Book 36:
My Friends by Fredrik Backman, Neil Smith (Translator)
Rough Review:
5 stars. I have so many thoughts and feelings about this book. AND SPOILERS NO TIME TO REDACT.
The first 70 pages or so were perfect. Just quirky and heartfelt and true, and SO funny, these sensitive, awkward little weirdos with too many feelings, lucky enough to find their people, for however brief a time. I thought there was no way he could keep it up for 400+ pages, and if he did, I would have a new favourite book of all time.
And I did love it, but a couple of things didn’t sit well with me. And massive spoilers for why.
So 4.5 stars, but rounded up.
I think this is my favourite Backman, although I did also love Anxious People. John Green, Fredrik Backman, these people understand depression and anxiety and existential despair so well, and they’re able to use it to write beautiful stories and make me wish I could do something useful with mine.
He wrote this blog post, and it also meant a lot:
https://www.fredrikbackman.com/2018/0….
Final Review: Another favourite.
Book 37:
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
Rough Review:
4 questioning stars. Minor spoilers below.
I’m having a really hard time with this one. Whitehead’s writing is evocative, keen, masterful. The conceit of an actual, physical underground railroad was interesting, but I wish more had been done with it. Or perhaps I’m not poetic enough to fully understand the metaphor made real. I felt frustrated at the ambiguity of the ending at first, but sitting with it, I think it’s kind of perfect, actually. Slavery is nominally over, but its legacy remains and related injustices occur to this day, so a triumphant completion of a journey through the underground railroad wouldn’t be as meaningful, even if it might have felt more satisfying. I also felt guilt and frustration on Cora’s behalf that so many of the people she comes in contact with die or are murdered or lose everything, but again, it’s honest – the horrors of slavery affected everyone in one way or another, it couldn’t be escaped as long as the system existed. So yeah, I was frustrated or uneasy with some of Whitehead’s choices, but I respect them. It was hard to really get attached to any specific character other than Cora, or get a handle on any individual’s actual personality other than Ridgeway, which is why I’m not giving this 5 stars outright.
Finally, I think it’s worth mentioning that I read this over the whole month of June with a LOT of gaps and life distractions and I think it might have read better if I had done it over a weekend or something. His writing is almost lyrical, and it’s a pity I wasn’t able to immerse myself in it properly. I’m looking forward to reading more of his work. Hopefully Nickel Boys next.
Final Review: 171 words.
Book 38:
The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware
Rough Review:
2 stars. AGAIN SO MANY SPOILERS BECAUSE I DISLIKED THIS INTENSELY AND NO TIME.
There were two things I kept thinking while reading this book:
1. Am I from the same universe as its author?
2. I should write a book.
I mean, how hard can it be, if this is the sort of thing that ends up on the best seller lists?
This review is going to be harsh, because I really did not mesh with this book, and it will have spoilers, because I don’t care.
So many things about the plot made no damned sense at all. Why would Carrie even have the wig and makeup if she was meant to be impersonating Anne for the whole trip? And if she wasn’t (which also wouldn’t make any sense), then what was her alibi supposed to be as a random extra passenger? If Bullmer and Carrie went out as a couple when Anne was in town so it “wouldn’t look suspicious” then what the hell was Anne doing while those two were out gallivanting? Was someone blocking the internet on purpose? If so, why would it have started before Lo started inquiries? Don’t know, this is dropped.
The main character is an absolute chore to spend the whole book with. I get that we meet her during a difficult time in her life (right after a robbery that’s caused some PTSD and may or may not be related to another robbery that occurred of another prospective passenger on this luxury cruise, except that thread is also dropped and never mentioned again, just a coincidence that the guy took her purse and then left, all set up, no pay off, as per usual), but she spends the entire first half of the novel either crying or snapping at people, complaining that no one believes her even as she is being asked follow up questions and introduced to the entire crew of the ship in order to try and find someone who matches her description of a missing passenger, calling everyone who’s not a young, slim, white woman dumpy, fat, wrinkled, old, or some other disparaging comment about their appearance (except for Cole Lederer, he is attractive and therefore worthy of talking to). Also her name is Laura but we are supposed to call her “Lo” and I hate it.
