THE SAVAGE LANDSCAPE: How We Made the Wilderness, poetic and beautiful subject and discussion

THE SAVAGE LANDSCAPE: How We Made the Wilderness
CAL FLYN
Viking Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$18.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A lyrical exploration of the world’s wildest, most forbiddingly remote places—and the humans who have always been there, by an award-winning and critically acclaimed writer

From the blacksand beaches of Iceland, to river crossings deep in the Amazon jungle, to the barren beauty of Antarctica, wilderness is a powerful, ancient concept, lying at the intersection of landscape, philosophy, and ecology. And for thousands of years, people have sought out uncontrolled, unknown, or uncharted nature in search of religious epiphany, self-actualization, and an escape from modern life. More recently these “pristine” places have been seen as the subject of a last effort to repair a planet imperiled by humans.

But as award-winning writer Cal Flyn traverses the most forbidding, untamed and inhospitable wild lands—the supposedly uninhabited wilds of the world—she finds that such truly untouched lands don't Nearly every wilderness has been or is actively inhabited by humans. Here we meet ascetics in search of theophany in the desert; lonely shepherds running off wolves under the stars; missionaries preaching from shacks deep in the jungle; wise lamas meditating under lofty mountain peaks.

The Savage Landscape takes us into these breathtaking wilds—deep into dark forests, to the tops of mountains, and into the hearts of deserts—asking provocative questions about the nature of wilderness, its preservation, and its meaning.

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My Review: Travel writing in the poetic mode:

Wolves, bears, the wild beasts of all kinds: those that frighten us, thrill us, go bump in the night. It's what's missing, they say, from the tight-leashed land: those lamplight eyes in the dark. Without them, without that element of fear, however faint or unformed, our relationship with the land is incomplete.

"If wildlife is removed," the environmental historian Roderick Nash has argued, "although everything else remains visibly the same, the intensity of the sense of wilderness is diminished!"

In other words: the fear is a part of it.

In the course of seeking out wilderness, Author Flyn makes the not-new case that "wilderness" is a societal construcy, it's about defining who gets to go where in the end..."wilderness" is reserved, apart from daily use for the great mass of people.

It's beautifully written...see quote above...but peculiarly impersonal. It's her musings, it's entirely about her responses to and thoughts about places the majority can never access. And, as the world shrinks and we humans use more and more of it for ourselves, a privileged subset of us have decided to define pieces of the world as "wild" thus off limits to the likes of you. You happen to live there? Move. This is wilderness now. I didn't see a lot of depth in her presentation of the responses to these diktats from indigenous people, but those stories are huge, deep, and outside this impressionist work's scope. I was sent off to look for the displaced's voices elsewhere—and a salutary reminder it was.

Auhor Flyn goes deep enough to present the inevitable, fundamentally irresolvable tension between the needs of humanity and the requirements of the planet's flora and animalia. It's not the first time I've read this story...Annie Dillard was my own first encounter with poetic prose telling nature's side of the story...but it is very well-made indeed.

Anyone who rethinks the relationship of human and nature has taken on an immense task, one that can't be finished, or even really grasped, in one book. Or one lifetime. We're always in need of people who look over the edges, across the horizons, under the fences, and tell us about what they saw and what they think it means. It's a perspective check...it's never possible for one person to see through all the other eyes there are looking at the world, perceiving it as we don't, even can't. It's the ultimate purpose of reading, acquiring those other perspectives in the best (albeit necessarily incomplete and skewed) way we can.

You know the lore of the woods in the 21st century, you most likely consume the stories about the denizens of the wild places on your TV. You most likely are watching vampire and werewolf media all the time. That mode of seeing these spaces has roots. Let Author Flyn show them to you, describe their planting and limn their growth for you; it will likely change how, even what, you see.

That's the point of reading, after all.

BEGINNING MIDDLE END, Luiselli speaks infrequently but always eloquently and elegantly

BEGINNING MIDDLE END
VALERIA LUISELLI
Alfred A. Knopf (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, preorder now for delivery on 28 July 2026

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: From the beloved, award-winning author of the modern classics Lost Children Archive and Tell Me How It Ends comes her most powerful and page-turning novel yet: the tale of a mother and a daughter starting over, searching for a new story.

This story begins when a mother and her daughter take off on a trip. It is a summer of rapidly changing winds, volcanic rumbles, and sudden tempests. They’ve landed in Sicily, near the ancient ruins where the mother’s grandmother worked long ago on an archaeological dig. The narrator’s marriage has collapsed, her mother is losing her memory, and her daughter is on the threshold of adolescence, starting to ask difficult questions and form complex memories. How do you begin again? the narrator wonders, pondering her family line. How do you begin again if you got the beginning wrong?

While the mother tries to figure out how to reconstruct their lives as a duo—cooking meals side by side, reading out loud to each other, playing chess, bickering and making up—her daughter takes the reins of the story, and their journey soon becomes a quest for origins, not just to the familial past across continents, languages, and generations, but also farther back, to a mythical and even geological past.

