November 2025

 Hi friends,

November flew by for our family. I finally returned to work when the government shutdown ended. That was an adjustment. We celebrated Thanksgiving with my in-laws, and I got to read a few good books. 

I’m also including a review and pictures of the Dragonsteel convention, which we went to at the beginning of December, but I want to let you know what I thought of it while it’s fresh in my mind. 

Let me know if you’ve read these books and what you think about them if you have. 

Merry Christmas,

Tonya 

Hemlock and Silver  by T. Kingfisher

Rating: 5 of 5 stars

Recommendation: yes

Review: Kingfisher’s books are hit or miss for me, but this one hit really well. This is a loose retelling of the Snow White story in that it features poisoned apples and weird mirrors. Everything else is fresh and 100% Kingfisher’s signature creepy style. One of the things that I appreciate about Kingfisher is her unconventional protagonists. I always want to read more fantasy with a heroine that’s mid-30s, socially awkward, and neurodivergent. The story is told from Anja’s first person point-of-view. She’s a 36 year-old spinster who lives with her wealthy merchant father. Since her older cousin died of an accidental poisoning in front of her when she was a child, she’s also been obsessed with learning all there is to know and conducting her own research on poisons.  As far as obsessions go, it’s one that bears fruit…. Literally! Anja gets called on by the king to treat his teenage daughter who he suspects of being poisoned. With saying no to the absolute monarch not an option, Anja follows the king to a country retreat where she discovers not only the sick teenager but a hidden and ultra-creep world behind mirrors. Have you ever wondered what happens to your reflection after you stop looking at the mirror? I didn’t before, but now I do, and I sincerely hope that Kingfisher’s mirror reflection monsters stay behind the glass. Kingfisher throws in a rooster and a satisfying romance that rounds out the story as Anja solves the mystery of what’s wrong with Snow. I would highly recommend for fans of Nettle and Bone. Definitely a good read. 

All That We See or Seem (Julia Z. #1) by Ken Liu

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Recommendation: yes

Review: I loved Liu’s epic fantasy series Dandelion Dynasty, and he’s now one of my auto-read authors—an author that I automatically read any of their new releases. Liu brings his expertise in character development and plot to this scifi thriller, but that’s about where the similarities end. This book is set in the near future where AI is embedded in our lives and each person has their own AI assistant that is trained on their data and integrated into almost every aspect of their lives. Julia is a former hacker, who’s now on the straight and narrow and spends her time not charging school districts to solve their catastrophic hacks when her world is disrupted by the husband of an artist who has mysteriously disappeared. Julia doesn’t want to get involved, but she’s soon forced to take the case, and man, does it lead some unexpected places from questioning postmortem AI avatars to descending into the depths of all that’s skeezy about capitalism and technology. Liu has a lot to say about AI, and the world that he describes seems more realistic than others that I’ve read about. Naturally, this book made me think a lot about my own relationship with my data, AI, and the social internet, and yeah…. There’s a lot of stuff we still need to figure out! I highly recommend for fans of scifi thrillers and Liu. 

The Let Them Theory: A Life Changing Tool That Millions of People Can’t Stop Talking About by Mel Robbins

Rating: 3 of 5 stars

Recommendation: yes

Review: This book was a recommendation from my mom and a few other people. The whole premise of the theory is that you can’t control other people, so when they do things you don’t want them to do, you tell yourself to “Let them,” as a form of acceptance and release. Then you tell yourself, “Let me,” and focus on what you can do. That’s it. Robbins somehow took 300+pages to explain that. OK, the rest of the book isn’t a complete loss. Robbins is a good writer, and she does provide a lot of helpful examples and explanation. One other thing that stuck out to me was that while we cannot control what other people do, we can set an example and model the behavior that we want to see. I find myself using this advice a lot as I also try to teach my kids to focus on their own accountability and agency. I don’t think “Let them,” is a silver bullet theory that will solve all your problems, but it is good advice worth reading and implementing. 

