The Farm, by Tom Rob Smith

So this book was based on actual events that happened to the author. In the spring of 2009, Smith received a call from his father saying that he needed to come to Sweden immediately because his mom had suffered a psychotic episode & was in an asylum. And almost immediately after, a call from his mother saying she'd just been released from the hospital, everything his father had told him was a lie, that his dad was involved in a criminal conspiracy, and she was flying to London to explain the truth.

You might think, well, obviously, this book has to go one of two ways. Nope. Smith keeps you guessing all the way to the end, with a couple of twists I'm happy to say I never saw coming. Ditto with the resolution. A smart mystery, tight writing, fantastic storytelling, and rich, believable characters? More of this, please.

Books Update

In January, I proclaimed that 2014 would be the Year of the Classics & chose a book for each month of the year. Since we are getting on to the halfway point in the year (!!!???), I figured it was time for an update.

January: A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller. Isaac Asimov's Foundation meets Neal Stephenson's Anathem, at a third the page count. I'd call it more spec fiction than sci fi; it takes place in the distant future where the vast majority of science, technology, & culture has been obliterated by nuclear war & reactionary fundamentalist sects, so parts of it feel more medieval than futuristic. Brilliantly & shrewdly written, confronting questions of history, philosophy, theology, ethics, and the cyclic nature of human civilization, without ever getting preachy or didactic. As relevant now as in 1960. Fans of Asimov & the like should love it.

February: Uncle Tom's Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe. I started this book in February, but keep having to take breaks to read something else. It's easier to read than I thought it would be, but somehow still feels like hard work.

March: Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy. This is what I'm currently trying plow through right now. Like Uncle Tom's Cabin, it's been easier going than I was afraid it would be and has a lot of interesting parts, but it's still looooong and slooooow and there are long stretches in which nothing much happens except protracted discussions of early 20th century Russian property laws & farming methods. I've taken a couple of breaks from it to read other things, but I'm hoping I'll be able to finish it by the end of May June.

April: A Room With a View, by E.M. Forster. This book seemed appropriate for the April since that's when we left for Italy. In general, it was a cute, engaging read, and I spent most of the middle of the book surprised & excited about where it seemed to be going. Then, after the last two chapters, I wanted to hurl it across the room. I mean I know it was 1908 & all & ladies still weren't all that far removed from just being property, but still. Beautifully written, but a disappointing ending.

May: Catch-22. This book was sold to me as "a classic that's actually funny" and "like 'The Daily Show' in terms of tone & political poignancy," so I thought it would make a nice break from srsbzns reading. Ha ha ha ha. Not. Yes, there are some funny parts, and the absurdist-satire-"hell is bureaucracy" theme has its moments, but it definitely ranks among the darkest, most depressing and harrowing books I have ever read, because war & stupid people.

Other Stuff I've Been Reading

The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt. This is probably the best book I've read so far this year. I'd been kinda-sorta meaning to read this book for a while now & putting it off because I wasn't sure I was up for the all the darkness, but recently a friend was like, "No seriously. Amazeballs," so I took it with me on vacation, and she was absolutely right. On the one hand I kind of think I'd say this is a great read as long as you're not going through dark, nasty stuff at the time, but on the other hand, maybe this is *exactly* the type of book you should read in that case because you might decide that things aren't really all that bad by comparison.

The Long Run, by Matt Long. The next time you start feeling sorry for yourself or like you're going through some hard times and are feeling frustrated & discouraged about how long the road seems, give ol' Matty Long a hundred pages or so. If you still feel the same way after, you are not human. I don't want to spoil the impact of the first few chapters, but the broad strokes are that Long was a Brooklyn firefighter, BQ marathoner, & Iron Man who got run over by a bus (LITERALLY LIKE A BUS DROVE OVER HIM) in December 2005 & suffered a litany of absolutely horrific injuries. The book chronicles is journey from a miserable, barely recognizable, barely functional, physical & mental wreck of a human to, well, the guy on the cover of the book. So yeah. This book basically convinced me I don't get to feel discouraged about anything ever again.

