Took a break from Denise Chong’s The Girl in the Photo (because it’s so depressing) with a book I stumbled across in the discount bin – 100 Rules for Living to 100: An Optimist’s Guide to a Happy Life by Dick van Dyke (with Tal MacThenia). It’s really more of an excuse for writing a lot of short reminiscences that didn’t make it into his memoir My Lucky Life in and out of Show Business. I was a bit sorry to see that it had been marked down twice, despite coming out only a few months ago. But it’s a good read, and Mr. Van Dyke has been pretty quiet and reserved individual, whose work I loved since his first show. A fun read.
I am a little late to this series. I bought and read the first Dungeon Crawler Carl book this week. It was a very enjoyable easy read. I will probably start on book 2 tonight or this weekend.
Glad you’re enjoying it! Those chapters at the end, that don’t seem to further the story much…I think they’ll mean a lot more as it goes along. 
Finished Revenge Prey by John Sandford. Another vintage Lucas Davenport novel. Another great page turner.
Finished Dick van Dyke’s 100 tips for Living to 100. It’s surprisingly good. nd it just came out last year. I hadn’t realized that he grew up with Gene Hackman in Danville, so when Hackman died it hit him really hard.
Still chugging through Denise Chong’s The Girl in the Picture, which is a pretty depressing book. I’ve already got two more lined up for after I finish.
I’m still re-reading Rachel Maddow’s Bag Man as bedside reading.
On audio, I started Sarah Rose’s For All the Tea in China, the story of Robert Fortune’s efforts to get tea plants and tea processing methods out of China to break China’s monopoly on tea.
Finished The Case of the Lonely Heiress, by Erle Stanley Gardner, which was okay; and The Jaybird, by MacKinlay Kantor, which was excellent. One of the main characters plays the fife, and I went on You Tube to hear the music he played, which definitely added to the reading experience.
Next up: Intrepid Girls: The Complicated History of the Girl Scouts of the USA, by Amy Erdman Farrell; and The Trouble with Gravity: Solving the Mystery Beneath Our Feet, by Richard Panek.
Started Bloody Genius by John Sandford. A Virgil Flowers novel that I think I missed when it was published in 2019.
Just got a book called Baby Dont Hurt Me by Chris Kattan. Love it.
One of my favorite books about the American Revolution, and a particularly good one to read this summer!
Finished Intrepid Girls: The Complicated History of the Girl Scouts of the USA, by Amy Erdman Farrell, which was okay; and The Trouble with Gravity: Solving the Mystery Beneath Our Feet, by Richard Panek, which is one of the best nonfiction books I’ve read so far this year.
Next up: Good Grief: Life in a Tiny Vermont Village, by Ellen Stimson; and “Beggars in Spain”, a science fiction novella by Nancy Kress.
I saw Bernie’s Mitten Maker by Jen Ellis in a store last week and bought a copy after reading a few pages.
Ellis is the woman who gave Bernie Sanders the mittens he wore on Inauguration Day in 2020, which became a meme. She writes about her life and the experience of becoming the center of a national news story. It’s an interesting perspective and Ellis writes well.
Nitpick: Inauguration Day in 2021.
I recently finished two slim volumes:
The Greatest Sentence Ever Written by Walter Isaacson, focusing on Jefferson’s key sentence from the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” A quick read from which I learned a thing or two.
Dog Songs by Mary Oliver, a collection of dog-related poetry from a Pulitzer winner. If you love dogs, you just might enjoy Oliver’s free verse. My favorites: “Percy,” “Little Dog’s Rhapsody,” “The Sweetness of Dogs” and “The Wicked Smile.”
I’m now reading Luke Skywalker Can’t Read: And Other Geeky Truths by Ryan Britt, an affectionate, uber-geeky exploration of all kinds of fandom. Not great, but I’ll keep going.
Still also reading To Paradise: A Novel by Hanya Yanagihara, a very long, centuries-spanning alternative history novel which has been a bit of slog at times, but is picking up speed towards the end.
I Am Not a Robot: My Year Using AI to Do (Almost) Everything Joanna Stern
The author, a personal technology journalist, uses AI extensively throughout calendar year 2025, and writes a silly, but entertaining and sometimes informative book about it.
