Eduardo Santiago

What is this power King has? She creates characters with whom I have nothing in common; whose lives are completely alien to me, nearly incomprehensible; who nevertheless draw me in so completely and intimately. Are there really people like this? Relationships? Is this what life is like for artist types? The sane part of me knows this is fiction but there’s this weird other facet of me that gets sucked in and so fervently wants to believe. This facet is making it hard for me now: having spent the past forty-eight hours immersed in these lives, vicariously feeling their connection, ... how do I reintegrate back into my own bleak life?

‘Isn’t love a kind of hope?’ I said.

‘No. Love is crushing. Love is something you let yourself feel at your own peril, despite your better sense.’

Then again, maybe I’m better off as I am.

Riveting. Mesmerizing. Beautiful language, minimalist and spare yet evocative. Savory. Intimidating at first, because she’s so well read, so many literary references and probably many more that I missed, but curiously she adds these in a way that exalts humanity, the reader included. I felt uplifted, never inadequate.

Highly recommended with two suggestions: if you can, read Writers & Lovers first. It’s not necessary—this book stands alone—but there’s just a little bit of context that you might appreciate. Second, grit your teeth through the abusive religiofreak shit in the first fifty pages. It’s offputting AF but do keep going, it gets better.

A lovely premise, but too contrived to work for me. The inconsistencies and plot holes were too big to ignore -- how do they bathe? have they never been caught in the rain?; and the journal, so cringe: that's not how people write in their journals, and it was awkward and took me out of the story, because all I could think was, okay, this is Hart slowly dribbling out little nuggets of story, so I can expect one more "shocker" then a chapter break. "Shocker" in quotes because no, not really: most of the main character's storyline is obvious to the reader from the first quarter, and I can't tell if that's intentional or not. It kills the tension.

Most disappointing is that the characters are so powerless. Things happen to them, they sort of respond but rarely in interesting ways; they're just guided by what the story needs. Hart is going for feminist, but I read the women as disempowered. Not what I expected after the kickass Weyward. Oh, and communication - yikes. Nobody here talks to one another! No real relationships (okay, maybe one). So many miscommunications, so many unresolved feelings because they're all so scared to talk.

Intense. I feel wrung out and still a bit on edge, recovering from the tension, all the way through, tension that kept me finding pockets of reading time on days where no such time was to be had. Caveat lector, do not start this book as a few-pages-a-night easy read.

Heavyhanded. Bleak AF; also so inspiring and full of hope. Very obviously written by someone male, occasionally to the point of being slightly irritating. And yet. Riveting, engaging, deeply human. Heartwrenching deep dives into the paths that may or may not lead to fulfilling lives. Beautiful depictions of friendship, its fragility and strength and power. Exquisite but highly improbable dialog (and monologues) that Tallent clearly spent a long time honing, and they're just brilliant, but the inverisimilitude took me out of the story. Made me feel like listening to the audiobook, though. The villains are cartoonishly awful but the heroes and supporting characters, oof, deeply relatable. Except for their grandiloquence they could be you or me, caring, devoted, flawed, with high aspirations and grit and sometimes poor judgment and falls and pick-back-ups dust-offs and life throwing monkey wrenches and train wrecks along the way.

Highly recommended despite its flaws. Kind of like life itself.

Sŏn practice injects curiosity into mindfulness. This is a term you don't really find in the early Buddhist tradition.

So much YES! This is the type of Buddhism that resonates with me: lean into wonder; integrate practice with a real-world life. Always question, including the “gurus.” Practice our morality, screw up, refine, do better. And do it with integrity, not as a mendicant: “what I enjoyed about training in a Sŏn monastery is that work is an integral part of the monastic life.”

A few tedious sections, mostly the language-game parts. Much that’s already familiar, but beautifully expressed so I loved it. I gained some insights that I’ve already included in my sitting practice, and some I hope to make part of my everyday real-world practice.

Highly recommended for Stoics and for those wishing to explore Buddhism without the reincarnation or follow-the-leader bullshit.

