A friend encouraged/bullied me into reading The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, written by Natasha Pulley and audiobook narrated by Thomas Judd. I didn't know going into it that it was steampunk, a genre I usually avoid on stylistic grounds. Specifically, contemporary writers often overdo the Victorian dialogue, going well beyond atmospheric and into pastiche.

But Natasha Pulley does not make this mistake, and I found myself pulled into the world of Thaniel, a young clerk who one day comes home to discover someone has broken in to gift him with a valuable pocket watch.

There's a whole lot going on here, including live musicals, Japanese and English international relations, lady scientists, synesthesia, precognition, a queer love story, and trains. Read this if you like multi-layered plots, plot twists, and quirky main characters.

Terry Pratchett's character Death, to borrow the words of his new apprentice, is "tall, wears black, he's a bit ... skinny...."

The new apprentice is a young man named Mort. ("What a coincidence," Death says when they meet.) No one else at the hiring fair was interested, so with some trepidation, Mort agrees to apprentice himself to a skeleton who shepherds souls after they die.

The job comes with perks, like riding Death's noble steed Binky, but it also comes with difficult responsibilities, like standing aside while an assassin kills a princess. When Mort chooses to interfere with that assassination, he accidentally opens an alternate dimension.

The sprawling Discworld series has many good entry points, and this is one of my favorites, because it's the first book where Death is a main character. 

Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go is like any other English boarding school novel, only the students are preparing to spend their adult lives in two specific careers, first as carers, then as donors.

That much is revealed in the opening parts of the story, so I’m not spoiling anything. We know from the start that something unusual is going on at Hailsham, but our narrator, Kathy H., doles out the details slowly in this slow-burn science fiction novel.

Here Nobel Prize-winner Ishiguro visits some of his favorite themes: what makes us human; how we construct memory and how memory shapes us; how we justify our crimes against others. “I wasn't sobbing or out of control,” Kathy H. thinks on the last page, but I was.

This is my fourth Ishiguro novel. I rank him among my top ten living writers. Scratch that: I just jotted a list of my top fifteen living writers, and Ishiguro belongs in the top five. I feel myself becoming a better person in real time as I read his books, feel my humanity growing.

The audiobook is capably narrated by Rosalyn Landor, if that is your preferred medium.

I read Elie Mystal’s second book, Bad Law: Ten Popular Laws That Are Ruining America, and now I have a reinvigorated hatred of the Hyde Amendment.

Mystal is one of my favorite political writers because he takes complex topics and makes them accessible and also there is lots of swearing. I always learn something.

Bad Law dives right in with voter registration. In America, we burden individuals with proving themselves eligible to vote. This is fine if you can you’ve got a driver’s license or some other form of ID, but if you don’t, then you have to go get one. That costs money and hours at the DMV, which is a big ask for people in low-wage hourly jobs. The state, not the individual, should bear the burden of proving voter eligibility. Which seems obvious now that I think about it.

Mystal did not set out to write a book that would win hearts and minds across America. He set out to write a book that help progressives make better arguments against bad laws.

If you like audiobooks, at all, even a little, this book deserves to be listened to. If you’re merely audiobook-curious, here’s your nudge to take the plunge. Mystal’s reading is delightful. He narrates like he’s having a conversation. It’s lovely. And there is this one passage with excerpts of the writing of founding father John Adams where Mystal goes into this fussy, be-wigged white guy voice and it is hysterical.

I listened to The Highest Law in the Land: How the Unchecked Power of Sheriffs Threatens Democracy, written by Jessica Pishko and narrated by Nan McNamara.

Eligibility requirements for sheriff vary by state, with some states requiring no education beyond high school and no experience in law enforcement. Unlike chiefs of police, who are appointed, sheriffs are elected to office. They answer to nobody except the electorate, which is not terribly reassuring, since around half of the races for sheriff are uncontested. It’s even less reassuring when you understand that something like ninety percent of incumbents win re-election.

These entrenched sheriffs are overwhelmingly white, male, and Republican, and a great many of those are politically far right. And as I learned in Pishko’s book, a whole lot of sheriffs see themselves as the highest legal authority in their county. For interpreting and enforcing the law, they claim supremacy above congress, the president, and federal agents.

Covering topics including immigration, gun control, covid mask mandates, and sundown laws, Pishko shows the outsize influence sheriffs have on social control within their communities, how they incarcerate people for profit and even as shocking numbers of people die in their custody.

Read Pishko’s book to understand how much power is concentrated in the office of sheriff and the ways it is widely abused

Squeaking in under the deadline for Women’s History Month is my re-read of the first book in Sigrid Undset’s Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy, The Wreath (1920), translated from the Norwegian by Tiina Nunnally.