Unsouled (Cradle #1) by Will Wight

Rating: 3 of 5 stars

Recommendation: yes

Review: There was an Amazon sale a few years ago where for 24 hours only you could download all of Wight’s books for free, so I’ve had the whole Cradle series for a while. I finally decided to read the first one because I got a chance to go to Dragonsteel this year, and Wight was one of the authors attending. I unfortunately didn’t get the chance to meet Wight when we were there, but I did finally start this series. This felt very much like a set up book for the rest of the series and the world. I was actually pretty confused at the beginning of the book about how the magic system and world worked. It’s an interesting mix of sci-fi and fantasy, but it just felt kind of clunky, like a bunch of different scenes all put together but lacking transitions. Lindon, the main protagonist, was also single-minded to the point of being unbelievable. After reading a few other fantasy books following this, I’m thinking that the main qualification to being a fantasy hero is the ability to withstand and fight through absurd amounts of pain and injury. Like it’s nearly unbelievable and kind of pulled me out of the story. I’m definitely interested in continuing this series and have heard that the writing gets better as the series progresses. There were definitely lots of loose ends to wrap up in the next book. 

The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert A. Caro

Rating: 5 of 5 stars

Recommendation: yes

Review: I read this book slowly over the course of almost a year, and I think that was a good way to digest it. This book won a Pulitzer for a reason, and it holds up despite being published 50 years ago. It is part biography and part history of New York for the middle of the 20th century. Robert Moses never held elected office, but he accumulated more power than anyone in the state of New York through an ingenious combination of confirmed positions. He was known as the best bill drafter in Albany and purposely crafted legislation that created positions that would be almost impossible to remove him from. He was a master at getting federal funding for massive infrastructure projects, and his singular vision is reflected in New York to this day. He was responsible for the displacement of thousands of, mainly poor, people in the midst of a housing crisis that he was responsible for creating. His massive bridges, tunnels, and toll roads are the reason that New Yorkers spend countless miserable hours sitting in traffic to this day. Each project promised to relieve the congestion only to worsen it as all mass transit projects were sidelined for lack of the funding that his public authorities captured through tolls and then put back into motor vehicle infrastructure. He became the sole decision maker to direct billions of dollars in government contractors to his personal friends and people who could help him get the one thing he desired more of: power. This book was a recommendation from another book I read earlier this year called Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress and How to Bring it Back by Marc Dunkelman, which talks about how we now have the opposite problem. In response to people like Moses accumulating too  much power and running roughshod over the interests of marginalized communities, we pushed power down and disbursed it to many different stakeholders. Dunkelman observes in his book that if Moses had lived today he wouldn’t have been able to get anything done. I don’t know what the solution is, but we seem to have missed the happy medium where the interests of all affected communities in a public works project are heard and addressed but where those in charge of executing it still have the power required to make difficult choices and get the job done. I highly recommend for anyone wondering why it’s so hard to build anything nowadays, or anyone who’s interested in a superbly crafted and told history. 

The Fall (The Bound and the Broken .5) by Ryan Cahill

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Recommendation: yes

Review: I made a goal for myself to meet as many authors as possible at Dragonsteel, and Cahill was there this year, and I got selected for a signing! This series was probably my favorite of the ones that I started before Dragonsteel. This is actually a prequel novella to the main series and shows a critical event in the lore of that world. It plunges the reader straight into the dragon and magic packed action as the ancient dragon-riding order that’s held power for centuries falls to a series of betrayals. It doesn’t provide a lot of context or exposition, but I was OK with that since I figured that would all come in the first book of the main series. It did show me that Cahill knows how to write action and deliver punchy emotional moments with very little time to set up the characters. It made me excited to read the rest of the series. 

Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi

Rating: 3 of 5 stars

Recommendation: maybe 

Review: I got to meet Adeyemi at Dragonsteel this year, and she was very kind and delightful to all the fans waiting in her line. However, this was probably my least favorite of all my new reads leading up to Dragonsteel. It’s an awesome premise, magic system, and the world building is on point. The things that annoyed me were probably attributable to it being a young adult novel. This book moves fast. I think the whole thing takes place over a few weeks, and it felt like Adeyemi was trying to cram too much character and relationship development into too short a time. The romance particularly bothered me in that regard. The enemies to lovers trope played out way too fast. Like they literally go from trying to kill each other to smooching in a day. Those teenagers and their hormones… Also, there was a ton of trauma in this book for all of the characters, and I wasn’t convinced that it was all necessary or served to enhance the themes. It was just a lot, really fast! I’m not sure if I’ll continue this series, but I did enjoy reading a Nigerian-inspired fantasy world. I need more of that in my reading life. 

