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The second book in the Southern Reach series is I assume considered in general a bit lesser, and I more-or-less agree with that. Annihilation was a powerful story of change and identity, and with powerful imagery and crazy worldbuilding. Authority I think was ultimately a bit more ambitious than that - VanderMeer tried to maintain a sense of deep, hidden meaning while hampering himself with an environment meant to be 2-dimensional at first glance, tropes of blank-faced men in suits doing secretive things. To a certain extent he succeeded, with some more subtle flourishes, but the intentional subversion of tropes I think ultimately weighed down the story a bit too much and in the end you get a novel that is a bit of a pulp and a bit of something else and not fully, breathlessly one or the other.

A sweet love song to the genre of jazz, treading an interesting line between historical and fictional, painting beautiful little portraits of the lives of the greats.

Fascinating! This book blew my expectations out of the water with a beautiful combination of interesting anecdotes, histories, and explanations of basic science that is significantly more relevant to modern life than I was aware. Charming and well written, it takes its vast subject matter and presents its list of facts as a compelling story told over time.

I found this book to be rich, emotionally honest, and a timely discussion of handling politics and interpersonal interactions when it feels like things are out of control, inaccessible. I think there is a through-line here, a bit sketchy, from George Elliot to Dorris Lessig to Sallye Rooney, although I would not be surprised if I was the first to try and claim that. Maybe that through-line is just Women of the British Isles. But I think there is something in here about looking at the world and presenting a story that is at once intensely personal and revealing about societal structure, politics told from the first person perspective.

A perfect novel, making the second perfect novel I have read, after Ulysses. I could maybe write more, but what is the point of writing, when it already has been done, perfectly?

Lots of fun, lots of corpses but a bit a lark, a bit of a laugh.

This is a fascinating and insightful biography of both a guy I, an ignoramus, had not heard of, as well as of American foreign policy over the last half-century. Lots of good stuff here, sharply written, my biggest takeaway being that I am not entirely convinced that foreign policy actually effects change. I mean it probably does something?

Good, solid, manly. Wister is clearly the Tolkien of the Western genre, and that caught me a bit by surprise - the seeds and bones of the genre are so clear and well-put, it feels like The Virginian precisely predicts the existence of Clint Eastwood and Larry McMurtry. Also just kind of surprisingly unobjectionable.

The story of a cabin over the centuries and the story of America and the story of some ghosts, cute and sweet. A bit overwrought and maybe a bit fanciful at times, trying too hard to write with styles, but I can forgive that.

For a long time, I have believed that a truly great novel is one which contains a sliver of divinity, something which makes me want to believe in the power and glory of God. As an atheist, that feels like a sufficiently high bar, and the books that have passed it - say The Brothers Karamazov, East of Eden, One Hundred Years of Solitude - feel well within the bounds of the canonical greats. 2666 disproves this, as 2666 is clearly a great novel.