The writing is EXTREMELY repetitive. And weird. Here are some key passages that threw me, and made me feel like I inhabited a different universe from the author:
“No one cleaned a room in a thigh-skimming Pink Floyd T-shirt.” ???
After coming across a crying woman: “Phrases skittered through my mind, each more inappropriate and impossible than the other: Are you okay? What’s wrong? Is there anything I can do?” I – How are any of those questions inappropriate or impossible when you find someone crying? What am I missing here?
Also apparently the only fabric that exists on this boat is silk (sometimes RAW silk).
I will admit that it picked up in the second half. I felt properly claustrophobic along with Lo, and with her survival instinct kicking in, she was way less stupid and insufferable than she’d been.
I actually have another couple of Ruth Ware books on my Kindle but I doubt I’ll ever read them unless you can tell me that The Lying Game and In a Dark, Dark Wood, are any better than this.
Final Review: This and Vera Wong are my least favourite of my 2025 reads. Although I did meet a Laura who goes by Lo this year, so, you know, I know nothing.
Book 39:
Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World by John Vaillant
Rough Review:
5 stars. GR note: There are so many different subtitles for this book! My copy says “The Making of a Beast” not “A True Story from a Hotter World” (which is good, because the latter subtitle is stupid and I don’t like it).
Another book that needs to go on everyone’s reading list, stat. I wanted to shove it in the face of everyone I came across while reading and yell READ THIS READ IT RIGHT NOW (joining Stolen Focus and Missoula from this year alone).
This book tackles a lot. The history of Big Oil worldwide and bitumen development in Alberta; the establishment and growth of the community of Fort McMurray; the history of climate science and its discovery, dismissal, denial, and deferral; the realities of climate change; the chemical and physical behaviour of fire.
And I think it’s vital reading for everyone because it tells the human story of what happens when the laws and baselines of the past no longer apply, and when the people entrusted with protecting you are unable to act on, unable to even imagine, what needs to be done. As Vaillant all but comes out and says in this book, the once-in-a-lifetime 2016 Fort McMurray fire, nowhere on Earth is safe from the effects of climate change, and we will all experience climate catastrophe in one way or another. This is what it looks like. This is what it feels like. This is how it happened.
I found Fire Weather a bit slow to get going. Part 1, “Origin Stories” is necessary set up for the tale Vaillant wants to tell, but it’s a bit dry, unless you happen to have a particular fascination for bitumen extraction. The parts dealing with the Fort McMurray fire itself are, as the many blurbs say, as adrenaline-soaked and engaging as anything you’ll read in a thriller. Personally, I connected most with the history of climate science and the personal stories of people throughout the day on May 3rd, 2016, as the fire changed from a commonplace backdrop for daily routine, to an imminent threat, to an unnatural natural disaster. These, and the final few chapters in Part 3, “Reckoning,” are why this is one of the best, or at least most important, books I’ve read this year (although I can’t call it a favourite), and essential reading for all of humanity.
When I was in grade 9, a student from our school’s environmental club passed me in the hallway asking people to sign a petition calling for Canada to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. Even back then, ALMOST A QUARTER OF A CENTURY AGO, I was confused as to how there was even a debate about the reality of climate change and global warming. And, it turns out, the scientific debate on the subject was all but concluded another freaking quarter of a century before that (in the 1980s), as I found out later.
The fact that in all that time we, as a society, have failed to do anything meaningful about our part in the destruction of our environment and the obliteration of the climate norms humans have experienced for centuries is infuriating. I thought about writing “unfathomable,” but let’s face it, it is all too fathomable, especially with what we witnessed during the pandemic so recently as an example. When faced with catastrophic change, just when you think a turning point must finally have been reached, industry and capitalism dig their heels in deeper, worshiping at the alter of the status quo, even regressing out of spite. No masks! No vaccines! No health and safety regulations! And similarly, no pivot from fossil fuels and bitumen for Alberta! No limits on carbon emissions! No changes to emergency response recommendations!
