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Reading Roundup, Q2 2026 · Pick Up and Deliver

0:03
Speaker 1: Welcome to pick up and deliver the podcast where I
0:05
Speaker 1: pick up my audio recorders, I step out for a
0:07
Speaker 1: walk and deliver an episode Jude while I stroll around.
0:11
Speaker 2: I'm Brendan Riley.
0:21
Speaker 1: Well, greetings, listener. It's a lovely day here in suburban Chicago.
0:24
Speaker 1: I'm out for a stroll before it gets too warm. Well,
0:28
Speaker 1: last time I did a reading roundup was in the
0:30
Speaker 1: middle of June, and calendar wise, I should be doing
0:34
Speaker 1: these once every three months, because the idea is I
0:35
Speaker 1: talk about one quarter of the year. But I've slowly
0:38
Speaker 1: gotten delayed on the calendar by waiting about three months
0:42
Speaker 1: between to the point where in June, at the almost
0:46
Speaker 1: at the end of quarter two, I finally did the
0:49
Speaker 1: episode talking about quarter one. The problem was that means
0:53
Speaker 1: I'm like five months away from some of those books
0:55
Speaker 1: that I read, and I just don't remember them as well.
0:58
Speaker 1: So what I decided was, I'm this in the last one.
1:01
Speaker 1: I was going to do another reading round up episode
1:04
Speaker 1: relatively soon, and that would put me back on track
1:07
Speaker 1: to be talking about these games within a relatively short
1:11
Speaker 1: time around.
1:12
Speaker 2: When I originally read them. So that's what I'm doing
1:15
Speaker 2: right now.
1:15
Speaker 1: This is reading roundup quarter two of twenty twenty six.
1:21
Speaker 1: So I read fifteen books in quarter two of twenty
1:25
Speaker 1: twenty six. I'm going to talk about as many of
1:26
Speaker 1: them as I can in the time I have left
1:29
Speaker 1: on my walk, or in the time I have on
1:31
Speaker 1: my walk if I run out, I will quickly go.
1:35
Speaker 2: Over the last books.
1:36
Speaker 1: But as usual, i'll talk about the book, what I
1:38
Speaker 1: thought of it, and if there's like a thematic game
1:41
Speaker 1: you could play, or something connection connected to the movie
1:46
Speaker 1: or the connected to the book. All right, So to
1:49
Speaker 1: start with, the first book I read was Kingdom of Gods.
1:53
Speaker 1: This is the third in the Inheritance trilogy by N.
1:55
Speaker 1: Kate Jemison. This is a fantasy story, you know, in
2:00
Speaker 1: the neighborhood of something like a Game of Thrones. It's
2:02
Speaker 1: a little less epic than that in terms of the
2:05
Speaker 1: number of characters that are involved, but the swing of
2:08
Speaker 1: the story is equally interesting. The big difference in this
2:15
Speaker 1: series is in each of the three books it's about
2:17
Speaker 1: a different character. So the world we are learning the
2:20
Speaker 1: evolution of this world in which these gods play a part,
2:26
Speaker 1: but the individual characters in each book are connected to
2:33
Speaker 1: that story, but not the characters from the last book.
2:36
Speaker 1: So as you're reading, say book three, which is when
2:39
Speaker 1: I read, the main character is somebody who maybe appeared
2:42
Speaker 1: in book two a little bit, but didn't they weren't
2:44
Speaker 1: the main character. These are very well written books. I
2:49
Speaker 1: think a really interesting cosmography. But I've enjoyed each one
2:53
Speaker 1: a little bit less as it goes along. It turns
2:55
Speaker 1: out having a more connected narrative works about for me.
3:01
Speaker 1: I like the broad sweep of emotions that the characters
3:05
Speaker 1: in experience in these books. These are much more thoughtful
3:08
Speaker 1: books about the way that people interrelate than a lot
3:14
Speaker 1: of fantasy stories are. These are character driven books, even
3:18
Speaker 1: though they are fantastical, and Jemison also does a really
3:21
Speaker 1: good job writing in a way that presumes you understand
3:25
Speaker 1: the world and reveals things about the magic when it
3:29
Speaker 1: makes sense in the narrative, rather than stopping to do
3:33
Speaker 1: a bunch of exposition. It works really well. It feels
3:36
Speaker 1: very naturalistic. The magic is strong, but weirdly subdued and complex.