The Sound & The Fury, by William Faulkner. This was a challenging book for me, but I'm glad I read it, and I can totally appreciate why people are still reading & studying it xx years later. BUT, know going in that it is depressing as hell. On the other hand, it's only like 300 pages long. I'd advise getting some background on the story before actually starting it, because some of it can be hard to follow & definitely requires your 100% focus & attention. Don't be ashamed to consult Wikipedia/Cliff's Notes/etc. as you read.

Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir, by Jenny Lawson (aka, "The Bloggess"). Do yourself a favor & get this one in audio book. Nothing beats The Bloggess herself narrating. I lost count of the number of times I nearly fell off the spin bike I was laughing so hard. The hijinks that girl gets up to!

Dad Is Fat, by Jim Gaffigan. Parents, you'll appreciate this one. Not *quite* up to the quality of his stand-up, but really the book is only maybe half comedy anyway & half about being a parent in general and being the parent of five (7, 5, 3, 1, & newborn) in New York City specifically. Reasonably entertaining overall, with a few absolute laugh-out-loud moments.

The Signal & The Noise, by Nate Silver (of Five Thirty-Eight fame). I loved this book for the same reason that I loved The Predictioneer's Game and Data, A Love Story. All of them lie at the intersection of math/statistics/data/modeling and psychology/sociology. While I still think Nate Silver is brilliant, after reading this book I have a better understanding of just how terrible at modeling and predicting so many other people are (& I'm talking about people who are paid for making predictions) & why it's so easy for him to look that much more brilliant by comparison. What it's really about is the use & abuse of statistics & data--what sorts of things can be predicted (short and/or long term) and which kind of can't, the most common mistakes people make when they try to use data to make predictions, and how living in the age of "big data" actually puts us more at risk for bad predictions.

What's left for me this year....

June: The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Díaz.

July: To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee.

August: Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert.

September: One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez.

October: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson.

November: Journey to the Center of the Earth, by Jules Verne.

**NOVEMBER BONUS READ**: The Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka.

December: The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

**DECEMBER BONUS READ**: A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens.

This is where I solicit from you other worthwhile reads!! What else is out there that I absolutely must read? Oh also you can be my friend on GoodReads if you want.

The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt

I've been kinda-sorta meaning to read this book for a while now; ten or so years ago I read The Secret History & loved it, in that kind of way that you love a book that is utterly depressing and dark and heartbreaking as shit but so incredibly well-written that you almost can't put it down. I'd been putting off The Goldfinch because I wasn't sure I was up for the all the darkness, but recently a friend was like, "No seriously. Amazeballs," so I took it with me on vacation.

Depressing? Check. Dark? Check. Heartbreaking as shit, especially for someone who spent many years working with teenagers? Check. But, like The Secret History, it was also beautifully and poetically written, and in some way I can't really understand or explain Donna Tartt manages to pull off writing a wide range of characters from disparate worlds (despondent teenagers, Manhattan socialites, Russian drug dealers, high-end art dealers, etc.) convincingly & authentically, down to the text messages they send one another.

On the one hand I kind of think I'd say this is a great read as long as you're not going through dark, nasty stuff at the time, but on the other hand, maybe this is EXACTLY the type of book you should read in that case because you might decide that things aren't really all that bad by comparison.

The Long Run, by Matt Long

So here's the only thing I think I really *need* to say about this book: If you think that you are having a bad day, or week, or month, or year, just pick up this book. The next time you think you think you've been through something really "difficult" or get caught up in how "hard" your life has been, give, say, the first quarter of it a read. If you ever start feeling sorry for yourself or feel like you're going through something tough and are feeling frustrated & discouraged about how long the road seems, give ol' Matty Long a hundred pages or so. If you still feel the same way after, you are not human.