Beginning Middle End evolves into a road novel of exquisite tenderness, spanning four generations of women. In their travels through Sicily, mother and daughter cross paths with the island’s migrants, storekeepers, and elders, and also its volcanoes, its winds, and its waters. Weaving myths, ancient philosophy, and natural history with fleeting moments of contemporary life, the unforgettable characters in this novel take us on a journey across time, and confront some of life’s primary questions: How do stories shape our children’s memories and imagination? How do we situate ourselves deeply in the world while accepting our transience in it? How are a family’s memories made and what happens when they disappear?

Warm, funny, and poetic, this novel is an ode to imagination and possibility in dark times.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: How do you begin again if you got the beginning wrong?

As a mission statement you don't get a lot clearer than that one, the simple reflection on how hard it is to create a story afresh. The women in this story are unnamed, because naming is a deterministic act, a story's half over when you're named because identity isn't fluid after that. A label like mother or daughter is subject to refinement...whose mother? daughter of whom?...but a name stops the question, collapses the possibility in the narrative by making in the identity "mother" or "daughter" concrete to that one person.

Sicily's ancient land is littered with bits and fragments of many identities that seemed immovable in other times. Ruins of homes, temples, fields, volcanoes, none in their original condition and most only tentatively identified and that with modern superimposed names that we use in place of older names from other stories that built, were built from, other identities. What better place to tell the story of telling the story of building anew identities that were never anything except conditional.

Volcanic violent emotions are everywhere in this story of re/invention. The women are scraped raw and still bleeding without bandages or protection for their wounds as the mother's book tour takes them to this ancient place of ancestral memory for them both. With them is a piece of Classical foreknowledge...a head of Proteus...that belongs in this restless shaky earth because he came from here. And how fitting: coming home in the hands of people reduced to relationship, deprived of the story they shared by loss, amputation, severing of a former castmate; here Proteus and continue a fragment of the story this fragment of a created piece of an idea of his physical form, this godly figment of millions of minds back on eruptive, earthquakey home soil (not even the sea he was an assistant god of in those fevered imaginings). It is the story of this story in a hand-holdable bit of broken-off antique knick-knack.

Mother and daughter move through this not-really native ancestral world, mother doing the mother thing by wondering if her daughter is really going to be the woman she sees coming into focus. Is the Proteus a stolen fragment of patrimony, or a piece of the homeland carted to a frightening new world by a feisty, scared girl shifted by her needs into a simulacrum of male freedom? Does this mean there is a hard-edged channel for the fast-flooding rage of the world in her daughter, or is the idea of belonging uniquely to a time and a place moving her feelings into Earthly action on Proteus' behalf?

Stories have no beginning middle end. We impose those ideas on the world. Time...that thing we are slaves to, are shackled on the side of being dragged along always trying not to be crushed under the wheels of the misunderstood, mischaracterized "juggernaut"...has no inherent direction, the equations don't define beginning middle end. It isn't the gods, then, that created time. That was us.

So here are two women out of place and out of their time, defining new beginnings middles ends with Author Luiselli sweeping the temple steps for their ascent. It is masterful work. It deserves to define your time as beginning middle end.

July 2026's Burgoine and Pearl-Rule reviews

Author 'Nathan Burgoine posted this simple, direct method of not getting paralyzed by the prospect of having to write reviews. The Three-Sentence Review is, as he notes, very helpful and also simple to achieve. I get completely unmanned at the idea of saying something trenchant about each book I read, when there often just isn't that much to say...now I can use this structure to say what I think is the most important idea I took away from the read and not try to dig for more.

Think about using it yourselves!

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I Who Have Never Known Men by by Jacqueline Harpman (tr. Ros Schwartz)

Real Rating: 4.8* of five

The Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers: Fiction For the week ending July 21, 2026

The Publisher Says: Deep underground, forty women live imprisoned in a cage. Watched over by guards, the women have no memory of how they got there, no notion of time, and only a vague recollection of their lives before.

As the burn of electric light merges day into night and numberless years pass, a young girl—the fortieth prisoner—sits alone and outcast in the corner. Soon she will show herself to be the key to the others' escape and survival in the strange world that awaits them above ground.

Jacqueline Harpman was born in Etterbeek, Belgium, in 1929, and fled to Casablanca with her family during WWII. Informed by her background as a psychoanalyst and her youth in exile, I Who Have Never Known Men is a haunting, heartbreaking post-apocalyptic novel of female friendship and intimacy, and the lengths people will go to maintain their humanity in the face of devastation. Back in print for the first time since 1997, Harpman’s modern classic is an important addition to the growing canon of feminist speculative literature.

I CHECKED THIS BOOK OUT OF MY LOCAL LIBRARY. USE THEIR SERVICES OFTEN, THEY NEED US TO STAY ALIVE!

My Review: Library borrow, to read before the story collection reviewed here: WE WERE FORBIDDEN, three stories from a feminist author at her tendentious best. This is an SFnal story about how very awful it is to be a woman. Since the evidence is pretty overwhelming that it *is* dreadful to be a woman, I've got nothing clever to say about it.