Slow clap. This took a long time to pay off—for the first 80% I was frequently tempted to DNF—but pay off it did, and I’m glad to have persevered. This is a thoughtful exploration of colonialism, privilege, fetishizing, and much more that I’m not smart or sophisticated enough to perceive. Yáng and King have built a perplexing but ultimately rewarding experience. The layers of artifice, annoying for much of the book, make the book more memorable in the end. What kept me going was my fascination with the main character (not the narrator!): fascinatingly intelligent, cultured, a masterful communicator, exquisitely sensitive. Yáng depicts her through the lens of an oblivious self-centered narrator, and it was so beautifully done.

Difficult to recommend. Possibly to someone deeply familiar with the nuances of early-twentieth-Century Taiwan/Japan history? That knowledge would’ve helped me greatly. The reader should also be able to memorize many dozens of similar-looking Japanese and Taiwanese words, mostly but not all food names. I got lost, ended up skimming a lot of paragraphs. (There is a lot of foodism, excessive even to me). And the reader should be patient. If that’s you, if you can tolerate an unlikably naïve and overbearing first-person narrator, and can humor Yáng in her clever Borgesian (as in Jorge Luis) sleight-of-hand, ... consider adding this to your list. Just be sure to stick with it to the very last of the afterwords.

Obviously a humblebrag timed to boost her campaign, but in fairness she does have much to brag about. Haaland’s accomplishments are impressive, her path to achieving them even more so, yet her voice is consistently matter-of-fact: not boastful nor humble nor faux-humble. She offers a candid picture of her background, struggles, and motivations. Her work ethic and grit are incomparable, as are her collaboration and listening skills. What’s missing is vision, and that troubles me greatly as we head into November. But let’s not go there now.

Not fine literature nor tension-filled, but I'm glad to have read this and to have learned more about who I fervently hope will be our next Governor.

Five stars for material, a little fewer for presentation. I loved it, but wish it was a little less dry. Kruse is a great speaker; her March 17 2026 appearance on Alan Alda’s Clear and Vivid podcast was powerful. Her writing, I often found dense and jargony. Even so, the content is absolutely spot-on. She understands how to live a proper life.

If you’ve read Marcus, Epictetus, Fukuyama, Nonviolent Communication, Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me), and/or much about Buddhism, you’ll recognize most—but not all—of the setting. She builds on them all and integrates in natural ways. Kruse demonstrates tremendous emotional intelligence and maturity; she is worth listening to.

Disappointed that she doesn’t talk about brain hemispheres or the value of psychedelics in developing both empathy and Stoicism. Next edition, I hope.

Better than the last few: more heart, more humor. Fun moments, and moving ones, but overall I found it tedious. Lots of rushing around into and out of danger, way too much jumping from one setting to the next, overly described, novelty for its own sake but adding nothing to the story. The initial premise was questionable, characters' motivations unrelatable. No tension: Murderbot just hacks any security system, jams enemy comms, and out-reflexes all physical beings. Tight timing? Outnumbered? No problem, Deus ex machina is just around the corner.

Promising hints that the next book might be SecUnit Settles Down, Joins Mensah's Polycule With ART Too, and They Raise Smart Compassionate Kids Who Save The World(s). Sign me up for that one.

A dozen or so kickass women who shaped our nation's history, all with histories—some recorded, some inferred—of childhood love of the outdoors. Well researched, informative, often engaging, ... and often not. I found it disconnected, trying to weave too many people together and losing me in the process. Really wanted to love this, but could only like it.

Jackbooted thugs rounding up civilians. Murdering some. Deportations. Concentration camps. It was hard at times to tell if this was 1940s Germany or 2026 America. Or Palestine.

The book is told in two parts. The first and principal is Hannelore's voice, from her childhood in the 1930s onward. The second is Carolyn, Hannelore's adult daughter, speaking candidly about her writing process and about her mother.

I want to give this to everyone I know. It's short. It's powerful. It's frighteningly relevant. And it even has mouthwatering cookie recipes.

It's hard to justify five stars. The writing is fourth-grade level, presumably because it's DuClos's transcription/condensation of her mother's verbal recollections across many years. (DuClos's own voice, near the end of the book, is a refreshing return to adulthood.) I justify my rating based on impact. I'm shaken, and feel even more strongly now that we must act.

