As with previous years, I continue to log each book to Blurt as I finish it. This post is a recap of the year, lightly editing those posts, and grouping books into categories:¹

All books are novels that I read for the first time, unless otherwise noted. Within each category, they’re listed in the order I read them. As usual, I liked far more books than I disliked, even if I had proportionally more dislikes than previous years.

The pinnacle

• 

  Papyrus: The Invention of Books in the Ancient World (Irene Vallejo, 2019; trans. Charlotte Whittle, 2025; nonfiction): This was a fascinating trip back to the birth of writing and, more importantly, of various forms of books, how they were copied, stored, sold, and valued, and a million short digressions, each of which Vallejo tied neatly back into the narrative. As usual, non-fiction meant slow reading, but it was quite good, and also has a lovely and witty index.

  (This book sung in a neat harmony with Ada Palmer’s Inventing the Renaissance, which I read earlier in the year, and which looked back at the same authors and books from the other end of our timeline. The title of the book in the original Spanish was El Infinito en un Junco, which I gather means “infinity (or the infinite) in a reed”, frankly much better than the English title.)

• 

  The Dog of the South (Charles Portis, 1979): This was amazing; every character was such a weirdo, such a wild card, that I never knew what was going to happen next, and was just along for the ride. Portis treated each of them with respect, and the overall effect was maybe something like a less cruel, less political Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (meant in a good way, or “/pos” as the kids would say).

  This was one of those that I kept thinking about for some time after I finished it. I loved Portis’s vision, language, and affection for his characters.

Recommended

• The Ministry of Time (Kaliane Bradley, 2024): This book managed the neat trick of being, simultaneously, a sci-fi novel, a thriller, and a romance novel, and pretty good at all three. Sometimes I entertain myself by explaining today’s world to Samuel Pepys; this book took some of that work off my shoulders, for a little while.

• Matter (Iain M. Banks, 2008): Culture series, book 8. Some mind-blowing ideas, and a really good expansion of scope, and fundamentally a good story — let down a bit at the end by an epilogue whose tone feels a little sour compared to the rest.

• Thinking With Type, 3rd edition (Ellen Lupton, 2024, nonfiction): This was a sort of introductory survey of all things typography and typesetting. Some of it was material I knew pretty well; a lot of the rest wasn’t stuff I know well or have put into practice. (Though as I wrote this I suddenly had a flashback to the high school newspaper.) This will definitely stay on my small typography reference shelf.

• A Drop of Corruption (Robert Jackson Bennett, 2025): Ana and Din series, book 2. The follow-up to The Tainted Cup, this was another fantasy-set murder mystery, this time with a clear anti-autocratic subtext. Bennett makes the subtext explicit in an afterword, laying into the fantasy genre, and A Song of Ice and Fire and its derivatives in particular, for their love of autocracies.

• Things Become Other Things (Craig Mod, 2025, memoir): Mod held a talk for this at Third Place Books in Ravenna, which I attended shortly after starting to read it. The book was partly about a walk around Japan’s Kii peninsula, but more a memoir about Mod’s childhood in a similarly economically depressed area. Very well-written and heartfelt.

• Inventing the Renaissance (Ada Palmer, 2025, nonfiction): This was a history of the Italian Renaissance, and something of a history of a history of it, and shifted at the end to address “progress” and what that means. Casual in tone, but rigorous in structure and argument; quite readable, but long, and I needed to break it up with a couple other books.

• Slow Horses (Mick Herron, 2010): Slough House series, book 1. First book in the series that’s the basis of the TV series I’ve been meaning to watch. Anyway, it was really good — clever, and deeply cynical in the way an espionage novel can be cynical (maybe not quite as much as Le Carré), which I do enjoy every so often.

  A word of warning: This edition of the book was horribly copyedited, with search-and-replace typos, quotation marks instead of apostrophes, and missing and incorrectly-placed paragraph breaks. Mostly just eye-bleedingly obnoxious, but sometimes it actively hindered my understanding of the story.

• Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales (Heather Fawcett, 2025): Emily Wilde series, book 3. Probably the best of the now-three books, and I kind of hope it’s the last, because this feels like a good endpoint for Wilde’s story.

• Tao Te Ching (Lao Tzu, c. 4th century BCE; trans. Ursula K. Le Guin, 1997; nonfiction, reread): I managed to finish this right before the end of the year; I’d finished the main text early in December, but not Le Guin’s translation/rendering notes. I don’t understand most of this, but most of what I understand resonates, and a lot of what I don’t makes me think.

Good

• Polostan (Neal Stephenson, 2024): Bomb Light series, book 1. Even though I was warned that it was a surprisingly-normal-sized book, I was still disconcerted by its very normal size. That turns out to be a bit deceptive though: The story is very clearly unfinished at the end of the book (though many parts are wrapped up nicely). Two more of these and it’ll feel like a more typical Stephenson opus.

  I would have expected this to be up in the Recommended section, but absolutely nothing about the book has stuck with me since I read it a year ago.

• The Wordhord (Hana Videen, 2023, nonfiction): This was a fun amble through some Old English vocabulary, not especially deep or challenging, but fun and interesting.

• The Girl in the Tower (Katherine Arden, 2017): Winternight series, book 2. Followup to The Bear and the Nightingale. I enjoyed this one, too, and it had more consistent drive than the first, but Arden relied on a particular plot contrivance trope a little too often for my taste. I’m not sure when I’ll get to book 3.

• The Tomb of Dragons (Katherine Addison, 2025): Cemeteries of Amalo series, book 3. The latest in the series that started with either The Goblin Emperor or The Witness for the Dead depending on how you’re counting. (I guess this would be book 4 if counting from the former.) Like the others, this book is generous and compassionate, both towards and among its major characters. It focuses on reparations for sins committed by previous generations, which Addison handles thoughtfully.

  But two things: First, some offscreen cartoon villainy undercuts some of the care and thought that went into the resolution. Second, the book’s setting and language demand a lot from the reader, and the story picks up immediately after the previous left off; usually I like not reading awkward “remember this from the previous book” insertions, but if any book wants them, it’s this one, and it doesn’t have any. Do not pick this up as your first in the series.

• A Canticle for Leibowitz (Walter M. Miller, Jr., 1959, reread): I came back to this at least 25 years since I first read it. I liked most of it, a kind of bleakly- or cynically-hopeful story of preservation of knowledge in a cycle of humanity’s self-destruction. Alas, the end of the book centers on a Catholic argument against suicide, which I found fairly offputting.

• Dead Lions (Mick Herron, 2013): Slough House series, book 2. The followup to Slow Horses. This had the same things going for it as the previous, including (which I didn’t mention) something of a sense of humor. Bonus: This edition of this book only had a handful of typos, one inexplicable but most inconsequential. (I enjoyed this as much as Slow Horses, but as a not-first-in-the-series book, it gets demoted one rank by default.)

Not recommended

• Mordew (Alex Pheby, 2020): Cities of the Weft series, book 1. I picked up this book solely for its Feiffer-esque front cover (very reminiscent of Gormenghast) and the description on the back. It was Weird, grotesque, such that after I started reading it at bedtime, I had bizarre dreams inspired by book imagery, and thus banished it from the bedroom. Was it good, did I enjoy it? I’m not sure, but it was definitely compelling.

  That said, at first I thought I’d probably get on to the next book in the series, but I find I have no desire to pick up another, even after (or perhaps because of) detoxing from this. Gormenghast it was not; those books had a kind of odd care for their characters, and I found little but contempt and cruelty in Mordew.

• The Will of the Many (James Islington, 2023, did not finish): Hierarchy series, book 1. I bought a copy based solely on its cover and heft, but found myself disliking every character, none of whom seemed capable of uttering a simple true statement. (Maybe there’s a theme here.) I set this aside about a third of the way through, by which point I was convinced it wouldn’t change.

Unfinished

• After the Ice: A Global Human History, 20,000–5000 BC (Steven Mithen, 2004, nonfiction): Carried over from last year and 2023; I don’t remember whether I picked this up this year, but I still intend to get back to it at some point.

Appendix: stats

“Published recently” means that year or the year before. For books with multiple authors, “distinct authors” counts each separately, which might skew the counts a little towards nonfiction.

It was also the year a small, well-curated bookstore opened up the street. I made a point to buy at least one book from them every month: I don’t know what we did to deserve it, but I’ll be damned if I take it for granted and let it go out of business.

As with previous years, I continue to log each book to Blurt as I finish it. This post is a recap of the year, lightly editing those posts, and grouping books into categories:¹

All books are novels that I read for the first time, unless otherwise noted. Within each category, they’re listed in the order I read them. As usual, I liked far more of the books than I was neutral towards, and was left with mixed feelings for just one.

The pinnacle

• 

  Menewood (Nicola Griffith, 2023): Hild series, book 2 (I’m not sure if Griffith has a name for the series, but I’m labeling it for clarity). Picking up right where Hild left off, this was another great book, with through-lines of trauma, grief, and becoming true to oneself. There was a perhaps-secondary theme of disability, from simple lactose-intolerance to the aforementioned trauma (Griffith self-identifies as a cripple). Like Hild, I will reread this at some point. I hope Griffith is able to write the next one in less than ten years.

• 

  Cahokia Jazz (Francis Spufford, 2024): A noir murder mystery set in the thriving city of Cahokia in an alternate 1922. The story ends up being a bit like one of Le Guin’s, asking whether a utopia is worth the price; this is made explicit by the appearance of Le Guin’s father, archaeologist Alfred Krober, as a supporting character. In the meantime, it explores cultural identity, racism, and economics, with all the elements of noir (a corrupt establishment, dirty police, a femme fatale, etc.). I loved this, and kept thinking about it (and recommending it) for the rest of the year.

Rereads

I read three other pinnacles this year, but since they were rereads, I’m separating them from the two new ones. I thought about demoting these to Recommended to keep from diluting this section, but couldn’t justify it for any of them.

• The Raven Tower (Ann Leckie, 2019, reread): I love this fantasy novel, about gods and bargains and thoughtfulness, and its casual queerness is the cherry on top.

• Lavinia (Ursula K. Le Guin, 2008, reread): Her final novel is one of my favorites. I still tear up on the last pages.

• Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (Susanna Clarke, 2004, reread): This massive book is about the return of English magic during the Napoleonic era. It proceeds at an appropriately stately pace, but the intensity ratchets up a notch every time the Gentleman with the Thistle-down Hair appears. In addition to her well-crafted writing, Clarke’s footnote game is top-notch.

Recommended

• Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands (Heather Fawcett, 2024): Emily Wilde series, book 2. I guess I didn’t mention that the first book was a romance novel in addition to all the other stuff it had going on. This book continues right along the same path, and was equally charming.

• Legends & Lattes (Travis Baldree, 2022): A short fantasy novel about an orc who retires from the adventuring life to open a coffee shop in a city where nobody has ever heard of coffee. This was completely ridiculous and cozy and charming, and the kids would probably describe it as “so gay (affectionate)”.