Set in 14th century Norway, the book follows Kristin through her childhood and adolescence. Kristin is the eldest surviving child of well-to-do farmers, both pious Christians. She’s an obedient young woman, careful to mind her parents, her friend the priest, and eventually the nuns she meets when she spends a year living in a convent. If she is not overjoyed when her father arranges her betrothal to a young man named Simon, neither is she upset…not until she meets Erlend Nikulausson, a man whose reputation is already in tatters for having fathered two children with his married mistress. From the moment Kristin meets Erlend, all thoughts of Simon fly out of her head.

I loved this book in college when I read it for a class on women and religion. I still love it for the way Undset puts women’s lives front and center. Her treatment of sexuality, desire, the medieval Catholic church, and family makes for outstanding historical fiction, and eventually led to her winning the Nobel Prize in Literature.

But I have no patience for Erlend, who reminds me of Anatole Kuragin, who vies with Napoleon for being the biggest asshole in War and Peace. When I was younger, I admired Kristin for her impetuous affair. I wanted her to follow her heart. I’m still a fan of true love, but in my middle age, I am out of patience for men who behave badly. I’m not mad at Kristin but I am officially over Erlend, who was old enough and experienced enough to know better. Men who think with their dicks, nor caring who they hurt? This is not romantic.

The books are outstanding works of literature, and I recommend them highly, but I’m not going to reread books two and three. I done with you, Erlend. It’s over.

I have a small handful of writers I read every year without fail, allotting myself one of their books like it’s margarine and this is the war. Natalie Haynes is now on that exceedingly short list.

A Thousand Ships explores the siege of Troy and related events from the perspective of the women and goddesses. We meet Helen, whose face launched those ships; Penelope, whose husband Odysseus takes the long way home; Cassandra, gone mad because no one believes her predictions; Iphigenia, eager to go to the altar to wed Achilles; Clytemnestra, who plots revenge after that wedding goes wrong; and dozens of others.

Haynes is a strong prose stylist and a strong storyteller. I love how often she makes me laugh, even as cities are razed and infants are sacrificed and corpses are defiled. Her audiobook narration is lovely, so I recommend listening to this one if you’re inclined toward audio.

I like the first two Discworld books just fine, but with the third book, Pratchett starts to get his footing.

Equal Rites introduces one of the great Discworld recurring characters, Granny Weatherwax, who has just attended the birth of the eighth son of an eighth son, a perfect candidate to inherit a wizard’s staff. The ceremony is done and completed before the child’s father and the bequeathing wizard realize their gaffe. The son is actually a daughter.

Everyone knows girls can’t be wizards. But little Eskarina has a wizard’s staff, and there’s no taking it back.

It is not a coincidence that I’m revisiting Discworld during these troubled times. The books are a balm for the soul, funny and smart. And most importantly, they have an emotional core that makes you feel better. That makes you better as a person.

Book talk for February 25. What's everyone reading?

For Black History Month, I read Toni Morrison's Beloved, which may be the closest thing we have to a Great American Novel.

Set in Ohio a few years after the end of American slavery, we meet a Black woman named Sethe. Her mother-in-law died a few years ago, and her two sons have run away from home, so now Sethe lives in her house only with her daughter, Denver, and a trickster ghost. That uncomfortable stasis is upset with the arrival of Paul D, who knew Sethe back when they were both enslaved. Paul D exorcises the ghost and settles in.

Only the ghost comes back, taking the form of a young Black woman and calling herself Beloved.

Going into it, I did not realize this was a literal ghost story. I don't mean the psychological is-it-or-isn't-it ghost you get in some gothic stories. I mean this ghost crawled out of the grave and found herself a house to haunt.

This was not my first time reading Morrison, but I'd missed her best-known work. It is about the horrors of slavery reverberating through generations, so it is not a fun read, but it is a profound read. Beloved is essential reading for understanding America.

In America, Trump is attacking DEIA—diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility—though if you’d prefer not to use an acronym, the easy way to say it is: Trump is bringing back segregation. He hasn’t been in office a month and he’s already dismantling everything that makes this country good.

In early January, before this attack on America’s people and institutions, I started reading a couple of books about Black history, one fiction, one nonfiction, in anticipation of Black History Month. Reading this history feels more important now than ever…though with all the bad things happening, part of me wishes I’d picked something fluffy to read. A cozy mystery where the cat solves the crime.

Published to widespread praise on its publication in 2014, The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism, written by Edward E. Baptist with audiobook narration by Ron Butler, is a detailed study of the ways slavery and capitalism helped each other grow.

I appreciate how Baptist centers stories of individual enslaved people throughout. He draws on slave narratives, historical newspapers, oral histories recorded by Works Progress Administration employees, and other primary sources to flesh out the experiences of real human beings in bondage.

I further appreciate the special care he takes toward dismantling the notion that the South was fighting for states’ rights. This pernicious myth captivated American historians for decades. If you hear someone arguing that the confederates seceded from the union over the abstract notion of states’ rights, point them toward this book. It was about slavery. It was always about slavery.

Also, if you didn’t already want to punch Andrew Jackson in the mouth, this will put you over the top.