Wicked River by Lee Sandlin

by Rebecca

Wicked River: The Mississippi When It Last Ran Wild
written by Lee Sandlin
read by Jeff McCarthy
2010

This is a wild ride. It’s a non-fiction black-comedy history book. It’s a collection of crazy stories about unpleasant people living awful lives and they are hilarious. Except that sometimes it gets grim enough that it overloads my sense of humor and just gets super depressing even in its ridiculousness. But it really is fascinating and an excellent look at American history and social movements. It’s kind of amazing how many patterns of events and types of people I recognize as being present in today’s world.

This is by the same author who wrote Storm Kings , which I enjoyed so much that I immediately checked out their other audiobook. Storm Kings is the better book, with a more cohesive storyline, while Wicked River is more a scattershot of stories and events, but it’s still very good and very impactful. Each chapter looks at a different aspect of life along the Mississippi, mostly pre-Civil War, skipping around in time and location, with a lot of stories about the lives of specific individuals and events. It gets into the nitty gritty of life and death and trade, the horrors of recurring epidemics, the cognitive dissonance of slave-holding societies, the lawlessness of the various settler justice systems, intermittent excesses of debauchery, celebrations of casual violence, ubiquitous drunkenness, and a vast cast of characters from all walks of life.

The book concludes with the Mississippi River Commission being established immediately post-Civil War and essentially taming the river, at the same time that railroads were replacing boats for transport. In the end, there’s a sense of nostalgia for the wildness that has been lost, because the river cultures were amazing and easily romanticized, even though, or perhaps especially because, they sound truly awful to have lived through.

Women’s Hotel

by Anna

By Daniel Lavery

This novel is less about telling a story than evoking a place and time, but it does that so well that I didn’t mind the slight plotting at all. In fact, with everything currently going on, a sort of gentle pastiche of the past might be exactly what I needed.

Daniel Lavery, a favorite author of mine, can just really turn a phrase that had me giggling at basically just clever nonsense (which I mean as a high compliment). Almost every sentence is packed with both witticisms and what I assume is meticulously-researched details of the period, and though it could make for an occasionally dense style, it is also a most welcome distraction from everything in the present.

I’ve seen some low-star reviews complaining that you must love the narrative voice, because there’s not much else going on, and while I suppose I agree, I absolutely love the narrative voice! For me, Lavery does a great job of recalling the absurdist comedy of Three Men in a Boat and Wodehouse. And even with the very light touch, he fits in some poignant themes of personal responsibility, social responsibility, and the frequent conflict between the two, which is very relevant today and helpful to hear, like a gently prodding pep talk. This book won’t be for everyone, but for those of us it is for, it is marvelous!

Unsatisfactory Cozies

by Anna

Only the Cat Knows by Marian Babson

Yeah, yeah, I know… I didn’t particularly like the earlier book I read, but just like that one, I was suckered into the premise. After a suspicious fall puts his twin in critical conditional, a renowned ‘female impersonator’ takes her place in the strange rich guy’s compound where she lives and works. The whole cast of weirdos all hanging on to an enigmatic millionaire is very reminiscent of Elizabeth Peters’ excellent Summer of the Dragon, and this book suffers by the comparison.

As I found in the first book, Marian Babson lacks the key charm necessary to write a standout cozy mystery, though her plots are fun enough. The bare bones are there, but a lot more goes into a decent cozy than the average reader (or writer, I guess) realizes. The end, too, felt fairly abrupt, just wrapping up with the nearest available weirdo being the culprit without much setup, and the happily ever after for the rest of the characters felt fairly unearned as well.

A Deadly Walk in Devon by Nicholas George

Maybe it’s me or maybe it’s 2025, but cozy mysteries are taking an increasing amount of suspension of disbelief, and I may have reached my limit. I already have to accept that the police are concerned with justice and safety in this fantasy world (at least this particular protagonist is already retired), but also that murder is always wrong. Hear me out: maybe if someone is an absolute nightmare to be around at all times, when they eventually push someone too far, that’s just natural consequences.

So, I’m already struggling to believe that our protagonist is a good guy, though he is sympathetically written, and now I have to convince myself that the main investigation is even worth doing. Nicholas George is a capable writer, but this is a steep uphill demand. Overall the majority of the book felt like following a basic outline for a cozy mystery with all the boxes checked off in order, though the end took a bit of a dramatic turn. I’m guessing that George will find a more natural flow in later books, though I’m not invested enough to see.

