2024-26 New Book Review

Hello, this is a review of recent books I've read or listened to. All published in recent three years. Hope you enjoy. No one pays me to have an opinion, unlike the reviewers you see in the papers.

Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil, by V.E. Schwab. 3.5 out of 4 stars. I didn't know I would like or would need a vampire book. I have NEVER read vampire material before. NEVER! Turns out I did need this. Just this. Who knew? Both readers on the audio are excellent and could make even the Bible sound interesting. Character depth, character growth, suspense, unspooling of plot pulls you forward in mystery and suspense. Yes these are vampires, spooky people, but they seem like real humans. A dark book, like visiting a graveyard and getting stuck there. Like a milkshake made of blood. You will love this, women and men. Spoiler alert: contains vampire material. What do you think happens when we die? Where do we go? Some believe in reincarnation around and around. I read a book a few years ago about how there are thousands of cases of people being born and report that they had a previous life on earth. They know intimate details at very young age about their other parents, etc. Upon investigation, thousands of these pass muster: meaning there is factual evidence for some humans having lived twice. What I think is: we know nothing; we are like cats playing with tools, hammers and nails, rulers and screwdrivers, unaware those tools could make a church or a school. What do cats care about architecture? They occupy space, they know how to find spaces they like, but they don't know how to call those spaces, whether they are classical or Roman, or modern. You have to be brave to write a vampire book. So many people are set, fixed on their idea of a vampire. Good luck writing a vampire book if you offend these people. They will spread the word, no one will buy your book! Does a cat enjoy architecture less because it lacks the appropriate terminology, the appropriate historical context of texture and material and shape? Or does the cat enjoy the space more because it lacks these forms of "knowledge" or "intelligence." Maybe going to church or searching for truth is like trying to teach a cat architectural terms.

Napoleon, a Life, by Andrew Roberts. One of the best biographies ever written, if not the best. This book, is, like 10,000 times better than Hamilton. Look, I love George Washington, I always have. Napoleon was 100x as smart as Washington and just as brave. Napoleon created the modern French state, all by himself! Or all by his lonesome! as my Mom would say -- all the laws, all the parts of government: legislature, judiciary, executive, the cheese, the departments, the compartments, measurements, museums, everything. Napoleon is like Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Hamilton, all in one person. You don't have to like him -- he has a lot of negative features. But as a character in history, there's no one who compares. No one. It's a shame the U.S. education system is so poor that we don't learn more about this guy in K-12. This biography is detailed, long, hilarious, written by someone who obviously loves Napoleon, as you will when you finish. Four out of four stars. When I finished it, I read it a second time, it's that good. All Francophones must read.

What We Can Know, by Ian McEwan. 3.5 out of 4 stars. This has the fun element of the unreliable narrator, which is so tasty that when I finished I read again immediately to see what I had missed the first time. This is a story about a historian in the future analyzing a poem written in the present day. The tension in the book is created by the depiction of the future world (it's fun to see the author predict the future of AI, the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, and so on) and then ultimately we get more information about the poem written in the present, so we get the delight of comparing the present information with the future historian's perception of the past. Clever, funny, cynical. I feel like the book is making fun of academics including historians and literary types who think they can figure out what someone who lived 200 years ago preferred to eat for dinner. Why do we still have email and Google?

The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco. 3 out of 4 stars. Super clever mystery, set centuries ago. This book is the inspiration for everything written by Dan Brown and similar authors. The author has a crazy amount of knowledge regarding history, philosophy, religion, culture, language, and he blends them together wonderfully. Ultimately I may not be the right audience for so much intrigue and detail -- hard to pay attention and keep track of so much detail. One of those books that probably needs to be read in a literature class where a teacher or accomplished student can help outline the material and tell us what's going on with a lot of the references. Did I tell you I took a class in law school called Dante & The Law? Yes, this was a class. On the first day of class the teacher said, "Veritably I say unto you my friends, my students, that in this course we will descend even into the butthole of hell and walk through the constricting anus of death and purgatory, and we will somehow come out on the other side clean as a little white baby sheep."