3:45
Speaker 1: So these are really good books. If you haven't read them,
3:48
Speaker 1: I do recommend them. Jemison is really compelling writer, somebody
3:53
Speaker 1: who is very important for the last couple decades of
3:56
Speaker 1: science fiction in America, and I'm looking look forward to
4:00
Speaker 1: reading the I think it's called the Unbroken Earth Trilogy
4:03
Speaker 1: or the Broken Earth Trilogy. The next her science fiction
4:07
Speaker 1: series that got so many ords. This is her fantasy
4:10
Speaker 1: series that was very well received. So that was Inheritance
4:15
Speaker 1: number three, Kingdom of the Gods, The Kingdom of Gods,
4:19
Speaker 1: excuse me. Next up, I read the next Hamish Macbeth novel,
4:24
Speaker 1: Death of a Gentle Lady. This is number twenty three
4:27
Speaker 1: in the mc beaten Hamish Macbeth series. You've even try
4:30
Speaker 1: to read one of.
4:31
Speaker 2: These a quarter. I really like them. They're quick.
4:34
Speaker 1: Hamish maketh character is very funny, so I've talked about
4:37
Speaker 1: them in the past because I'm trying to read them regularly.
4:43
Speaker 1: The premise is Hamish Macbeth is this sort of lazy
4:45
Speaker 1: but very smart police officer who I don't even know
4:49
Speaker 1: if it's fair to call him lazy anymore. He just
4:52
Speaker 1: likes the peaceful living of the rural community in Scotland,
4:56
Speaker 1: and he's constantly at odds with his about higher reps
5:00
Speaker 1: in Glasgow.
5:04
Speaker 2: It's not even Glasgow.
5:05
Speaker 1: I can't remember the name of the slightly big town nearby,
5:09
Speaker 1: and he doesn't want to move there. He doesn't want
5:11
Speaker 1: to be a police officer in that town, but they're
5:14
Speaker 1: always sort of wanting. He's always in danger of closing
5:17
Speaker 1: down his police station because of money and moving him there,
5:22
Speaker 1: even though he seems to be very good at rural
5:24
Speaker 1: policing in a way that the Strathbearn Strathbeane is the city,
5:31
Speaker 1: the way that those police officers aren't.
5:34
Speaker 3: So.
5:34
Speaker 2: In this one, death of a gentle Lady.
5:37
Speaker 1: Gentle Lady is here used with big sarcasm quotes around it.
5:41
Speaker 1: This woman comes to town who is who sees herself
5:44
Speaker 1: as gentry right. She is snooty and wealthy but stingy,
5:48
Speaker 1: and treats everybody as though they are somebody who needs
5:53
Speaker 1: to balance grape. She has a very nice public face,
5:56
Speaker 1: so she makes a good impression in the community, but
5:58
Speaker 1: she treats her family and her servants like shit and
6:02
Speaker 1: ends up getting murdered for it. It's a delightful book.
6:06
Speaker 1: Hamish is continually trapped by the potentials for romance. In
6:11
Speaker 1: this one, he gets entangled with a woman who is
6:14
Speaker 1: running away from abusive family, and Hamish considers doing a
6:20
Speaker 1: sort of immigration marriage with her, and things get really complicated,
6:24
Speaker 1: really quick. That is Death of a Gentle Lady A
6:27
Speaker 1: nice A good addition to the Hamish Macbeck series. I
6:31
Speaker 1: think after the last one I read, I was like, well,
6:33
Speaker 1: I don't know how many more of these I want
6:34
Speaker 1: to read? This one I was back in I had
6:38
Speaker 1: to tell myself, I don't. I'll overdo it if I
6:40
Speaker 1: try to read more than one a quarter because they're
6:42
Speaker 1: all so similar.
6:44
Speaker 2: But I would have just.
6:45
Speaker 1: Gone and read the next one. Maybe, Oh, I'm not
6:50
Speaker 1: doing games. I'm just gonna not. If I think of
6:53
Speaker 1: a game, i'll think of it. Otherwise I'm not going
6:55
Speaker 1: to do it nextcept. I had read the Dark Tower
6:58
Speaker 1: series a while ago, but I didn't quite finish. There
7:01
Speaker 1: was one book left, The Winds through the Keyhole, which
7:04
Speaker 1: was a.