Most agreeable-to-me prose style as ably rendered into English by Translator Schwartz, it feels...pithy, almost aphoristic.

Transit Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) EXPECTS $15.99 from you before you open the ebook.

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The Simp: A Novel Without a Hero by Roshan Sethi

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A novel without a hero. Hellscape with an infinity pool.

Raj Ladlani is an unemployable actor. He has reasons to believe he is spectacularly talented (his beloved acting coach Anthony says so), a legend in every way but for the success.

His anonymous life working at Yogurtland, obsessively reading Vanity Fair, and fantasizing about stardom, comes to an end when he answers a job ad detailing a relentless, laughable parade of menial responsibilities for a "Hollywood Family." So begins the astonishing decline and fall of Raj Ladlani.

The Simp tells the story of Raj's momentous employment with the H Family and the destruction that follows in the wake of his time with the with Jim H, a massive and macho director in a creative rut. Anna H might uncharitably be described as his much younger trophy wife, quietly and neurotically seeking out her own independent sense of purpose as a screenwriter. Raj’s work as their executive assistant becomes his new sense of soaring purpose. But he procured the job through a sea of lies.

And when the job reveals itself to be an absurdist walk through affluent domestic chaos and misguided engagements with identity politics, Raj might be about to lose it—on a very public stage.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: The Line of Beauty. Saltburn. The world of wealth and its attendant privileges is of never-ending fascination for the have-nots. Is another iteration, with a South Asian protagonist, adding to the conversation or cashing in on the gossip?

Yes...both...and bloodily flensing the fakeness of it all, class, ethnicity, hype, all of it. Not as much LOL-funny as it is mordant.

Simon & Schuster (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) takes $14.99 from you to legally read the ebook. It will fit a mood, or else skip it.

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A Human Business: The People-First Model for Lasting Success by Glenn Bostock

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: For too long, business leaders have operated under the assumption that maximizing profit requires minimizing humanity. The result is widespread employee disengagement, toxic workplace cultures, and organizations that drain rather than energize their people.

A Human Business challenges this paradigm with a proven alternative. Drawing from forty years building SnapCab from a small cabinet shop to an international manufacturing company, Glenn Bostock demonstrates how modeling your organization after the human body creates communities where people thrive.

Inside, you will discover:

how to create a foundation of caring that attracts and retains exceptional talent

identify and leverage what you and your team genuinely love doing

shift focus from profit-chasing to value-creation through usefulness

build interdependent systems where every department serves shared intentions

Through vulnerable personal stories and practical business applications, Bostock reveals how dyslexia and learning disabilities became unexpected assets in building a company culture that values accessibility over expertise, collaboration over competition, and purpose over profit alone.

Whether launching a startup or transforming an established organization, A Human Business provides the framework for creating workplaces where people want to spend their days—and where sustainable success follows naturally.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Three stars for the time-tested advice to get to know the people, treat them with respect and honor, and allow them to grow under your care. The extra half-star is for the genuinely vulnerable revelations of how Author Bostock learned to take these ancient nuggets of wisdom to heart, apply them to his own business, and reap generous rewards therefrom.

Life changing for some, perhaps, good for all to read as a reminder of how to behave and why, and not at all hard to plow through.

Forbes Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) offers an ebook for 99¢. I bought one just to show solidarity with the author and publisher for being so very generous.

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Nothing in Moderation: A Psychedelic Reckoning With Excess by Shep Rose

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Shep Rose thought he had life figured out.

As one of the breakout stars of Bravo's Southern Charm, he'd built a reputation as Charleston's ultimate good-time guy: charismatic, adventurous, and always ready for the next party. His mantra? Say yes. Say yes to every invitation, every adventure, every opportunity for excess. For years, it worked beautifully, bringing him a successful television career, incredible experiences around the world, and the kind of life most people only dream about.

But by November 2023, that same approach had become dangerous. A blackout weekend at BravoCon in Las Vegas, complete with drugs, gambling binges, and behavior he couldn't even remember, culminated in a sobering phone call from Andy Cohen himself. The message was clear: change or lose everything.

Instead of deploying more traditional methods, Shep made an unconventional choice. At the recommendation of a Navy SEAL friend who'd found his own healing there, Shep flew to Costa Rica to spend a week at Rythmia, participating in four consecutive nights of Ayahuasca ceremonies. What followed was the most transformative, terrifying, and enlightening experience of his life.

In this remarkably honest memoir, Shep chronicles his journey with vivid detail and his signature humor. From his first ceremony, where he saw himself as the pole of an amusement park ride that could send everyone flying if he wasn't stable, to the profound night when he witnessed "the machine" and underwent spiritual heart surgery, each experience peeled back another layer of self-deception and forced him to confront uncomfortable truths.

This book is about the universal struggle between who we think we are and who we've actually become. It's about the fine line between being the life of the party and being destructively out of control. It's about learning that vulnerability isn't weakness and that sometimes the bravest thing you can do is admit you need help.

