tiny book reviews.2025.n7 -- Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

 

I honestly don't remember how this book got on my radar. I clearly read about it somewhere, in passing, and was interested enough to open Audible and download it. Up it comes in the queue, and in blind obedience to my past self, I read it.

Science fiction: The end of life on Earth is imminent (for none of the reasons you might expect), the world's governments come together (perhaps the most fictional part of the science fiction) to launch a deep-space vessel with a crew tasked to discover a solution to the problem that's killing Earth, adventure ensues. 

Like any good sci-fi, the book is about so much more than telling a fanciful story, and as science fiction goes, I'd say it's pretty good--not great, but pretty good.

And Hollywood apparently agrees, because I believe a movie adaptation of the book is expected in 2026. So, read it now, go see the movie with your friends, and enjoy the pleasure of being insufferably pompous by telling them all the ways the movie didn't live up to the book.

Oh, and, for what it's worth, I think this book might be particularly compelling to teenage boys. There's one of those that lives in my house, and I plan to make him listen this summer as we road trip from here to there and back.

3.5 of 5 stars.

tiny book reviews.2025.n6 -- To Kill a Mockingbird

 

Here's at least one argument for reading as much as possible when you're young: One of life's great pleasures is to re-read a book decades on and reflect on how it hits differently. Because it always does. Hit differently. You've remembered portions incorrectly. You've completely forgotten other parts, important parts, parts that you wouldn't have thought you'd forget. You understand the characters differently. You understand the context differently. And, ultimately, I think, you begin to understand yourself a little differently.

Before the semester started, I took a quick solo trip to Alabama to...idk, do something. I rode bikes, camped, explored a half dozen crappy little Alabama towns, and--critically--rejoiced in the sunshine and exposed bare knees in the wind. I also re-read To Kill a Mockingbird (which is, of course, set in Alabama).

I don't know what to say... Y'all already know this is such a great book. It still is. 

And Atticus Finch remains my personal paragon of manhood.

I guess I don't have much more to say, but want to remind you of this delightful description of how Scout felt in her dress when spiffied up by Calpurnia before taken to Black Church:

"...the starched walls of a pink cotton penitentiary."

:-)

5 of 5 stars.

tiny book reviews.2025.n5 -- Liars by Sarah Manguso

 

This one was kind of a hard read, but not in the sense that it was hard to work my way through, but that I...well, I guess I can say I struggled with it...emotionally.

It's about a woman, a woman telling her story, a story of falling in love, getting married, having a child, following her husband through numerous moves as he chases his personal big rock candy mountain, then his betrayal, departure, and (briefly) her life after marriage. During their time together, sometimes he is making a lot of money, mostly he is not. And our protagonist suffers through a kind of cold, anonymous existence as she does most of the bread-winning, the child-rearing, and, it would seem, the work to keep the couple's relationship alive, but gets no recognition or validation or even gratitude from her husband for doing it. 

And when I write that out it reads like a pretty real paradigm for many women. For some women, the novel may be cathartic. Or excruciating. 

For me, in reading this book I felt...indicted. But let me be clear: I am by no objective standard the failure of a partner the husband she's describing is and still I felt indicted. Just because. I guess. I'm a man. A husband. A father. And...I guess I feel like I never quite live up to the ideal or standard I've set for any of those identities. So when I read the part where she complains that her husband never cleaned the bathroom, I felt so guilty that I nearly raced home to the cleaning supplies and got after it. I cleaned and wiped and disinfected every surface of that bathroom.

Here's a passage I found poignant enough to copy out:

Even a decent marriage drains the life of a woman. And during our worst fights, I referred to a divorce as a sure thing and impending, yet I don't know anyone with a better marriage. It really is absolute shit being a man's wife. I swear up and down that if I outlive this marriage I will never be with a man again.

Well...

So, I read this book and sorta felt like garbage (the bathroom needed cleaning anyway, so that's a positive outcome), but then a day or two later, as I was just sort of thinking about it, I came to wonder if we're meant to fully trust the narrator. See, the book is told from the perspective of the woman who's story it is. She's been rebuffed. She's lost her husband. She's lost her youth. She's kind of just...lost. But that's the thing--it's her story, and, well, in the very beginning she calls herself a liar, which is, you know, kinda like the title of the book, too. And so I began to rethink it all.

For those that have read (or watched) Fight Club, you might remember getting to the end and realizing a thing and suddenly you have to reinterpret everything you've read to that point. That's sort of where I was. After a couple of days reflection, anyway.

I've read zero book reviews or author's interviews, so I have no idea if this is the author's intention or if other readers have had similar takes. I kinda don't want to know. Because this is the beauty and wonder of art, that we can all see the same thing, yet walk away with very different experiences. Or, in my case, two distinctly different experiences.

3.5 of 5 stars.

tiny book review.2025.n4 -- The Life Impossible by Matt Haig

 

The first I'd heard of Matt Haig was when a friend recommended The Humans last fall. Read it. Loved it. Then I read another--How to Stop Time--which was ok, but not my favorite. Then Valerie recommended The Life Impossible and it was, again, lovely. My favorite of the three.

What Matt Haig succeeds at is writing a fun, easy-reading novel that somehow packs a punch full of thought. I wanted to write a philosophical punch, because it is, but sometimes that big p-word sort of scares people off, or makes it seem weightier and more dense, and that's not the feel you get reading these novels. The undertones are of weighty stuff, but served with such fun stories that if feels light. All three of his books I've read do this, so I assume that's his thing. 

Beyond that goodness, The Life Impossible is set in Ibiza, which I love (I haven't been to Ibiza, but I'm a regular visitor to Mallorca, so, you know, kinda the same feels...) And the taste of oranges is a bit that is central to the theme, and, well...American oranges just plain suck compared to Mallorcan oranges, so I get it. (Seriously, I love them so much. The oranges and the olives. They're everything.)