Of Blood and Fire (The Bound and the Broken #1) by Ryan Cahill

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Recommendation: yes

Review: This book is classic epic fantasy ala Tolkien and Robert Jordan but with a modern feel. Cahill presents us with several classic fantasy tropes including the village farm boy, or in this case blacksmith’s son, whose life is uprooted by big magic and big trauma to go on an epic quest to save the world. Cahill puts his own spin on things, and it felt familiar but also new in many ways. I liked that it had a slower start and that I got to know our main cast of characters before the adventure really set in. I also really enjoyed the character development of Calen, Dann, and Rist, all of whom felt like distinct characters with elements of tropes. Calen being the hero, Dann being the funny drunkard, and Rist being the smart and snarky one. It has all your class fantasy races: elves, dwarves, scary urak bad guys, and of course, dragons! I need more dragons. I’m confident that the next books will have more dragons.

Dragonsteel 2025

Dragonsteel is the one fun thing that Dan and I like to do every year that is fun just for us, not "fun for the whole family," or more often, "fun mostly for the kids." We're both big Sanderson fans, and it's convenient to go because my parents live near Salt Lake. This year we went with my sister and brother too, who mainly went to hang out with us. We had so much fun playing games, going to panels, buying too much merch, and meeting authors. My sister brought three different costumes and dressed up as Vin from Mistborn, Tress from Tress of the Emerald Sea, and Carl from Dungeon Crawler Carl. She did the cosplay showcase as Vin and killed it. While I don't enjoy dressing up, I definitely appreciate seeing other people dress up. The fandom is so much fun to be a part of, and I definitely recommend reading the Cosmere as well as checking out some of the other authors I got to meet. Pictures below!

Dan and I with Kaladin and Syl. 

Me with Ryan Cahill, author of The Bound and the Broken

We enjoyed being together sans kids for the longest time all year when we're not working

Me and Matt Dinniman, author of Dungeon Crawler Carl

Me and Tomi Adeyemi, author of Children of Blood and Bone

Dan and I with Dan Wells, author of I Am Not a Serial Killer. Sanderson himself is photo bombing us. 

Me and Lynn Buchannan, author of The Dollmakers, which I've reviewed before on this blog. 

Me and Isaac Stewart, the head of art at Dragonsteel and author of the adorable board book Monsters Don't Wear Underpants

October 2025

 Hi friends,

October was an interesting month for our family. I was furloughed the whole month because of the ongoing government shutdown, and I still don’t know when I’ll be called back to work. On the plus side, I didn’t have to take any time off to take care of sick kids. We had at least 1-2 sick kids home each week of October. On the down side, I had to clean up a lot of vomit along with all the other bodily fluids I have to clean up more regularly. 

I did get a few good reads in amid all the uncertainty. Despite not having to work full time, I found my time filling up with just the basics of taking care of my family and my house, so I didn't read a lot more than I would have despite the time off work. I also got to spend a lot more time with my two little kids who don’t go to school. They are pretty fun to be around. 

Anyway, let me know what you think of these books, and if you have suggestions for further reading. 

Best,

Tonya 

Boldly, Nobly, and Independent: 1893-1955 (Saints #3) by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Recommendation: yes

Review: This was my second time reading this narrative history of the Church as told by the Church itself. This volume of history covers the ending of polygamy and growth of the Church in the early 20th century when the Church stopped encouraging all members to emigrate to Utah and to build the Church where they lived. Both of these decisions were huge changes to Church practice at the time and have ramifications that are still felt today. This was an interesting read for me right now because it helped put a lot of things in context for me. For example, the decision to end polygamy was extremely controversial and it stressed the faith of many faithful practitioners who believed that their practice of plural marriage was a sign of their devotion and faithfulness. It’s not overstating it to say that this change actively divided the Church in ways that many at the time probably wondered if would lead to the end of the Church. Of course, we’re still here, and that gives me hope that issues that divide the Church today can be resolved as well with time and work. These narrative histories are always a bit clunky, which is likely the result of many people providing input and feedback into the writing process, but I appreciate that they don’t gloss over big moments of Church history and controversy. I think it’s a good approach that helps build trust. No people or organization is perfect, even the Lord’s Church. Acknowledging that and not being afraid to discuss mistakes is a sign of a healthy and productive organization that can evolve and adapt as needed to a changing world. I like to remember that the Restoration is ongoing, and reading this book helps me realize how much things have changed in less than the 80 years since the end of this volume. I highly recommend for all members of the Church and anyone interested in learning what the Church has to say about its own history. 