It remains to be seen for how much longer those in power and those who fill their purses can stick their heads in the sand while shoving others’ down there with them, but the consequences of this willful blindless are already being felt by all of us, and it’s not going to get any better. Published two years ago, before even taking into account the devastation the current US administrations’ policies are going to have on the environment, Vaillant notes that “The next decade is a crucial test for humanity. Unlike past species, humans have a choice. If we fail, the stakes will rise with each subsequent test.” So no, it isn’t hopeless, but the longer we put off this reckoning, the harder facing it will be. And we have put it off for so long already.
Quotes:
“As far as Pollan’s plants, or our fire, are concerned, humans are simply zombie hosts obediently disseminating their seeds, tubers, sparks, and gases around the globe. In the end, the geologic record will show that it is we who served fire, who enabled it to burn more broadly and brightly than it ever has before. Fire, thus far, has mastered us.”
“We are, right now, witnessing the early stages of a self-perpetuating and self-amplifying feedback loop, accompanied by myriad “cascade effects.” In human terms, this has been a long time coming, but in geologic terms it has taken place overnight-roughly 7 human generations, or 2 life-spans. So limited are we by the brevity of our lives and, lately, by the kaleidoscopic swirl of technological advancement…”
“Currently we are on pace to re-create […] climatic conditions that previously took millions of years to bring about. Such a cataclysmic rate of change will outrun most species’ ability to adapt, and a new equilibrium will be a long time coming. Whatever that new world looks like, it will be a lonelier place inhabited by a relict fraction of today’s biodiversity.”
“[…] devoting our energy and creativity to regeneration and renewal rather than combustion and consumption – is what Nature is modeling for us and inviting us to do. Homo sapiens got us to the Petrocene Era. Homo flagrans is who we have become. Homo viriditas can guide us forward – and, possibly, back.”
A lot of the quotations I’ve highlighted aren’t from author John Vaillant himself but were quoted by him. Here are a couple:
“”The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.” ~ Albert Allen Bartlett, physicist”
“”This isn’t a “drought,” wrote the climate journalist Bob Berwyn in 2020, “because that implies recovery. This is aridification.” Aridification precedes desertification.””
Final Review: Another incredible 2025 read.
Book 40:
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
Rough Review:
4 stars and SPOILERS AHOY.
I really liked this! I can’t even remember how I came across Andy Weir’s webcomic, Casey and Andy, 100 years ago, but I remember following it with dedication and being so excited when he came out with a book that did so well critically and commercially. I enjoyed The Martian a lot, skipped Artemis (at least for now) because of the many poor reviews mentioning that Weir is perhaps not so great at writing young women (this does not surprise me). The general consensus was that Hail Mary was a return to form, and what a great read it was.
I feel like I am the exact right level of science geek for this book – I know enough and care enough that I loved following along with each experiment but (except for the chemistry and bio, where I got to feel all smug and smart because I figured things out before Dr. Grace himself) don’t know SO much that I got bored/annoyed with the explanations. So that was nice. Weir is absolutely excellent at tension and pacing. I have a thing that I don’t like so much about myself where I simply cannot just read a book like a normal person. I literally cannot remember the last time I DIDN’T skim ahead to the end of a book after a certain point because I needed to know what happened now and not in the day or two it would take me to finish. The Project Hail Mary gets another win by having me read along so wide-eyed and excited that I didn’t take the breath I needed to step back and do that skim until over 70% of the way through. That’s a complement. Crap books I skim from almost the beginning because I don’t care.
It has a lot of the same pluses and minuses as The Martian in that characterization is not Weir’s strong suit (the main characters here were lovely, but not meaningfully different than what we’ve seen him write before, i.e. variations of himself), and again, minor spoilers, , but it’s clear that wasn’t the goal of the story and it did well at what it set out to do. I also felt like it did lose some momentum near the end. I get that science in real life is like this, but the step-by-step problem-experiment-solution formula that I liked so much during the story’s introduction got a bit repetitive by the end, and kind of record-scratched the tension.
Spoilery misc thoughts:
Final Review: Maybe I’m just going to have more than 5 books on my top 5 list this year. Nothing means anything anymore. Go wild.