I don't want to spoil the impact of the first few chapters, but the broad strokes are that Long was a Brooklyn firefighter, BQ marathoner, & Iron Man who got run over by a bus in December 2005 & suffered a litany of absolutely horrific injuries. The book chronicles is journey from a miserable, barely recognizable, barely functional, physical & mental wreck of a human to, well, the guy on the cover of the book. (I won't spoil the ending any more than that.)

So yeah. I've basically decided I don't really get to feel discouraged about anything ever again.

There are a few things about the writing & Long's personality that kind of bug me (particularly with regard to how he seems to view women), but the story itself is just so overwhelmingly incredible that I can't really deduct more than, like, a quarter of a star.

Once A Runner

This is one of those running books I've heard about here & there, but only really often enough for the title to be familiar. It was part of an Audible BOGOF promotion so I figured, "Eh, why not?" It was short (~8.5 hours), & at least then I'd know if it lived up to all the hype.

Well. 12 chapters in I was convinced it was about the stupidest book I'd ever read. The writing was cliche & forced, & the dialogue was unbelievable and frankly hard to follow (though I'm sure that's at least partly to do with trying to decode 1970s Florida college slang). I couldn't relate to the characters, and the jumpy, meandering style of storytelling made the main story line difficult to follow (or even detect) for the first half the book. Many of the scenes felt bafflingly irrelevant. If it wasn't so short I probably would have given it up there.

However, the second half had some redeeming qualities. Once he ditched most of the side characters (including the lone woman, who was, sadly, kind of whiny & cringe-inducing), the story felt more coherent and a narrative arc gradually became detectable. And although as a runner I have never been anywhere *near* the level of the protagonist (a collegiate 4:00 miler obsessed with running a sub-4:00), there were actually a lot of parts I was able to relate to on some level. (It also brought back all the most painful, most horrific parts of running track, which sort of sucked, but I guess that's kind of the point.) It's when Parker was actually writing about running and training and racing that it wasn't too bad, and there were definitely a few sections near the end where I found myself thinking, "OMG, it is/was *totally* just like that," so he gets some props for that. On the other hand, I doubt anyone who hasn't had the experience of running track at least semi-competitively will really "get" those parts.

So yeah. If you are or have been a super competitive male college track star, this book *might* speak to you. If you're a distance runner in the sense of, "Meh, I run marathons & half-marathons sometimes for fun/health/thrillz," you can probably just skip it without missing much.

The Signal and the Noise, by Nate Silver

I loved this book for the same reason that I loved The Predictioneer's Game and Data, A Love Story. All of them lie at the intersection of math/statistics/data/modeling and psychology/sociology. While I still think Nate Silver is brilliant, after reading this book I have a better understanding of just how terrible at modeling and predicting so many other people are (& I'm talking about people who are paid for making predictions) & why it's so easy for him to look that much more brilliant by comparison.

What it's really about is the use & abuse of statistics & data--what sorts of things can be predicted (short and/or long term) and which kind of can't, the most common mistakes people make when they try to use data to make predictions, and how living in the age of "big data" actually puts us more at risk for bad predictions.

The great tragedy of this book is that the people who are most likely to read it are probably the people who already have a pretty decent understanding of data/statistics, and the people who have a less-good understanding of those things are probably the people who would most benefit from reading it.

Assassin's Quest (Farseer #3), by Robin Hobb

First, just about all my comments from Book #1 still hold.

Realistically, I kind of want to give it 4.5 stars. The characters & writing hold up, the story was unpredictable enough to keep me intrigued & guessing about how she'd wrap it all up, and the ending satisfying, if a bit heart wrenching. My only quibbles are that books #2 & #3 both felt just a tiny bit slow in places--at times it felt like there were long stretches where I didn't see where things were going. Not to say that nothing happened--plenty was happening; it just didn't always feel like it was moving the story forward. Also it's a complicated story, & in retrospect there are some things where I felt either like the foreshadowing could have been paced better.

BUT, overall, a really excellent, interesting, well-written high fantasy series.