7:06
Speaker 2: Story within a story kind of story.
7:09
Speaker 1: The main characters are sitting around campfire telling stories, and
7:14
Speaker 1: Roland tells a story that involves a person telling a story,
7:19
Speaker 1: and that's what this is about, all right. So in
7:24
Speaker 1: the story, Roland and the Content are crossing this river
7:29
Speaker 1: and there's a cold storm coming, so they have to
7:31
Speaker 1: get inside. And while they're inside hiding from this cold storm,
7:37
Speaker 1: Roland tells a story of when he went to find
7:41
Speaker 1: a he was sent by his father to investigate a
7:44
Speaker 1: shape changer who was murdering people. They called him a
7:47
Speaker 1: skin man, and during that sequence, Roland, as a youth,
7:56
Speaker 1: was stuck hiding in a shelter with one of the
8:01
Speaker 1: locals from the town. And while they were waiting with
8:06
Speaker 1: this kid, he decides to tell this kid the story
8:09
Speaker 1: of the Wind through the Keyhole, which is a story
8:11
Speaker 1: he knew from a day's past, So it's a story
8:15
Speaker 1: within a story within a story. The all three stories
8:22
Speaker 1: are great, and King does a really nice job shifting
8:25
Speaker 1: up and down between the three. There is some thematic
8:28
Speaker 1: overlap that goes up and down, but ultimately it's just
8:31
Speaker 1: sort of like he had another story to tell of
8:34
Speaker 1: the journey.
8:37
Speaker 2: And it worked great. So is you like this? One?
8:41
Speaker 1: Particularly reminded me of the Wizard's Glass, that's the most similar.
8:46
Speaker 1: It's like a tale of stuff happening that is really
8:51
Speaker 1: connected to Roland telling the content about his youth. So
8:57
Speaker 1: I think that works best and definitely something you should
9:03
Speaker 1: think about if you enjoyed The Dark Tower. It doesn't
9:07
Speaker 1: add a lot to the mythos of the Dark Tower,
9:09
Speaker 1: but it does make for a very entertaining story. I
9:14
Speaker 1: read the remaining murder Bot Diaries works that I had
9:18
Speaker 1: not yet read. These are two very short stories, Rapport, Friendship, Solidary, Communion, Empathy.
9:26
Speaker 1: Oh so I read Raphor and then I read two
9:31
Speaker 1: murder Bot novels, System Collapse and Platform Decay. These are
9:36
Speaker 1: the two I had not yet read, and they bring
9:38
Speaker 1: us up to the I've now read all of the
9:40
Speaker 1: published murder Bot stories. I've talked about murder Bot on
9:44
Speaker 1: here before. It's one of my favorite ongoing series right now.
9:47
Speaker 1: I love the nature of the character Wells has described.
9:51
Speaker 1: I think he does an excellent job sharing the experience
9:55
Speaker 1: of somebody who's used the world differently than the people
9:57
Speaker 1: around him. It's a nice mix of world building, character building,
10:03
Speaker 1: and action. Wells really knows how to make the scenes
10:07
Speaker 1: with murder Bot sing where they feel both dangerous but also,
10:12
Speaker 1: as is often the case with this kind of story,
10:14
Speaker 1: we really enjoy the fact that murder Bot knows what
10:16
Speaker 1: he's doing and is good at it, and so enjoying
10:20
Speaker 1: that piece of it really works well for me. The
10:23
Speaker 1: short story Rapport, Friendship, Solidarity, Communication, Empathy, it's pretty good,
10:28
Speaker 1: definitely worth reading. You can get it for free on Hoopla,
10:31
Speaker 1: or actually maybe I just found it online. It was
10:34
Speaker 1: a special digital release that was given to people who
10:37
Speaker 1: pre ordered one of the books, so it's not widely available,
10:42
Speaker 1: but definitely worth checking out if you haven't read it
10:45
Speaker 1: and you like the murder Bots stories.
10:49
Speaker 2: That's all I really have to say about that.
10:50
Speaker 1: Platform Decay was an interesting one because it takes place
10:53
Speaker 1: on this giant ring that circles the world like a ring,
11:00
Speaker 1: like we've seen sort of stories about these kinds of platforms.
11:04
Speaker 2: And.