Storm Kings by Lee Sandlin

by Rebecca

Storm Kings: The Untold History of America’s First Tornado Chasers
by Lee Sandlin
read by Andrew Garman
2013

This is AMAZING! I had expected it to be vaguely interesting, enough to keep me entertained on my commute without being a problem to stop whenever I arrived. I had also expected it to be about modern storm chasers. Instead, it was utterly fascinating and surprisingly funny and I had to turn it off occasionally when I got to tricky intersections in my driving because the story was too distracting. For about two weeks, I started the majority of conversations with “In this book about weather….” because it just filled my thoughts and I wanted to share the fascination with everyone around me.

Via the focus on tornadoes, the book covers the development of weather research in the United States from colonial days to the present, following the work of maybe a dozen pivotal individuals driving tornado research. And let me tell you: the people who dedicate years, decades, or whole lives to the study of tornadoes are some truly fascinating characters!

Tornadoes by themselves are interesting phenomenon, but more than that, the books focus on tornadoes gives an amazing perspective on a wide range of history of the United States and the history of scientific studies in general, allowing the book to cover a wide range of issues without ever getting too far away from the primary topic. The book touches on Benjamin Franklin’s famous lightning experiment, the establishment of the Smithsonian, the displacement of American Indians, various arctic explorations, the great dust bowl, and a number of wars, all while discussing how these specifically related to the study of tornadoes. Sandlin does a really amazing job of covering long time periods succinctly and then covering specific events in minute-by-minute detail, and not letting the story he’s telling get bogged down in either.

The book also felt rather timely, as the current news reports storms and deaths and political decisions that interfered with factual weather knowledge, because it turns out that none of that is new or unusual to the weather service. This book is full of storms and deaths and the politics that go into deciding which facts to look at and which theories to believe. But it’s also distant enough to not be just one more bit of depressing news.

Overall, this book was fascinating and funny and horrifying and jaw-dropping, and I highly recommend it. Also the reader for the audio book is excellent.

Ann Arbor Comic Arts Festival 2025

by Rebecca

I almost skipped the Ann Arbor Comic Arts Festival, held in the downtown branch of the Ann Arbor District Library, because I was tried and busy and distracted and when I went to double-check the time and location, the website was definitely geared towards families with young kids.

I’m really glad that I went though! There were probably about 50 artists’ booths and while the content was all family friendly (some of the artists had left some of their creations at home in order to keep the selection family friendly) there was still plenty of things that I found interesting. I forgot to come with a suitable amount of cash, but a number of the vendors did take credit cards, and I acquired a few more fascinating items.

100 Demons Dialogues
by Lucy Bellwood
This is a sweet little book that has some serious emotional impact, as Bellwood personifies her internal critic as a little demon that follows her around, and she refutes its arguments as she continues to work on her art. It’s remarkably inspiring.

to and fro
by kat tuesday
This is a short (24 pages) compilation of three of the author’s works, including Peek and Plover in Another Blasted Cave, and is just generally kind of adorable. In some ways it feels like the kind of sketch/doodle story that you might create when you’re bored in a meeting with only your note pad available, except that it’s both really well done and finished.

Click
by Duncan Bryk
This has some fascinating background world-building of some sort of magical-realism steampunk post-apocalyptic situation, except that it’s all through the point of view of a mouse that only explores within the one odd mansion and only interacts with the very strange caretaker of that mansion. The caretaker clearly knows more about the situation than the mouse, but the mouse is their only companion as well. The overall sense is a combination of intrigue and melancholy.

Resilience
by Ari Coester
This is a tiny zine (ie, an 8.5×11 paper folded to create an 8-page booklet) about the anti-bird spikes that corporations install in their signs and how the birds build their nests right on top of those spikes. Adorable!

What To Do
by Jackalyn Fleming
This is another tiny zine that consists of a flower wondering what it’s purpose in life is. Having bloomed, it wonders what’s next and asks the people around it. It turns out that the bee has opinions but the bird doesn’t care. It’s both hilarious and feels timely.

The Complete Works of Shakespeare in three panels each
by Mya L. Gosling
I’ve followed this artist’s work for years and was delighted to get a physical copy of some of her work. It’s hilarious, and also really well done. Just, taking each of Shakespeare’s plays and stripping them down to the bare minimum (and perhaps significantly beyond) of plot points. It feels a bit like poetry and a bit like a series of teasers.

Spinning, Dyeing and Weaving by Penny Walsh

by Rebecca

Spinning, Dyeing and Weaving: Essential Guide for Beginners, from the Self-Sufficiency series
by Penny Walsh
2009, 2016

I’ve recently been delving into the basic fibre arts. I’ve taken classes in how to spin wool on a drop spindle, how to dye yarn with natural dyes, and how to “skirt” a fleece that’s been freshly sheered off a sheep. One of these days I’m hoping to learn how to sheer a sheep myself. I already had the basics of weaving, knitting, and crocheting (albeit at the most basic level) and I’m enjoying figuring out the precursory stages. This book seemed like it would be right up my alley.

