Category: nonfiction
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Book Review: The Bookseller at the End of the World, by Ruth Shaw
We visited the Wee Bookshops in Manapouri and met Lance, who painstakingly added up our book totals on paper and then counted the cash (no “plastic” in that shop). He somehow got us onto the topic of marriage and was adamant that marital promises should not be made lightly. I didn’t quite know what to…
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Book Review: Eggshell Skull, by Bri Lee
I remember seeing this book doing the rounds several years ago when I was living in Melbourne, but the cover design had me convinced it was a romance novel, and I looked no further. But after reading and loving Seed (Bri Lee’s latest novel), I was compelled to go back and take another look. It…
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Book Review: Flesh Wounds, by Richard Glover
Another masterpiece by a national treasure. This book is Richard Glover’s memoir about his bizarre childhood and later quest to find out who his parents were and why they did such a spectacularly crappy job at parenting. Glover is, in my opinion, one of the funniest writers of all time, so you will find yourself…
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Book Review: Homeschooled: A Memoir, by Stefan Merrill Block
I didn’t quite know what I was signing up for with this one, but what a journey. I was completely swept up in the confusion and crushing loneliness of this poor boy’s childhood. This book had a lot in common with Tara Westover’s Education. While Westover’s story is more extreme in its subject matter, this book was…
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Book Review: The Road to Freedom, by Joseph E. Stiglitz
I read this book in the cool dark mornings and eternally bright evenings of the New Zealand summer while on a three-day hike with my family. I was immediately hooked by the premise: What do we mean when we advocate for ‘freedom’, and what happens when one person’s freedom comes at the expense of another’s?…
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Book Review: Little Bosses Everywhere, by Bridget Read
“Of course, I’m concerned about profits and losses. I just don’t give them top priority. That’s why I say, “P&L means people and love.” — Mary Kay Ash I love a good multi-level-marketing takedown, and this book delivered the goods. Read has done extensive research on the birth, evolution, and pervasive reach of pyramid schemes in America,…
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Book Review: Everyone Who is Gone is Here, by Jonathan Blitzer
“No one ever wants to migrate. The whole thing is a fight not to become invisible.” These are the words of an immigrant who lost an arm and a leg trying to enter the promised land. Making the invisible suffering of migrants visible is this book’s ultimate triumph. Blitzer does a masterful job at capturing…
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Book Review: How They Get You, by Chris Kohler
I found Chris Kohler on one of the identical algorithmic short-form video platforms (Facebook, maybe?) and fell in love with his videos. He was highlighting the very absurdities of corporate power and government inadequacy that I was reading about in many of my books, but with a humour and a subtlety of facial expression that…
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Book Review: When Everyone Knows that Everyone Knows…, by Steven Pinker
Well well well. Steven Pinker’s Enlightenment Now changed my life several years ago — converted me from pessimist to optimist, gave me the historical context I needed to understand just how miraculous the post-Enlightenment world really is. I read Rationality shortly after, which I devoured, given my love for mental models and metacognition. I wish…
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Book Review: Raising Good Humans, by Hunter Clarke-Fields
As I wait for my much-awaited family to someday start, which would probably be easier if my eggs could get through my fallopian tubes, it feels as though I am filling the endless series of long, hot days with reading. Books, gym, work, repeat. It feels like I’m on a quest to better understand the…