Written with the same authenticity that's made him a fan favorite for over a decade, Shep shares not just the mystical visions and profound realizations, but also the awkward moments, the embarrassing incidents, and the ongoing work of integration after the ceremonies ended. He doesn't pretend to have all the answers or to be "cured." Instead, he offers something more valuable: an honest account of one man's attempt to course correct before it's too late.

Whether you've struggled with your own relationship to excess, questioned whether your greatest strengths might also be your biggest weaknesses, or simply wondered what it's really like to drink Ayahuasca with a shaman in the Costa Rican jungle, this book offers insights, laughs, and the kind of raw honesty that's increasingly rare in our curated world.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Earnest, heartfelt prose telling the self-discovery story again. I myownself will attest to ayahuasca's efficacy as a self-discovery tool from forty-plus-year-old experience...nothing beats altering perceptions of reality as an aid to gaining perspective on life, the past, and the path forward best to take: Pursue honesty and behave compassionately, starting with yourself.

DO NOT TRY IT ALONE. Always seek guidance, always verify your guide's trustworthiness because honest people welcome scrutiny.

Advantage Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) wants $9.99 for an ebook. Worth the price if you need the nudge to take the reins of your life.

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The Antique Hunter's Guide to Murder (Antique Hunter’s #1) by C.L. Miller

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: In this irresistible and thrilling debut novel, a former antique hunter investigates a suspicious death at an isolated English manor, embroiling her back in the dangerous world of tracking stolen artifacts.

What antique would you kill for?

Freya Lockwood is shocked when she learns that Arthur Crockleford, antiques dealer and her estranged mentor, has died under mysterious circumstances. She has spent the last twenty years avoiding her quaint English hometown, but when she receives a letter from Arthur asking her to investigate—sent just days before his death—Freya has no choice but to return to a life she had sworn to leave behind.

Joining forces with her eccentric Aunt Carole, Freya follows clues and her instincts to an old manor house for an advertised antiques enthusiast’s weekend. But not all is as it seems. It’s clear to Freya that the antiques are all just poor reproductions and her fellow guests are secretive and menacing. What is going on at this estate and how was Arthur involved? More importantly, can Freya and Carole discover the truth before the killer strikes again?

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Very much on board with the "return your spoliated goods" message; the precise target audience for the Antiques Roadshow provenance of the story; loved the tidbit about the author being one of the show's expert's daughter!

The mystery itself was competent but journeyman-level work. It's not bad but it should only get better from here.

Atria Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) would like you to be so genteel as to surreptitiously slip $13.99 onto the electronic butler's digital visiting card tray before you open that ebook.

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The Antique Hunter's Death on the Red Sea (Antique Hunter’s #2) by C.L. Miller

Rating: 3.25* of five

The Publisher Says: In this follow-up to the USA TODAY bestselling “utterly charming mystery” (Robyn Harding, author The Party) The Antique Hunter’s Guide to Murder, Freya Lockwood and Aunt Carole are on the hunt once again to return priceless stolen antiques and catch a dangerous criminal aboard a cruise ship.

When a painting vanishes from a maritime museum and a dead body is found nearby, the newly established Lockwood Antique Hunter’s Agency, Freya Lockwood and her Aunt Carole, are called to investigate.

Following a lead that takes them aboard a glamorous antiques cruise sailing toward the Red Sea in Jordan, they quickly discover that the ships art gallery is filled with stolen antiquities. Each antique is also listed in Freya’s late mentor’s journals that detail unsolved cases. In chasing a murderer with a stolen painting, they may have found something more sinister than they could’ve imagined…

Their hunt soon turns deadly when they learn the enigmatic and dangerous art trafficker named The Collector could be on board. But on a ship full of antiques enthusiasts—plus some unexpected familiar faces—will Freya and Carole be able to discover the Collector’s identity and stop his murderous plans before the ship docks? Or will the killer strike again?

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Again, I batten on each element of the story: bottled on a cruise ship, antique collectors with grudges old enough to have grand-grudges end up one terrible old greedy snot down, while on the quite stunning Red Sea. None of it quite jells.

"The Collector" who is the anonymous Big Bad would've been a cute narrative device on TV. Think Lovejoy on The Love Boat. Alas, an authorial hand more suited to Kojak was at work.

Atria Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) still wants $13.99 for the ebook. Mmmaaaybe, but the library's free.

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The Antique Hunter's Murder in the Castle (Antique Hunter’s #3) by C.L. Miller

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: The third novel in the “delightful, page-turning” (Tom Ryan, USA TODAY bestselling author) Antique Hunter Series finds Freya, Aunt Carole, and friends searching for a missing colleague in picturesque Scotland.

Hot on the heels of an art forger, a member of the Lockwood Antique Hunter’s Agency disappears while investigating an isolated castle deep in Scottish countryside. Freya and Aunt Carole race to her last known location and arrive in the wintry, snow-covered Scottish Borders.