Favorite sentence, from the epilog: "Krause [concentration camp director] met his fate in much the same way as he had treated his thousands of prisoners: brutally. He was captured, torn apart, quartered, and torn into pieces by Russian partisans." Let's hope we get to see (and participate in) a lot of that soon.

[Sincere thanks to Milkweed Editions and to Bookworks Albuquerque for providing me an advance review copy]

Passions are impossible to describe to those who don't feel them, yet most of us can't help but try: think of the countless hours you've spent explaining the joys of stamp collecting and model trains to your remaining friends.

Laidlaw has several advantages that improve his odds of conveying the wonders of rock climbing. For one, he's a lifelong climber so he doesn't have that new-convert preachiness. He's also a gifted climber, strong, talented, with ample time to train and climb (he acknowledges his privilege). Most importantly, he's a gifted writer with an eye for detail and an ability to convey the feeling of being on rock. His language is evocative; his reflections insightful and illuminating. He muses on the nature of consciousness, on ecology and ethics, history, geology, on death and on living well. His risk calculations differ significantly from mine, but that's why poets tell better stories than engineers: "I decided to call it a day"—my regular mantra—does not a rapt audience make.

Recommended not just for climbers but for anyone pursuing a life of intention and meaning.

“This man was willing to lose his life to preserve white supremacy,” she writes in a chapter dealing with health care (specifically the ACA), and this sums up the book better than anything I could say. Hernández will have you thinking more deeply about U.S. systems of cruelty--both internal and external (think CIA and dictatorships and overthrows)--than you want to. But you should. Colorism, women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, white privilege, the propaganda machine and how it gets stupid people to vote against their own interests. Cuban hypocrites moving here then voting for the orange cockroach, hoping to pull the drawbridge up after them. She effectively interweaves policy coverage with her own and her family’s lived experiences, really driving home the impact of continuous incremental oppression of those who have so little choice.

One disappointment: she never mentions statutory citizenship, the kind granted to subjects born in some U.S. colonies. An understandable oversight, given the number of other second- and third-class citizenships she covers, but it makes me wonder how many other ways there are to define--and limit--citizenship. Given what we know about humans, probably too many to mention.

Recommended reading for everyone.

Delicious. Smart, laugh-out-loud funny, which sucked because I couldn't read it while voters were in the polling center.

Too intense and unusual for me to have much to say. Plus, I’m not the target audience; I often felt uncomfortable as a voyeur, and often felt lost with some cultural references. That said, I agree with S.’s assessment of this as a broad must-read for people trying to be decent. Just pick your timing carefully: there’s trauma, abuse, self-destructive behavior, deep levels of pain.

Has Mary Roach always been this cheeky? It's been a lot of years since _Stiff_ and _Bonk_ but I think yes, that's her voice. This time I found it a little overpowering.

Fascinating material, fun, funny, informative, but a little more scattershot than I'd expected from a supposedly linear adventure. Her research was impressively thorough, her presentation accessible.

It became obvious by page 3 that this was going to be a feel-good kind of book—no surprise if you’ve read The Music of Bees (and if you haven’t, please do yourself a favor and read that first. It’s not strictly necessary, but your love for and understanding of the main character will be stronger). What wasn’t obvious was how emotionally twisty it would be. Manipulative either way but I’m not complaining: I really needed this right now (2026) and would bet that maybe you do too. It’s a reassuring hug in dark times: good kind flawed heroes, including a deliciously relatable neurodivergent one; tough moral dilemmas; vile odious monsters who end up falling into vats of slow-acting poison-acid. (Sigh, not really, but let me remember it that way please?) Toxic masculinity defeated by more powerful quietness. Cooperation, community, growth. I closed the book and felt briefly at peace.

Garvin’s writing is—forgive me—mellifluous. Gentle, pensive, with awareness of all senses, scent and sounds and delicate touches. I swooned when reading “The grass susurrated against her pant leg”: a word I’ve always loved, fairly common in Spanish but so rare in English. And speaking of Spanish, the occasional idioms were perfectly apt; it’s clear she had it proofread by a native speaker. Those little details matter, and this novel is rich with details. And with love.