Children of Time (Children of Time #1) by Adrian Tchaikovsky 

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Recommendation: yes

Review: Dang. This book was some pretty epic scifi. It tells the story of two parallel and mostly separate civilizations: one the last human survivors of an apocalyptic Earth and the other the human-assisted rapid development of sentient spiders on an alien planet. To be honest and much to my surprise, I found myself empathizing and enjoying the spider plotline more than the human one. It was just really cool to see the spiders literally evolve and to imagine what type of society super intelligent and sentient spiders would create. Although the spider storyline covers multiple generations and individuals over hundreds of years, Tchaikovsky keeps us invested in the individuals by assigning 4-5 spiders from each generation the same names and broad roles, so that we can see how their society and intelligence evolves over time without having to be introduced to new characters every 50 or so pages. It’s a genius device and works really well. I realize that in a book about super smart spiders it might same weird to say that the plotline about the humans was weird, but I really thought that it was. There’s some hooky AI characters and plot points that I didn’t enjoy very much, and while the story of the refugees made sense and would probably play out just as Tchaikovsky portrays it, for that reason it felt oddly predictable and exasperating. Maybe he was trying to convey that even thousands of years in the future and millions of light years from Earth, humans will be humans with all of our weaknesses and issues? In any case, I really enjoyed this longish read and will likely pick up the next books in the series. I would recommend for anyone who enjoys epic scifi and isn’t too squeamish about spiders.

The Impossible Fortune (Thursday Murder Club #5) by Richard Osman

Rating: 5 of 5 stars

Recommendation yes

Review: Osman has become one of my auto-read authors, so I automatically read anything that he writes. I love the Thursday Murder Club, and in a lot of ways this book felt like a return to form after the fourth one, which just had a lot of tragedy and trauma for our gang of senior sleuths. I really liked that we got to know Joyce’s daughter, Joanna, more in this one and that Osman got to make some great observations about dating and relationships in the age of social media. After the tragic events of book four, the gang is still recuperating, and you can tell that Elizabeth in particular is not on the top of her game as she has been before. Still, the rust starts to come off as the mystery that our characters are asked to solve in this one progresses. I really loved Ron’s character arc about remaining relevant as his abilities decrease and finding ways to still protect and care for his family. Osman is just a brilliant writer, and every character continues to stand out as unique and individual. It really makes me want to retire to a British senior community one day and make my own murder club gang. I’m glad that I live in a world where I get to read Osman’s mysteries.  

The Two Towers (Lord of the Rings #2) by J.R.R. Tolkien

Rating: 5 of 5 stars

Recommendation: yes

Review: I continued my Lord of the Rings re-read this month with The Two Towers, and it was probably the best thing I read all month. There were two things that surprised me about this re-read. The first was that this book is surprisingly short compared to the epic fantasy that I typically read now-adays. It comes in at a little over 300 pages, and I feel like I can’t find a good epic fantasy book for less than 500 pages that’s been published in the past 5 years. The other thing that surprised me was that there’s no intertwining of the two main plots. The first half of the book follows Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli through the Helms Deep plotline along with Merry and Pippin with Treebeard and the battle of Isengard. We then go back in time a few days/weeks and follow Frodo, Sam, and Smeagol/Gollum to the Black Gate and then through Ithilien. I feel like if this book had been written today the two plots would likely have been intertwined with each chapter leaving you with a mini cliffhanger. That being said, I enjoyed the continuity of getting to sit with each set of characters for many pages and see their journeys progress. I have definitely watched the Peter Jackson movies way more times than I’ve read the books and am much more familiar with them. One of the biggest differences I noted from book to movie is the treatment of Faramir. In the book, this guy is the most honorable, gold star, all around good guy, and I can’t help but feel that Jackson did him dirty in the movies. In the books, he never once even desires to take the ring from Frodo, and he goes out of his way to leave Frodo and company in the best situation possible when they part. Also, I don’t think that people talk about very much all the legitimately horrifying moments there are in these books. Like, I would say they should be considered fantasy/horror. There are some genuinely spooky and terrifying moments when Frodo and Sam meet Shelob and when Merry and Pippin nearly get eaten by orcs. Anyway, I’m really enjoying this re-read and highly recommend that you revisit the series as well if you haven’t in a while, or pick it up for the first time if you’ve been delaying.  