She covers AI in medical settings (that was interesting - AI review of cancer screenings is actually saving lives. Puts the angst about data centers in a new light), self-driving cars ( I’ve ridden Waymo a few times. The first time I was amazed by how it all works. By the third or fourth time, it seemed mundane.), and AI romantic partners (I’ve never tried this and hopefully never will).
Recommended reading, but don’t wait too long. It will probably be out of date shortly.
Finished Good Grief: Life in a Tiny Vermont Village, by Ellen Stimson and “Beggars in Spain”, a science fiction novella by Nancy Kress, which were both okay.
Next up: Hole in the Sky, by Daniel H. Wilson; and Big Stick, by Michael A. Ventrella.
Finished Bloody Genius by John Sandford, another excellent Virgil Flowers novel.
Next up: Murder Your Employer by Rupert Holmes.
I finished “Displeasure Island” by Alice Bell last night… and um it was not as good as the first book and the first book had all kinds of pacing issues. This one ramped up the meandering around to 11 and for a book taking place on a small island that’s a LOT of pacing. There was way to much of Claire’s inner monologue, and while I understand why she was moping, it didn’t make the book any more enjoyable.
A few new ones:
The Unveiling, by Quan Barry. A Black woman goes on a business/pleasure cruise to Antarctica, and things go south. I almost put this book down in the first 20 pages: every character, including the protagonist, was annoying and awful. But then around page 30, something happens, and I was like, oh, Jeff Vandermeer has entered the chat. Which isn’t to say it’s a knockoff; rather, the book grows weird in a way that I found much more compelling. Ultimately I’m not sure it sticks the landing, but I’m not sure it doesn’t: it’s certainly stuck with me.
The Three Coffin Problem, by Lavie Tidhar. A vampire detective and his Renfield traipse across medieval Europe solving mysteries and enforcing the very sparse vampiric legal code. I caught the Three-Body-Problem reference, of course, but it wasn’t until I put it in Storygraph that I realized there’s a John Dickson Carr mystery, The Three Coffins. Very clever! And that’s about the extent of this book: silly, repetitive humor. The human character loves cheese and sausages, and that’s mentioned several times in every chapter. The vampire is feared by others of his kind, and he’s persnickety, and that shows up in every chapter. It’s a bunch of serial short stories in novel form with nothing on its mind past being entertaining; and I was entertained enough to finish it, but not much more.
All that We See or Seem, by Ken Liu. Have you ever read any Cory Doctorow fiction and thought, your ideas are cool but your stories are super-boring? I sure have. This book aims to fix the problem: Liu writes like he’s just finished reading a Cory Doctorow essaystory and decided to add some action. It’s like 50% Doctorow, 25% Neal Stephenson, 25% MacGuyver. You’ll notice 0% Shakespeare–we’re not talking high literature here–but it was tons of fun, and I loved it.
The Girl with a Thousand Faces, by Sunyi Dean. A ghost-hunter in the slums of 1970s Hong Kong runs afoul of organized crime, a city council member, and a powerful, mysterious, murderous ghost. Then things go strange. Not Vandermeer strange, not this one, but definitely not the direction I was expecting. I previously read another book by this author (The Book Eaters) and was underwhelmed, but this one was genuinely moving. Recommended!
My grasshopper brain is in fine form, in the last two days, I have started:
Platform Decay by Martha Wells, the latest Murderbot book. Glad to see more of Three.
A Whisper and a Curse by Darcey Burke, the 3rd in her Raven & Wren series about a psychic lord and a woman investigator in 1868 London.
The Gods of Guilt by Michael Connelly (audiobook) the 5th Mickey Haller book. I found last year’s release in a bargain bin and thought "Dayum, I’ve not visited with Mickey in a long time. (Ten years this month to be exact!)
I just started Shores of Knowledge: New World Discoveries and the Scientific Imagination by Joyce Appleby today. I’m only about thirty pages in so too early for me to offer an overall opinion. But the topic seems interesting and Appleby’s writing is good.
True. But I read an article yesterday about how some corporations are using ai screenings to determine which employees might develop cancer in the future - and then firing those employees to reduce their health insurance costs.