1885 Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant, First Edition, Volume 1, by U.S. Grant. Four out of four stars. Yes he wrote his own auto-biography about his time as a general in the Civil War and his rise to the White House. He wrote this in a hurry as he was dying. Thankfully he did this for us. Most people when they are dying don't bother to write an epic auto-biography in two volumes. The writing is simple, hand-written of course, with a sing-song tone, but it's heavy, substantive, meaningful, interesting, and a type of writing that has been lost -- he's writing history here, he's not writing to glorify himself. Grant is one of the great Americans of history. Franklin, Grant, Adams, Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson, Hamilton, Martin Luther King, Jr. -- those are often the first names. I would put Grant in the top 3 with Washington and Lincoln -- he was that great, that honest, that determined. If you go through the K-12 educational system in U.S.A. and you don't end up ranking Grant in the top 5 as purely a historical figure (meaning we are ignoring artists and religious types and humanitarians and other important people), you probably had crappy teachers.

1984, by George Orwell. Four out of four stars. This should be taught in every school and church in America, year round. It should replace every other book used in those settings until it is known by all the population. It's the most true, the most correct book ever written. To me it's the most important book ever written, after the Bible. I have read it three times in the past two years. I can't stop reading about it or thinking about it. It fully predicted the Trump presidency, the stupidity of those who put him and keep him in power. The book is a complete dissection of the American political system, military, PR world, American religion, and economy.

The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov. 3.5 out of 4 stars. I had wanted to read this one for more than 15 years, and finally made time for it, actually reading it (not audio). This is a work of crazy genius. It reminded me of Gogol's work. There are a variety of interesting and bizarre characters who come together here in unpredictable ways. Dead Souls crossed with Confederacy of Dunces? There's a bit of Dante in here, too. Underscoring the whole story is the author's intense sense of hope, which breaks through the text and the story at times in beautiful ways. I'm sure that this could be better enjoyed in a literature class or with some kind of guide. If you are given two chances to read this book, and one of those chances is by yourself, and the other is in a class with other people reading the same book, where you can discuss the book with others, I would pick the second chance because you are going to want that support and help. If there is a third option where you can read this in a Russian literature course in connection with 2-4 other Russian novels, I would pick that above the other two. If a fourth chance comes along with free pizza, even better.

A Promised Land, by Barack Obama. Three out of four stars. I did the audio for this one. He's a great reader and a great writer. I enjoyed going down memory lane with President Obama, enjoyed hearing his take on different key events, remembering where I was and who I was with when such and such happened. He has an admirable system of ethics, tremendous integrity and honesty, a pure intention. He's also a great husband and father and friend. He does an excellent job tying different themes, elements, and pieces together, shows how one thing leads to another. He avoids cynicism and bitterness. At times I wanted him to be more humorous, to stand back a bit farther and comment on certain people or events. Ultimately he's so committed to being presidential in his writing and commentary, he doesn't dare to be too irreverent or mean, which was probably the right call by him. As a history it's interesting and well-done, as an auto-biography or biography it's probably a bit boring. It's hard to believe we live in a country where Obama was the President and the next President was Trump. That's crazy. That's fffff'in crazy. It's like a restaurant where you get a nice steak and crab one night (Obama) and the next night they serve you a tray of poop (Trump).

The Doorman, by Chris Pavone. 2.5 out of 4 stars. Modern suspense reader where a Hispanic doorman Chicky Diaz is the intermediary for many people and events. Can be read on a flight from Detroit to Lansing, where I go to get my wool mittens laundered. Better than recent Grisham, not nearly as good as early Grisham. Fun to read due to current themes, even though the writing isn't strong and the main character is not actually the doorman. Am I embarrassed I read this? Yes.