Nolan Can Read

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January 20, 2024

Waiting for Godot

By Samuel Beckett

I’ve been seeing references to Borges’ story Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote around a bit, for whatever reason (it is the one about Pierre Menard, through diligent scholarship, rewriting and recreating Don Quixote, line for line). And classic Borges...

January 16, 2024

If Beale Street Could Talk

By James Baldwin

Most books I read which strive to be about the Black experience living in America are ultimately about trauma, for obvious reasons. If Beale Street Could Talk also has its fair share of trauma and no happy ending - but...

January 14, 2024

Shadow Country

By Peter Matthiessen

The term shadow cousins refers to family members that are excommunicated, not spoken of and ignored. At least in the parlance of the book; I suppose in real life as well, although I have not heard of it elsewhere. The...

January 12, 2024

His Majesty's Dragon

By Naomi Novik

One of my favorite book’s growing up was My Father’s Dragon, which I remember little about now - but did bias me pretty strongly against His Majesty’s Dragon. I am an adult now! This looked like the lowest form of...

January 03, 2024

Butterflies

By Hermann Hesse

A cute and lovely collection of prose on butterflies. The poetry - I’ve read some of Hesse’s poetry before, and I can’t really tell if he is a bad poet or it doesn’t come across in translation? For a writer...

December 26, 2023

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

By N.K. Jemisin

I think my threshold for good fantasy varies wildly from book to book, season to season. At times it is a comfort food, and seeking comfort and ease I find it and look no further - while at times I...

December 18, 2023

System Collapse

By Martha Wells

Murderbot continues to be a delight, maybe a bit more on the Real side with this one but still at the core the classic Murderbot running around, saving lives, struggling with Emotions, getting shot a few times. While quite enjoyable,...

December 05, 2023

A City On Mars

By Kelly and Zach Weinersmith

Life on Mars is great edutainment, clearly the work of people who are passionate about research, space, and space research. It is full of fun anecdotes and what seems like a difficult to assail argument that space colonization is not...

October 20, 2023

Rosshalde

By Hermann Hesse

I recently reread Rosshalde because I was curious about an alternative to Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow - an author exploring what it means to live as and pursue art in a non-linguistic medium. I found what feels more authentic,...