At the start of 2023, I wrote about the books I read in 2022. I'm two months late this year, but I've finally gotten around to it.

Like last year, I will not give star system reviews. I continue to hold the position that star system reviews of any kind are for the willfully inept. I'm often inept, but I am never willfully so.

I'm also breaking out a new category of Re-reads. If I re-read a book, it's because I like it quite a bit.

Toppest of the Top

Stella Maris - Cormac McCarthy
At the end of 2022, McCarthy released his long-awaited next novel, The Passenger, his first since The Road in 2006. Stella Maris, its companion novel, was released 6 weeks later.

The Passenger primarily follows a few years of the life of Bobby Western, a salvage diver drifting through life. Stella Maris consists entirely of conversations between Western's sister, a brilliant and devastatingly depressed young mathematician, and the psychiatrist at the facility she has checked herself into. It reads a bit like a screenplay.

The structure of the two together is unlike most everything I've ever read. The two books are not sequel/prequel, they are companions in an intellectual territory. They form a whole only together, and if you read one you should very shortly thereafter read the second. (The only other books that come to mind with a similar-ish structure, though still different, are Blindsight & Echopraxia, by Peter Watts. Those two deal with the nature of consciousness and intelligence in two very tangentially connected narratives set in a slightly future universe. If anyone knows of others works published together in a similar structure like these, I would love to hear about them!)

If you decide to read the two, I highly recommend that you first read https://nautil.us/the-kekul-problem-236574/, which contains some of McCarthy's musings on the relationship between the unconscious, the conscious, how the brain solves problems, and language, which are central themes of The Passenger & Stella Maris. They are very understated, but I think they are the core of the books if you know to look for them. I think I would have missed most of those connections without having read that piece.

I really really really liked The Passenger and Stella Maris.

Cormac died in 2023. This was his last book, unless posthumous stuff comes out. I don't think it will. Not his style. Probably contraindicated in his will.

Deep River - Karl Marlantes
God did I love the hell out of this novel. This is the story of 3 siblings from Finland who immigrate to the southern side of Washington State (near the Columbia!) in the early 1900s to escape the Russian forces strangling their country at the time. It is about logging, it is about language, it is about raising children, it is about work, it is about fighting for a better way, it is about life.

Marlantes wrote my all-time favorite war novel, Matterhorn, and with this, his second novel, he has proven he can replicate the intensity and struggle and sheer human-ness he captured in Matterhorn. I unconditionally recommend this to everyone.

Titan - Ron Chernow
This is a thorough biography of John D. Rockefeller, who was the richest man in America in the early 1900s via Standard Oil, the oil & gas company that he founded. I found the history of the early oil days absolutely fascinating. It was illuminating to read how much of what allowed Standard Oil to become so enormous and profitable was wholesale corruption and monopolistic strangulation of competitors. The tech giants of today have grown to their current preposterous sizes with a list of similarly dishonest and anti-competitive behaviors that I think would make Rockefeller proud, and I'm sure someone will write a very similar book about them in 40 or 50 years, after they are dismantled on the basis of the laws that were created to dismantle Standard Oil.

This was a super fun book. I love the history I can learn from a well-written biography, and from witnessing the crucible moments of those that have gone before, and how they dealt with them. I also love seeing that nothing is new under the sun. Greedy businessmen have been running around scamming people, lying to regulators, and bribing lawmakers as long as there have been people. It doesn't excuse the behavior, but it makes it easier to take it in perspective. There is nothing uniquely horrible about anything that goes on today. It all has been done before, and will be done again. The written record will however, hopefully make us wiser in recognizing the patterns in the future (hah who am I kidding, nobody reads).

I had pages and pages of notes and quotes from this book that I meant to write up here for you all, but then I packed up the book and everything else too in a box and moved to Spain, so now you don't get them. Sorry. I'll do better next time.

I recommend this to anyone who thinks it sounds interesting. That may seem like a platitude, but it is not. There are many books whose premises do not sound interesting at all, but in fact are insanely enrapturing and good, and there are also many books which will only be interesting to those who already think the premise is interesting before starting. This is in the latter category.

Scattered Minds - Gabor Mate
Gabor Mate is well-known these days for his writing on the effects of trauma on childhood development, and by extension, adult behavior. Scattered Minds is his first book, published in 1999, about ADHD. The book attempts to show how certain early/mid-childhood experiences can have a strong influence on your ability to focus and keep a sense of togetherness and calm in your mind. I think the case it presents is very strong.

One of my sisters takes ADHD medication, and has for a couple of years. We had contentious discussions when she first decided she had ADHD. I did not agree that she had ADHD, and I thought that if she believed that she did, that that would probably reduce her general happiness and ability to overcome hardships. I read Scattered Minds in large part as a response to that, to try to learn more about ADHD so I could communicate more effectively about it to her. The book changed my mind. How much and in what areas would take an entirely separate piece of writing, so I'll leave it at that.

I only read half of each of two of Gabor Mate's more recent books, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts & The Myth of Normal, before giving up in sheer despair. The themes of those books are of the worst humanity has to offer, and I simply didn't see a way to do anything with what I read in them. I can see the seeds of those books in Scattered Minds, but Scattered Minds is far lighter in theme than those others, and I would recommend it to anyone who is curious about childhood development or ADHD.

Band of Brothers - Stephen Ambrose
Before it was an award-winning TV show, it was a book. A very good book. I think about the privations and suffering that these men went through, the sacrifices they made, and I wonder if I will ever amount to a tenth of the men they were.
Recommend to all.