11:06
Speaker 1: It's an enormous environment, and so murder Bot has to
11:09
Speaker 1: kind of navigate these this environment that is of course
11:12
Speaker 1: riddled with and corrupted by capitalist interest, but otherwise is
11:18
Speaker 1: pretty entertaining. So that is the three Murderbot stories that
11:23
Speaker 1: I have read recently. Next up is The Wizard Hunters,
11:28
Speaker 1: the first book in the Fall of Ilienne series by
11:31
Speaker 1: Martha Wells. I guess I was on a Martha Wells
11:35
Speaker 1: kick at some point here. Part of it is that
11:37
Speaker 1: her books tend to be shorter, so they are more
11:39
Speaker 1: bite size, and I'm listening to them all in an audiobook,
11:42
Speaker 1: so they go fast. I've previously read two different Illrian novels.
11:47
Speaker 1: I read Death of a Necromancer and I read The
11:50
Speaker 1: Element of Fire. Both of these describe sort of fantastical
11:54
Speaker 1: worlds that are on the same technological arc as our own,
12:00
Speaker 1: but also have magic, and so there's this weird thing
12:04
Speaker 1: where they're like slowly inventing machines, but they also have magic,
12:08
Speaker 1: which complicates things. The timeline on this current one is
12:12
Speaker 1: sort of turn of the century, from the nineteen hundred
12:16
Speaker 1: or the eighteen hundreds into the nineteen hundreds. They've started
12:19
Speaker 1: to have things like steamships and automobiles and trains, but
12:26
Speaker 1: they also, of course have magic, and they are being
12:28
Speaker 1: invaded by these invaders who have superior magic. They have
12:35
Speaker 1: a much more dangerous technology and magic level. Particularly, they
12:39
Speaker 1: seem to be able to capture wizards and put them
12:42
Speaker 1: into machines.
12:44
Speaker 2: That then non wizards can use.
12:46
Speaker 1: So magic becomes a much more versatile weapon, even though
12:50
Speaker 1: it means capturing and killing wizards at a shocking rate.
12:56
Speaker 1: The first one involved, as is often the case of
12:59
Speaker 1: Martha Well, is just throwing us right in the middle,
13:02
Speaker 1: and we slowly figure out what's going on as time
13:04
Speaker 1: goes by. So's particularly complicated by the fact that it
13:08
Speaker 1: takes place in two different worlds that are connected through
13:11
Speaker 1: sort of dimension shifting time travel or dimension shifting travel
13:15
Speaker 1: with portals, and one of the worlds is not one
13:18
Speaker 1: we've seen before, so not only are we thrown in
13:20
Speaker 1: the middle, we get a whole new world, but it's
13:22
Speaker 1: connected to the old one.
13:23
Speaker 2: You know.
13:23
Speaker 1: It's an Illran novel, so that one's a little confusing
13:27
Speaker 1: as well.
13:29
Speaker 2: All in although I thought.
13:30
Speaker 1: This one was really fun, and the fact that it's
13:33
Speaker 1: on good Reads called The Fall of Illyan Number one
13:36
Speaker 1: suggests to me that there are more to read, and
13:38
Speaker 1: I'm excited to do so. Once again, like the other
13:42
Speaker 1: Martha Wells novels, this was one I listened to, so
13:45
Speaker 1: definitely worth reading or hearing if you get a chance.
13:49
Speaker 1: Next up, we have a graphic novel, Supergirl Women of Tomorrow.
13:53
Speaker 1: I haven't read much Supergirl, so this is may be
13:56
Speaker 1: the wrong place to start, but I heard that the
13:58
Speaker 1: movie that was coming out is based on the graphic
14:01
Speaker 1: novel Supergirl Woman of Tomorrow, so I went and read that.
14:08
Speaker 1: This was a rollicking adventure with a delightful cast of characters,
14:14
Speaker 1: or delightful and delightfully evil. It is episodic in a
14:18
Speaker 1: way that you would expect from a monthly comic, but
14:21
Speaker 1: it does have an ongoing plot. Essentially, Supergirl is on
14:26
Speaker 1: an inner galactic bender and somebody shoots her dog with
14:31
Speaker 1: a slow acting poison, so she goes to try to
14:34
Speaker 1: get revenge for the dog's slow agony and hopefully cure
14:40
Speaker 1: it before it dies. But the person who shot her
14:44
Speaker 1: dog also steals her spaceship spaceship, so then she has
14:48
Speaker 1: to sort of take space buses kind of to go
14:52
Speaker 1: from place to place. And on top of that, this
14:54
Speaker 1: person who did this also killed this family, except the
14:59
Speaker 1: girl was gone, so when she got back, her family
15:02
Speaker 1: was dead, and so she's on a revenge mission as well.
