Each one is rated from one to ten. Six, for fiction, is “not bad, but has some flaws” or “needed a stronger edit to cut out fluff.” A six for non-fiction is likely “good information, but drags quite a bit.” Sometimes a non-fiction book is either padded beyond what’s necessary, or the author did a ton of research and is determined to show it in the book whether it’s more detail than necessary or not.

A seven or better means that a book was compelling and I’d recommend it without hesitation. A nine or better means that I will probably recommend the book whether anybody asks or not… If it wasn’t reaching a six or better, I stopped reading and moved on.

What I read…

• The Final Girl Support Group — Grady Hendrix (6.5/10)
• Deeplight — Frances Hardinge (7/10)
• Space Oddity — Catherynne M. Valente (7/10)
• Of Monsters and Mainframes — Barbara Truelove (8/10)
• Some Desperate Glory — Emily Tesh (6/10)
• The Cat Who Could Read Backwards — Lilian Jackson Braun (6/10)
• Parable of the Sower — Octavia E. Butler (8/10)
• The Illegals — Shaun Walker (6/10)
• Half of a Yellow Sun — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (6/10)
• The Galaxy, and the Ground Within — Becky Chambers (8/10)
• Slaughterhouse-Five — Kurt Vonnegut (9/10)
• Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng — Kylie Lee Baker (7/10)
• The Secret History of the Rape Kit — Pagan Kennedy (6/10)
• Direct Descendant — Tanya Huff (7/10)
• Feet of Clay — Terry Pratchett (8/10)
• Code Girls — Liza Mundy (6/10)
• Monsters — Claire Dederer (6/10)
• Assassins Anonymous — Rob Hart (7/10)
• Consider Phlebas — Iain M. Banks (6/10)
• The Jakarta Method — Vincent Bevins (8/10)
• The Apocalypse Codex — Charles Stross (7/10)
• Thinner — Stephen King (6/10)
• When the Moon Hits Your Eye — John Scalzi (6/10)
• Maskerade — Terry Pratchett (8/10)
• The Drowning House — Cherie Priest (8/10)
• From a Certain Point of View — 43 authors (6.5/10)
• Yellowface — R. F. Kuang (9/10)
• The Day of the Dissonance — Alan Dean Foster (7/10)
• To Be Taught, If Fortunate — Becky Chambers (8/10)
• Damned — Chuck Palahniuk (8/10)
• The Woman They Could Not Silence — Kate Moore (6/10)
• The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War — David Halberstam (7/10)
• The Imaginary Girlfriend — John Irving (7/10)
• I Heard You Paint Houses — Charles Brandt (7/10)
• Nuclear War: A Scenario — Annie Jacobsen (6/10)
• Record of a Spaceborn Few — Becky Chambers (8/10)
• Light from Uncommon Stars — Ryka Aoki (9.5/10)
• A Closed and Common Orbit — Becky Chambers (8/10)

What I didn’t…

These are the books I picked up and then put back down after deciding they weren’t for me. I’ve gotten much more willing to drop books that aren’t doing it for me, these days. Life is too short, there are too many books.

• Ubik — Philip K. Dick
• Womb City — Tlotlo Tsamaase
• Night Magic — Thomas Tryon
• The Blind Assassin — Margaret Atwood

2026

My 2026 goals are similar to last year, with a few new ones. For example: to finally read a few classics that I’ve never tackled, such as Moby Dick, and some longer non-fiction that I have put off like Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty. Also, expanding my reading beyond just books; I have a Clarkesworld subscription and want to be sure to read each issue this year as well as some back issues.

I got some good responses late last year when I asked for recommendations on social media. I hope to tackle a number of those this year. See y’all in the book stores!

As 2026 looms just over the horizon, I’m thinking about what it’ll bring and what my plans might be.

In February, I’ll have been with LWN.net for two years. God willing and the subscriber numbers rise, I hope to be there for quite some time. At least until I win the lottery, retire, or keel over. With my luck all three of those things would happen on the same day…

There’s some home-improvement stuff I’d like to do or get done in the coming year. Our deck needs a major tune-up, if not a replacement, so that’s on the list. When that happens I intend to turn it into a full-blown Catio, so that the fuzz monsters can go get some fresh air when they’re of a mind to.

