Month: September 2025

Books Read in August 2025, part 2

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Dissolution, by Nicholas Binge

Published 2025

Maggie is eighty-three years old and her husband, Stanley, is in a memory care facility called Sunrise because he has dementia. Sometimes he remembers Maggie, and sometimes he doesn’t. 

The story opens with Maggie in a strange interview with someone named Hassan who tells her that actually the problem is that Stanley isn’t forgetting things, his memories are being taken from him. Hassan needs some information from Stanley’s mind to help him stop some baddies who are erasing Stanley, and he needs Maggie’s help to get into Stanley’s mind to retrieve the information before it is too late. 

The story unfolds in the present and the past, delving into Stanley’s early life for the seeds of his discoveries about time travel via memories. It also chronicles Stanley and Maggie’s life story and their deep love for one another. But as Maggie goes deeper into her journey through Stanley’s mind, it becomes clear that Stanley is hiding things, even from her. 

Time travel and memory are also a little mind-bending subjects, and this was a fun ride as well as a sweet love story. The stakes do get raised to “oh no this could affect the world in bad ways if we aren’t careful,” but it does not get to the “and now we’re in a complete dystopia” level that it would if this was a Blake Crouch novel. 

That said, if you enjoy Crouch, you will likely enjoy this novel, and it also avoids some of the annoying time travel tropes while making use of some others. It just depends on what annoys you about time travel if you’ve read other books in the genre! 

The Hidden Life of Trees, by Peter Wohlleben

Published 2015

Written by a German forest manager, this book is designed to evoke wonder and delight around forests and trees. Wohlleben describes trees in extremely anthropomorphic ways which I found overblown or slightly distracting at times, but I also appreciate the technical knowledge he has about tree communication and the ways that trees compete and cooperate. 

Overall I found the book delightful, and while I imagine I might have been irritated by the ways the author describes some trees as “street kids” and “immigrants,” as a lay person some of the analogies were helpful. 

Trees are pretty amazing, and I appreciate that someone is out there trying to convince people that forests are great and we should allow more forested areas to thrive on their own without our intervention and without trying to make all land “productive” for human purposes (even the language of “productive” and “unproductive” creates a value judgment that isn’t helpful). 

Part of being a good steward as a human is caring for the beautiful planet we call home, not simply stripping it for parts, and living more with nature instead of opposed to it, is an interesting topic of much discussion and debate. I loved learning more about networks of trees that make up a forest, how they coexist with other organisms, and how trees work to create a beautiful ecosystem from which we all benefit. 

Books Read in August 2025, part 1

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The Man in the Brown Suit, by Agatha Christie

Published 1924

Anne Beddingfield is at a loose end after the death of her father, an impecunious academic. She goes to London to look for work and adventure, and one day witnesses a man’s death at a Tube station (London’s underground train transport system). 

She decides to investigate, and this leads to her taking a cabin on a ship sailing for South Africa to find out more about the man’s death, which she thinks may also be connected to another death in a country house. Shenanigans ensue, of course. 

The spine of this book said it was first in the “Colonel Race” mysteries by Christie, and Colonel Race is a character in this book, but not in the way Poirot or Miss Marple are the main detectives in their stories. Miss Beddingfield is the main character in the book, and it’s a standalone story in which Col. Race appears as a background character. 

I appreciate that Christie was experimenting with style here—after two Poirot mysteries and a Tommy & Tuppence mystery, she moved on to try something else. However, I am not sure this effort at a thriller was completely successful. 

Anne is interesting, but she is attracted to men who are a bit brutal and harsh. She rejects a man who respects and admires her and instead is interested in someone who yells at her and orders her around. This preference was off-putting and I understand why this has not made any “best of” lists. There is a lot of Agatha Christie material out there, and I recommend starting elsewhere (The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Death on the Nile, And Then There Were None, and The Body in the Library, and Murder on the Orient Express are well known for a reason. I also have a soft spot for Dumb Witness—a cute dog! and Crooked House—if you want to try something not related to Poirot or Marple). 

Remarkably Bright Creatures, by Shelby Van Pelt

Published 2022

Despite opening from the point of view of Marcellus, a Giant Pacific Octopus who lives in an aquarium, this is not a sci fi book. All the other point-of-view characters are humans living normal human lives. 

The primary characters are Tova, a lonely older woman who cleans the aquarium and befriends Marcellus, and Cameron, a young man who can’t seem to hold a steady job and who is searching for his identity and some stability to escape his troubled past. 

Tova is considering retiring and moving to a retirement home as she has no one to care for her as she ages—she’s a widow whose only son tragically died many years ago when he was just eighteen. She is so focused on her lack of biological family that she overlooks the people already in her life. 

Cameron also thinks of his past as his destiny. His drug-addicted mother left him with his aunt and never told him who his father was. Cameron finds his father’s class ring and goes to search for someone to tell him who he is. 

Of course, eventually Tova and Cameron meet at the aquarium, and Marcellus helps them realize that their pasts may hold tragedy, but they can move forward together. 

While I occasionally wanted to shake some sense into the characters (especially Cameron), this was a sweet book about connection and identity and I enjoyed it.