Author Archives: Rebecca

A Brief History of a Long War by Miriam Naiem

by Rebecca

A Brief History of a Long War: Ukraine’s Fight Against Russian Domination
written by Mariam Naiem
illustrated by Yulia Vus and Ivan Kypibida
2025
translated by PE Omelianenko Liliia Serhiivna
2026

This book1 is only 106 pages long but it still took me a couple of weeks to read. It covers a lot of heavy ground about a national conflict spanning centuries including massacres, genocides and government corruption. The plotting is structured around the story of a young woman living in an apartment complex in Ukraine, dealing with nights broken up with bombings and spending long hours in crowded bomb shelters, interspersed with stories about the history of the region that led to this situation. The historical instances are painful though distanced by time while the continuation into the current time period strikes even harder and is all the more important for it. This is about history and current events and the aphorism, “those who don’t learn history are doomed to repeat it”, at least on a macro-level, because many of the individuals do know their history but are still very much doomed to repeat it.

In some ways, this book is similar to Games Without Rules in that it presents the history of a how a current conflict grew from historical roots. It doesn’t have the humor that lightens that book and it flattens the history into a conflict between the good guys and the bad guys, but it is, as the title proclaims, a very brief history of a very long conflict, so there’s obviously only so much nuance that’s possible in the space, but it suffers from that shortness. That said, it’s still introducing a lot of important history that I didn’t have before, or did have but without the context that this provided.

In some ways, this book is similar to Power Born of Dreams in that is about a current living person is surviving the trauma of a modern day genocide that’s still being fought to see whether it will succeed or not, whether this person and their culture will survive or not. It’s desperately hopeful in the way that people must be in order to continue trying to survive.

Overall, this book is an excellent introduction to how the Russian invasion of Ukraine came about and where that war stood as of the book’s publication in 2025. It’s very useful background full of important knowledge, but it’s sure not easy.

  1. Whenever I talk about a nonfiction graphic novel I run into the problem of what to call it, because “novel” implies fiction and this is a nonfiction history complete with citations and a bibliography. But it’s also fully illustrated and the current term for this kind of publication if a “graphic novel”. ↩︎

The City of Falling Angels by John Berendt

by Rebecca

The City of Falling Angels
written by John Berendt
read by Holter Graham
2005

This is a wild ride and a fabulous introduction to a city and a culture that is misleadingly inviting. This is an introduction to Venice, not as a tourist destination or a place of history, but as a location where a number of truly nutty people live and are deeply impacted by the tourists and the history.

The author does an amazing job of writing people who I expect would be extremely annoying in real life as being delightful, and of showing interpersonal conflicts as being multi-sided. He likes people and they open up to him, and thus to the reader, and we get to see an incredibly rich world filled with complicated people and situations.

With a topic as vast as “life in Venice”, Berendt provides a structure around the burning and then rebuilding of La Fenice Opera House. His original planned visit to Venice happened to have him arrive just three days after the famous opera house burnt down, and everyone is talking about it, so it’s a natural discussion point that ties into the justice system and construction and history and art and everyone who happened to live nearby, which meant everyone in Venice, because they’re all interconnected. The book also covers a significant amount of history because in a city like this, every current resident has connections going back generations, from the glass artist who is the twenty-first generation of glass blowers in his family, to the American ex-pats who are referred to that way despite having moved to Venice in the 1890s after a social kerfuffle in Boston high society.

This book is fascinating and delightful. While it feels timely in the way it discusses governmental corruption and personal self-aggrandizement, it also feels remarkably low stakes. It was both interesting and soothing. I highly recommend it.

A special call out to the reader Holter Graham, who did a fabulous job, to the point where I had to double check that it wasn’t the author reading his own story, because he really embodied the first person account. He has an excellent voice for listening to for hours on end, especially after I’d quit a different audio book after just half an hour because I could not listen to the reader.