Planning on a trip to FOSDEM and CfgMgmtCamp at the end of January and beginning of February. Beyond that, I have no idea what travels may be on the table. Hopefully not too many. I’ve long since gotten over the travel bug.

Finding more time for exercise, dog-walking, and eating better is surely in the cards. I’m not comfortable with the current state of my waistline.

And more reading; I’ve read about 40 books this year, which isn’t terrible but isn’t as many as I’d like. (I probably need to read something like 200 a year to catch up with my to-read list, but I digress…) I also have several issues of Clarkesworld waiting on me to dig in… more reading time is in order.

Mostly, I’m proceeding with caution. No big wishes or plans; just going to walk softly into the new year while planning for the worst but hoping for the best. Like always.

It’s about something all-too-often relevant, but especially so last week: the need to seek out something soothing when the world is overtaken by bad news.

All at once, it fills up my feed
More bad news that I didn’t need
I can’t stop reading, but I wish that I didn’t know

Still too soon; there’s not much to say
They don’t know, but talk anyway
All of the pieces and none of the places they go

So I am looking at pictures of cats
I am looking at pictures of cats

As I said, especially relevant last week. If you’re reading this months or years from now, you might have trouble placing the bad news from last week from the bad news that’s happening all the time. It doesn’t matter, really.

The other thing that helps me, aside from looking at (or posting) pictures of cats, is to make playlists. So I’ve been working on a Pictures of Cats playlist; it’s incomplete, and I’m still tinkering with the track order. Currently features Coulton, Aimee Mann, The Staves, Tracy Chapman, Eliza Rickman, Gil Scott-Heron, Beth Orton, Johnny Cash, R.E.M., Leonard Cohen, Gurf Morlix, Gillian Welch, The Jayhawks, Jukebox the Ghost, and Mavis Staples.

It’s on YouTube Music because it’s the least-bad option for hosting such a thing, at least that I know of, that most people will be able to use. I sure miss sharing such things on cassette… Anyway, check it out, and make suggestions if you are so inclined.

Two dogs came into my life when I met my wife in 2016, Hanna and Malcolm.  Both black labs, half-siblings, born in 2010 about six months apart with Hanna being the older sibling. They were purebred dogs that were judged not quite show worthy and Meg adopted them in 2011, first Malcolm and then Hanna.

I met them not long after meeting Meg, and got to know them well as Meg and I were dating.  Malcolm and Hanna helped raise more than 30 foster kittens and got along famously with the cats in Meg’s household.

Despite their sly, food-stealing tendencies, and over-excited greetings every time I walked into the house, they had not a single aggressive molecule between them. Gallons of slobber, but not even the tiniest hint of danger to any living creature. Fingers holding treats being the sole possible exception, but only from over-exuberance and not from malice. They were even quite polite when wrestling each other for possession of the Kong filled with peanut butter, one of their favorite activities.

It was always a treat to watch them around new kittens. They always displayed respect, gentility, and deference to the foster kittens. They helped many a cat learn that dogs could be friends, and to be brave. If a kitten bapped their nose, they’d scurry away and give it space. The Knox Street crew of cats, our permanent trio of Sam, Sir Wobbles, and Cupcake, loved to sleep on the dog beds with Malcolm and Hanna next to the fireplace. Sometimes they even let Hanna and Malcolm stay on the beds…

Generally, I am not what you’d call a dog person, nor would I have chosen labs as pets. I love dogs, and love hanging out with them, but I prefer cats as housemates. Their aloof and quiet nature suits me much better at home than big dogs. Especially dogs that will steal food off your plate should you let your guard down. Especially dogs that seem to have a death wish and wind up in the doggy E.R. several times needing a stomach pump and expensive care after eating things they should definitely not eat, such as paintballs, large quantities of raisins, a bottle of prescription medicine, or a package of atomic fireball jawbreakers (in the wrappers, no less). At least the raisins made sense. Why Malcolm decided that paintballs were a treat is still a mystery.

