Recent reading
| Number of books read and reviewed each year |
|---|
| 1995* |
(28)
|
| 1996 |
(47)
|
| 1997 |
(74)
|
| 1998 |
(61)
|
| 1999 |
(62)
|
| 2000 |
(27)
|
| 2001 |
(51)
|
| 2002 |
(60)
|
| 2003 |
(37)
|
| 2004 |
(36)
|
| 2005 |
(32)
|
| 2006 |
(46)
|
| 2007 |
(109)
|
| 2008 |
(78)
|
| 2009 |
(65)
|
| 2010 |
(68)
|
| 2011 |
(98)
|
| 2012 |
(129)
|
| 2013 |
(114)
|
| 2014 |
(101)
|
| 2015 |
(88)
|
| 2016 |
(82)
|
| 2017 |
(76)
|
| 2018 |
(67)
|
| 2019 |
(95)
|
| 2020 |
(90)
|
| 2021 |
(85)
|
| 2022 |
(101)
|
| 2023 |
(124)
|
| 2024 |
(155)
|
| 2025 |
(133)
|
| 2026 |
(64)
|
| * Partial year |
[Finished 29 September 2026] A somewhat harrowing account of Wynn-Williams’ time at Facebook, beginning with her idealistic view of the company as a force for good and watching as it became increasingly a force for evil from the front row, culminating with her retaliatory firing for raising sexual harassment complaints against her boss. A passing mention to her reluctance to leave earlier in part because of the promise of income from stock options that would vest in the future offers some indication that she’s not writing from a point of pure self-importance. Certainly, the effects of almost everything she writes about have been visible from the outside looking in and I’m glad I deleted by Facebook account over five years ago.
[Finished 23 September 2026] Consisting of single-paragraph sections with occasionally informative titles, this novel reads like no other I’ve read. It’s a beautiful experiment in narrative structure with two timelines in the protagonist’s life woven together in ways that occasionally reinforce each other and occasionally seem completely unrelated. It was a bit amusing to look at the reviews on Goodreads and see people who found the structure challenging declare it like reading poetry, which makes me wonder what they think poetry is.
[Finished 17 September 2026] A strangely surreal book, with the curious choice of putting the final chapters of the book (numbered as such) at the beginning and then returning to chapter 1 leaving the reader knowing where the story is going but not how it will get there. I am far removed from Jančar’s politics, but this is a book that will stay with me.
[Finished 12 September 2026] I just never connected with the book, I felt like maybe I was just too distracted while reading it or something, which is a pity because I think there might have been a brilliant read here which I missed.
[Finished 11 September 2026] A kaleidoscopic and frequently maddening book, running 600 pages and not always earning the length but sometimes definitely earning the length with the sort of crazed risk-taking that is both rare and unique for a first novel. I didn’t always like it, but I was thrilled to have the experience of reading it.
[Finished 4 September 2026] An interesting concept, although it ended up a bit disappointing in its execution. I felt like Maazel was trying too much to write something Pynchon-esque and we ended up with second-rate Pynchon instead of first-rate Maazel as a consequence.
[Finished 29 August 2026] A wonderfully delightful story of a young religious sister in a dying order and her encounters with the world. It’s a wonderfully drawn picture of the life with all the complications that arise from community and trying to distinguish God from the church.
[Finished 24 August 2026] Frankly, a bit silly of a book. The conceit is interesting, that Jesus was actually a woman living as a man, but then big chunks of the back story end up being completely implausible, like that patriarchal religion was only established within the lifetime of the elder characters of the book, and it was difficult to get past that. The plot was serviceable, but I felt like I was reading something written by someone whose knowledge of Jesus and first-century Palestine didn’t run much deeper than
Jesus Christ Superstar and Christmas carols. A better-conceived book on the subject would have worked much better than this one did.
[Finished 20 August 2026] Set in a near-future dystopian America, it started out feeling insufficient, but as the book continued, it felt better realized. The pointing out that America has long used separating children from their parents as a form of violence (whether with enslaved people or Native American boarding schools or the border separation by the Trump regime—the last when I learned of it sent me into a month-long depression) was a notable element of the author’s note at the book’s end.
[Finished 14 August 2026] The writing here was painfully mediocre (it had the same flat voice of other amateur autobiographies I’ve read) and the content had to be filtered through the understanding that Seraphine was writing his account with an agenda—to establish that he was a key creative wellspring for the band Chicago, but even with those caveats, it’s an interesting history of the band and the travails and triumphs along the way. One only wishes it were better written and the obvious bias was better managed.