Games Without Rules by Tamim Ansary

by Rebecca

Games without Rules: The Often-Interrupted History of Afghanistan
written by Tamim Ansary
read by Tamim Ansary
2012

This was another excellent audio book that I knew I needed to listen to after I’d finished Destiny Disrupted, but also needed to gird myself to listen to, because it’s about the last two centuries of Afghanistan’s history, which covers the British invasion(s), the Russian invasion(s), and the American invasion(s), all interspersed with the locals and more-near-neighbors all having their own factions trying to come to power. Pretty much every faction is getting in the way of every other faction, including those who’s policies would make them natural allies if not for a disagreement on who would actually lead. If it were fiction, it would be somewhere between a tragedy and an extremely dark comedy. As non-fiction, it’s somewhere between heart-breaking and enraging, while also being completely fascinating. Ansary does an excellent job of laying out the various players and how the various events lead from one to another.

This book gave me context for people and events that I had previously found largely incomprehensible without that context. I wish I’d been able to read this thirty-five years ago when “Desert Storm” was the military action discussed in my school, and I really should have read it fourteen years ago when it actually came out, but I’m glad that I finally got around to reading it now.

The Enchanted Greenhouse by Sarah Beth Durst

by Rebecca

The Enchanted Greenhouse
Book 2 of The Spellshop
by Sarah Beth Durst
2025

This is a cute book with a lot of interesting, fun world-building and I get why it’s recommended a lot, but it’s a few degrees off from my personal preferences.

I enjoyed the book but I also put it down at one point and read a few other books in the meantime before picking it up again to complete. I realized that I had two issues with it, neither of which are an intrinsic problem. First it was just a little bit overly cutesy to my taste: the various characters are described as being pastel colors but it has no effect on the plot or character interactions, and many of them talk in a way that it seems clear the author has spent years in therapy and knows that emotional issues can be worked through in a kind but determined fashion. These are good people who are doing good, which is, you know, good, but it felt less like an optimistic world view and more like a morality tale.

Second, while it had been recommended to me as cottage-core and had a lot of the aesthetic of the cottage-core genre, it had a much more standard fantasy plot: there was a grave danger and it needed to be fixed before something terrible happened. The point of cottage core is that the stakes are extremely low: the main character needs to bake a cake and then they do, they need to plant that garden and then they do. This had the cute cottage and the garden and the cakes, but it also had the greenhouses catastrophically failing and the threat of political violence and a lot more embedded anxiety and fear of consequences than I was hoping for.

In theory, this book is also the second book in a series, which I hadn’t realized when I put a hold on it at my local library, but it works just fine as a standalone book. I could vaguely guess which characters I would recognize if I’d read the first book but it seems clear that it is a shared world rather than continuing to follow any main characters.

Overall, this book is fine and I get why a lot of people would love it, but much to my own disappointment, it was not really for me.


Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

by Rebecca

Project Hail Mary
by Andy Weir
2021

This book was a lot of fun and I read all 476 pages in three days. I do love a good science montage scene and and this was full of them. It was also extremely similar to Weir’s breakout novel, The Martian, which I had enjoyed very much. This one is obviously less bound by actual science — introducing both aliens and alien technology — but it’s clear that Weir is trying to at least keep some of the math accurate.

The book tells parallel stories of Dr. Ryland Grace waking up alone on a spaceship with no memories and figuring how what he needs to do and then doing it, interspersed with the flashbacks that tell the history that got him to that point as his memories return to him. I would sometimes wince at the choices the main character was making but I appreciated the in-story acknowledgements that his decision making skills were compromised because he’s working under a lot of stress with imperfect knowledge. I did have to suspend disbelief that it worked out for him (and humanity) as well as it did.

There were some points when I had to pretty actively suspend disbelief, less about the science technology and more about the social decisions. Having all the world governments come together to send an incredibly expensive space mission that *might* have results in 26 years seems a lot less likely than most of them deciding that it would be cheaper and quicker to come up with a local solution, but that’s not actually addressed at all: the premise is all the world unites to do this one mission. Talking around spoilers: At another point, there was an argument between two characters where it was pretty obvious that Weir was writing it purely for the drama of a conflict but didn’t actually know what the real counter argument was, so put a pretty dumb strawman argument into our protagonist’s voice. Events could easily have played out the exact same way just more interesting if it had been a real argument between two valid sides.