Even so, when we decided to buy a house together, they were part of the family package and joined the pet menagerie we call home. We started in 2020 with seven (!) cats, and Malcolm and Hanna.

Labs are generally expected to live about 10-12 years. Malcolm and Hanna were already near the end of their warranty when we moved in together. They both sailed past their 12th birthdays in 2022 with very few signs of slowing down. Malcolm had a few white hairs on his muzzle by then, but if they were supposed to have expired by then, nobody informed them. We certainly weren’t going to tell.

Anybody reading this surely knows the trope of the dad who didn’t want a dog (or dogs) but then wound up loving the dog (or dogs). Well. It’s a trope for a reason, largely because it’s inevitable. I wouldn’t have picked them, but I loved them just the same and have enjoyed their company. Being the extremely soft touch for treats that I am, I think they’ve enjoyed mine as well.

Sometime in 2023, Malcolm tore his CCL. He was too old to undergo surgery, and we thought that his days were numbered. I mean, more numbered than all of ours are, and that he’d be crossing the proverbial rainbow bridge “soon”. He didn’t. Malcolm wasn’t about to let something like a bum leg keep him down. He limped along as best he could, undeterred. We upped his pain meds and took him for regular cold laser treatments to manage his pain the best we could.

Along the way, his hearing seemed to go. Hard to do a hearing test on a lab, but the boy who could hear the crinkle of a food bag at 100 paces was clearly not hearing us call his name.

Earlier this year, Hanna was diagnosed with cancer. It was relatively sudden, she was losing weight and starting to bark a lot more. Her sunny demeanor started to dim. It was clear that whatever the tumors were doing caused her anxiety and she was no longer enjoying her time. Usually an attention hog, she couldn’t be bothered to stay on the couch with her boy, who came home to see her from college. It was time, and we said goodbye to her before Summer.

Malcolm, who, we thought, would precede his sister, kept limping along. A few months ago, he started to have problems with incontinence. The vet diagnosed something something neuropathy and told us what to expect. His back legs would keep getting weaker, he’d be more incontinent, and also exhibit some signs of doggy dementia similar to sundowning. There would be a day when Malcolm wouldn’t be able to get up again.

We did not want to reach that point. He started to struggle to get up, or stay up. He’d stand with his back half low to the ground, clearly struggling to stay upright but not wanting to sit fully. Sometimes he’d have to scrabble and struggle a bit to get up. He had more anxiety, was restless in the evenings, pacing and panting. But his light never dimmed, which made it hard to decide to let him go. When it was Hanna’s time we felt she was no longer finding joy in life at all. Malcolm never stopped wagging and being happy to see us.

He turned 14 last week, and got to celebrate Christmas with us. He had a great time seeing his kiddos, and out of town family. We were even looser with snacks than usual, and he enjoyed some Christmas ham and other goodies. We made sure he had a really good last weekend. I took him for a last walk to sniff all the sniffs he wanted, and shared a beautiful sunset.

He had an extra dinner of a burger and fries on Sunday night. Monday morning he had an extra breakfast of pancakes, eggs, sausage, and a biscuit. He got in a final walkabout escape when he was let outside with the gate open, and came back on his own like the good boy he always was, but pleased with himself for pulling a sneaky.

Malcolm left the world surrounded by his family and with a belly full of treats. He made the most of his time, and gave so much love and joy. We are going to miss him terribly and remember him always.

As others have noted, folks in my demographic (older, white, cis-het male) are least-threatened by the incoming administration. It’s true. Least, of course, does not mean we get a pass entirely, though. I expect that the next four years (at a minimum) will be an utter shitshow of varying awfulness for just about everybody—including most of the folks who voted Trump and the GOP into power for whatever reason.

I’ll leave it to folks smarter than I to read the tea leaves to figure out the reasons people chose another four years of Trump with even fewer guardrails. It may or may not be a love of misogyny, white supremacy, and fascism… but they ignored those things or decided they weren’t deal-breakers.

All of this to say, I’m finding it difficult to get up in the morning, drink my coffee and get in the right frame of mind to do my job. Trying to focus on things that used to seem really important and rewarding is proving very hard. I know I’m not alone on that front. Again, I recognize that in the grand scheme of things that I’m a lot better off than many people, perhaps even most. Still, knowing it and feeling it are entirely different things.