• The Mountain in the Sea (Ray Nayler, 2022): This was a wild ride — I couldn’t put it down — about labor and sentience and connection. Very briefly: A woman and the only possibly-sentient android explore the possibility of an octopus civilization, while a man is enslaved on a fishing trawler run by an AI, and a savant tries to hack into a more sophisticated AI. I thought this would stick with me all year, but I was surprised to find that I didn’t think about it much at all after I was done, which knocked it down from Pinnacle-status where I expected it to land. Rhymes with Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Ruin and, unexpectedly, Pink Floyd’s “Echoes”, which I’d been listening to quite a bit around the time I read this.

• You Deserve a Tech Union (Ethan Marcotte, 2023, nonfiction): I needed to pace myself with this, because I keep getting mad about my job and the software industry as a whole. Even though the point of the book is to inspire and mobilize unionizing, I ended up disheartened. This eventually passed, but I regret that (for structural reasons) my workplace is unlikely to unionize in the next decade.

• Parable of the Sower (Octavia Butler, 1993): This was a harrowing book, written in the early ’90s, about a teenager growing up as the United States is collapsing in 2024. It ended on a slightly hopeful note, and the book’s society is more collapsed than ours, so I guess there’s that, but reading about a president promising to make America great again … [I pause to gaze into the far-off distance]. Content warning: There’s nothing on-screen, but there are plenty of references to rape.

• The Tainted Cup (Robert Jackson Bennett, 2024): Another murder mystery, though not quite so noir-y as Cahokia Jazz. This one is a Holmes-and-Watson–style mystery, set in an odd fantasy world, and we’re left with a clear path to more stories starring the protagonist and his brash boss. Thinking back on it, it felt somewhat similar to Bridge of Birds, which I should reread one of these days.

• Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore (Robin Sloan, 2012), and its accompanying novella “Ajax Penumbra 1969” (also 2012): This was fun; it felt like a light Neal Stephenson novel, in length and intensity and depth, and earnest where Stephenson tends ironic.

• The Design of Books (Debbie Berne, 2024, nonfiction): This is a casual overview of the process of, as it says on the cover, designing books, from cover to page layout to interacting with authors and editors. Very interesting, though of course not especially relevant to my life.

• Lake of Souls (Ann Leckie, 2024, short fiction): A handful of the stories are set, at least notionally, in her Imperial Radch setting, several are in the setting of The Raven Tower, and several others are their own things. I enjoyed all of them to greater or lesser degrees; The Raven Tower in particular seems perfect for short stories.

• Moonbound (Robin Sloan, 2024): The book started with a banger of a prologue, eased off a fair bit, and brought it back up for the finale. Even though I didn’t quite fall in love with the book, I enjoyed it thoroughly, perhaps because it consistently surprised me. I was struck in particular by the book’s fundamental kindness and generosity.

• On Tyranny (Timothy Snyder, 2017, nonfiction): A collection of twenty brief essays about how tyranny and resistance work. Quick and bracing; nothing I didn’t already know, but a good refresher.

• The Bear and the Nightingale (Katherine Arden, 2017): Winternight trilogy, book 1. This was recommended by one of the owners of the new bookstore. I super-enjoyed this, based on Russian mythology, about a girl who can see spirits at a time when Christianity was driving them away. I wasn’t fully hooked until about halfway through, but then devoured the rest of the book.

• The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories and “The Wood at Midwinter” (Susanna Clarke, 2024, short fiction): The former is a collection of short stories which fit right into the Strange & Norrell setting, some explicitly, some only by vibe; all are charming and have the novel’s characteristic humor. The latter is a brief story that is unsettling in the same way as Piranesi.

• The Player of Games (Iain M. Banks, 1988, reread): The Culture series, book 2. I think I must have read this about 25 years ago, but I have even less memory of it than I would have expected, recalling story beats more than scenes or even plot points. I quite enjoyed it, and plan to read more in 2025.

Good

• The Eighth Detective (Alex Pavesi, 2020): Several short murder mysteries linked by an explicit exploration of the form. The overarching story doesn’t play fair, but nevertheless is clever and ends on a satisfying note.

• Witch King (Martha Wells, 2023): The protagonist is the demon that a bunch of fools tried to bind in the first chapter. Turns out he’s mostly a nice guy, or at least trying, as he tries to (in one arc of the story) overthrow an evil empire and (in the other) prevent a new empire from taking its place. Quite good, but I thought I wanted a different book.

• Dinner in Rome: A History of the World in One Meal (Andreas Viestad, 2022, nonfiction): A light overview of food and history, through the lens of a single (large) meal at Rome’s La Carbonara. The lightness is counterbalanced by an excellent bibliography, like Tom Standage’s A History of the World in Six Glasses (itself discussed in the bibliography).

Okay

• The Long Earth (Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter, 2012): The Long Earth series, book 1. A promising setup (what if people could step through an endless series of parallel Earths?) was let down by merely adequate writing and a very abrupt out-of-nowhere ending (that wasn’t really an ending at all but a setup for the next book). Glad I read this book; not sure if I’ll read the next.

Very mixed feelings

• Kafka on the Shore (海辺のカフカ) (Haruki Murakami, 2002; trans. Philip Gabriel, 2005): This was my first Murakami book; I finished it uncertain of what exactly I’d read. I’m fine with magical realism, and there were parts I really loved. But, content warning, there were parts which let’s say I found problematic: The protagonist rapes his sister in a dream. I don’t know if that’s a Murakami trope or unique to this book, but it leaves me a little leery of attempting another.

Unfinished

• After the Ice: A Global Human History, 20,000–5000 BC (Steven Mithen, 2004): Carried over from last year; I made a bit more progress this year.

Appendix: stats

“Published recently” means that year or the year before. For books with multiple authors, “distinct authors” counts each separately, which might skew the counts a little towards nonfiction.

As with 2021 and 2022, I continue to log each book to Blurt as I finish it; this is a recap of the year, lightly editing those posts, and grouping books into categories:¹

All books are novels that I read for the first time, unless otherwise noted. Within each category, they’re listed in the order I read them. As usual, I liked far more of the books than I was neutral towards, and I actively disliked just one: I either choose books well, or have very low standards.

The pinnacle

• 

  Golden Hill (Francis Spufford, 2016): Set in 1746 New York, this felt Austinesque like the best Aubrey/Maturin stories, though without the nautical adventure. It started out as a fun romp; by the end it became something else, very satisfying but more melancholy. This was the second book I read this year, and as I suspected, it was my favorite new read. I ended up rereading the ending two or three times, which I never do.

• 

  The Fellowship of the Ring (J.R.R. Tolkien, 1954, reread): The Lord of the Rings, part 1, as I’m sure I don’t need to tell you. This was something like my twentieth time reading this book. One thing that strikes me from this reading is how economical it is — seriously! — with the important exception of the poetry, which felt self-indulgent. Pay attention to how much happens in any given chapter, and how short that chapter is compared to how it would have been written by a modern author. Inner lives of the characters, and even much of the outer lives, are pared down, leaving us with the scope of an epic. Speaking of epic sagas, this is very much a book that wants to be read aloud.

Recommended

• The Glass Hotel (Emily St. John Mandel, 2020): Ostensibly (and, to be fair, mostly) about a financial con, it’s also somehow about ghosts and maybe alternate realities. I think this is my favorite of her books. The most obvious St. John Mandel motif was the improbable connections between characters; some of the characters were hapless, but not as intensely so as in her earlier books.

• Wolf Hall (Hilary Mantel, 2009): Thomas Cromwell series, book 1. This was a big chonker of a book, about Thomas Cromwell’s rise from son of a blacksmith to most trusted councilor of Henry VIII (Henry the Butthead). Very enjoyable. I had one significant kvetch: Whether a writing tic or a stylistic choice, there were many passages with ambiguous pronoun references; sometimes I had to reread multiple times to understand what was happening.

• Sea of Tranquility (Emily St. John Mandel, 2022): About plague, time travel, and the simulation hypothesis. Includes some more-mature forms of her standard motifs, plus links to other parts of the St. John Mandel Literary Universe. Quite good.

• Babel (R.F. Kuang, 2022): About the translators’ college at Oxford in the 1830s that worked magic based on the tension between imperfectly-translated terms, and thus fueled the British Empire. About empire of course, and appropriation and systemic racism and such. I enjoyed this; in hindsight I’m not sure it quite held together as well as it felt at the time, but it’s certainly worth reading.

• The Steerswoman (Rosemary Kirstein, 1989): The Steerswoman, book 1. A kind of a fantasy novel about a group of (mostly) women who gather and share knowledge, and a group of (mostly) men who hoard it. This feels like the kind of story that a younger Ursula K. Le Guin might have written.

• Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries (Heather Fawcett, 2023): This was a charming story about two academics — the titular Wilde, junior and diligent and quite possibly neurodivergent, and a tenured professor, lazy and charming and (Wilde suspects) prone to falsifying his research. Seasoned with little bits of horror, but still quite fun and cozy.

• Termination Shock (Neal Stephenson, 2021): I had dragged my feet on this book because the marketing had put me off; this was apparently a Very Important book with Things to Say. I shouldn’t have paid attention: This was Stephenson’s most fun book since at least Reamde, and a very characteristic one, with hijinx, unlikely characters, passages where Stephenson showed off the cool research he’d done — the only thing missing was the badass Russian with a heart of gold. Two notes: First, one exposition dump early in the book dragged a bit, though at least Stephenson had the character acknowledge it. And second, the climax felt similar to those in Seveneves and Reamde, and possibly others further back that I’ve forgotten.

• The Diamond Age (Neal Stephenson, 1995): The only book Stephenson has written solo that I hadn’t read (other than The Big U — is that any good?). Some amazing imagery, and carefully-thought-out social impacts of nanotechnology and post-scarcity that rhymed in some ways with Ada Palmer’s Terra Ignota series. The book has some vestiges of its time (e.g. some really dated stereotyping), and an abrupt ending characteristic of his earlier work, but the ending worked and overall I really liked the book.

• Children of Ruin (Adrian Tchaikovsky, 2019): Children of Time, book 2. Tchaikovsky does the same thing as he did in his previous, but with an additional element and resulting different themes. There was also a bit of horror — beyond the previous book’s simple arachnophobia triggers — such that I didn’t want to put the book down in those sections.

• Crook Manifesto (Colson Whitehead, 2023): A followup to Harlem Shuffle, and equally delightful.

• The Two Towers (J.R.R. Tolkien, 1954, reread): The Lord of the Rings, part 2. Another thing I’ve noticed on this reread is that my mental images of the locations are very different. Tolkien’s descriptions seem very clear, and I don’t know why or how I could ever have imagined things as I did in the past, and I don’t think my current images are influenced by the movies in any meaningful way. Curious!

• The Return of the King (J.R.R. Tolkien, 1955, reread): The Lord of the Rings, part 3. It turns out I hadn’t read all the appendices, or had thoroughly forgotten some of them. I like to think that everybody should read them, but … well, they’re not part of the main story for a reason. This book, for all its various virtues, was the volume with most of the racist characterizations we think of as we reevaluate Tolkien — not just the Haradrim and Easterlings, but even some of his depictions of orcs cross the line. Important to be aware of flaws in a work, even (or especially) if you otherwise love it.