Good Material by Dolly Alderton

Rating: 3 of 5 stars

Recommendation: maybe

Review: I read this book for a book club that I sporadically participate in. I think it was meant to be funny, but it was more of a situational irony than a laugh out loud funny, and not all of the humor worked for me. This story is kind of like an anti-romcom in that it tells the story of the breakup of a long term couple. Alderton chooses to tell most of the story from Andy’s first person point-of-view. He’s a mildly successful comedian living in London who is shocked when his girlfriend of four years, Jen, breaks up with him after a trip to Paris. It’s a testament to Alderton’s skill as a writer that she kept me engaged in the story even though Andy was extremely annoying. Like, I don’t think it was just me who would find him annoying. I’m sure that Alderton wrote him purposely to be annoying and to help us understand and empathize with why Jen left him. Like I said though, she gives him enough redeemable characteristics that you like him enough to keep reading. I personally kept reading because I had heard that the last chunk of the book was from Jen’s point of view, and I really wanted to get inside her head and see how she was handling the break up compared to Andy. I think it’s somewhat revealing that Andy’s post-breakup story takes up about 200 pages of the book, and Jen’s takes up less than 100. Oh man, I could write a lot more about everything that was wrong with Andy, but I think I want to wrap it up and say that I don’t think I really actually bought the whole premise of Alderton’s argument. She maintains through the character of Jen that some people are happier and better alone than in a relationship and that love is not enough of a reason to stay in a relationship. However, Jen also lists several instances and actions of Andy’s that drove her to break up with him. She doesn’t indicate that she tried to work with Andy on addressing these actions or strengthening their relationship. She just leaves. All of that to say that I think that Andy and Jen had massive problems and neither of them had the will or tools to help fix them, so Jen concludes that she’s better alone and Andy uses the absurd things he does in wake of their breakup as content to improve his stand-up comic career. My takeaway from the story was not that some people are just happier and better alone but that Jen and Andy had issues that they couldn’t work through. Anyway, that conclusion is certainly colored by my own experience with romantic long-term relationship—of which I have had only one— and how I handle conflict and challenges with my husband when they arise. I’d be interested in hearing the perspective of others on this topic too, so feel free to share. 

Katabasis by R.F. Kuang

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Recommendation: yes

Review:  I’ve really enjoyed every Kuang book that I’ve read. I definitely feel very smart when I’m reading them even when, as was the case with this one, I don’t understand the references she makes or what she’s talking about. Like, I read the whole book and could still not explain to you how Kuang said the magic system worked. That being said, I didn’t feel like a better understanding of the magic or all of the academic and philosophical references Kung makes would have improved my reading experience much if at all. When I got to those parts in the text talking about magical or academic theories, my brain just kind of went, “Oh, that’s nice. Keep reading.” Not following every nitty gritty detail might bug some people, but I was much more invested in the plot and the character growth, so it didn’t bother me. In this book, Kuang draws from her experiences as a grad student at Oxford and Cambridge to tell the story of two grad students—Alice and Peter—who descend into hell on a Dante-esque journey to save their advisor and get those precious letters of recommendation to help secure a tenure track job when they finally graduate. Alice is an amazingly well realized character and probably has the most satisfying arc of any protagonist I’ve read from Kuang yet. Kuang emphasizes themes of trauma, abuse, and forgiveness, and the moment when Alice finally confronts her abuser is so freaking satisfying. It was far and away the most emotionally cathartic moment in the book. I was happier with the ending than I thought I would be based on how the other books I’ve read by Kuang have ended, and I would recommend for anyone looking for a great fantasy read. 