No real point to this post other than to try to flush some of those feelings and get back to work, focus on what can be done. Reach out if you are also having a tough time and need an ear.

My wife, and her mother, still talk about him often. What comes through loud and clear is his kindness, his gentility, his curiosity, his love of his family, and a love of music, computers, and learning in general.

His life was far too short, but it was well-lived. He is still remembered and beloved by his family decades later.  That is something to aspire to, and I only hope that I can grow into that kind of person.

I don’t do a lot of blogging on Dissociated Press these days, since I spend most of my time writing about open source for LWN.net, but I’ve never been 100% comfortable mingling personal topics with posts meant for a much wider audience. Not that Dissociated Press gets millions of page views, but…

Anyway, I hope to pick up the pace of blogging here about random things that don’t fit for LWN.net and are too long or less ephemeral than what I put up on Mastodon.

That’s 14 for the year, which is probably close to what I read in all of 2023 and a pretty poor showing compared to how much I read in my teens and 20s. Somehow past-me imagined that adult-me would have so much more time to read than adult-me actually does. Clearly, adulthood was a mistake.

The order of books I’m reading is somewhat dictated by the ebooks available via my library, as I find it more convenient to read on a device than a paper book, and I’m seeing how much of my reading wishlist can be satisfied by utilizing the library instead of buying books. Depending entirely on the library probably won’t last through 2024, but I’ve been really pleased by how much I’ve been able to find via Durham’s library system. Kudos to the folks who run those services, they are doing nice things. I may also pick a month this year and only read paper books, just because, and stick to things that aren’t available via e-reader.

This is mostly just tracking what I’m reading. Not really doing any in-depth reviews of the books, as that would take time away from reading (bad) and most of my writing hours are accounted for these days. And I’m skeptical the other editors at LWN would think it worthwhile to run book reviews of the random stream of titles that catch my interest.

Terry Pratchett

Expect to see lots of Terry Pratchett if you follow what I’m reading. Partially because I’m on a quest to read or re-read all the Discworld novels, but also because I know what I’m getting from a Pratchett book and deeply enjoy his work. Since the last update, I read Guards! Guards!, and Men at Arms. Both books are about The Watch, and follow the antics of a group of misfit (but oddly effective) members of Ankh-Morpork’s City Watch. If you haven’t read these, back-to-back is a good way to do it.

The only quibble I have with Men at Arms is that Lady Sybil Ramkin is so absent from the proceedings. The relationship between Ramkin and Vimes could’ve been explored more deeply and it seemed conspicuously absent.

But, otherwise… it’s Terry Pratchett. Of course I enjoyed both.

Jennette McCurdy

Some people have great relationships with their parents, some of us perhaps not so much. McCurdy’s I’m Glad My Mom Died is on the extreme end of “not so much.” McCurdy is best known for her role on iCarly. The book goes into great detail about how she was pushed into acting by her mother, and worse.

This one was sort of an “impulse buy” — the title caught my attention (how could it not?) as I was skimming books available from my library via Libby. It’s a quick read, I think I finished it over two days. I would hope that her experiences as a child actor are outliers, but it does raise some questions worth thinking about when it comes to putting kids into the entertainment machine.

Charlie Stross

Somehow I’ve failed to read any of Stross’s books until this year, even though I’ve been reading his blog off and on for some time. Finally laid hands on The Atrocity Archives (Laundry Files book 1) and had a great time with it. I love the mix of technology and Lovecraftian horrors. Pure fun, if there’s a deeper meaning in the book, I missed it.

Unfortunately, my library doesn’t seem to feel the need to stock the entirety of every series, so I’ll need to buy the next one(s).

Sidney Thompson

I kept seeing ads for Lawmen: Bass Reeves, which is a Paramount+ miniseries, and decided I’d see if there was a book it was based on before watching the show. (How else can you say “that’s not quite right?”) Landed on Follow the Angels, Follow the Doves which is part one of Sidney Thompson’s trilogy about Reeves.