Good

• The Old Ways (Robert Macfarlane, 2012, nonfiction). This is a rambling look at walking, paths, and sailing, and is also (unexpectedly) a little biography of Edward Thomas. I lost momentum about three quarters of the way through, but managed to recover and finish. Maybe I would have preferred the book to be a little shorter, but on the other hand it resonated with me enough that I bought a copy to have on hand when the library loan ends.

• Imaginary Peaks (Katie Ives, 2021, nonfiction): The core of the book is a mountain climbing hoax, but it extends outwards to cartography and its difficulties, hoaxes more generally, and colonialism, among other things. The book referenced several books and authors also referenced in The Old Ways, not entirely surprisingly.

• Joan (Katherine J. Chen, 2022): Historical fiction about Joan of Arc. Chen, properly, wrote her own interpretation of Joan, one who’s less a holy maid with visions and more “the Thomas Edison of handing a dude his ass” (note: not a quote from the book). The final part of the book was difficult to read — it’s a tragedy after all — but at least we don’t get to her being (spoiler for approx. six-century-old history) burnt at the stake. Side note / content warning / complaint: In the book, Joan’s sister is raped (offscreen, and handled delicately, but). I hope someday we can find a better plot point to motivate the main character.

• Dead Country (Max Gladstone, 2023): The Craft Wars, book 1, or perhaps The Craft Sequence, book 7, depending how you count. (It’s the latter, I think.) Anyway, interestingly, this book sort of rhymed with Gladstone’s previous, Last Exit, sharing some motifs, but I think this was the better book: tighter and with less clumsy preaching.

• The Echo Wife (Sarah Gailey, 2021): I read it compulsively, but it was really hard, about sexism and abuse and surviving them. It didn’t help that the protagonist — or at least the narrator, maybe she’s not the protagonist — is not especially likeable. I’m glad I read this, but I can’t easily recommend it.

• The Outskirter’s Secret (Rosemary Kirstein, 1992): The Steerswoman, book 2. Confirms the Le Guin vibes I got from the first book: ecology and sociology are core to the story. If you read and enjoyed The Steerswoman, bump this (and the following books) up to Recommended.

• The Lost Steersman (Rosemary Kirstein, 2003): The Steerswoman, book 3. This was a little more harrowing than the previous two, but (or thus?) a little more compelling. These books are self-published, and could have used another pass from a copyeditor, but nothing that ruins the read.

• The Language of Power (Rosemary Kirstein, 2004): The Steerswoman, book 4. This is clearly not the end of the series, though it ends on an adequately-satisfying note, but it’s the most-recently published. (Kirstein is apparently continuing to write.) Less Le Guin–esque than the others, but still reminiscent. I’ve enjoyed all these books.

• Bring Up the Bodies (Hilary Mantel, 2012): Thomas Cromwell series, book 2. I very much enjoyed this. It feels like the political parts of A Song of Ice and Fire, but with a wry sense of humor, and without the fantasy elements (obviously) and glorified cruelty that became increasingly central to that series. (Or, rather, probably vice versa: That series clearly drew some of its inspiration from these historical events.) Amusingly, the stylistic tic of Wolf Hall was transformed into a different tic which eliminated almost all pronoun ambiguity; it felt forced at the beginning, but it gradually won me over. If you read and enjoyed Wolf Hall, bump this (and the following book) up to Recommended.

• The Mirror & the Light (Hilary Mantel, 2020): Thomas Cromwell trilogy, book 3. This was a huge book, and reading it felt a little bit like work, but it was absolutely worth it by the end: We know how the story must play out, even if we haven’t read the history, but it remains compelling to the last page. Probably don’t bother reading this if you haven’t first read Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, but if you have, this is a must.

• Seveneves (Neal Stephenson, 2015, reread): I still find the first two-thirds of the book intensely compelling. I had trouble connecting as well as with the last third, though. I wonder if it should have been expanded and broken into a second book? It’s an important part of the story, but I feel like it wanted a little more space to breathe, and a little less recounting of history.

• These Burning Stars (Bethany Jacobs, 2023): The Kindom Trilogy, book 1. I almost put the book down early, when it repeatedly poked at a stylistic peeve of mine, but Jacobs’s writing stepped up just in time, and I enjoyed the rest of the book to the end.

Okay

• Saving Time (Jenny Odell, 2023, nonfiction): I read this slowly and sporadically, as I do with a lot of nonfiction, and I’m not sure what to make of it. There seem to be some deep insights about how we perceive time and how parts of it are a social construction, along with digressions about labor and inequity that Odell manages to pull back to the main topic, along with bits that feel a little too woo-woo for me.

• Fall (Neal Stephenson, 2019): I can’t even start to analyze this through the lens of Goethe’s three questions: I couldn’t tell what Stephenson wanted his book to be (about uploading consciousness? a retelling of Paradise Lost? a fantasy quest? mad about the internet and/or religious fundamentalism?), and so I can’t even judge whether he succeeded, much less whether it was worth doing. And I can’t tell if it ended up more or less than the sum of its parts. I will say that I was kind of tired of the book around the ⅘︎ point (though the ending picked up a bit), and I feel pretty sure this wasn’t his best work.

Very mixed feelings

• The Vaster Wilds (Lauren Groff, 2023): A beautifully-written, incredibly-bleak story of a girl who escapes the famine in colonial Jamestown. What she finds is barely better, and the glow of light and hope at the very end didn’t do much to counter the darkness of the rest of the story. I’m glad I read this, and I enjoyed it in some ways, and cannot recommend it wholeheartedly, unless you value how well words are put together more than what happens to the book’s only real character.

Not recommended

• The Terraformers (Annalee Newitz, 2023): I almost put this one down unfinished: The setting and story are incredibly inventive, and the characters’ portrayal and motivations very one-dimensional and clumsy. I actually found myself skimming parts, which I almost never do with fiction.

Unfinished

• After the Ice: A Global Human History, 20,000–5000 BC (Steven Mithen, 2004): I’m enjoying this, but it’s a big chonk of a book. I set it aside, but have dipped back into it occasionally, and will make it through eventually.

Appendix: stats

“Published recently” means that year or the year before. For books with multiple authors, “distinct authors” counts each separately, which might skew the counts a little towards nonfiction.

[There seems to be] a trend where execs are becoming more public characters — with their random dumb thoughts posted online — at the same time that everything is becoming political. So now we buy products based on our values instead of quality. Sometimes good, sometimes taken too far.

I don’t know what he means by “taken too far”.¹

This is where I think I disagree with Reece: Who gets to define “quality”?

To use the example he’s talking about, a car can have many qualities, in the sense of “peculiar and essential character”: It can have an electric motor (or motors), it can be comfortable, it can have a quiet cabin, it can offer a smooth ride. It can also be built by a company whose owner and face² had a regrettable habit of intemperate anti-Semitic statements.

Here’s the thing: We are spoiled for choice these days. I can go to the grocery store and choose from scores of varieties of potato chip, or sandwich bread, or apple. If I don’t like one, or I change my mind about it, or it starts demonstrating new and unpleasant qualities — say, the Fuji apples have been pallid and bruised for the past couple weeks — I can choose to spend my money on a different apple.

The same even applies to electric cars. Today I can choose from among scores of electric cars! More are being released all the time! Many of them are not great, but quite a few are. “Owned by awful person, who presumably earns a profit when one of these things is sold” is a quality of some cars, and I believe that makes a car low-quality, in the sense of “superiority in kind”, regardless of what other qualities that car might have, or what other people believe about those qualities.

Yes, I am limiting my selection when I do this. That’s good! We need to narrow our choices, or we face analysis paralysis. “Must have a range of at least 150 miles” and “must have physical knobs for climate control” are ways I can narrow the choices. “Must not be owned by an awful person” is another that I choose to include.

I can do this for other things beyond cars, too. I don’t have to watch a comedy special starring a guy who consistently punches down rather than up, or who is a well-known sex pest — there are hundreds of other good ones I can watch instead. I don’t have to listen to an album by a guitar wizard who has become an anti-vaxxer — lots of guitar wizards out there; I don’t need to send my money towards this one.

So I don’t understand why ruling out an electric car — one of scores I can choose from — might be “too far”. I’m not choosing products based on values instead of quality. I’m choosing products based on quality, and I define quality in part in terms of my values.

Edited 12/17/2023: Corrected the spelling of Reece — thanks for the correction, William, and I apologize for the misspelling.

(Original post follows. After that, for the super-nerds, are some mail headers demonstrating that this all works. At some point, I might set up some kind of DMARC policy, but not tonight.)

Do you send email from an @pile.org email address? Do we know each other, and have we quite possibly had beers together? Get in touch with me before Monday evening Pacific time, May 8, 2023, at my four-letter nickname @pile.org (or however you normally reach me).

I’ve had a few too many emails rejected or dropped into spam folders because I haven’t implemented SPF or DKIM for the domain. It’s long past time to change this, and my current plan is to do it the evening of Monday, May 8. You and I will each need to make a couple changes, so reach out and we’ll get it all sorted — it should be pretty simple.

If you try to send from an @pile.org address after I make the change, without having gotten in touch with me and sorted things out, your emails will have a higher chance of getting rejected as spam by the recipient’s email server (and getting bounced back to you) and/or possibly client (and silently dropping into their spam folder).

(On the back end, I’ll need to make some DNS changes, and will need to set you up with an account that lets you authenticate to the SMTP server for pile.org. You’ll need to change your mail client to send mail via that server.)

Here are some mail headers from Gmail’s receipt of a message sent with the new SPF and DKIM configuration.

ARC-Message-Signature: i=2; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=google.com; s=arc-20160816;
		h=to:date:message-id:subject:mime-version:content-transfer-encoding
		 :from:dkim-signature;
		bh=Nu+1dXkJIdCjtLlsvKs2R1NYjS/yUvazBiI84+LiFR4=;
		b=NaXmJOB0QrprcicmvTAvIp6E8+7nUNHq5dtaP4Mqzmh7UrJPbw9xZV9mw40E6fquf4
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		 Q3Fogs7/eVPG7NxbEhl11Eyl3qCXqa/M2o2RLr1MgaYlzTOgPE9mYEjA2w2UWX6P1aQl
		 VEiXqUfZ/LGCITBREEii4JZxAekhSawGmqGjnhiNtnKErcCxpbFoYatEbKL65zAC1t9Z
		 7vrw==
ARC-Authentication-Results: i=2; mx.google.com;
	   dkim=pass header.i=@pile.org header.s=dreamhost header.b=EUI5mKpK;
	   arc=pass (i=1);
	   spf=pass (google.com: domain of xxxx@pile.org designates 23.83.209.24 as permitted sender)
Received-SPF: pass (google.com: domain of xxxx@pile.org designates 23.83.209.24 as permitted sender) client-ip=23.83.209.24;
Authentication-Results: mx.google.com;
	   dkim=pass header.i=@pile.org header.s=dreamhost header.b=EUI5mKpK;
	   arc=pass (i=1);
	   spf=pass (google.com: domain of xxxx@pile.org designates 23.83.209.24 as permitted sender)
ARC-Message-Signature: i=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=mailchannels.net; s=arc-2022; t=1683606060; h=from:from:reply-to:subject:subject:date:date:message-id:message-id:
		 to:to:cc:mime-version:mime-version:content-type:content-type:
		 content-transfer-encoding:content-transfer-encoding:dkim-signature;
DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=pile.org; s=dreamhost; t=1683606060; bh=Nu+1dXkJIdCjtLlsvKs2R1NYjS/yUvazBiI84+LiFR4=; h=From:Content-Type:Content-Transfer-Encoding:Subject:Date:To; b=EUI5mKpKNpRlnI0NchGUohFrf14O7aRCJ/Kg3wObnCpO44vPOy913xAei/qk/M/F3
		 RxS4DbwRQJxd6MWDCf40XoF2JUqZkvqDESRrsJYOKI40oDS+1ClSg8ieMnPhOILM6X
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		 14SkTpCZqZsbAS8lUmGegfCLGzqAurUNZ+YwV/8KhuxnqmCYxyI+Gx2ABlSl6rspdR
		 RmWI6b8IBqEoA==

I’ve been running pile.org for that long, too, though obviously I haven’t been posting anywhere near as much. The earliest forms of the site are lost to the ether, which is probably for the best.¹ But that got me thinking to my first glimpse of the Web, back in 1993 or 1994.