I enjoyed this book. It was fun and kept my attention. However, the more I think about it, the more the flaws stand out. In some ways it reminds me of Tom Godwin’s short story, The Cold Equations (1954). Both are science fiction stories that deal with the trolley problem and making hard decisions while ignoring how much their premises focuses on physics while ignoring engineering: the math works out, but it’s really bad engineering to create systems that are so inflexible. This particular book also has a meta-layer of unintentional satire provided by the interview in which Weir stated that his writing isn’t political at all, which is so fractally wrong that it’s more mind boggling than any part of the actual book.

So in summary: I enjoyed it, but it feels a lot like some of the classic science fiction stories of generations past with both the pluses and minuses that entails.

How to Love in Sanskrit by Rao & Mahesh

by Rebecca

How to Love in Sanskrit: Poems
edited and translated by Anusha Rao & Suhas Mahesh
2024

This is a delightful little book of poetry, with 218 poems from a variety of authors across millennia, originally written in Sanskrit (more or less), and selected as representations for how love was and is conceived of in that language. An innate part of poetry is that it involves evocative language of metaphors and references and it’s fascinating to see what comparisons are impactful in other cultures. For example: a lot of British poetry will refer to the coldness of a scornful lover or the warmth of a loving relationship; in contrast, a lot of this poetry from India talks about the burning heat of abandonment or the cool soothing presence of a lover.

I’m not much of a poetry reader, but I bought this book specifically for the introduction which discussed the process of translating the poems, and I wish that had been more extensive, or even (oh how I wish!) a matching description of the process for each individual poem. Part of the introduction used a single poem as an example and went through the stages of: 1. what it was in the original (which I couldn’t read at all), 2. what it was in the direct literal translation (which was oddly disjointed as such types of translations always are), 3. what it meant in the conceptual translation (which made more sense), and 4. finally what these translators created as the end result (which was delightful!)

These poems are mostly quite short and often quite funny, and the translators have made them very accessible.

This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me by Ilona Andrews

by Rebecca

This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me
by Ilona Andrews
May 31, 2026

I am obsessed with this book; it scratches right at my id and I adore it! The main character Maggie is a modern woman in our real world who has been obsessed for years with a fantasy novel series that was never completed, something along the lines of Game of Thrones or Wheel of Time, except only two books, but she has read them multiple times, has all the details memorized and cares deeply for the characters who all have complex and often devastating lives. In this book, Maggie wakes up one day in the world of that book series, in the opening chapter with absolutely nothing except for her knowledge of how dangerous this society is and what the future holds. What she learns relatively quickly is that if she is killed, she will return to life. Which is a decidedly mixed blessing in a world where torture is just not that uncommon.

But over the course of this book, Maggie uses her knowledge of the world to A) improve her own situation, going from naked and alone in a ditch, to having many allies and socializing at the highest level, B) saving her favorite characters from their tragic fates and giving the villains their just rewards, while C) stumbling over the fact that knowledge from a book does not always perfectly translate into easily recognized personal experiences.

In a time when anxiety in the real world is high, it was great to read a book where the main character knows what’s happening and works to fix it, innocent people get saved and guilty people face consequences. It’s a hefty 470 pages but reads very quickly. I have, in fact, already read it twice now and I am desperate for the sequel to come out despite this first book having been published only 20 days ago. I am ready to read more!

That said, I do have some caveats: First, sometimes events do tend to work out for Maggie in a variety of ways that just fall nicely into place via authorial intent rather than because it makes sense plot ways. I’m giving that a pass because it’s that kind of book: everything is going to work out, the world is on her side, it’s fine. Second, and more seriously, the narration is somewhat casually pro-war crimes. Like, the bad guys commit atrocities and need to be stopped because of that but the good guys also commit atrocities and get reassured that they only did what was necessary to achieve their goals, so it’s all good. I’m fine with giving that a pass too because this is escapist fiction, but in today’s real world climate it does make me nervous to actually recommend anything promoting that moral stance.

But over all, this book just hits so many right notes, has so many great scenes, and keeps me delighted all the way through.

Destiny Disrupted by Tamim Ansary

by Rebecca

Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes
written by Tamim Ansary
read by Tamim Ansary
2009

This is an amazing book and I highly recommend it. I listened to the audiobook version which was read by the author, which I always appreciate. It is also unfortunately timely, what with the current war with Iran. I’ve been sitting on this review for a couple of weeks now because I’ve had trouble figuring out how to describe this book, beyond just saying that everyone should read it.