And it is, sort of. However it’s also absolutely bonkers. It veers wildly between being an extremely basic overview to being an extremely detailed instructional manual, and then back again. Harvesting vegetable fibres such as flax, hemp, or nettle is given a half page summary that mentions the necessity of starting and then interrupting the rotting process; meanwhile, there are 18 pages of recipes for dyes, including ingredients, amounts, temperatures and durations. However, I knew from early on that this book wasn’t going to be particularly reliable when it starts with discussing how easy maintaining a couple of sheep is to have your own steady source of fleeces. That seemed to be the theme of this book: mentioning some elaborate and time-consuming endeavor while narrating that it’s actually very simple.

Overall, I found it inspiring to keep working on the projects I’m working on. In some places, it reinforces some of the things I’ve learned from other sources and while in others it provides alternatives to some of the things I’d previously learned. But I didn’t learned anything new from this book, and not because there wasn’t anything new in it, but because nothing entirely new was explained well enough for me to learn it.

Oddly, the book also tries really hard to be easily readable to both British and American readers, and does so by providing translations between British and American terms as well as between metric and imperial measurements, but every time it does that, it just makes the text that little bit more confusing. For example, writing “2 square metre (21.5 sq ft.)” looks both weird and weirdly specific when talking about a garden plot for raising dye plants. It seemed representative of the variable levels of respect for the reader: we are assumed to be able to understand tapestry weaving from a two page spread including three diagrams and an illustrated loom, but also need clarification about “furniture (slip) covers”.

Overall, I’m not quite sure who the intended audience for this actually is, but it’s really not for a beginner. And while I enjoy learning all of these skills as a fun hobby, it’s not easy, it’s not quick, and it’s not a replacement for store bought: this is not a guide for self-sufficiency. However, reading this did get me off my couch and preparing a fleece for spinning that I’d been procrastinating about. So that’s a win!

Martyr!

by Anna

By Kaveh Akbar

This is capital-L Literary novel about a depressed young poet searching for the meaning of life and death, and I should absolutely hate it, but I was riveted! I guess that’s a testimony to the writing. The protagonist is still quite annoying, the sort of drug-fueled tortured artist that intrigued me in my 20s and just exhausts me now. But even within the first few pages, I ran across lines that I knew would stick with me for a while.

I never would have even picked it up if it hadn’t been recommended by what is becoming one of my favorite e-newsletters, Death by Consumption.* The recommendation includes this quoted passage:

Everyone in America seemed to be afraid and hurting and angry, starving for a fight they could win. And more than that even, they seemed certain their natural state was to be happy, contented, and rich. The genesis of everyone’s pain had to be external, such was their certainty.

And I thought to myself, well, yes, of course we all want to be happy, contented, and rich; who doesn’t? So I felt like I needed to read the book to find the counter argument. I didn’t really get an answer, but instead got a lot to think about over the next few days and weeks. (Danny also calls it “short but expansive” and I believe his definition of short has been warped by the enormous tomes he usually reads, since this comes to a healthy 331 pages, but it was a quick read, with short chapters from rotating viewpoints that pull you in for ‘just one more.’)

Also, about halfway through the book, there’s a surprise twist that adds a significant mystery that I wasn’t expecting at all, but helped balance the tortured artist side of it all. That said, I found the ending both confusing and upsetting, which could have been intentional but I got the sense that I was getting caught up in details and missing the big point of it all. I was incredibly grateful to google for autofilling my search of “Martyr! Kaveh Akbar…” with “ending explained” and finding an hour-long lecture on youtube, as well as a decent sized reddit thread.

*Side recommendation: I first started following Danny Gottleib’s writing when he was doing a tongue-in-cheek Julie & Julia thing called Danny & Gweneth, where he tried to make all of Gweneth Paltrow’s recipes with ingredients he could find locally in the Midwest. He ended up moving to NYC and switched to a general media recommendation newsletter that I look forward to every week.

The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar

by Rebecca

The River Has Roots
by Amal El-Mohtar
2025

This author has a way of using language to create worlds like lucid dreams. She makes metaphors so strong and pervasive that they’re world-building. It lives in the space between poetry and prose, and reading it feels like a way to slow the frantic pace of my thoughts and set my brain to a reasonable rhythm. I’m in awe of her writing.

This story is a retelling/re-imagining of the classic folk song, The Two Sisters. And of all the versions I’ve read/heard, I like this one best. It’s not a long book, only 100 pages, and includes many beautiful black-and-white illustrations.