I was in one of the computer labs at school, and there was a new application running on some of the graphical terminals: In hindsight, it was NCSA Mosaic, one of the first web browsers. I looked over somebody’s shoulder, and probably poked around at one of the handful of World Wide Web pages. And I kind of shrugged, and thought to myself something to the effect of “hm, that’s kind of cool, I guess, but it doesn’t seem much better than gopher”.

On a completely unrelated note, I don’t know how ChatGPT-style chatbots can reliably produce truth. At least today, they produce plausibility, which is a very different thing. And even if you train one on nothing but 100% pure fact, it seems like it can still generate mistakes, as a feature of how it works, right? How can it be anything but a bullshit generator?

Jon and I are going to compare notes about this in a year. He’s more optimistic than I am.

I want to be clear what I am and am not skeptical about here. I don’t think that chatbots, generally, are useless or doomed to failure or anything like that.

I do think that ChatGPT-style text producers are probably a dead-end, in terms of producing truth, which is critical for many of the uses that have been claimed for them (e.g. search engines). I don’t understand how “truth” can be added to this approach, unless it’s something clunky like having an entirely separate piece of code that evaluates its output for truth, and rejects its output and tells it to try again if it’s untrue. That thing would be interesting, and I think it would be a major advance in what we can do, but it would be bolted on to GPT to override fundamental behavior, not integrated into the technology.²

I think that the things ChatGPT can output are fascinating. I think that when companies saw that people were paying attention to it, they raced to catch a bit of the buzz, just like so many companies did with VR and NFTs and cryptocurrency, even if most of them didn’t have a compelling use-case or even vision for how the technology could help people. I think that, maybe, ChatGPT could be part of a bigger stack in the future — it’s clearly quite good at producing sentences as good as (or, let’s be honest, better than) those of most humans. But I don’t think that, by itself, it can produce anything other than bullshit.

I think it’s useful, and can improve at what it does, but I think that what it does is ultimately a dead-end.

All books are novels that I read for the first time, unless otherwise noted. Within each category, they’re listed in the order I read them. I liked far more of the books than I was neutral towards, and I actively disliked just one: I either choose books well, or have very low standards. (I edited this post in early 2023, after I decided I wasn’t returning to finish one book that I’d set aside at the end of 2022.)

The pinnacle

• 

  Hild (Nicola Griffith, 2014, reread): The first part of a fictional biography of the lightly-documented Saint Hilda of Whitby. I love this book, love how it centers girls and women in its well-researched portrayal of seventh-century life. I read this slowly enough that having the ebook was a huge advantage: Whenever a character I’d forgotten showed up again, I could quickly search to remind myself who they were. Griffith has finished the first draft and at least the second round of rewrites of the next part of the story, Menewood. This one belongs on the shelf next to Lavinia and Matrix.

• 

  Station Eleven (Emily St. John Mandel, 2015): A pre-covid “most people in the world die of a plague” novel. The story starts during a performance of King Lear at the start of the plague, and then follows two people — the actor playing Lear, through the before-times to that point, and a young girl also in the production, through the after-times in a traveling company performing Shakespeare plays. I read Last One at the Party last year, and think this one is so much better it’s almost unfair to compare them. If you can stomach the premise, read this.

Recommended

• Treason’s Harbour (Patrick O’Brian, 1983, reread): Aubrey/Maturin series, book 9. Still in the sweet spot, with the Kim Philby–esque traitor revealed to the reader in the first couple chapters, but not to Maturin (or Aubrey) in the whole book.

• Matrix (Lauren Groff, 2021): This was lovely: an imagining of the life of Marie of Shaftesbury, creating a feminist haven out of a failing abbey in 12th-century England. I got very strong vibes of both Nicola Griffith’s Hild and Ursula K. Le Guin’s Lavinia (though this doesn’t quite rise to Le Guin’s level — which is no failing — and Groff wasn’t trying to write either of those books).

• The Lincoln Highway (Amor Towles, 2021): I loved this, even though the story mostly ended up being “what did Duchess do this time, and how are the rest of them going to clean up after him?” (Wait, he did what?? But — !)

• The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (David Graeber and David Wengrow, 2021, nonfiction): This was a slow, dense, enjoyable read; the authors attempt to reinterpret prehistoric and historic societies, and (even with a few rhetorical sleights-of-hand) succeeded. I’ll probably look back on this book as perspective-changing.

• The Thirteen Gun Salute (Patrick O’Brian, 1989, reread): Aubrey/Maturin series, book 13. This is one of my favorites in the series, with some of the most memorable scenes, and for once the next book will start more or less where this leaves off. I can’t recommend this as the first to read (that would be H.M.S. Surprise), but it’s a high point to look forward to.

• Spear (Nicola Griffith, 2022): A short, fun novel retelling the story of Percival and the Holy Grail. (It’s just around a quarter the length of Hild!) A lovely digestif of a book.

• Anathem (Neal Stephenson, 2009, reread): Boy do I have complicated feelings about this. On the one hand, the concepts are fascinating and the storytelling is top-notch. On the other, there’s a bunch of pandering to nerds and contempt for non-nerds, especially in the first half of the book, not to mention the casual sexism. (I would be curious to see what the book would have been like in the alternate universe where he wrote it today.) I used to recommend this book without reservations, but now it would be more along the lines of The Lord of the Rings (which would be “read this, but don’t fail to notice that the people with dark skin are bad guys”).

• The Sandman volumes 1–10 (Neil Gaiman et al., 1989–1996, graphic novels, reread): This still basically holds up, which I was a little concerned about. (There’s more reference to rape than I remembered, but at least it doesn’t involve protagonists, and justice of a sort is generally done.) Some of stuff that was profound when I was in my 20s feels a little trite, but overall it still seems to achieve what it’s aiming for.

• The Grief of Stones (Katherine Addison, 2022): A followup to last year’s The Witness for the Dead. I enjoyed this as much as the previous. Addison draws her fundamentally-decent but painfully-introverted protagonist with compassion, through grim events of murders, child pornography (handled as delicately as possible), and a malevolent spirit.

• Duck Season (David McAninch, 2018, nonfiction): About the food and culture of Gascony. I’m slow at reading this kind of book, and I had other things that distracted me, but I loved the writing, and need to try cooking various Gascon dishes.

• Bad Machinery volumes 1–10 (John Allison, 2009–2017, graphic novels, reread): Allison’s follow-up to Scary Go Round, starring (the UK equivalent of) middle school–aged kids introduced towards the end of that run. I like this more than its predecessor; Allison had grown up as a storyteller and artist.

• The Singer’s Gun (Emily St. John Mandel, 2009): I really liked this book; the protagonist started as another spineless, obsessive young man like in Last Night in Montreal, but grew up by the end, and the book’s conclusion was satisfying without tying off all loose ends.

• A Prayer for the Crown-Shy (Becky Chambers, 2022, novella): Monk and Robot, book 2. I made short work of this. I realized, several years ago, that I should be as kind to myself as I try to be to others, something that is very hard for me. This book is, in part, about that.

• City of Blades (Robert Jackson Bennett, 2016): Divine Cities, book 2. City of Stairs was good, but this was more compelling, about war and trauma and regret. (Very strange how I’m finding myself relating to older characters these days.)

• The Lola Quartet (Emily St. John Mandel, 2012): Another book featuring an obsessive, helplessly-passive (up to a certain part of the book) man-child. (To be clear, I enjoyed this, as I have her other books so far, and there’s a clear progression from Last Night in Montreal through The Singer’s Gun to here. It might be interesting to reread Station Eleven at this point, her next book in publication order but the first I read, but I probably won’t.) I almost quit the book early on, as the main character’s particular form of self-destruction made me incredibly anxious, but I managed to power through.

• City of Miracles (Robert Jackson Bennett, 2017): Divine Cities, book 3. In a way, I wish the series hadn’t kept getting better — even though the first book was good, it’s awkward to recommend a book by saying that its sequels are even better. (This one was about regret and repentance and, eventually, making a good decision even if you haven’t always in the past. And aging, as a kind of sub-theme.)

• Children of Time (Adrian Tchaikovsky, 2015): Children of Time, book 1. What if you meant to uplift other primates to sentience, but accidentally got spiders instead? About monomania and resilience, and empathy.

Good

• Middlemarch (George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), 1872): This was long, and there wasn’t quite a plot (or at least not a single one), but I’m glad I stuck it out. (“The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.”)

• City of Stairs (Robert Jackson Bennett, 2014): Divine Cities, book 1. This fantasy novel had the misfortune of being read immediately after Middlemarch, and nothing from the first part of this book caught my interest. But I eventually got into the right frame of mind, and enjoyed the book more as I made my way through.

• The Far Side of the World (Patrick O’Brian, 1984, reread): Aubrey/Maturin series, book 10. A lot happens here, but still he leaves large gaps that earlier books would have filled in, and the ending is one of his most abrupt yet (though it wouldn’t have told us anything we couldn’t figure out on our own).

• The Reverse of the Medal (Patrick O’Brian, 1986, reread): Aubrey/Maturin series, book 11. We’re in the back half of the series now, and O’Brian clearly wants to introduce new plots and situations, as there’s only so much that can be done with the Royal Navy. Here we have more treachery, a court case, and a thief-taker, leading to a miscarriage of justice and a satisfying climax.

• The Letter of Marque (Patrick O’Brian, 1988, reread): Aubrey/Maturin series, book 12. This one felt more full than some recent ones: more naval action, more intrigue by land, more of Maturin’s laudanum addiction, and an interesting look at how a private letter-of-marque ship differs from a Royal Navy ship.

