The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

My book club’s latest genre was classics. As usual, we had a vote between three choices. As the voting deadline approached, all of our members (four) had voted but me. They had each voted for one of the three books, leaving me to break the tie. I selected this book. It is considered a classic and many of the sources I have for finding new books rated it highly as did both Good Reads and The Story Graph. I’m not sure I made the best decision.

The story is very unusual. The devil arrives in Moscow talking to an editor and a poet. They discuss whether Jesus Christ ever lived and if the devil is real. The devil then goes on to tell the tale of Pontius Pilate differently than is found in the Bible. After the editor dies in a way that the devil predicted, things get even crazier across Moscow as the devil and his retinue perform all sorts of supernatural trickery. About a third of the way through the book we meet the Master and Margarita at which point the story also becomes a love story between these two.

I am not sure why this book is so beloved and considered a classic. It’s okay, but for me it was all over the place. It didn’t seem to have much of a point, at least not one that was clear to me. Maybe this was because it was written in Soviet Russia and the writer needed to be careful to avoid being censored or rounded up and killed. In any case, I found myself forcing my way through it. If it weren’t a book club read, I likely would have not finished it.

My rating: 3/5

Blindsight by Peter Watts

This is a book that I have heard about from time to time over the years. It is described as a superb hard science fiction novel that explores philosophy and what it means to be human. That tends to be my favorite kind of science fiction. And with all the high praise for this book, I was excited to read it. Perhaps the reviews were a little overdone for me.

The story is one of first contact with a limited cast of characters. It takes place hundreds of years in our future where all of those on the mission are enhanced in some way, physically. The ship is also a character being a sentient AI. They are sent to encounter a large object nearly the size of Saturn. When they arrive, they find some sort of ship in orbit around the object. The bulk of the novel is their attempts to communicate with and figure out what exactly it is.

The writing is a bit too much hard science. I read this on an ereader and was glad for it. I had to look up the meaning of many words to understand them. The context did little to help with that. The story is also told in a manner that made it feel almost a little confusing to me. I got the main thread but couldn’t help but feel like I missed a lot. That said, it really delivered on the philosophy and the human condition. Overall, I enjoyed it.

My rating: 3.5/5

The MANIAC by Benjamín Labatut

I subscribe to Austin Kleon’s free Friday newsletter. In a recent edition, he mentioned that a “book about A.I., The MANIAC, is one of the best things I read this year.” With all the hype about artificial intelligence these days, this really got my attention.

This book is a semi-biographical novel about John von Neumann, widely considered to be one of the founding father’s of digital computing. Each chapter is in the first person from the point of view of someone who knew von Neumann well. It is an intriguing picture of an important historical figure. But what really grabbed me was the epilogue. There the author tells the true tale of how the computer program AlphaGo beat a top professional Go player. I play Go and followed that series of matches as it happened. Like most other Go players at the time, I didn’t think there was a chance that the computer would win. Spoiler alert, it did.

This novel is a great introduction to the human side of von Neumann and artificial intelligence. The excellent writing varies from voice to voice, showing Von Neumann to be a flawed and struggling human like the rest of us. When you finish this wonderful novel, I highly recommend reading the biography of the computer by Walter Isaacson called The Innovators.

My rating: 4.5/5

Why Are People Into That? by Tina Horn

I receive a number of bookish newsletters. One of those is by Neil Pasricha. In his latest newsletter, he made an unusual recommendation. As the third book he recommended this title. When he picked it up at a bookstore in Ottawa and browsed the table of contents he “could feel internal aversions and curiosities, and knew I should probably pick it up to learn more.” That piqued my curiosity, so I borrowed it from my library.

Each chapter covers a different fetish, such as “Feet”, “Spanking”, and “Orgies”. They open with a frank discussion of what they are and a compassionate look as to why people enjoy them. I appreciated this approach, especially for the chapters I was less comfortable with like “Consensual Nonconsent”.

I highly recommend this book for those whose only exposure to kinks is mainstream movies or porn. Both show fetishists as out of touch weirdos. From this book, I learned that there is much more to what turns people on than the surface understanding that comes from such sources. It is a real exercise in understanding the motivations of others. And that is a valuable experience regardless of the subject matter.

My rating: 4/5

Wrong Place Wrong Time by William Morrow

I heard about this book on the podcast What Should I Read Next?. It intrigued me because of its unique time travel element as well as the emotional aspect of a mother trying to save her son from doing something terrible that would change his life in ways he could never undo.

As the book opens, a mother is waiting for her teenage son to return home. He is running late and she is nervously looking out the window looking for him. Soon, she sees him walking toward the house. He is joined by another person. They seem to talk briefly. Then her son takes out a knife and stabs the man. The rest of the night involves the police and her son going to jail. In the wee hours of the morning she finally gets home to get some sleep, intending to get him a lawyer and start sorting all this out the next day. But when she awakes, it is the day before the murder. And every time she wakes up, it is a day or more before the day she just relived.

I couldn’t put this book down. The mother is at the center of the story as she attempts to unravel what happened, why her son would stab someone, and how she can prevent it from ever happening in the first place. Through some help from other characters, she uncovers more and more that she didn’t know about her own life. The story is filled with surprising revelations artfully spun. The mother’s emotions are an underlying thread as she finds out things about her son and husband that she never knew. And the writing pulls at the heartstrings in a way that fits perfectly with the story without pulling you out of it. A well-written and evocative mystery that effectively uses time travel and makes it feel almost normal.

