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Grabbed this one off the library shelf on a whim. I read Kostova’s The Historian a few years back and remember enjoying it, and I was ready for some fiction.

First comment on this one: bet you’ve never read a book set in modern Bulgaria before! (Kostova is an American but is married to a Bulgarian, hence her interest in the region.) The novel flashes back and forth between present-day and early Cold War-era Bulgaria to tell the story of a family and their suffering under Communist rule.

I didn’t find it as intense or engaging as The Historian, but Kostova writes beautifully and the story kept me going until the last page. Not a bad choice for some casual reading.

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The Shadow Land: A Novel by Elizabeth Kostova

Picked this one up from the library on a whim. The Madame Curie Complex is a relatively short volume covering the history of a dozen or so women scientists starting with the archetypal Marie Curie and running through the 20th century up to Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey.

Des Jardins consistently hits the themes that these brilliant women were underappreciated, underpaid, and had uneven expectations levied on them - circumstances that continue for women across the workforce today. While each chapter provides a nice summary of each woman’s achievements, there’s not a compelling through line or narrative arc to the book to pull it together as a cohesive whole. Nevertheless, this is a good bit of history to read up on.

-- The Madame Curie Complex: The Hidden History of Women in Science

I’ve kept up with David Fitch for a while now via his blog and twitter. Fitch is a professor of theology at Northern Seminary in suburban Chicago, and has led church plants that reflect his focus on community, mutual leadership and submission, and reconciliation. Faithful Presence seeks to capture those ideas in a short, practical volume for church leaders.

Fitch outlines three areas of presence that Christians should occupy: the “close circle” (presence with other Christians around the Lord’s Supper), the “dotted circle” (still a fellowship of believers, but open to non-believers, typically in the context of a believer’s home), and the “half circle” (extending Christian presence into the neighborhood).

He then spends short chapters on each of seven disciplines he outlines as critical to a faithful presence. They are:

• The Lord’s Table
• Reconciliation
• Proclaiming the Gospel
• Being with the “Least of These”
• Being with Children
• The Fivefold gifting (roles in church leadership)
• Kingdom Prayer

I really like Fitch’s focus on neighborhood and community presence; this is a welcome redirection from the big evangelical church as social hub. I found resonance there with an end note from Nadia Bolz-Weber’s Accidental Saints, where (if memory serves) she says essentially “do you want what we have? Don’t move here and come to my church - instead, start having a weekly dinner in your home with other believers, and let it grow from there.”

There’s a lot here to consider in an easy, small volume. Worth the read.

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Faithful Presence: Seven Disciplines That Shape the Church for Mission

Because I’ve been lazy and not keeping up:

The Big Screen: The Story of the Movies - and What They Have Done to Us by David Thomson An extensive trip through the history of filmmaking. I’m interested in movies far more than I get the opportunity to watch them, so this was an interesting read and gives me lots of movie watching gaps to fill in.

City of Dreams: The 400-Year Epic History of Immigrant New York by Tyler Anbinder This came on the tail of visiting Manhattan for a week for work. A really fascinating read starting with the first white settlers in New York and carrying on through the late 20th century.

The Believer by Joakim Zander A thriller novel that hits a little too close to home, including a wanna-be jihadist and shady government forces at work.

Last Year by Robert Charles Wilson A time-travel novel in which the present day has a gate into one possible past, but only to a specific time the 1870s. More thoughtful than I anticipated.

Dune by Frank Herbert Caught up with a classic I’d never read. Really enjoyed it. Now I suppose I’ll get sucked into the whole series.

Another random library selection, and a nice change of pace from history and theology. In Now, Cal Berkeley professor Richard Muller sets out to provide a layman’s-level discussion of the nature of time and how the domain of physics interacts with and helps explain it.

Muller provides an engaging discussion about relativistic time dilation, the big bang, quantum effects and “spooky action at a distance”, and his own thoughts about what it is that causes time to move only forward. It’s not entirely for the faint of heart, but he at least is good enough to leave his derivation of equations into appendices rather than embedding them within the body text. The Goodreads reviews of the book seem to be a bunch of physics nerds giving the author flack for his approach, but to this engineering nerd who isn’t deep into physics, it was just fine.

-- Now: The Physics of Time

I’ll confess I’d never heard of James Rhodes prior to picking this book up at the library. Turns out he’s about my age, and a British classical pianist who has had some amount of popular culture impact in Britain trying to make classical music less culturally stuffy and more accessible to the masses.

Instrumental isn’t nearly so much about music as it is about a man trying to come to grips with the effects of some horrifying abuse he underwent as a young boy in primary school. I’ve never read an account that so directly describes the horror and brokenness that an abuse victim can feel. One of Rhodes’ escapes is music, but he vividly describes others that are much less beautiful and much more self-destructive.

Rhodes does mention a couple handfuls of favorite classical pieces through the book, which someone has already arranged into a convenient Spotify playlist.

Instrumental is a worthwhile read but not for the faint of heart.

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Instrumental: A Memoir of Madness, Medication, and Music

Found this one on the New Books shelf at the library and figured hey, why not? Welky tells here the story of a handful of Arctic explorers who followed up on Robert Peary’s claim to have seen an Arctic continent he called “Crocker Land” (named after one of his financial sponsors).

Want to trek for multiple years living off pemmican, hardtack, and the internal organs of whatever bears and musk oxen you can hunt? Lose your toes to frostbite? Go (in some cases, at least) more than a bit loony? Early 20th century Arctic exploration might be for you!

Welky’s writing is engaging and the story is an adventurous one. After reading it, I think it’ll be at least a week before I stop feeling cold.

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A Wretched and Precarious Situation: In Search of the Last Arctic Frontier

Because sometimes you need some thoughtless entertainment. Even at that, Grisham is just coasting on his reputation at this point. Meh.

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The Whistler