• The Bright Ages (Matthew Gabriele and David M. Perry, 2021, nonfiction): This book is less a history of Europe and more a support of three arguments: that there was continuity from the end of the western Roman Empire to medieval times; that we shouldn’t use medieval history to drive a modern agenda; and that medieval populations were diverse and mobile. I wish it had been more of a history, but I suppose it would have needed to be ten times longer to offer a brief survey of the period. Fortunately, the book ends with extensive suggestions for further reading, focusing on recent writing and a few primary sources, particularly ones that are more readily available to the non-specialist. (The voice and perspective of this book reminded me a bit of The Dawn of Everything.)

• The Nutmeg of Consolation (Patrick O’Brian, 1991, reread): Aubrey/Maturin series, book 14. Not quite as strong as the previous, but still a worthy continuation. The scenes in the penal colony of New South Wales, later in the book, are restrained but still horrifying.

• Last Exit (Max Gladstone, 2022): Lots of thoughts about the book — reminds me of Stephen King I read ages ago; repetitious and hamfisted observations on the Way the World Is Today; difficult to stay focused on, especially the first half — but in the end it still won me over, and I really enjoyed it.

• Index, A History of the (Dennis Duncan, 2022, nonfiction): Duncan made the topic as lively and entertaining as it could possibly be, though chapter seven did drag a bit.

• Scary Go Round volumes 1–8 (John Allison, 2002–2009, graphic novels, reread): I first read these as they were published online (starting with 2004’s “1840 and All That”); it was very interesting to reread them as a whole work, seeing the progression of Allison’s artistic and storytelling styles and interests.

• The Truelove (Patrick O’Brian, 1992, reread): Aubrey/Maturin series, book 15. The third book of a circumnavigation of the globe. Another well-crafted book, focusing on the relationship among the ship’s officers; most of the naval action is relegated to a montage sequence late in the book.

• The Wine-Dark Sea (Patrick O’Brian, 1993, reread): Aubrey/Maturin series, book 16. The fourth and final book of their circumnavigation. Neither Aubrey nor Maturin has great success in this book; oddly, this felt satisfying enough that even a deus ex machina ending wasn’t a disappointment.

• Last Night in Montreal (Emily St. John Mandel, 2009): I enjoyed it, though I was quite tired of some of the characters by the end of the book. The story had a couple coincidental meetings that were even less plausible than some in Station Eleven — we’ll see if this is a recurring motif in her work.

• The Commodore (Patrick O’Brian, 1995, reread): Aubrey/Maturin series, book 17. Features a grim description of one of the less-awful ships in the Atlantic slavery trade.

• The Yellow Admiral (Patrick O’Brian, 1996, reread): Aubrey/Maturin series, book 18. This was an odd one: A couple chapters involving enclosure and boxing felt like O’Brian had just been reading about them and decided to put them in his own book, and there was a faint repetitious quality throughout. On the other hand, it was gratifying to watch them sail past the Pointe du Raz while on the Brest blockade, and the sweet, faintly melancholy ending would have made a good finish to the series … except that Napoleon just escaped from Elba, and there are still two books remaining.

• The Hundred Days (Patrick O’Brian, 1998, reread): Aubrey/Maturin series, book 19. We’re nearing the end, with a few more odd tics on O’Brian’s part, along with the sudden deaths of two secondary characters who have been in the books since the earliest days — one on-screen, the other off-. I understand why he removed at least one of them (no more new stories to tell), but both were handled in a very flat, nearly-emotionless manner.

• Blue at the Mizzen (Patrick O’Brian, 1999, reread): Aubrey/Maturin series, book 20, The last of the series. Just like in the previous couple books, there were a few oddities that might have been caught by a more vigilant editor. But the story as a whole is sound, and all is forgiven for the ending, which has brought tears to my eyes each time I’ve read it.

• Permutation City (Greg Egan, 2014): Lots of things to like, e.g. digital clones living in a hacky simulation that is more than an order of magnitude slower than the real world. The special relativity section of my brain rebelled against one significant plot point (though I’m not sure I understood it correctly). Very strong Philip K. Dick vibes from the story.

• Blitz (Daniel O’Malley, 2022): Checquy Files, book 3. I didn’t think I was in the mood for the occasional bits of zaniness, but I think they lightened the story enough to keep it from collapsing in self-seriousness. Slow to start but quick to finish.

Okay

• The Mask of Mirrors (M.A. Carrick, 2021): Rook & Rose, book 1. I ended up enjoying this fantasy novel centered around a long con, but several weak points wanted changing: an emotional beat that falls flat, a character with nothing to do, and about one or two hundred extra pages. Maybe a more strict editor would have helped?

Not recommended

• Elric of Melniboné (Mickael Moorcock, originally published 1961–89, this collection published 2022): The Elric Saga, book 1. I started this at the end of the year, but set it aside and am probably not returning to it any time soon. It’s part of a collection of Elric stories in order of fictional chronology, and I think this didn’t do the collection any favors: The first part (“Elric of Melniboné”, which I read decades ago) was pretty good, but I could not get interested in the next (“The Fortress of the Pearl”). In the third (“The Sailor on the Seas of Fate” — a badass title), Moorcock brings together several protagonists from his other stories, and seems to expect that I have read about and care about those protagonists, and then they smash together and become Voltron or something?, and I just had to put it down. I like the idea of Elric, but could not enjoy these stories.

Ire-inducing

• Cugel the Clever (Jack Vance, 1966, reread, previously as The Eyes of the Overworld): Dying Earth, book 2. This picaresque was quite entertaining, despite (or because of) the cruel and antisocial main character, who invariably chooses the most destructive option whenever possible. You know what? I regret that characterization of the book. I was worried going in that its mid-century origins wouldn’t hold up to modern standards, and I was unfortunately correct. This story is a trap: You’re meant to be entertained by the cruel and antisocial main character, and you’re meant to gloss over or laugh off how he sexually coerces one character and sells another into slavery. Fuck that, and fuck this book.

Appendix: stats

“Published recently” means that year or the year before.

After Meghan’s comment, I wondered if maybe the way I try to plan before I speak is some kind of compensation technique — I don’t think I’ve had a real stammering problem since childhood, and maybe this was how I learned to avoid the problem.

All books are novels that I read for the first time, unless otherwise noted. Within each category, they’re listed in the order I read them. I liked far more of the books than I was neutral towards, and I actively disliked very few: I either choose books well, or have very low standards.

The pinnacle

• Piranesi (Susanna Clarke, 2020): Short and unsettling and very, very good.

• Kindred (Octavia Butler, 1979): About slavery and its effects on everybody (but especially the enslaved), it’s brutal (but intentionally less than it could have been) and compelling, with a spare style that suits the story. You should read it, but only when you’re prepared.

• Lavinia (Ursula K. Le Guin, 2008, reread): This was Le Guin’s last novel (and one of my favorites, along with (in first place) Always Coming Home and (in third) perhaps Tehanu). It’s clearly the work of an older Le Guin, comfortable writing not just as a woman (which only happened some time into her career) but as an older woman. The ending has brought me to tears both times I’ve read it.

Recommended

• Too Like the Lightning (Ada Palmer, 2016, reread): Terra Ignota, book 1. Still has off-putting elements, but I charged ahead to the next book….

• Seven Surrenders (Ada Palmer, 2017, reread): Terra Ignota, book 2. When I started rereading the first book, I had forgotten most of it, but it came back to me as I was reading it. This book, though, I felt like there were whole chapters I was reading for the first time. Really enjoyed it, though! She undercut her “I am writing about only the best people” shtick at the end — a little later than I’d’ve liked, but I’ll take it.

• The Galaxy, and the Ground Within (Becky Chambers, 2021): Wayfarers, book 4. I loved this series; I don’t know if “cozy sci-fi” is a genre, but this would anchor it. Lots of explorations of family and community. (Unlike many series, you really can pick up any book and dive in without missing any context.)

• The Dragon Waiting (John Ford, 1983): I loved it; it felt like a mix of Tim Powers and Neal Stephenson … but sometimes with the attention span of Douglas Adams, or quite possibly I mistook oblique allusions for dropped threads. The book changed directions several times, and briefly became a murder mystery, but even when I wasn’t sure where it was going (or even that Ford was sure), I was happy to be along for the ride.

• H.M.S. Surprise (Patrick O’Brian, 1973, reread): Aubrey–Maturin series, book 3. If you’re interested in reading any of these books (perhaps you enjoyed the movie?) but aren’t ready to commit, start here (but read the Wikipedia plot summaries of the first two before you start).

• The Goblin Emperor (Katherine Addison, 2014, reread): I’d forgotten how much I’d enjoyed this fish-out-of-water story. The invented-language names were constantly baffling, but once I started aggressively using the glossary and cast of characters as a reminder, the book was smooth sailing.

• The Witness for the Dead (Katherine Addison, 2021): Stars a minor character from The Goblin Emperor; this book’s main character is as fundamentally decent as the previous book’s. It was a pleasure to read, and to watch all the pieces come together at the end.

• This Is How You Lose the Time War (Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, 2019, novella): Well, wasn’t this a delightful read. If you like letters, time travel, and/or love, you’ll be delighted too.

• Steeple, volume 1 and volume 2 (John Allison, 2020–2021, graphic novel): I originally read volume 2 serialized online (it’s ongoing), and it and the first are great ridiculous fun.

• The Golem and the Jinni (Helene Wecker, 2013): A couple quibbles aside, I loved this book, set in Manhattan c. 1900. It felt like a puzzle where all the characters ended up fitting together just so (and I think the quibbles are where I didn’t feel like the fit was quite satisfactory … but they were minor characters).

• The Will to Battle (Ada Palmer, 2017): Terra Ignota, book 3. This was a faster, more intense, I think better book than the first two, which (aside from the faster part) is saying something. I don’t know if it’s due to my growing familiarity with the baroque setting, the improvement of the author’s craft, rigorous editing on the part of her and her editor, or the plot itself.

• Where the Wild Coffee Grows (Jeff Koehler, 2017, nonfiction): Coffee and its origin in the Ethiopian highlands. Well-written and -structured, it covers (among other things) history, economics, biology, sociology, and climate change, but somehow isn’t too long.

• Harlem Shuffle (Colson Whitehead, 2021): A delightful story (or, really, three stories) of crime and family, set in late ’50s and early ’60s Harlem.

• Perhaps the Stars (Ada Palmer, 2021): Terra Ignota, book 4. A fitting end, perhaps a little more neatly tied off than I’d like, but perhaps that’s appropriate for a story of this length and intensity. I do sincerely appreciate that it barely hints at an answer to one of my big questions I’ve had since the first book — I don’t think an answer would have improved the books one bit. The series is a little too weird for me to recommend whole-heartedly to just anybody, but I loved it, and will probably reread it one of these days. (For me personally, the series as a whole is very close to reaching “pinnacle” status.)

• The Hidden Palace (Helene Wecker, 2021): The sequel to The Golem and the Jinni. I wasn’t sure it actually needed a sequel, and on the one hand, sure, the first book stood perfectly on its own, but on the other, it was great to spend a little more time with these characters, even if they make some bad choices. I think the rough edges of the first story were filed off, and the stakes were even more personal this time.