Anyway... This book is a strong recommend. It's a fun story told in a lovely voice with undertones of profundity that made reading it feel like dinner and dessert all in one.

5 of 5 stars.

tiny book review.2025.n3 -- mating in captivity by Esther Perel

Esther Perel has been around for a while (this book was published in 2006), but may be having a bit of a moment presently, or I'm just catching up. She has a podcast (apparently; I haven't listened), she is a guest on many other podcasts (where I was first introduced to her) and people (in my circle, at least) just seem to be talking about her. So I decided I'd read her book. Or this book of hers. 

My review: It was good. Really good. Good enough that I'm now recommending it to all my married friends, or at least those friends with whom I have the sort of relationship that I can use the word "sex" in conversation with them. Because that's what this book is about. Sex. In marriage (or the equivalent). 

And...given that's the topic, I'm hesitant to offer too much more regarding my specific thoughts and/or insights. But let me say this: I found her ideas challenging, in the best of ways. Though, I was skeptical at first. 

She starts by explicitly challenging the status quo of the relationship between sex and intimacy in marriage (tell me how things are in the bedroom and I'll tell you how things are otherwise), and for the first couple of chapters I guess I was unconvinced--thinking her explanation of the status quo sounded just about right. However, by the third chapter I was coming around, and each chapter thereafter I found increasingly insightful, so that by the end I was questioning everything I thought I knew about long-term healthy sexual relationships. 

So, I liked that. 

Also, the topic of sex in marriage highlights what we should already know: there is just so much variance among the human population. In fact, at one point I was reminded of the marriage (non)advice that I give when called upon to give advice--that all marriage advice is useless, because everyone's arrangement is their own, and what works for one couple will not likely work for another, so you've gotta just figure it out for yourselves.

As I said, I'm recommending it...to all my married friends. 

4.5 of 5 stars. 

tiny book reviews.2025.n2 — you are here, by David Nicholls

A nice thing about branding this exercise “tiny book reviews” is that I can read a book, post its picture, write only a couple of not-very-descriptive-or-informative sentences about it, and I’ve still fulfilled the vision, thus protecting me both from the self-criticism of not doing something more impressive and the potential critique of some reader who might complain that I’m not really providing any useful information about the book.

To whit:

A friend (hi, Lansing!) gifted this book to Valerie and I. His review (shared without permission): 

“We…really liked it…. [I]t was so well written and hilarious and enjoyable to listen to together.”

So, Valerie and I read it. (Well, Valerie read it, I listened to it.) My review:

Fun. Enjoyable entertainment. And impossibly witty dialogue (does any human speak or has any human in the history of time spoke as cleverly as the characters in this book?). 

There you go. Reading this book is unlikely to change your life, but doing it will be fun!

tiny book reviews.2025.n1 — when we cease to understand the world, by Benjamin Labatut

 

I suppose the point might be overstated, but I often feel something a little other-worldly when reading a novel written by someone from a very different culture. It can be disorienting. Especially, I find, with a translation.

Anyone I’ve pestered with conversations about books has listened to me talk of Hakuki Murakami, and how in reading his novels I feel like I’m missing…things, important things, things just under the surface that are invisible to me, the outsider, because I don’t share or really have any context for understanding his cultural background (and this, from reading a Japanese author whose writing is criticized as being “too western” and “not Japanese enough”).

I’m starting here, because there was an undertone of this in reading When We Cease to Understand the World. An undertone, like I’d wonder if what I just read, and the meaning I took from what I just read, should have been taken at the level and texture that I took it. 

This feeling, this subtle confusion, I feel it more now that I’ve finished the book than when I was reading it. And that right there, the observation that I’ve finished, but that the book keeps tumbling around in the washing machine of my brain, that I revisit and revise how I think I feel about this or that part…well, I think that’s a pretty good indicator that I just read a book that was worth reading.

My BIL recommended the book, texting something to the effect, “I’ve been reading this weird book…” My texted response to him once I’d finished: “Idk how to describe it, but I thought it was a great read. I’m moved. And a little distraught.” Kafka tells us the books we need should affect us like a disaster, that they should leave us to grieve deeply, that the book should be like an “axe for the frozen sea within us.” I think this book qualifies.

So, what is this book about? 

I’m still not sure.

On the surface, it’s a series of stories of stupidly smart men in the first half of the 20th century whose genius led to discoveries and technology that have impacted humanity massively and irreversibly, sometimes for good, sometimes for bad. But that’s putting too black-and-white a moral point on it; the book is certainly trying to make a moral point of some kind, but probably not one that overt.

On a deeper level, the book is about genius, specifically the genius of the most genius mathematicians and physicists of the past century, and the madness that seems to walk hand-in-hand with that genius. I mean, it’s sounds almost trite to say it like this, but the book forces the reader to ask if genius is even possible without accompanying madness. (Coincidently, I’ve been rereading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, a book that’s forces the reader to ask similar questions.) However, we’re also asked to question whether the madness is madness at all, or if what we perceive as madness is an understanding of things that is closer to “true,” an understanding that transcends what the merely ‘very intelligent’ are able to absorb. If that’s the case, then these tortured souls are doing something akin to Toto gripping the Wizard’s curtain with his teeth, pulling it back for humanity to see, but instead of the secret machinations of the smoke and light show becoming immediately obvious, we’re left scratching our heads, unsure if we see what Toto sees, unsure if the disordered tableau is real or illusory, if Toto is a genius…or just a dumb dog.

Like the feeling you get when you’re staring at troubling piece of art. It’s the struggle to understand that makes it worth it.

“…the axe for the frozen sea within us.”

5 of 5 stars.