Eduardo Santiago

Possibly the most heartening, joyful, and meaningful book of the past many years. (Ugh. This makes the book sound like self-help or inspiration or somesuch. It's not: it's purely science, with occasional side trips into philosophy).

The book covers so many of my favorite topics, so much of what I've learned over my life about how the Universe works and how to live in it: chaos; randomness; living with uncertainty; designing for efficiency vs resiliency; cognitive biases; the nature of consciousness; heuristics and probability; eudaimonia; and, most importantly, cooperation and doing good. Klaas gets it, REALLY gets it, and he's a brilliant writer to boot. Great pacing. His examples are fascinating, relevant, sometimes chilling, always insightful. Even his chapter on free will--a subject I find inane and tedious--had fresh perspectives. He has thought about everything I think about, in much greater depth, and he describes it all so elegantly. It irks me that he talks about lower-case stoicism without understanding the slightest bit of capital-S Stoics, but nobody's perfect. He can learn.

Reading this in January 2026, as I helplessly watch the U.S. collapse, is counterintuitively an exercise in hope. It reaffirms many of my most important life choices, those related to building and strengthening community. I will be recommending this book to everyone in my circles.

One paragraph exalts the natural wonders of the North American continent, the next bemoans the corruption and venality of its inhabitants. Repeat, repeat. It was a little too choppy for my taste, impossible to get into a flow. I also felt completely unable to relate to the author: her neuroses match mine to some extent, but her life choices baffle me to the point of annoyance.

There's beautiful writing about magnificent places, many of which I've experienced, some that I haven't and appreciated learning about. Hidden amid the handwringing there's sharp writing about evils perpetrated by monsters big and small; mostly reminders, not much new to someone my age but perhaps informative to younger folks. Chopping and dicing the two together, though, did not work for me.

A disheartening indictment of white supremacy and ultimately humanity itself. There were so, so many chances for things to go better than they did: decent moral people here and there, in positions where they could do good or at least prevent greater harm, all of them replaced or killed or simply worn down by the system. Really drives home the inevitability of Might Makes Right, how subhuman bullies can destroy entire worlds in brief times. Reading this in 2025 is depressing AF. Like seeing a roadmap of the next thirty years.

Although nominally centering around Kit Carson -- a more complex and tragic figure than I had thought -- the book is much more epic in scale. Carson is a major player, but the focus is really on the white expansion into the West through bullying, force, lying stealing cheating. Sides attempts to write with objectivity, giving (what comes off as) fair voice to the many NDN tribes involved. He repeatedly stresses the role played by misunderstandings, by cultural divides that could have been bridged... had anyone in power bothered to try.

Well researched and engagingly written. Highly, highly recommended, especially to anyone in New Mexico.

I read Kingfisher because of her great big heart. Conflicted characters (mostly) doing their best, with touches of sweetness and humor. This one just didn't work for me. Characters were wooden, the story too constrained by the House of Usher gimmick. I really should give up on Gothic: I find the drama and gloom and "creepiness" tiresome.

A bit forced: the Phantom of the Opera gimmick was fun but the constraints it imposed made things awkward at times. Too many sections just dragged. But oh, the finale! Tender, snort-out-loud funny. Completely made up for the rest.

A 300-page motivational speech plugging Internal Family Systems, meditation, self-love, and friendship. That's not really fair, though because it's hella smart, kind, thoughtful, well researched... and, most of all, fun. And did I mention smart? This is the kind of book you hand to a galfriend (of any age) and say Honey, you need to read this, and then you gab about it later over a bottle of wine. Or, if you're not already at peace with your own aging, give it a try: you'll find fresh, sassy material to ponder.

It did grate on me that all the important characters are beautiful, talented, wealthy, and loved. Soaked in privilege. Tara went for escapist; I wish she'd made it relatable. But then I'm not the target audience.

Recommended reading for women over twelve, and for anybody who knows one.

OMG so bleak. Very difficult going at first: hard to feel anything other than contempt for the characters. I persevered, and contempt became pity, which I know is not much better. Finally, halfway through, compassion set in and stayed.

Same day I started reading this, there was an AskReddit thread, What’s something you always assumed was mandatory in life—until you met someone who just… didn’t do it? and almost all the top answers related to communicating, listening, engaging with others. I kept thinking about that while reading. How generational trauma and broken systems trap us with no role models or good examples. How the trauma is passed down and around.

Impressive first work, shows promise. His metaphors felt strained at times ("when night dripped over") and some of the young-child-POV stories were implausibly precocious ("there was no escaping how those problems shaped us all, no escaping the end, like the way the ice melts in the river each spring"). A few continuity glitches and some repetition, likely because these were published previously as individual stories. (This book is described as a collection, and in theory it is, but the stories all form a consistent -- although chronologically jumbled -- first-person narrative comprising one man's childhood through adulthood). Not sure who I'd recommend this to, but I'm glad to have read it.

Sublime. Brilliant. Laugh-out-loud funny one moment, gut-punch brutal the next. Thoughtful, smart, a beautiful mix of rage and kindness and wish-fulfillment fantasy. Necessary reading.

Not sure what this was. Musings on the Covid lockdown in NYC; on writer's block; on writing, writers, art, the future of humanity? Very meta. Bleak at times but--this is Nunez--always gentle.

Absolutely brilliant in style, narration, and above all content. Maugham uses negative space masterfully: the principal character, around which everything revolves, is mostly absent throughout the book. He appears periodically but his influence is really felt indirectly, through others who are depicted more richly. Too richly: they are for the most part shallow, vapid, inane shells leading meaningless lives, and in fact I nearly abandoned the book two chapters in because of this; I continued because I started understanding Maugham's reason for doing it, and I was rewarded. So take a leap of faith if you find yourself faltering.

Another intriguing use of negative space: the first-person narrator--a proxy for Maugham himself--is mostly invisible. A fly on the wall, one who does interact with the cast but only minimally. For the most part he observes and listens and describes. Which brings me to why I chose to read this: it's because of Kate Murphy's exquisite You're Not Listening. She cites Razor's Edge in her Further Reading list, and indeed there is soooo much awareness here. The narrator has somewhat supernatural powers of attention, noticing peoples' reactions, expressions, and nuances, going in depth into the emotional states involved. A trick that works better in fiction than IRL, where we're better off asking, but that's not always possible and I will assume that the author has a good feel for his characters' mental states. It was effective and showed tremendous sensitivity toward each imperfect creature.

I don't recall ever having read anything like this. Loneliness, search for meaning, privilege, mature views on sexuality and religion and morality, and so much compassion. The fact that it was published in 1944 astonishes me. There's a bit more privilege than I'm comfortable with, not enough (right now) to knock down a star. Just enough to offer you a heads-up.

A portal opens, enabling a race of malevolent greedy subhuman monsters to invade. They torture and kill and destroy.

In this book version, the monsters are stopped by three powerful women and their allies. In the 2025 USA version, ... sigh, it's still up to us.

This was one of his better ones. Good tension, noble characters, decent wit and morality.