Book Log 2022 #42: In the Distance by Hernan Diaz

Brothers Håkan and Linus Söderström are sent away from their Swedish home by their father, a struggling farmer, in the hopes that they'll find a better life. Joining the growing wave of immigrants to the US, they are separated, and Håkan winds up in California. Believing that Linus is still in New York City, Håkan sets out on an epic trek eastward to rejoin him. The story of that trip, the people Håkan meets, and how he deals with being alone in a new and foreboding country, is told in this novel.

To be honest, I was looking to read Diaz's most recent book, Trust, but the waiting time for my hold was months long, so I turned to his earlier novel instead. I did like it, but it did bump against my general disinterest in Westerns. Not that it's a traditional Western. But it's still a genre I'm not that interested in. To put it in context of other Westerns I've read recently, I think I liked The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu more, but liked this much, much more than The Last Kind Words Saloon.

 Book Log 2022 #41: The Wandering Earth by Liu Cixin

This is a short story collection by the author of The Three Body Problem and is named for its first story, in which mankind works to move the Earth out of the way of the sun when it goes supernova. Not all of the stories are hard sci-fi, and some have a fairly light or humorous tone. I thought they were all well-written and inventive, though there were a couple I liked less than the others, which I expect is pretty common given the mixed nature of the collection.

 Book Log 2022 #40: The Stranger in my Genes by Bill Griffeth

As part of his interest in genealogy, financial journalist Griffeth took a DNA test to get more information to help fill out his family tree. The results gave him not just a new branch to consider, but possibly an entirely new tree. This memoir documents his work to uncover the truth about his past and the pasts of his parents, biological and otherwise.

This book came out in 2016, when DNA testing was just becoming popular and surprise results were often (at least locally) newsworthy. Reading the book in 2022, when these sorts of results have become more commonplace, does threaten to lessen the impact of the story. But Griffeth uses his journalistic skills to tell a story in an engaging way without being overly dramatic. 

 Book Log 2022 #39: The Confessor by Daniel Silva

So I didn't intend to dip back into the Gabriel Allon series quite so quickly, but I needed a book and figured I could stand to catch up a bit on the series. In this outing, a Holocaust scholar is murdered in his Munich home, and Allon is tasked to find out who did it. In the course of his investigation he learns about a secret society within the Catholic church that acts to defend its reputation and power - both of which were under threat from the scholar's work. When that group sees the current pope as a threat, Allon must act to not only avenge the death of the scholar, but to prevent an assassination that could have worldwide ramifications.

Like the previous book, Silva selects an historical basis for the plot that is worthy of greater public examination. It's fair to say that the Vatican did not cover itself in glory in its response to the Holocaust and Nazi Germany. On the other hand, a secret society within the Vatican is a pretty tired trope. Still liked the book, just hope it doesn't indicate the series heading off in a Dan Brown-type direction.

 Book Log 2022 #38: We Don't Know Ourselves by Fintan O'Toole

A combination memoir and social history, O'Toole uses the coincidence of his birth and the passing of legislation to open up the Irish economy being in the same year to use his life experiences as a lens to examine the changes in Irish society. His journey from being a kid in working class Dublin to going to university to becoming a journalist and critic echo Ireland's change from being insular and church-dominated to being one of the most open societies in Europe.

In some instances the book is quite touching, especially as O'Toole shares memories of his parents and growing up in the 1960s. In others, he is searingly critical of the power structures that allowed violence and abuse to run free, from the overt violence of the Troubles to the personal violence of abusive parents, teachers, and priests that went undiscussed and unchecked. 

The book takes its title from an Irish saying, "Sure, we don't know ourselves," which typically refers to things improving to a point where you don't recognize who you are now based on where you were. What O'Toole successfully demonstrates is that there was (and probably still is, in some fashion) a cognitive dissonance in Irish society between the things that are publicly known and things that are collectively privately known but allowed to fester. This book take a fascinating and highly readable step towards synthesis.