At the castle, they discover that a murdered laird in the vegetable garden and his priceless collection of silverware has been stolen. Local police believe Freya’s missing team member was involved with the robbery and murder...but where is she now?

As a snowstorm descends on the castle, Freya and Carole call in back-up to help uncover what happened that fateful night. As each question is met with more mystery, the clock is ticking to find their friend and the murderer before they are cut off from the outside world.

Another delightfully gripping and endearing mystery, the Antique Hunter’s Series provides “great characters, great story, and you’re always eager for the next one” (Ian Moore, author of Death and Croissants).

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Look at that praise, from reputable authors! And here I sit with my teeth in my mouth.

No more. Atria should not try this author on me again because I'm not a good fit for this prose.

Atria Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) now wants $14.99 for an ebook! Gadzooks and godzilla!

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A Lark's Gambit (A Verity Lark Mystery #6) by Lynn Messina

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Oh, dear. Is that the Marquess of Ware enjoying a pipe in the very same upscale opium den as Verity Lark?

It is, yes.
Wonderful.

Now she must inform her suitor, Colson Hardwicke, of his father’s unsavory habit—which means she will have to reveal that she herself had been partaking in the very next berth.

He will understand.

Once she explains that the den is above the fish seller whose poppy trade she has been monitoring for months, he will totally get it. As London’s most intrepid reporter and dogged gossipmonger, she is duty bound to get to the bottom of the mystery.

What Hardwicke might find a little harder to accept is why she was kissing the marquess in a darkened room during a fashionable society affair.

That is a slightly more complicated story.

Alas, with a killer stalking her, she might not have a chance to tell it.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: There is a deeply, intricately interconnected Messina-verse. Verity Lark and Beatrice Hyde-Clare are the poles the puzzles to be solved in the stories anchor to. The reason Author Messina chose two bluestockings to hold up her stories is obvious: Aren't you damn good and sick of YET ANOTHER marriage plot?

Bridgerton notwithstanding, it's time to move 2026 past 1806's mores, if not manners and speech patterns because those're still heaps of fun. Verity's a ballsy Lady Whistledown with serious Ida Tarbell vibes.

I won't pretend this is Heyer territory, all champagne bubbles and gooseberry fool served to noddycocks by discreet servants. It's still well-thought-out fun, puzzling stories that hang on details you missed; no easy solves with Verity! You *do* need to read them in order, though. I recommend starting with A Lark's Tale to get properly oriented, the proceed at your own pace...likely apace...to savor the fun.

Potatoworks Press (non-affiliate Amazon link) will need $6.99 for you to get into that Kindlebook.

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This space is dedicated to Nancy Pearl's Rule of 50, or "the Pearl Rule" as I've always called it. After realizing five times in December 2021 alone that I'd already Pearl-Ruled a book I picked up on a whim, I realized how close my Half-heimer's is getting to the full-on article. Hence my decision to track my Pearls!

As she says:

People frequently ask me how many pages they should give a book before they give up on it. In response to that question, I came up with my “rule of fifty,” which is based on the shortness of time and the immensity of the world of books. If you’re fifty years of age or younger, give a book fifty pages before you decide to commit to reading it or give it up. If you’re over fifty, which is when time gets even shorter, subtract your age from 100—the result is the number of pages you should read before making your decision to stay with it or quit.

So this space will be each month's listing of Pearl-Ruled books. Earlier Pearl-Rule posts will be linked below the current month's crop.

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Goodbye Chinatown (28%) by Kit Fan

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: As her native Hong Kong seethes, torn between two world powers, Amber Fan tries to build a career as a chef in London’s Chinatown.

Amber Fan, a young Oxford-educated chef, opens the first Chinese fusion joint in London’s Chinatown following the failure of her father’s traditional restaurant. When her parents decide to return to Hong Kong, taking with them their young son Bobby as well as the haunting secret surrounding his birth, Amber is left alone in London. That is, until a woman called Celeste hires out the restaurant, coughing up three grand for a dinner for one. Who is this extravagant stranger, and how did she get so wealthy?

Set in the aftermath of Hong Kong’s return to Chinese rule, Goodbye Chinatown shows a family torn between two countries. Amber throws herself into her career to escape the painful cycle of family separations and reunions.

The tastes and smells spark off every page in Kit Fan’s latest novel, making for a truly multisensorial reading experience. Offering a behind-the-scenes of this suburb of London’s hospitality economy, and using food to reflect on identity, Goodbye Chinatown paints a portrait of an enterprising émigré who, faced with divided loyalties, invents her own language for home through the culinary arts.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: I tapped out in chapter 13:

Amber smiled. She'd just closed the kitchen and agreed to meet Celeste outside in five minutes. She came out wearing a tight pair of Levi's and a loose russet jacket and kissed Celeste's cheeks.She told her she'd have put her on the VIP list if she'd rung.

Which she? Who "her"? What's "her" jacket got to do with anything except making me picture "her" as a potato? (Russet, see, and unattached to any other concept but closely associated with a kitchen = spud.) Craft failures for author *and* editor.

