Recent Books

To the list

This is a list of books I’ve read so far in 2025.

• Small Favor (The Dresden Files, #10) by Jim Butcher
• Deep Storm (Jeremy Logan, #1) by Lincoln Child
• Karla’s Choice: A John le Carré Novel by Nick Harkaway
• Out of Sight (Jack Foley, #1) by Elmore Leonard
• Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown
• City Primeval by Elmore Leonard
• The Contortionist’s Handbook by Craig Clevenger
• The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman
• When the Women Come Out to Dance by Elmore Leonard
• The Infernal Machine: A True Story of Dynamite, Terror and the Rise of the Modern Detective by Steven Johnson
• The Lost Tomb: And Other Real-Life Stories of Bones, Burials and Murder by Douglas Preston
• The Waiting (Renée Ballard, #6, Harry Bosch, #25) by Michael Connelly
• Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry
• The Future by Naomi Alderman
• This Strange Eventful History by Claire Messud
• In Too Deep (Jack Reacher #29) by Lee Child
• Faceless Killers (Kurt Wallander, #1) by Henning Mankell
• Amped by Daniel H Wilson
• The Black Echo (Harry Bosch #1)
• Toxic Prey (Lucas Davenport #34, Letty Davenport, #3) by John Sandford

Out of that I made some notes on what I liked. A number of the books in the list I just read because I was up late and they were available from the library.

Nick Harkaway

• Karla’s Choice: A John le Carré Novel by Nick Harkaway.

Nick Harkaway is the pen name of Nicholas Cornwall. He is the son of the novelist David Cornwall who wrote his spy novels under the name John le Carré. le Carre’s most famous character is George Smiley. This novel by Harkaway is the first continuation of Smiley after le Carre’s death.

It’s well done. I thought the tone and pacing matched how his father had written the spy novels.

Elmore Leonard

• Out of Sight (Jack Foley, #1) by Elmore Leonard
• City Primeval by Elmore Leonard
• When the Women Come Out to Dance by Elmore Leonard

I enjoy Elmore Leonard’s writing.

The Contortionist’s Handbook

• The Contortionist’s Handbook by Craig Clevenger

This book was one of the more interesting I’ve read in a while. It’s reminiscent of Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk. It’s got a narrator whose continued weaving of self-created lives with different names and different backgrounds left him not quite sure what was left of him.

The Infernal Machine

• The Infernal Machine: A True Story of Dynamite, Terror and the Rise of the Modern Detective by Steven Johnson

Interesting American history. The rise of anarchist movement at the same time as the mass availability of dynamite led to thousands of bombings (or attempted bombings). This period of time was quite cruel for workers. Many more people died in factories than were ever killed by the anarchist’s bombs. But the threat of dynamite led the US to develop its first science based approach to crime (as opposed to simply beating the crap out of a suspect until they confessed).

Jayber Crow

• Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry

The search for meaning in rural Kentucky through the 1900s.

The Future

• The Future by Naomi Alderman

Novel that follows her speculative science fiction novel The Power. Billionaires lead the world to destruction.

Faceless Killers

• Faceless Killers (Kurt Wallander, #1) by Henning Mankell

Wallander is a British television series broadcast from 2008 to 2016. I really enjoyed the series. It was amazing. So I decided to read the books.