Reeves was a Black Texan who escaped slavery and became a Texas Marshall after the Civil War. Book one coveres Reeves’s early life up through his escape. At times a hard (unpleasant) read but compelling and I’ll definitely be picking up book two.

Cory Doctorow

Doctorow doesn’t just coin terms like “enshittification,” he writes novels too. Good ones, as it happens. Red Team Blues is a fun techno-whodunnit with (you’ll be shocked, I’m sure) quite a lot of social commentary and a compelling plot. Enjoyed this enough that I’m planning to check out the other Martin Hench books.

R.F. Kuang

The first mention of Kuang’s Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution that I can recall came via news that it was excluded from consideration from the 2023 Hugo awards. Then I started reading reviews of the book and decided I’d be seriously missing out if I didn’t read it.

Having just finished it, I can say that was correct: Babel is a fantastic book and ticks pretty much every box for me. It’s a compelling story (check) with compelling and complex characters (check), fantastic world-building (check), and a bonus foray into translation and word histories. The book pulls no punches about imperialism or complicity in going along with systems of oppression and violence. It does lack subtlety—I’m sure that some readers will be unhappy with the choice to voice some of these messages directly and explicitly rather than implicitly—but perhaps the time for subtlety has passed.

My only complaint, and it’s tiny, is that this could’ve easily been two or three books. I’d have liked to have spent more time in this world and more time with its characters. I’m definitely going to be picking up more of Kuang’s books.

Adam Higginbotham

Because I enjoy light reading about fluffy topics I picked up… Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster.

The title pretty much sums up what the book is about. It was a decent recounting of the disaster, how it came to be and how it unfolded. If you’ve seen HBO’s Chernobyl mini-series you won’t find many surprises in the book, though the HBO series was based on Svetlana Alexievich’s book Voices from Chernobyl.

I appreciate authors who can take a complex historical event and produce a readable account, and Higginbotham does that here. Had hoped he might have a longer bibliography but his only other book-length work is about the space shuttle Challenger, to be released in May of this year.

That’s all for now. As always, open to suggestions for additional reading, or thoughts on any of the titles I’ve recently read.

Terry Pratchett

I’ve read most, but not all, of Terry Pratchett’s books. The bulk of them I read in the early 2000s via Denver’s library system, but completely out of order. This time around I’ve been reading his work (mostly) in order.

So far this year I’ve read Witches Abroad, Lords and Ladies, though I skipped Small Gods because I had re-read that very recently. For me, Reaper Man is still the high-water mark for Pratchett—but the witches books are still quite good. Pretty sure I missed Lords and Ladies the first time around, so I’m glad that I finally got around to it. The theme of “what might have happened” wouldn’t have hit quite the same way in my 30s that it does now. Solid recommend for both books, but that goes without saying. Haven’t read a Terry Pratchett book yet that I have not enjoyed.

Martha Wells

Last year I started on Martha Wells’ Murderbot Diaries series, which I’ve been enjoying quite a lot. Most recently I got my hands on Exit Strategy, which was a fun if somewhat forgettable read. This isn’t to say that I didn’t enjoy the book, but it didn’t stick with me anything like the first two entries. I think this is a combination of two things: the premise is no longer novel, and Murderbot’s personal growth is more incremental than the few books. I’m still invested in Murderbot’s journey, but this one didn’t quite have the same impact.

I also took a pass at another Wells’ series with The Wizard Hunters. For whatever reason, this one just didn’t resonate with me and I put it aside after about 30 pages. Maybe I’ll revisit it or another Wells’ series one of these days—but I just wasn’t feeling this one when I tried it out. I can’t put my finger on any particular flaws, so I’m going to chalk this up to a potentially right book at the wrong time.

Maria Vale

For whatever reason, I’m a sucker for fiction that features Death or Reapers as a character or characters, or perhaps just anything that explores what happens after we die. I love Terry Pratchett’s Death in the Discworld series and Neil Gaiman’s Death in the Sandman series. Enjoyed the hell out of Christopher Moore’s A Dirty Job, and Dead Like Me (though the post-series movie was a big let-down).

