Book #51 of 2017: Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman A neat retelling of old myths about Odin, Thor, and the other Norse gods, synthesized by Neil Gaiman from a variety of original sources. It doesn’t read like a novel (because it isn’t one), nor does it bear much resemblance to Gaiman’s other work. But it’s …
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Book #50 of 2017: The Penultimate Peril by Lemony Snicket (A Series of Unfortunate Events #12) Probably the best book of the series so far, with plenty of characters from earlier novels making surprise returns and the lines between good and evil continuing to blur. The Baudelaires and Count Olaf are all shaded into more …
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Book #49 of 2017: Swing Time by Zadie Smith Very reminiscent of Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend, in part because the narrator isn’t really at the center of her own story. Here, our unnamed protagonist alternates between childhood memories and more recent life history, each of which sees her drastically eclipsed by another figure: first …
Book #48 of 2017: Wild Magic by Tamora Pierce (The Immortals #1) More confident and less problematic than author Tamora Pierce’s earlier work Song of the Lioness, but with its same fun sense of magic and adventure. The Lioness Alanna and her friends return as supporting characters this time, with the main focus given over …
Book #47 of 2017: The Queen of the Tearling by Erika Johansen (The Queen of the Tearling #1) This post-apocalyptic fantasy was a little bit underbaked, but I still enjoyed it for the most part. (It helps to have a protagonist whose first act as queen is to storm in Daenerys-like, freeing a bunch of …
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Book #46 of 2017: The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail – But Some Don’t by Nate Silver The prose is sometimes lacking (and the baseball sections could not have been more boring), but FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver writes an easy-to-follow introduction to the science of analysis and prediction. It’s less of a …
Book #45 of 2017: Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance An outstanding memoir of life in rural Appalachia at the turn of the 21st century. A lot has been said about this book inadvertently offering insight into the angry voters who swept Donald Trump into office, but …
Book #44 of 2017: The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón (The Cemetery of Forgotten Books #1) I loved the atmosphere at the beginning of this novel, all dark and gothic and promising of mysteries hidden in forgotten libraries. And I especially liked Zafón’s descriptions of what it’s like to fall in love …
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Book #43 of 2017: Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right by Jane Mayer An infuriating and depressing account of how the super-wealthy have quietly influenced popular discourse through the funding of think tanks and campaign contributions to bring about policies protecting their own wealth and business …
Book #42 of 2017: Six Earlier Days by David Levithan I loved David Levithan’s novel Every Day about a teenage entity who wakes up each morning in a different body, but this prequel just didn’t do it for me. I think the intent was to showcase how A adopted their principles and grew to be …
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