• The Ionian Mission (Patrick O’Brian, 1981, reread): Aubrey–Maturin series, book 8. We’ve kind of settled into the sweet spot of the series, if memory serves, and in any case this book is its own sweet spot, a pretty balance of sailing, spycraft, politics, and interpersonal drama, along with a return to the beloved H.M.S. Surprise.

• A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (Emma Southon, 2021, nonfiction): A fun and chatty look at Roman law and society through the lens of homicide. Southon uses a good chunk of her page count pointing out how little we know about the lives of Romans other than the richest men, and showing us a bit we can infer about the rest.

Good

• Cuisine & Empire (Rachel Laudan, 2015, nonfiction): Fascinating look at how ingredients, cooking techniques, and culinary philosophies have changed and spread over the millennia.

• A Desolation Called Peace (Arkady Martine, 2021): Teixcalaan series, book 2. A satisfying sequel to Martine’s first, not flawless but still very well executed.

• Web Typography (Richard Rutter, 2017, nonfiction): Exactly what it says on the cover; this was quite helpful as I was putting the finishing touches on my long walk journal.

• God Cancer (Greg Stolze, 2020). I didn’t know I was looking for a short horror novel mashup of Lovecraft (At the Mountains of Madness–style) and cancer, but I sure was.

• Master & Commander (Patrick O’Brian, 1969, reread): Aubrey–Maturin series, book 1. It’s a little longer than most of the other 19 (!) books in the series, a little less tightly-focused, but still very enjoyable.

• Post Captain (Patrick O’Brian, 1972, reread): Aubrey–Maturin series, book 2. Master & Commander was good, but this book is where O’Brian really started to figure out what he was doing.

• The Elusive Shift (Jon Peterson, 2020, nonfiction): How a wargame hack (D&D) came to be understood as a “role-playing game”, and what that meant to early players and theorists. I thoroughly enjoyed it. (Bump up to “Recommended” if this sounds like it would be interesting to you.)

• Leviathan Wakes (James S.A. Corey, 2011): The Expanse, book 1. Competent prose, though wading through the early character introductions was a chore (“Joe Spaceguy’s square jaw set him apart from the other pilots”, etc.). The structure of the book made it quick and compelling: many short chapters, alternating between viewpoint characters, always ending where I wanted to read more.

• The Mauritius Command (Patrick O’Brian, 1977, reread): Aubrey–Maturin series, book 4. Not quite as enjoyable as H.M.S. Surprise, but still a delight, including some choice bits about coffee, and a harrowing description of a hurricane.

• “Mick and Amanda and Reesa and Craig”, “Mick and the Spoonbender”, “Mick and the Fit”, and “Like Uber, but for Monsters” (Greg Stolze, 2021, short stories): Like much of his work, it’s well-crafted, unsettling, and sticks with you for a while.

• A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Becky Chambers, 2021, novella): Charming and cozy, as one expects from Chambers. About half the book resonated with me in a perfect, clear note, and I recognized the half that didn’t even though it wasn’t speaking to me.

• Subcutanean (Aaron A. Reed, 2020): A horror novel with twinned premises: It involves parallel universes, and each copy of the book is uniquely generated. (Mine was seed 40105.) Very effective as horror, and successful (as far as I could tell) in how it was generated, though of course I’m very curious what another version would be like.

• TARDIS Eruditorum, Volume 7: The Sylvester McCoy Years (Elizabeth Sandifer, 2020, nonfiction): Part of a series of critical surveys of Doctor Who. Though a fan of the show, I’ve never seen a single episode of this era, much less read any of the novels, so I expected to skip my way through this volume. But Sandifer always had something interesting to say, and I found myself reading cover to cover.

• Lovecraft Country (Matt Ruff, 2016): Described as a novel but really a set of closely-connected short stories. As reviewers have said, the racism is far more scary than the horror, though the second half of the book does bring nice bits of the Lovecraftian “sure, magic is evil, but maaayyybe just this once?”. Really, it just made me want to run a Harlem Unbound game of Call of Cthulhu.²

• The City & the City (China Miéville, 2009): This was one where I enjoyed having my misapprehension corrected partway into the book; it’s a murder mystery set in a pair of overlapping/intertwined cities, with none of the overt supernatural of the other Miéville books I’ve read.

• The Silver Pigs (Lindsey Davis, 1989, reread): Marcus Didius Falco series, book 1. A hard-boiled detective thriller set in imperial Rome, the book was quite good … except for first part, which painted the main character with such unpleasantness and misogyny that it was something of a slog. The “but with a heart of gold” was there, of course, but I wish the author hadn’t felt the need to play into that trope quite so hard. I’m considering reading more of the series, but I don’t know if the next book resets the character back to his initial state; if so, I’d probably rather just read something else.

• The Shadow of the Torturer (Gene Wolfe, 1980): The Book of the New Sun, book 1. Technically this was a reread, but I recalled so little that I may as well treat it as my first time. Really quite good, though it’s not my favorite novel by any stretch. Looking forward to the next book in the series.

• Desolation Island (Patrick O’Brian, 1978, reread): Aubrey–Maturin series, book 5. This one was grim, nearly unrelentingly so: plague, storms, and mutinies, with a bare glimmer of hope at the end of the story. Compelling reading.

• The Claw of the Conciliator (Gene Wolfe, 1981): The Book of the New Sun, book 2. Not quite as compelling as Shadow, but it felt like the protagonist was a little more active (even if he was somewhat unpredictable). (This turned out to be a recurring theme with these books.)

• The History of Jazz (3rd ed.) (Ted Gioia, 2021, nonfiction): This was kind of the flip side of A History of the World in Six Glasses (below): I wish it hadn’t been quite so long, but I was fascinated by every part of it, and wouldn’t cut much if anything. (Boost this to “recommended” if you’re a jazz fan, of course.)

• The Fortune of War (Patrick O’Brian, 1979, reread): Aubrey–Maturin series, book 6. As foreshadowed in the previous book, the backdrop is the War of 1812. This one shines a spotlight on Maturin’s spycraft: It played an important role in the previous books, esp. H.M.S. Surprise, but Maturin is uncharacteristically the more active character for much of the novel.

• Game Wizards (Jon Peterson, 2021, nonfiction): One of those niche books I sometimes read about the history of role-playing games. This one focuses on TSR from before its inception to the ouster of Gary Gygax. It was mostly just sad: The two principal figures (Gygax and Dave Arneson) come across as bitter, insecure, and emotionally-stunted grudge-holders; the story is fascinating (with much more detail than I’d known before), but their animosity left me with a bad taste in my mouth long before the end of the book.

• My Real Children (Jo Walton, 2014): The book started very bluntly, but became much more nuanced well before the halfway point, and was heartbreaking at the end. Not a perfect book, but I very much enjoyed it.

• Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don’t Rhyme (Arika Okrent, 2021, nonfiction): Full of charming, bite-sized little pieces about why English is the way it is. I already knew much of it, but there was also plenty I didn’t know, and a couple times it ventured deeper into linguistics than my dilettante self could quite follow. You know whether or not you would enjoy the book from the title.

• The Surgeon’s Mate (Patrick O’Brian, 1980, reread): Aubrey–Maturin series, book 7. As usual, the book is split between sea and land, and on land (as with the previous book) Maturin’s spycraft is more foregrounded than had been typical of the series.

• Light Chaser (Peter F. Hamilton and Gareth L. Powell, 2021, novella): A fun, short, fairly simple story about a woman traveling a route through colonized space at near–light speed.

• The Sword of the Lictor (Gene Wolfe, 1982): The Book of the New Sun, book 3. The narrator seemed even more of a character, and less a pawn of the author, than in Claw. Not coincidentally I enjoyed this book more than the previous two.

• The Citadel of the Autarch (Gene Wolfe, 1983): The Book of the New Sun, book 4. This was far and away my favorite of the four books, with a narrator who finally seems human, and something of an explanation for some of the seemingly-irrational events of the earlier books. Was the payoff worth it? Yes; I’m still not a fan of the semi-inscrutability of the earlier books, but they had their own compensating virtues. (I would have called this “recommended”, except that it is essentially incomprehensible without the previous three, and I can’t in good faith recommend them blindly.)

• Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (Hannah Arendt, 1964, nonfiction): Reporting on the show trial of the bureaucrat who kept the trains running to Auschwitz, Arendt uses it as a narrow lens to look at the Holocaust. Her discussions of then-modern Germany and Israel are not generally relevant today, but the question that will keep coming back to me is how to resist from within such a system.

Okay

• Last One at the Party (Bethany Clift, 2021): A post-COVID “everybody in the world but the protagonist dies from a plague” story. I have mixed feelings about this one: It wasn’t what I expected, the protagonist did not start out at all sympathetic, and there were some gruesome descriptions of the recently-dead. That said, it was compelling, I found myself rooting for the protagonist by the end, and the end itself was satisfying.

• The Blacktongue Thief (Christopher Buehlman, 2021): If you can get past an excessive amount of swearing — I can put up with a lot, but this was a lot — it has a surprising amount of heart; I eventually decided it felt a little bit like The Lies of Locke Lamora (but without a con game or heist).

• Caliban’s War (James S.A. Corey, 2012): The Expanse, book 2. Focuses on PTSD and how three of the main characters deal (more or less successfully) with theirs. The storyline basically echoes the first book’s.

• A History of the World in Six Glasses (Tom Standage, 2005, nonfiction): In many ways, I wanted this to be deeper — any of the chapters could comfortably have been twice as long — though I’m not sure I wanted to read a book that was twice as long. The sins of brevity were largely atoned for by the appendix (“how can I taste something like the early forms of these beverages?”) and thorough bibliography (for further reading).

• King of Sartar (Greg Stafford, 1992): This is something of an anthropological study of Stafford’s RPG setting Glorantha, which inevitably reminds me of Ursula K. Le Guin’s Always Coming Home. But while the vast majority of game designers aren’t Greg Stafford, it’s also true that Stafford wasn’t Le Guin. (Boost this to “good” if you’re interested in Stafford’s Glorantha setting.)

Not recommended

• Abaddon’s Gate (James S.A. Corey, 2013): The Expanse, book 3. I had two major dissatisfactions with the book. First, one of the viewpoint characters made consistently dumb decisions, from before the book started to almost the end; I understand the arc the author wanted to draw, but it made a quarter of the book unpleasant. Second, two characters made a big deal about violence being a dead end and a last resort … but the book sure loves its military-grade ultraviolence, in precise detail. Which is exciting reading! But the author kind of wants to have their cake and eat it too, but really just wants to eat tasty cake.

• The City of Brass (S.A. Chakraborty, 2017, did not finish): The Daevabad Trilogy, book 1. I set this aside about halfway through. I’m frankly a little baffled by the good reviews; I’m not sure I was even reading the same book. Maybe you’ll like it — obviously plenty of people do — but it’s not for me.

• The Priory of the Orange Tree (Samantha Shannon, 2019, did not finish): I set this aside about a quarter of the way through. I wanted to like it, and probably would have finished it if I’d read it ten years ago, but today it feels more drawn-out and portentous than I’m willing to tolerate.