So, of course, I picked up Molly Molloy and the Angel of Death. The setup for this is that Death flubs collecting the title character’s soul, and things go on from there with Death falling for Molly and … well, no spoilers. Some familiar tropes here, (e.g. godlike being doesn’t understand how to Human, thus hijinks ensue) but I found quite a bit to like and was pleased at the (somewhat rushed) ending.

Non-fiction

I’ve been hearing a lot of good things about How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them (by Barbara F. Walter), so I decided to give it a shot. The title over-promises quite a bit, but it has a few solid ideas that are worth exploring and spreading. Specifically, the book spend a lot of time on the polity index and the middle ground between autocracy and democracy (anocracy) where countries are more likely to plunge into civil war. It also calls into question the idea that civil wars are caused by things like economic inequality, and makes the case that they’re most likely when a country has an aggrieved ethnic group with a shared identity that believes it has lost power and status, coupled with a system of governance that isn’t autocratic nor fully democratic. (Sound familiar?)

My overall take is that the book is entirely too timid—it’s ringing the alarm about the Republican Party and its embrace of White Christian nationalists, but tries to do so without offending anybody. (Even then, the book has been accused of “fear-mongering” … unless Walter is right, in which case it’s “the right thing to do.”) It’s “how to stop them” is also entirely too timid, and reminds me of the “then draw the rest of the owl” gag.

I may be grumpy in part because Walter commits a common sin of journalists and historians, writing that various figures “believe” or “think” certain things, rather than reporting these as claims. Saying that a politician, dictator, whatever “believes” X is giving entirely too much credence to their words and too much justification to their actions. Report what people say and do, you can quote them saying they “believe” something, but there’s no way to know whether a person believes something or not. (Admittedly this is a pet-peeve of mine.)

Verdict: This book is worth reading and probably needs to be read by a lot more people. But the book rushes through a lot of previous civil conflicts just to establish a pattern, is too timid by a lot about Walter’s real topic (the U.S.), and not enough “how to stop them.”

§§§

On the other hand, Vagina Obscura: An Anatomical Voyage, did not disappoint. Rachel E. Gross, the book’s author, has a writing style that reminds me a lot of Mary Roach. That is, coming from me, a high compliment—Roach has a great way of covering any topic she touches with humor and supreme readability.

The book has a few main themes: It seeks to educate the reader about topics like the clitoris, the vaginal microbiome, egg cells, and so forth. Basically, what we know about the ways womens’ bodies work. It also looks at how womens’ bodies have been misunderstood, ignored, and abused throughout the ages. The politics of science when dealing with reproduction or womens’ health, and the (still extant) difficulties into pursuing research specifically about women’s health. Gross also covers the history of medical care for women and gender-affirming surgery.

I can recommend this one with no hesitation, and am hoping that Gross’s first book won’t be her last.

§§§

I have a few more titles that I’ve set aside and would like to finish before the end of February (and certainly before the end of 2024…). Masscult and Midcult: Essays Against the American Grain by Dwight Macdonald, and The Palestine-Israeli Conflict: A Beginner’s Guide by Dan Cohn-Sherbok. The core essay in Masscult and Midcult has some real heft to it that I’d like to revisit, not sure the entire set of essays is necessary. The Palestine-Israeli Conflict is, well, depressing and gets lost in detail at times. While its important to establish a timeline for events, for example, you can end up assaulting the reader with factoids and details that they don’t need. Also need to finish The Fate of Africa by Martin Meredith.

Other titles on deck

My “to-read” pile, at this point, is huge and growing all the time. Right now I’m reading Jennette McCurdy’s I’m Glad My Mom Died, because I’ve heard such good things about it. It’s a breeze so far, but not entirely “light” reading. Definitely want to keep the Discworld train rolling, so I’ll be picking up Men At Arms as soon as I’ve finished McCurdy’s book. I’ve also had Why You Like It: The Science & Culture of Musical Taste by Nolan Gasser on my list for quite a while, and Isabel Allende’s The Wind Knows My Name should be at the top of the queue soon.

What are other folks reading these days? And how? I do most of my reading on devices these days, rather than dead trees. I suspect, though I could be wrong, I’m not alone on this. Happy reading, whatever you read and however you choose to do it.