by J. R. R. Tolkien

Adorable children’s story Tolkien wrote for his second son, or Boy Two, after he lost his beloved toy dog on the beach. A real dog is enchanted into a toy dog, and then goes on adventures, up on the moon and under the sea. In the end he is transformed back into a real dog and sent home to Boy Two.

by Madeline Miller

This is the story about a goddess who lives alone on a beautiful island where she dyes, spins, weaves, and casts spells.

No, just kidding. I wish it was. It’s an outlandish story with violence on almost every single page. Just one random violent thing after another.

by J. R. R. Tolkien

Small book with three distinct parts. First part is Tolkien expounding on “faerie stories” as a concept. It’s rather professorial. The second is a lovely short story called “Leaf by Niggle”. Tolkien has stated that he doesn’t like allegory. But this is a story about an artist who can’t ever complete his painting of a tree, because he wants each individual leaf to be beautiful and unique. Makes me think of someone – except, thank all our lucky stars, Tolkien DID complete LORD OF THE RINGS. It’s a tree which is beautiful above and beyond all its individual leaves being beautiful. Finally, the end of the book is a long poem in iambic pentameter. It’s a bit cryptic but I read it as being about the existence of God in nature and art.

by Nathaniel Ian Miller

I read this because I loved his second novel, RED DOG FARM. This is extremely different. I was hooked early on, but the hook lost me after 60 pages or so. Sven is an interesting character and goes off to the north to seek adventure, and makes a sympathetic friend. Then there’s a mining accident, and I lost the thread. He goes off further north to become a trapper. Eventually the story jumps the shark when his spunky niece shows up with her baby, yes in the wilds of the north, to stay with him. By the end I was actively disliking this meandering story. It didn’t seem to matter what happened, the story would just wander wherever it wanted.

edited by Benjamin Hedin

“They’re songs. They’re not written in stone. They’re plastic.” – Dylan, Songwriters on Songwriting, April 1991

“From the bottom of my heart, however, I want to thank Bob Dylan for his poetry, his music, his soul. He’s made life, sometimes a desperate crawl through a vicious universe, clearer, cleaner, and quieter for me, even when he was at his noisiest. I hope never to meet him. This meeting would involve very little. A handshake. he’s already shaken my hand. Good God, thank you, Bobby Zimmerman.” – Barry Hannah, written for this collection

by J. R. R. Tolkien

(re-read)

I really don’t like The Hobbit. I re-read it to brush up on things. But not only because it’s a kid’s book and it trivializes important things from the masterpiece LOTR… but because it bored me! I found the ending boring. I also thought Beorn was outlandish and didn’t fit into the LOTR world.

by J. R. R. Tolkien

Just wanted to immerse myself in more Tolkien escapism. I learned a lot.

37 was a re-read of Red Dog Farm for book club (my own pick).

38 is by my high school classmate JD Glass, originally in novel form and now in graphic novel form illustrated by her wife:

by JD Glass & Kris Dresen

I feel like in this format, the arc around “Attila the Nun” and the emergence of her softer side was not given its due. We didn’t see enough of her being a tyrant to begin with, only a page or two. And then not enough of her being the savior in the end. That was my favorite part of the original novel.

by Alexander Starritt

Whenever I see a review of any novel about characters in STEM, I grab it. It’s so rare.

This is a story of two unlikely friends who know each other distantly at Oxford, then meet up at their first job working at McKinsey Management consultancy. First they’re working on allocating funding for education, but then the 2008 financial collapse happens, and they end up (as McKinsey employees) restructuring (other) firms and laying off people. This is how they come to be in Aberdeen, where they shift gears and start up a company that is going to make turbines that generate energy from the tides.

Backing up a bit, the reason these friends are unlikely is their personalities. Drayton is a classic “on the spectrum” personality – focused and driven and bad with people. Mackenzie is a hapless and happy-go-lucky “normie”. At first they aren’t friends at all. As the novel builds momentum around their increasingly successful and spectacular energy startup, it builds their friendship, in a wholly believable and non-caricatured way.

I personally liked the appearances by the likes of Ben Bernanke and Mario Draghi dealing with the events of 2008. Peter Thiel and Elon Musk are also bit characters.

by Geraldine Brooks

This was a really dull book. Through all the different strands of plot, I kept wondering why I should care, who I should be rooting for, and what exactly was at stake. That was really the issue – nothing really seemed to be at stake.

by Julia Quinn

I watch this TV series for the dresses and the jewelry. This was my first time reading one of the novels. Jane Austen it’s not. My biggest complaint is the pages and pages devoted to conversations where the same point is kind of made over and over. E.g. “Penelope you are very clever!”… “Penelope/Colin how could you invade my privacy!” – pages and pages. Leaves less room for actual action. And the book is over 400 pages.