One weird aside: a (female) friend approached me yesterday and, seeing me read it, asked: “I got the sense this was a women’s book, is it?” I was taken aback, not really understanding the question. Still not really sure I get it. I don’t remember any parts of the book where a reader’s genitalia would affect their interpretation or enjoyment ... but then again by definition I wouldn’t. Do I have any friends willing to break the sistah code and illuminate me? If not, no sweat: my enjoyment and appreciation remain high.

Humbling and thought-provoking. Not really a cookbook--you and I are unlikely to prepare any of the dishes listed--but Swentzell and her community did, and subsisted on them, and share what they learned. We take so much for granted, not realizing that nearly all the foods in our kitchen would never have been together until just a few hundred years ago. The essays are powerful, and reading the recipes, with their limited ingredients and intense preparation, is a reminder of how fortunate we are.

Poorly promoted: it's much, much more than "book about a fire in some library you don't care about" and I wish it billed itself thus. This is a book for bibliophiles everywhere. It's educational, inspiring, warm, and fun, broadly covering subjects library- and book-related; how our modern concept of library has evolved and continues to. And yes, there's some coverage of the 1986 Los Angeles library fire, bits and pieces tossed in periodically, but it feels like a halfhearted attempt to center around a unifying theme.

May not be suitable for younger (under forty) readers: a good part of the fun involves the chapter headings, which are three or four Courier-typed card catalog book listings related to the chapter content. I enjoyed reading those, keeping them in mind as the chapter progressed, and flipping back to review what I'd missed. (Yes, flipping back. This was a hardcover, borrowed from our local library. That, too, was part of the fun). I could almost hear the drawers sliding open, almost feel the rough uneven edges of the cards.

Recommended for anyone who has ever felt awe when stepping into a library.

“Free Will” is in the zeitgeist, so let’s talk a little along those lines. There are people who somehow believe that each of us has full control of our decisions at all times; that someone who grows up neglected, without secure attachment, surrounded by poverty and daily violence and gang pressure, can tug on magic bootstraps and get a 9-to-5 at MegaCorp. Those people tend to be privileged and, to put it bluntly, very stupid. (It’s not their fault—they’re a product of their own environment and upbringing—but dammit they are still so infuriating). Can these people stick to their beliefs after reading this book? De León’s crushing answer, in his epilogue, is yes. And that just crushed me. How must he feel?

This is a hard book to recommend: there’s violence, misery, brutality. Recognition that some people live very hard lives and make tough choices under impossible circumstances. It’s uncomfortable for us affluent northerners to see the scope of suffering just a few miles south of us, suffering enabled (and encouraged) by systems that we live in and support. Hard to recommend, but I do so unreservedly.

One note: de León is an anthropologist, not a journalist. He does not embed himself clinically-dispassionately. He is careful not to participate in “criminal” activities (quotes reflect the absurdity of criminalizing migration) but he is very much present in the narrative, often in ways I found disturbing. I choose to reserve judgment: surviving for years among scary-dangerous people, and living to produce a powerful book, takes courage and personality beyond anything I can imagine.

Trippy! I never knew where he would go next, and every zig and zag was intense. Friend J recently expressed a penchant for “books that make me feel, or make me think”; This one is very much both. Powers is a True Believer, almost but not quite Leary level, but he’s very much self-aware: just when I was getting ready to ditch the book he comes out with Sometimes, I play back an interview I did, and creeping into my voice is the breathless panting of a zealot.. He does that a lot, going into what feels like manifesto mode and then swerving into ... well, different tacks.

The one central thread is healing. Psychedelics have an immense power to heal trauma, and apparently Black Americans experience quite a bit of generational and personal and daily trauma [citation buffer overflow]. Powers explores what that healing could look like, and wow does he go in depth, with angles and consequences I’d never considered, all with love and rage and wonder. He kept me on my toes, feeling and thinking. His alternate-self exploration, where he acknowledges a different-timeline version of himself who grew up stuck in the Projects, hit home hard. There but for incredible good fortune and privilege, etc etc.

Not a book for everyone. If you haven't personally experienced the healing, you may find it baffling or even unnerving. If you're already a (lower-case) true believer, and want to learn more about antiracist healing possibilities, and are willing to be challenged, pick this up.