El-Mohtar is one of the co-authors of This Is How You Lose the Time War, which was extremely good but also complicated in a way that required more focused concentration than this book did. This story feels closer to Nghi Vo’s The Singing Hills Cycle books, which is also a high complement.

The Age of Magical Overthinking by Amanda Montell

by Rebecca

The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality
written by Amanda Montell
read by Amanda Montell
2024

It took me awhile to write up this review for an audiobook I finished a couple of weeks ago, which is helpful because I want to say that it stuck with me. Not constantly, but every day or every other day, I have the thought of: oh this reminds me of that section of The Age of Magical Overthinking! And that is quite impressive.

I can’t recall how I ran across this book but my library had it as a book-on-tape (ie, CDs) and I have a commute that goes faster if I’m listening to something interesting. This was definitely interesting and gave me plenty to think about. Montell has a bubbly upbeat voice and matching word choice, her book is filled with fun metaphors and sitcom-esque anecdotes, and that combination tried valiantly to keep the tone of this book cheerful as she discusses cognitive biases and how they impact people on both an individual and societal level, including some pretty grim scenarios.

Magical thinking is the idea that your thoughts alone can manifest changes in the world. Montell picked the title of this book with intention, because this isn’t a book about magical thinking, it’s a book about magical overthinking. And she does the same thing with each of these biases: acknowledge that they developed for a reason and have a reasonable place in our mental toolkit. They are not inherently wrong, but they can cause immense harm when they’re over-used or used inappropriately.

The table of contents lists the biases she covers and also gives you a sense of her conversational writing style:

  • Make it make sense : an intro to magical overthinking
  • Are you my mother, Taylor Swift? : a note on the halo effect
  • I swear I manifested this : a note on proportionality bias
  • A toxic relationship is just a cult of one : a note on the sunk cost fallacy
  • The shit-talking hypothesis : a note on zero-sum bias
  • What it’s like to die online : a note on survivorship bias
  • Time to spiral : a note on the recency illusion
  • The scammer within : a note on overconfidence bias
  • Haters are my motivators : a note on the illusory truth effect
  • Sorry I’m late, must be Mercury in retrograde : a note on confirmation bias
  • Nostalgia porn : a note on declinism
  • The life changing magic of becoming a mediocre crafter : a note on the IKEA effect.

Most of these I’ve long been aware, and none of them came as a shock, but some of them I hadn’t given much thought to before this book. And they’re all worth thinking about. This book does an excellent job of introducing the biases to the reader for further contemplation.

In cases where I had already spent a lot of time thinking about them, Montell’s discussion was still an introductory overview that didn’t cover some of the more complex aspects, which is fair given the kind of book it is. But for the biases where I hadn’t been thinking about them, this was a good jumping off point, to start the process of thinking about how I’m thinking.

The Hymn to Dionysus

by Anna

By Natasha Pulley

Ooh, Natasha Pulley just keeps getting better and better at her special talent, which is weaving truly brutal social commentary through a cover of fantasy action. I went into this one with less trepidation after The Mars House, and I’m sort of wondering if The Mars House was a setup. There are enough notably similar themes between the two novels that I began to think of them as a pairing of sorts, though very, very different in setting, character, and plot.

The Hymn To Dionysus has an even more light-hearted tone right off the bat. Our protagonist is a happy child soldier in ancient Thebes, and if it doesn’t exactly sound like a happy existence to a modern reader, well, sometimes that’s just the case with fantasy, especially historical fantasy. I mean, look at the majority of children’s and young adult media, right? The Hunger Games and Naruto, just to name a few right off the bat – full of deeply traumatizing events for young children who just sort of make do, and that’s what our protagonist does, too. His life has some downsides (murdering, enslaving, etc.) but there’s plenty of upsides, too (his military unit is like a family to him, he gets to travel and see all sorts of sights). He and everyone else in Thebes are just going along, until Dionysus, the god of madness, shows up and suddenly they can’t just go along, and the full awareness of it all starts crashing down on them, and it is devastating, for both the characters and the reader.

As if all that wasn’t enough, there are some striking comparisons to our current world. My ancient Greek history isn’t up to much, but I started getting the impression this was set toward the end of the Grecian empire, with a years-long drought devastating all levels of civil society. As field slaves run away, figuring capture and death is better than starvation on the stringent food rations, the military is charged with rounding up ‘criminals’ to work the fields for the necessary food for the city and given a quota to meet, which rang direly true.

It ends as satisfactorily as possible, more so than I’d imagined it being able to after a whole series of gasp-worthy twists, and left some scenes indelibly imprinted in my head, so I’d generally recommend this, though I am looking forward to returning to something a little more gentle next (spoiler: I didn’t do that).