It's just too hard to connect all those dots tentatively because who knows if I'm getting the referents right, who knows what I'm supposed to think about "her" sincerity over the VIP list, or about "her" place on it...or control over it...?

World Editions (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) would like $14.99 for you to read the book. Try a sample first.

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Paranoid Publics: Psychopolitics of Truth (30%) by Zahid R. Chaudhary

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Facts and established truths are regularly denied in contemporary life. This situation has brought paranoid politics into the mainstream, from conspiracy theories like QAnon, to sex panics and assaults on public health measures, to election denialism and the rise of vigilante militias. Paranoid Publics analyzes these phenomena as psychosocial realities enmeshed with emerging ways of determining truth.

Today’s paranoia cannot simply be blamed on the rise of social media or the recent surge of populist anger. Rather, as Chaudhary shows, both are fueled by preexisting psychosocial processes. Applying psychodynamics to analyze truth and politics, Paranoid Publics foregrounds unconscious demands, wishes, and compulsions. Against the hope that progressive economic policies might dispel widespread disorientation and disillusionment, Chaudhary reveals how psychic realities mark politics as deeply as do self-interest and class dynamics do.

Chaudhary takes up and reinvents psychoanalytic concepts to analyze how, for example, the personal liberty exercised through vaccine exemptions is paradoxically grounded in submission to the authority of the family and the state. Such politically consequential attitudes concerning truth emerge from a social order that they proceed to challenge. Making a case for psychosocial understandings of our current historical juncture, Paranoid Publics radically expands our notion of the political.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: I had to give up my battle against academic prose when Author Zahid says, oh so casually, "Hence, as well, elaborate rationalizations by right-wing politicians for the kind of manipulative work engaged in surreptitiously by Cambridge Analytica (which has become more common and less scandalous since the Cambridge Analytica scandal of 2018.)"

I felt a T.I.A. in my immediate future as the import of that statement sat longer and longer in my craw, stuck fast. Self-defensively, then, I called it and closed my Kindle at that point.

Fordham University Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) would like $26.99 for ebook access. If you're up to it....

SHADOWS OF THE REPUBLIC: The Rebirth of Fascism in America and How to Defeat It for Good, spot-on and well thought through if light on action items

SHADOWS OF THE REPUBLIC: The Rebirth of Fascism in America and How to Defeat It for Good
OMER AZIZ
Broadleaf Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$32.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: What is driving the rise of fascism—and how can we stop it?

In this singular investigation into the sinister realms of fascism and its many guises, Omer Aziz, author of the acclaimed Brown Boy and contributing writer for the Boston Globe, sets out to answer the Why are so many young people like him drifting to the ultranationalist right? Shadows of the Republic offers a haunting portrait of American fascism, how it began, and why it is now focused on immigration, technology, and the purification of society.

Fascism is not coming to America; it has been here for a long time. With astringent clarity, Aziz traces the flaring up of fascist ideas in both American history and our current moment.

From the dominance of the KKK, to the Nazi rally in New York in 1939, to the alliances between U.S. elites and European fascists, Aziz examines the long shadows of fascism. Traveling across the United States and Europe, he illuminates connections between street fascists and the ones in suits, between Hitler and the country across the ocean he so admired. Aziz examines culture in Germany and Italy in the 1930s, where propaganda ministers made people believe both everything and nothing, and he examines the apppeal of the far right among the very group it targets. Using interviews with experts and his own experience, he also offers an anti-fascist playbook to reinvigorate democracy and our civic life.

Fascism is a precise term, cheapened by overuse. Yet when a word describes reality, we can't afford to ignore it. From the pulsing power of an ideology of the past to its comeback among even those with the most to lose, Shadows of the Republic offers the definitive story of American fascism—and what we can do to salvage democracy for years to come.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: From the publisher's blurbs:

"A comprehensive work on fascism and America's democracy."—BOB WOODWARD
"An alarm bell announcing that the American house is on fire."—STEPHEN KING
"A provocative and passionate reminder that democracies don't collapse overnight."—CALEB GAYLE

Not bad, as a group of famous names lending a book their luster. It helps that Brown Boy already proved Author Omer's literary cred to all and sundry. (If you've never read it, your library has a decent chance of having a copy on their shelves.) A man with multiple degrees from good schools who happens to be from a Pakistani-Canadian immigrant family knows exclusion and profiling intimately. It's why he speaks with the passion for his antifascist beliefs that clearly powers his writing of this book.

What will likely open the reader's eyes is the depth and age of fascism's roots in the US. It's really easy to say "it's this regime's doing" but it ain't the whole truth, or even close to it. In doing the reporting for this book, Author Omer delved into the different identities in modern fascism, from street-level grievance-led prejudice to boardroom media-trained corporatism. Each branch of the shrub has its own genesis, its own (perverse) virtue-signaling, and its own class systems to go with its origins.