The Enchanted Greenhouse (Spellshop #2) by Sarah Beth Durst

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Recommendation: yes

Review:  I read and enjoyed the first Spellshop book because it delivered exactly what it said it would: a cozy and fun fantasy romance read. This second installment is set in the same world but with a completely different but related set of characters. It also understood the assignment and delivered a great cozy and fun fantasy romance read. All of the major plot points and the progression of the romance followed the typical fantasy and romance tropes, which although predictable, was really well executed. There’s a reason that certain plot and character moments become tropes, and that is because they are generally enjoyable and make sense, so when an author executes a particularly common trope well, I think it makes for a good albeit predictable story. Like sometimes I want to be really surprised and shocked by a book, and sometimes I just want it to deliver what it promised without much hullabaloo. In this book, our main character is a former librarian and one-time magician, Terlu, who got turned into a statue as punishment for illegally casting a spell to make a spider plant sentient to help ease her painstaking loneliness. The book starts with her being de-statufied and then immediately meeting the male romantic lead and helping him solve the problem of trying to maintain a rapidly failing magical greenhouse. This book contains lots of talking plants and delicious home baking, as well as a male lead who, as is typical in this type of romance, is nearly flawless and somewhat personifies the perfect boyfriend. The most unbelievable point of this story was that this guy was still single, but I guess living alone on an island and obsessively caring for a bunch of magical plants might explain his continued bachelorhood…. Anyway, I enjoyed it and will definitely read more from Durst.

September 2026

Hi friends,

September was a good month for our family. We celebrated Sarah’s first birthday, which made me kind of sad since my last baby is growing up, and we did lots of fun weekend activities with the kids. 

I also got in a few good reads, including some nonfiction books that might be controversial. Let me know what you all think of these reads and if you have suggestions for what to read next. 

Best,

Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up by Abigail Shrier

Rating: 2 of 5 stars

Recommendation: not really

Review:  Buckle up, buttercup. I have thoughts about this book. I recently resolved to put down more books that I wasn’t enjoying. I have a tendency to feel like I have to finish a book even when I’m not enjoying it, but I’ve realized that there are just too many books in the world and not enough time to dedicate to finishing anything that I’m not really into. I think I might need to make an exception to that rule in some cases though because when I was reading this book I realized that it can be beneficial to read books that make an argument that you don’t agree with. In this book, Shrier argues that therapy can have negative side effects like any other medical treatment. She makes the case that these negative side effects aren’t often explained and that most patients don’t understand them. She then goes on to make the case that the increase in the amount of therapy that adolescents and teens have used has not helped alleviate the increase in mental health diagnoses. Both of these facts are likely true, but she then uses these facts to make a lot of conclusions and arguments that I don’t think are supported by the evidence. At one point she says, “Parents should only allow their children to take psychotropic medication as the very last resort,” which yeah, I just don’t agree with. There are lots of other arguments and advice that she gives parents raising kids nowadays, some of which made more sense to me than others, like not allowing children to have a social media presence until they’re at least 16, but I can’t really recommend this book to anyone because I disagree so strongly with parts of it. 

Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry by Randolph M. Nesse

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Recommendation: yes

Review: I actually saw this book recommended in a really insightful review of  Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up by Abigail Shrier. I was trying to make sense of what I thought about that book, and one of the reviewers said that this book was a better way to understand mental illness and its causes. I have to say that I enjoyed this book a good deal more than Bad Therapy, and that may be because Nesse is an actual certified doctor and psychiatrist, whereas Shrier is a Fox News pundit. Anyway, Nesse delves into trying to explain why evolution has allowed the selection of people that transmit mental illness. It’s a fascinating question, and one that Nesse claims none of his colleagues have explored. To be honest, I always take these claims of “this was a total revolutionary idea that everyone else overlooked in the field,” with a grain of salt when reading popular science books, but I digress. In any case, Nesse puts forth a number of interesting evolutionary explanations for why mental illness has perpetuated throughout human history. One of the reasons that he puts forth is that people today are living in a very different environment than what our hunter-gatherer ancestors evolved in for hundred of thousands of years. Another is that some sensory alarm mechanisms, like anxiety, become over sensitive and are applied in inappropriate situations. He has a few sections dedicated to explaining depression and anxiety specifically and says that depression has not been selected out of people because it’s a helpful indicator of when to quit an activity that’s not resulting in achieving a goal. Likewise for anxiety, the ability to plan and prepare for the future can sometimes be taken beyond what is practically advantageous and applied to situations that we don’t have control over or that don’t present real risk. It’s a fascinating read, and while there’s not a ton of evidence to support all of his arguments, I enjoyed reading and thinking about why mental illness continues.

