I’m usually more on top of tracking my books in Goodreads – just didn’t this year until I noticed a couple of hours ago that I’d recorded two for 2025. Busily added the rest that I’d read/listened to as noted in my journals. Grand total (I think) of 31.

Dutch:
I’ve started reading Dutch kids books that I find in Little Free Libraries. It’s helping a little bit. I’d do myself a greater favour by reading the kranten (newspapers – I learned yesterday the root of this word is ‘courant’ a French term for newspaper also used in English). Anyway:

Wipneus en Pim bij de Trappertjes by B.G. Van Wijckmade

Lotje Met Chimp naar het Circus by Jaap ter Haar

Audio:

The Silk Roads: A New History of the World by Peter Frankopan (highly recommended – fascinating stuff)

Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut

To Hell With Poverty by Jon King (narrated by the author, a history of the initial run of the band Gang of Four. Andy Gill had passed away before its publication, so can’t argue with King’s general assessment that he was a serious expletivedeleted.)

Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boys’ Club of Silicon Valley by Emily Chang (depressing insofar as the inherent sexism of the Valley hasn’t changed in 40 years and it’s only getting worse. But a great piece of reporting.)

Ideaflow: The Only Business Metric That Matters by Jeremy Utley and Perry Klebahn.

Speaking My Mind by Leo Varadkar (Very interesting, but I fear he’s too protective of his own [well-earned, don’t get me wrong] legacy. He could have taken more risks with it. Also: before reading, bone up on the main Irish political parties. He writes for an audience that knows one from another.)

Head On by John Scalzi

Vita Nuova by Dante Alighieri

Other stuff:
The Glass Room by Simon Mawer

The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas by Machado de Assis (This is an early 19th C. Brazilian classic read by just about every high school student there – it was recommended to my office book club by a Brazilian colleague. I quite enjoyed it, but what I really wanted to talk about in our discussion of it is how it’s informed by Vita Nuova (see above), Tristram Shandy, and Candide. Which no one else in the group had read. I doubt I’ll make the time to write the essay that ties them all together, but I want to.)

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig (Light slightly fantastical reading that I enjoyed. Read it for both the office book club and the local expat book club this year.)

Nana and Luna by Delacorta (same main characters as Diva – light reading if you can ignore the 14 year old protagonist’s highly sexualised presentation. The 80s were a different time.)

Guards, Guards by Terry Pratchett (Classic Pratchett.

Fifteen Dogs by Andre Alexis (expat book club entry – interesting but ultimately depressing to me. As a new dog owner, I found the deaths of dogs hard to take.)

The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar (Gorgeous. Highly recommended.)

The Accidental Further Adventures of the Hundred Year Old Man by Jonas Jonasson. (If you enjoyed the first one, you’ll enjoy this one too.)

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Moreno-Garcia is an excellent writer and this one’s a treat – super-creepy mid-20th century set take on the old gothic novel, with nods to The Yellow Wallpaper.)

The Planets by Andrew Cohen and Brian Cox (Gorgeous tour of the solar system with the depressing notation that the likelihood of other planets like Earth in our galactic neighborhood is very slim.)

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid (I enjoyed this one and am likely to check out more – pretty sure I have Daisy Jones and the Six in my TBR. Hugo is an actress from the golden age of Hollywood who contracts a writer for a Vanity Fair-like mag to write her life story. With twists.)

The Fisherman by John Langan (Recommended by my friend Matt, this was a doozy. I don’t do horror, generally, but I was intrigued by his description of it being stories within stories. Langan was meticulous in his construction of this tale. I’m going to read more by him, but this is his only novel. Several short story collections await.

Patti Smith – Just Kids (reread for expat book club – so good, but so sad. While I’m well familiar with the setting and the people Smith talks about, the Dutch members of the club – not entirely expat, come to think of it – and the 28 year-old Ukrainian woman found the name-dropping a little hard going.

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick (It’s PKD – if it weren’t weird, you’d be surprised.)

Strange Angels by Andrea Speed (sweet queer fantasy of competition between gods among other things.)

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (Gorgeous and winding and it helps to create a family tree in the first chapters so you know what’s going on later. Very sad but so well done. Roy definitely earned her Booker with this one.)

Unleashed by Emily Kimelman (Sydney Rye Mysteries #1) (Beginner detective takes on the powerful of NYC with the help of a fantastic dog. #2, Death in the Dark, is a novella. I’ve got #3, Insatiable, queued up.)

The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden (Netherlands-set novel of a trio of siblings and the strange history of the house their parents bought after WW2. Also: The best-written sex I’ve come across in ages. Some, but not all, members of the office book club were put off.)

James by Percival Everett (I enjoyed this retelling of the Huck Finn story from Jim’s perspective. A Pulitzer Prize in literature is usually a mark of quality. Amusingly, the woman at Marcus Books in Oakland who sold it to me said that she’d read several other works by Everett and didn’t think this was close to his best.)

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho (I missed this when it was in competition with Grisham’s The Firm for the book everyone on Muni was reading, and I think it would have served me better had I read it at 25 or so, but I enjoyed it. Very strange to read a tale of a shepherd boy in search of Truth just before picking up my current reading, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ by Jose Saramago.)