My rating: 4.5/5

All the Colors of the Dark by Chris Whitaker

The genre for the month of August in my book club was mystery/thriller. This is the book that we ended up reading. It is not one that I was familiar with or had heard of before. I found the story deeply interesting and engrossing while the writing left a bit to be desired.

The story begins in 1975 and revolves around a one-eyed preteen young man everyone calls Patch. Young girls about his age are disappearing. When he happens upon this happening in the woods and stops it, he is taken instead. This turns his world upside down. His best friend Saint never stops looking for him even after all of the rest of the town has given up on her friend.

This is a story about many things: love across the years, overcoming tragedy, and deep friendship. The plot has many twists and turns. The writing was a little off for me. For one thing, the author is British telling a story in the US, so some of the writing just feels out of place. Like when he mentions that something “came by post”. And the language at times tries to be so flowery and poetic that the meaning and storytelling become obscured. But overall, this is a beautiful, nuanced story of tragedy and how it can affect a young person for the rest of their life. Though it tries too hard in some places and fails to communicate, when it does communicate, it gets under you skin and hits you in the feels.

My rating: 4/5

Long Time Gone by Charlie Donlea

This was one of those books that I listened to in the car on a long road trip. We like to listen to thrillers that keep our attention and entertain us as the road goes by. This was a good choice.

A young woman is studying to become a medical examiner. As a forensic scientist, she must do a thesis on the topic of her advisor’s choosing. Her advisor chooses genetics as her area of focus. Diving in to get started, she submits her DNA to an online ancestry tool and learns that she is the baby that disappeared almost thirty years ago to national attention. As she tries to delay the inevitable national attention that will again be coming her way, she works to unravel what happened to her and her birth parents all those years ago.

This is a rip roaring adventure tale with many plot turns and twists. There is a bit of explicitly described gore, but largely the story is suspense driven. I thoroughly enjoyed it. The writing was nothing special for me, but it was excellent in the sense that I didn’t notice it, I was so absorbed in the story.

My rating: 4/5

And What Can We Offer You Tonight? by Premee Mohamed

On a recent road trip, I drove a moving truck back home for a friend who had a few things left to move from her old house. I needed a short audiobook to listen to as I drove home by myself. This was the one I chose for that trip. It was okay.

It opens at a funeral for a young woman who was a courtesan in a bleak world where underprivileged people hope to become courtesans. The young woman comes back to life mysteriously. She realizes that being dead (undead?) she is not subject to the same methods of surveillance that the others still are. The storyteller is disturbed by this but ends up accompanying her on some of her excursions.

It is a tale of privilege and struggle about haves and have nots. It feels very timely but at the same not all that interesting. I enjoyed it enough to say I liked it, but it was just okay for me.

My rating: 3/5

Sabrina by Nick Drnaso

I don’t remember how I came across it, but one of my favorite blogs to read each week is The Biblioracle Recommends. It is written by John Warner, a book columnist for the Chicago Tribune. At the end each edition of his blog, he shares the last five books a readers has read and what he recommends they read next. I submitted my list and John included it in a post this past January. He recommended this book. I immediately put it on hold at my local library and was finally able to read it earlier this summer.

This graphic novel is very unusual in my experience. Most graphic novels I have read are on brightly colored glossy paper. They tend to be heavily plot-driven adventure stories of some kind. This book is none of that. In fact, it is a rather literary, character-driven tale told on plain paper with subdued colors, almost pastel. Interestingly, I don’t think this story would work as well as a straight novel. The drawings tell so much of the story and communicate so much of the feeling of the book that it almost had to be a graphic novel.

The story is about how a young woman named Sabrina who goes missing and how it affects those who know her or know those who know her. Her boyfriend moves in with an old high school friend serving in the Air Force who is himself dealing with being separated from his wife and daughter. As these two men live together and work through their individual issues, they also have to deal with how the missing woman’s story is handled by the press and social media. It is not a lighthearted read. It deals with issues of anxiety, depression, and online abuse. Rather that tell the reader what to think or do, it instead moves the reader through these experiences in an effort to show how it feels to go through these experiences. And that is the strength of this amazing work of art. It wasn’t my favorite book but it is unique and worthy of anyone’s time and attention.

My rating: 3.5/5

The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George Spafford

I saw this book on a friend’s bookshelf when we recently visited Cincinnati to hang out with some old friends. He recommended it to me highly. The idea of a business book in the form of a novel reminded my of The Goal and Leadership and Self-Deception. Intrigued, I picked up a copy from my local library to read.

The story starts when Bill Palmer is called into the office of the CEO. On the way he learns that the CIO and VP of IT Operations have been summarily fired. When he reaches the CEO’s office, he is told of the bad spot the company is in and offered the job of VP of IT Ops. He wants to refuse, but the CEO sweet talks him into accepting before he even realizes it. The rest of the books is how he slowly builds a team and learns how to apply factory principles to IT operations.

This is a clever and engaging way of sharing some very important concepts. It felt close enough to real for it to be instructive. There were people who dug in and didn’t change, but most wanted to succeed more than be right. They worked and grew together. It was both educational and entertaining.

My rating: 4/5