Second-Class Saints: Black Mormons and the Struggle for Racial Equality by Matthew L. Harris

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Recommendation: yes

Review: This was in many ways a difficult book to read. Harris tells the story of how The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints ended its policy of restricting people of black African descent from priesthood ordination and temple attendance in 1978. One of my biggest takeaways is that even the men that I sustain as prophets are flawed and have their own prejudices and biases. Reading some of the explanations for the policy that Church leaders put forth over the years was infuriating and baffling. Another big takeaway I had is how things can change even in a very traditional and conservative organization like the Church. It’s a testament to the wisdom of receiving ongoing revelation that something as major and signalificant as this policy can change. I was thinking of this in particular when listening to general conference today. A black leader spoke of his own conversion and struggle when he learned about the ban as a missionary only a few years after his baptism. I’m also reminded of a friend of my own generation I had in a previous ward who was in an interracial marriage. She told us about how Church members were still warning her about the now debunked “curse of Cain” teaching before she got married, so these ideas, while no longer taught and condoned, are still present in Church members. Another thing I learned from this story though is that people advocating for change can and have had an impact on the decisions our Church leaders make and Church policy. For me, that’s a really helpful and hopeful message as I continue to pray and ponder about my own questions. Harris is a great storyteller and he combines all of his historical sources into an engaging narrative. I highly recommend this book to all members of the Church. For me, asking and thinking about difficult questions regarding Church history and policy can be a faith strengthening experience if done with accurate and insightful context and information, which Harris provides in this book. 

The Martian Contingency (Lady Astronaut Universe #4) by Mary Robinette Kowal

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Recommendation: yes

Review: I have mixed feelings about this book. In this Lady Astronaut installment, Elma York finally gets to the surface of Mars with her husband and tightly knit crew. As it always does with space flight, things go wrong and secrets held from the first Mars landing expedition begin to endanger the future of the current and future Mars habitats. In this respect, it felt like Kowal was retreading the same ground as themes from the first three books of racism, sexism, and prejudice. I was hoping that she would go somewhere new with this one though. It is nice though to read a book where the protagonist is a middle age woman going through perimenopause symptoms. Ever wondered what it would be like to have a hot flash in a space suit? Me too. I’d recommend for fans of the series so far, but I think that the first two were better.

 

The Hidden Girl and Other Stories by Ken Liu

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Recommendation: yes

Review: Liu is a story telling genius. I loved his epic fantasy Dandelion Dynasty series, but I hadn’t yet picked up his short story collection I was glad I did because it was excellent. The best sequence was a collection of short stories all set in the same universe but at different points in the future and with connected characters. Liu raises some great questions that sci-fi provides the perfect context to discuss including what is necessary for a human life to flourish? How do we maximize the human experience without overtaxing our planets resources? With AI seeming to take over our social and cultural discourse, this book has some interesting things to say about our relationship with technology. I took off a star because like with other short story collections, I felt like some of the stories were cut short artificially especially with characters just dying. Maybe that’s just a weakness of the genre, but I would still recommend it for fans of sci-fi and Liu. 

 The Magician of Tiger Castle by Louis Sachar

Rating: 3 of 5 stars

Recommendation: yes

Review:   Holes by Sachar was one of my favorite books growing up, and I thought that the movie was one of the best book to screen adaptations I’ve ever seen. So I was excited when I heard that Sachar had now written an adult fantasy book. This book tells the story of political intrigue and forbidden romance but from the perspective of a third party court magician. The first half of the book was really good following our bumbling, bald middle age magician as he gets caught up in court politics and the princess’s upcoming wedding. The second half has a totally different vibe and the ending was weird but not in a good way. So half of it was good? I’m not sure I’d recommend, but I don’t think it would be a bad experience. It was just kind of disappointing