On the one hand, I want to talk about the things I learned — about the history of the Khalifate, the schism between Shia and Sunni, the Mongol holocaust, the various reform movements, and all of the fascinating stories that kept me variously enthralled and horrified, and surprised in how it all fit together. But if I start, I’ll just want to quote the entire book. Ansary has a conversational way of writing about history, both discussing broad themes and recounting specific events, peppered through with humor. With that in mind, this book is a delightful read.

On the other hand, I want to point out how these stories are the background by which whole populations see the world and make decisions based on the patterns in history that they know. Being in the US, protestant Christianity is pervasive and history is told with the US as the focal point, to the extent that it can be a struggle to image an alternative. This book provides an alternative, showing what history looks like when Islam is the pervasive religion and the geography Ansary defines as “the middle world” is the focal point. With that in mind, this is an important read.

This book is very much what it claims to be: it’s a world history book written for a western layperson, and also a demonstration of how subjective even factual history can be, based on which events are considered important or not. In the introduction, Ansary talks about how he was inspired to write this book as a result of having previously written a history textbook, specifically for a Texas school system in 2000, that had a set outline of what was important to discuss, with most of Arab history missing entirely. He was inspired to write a pointed response, since in this book, much of European history is insignificant and the US is barely considered a nation before the late 1800s.

Ansary makes a point that there are many world histories that can be truly told very differently depending on which culture is providing the perspective. World histories told through the East Asian, African, or Native American eyes would have just as little or even less overlap than world histories through Islamic and European eyes have. I kind of want to read those histories now too. But in the meantime, I’ll just have to read Ansary’s other books, because he really is an excellent writer.

While writing up this review, I also discovered that the book is available, in its entirety, on the Internet Archive! Go read it!

Cinder House by Freya Marske

by Rebecca

Cinder House
by Freya Marske
2025

This is shockingly good! It’s only 136 pages long, a retelling of the Cinderella story, and it starts with Ella’s death, because she’s a ghost for the entire story. The prince is, notably, not a ghost. Also, I have rarely hated a character as much as I hated the second step-sister.

Marske manages to create an incredibly well-developed and fascinating world of magic and politics, a cast of characters who are each unique and complex, and a host of delightful but seemingly-loose threads that all get pulled together into an incredibly satisfying conclusion. All the pieces and plot points were laid out ahead of time such that no action or event happens without plenty of backing for why and how, and yet the twists and turns were still surprising and exciting, and all the more wonderful for how everything slots perfectly into place. I read this in a single evening and am giddy with it! I highly recommend!

I Want To Be Left Behind by Brenda Peterson

by Rebecca

I Want To Be Left Behind: Finding Rapture here on Earth, A Memoir
by Brenda Peterson
2010

This is an excellent book and I found it quite difficult to read. I read it one chapter at a time with breaks in between and had to renew my library check-out. It’s 275 pages across twelve chapters plus a prologue and an epilogue. It’s a memoir about growing up in an extremely devout Southern Baptist family during a time of great social change where her values and the values of her family are increasingly diverging.

Her whole extended family are devout Southern Baptists who talk excitedly about looking forward to the Rapture, are stalwart Republicans who supported the Vietnam War, don’t believe in global warming, and don’t approve of those hippies. They are also loving people who care for her and for each other, live closely with nature, hold holiday feasts like no one else, and support their friends and neighbors. Peterson realized relatively early that she didn’t have the same faith or beliefs as her family, and thus struggled with how to be true to herself and her beliefs without hurting her loved ones. In a warm and welcoming social group that is all looking forward to the end of the world when they’ll be taken directly to heaven, how can she say that she actually wants to stay behind and protect the world instead?

The twelve chapters of the book progress through time from Peterson’s young childhood, through her education and exploration of other faiths, her young adulthood of trying to find a career path, to being the established nature writer that she grew into. Every chapter is a story about the stretch, pull and tug of growing into someone that doesn’t fit with her family but is also forever a part of that family: how the love and discomfort go side by side, for both her and her family members.

It is very timely as US politics become ever more polarized. I highly recommend it.