A serious problem we're watching play out in real time is the anti-intellectual fervor of fascists. Ultimately, Author Omer decries the harms being done to all of us now, but points out we can use this same reality against the fascists. It's heartening to read a book that doesn't just ring the tocsin for the republic for which we stand, but shows us who's resisting (or resisted before) and how.

I'm sad there was not *more* of that in the read, but understand the reasoning of focusing on presenting the system so we can stop making the fumblimg foolery that's led us to this dark passage in our country's existence. It's widely applicable to many places, of course, but wow are the people of the US led carefully away from thinking critically about what's happening around us. Author Omer explains how effectively and helpfully but maybe a bit too often.

Author Omer is a fine, approachable guide to the perpetrators and the resisters. It's clear whose side he's on but he doesn't fall into the trap where I live my life, ie vilifying The Others and treating them as unworthy shitty beings. I admire this character trait. I have never in my rising-seventy years on Earth been able to emulate it. Would that I could, but at least Author Omer provides example and encouragement to try, try again.

As a read, this is a fine experience; as a guide to resistance, this is an inspiring collection of ideas; as a way to support people who are doing good work in the world, buying a copy of this book is a good investment.

WISDOM CORNER, second Virgil Wounded Horse thriller

WISDOM CORNER
DAVID HESKA WANBLI WEIDEN
Ecco (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: From the award-winning author of Winter Counts comes a new thriller about life—and death—on the Rosebud Indian Reservation.

Virgil Wounded Horse is desperately trying to escape his past as a hired vigilante on the Rosebud Indian Reservation. But when a legendary figure from the reservation is murdered, he’s forced to return to the job. Making matters more complicated, threats are coming from the Pine Ridge 705—a street gang from a neighboring reservation who want to expand their reach into Rosebud—and Mitch Gagnon, a shady politician who will stop at nothing to gain more power.

With a heated tribal council election looming, as well as new revelations regarding past injustices at the local Native boarding school, the stakes grow even higher. Will Virgil find the justice he’s seeking before it’s too late?

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Coming to terms with harms and wrongs you've done, even when you thought you were right to do them, is a tough passage of adulthood. It's necessary to face up, and if necessary 'fess up, in order to move past your own guilt and self-trauma. Of course, that leaves all the nightmares of trauma caused from without...but starting within is always sound policy and strategy.

Picking up where Winter Counts left off is this story of Virgil Wounded Horse doing his damnedest to keep his homeplace from succumbing to the depredations of the worst, most amoral forces from without and those within who care little for humane results and lots for power and the money that flows along side it. Virgil knows from the inside the seductive nature of power, enforcing criminals' will isn't a lot different from enforcing The Law℠ in its particulars only in its motivations (hopefully its results too). Challenging Virgil's sense of rightness is the death by murder of Jerome Iron Shell. Beloved by many for his warmth and wisdom and stock of lore, whatever led someone to kill him makes Virgil angry as well as woriied for his inamorata Marie Little Bear. Her deepening involvement in politics on Rosebud Reservation is clearly not safe sonve politics is almost certainly what got Jerome killed...how to make your former-gang-enforcer boyfried edgy and worried for you was never easier for Marie. She's the one whose request for him to staighten up, work the sunny side of the street, thus not add to her hurdles getting into government to start cleaning up generations of greed and indifference, has Virgil in knots. To her credit, Marie Little Bear is very much on the side of Justice and Fairness so as Virgil discovers corruption and greed, Marie stands shoulder-to-shoulder damn the consequences.

I really like the couple dynamic between Virgil and Marie. As the vileness and ugliness that Jerome was aware of, and trying to get acknowledged, intertwines with the appalling greed that land development supports and rewards, Virgil...and Marie...learn even the lowest acts they know happen now aren't a patch on those committed in the not-distant past. It serves to make them both, together and individually, more determined to be forces for improvement and restoration.

The series is definitely one I recommend to y'all who're needing more than polite white ladies looking into polite little family deaths. Cozies are like pineapple: tasty, tangy, but not healthy when they're the only thing on the dessert menu. Switch it up with a trip to South Dakota.

LIVING, TOGETHER: Reimagining Community in the Age of Disconnection, exactly what it says on the label

LIVING, TOGETHER: Reimagining Community in the Age of Disconnection
SAMANTHA PAIGE ROSEN (editor)
Beacon Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: 21 writers and organizers on found family, hacking adulthood, and other lessons communal living can teach us about the future of housing in America

Featuring Kristen Arnett, Rhaina Cohen, Kim Stanley Robinson, and more

At age 29, when Samantha Paige Rosen made an unexpected move back home, she was surprised to find how much she loved living with her parents again. Inspired and curious, she began searching for others who had redefined home and community.