I had trouble finding a nut-free granola recipe that’s to our liking, so I adapted the “Crisp Homemade Granola” recipe from Serious Eats², with just one change: Instead of the recipe’s 2½ oz. chopped almonds and 2¼ oz. pecans, I use 2½ oz. shelled sunflower seeds.³ That, plus paying attention to the ingredients I use (like one does in a household with nut allergies), is all it takes.

Okay, fine; I’ve made a few other changes as well, not related to nuts:

• Due to household preferences, instead of the dried fruit given in the recipe, I use 2½ oz. dried cranberries and 2 oz. dried cherries.
• I was able to decrease the sugar from 7 oz. to 6 oz. without noticing any significant difference.
• I use ground flax seeds, though whole are just fine too.
• If you’re feeling sassy, you can also add about ¾ oz. mini–chocolate chips with the other mix-ins.⁴ (Though our household tends to enjoy the same foods overall, we differ in certain details, such as this one.)

With all those changes, the base granola ingredients are:

• 12 oz. old-fashioned rolled oats
• 1½ oz. wheat germ
• 1 oz. ground flax seeds
• ½ oz. chia seeds
• 8 oz. buttermilk
• 4 oz. unsalted butter
• 6 oz. sugar
• ½ tsp. kosher salt, or ¼ tsp. table salt

And the mix-in ingredients are:

• 4½ oz. pumpkin seeds
• 2½ oz. (shelled) sunflower seeds
• 1 tsp. neutral oil
• ⅛ tsp. kosher salt, or half that much table salt
• 2½ oz. dried cranberries
• 2 oz. dried cherries
• ¾ oz. mini–chocolate chips (optional)

I make this often enough that we order the pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds from Gerbs, an allergen-friendly supplier. I’ve gone back and forth on using pre-roasted or raw seeds; pre-roasted seeds save a little bit of effort, but honestly not much at all. (If you use pre-roasted seeds, you won’t need the oil or salt for the mix-ins.)

Also, I’ve found that it’s almost as easy to make a double batch as the standard recipe. I put the two baking sheets on different racks in the oven (the doubled recipe doesn’t fit on one sheet, and two sheets don’t fit on one rack), swapping the sheets each time I stir the granola in step 3.

As a final note, this makes a nice Christmas gift: Just divide it up among Mason jars or jam jars or whatever you have.

Weather was pretty favorable for me, in general. April was quite dry (around 15–30% of Brittany’s average rainfall), and started warm, though there was a stretch of chilly nights for the last week and a half or so. May’s rainfall was more typical, and the weather was quite warm for the last week.

I camped about half the time, and under a variety of types of roof (gîte, room, hotel, and (twice) an entire tiny flat) the other half. I have no idea how many croissants and assorted pastries I ate (it was a lot), and likewise have no idea how many calories I burned (also a lot).

If I were to do this again — or rather, if I were to walk another section of the E5, since I’d prefer to “complete” it before I rewalk any portion — there are a few things I’d probably do differently.

First, I would spend a significant amount of time getting proficient with the language. With a bit of practice, I believe I can refresh my high school German to get by acceptably. My conversational Italian (a.k.a. “ristorante” — sufficient to order food in a restaurant) is a decent base to grow from. But my French only improved from absolutely nothing to merely terrible; it was arrogant of me to assume I’d be able to pick up the language well enough without any study.

Next, I would try to make sleeping ar­range­ments — campsite, gîte, etc. — in ad­vance. In addition to knowing my average walking range, I also have a sense of how far I can push myself on those days where the only thing available is another three miles farther. I would also have a better understanding of how elevation changes on a map equate to the terrain’s actual hiking difficulty.

I would also make a point to take more pictures. Looking back at the pictures I did take, there was never a day where I wished I hadn’t taken so many. I’m even curious about what it might be like to record video of the walk, which would communicate so much more than words or photos (though I’m skeptical of what the power draw would be — would this make it harder to get from one electrical outlet to the next?).

Finally, and most importantly, I would not plan to be away from my family for two months, to say nothing of the five or so months of the full E5.

I would guesstimate that the next big stretch of the E5, the GR 2 from Paris to near Dijon (a little more than 300 miles), would be perhaps three weeks of walking, similar to the stretch from Mont-Saint-Michel to Paris. (An unofficial site breaks it into four sections, though they’re presented backwards, e.g. Montereau-Fault-Yonne to Paris, instead of Paris to Montereau-Fault-Yonne as I would walk it.)

The next stretch would be from Dijon over the Vosges via the GR 7, perhaps 200 miles and two weeks (possibly longer due to the mountainous terrain). From there the trail goes south to the border with Swit­zer­land, and then (I’m a little less clear on the details of this part) up to Basel. From Basel it follows the Via Rhenana east to Constance, 120 miles and maybe a bit more than a week. The final long stretch, the “classic E5”, would be from Constance to Verona.³ Gillian Price’s Across the Eastern Alps: The E5 (perhaps out of print?) conveniently breaks it down into 29 days, 365 miles.

If I were to do exactly one more long walk along the E5, I would probably attempt the Alpine crossing from Austria to Italy, perhaps a two- or three-week stretch. I’m confident that I would be able to do the rest of the E5, but this is the portion that would be the most physically challenging, that I’m least certain of being able to accomplish.

Before I started walking, I came across the site of a couple who have walked in France every summer from 2002 to 2019;⁴ their site is full of great information, which I found helpful for my own walk.

Afterwards, I came to realize how much walking Craig Mod does. Being near to and/or passingly interested in the (web) design world, I had of course heard of him, but he has done several similarly-long walks in Japan. If you found this journal at all interesting, you will probably find his walking newsletter, Ridgeline, interesting as well — less journal-y, more thoughtful and intentional.

After arriving in Paris, I spent my first night in the Hôtel Lord Byron. The next morning, the 6th, I walked to the appointed FedEx location to pick up my care package from home. I took it to the nearby train station (the closest place I could think to sit down for a bit) to break into it: They had sent me photos, art from the kids, and a new pair of shoes. It was wonderful.

My plan had been to spend several days in Paris scouting for the upcoming family trip⁵, and I had made an AirBnB ar­range­ment, but the host contacted me with a scammy-sounding excuse for why I wouldn’t be able to stay there after all, and asked me to cancel my reservation. I declined, and took an overnight train down to Rome to do some scouting there instead.

I spent several days in Rome, the city that still fits me perfectly. I arrived at Roma Ostiense station early in the morning, walked across town to the small flat I stayed in, and scouted the city for the family: Is this Roman legion museum worth dragging the family (or at least the kids) to? How about Ostia Antica? (Probably not, with the limited time we had.) Where is there gelato that’s safe for kids with nut allergies? (We had luck at il Gelato di San Crispino.) I also took the opportunity to climb up to the highest publicly-accessible part of the dome of Saint Peter’s, which was absolutely worthwhile, though again not for the whole family. On the last afternoon before I left, I happened to be in the right place to watch Rome’s Pride parade.

On Sunday the 11th, I headed back to Paris, to do some scouting there: What exactly is a visit to the Eiffel Tower like? Can you visit the Catacombs without a reservation? (Yes, but you’ll spend a long time waiting in line, so you should make reservations if you can.) Is l’Hôtel des Invalides worth visiting? (Yes, for military history buffs.) Where would we be able to get nut-safe croissants near our flat for breakfast? (Les Jardins de Paul’ Ha, in the 14th arrondissement, worked for us.)

On Thursday the 15th, I took the train to Zürich to visit my friend Susannah⁶ and her family, who had invited me to stay with them. It was great to see them. Susannah showed me around Zürich; Dan gave me a tour of the Google offices; and when both were working, I strolled around town on my own. We also took a day trip to Vierwaldstätter See (“Lake of the Four Forests”, roughly) and Pilatus, a nearby mountain with an incredibly-steep cog rail. It was good to catch up with them, and good to have an actual face-to-face conversation.

On Wednesday the 21st, I headed to Rennes. I had an appointment on the 22nd to get my long-stay visa, to let me stay in Europe for more than 90 days. (I was cutting my walk short, but I would still be staying with my family a few days past the short-term visa limit.) It involved getting a brief medical checkup (it seemed like they were looking for tuberculosis?) and then a brief interview; instead of providing documentation of where I was staying, I produced a long list of where I stayed every night. This seemed to bemuse the official, but permission to stay was duly granted. I then spent the next day wandering the town.

The following day, I headed back to Paris for a night; I got a shave and a haircut, the first since I left home.⁷ Finally, on the 25th, I took the Eurostar to London to meet my family for a two-week vacation, the kids’ first time overseas. On July 8th, we left Rome and flew back home to Seattle.

I spent the rest of the summer at home, rediscovering my family and learning who the kids had become over the past three months.

The first half of the day, the trail took a large S shape to follow scraps of forest into Paris. It started near Viroflay; near Vélizy-Villacoublay, it followed a neatly-groomed path past a cemetery. It climbed up a bluff to the Forêt Domaniale de Meudon, and wound north along the top of the bluff, before descending back down and being joined by the GR 2. It then curved around to the east, threading its way past Sevres, a suburb. At this point, crossing a highway, I got my first glimpse of Paris proper.

The trail soon left the woods for the final time, entering the suburb of Meudon. (From this point on, with a few brief exceptions, the trail was just a designated series of roads and walkways.) I followed the trail north, leaving briefly to head down to Bou­lan­ge­rie Pâtisserie Thomasse for a late sandwich. Returning to the trail, I descended down to the Seine.

The trail followed the left bank (left when looking downriver — here, the south bank) upriver until reaching the Île Saint-Germain (“Saint-Germain Isle”, named for a settlement that was long ago incorporated into Paris and is now a neighborhood). It crossed a bridge (the Pont de Billancourt) onto the island and continued along the island to cross the Pont d’Issy bridge at the upper end. From there, it left the riverbank and headed inland for a while, passing through a series of parks and a hospital complex. It returned to the river and crossed the Pont de Grenelle onto a tiny artificial island, the Allée des Cygnes (“Swan Alley”).

At the far end of the island, the GR 22 crossed over to the right bank, to head past the Champs Élysées and the Louvre to Notre-Dame. While that also would have been a fitting end to the walk, I decided to end it at the Eiffel Tower — starting at a natural marvel, visiting a medieval religious marvel at the midpoint, and ending at a marvel of early modern engineering. So, I followed the GR 2 across the Pont de Bir Hakeim back to the left bank.

And then it was just a few more minutes to the Eiffel Tower, the arbitrarily-declared endpoint of my 2017 long walk.

The trail looped below Neauphle-le-Château, then climbed up to the Forêt Départementale de Sainte-Apolline, the first of the well-groomed forests I walked this day. The trails were clean, flat, and wide, and often paved. As I walked through, there was some kind of event involving people jogging with their dogs; I saw many dog/person pairs, and several stations with water dishes.