Elon Musk - Walter Isaacson
I think you could dislike Elon Musk very much and still get a lot out of this biography. It's a banger. That's all I'll say. I recommend to all.

The Rest, Which You May Find Topically Fantastic, Depending On Your Interests

Samurai! - Saburu Sakai with Martin Cadlin & Fred Saito
This is the story of the top surviving ace of the Japanese air force in WW2. I've read many books from the Allied perspective of WW2, and it was very neat to finally read a story from the other side. I enjoyed this book a lot.

Something that has stayed with me ever since I read this: the author wrote of the brutal training that the top aviators had to endure to become fighter pilots in Japan. He wrote that he never forgave those instructors for their cruelty to the students. Something like 1 out of 10 students withstood the abuse long enough to become pilots. He wrote later in the book that there were a plethora of incredible aviators that had washed out of the program due to inhumane behavior of the instructors, and that if Japan had not done that, their air force would have been far stronger in the war than it was. His opinion was that they still would have lost to America, but would have put up a far fiercer fight in the air. That it was a disgrace to Japan that the air force selection program chose aviators based on their ability to put up with brutality and cruelty from the instructors, and not just flying ability.

I'd recommend this to anyone who has more than a passing interest in WW2 or aviation.

Death's End - Cixin Liu
This is the conclusion to The Three-Body Problem trilogy, and I recommend said trilogy to anyone with a pulse.

Ball Lightning - Cixin Liu
After finishing Death's End, I picked up Ball Lighting: the first sci-fi novel Cixin Liu published in China. I have read that Ball Lightning is far more in-line with the typical Chinese sci-fi of that era; certainly it feels much different than The Three-Body Problem. I enjoyed it, but Liu's imagination is put to far better use in his later books.

Child of God - Cormac McCarthy
This is one fucked-up book. I read it because I intend to read every McCarthy book (I think I'm only 2 short), and I'm glad I did, but I don't know what the hell the point of this book is. I read this one with a couple friends, and after we finished one of them sent me a YouTube video of James Franco telling about the time he asked Cormac why he wrote the book (Franco adapted it to film). Cormac's response?
"I don't know James, probably some dumbass reason."

I only recommend this to those who also want to read all of Cormac's books.

Single and Single - John le Carre
First John le Carre I've read, won't be my last. I've a friend who I think has the same relationship with le Carre novels that I have with Louis L'Amour novels, and now I understand why.

Picture in the Sand
It is now too far after the reading of this to remember much, so you can probably tell that it did not leave a mark. Not bad though.

Malazan Book Of The Fallen (Books 1-10) - Steven Erikson
These books are objectively not good across most qualities of books and yet I read 10 entire books of them this year. 3 million words. That's 3 entire Harry Potter series' back-to-back. I was feeling fairly down for a few months and simply wanted to vanish elsewhere, and that is the great niche of grotesquely extended fantasy series. You could do the same, if you were in the same boat, but you could also pick another, better series to vanish yourself within. These books have some very memorable characters. These are intermixed with a set of characters so beyond paperthin that they may as well not be people at all. Likewise, certain parts of the stories are genuinely incredible. And then others I simply don't know why the author would bother to write them.

But I still read all 10 of them.

I'd only recommend this to someone mildly depressed who has already read most of the other fantasy series (that are bearable) and doesn't have a single other thing to read to get them out of their head for a bit.

A History of Fear - Luke Dumas
I do not recommend that you bother with this book, but I encourage you to continue to exercise your free will (if in fact it exists, still on the fence about that myself), up to and including reading this book in spite of my freely given antirecommendation. I wish the author best of luck next time.

...And The Re-Reads

The Witcher (books 2-8) - Andrzej Sapkowski
The Witcher is, by dint of times-read, my favorite book/series that exist in the universe thus far. I've read the series at least 5 complete times since 2017. I badly want to meet the author and get a few beers in and have him recount me some of the stories he must have from growing up in Soviet-era Poland.

As I write this sentence in Feb2024, I've already re-read the first one again this year, and just bought a copy of the second one in Spanish to read side-by-side with an English copy on my Kindle. I'm hoping this catapults my Spanish reading ability into the stratosphere, but I may just end up with a robust vocabulary of medieval terminology entirely useless in our degenerate AI-powered modern era.

I've read these every year for, I don't know, 5 or 6 years now, and they're not getting old, so what higher recommendation can I give?

Blindsight - Peter Watts
I've re-read this a few times now. Has (to me) very novel and unsettling ideas about the nature of intelligence & consciousness that I wanted to re-visit & re-ponder when ChatGPT (and more importantly, GPT4) came out. Dark & disquieting in the best way, with some wonderfully fascinating ideas.

Heller With A Gun - Louis L'Amour
Gotta have my Louis L'Amour for the year. Honestly ashamed I only read one. I strongly recommend that everyone reads at least one Louis L'Amour in their lifetime. Hopefully you'll fall in love with them, but if you don't, that's cool too.

The Quantum Thief - Hannu Rajaniemi
The Fractal Prince - Hannu Rajaniemi
The Casual Angel - Hannu Rajaniemi
These are all in a series, and I've re-read them at least once already. They are very fun. I'd recommend to any sci-fi readers, and I'd probably recommend them to any readers who want to try to get into science fiction, too.

Chasm City - Alastair Reynolds
Redemption Ark - Alastair Reynolds
I re-read one or two of Alastair Reynold's space operas every year as a holiday-times "get out of my head" book. I still enjoy them a lot. I'd recommend to any sci-fi readers.