Finished reading On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder. Quick and bracing; nothing I didn’t already know, but a good refresher.
Finished reading The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett, another murder mystery, though not quite so noir-y as Cahokia Jazz. This one is set in an odd fantasy world, and we’re left with a clear path to more stories starring the protagonist and his brash boss.
Thinking back on it, the book feels somewhat similar to Bridge of Birds.
Finished reading Thinking With Type by Ellen Lupton. This is a sort of introductory survey of all things typography and typesetting. Some of it was material I knew pretty well; a lot of the rest isn’t stuff I know well or have put into practice. (Though as I write this I suddenly am having a flashback to the high school newspaper.) This will definitely stay on my small typography reference shelf.
Finished rereading A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr., at least 25 years since I first read it. I liked most of it, a kind of bleakly- or cynically-hopeful story of preservation of knowledge in a cycle of humanity’s self-destruction. Alas, the end of the book centers on a Catholic argument against suicide, which I found a little offputting.
Finished reading The Tomb of Dragons by Katherine Addison, the latest in the series that started with either The Goblin Emperor or The Witness for the Dead depending on how you’re counting. Like the others, this book is generous and compassionate, both towards and among its major characters. It focuses on reparations for sins committed by previous generations, which Addison handles thoughtfully. But two things: First, some offscreen cartoon villainy undercuts some of the care and thought that went into the resolution. Second, the book’s setting and language demand a lot from the reader, and the story picks up immediately after the previous left off; usually I like not reading awkward “remember this from the previous book” insertions, but if any book wants them, it’s this one. Do not pick this up as your first in the series.