The trail descended into Plaisir, clearly a suburb¹, which was very disorienting — it felt very American. The trail passed through a housing development and then climbed back up into another woods, this one the Forêt Domaniale de Bois-d’Arcy. The trail here was quite straight, with long stretches broken up only by occasional slight bends. Towards the end of the wooded stretch, the trail went down a bluff and felt quite rugged and isolated, aside from the nearby rail line with trains rushing by every few minutes.

Next the trail skirted Saint-Cyr-l’École as it threaded a path across several highways that were converging as they left Paris. I stopped for a snack at the Saint-Cyr location of le Pétrin Ribeïrou, a bou­lan­ge­rie chain, and then into the Forêt Domaniale de Versailles.

After passing the third pond, the GR 11 split from the GR 22, which I continued to faithfully follow as it turned north; an hour later, I left the trail and descended from the woods towards my destination.

I stayed at the Versailles location of the Huttopia chain.² It felt mostly like a glamping site, with plenty of cabins and huts, many trailer and car camping spots, and a handful of spots for walk-up campers like myself. The campground was pretty full with families;³ the spot I was given was incredibly dusty, perhaps the least-pleasant plot of my entire walk. However, I did laundry in the large on-site facilities, and ate a huge cheeseburger in the on-site restaurant, while watching kids run around only half-attended by their parents.

The trail soon entered the Forêt Domaniale de Rambouillet, and roughly followed the route of a stream. After the village of Gambaiseuil, the stream and trail entered a valley.

At 11 AM, I reached a T junction. The GR 22 continued to the east, while the E5 turned to follow the GR 1 to the south. I left the E5, which I had been following for 56 days, and headed east to end my walk in Paris.

About an hour later, the trail turned north, and soon crossed a stream, the Ruisseau des Brûlins. The trail near the stream had thousands of tiny frogs, perhaps an inch long, hopping in every direction. I did my best to avoid stepping on them.

Another half hour had me exiting the woods for the day, after which I passed through a pair of towns. First was Montfort l’Amaury, a cute little town that wasn’t as fully-preserved as Dinan, but still had a touch of quaintness to it.

There was a castle built by Anne of Brittany on top of the hill overlooking the town, but I didn’t feel energetic enough to climb up to see it. Instead, I got some macarons from a bou­lan­ge­rie as I headed out of town.

From Montfort, the trail passed through the town of Méré, and then across fields and over a highway to the village of Neauphle-le-Vieux¹, with the GR 11 re-joining the GR 22 along the way. From there, the trail took me through the adjacent town of Villiers-Saint-Frédéric (the GR 1 splitting off again²), and into Neauphle-le-Château, my destination for the evening.

I left the trail at the town square, and made my way to the AirBnB. After first knocking at the wrong house, I found the correct one, and met the very gracious owners.

For dinner, I made my way back up to the town square, and ate at Le Valinco, an Italian restaurant. After dinner, I wandered the nearby streets.

Not long after I started walking, I got a phone call about my upcoming package.¹ It turned out that FedEx wouldn’t deliver to a competitor’s location, so they were calling me to ask where they wanted me to pick it up. Of course I still didn’t speak French well, and the person who called me didn’t speak English, so we had an inconclusive exchange, until we finally both gave up; I figured I’d email or call again later in the day, when I was better able to figure something out. A short time later, though, they called back; the first person had gone above and beyond to find an English speaker, and we quickly agreed that I would pick up the package from a specific FedEx location in Paris; they would hold the package for up to a week.

Shortly afterwards, around 9 AM, I reached a trail crossroads: The GR 22 that I was following joined the GR 11 and turned south. I had very little distance to cover this day, and my eventual AirBnB hosts wouldn’t be ready for me until later in the afternoon, so I had some time to kill. I decided to leave the trail and head north on the GR 11 to the nearby town of Septeuil.

Septeuil was a quiet town. I stopped in Au P’tit Café for a rare caffeinated coffee, then got a takeout lunch and ate outside Pains d’Ailleurs. I loafed around town a bit, and then headed back down to the GR 22 and continued on my way.

As I approached the town of Orgerus, I heard thunder, and saw a few distant flashes of lightning. I considered leaving the trail again to get a snack at a bou­lan­ge­rie, but as I reached the crossroads that would have taken me into town, the storm hit, and I started getting drenched. I took shelter in a nearby grocery store, until the rain lessened somewhat, at which point I headed back out and continued on my way. (A drizzle continued on and off for the rest of the day.) The trail jogged through a quiet neighborhood before entering the Forêt des Quatre Piliers. The forest was hilly — I’m guessing the “four pillars” were hills or outcroppings or something.

I crossed a bridge over a highway, and walked perhaps a block off the trail to the AirBnB I stayed at for the night; I had arrived wet, but not too early. I slept in a family’s spare room, and amused the young children with my terrible French.

The trail very roughly followed the course of the Vesgre, then east to Berchères-sur-Vesgre, where I stopped in the cute village square at a Banette chain bou­lan­ge­rie for a sandwich and croissants. From there, I went south and east to Saint-Lubin-de-la-Haye, and then away from the Vesgre and east to the town of Richebourg.

In Richebourg, my map led me to an apparent highway crossing that had been recently removed, so I had to backtrack a little to a still-viable crossing. From there, the trail passed through some fields towards the town of Tacoignières, my destination for the evening.

I’d tried to contact the gîte, a stable with accommodations that I imagine were primarily for summer riding camps, but that offered individual beds during the week. I’d never heard back, but since I’d usually had some sort of luck doing this type of thing, I showed up and asked for a room. It turned out that the rooms weren’t yet open for the season, and they weren’t ready for any guests, and (unlike some places earlier in the walk) weren’t able to make an exception. That was fine … but it kind of left me at loose ends. I already had an AirBnB room reserved for the following night, and I wasn’t willing to cancel it, or try to reschedule for this night and then hoof it there before dark.

So, I decided to bite the bullet and finally try camping sauvage, “wild camping”. From talking to people over the past weeks, I’d finally come to the conclusion that it was legal, on non-private property, as long as you weren’t blocking the trail, you set up no more than an hour before sunset, and you were gone by an hour after sunrise.

Camping alongside somebody’s field didn’t feel like a good idea, and the only trees in the next couple hours were the Bois de Prunay (“Prunay Woods”), perhaps a 20–30 minute walk away. So, I followed the trail into the woods, and (with plenty of time before sundown) scouted for a good place to set up my tent; I ended up settling just inside the woods, on the western edge. I sat down to read and eat dinner while I waited for sunset, at which point I set up my tent for the night.

I didn’t sleep very well. Aside from general restlessness, at some point in the night (or perhaps several points), I heard an animal crunching through the underbrush, at a distance. I spent some time trying to figure out what it was (it was smaller than an bear but larger than a mouse), so I decided it obviously must have been a fox.

I climbed through a small woods, and then back down past the village of Montreuil, near where the Avre flowed into the Eure River. Crossing the Eure, I climbed a steep bluff up into the Forêt Domaniale de Dreux, where I would spend much of my day.

The trail more or less skirted the top of the bluff that formed the western border of the forest. About an hour along, it passed by the 400-year-old ruins of the Château de la Robertière, barely discernible through the trees and brush.

Near the northern edge of the forest, the trail zigzagged to the east-south­east, until it reached a grand crossroads in the middle of the forest. From there, the trail went mind-numbingly straight to the north­east, until it wound down to the town of Anet.

Anet was cute; the streets looked like a 1950s ideal of a small town. I had plenty of time until I reached my day’s destination, so I detoured to stock up on groceries, then stopped at a bou­lan­ge­rie to get a sandwich and pastries for dinner.

The trail then headed out of town to the east and wound its way to the south­east before reaching the village of Boncourt. A small road below the main road led back to the village’s gîte, basically a series of rooms above a fairly modern rec hall. It felt like the opposite of the previous night in Dreux: small, modern, and quiet, looking out over fields. I pulled a chair out onto the deck to eat dinner in the pleasant evening, and slept soundly that night.

Along the way, I stopped for some fruit at la Halle de Nonancourt¹ (“the market hall of Nonancourt”, basically a roadside fruit market), and then wound up some side streets to get back to les Caves. The trail headed up over a rise, before dropping back down to a stream valley.

The trail then descended back to the eastern out­skirts of Saint-Rémy — it wasn’t a route that anybody would have taken who wasn’t focused on walking (almost) every foot of it. (I walked maybe four or five miles to get to and then follow the trail, compared to maybe a mile and a half if I’d gone straight through town.)

I crossed the Avre for the third time so far that day (not counting leaving the campground’s island), and continued following the trail downstream to the east. Soon after noon, it headed back down to cross the Avre a fourth (and final) time, passing through clearly-marked private property.²

After crossing to the south bank one last time, the trail continued east to the village of Muzy, where it turned to head south up a valley road towards the large town of Dreux. (I hadn’t been able to find a better place to stay for the night, so I was aiming for a cheap motel on the edge of town.) Just after the trail turned up a dirt path into a woods, I left it and continued south through the woods and some fields, to the town’s industrial northern out­skirts, and to the Hôtel Stars.³

The hotel wasn’t awful, but it wasn’t especially great — it felt a little like the French equivalent of a Holiday Inn. (In hindsight, it might have been better to just continue walking and camp on the side of the trail.) I didn’t spend much time in the room; I chose to escape and head up into Dreux proper.

Dinner was döner kebab again, this time at Delice Kebab. Aside from the industrial out­skirts, Dreux felt a little like Avranches — a non-touristy town that was doing its own thing, unrelated to the GR 22 trail a couple miles outside of town. Most of the half-hour walk back to the hotel was nice, though the last few minutes and the hotel itself were kind of a drag.

The trail headed briefly north into Tillières-sur-Avre (though the current route of the trail no longer does).

It was another hot day, and having left Verneuil late in the morning, I found myself walking without shade in the mid-afternoon heat.

Passing Dampierre-sur-Avre, I started to get a little concerned again about having enough water. I took a brief detour up from the trail to the town hall, but it was closed and there were no apparent outdoor faucets I could take water from. I decided to cut off one loop to the other side of the Avre (two crossings) to walk past a cemetery that was shown on the map, to see if I could get some water. After staring at the cemetery’s faucet and waffling a bit, though, I decided I wasn’t certain about its potability, so forged on ahead without refilling.

(This turned out fine, because I soon reached the town of Saint-Lubin-des-Joncherets, where I stopped in a grocery store for a bottle of cold water — far better than the lukewarm stuff I would have gotten from the cemetery.)

The trail headed up out of town, and at the village of les Caves, I left the trail and headed down a road to the town of Saint-Rémy-sur-Avre. The road was actually uncomfortable to walk, because it had little discernible shoulder (a steep slope on one side and the Avre on the other), and I frequently had to stop for cars driving by.

I stayed in the town’s municipal campground, Camping du Pré de l’Église, on a small island in the Avre. It wasn’t full, but there were several families staying there.

Dinner was döner kebab at Istanbul Kebab “Chez Abi”, one of the few places open (the town felt weirdly quiet, though maybe that was just because it was a Monday evening); it seemed to be a family-run business, based on the preschooler using a tablet behind the front counter. After dinner, I enjoyed a quiet stroll back to the campsite.