The essays and Q&As in Living, Together are about carving out spaces of communal connection and joy in our 3-bed, 2-bath starter home culture. Although they recount life at different stages and in different regions, these stories showcase the delights and tradeoffs of more dynamic shapes of “home.” AAcross sections on family, intentional community, and what lies beyond housing, readers will hear from voices like:

Kristen Arnett, whose found family kept her afloat, from weddings to hurricane season and everything in between

Kim Stanley Robinson, who describes the magic of communities that are led by everyone

Sarah Thankam Mathews, who founded a pandemic mutual aid group and discovered, like so many of us, how essential connection and care are in times of crisis

Rodney M. Bordeaux, who explores how strength and unity are inextricably tied to life on First Nations reservations

Communal living isn’t just for cults or millennials with a pipe dream. Amidst the climate crisis, a hostile housing market, and the loneliness epidemic, Living, Together opens a window into how people in the US are thriving through collective care. This book invites us to imagine what new opportunities for connection exist when we push through the walls society has built for us.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: I live alone. I have always loved living alone. Company suits me only when I can't hear, see, or smell them (smokers need to be treated for their addiction!) when I don't want to. (Which is almost always.) However, age and disability require I compromise by living in congregate care so the things I genuinely can no longer do but that need doing are still done.

Because I live in New York City, that is not an impossible dream, and I wake up each and every day happy and comfortable...and very aware of my extreme good fortune.

So there's my essay for this collection of them on the topic of living in and among others. It is a fascinating topic, living arrangements always are. The essays within the collection are going to appeal in varying degrees. Different writers approach the topic differently, and sometimes unexpectedly based on their larger bodies of work.

I'm convinced the topic of housing all of us is never going to be less than contentious. Capitalism's deep, invasive weed roots are going to wrap around everyone involved in its systems' minds. I hope reading this collection of essays will convince a few to stand outside the building their lives have been spent within to take a fresh, sunlit view of the needs, the wants, and the realities of fair, just, reasonable access to housing.

*snort* Not bloody likely in a world where healthcare is rationed by money, but a boy can dream.

WATERSPOUT, one of Troy Ford's Pink Sheep Novels

WATERSPOUT (The Pink Sheep Novels Book 2)
TROY FORD
Sweet Flag Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$15.99 paperback, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Pillion meets The Goldfinch in this dark literary novel about art, ambition, and the volatile people who become our muses.

Jimmy Traywick is running out of options. Job, apartment, boyfriend, and gallery in San Francisco—gone. Retreating to a quiet town across the Bay, he’s hoping for a fresh start when a charismatic insider offers a shot at the New York art world.

Desperate to seize the opportunity, he begins painting the new lovers and friends who have pulled him into their orbit, transforming passion and chaos into a raw new body of work.

But when secrets surface and relationships fracture, he discovers too late that inspiration can come at a devastating price.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Ambition's a cruel taskmaster. It forces people into actions they'd otherwise overthink their way out of, like trading sex for fame. It's a terrible price to pay for a a commodity that loses value when you lose interest. Money...assets...jewels...their value is more durable.

It doesn't stop people from making that bargain. For millennia people have traded sex for tangible items and intangible things like gods and power and fame/notoriety. Jimmy Traywick did that. It worked...until it didn't.

That's the thing about Faustian bargains: Wanting something badly enough to ignore your own misgivings about it is its own reward. Funny word to use, isn't it. Not funny-ha-ha but funny-hmmm. It's a bad reward, but a real one, to set and pursue a goal to the single-minded exclusion of doubt and fear. Jimmy, like other ambitious people, desires at a more intense level than most of us. He's not stupid, wait yes he is, he's not dumb because he sees Paul Allenson in 3D, shadows are there, they point to things that aren't open, aboveboard...and he takes the proffered bargain anyway.

It's a choice. A choice he made. Now we meet Jimmy in the aftermath. He still owns his choice, its mark is on him for good and ever. The story you're reading is the story of making that choice, choosing that fate knowing it will be costly but not what exactly the cost will be.

It's always fascinating and not a little enlightening to read stories about people who are more intense about their lives, their goals, the desires than we-the-reader are. We're looking in on a train wreck, watching the rescue operation be hit by flash floods, the director with the radio coordinating everything get hit by lightning, the ambulances fall into sinkholes on the way to the scene...and we-the-reader sit comfortably in our chair in the air conditioning thrilling to it all.

Ain't reading grand?

Author Ford is an unkind man with a depraved soul. Goddesses please bless him for showing it to us. Jimmy goes through the wringer and comes out flattened but never flat and featureless.The same is less true of those around him, or this would be five stars with a yodel of rapture. It's a tough balancing act, taking time away from our PoV guy to limn some depth for the supporting players. It's a thing all too often left undone. I don't think it was left undone here, Author Ford's not careless or unskilled. It was part and parcel of the choice to tell the story with its focus resolutely on Jimmy. It was a lot to put onto one character, and that one character was rather less nuanced than I'd've needed for him to be to sit back in my chair with the book open on my lap with a slightly dazed expression on my puss.

It's a really involving tale, once I opened it I didn't close it willingly; it never once bored me or made me wish to heck he'd get bloody on with it; but it explored depths I didn't find that deep, so it's not my idea of perfect.

It very much is perfectly entertaining and, not for nothing, really begging to have a movie draped over it. Get you one and see if I'm wrong.