15:06
Speaker 1: Now in the way that that is translated into the film,
15:11
Speaker 1: I heard somebody describe this as a true grit plot,
15:13
Speaker 1: which I had not clocked before, but once they said that,
15:16
Speaker 1: oh yes, it absolutely is, with Supergirl.
15:19
Speaker 2: In the role of Rooster Cogburn.
15:23
Speaker 1: So with that as the framing, I think it's a
15:26
Speaker 1: really interesting comic. It's well told, it was entertaining.
15:33
Speaker 2: I didn't really like it.
15:35
Speaker 1: I think that, like the individual episodes were fine, but
15:38
Speaker 1: I have so little investment in Supergirl as a character
15:41
Speaker 1: that her emotional struggle doesn't mean a lot to me
15:45
Speaker 1: because I hadn't been following the character, and I don't
15:47
Speaker 1: know if before this if this is a sort of standoff.
15:50
Speaker 1: They talk about it that way, a standalone, which then
15:54
Speaker 1: makes it interesting to think about as something you would
15:58
Speaker 1: encounter in a film. Given some of the response I've
16:01
Speaker 1: seen to the films, suggests that maybe that was the case,
16:04
Speaker 1: that this was an ambitious one to choose, given how
16:09
Speaker 1: many Okay, so I accept these nine things as the
16:13
Speaker 1: beginning of the premise part, which, to be fair, is
16:17
Speaker 1: exactly what they did with Guardian of the Galaxy. So
16:20
Speaker 1: the question is for the Supergirl one, how's the script?
16:25
Speaker 1: The comic book I thought, like I said, I thought
16:26
Speaker 1: was well done. I can see why people find it engaging.
16:30
Speaker 1: It just didn't really click for me. It didn't make
16:32
Speaker 1: me want to go read more Supergirl comics. That is Supergirl,
16:36
Speaker 1: Woman of Tomorrow by Tom King, Thinks by Tom King, yep,
16:41
Speaker 1: and Robin Sloane No, Tom King. Robin Sloane wrote Mister
16:47
Speaker 1: Pannumbers twenty four hour Bookstore, which is also marked as
16:51
Speaker 1: number one of the series, which means apparently there's more.
16:53
Speaker 1: I didn't know that I looked. I didn't see them,
16:56
Speaker 1: so maybe he's planning to write more. Anyway, This is
16:59
Speaker 1: a really interesting book that I think I first encountered
17:02
Speaker 1: as a audio rendition of a short story. And essentially
17:09
Speaker 1: the idea is there's this mysterious bookstore that's full of
17:12
Speaker 1: these arcane, cryptological or cryptographical books, and there are these
17:19
Speaker 1: sort of devotees who come to the store, check out
17:22
Speaker 1: the books, take them home, try to solve them, come
17:25
Speaker 1: back and get the next one, and so on. And
17:28
Speaker 1: our main character is a out of work graphic designer
17:33
Speaker 1: who sort of tied into the tech culture of Silicon
17:37
Speaker 1: Valley in the late twenty in the late two thousands
17:41
Speaker 1: or early twenty tens, so the sort of Heyday of
17:46
Speaker 1: Google craziness. And he is out of work because of
17:52
Speaker 1: the two thousand and eight recession, and he gets a
17:59
Speaker 1: job at this book it's an all nine book store.
18:01
Speaker 2: He gets the job as the night clerk.
18:03
Speaker 1: And there's just a few sort of magical, weird things
18:05
Speaker 1: that happened the books. Our owner himself is very strange.
18:08
Speaker 1: The mysterious cryptographic books and the people who check them
18:14
Speaker 1: out are very strange.
18:16
Speaker 2: And then on top of.
18:17
Speaker 1: That, our main character starts to really try to figure
18:21
Speaker 1: out what's going on with these mysterious books, because the
18:23
Speaker 1: front half of the book is actually a bookstore. In
18:25
Speaker 1: the back halfs this weird sort of lending library for members.
18:30
Speaker 1: Sloan has and evocative writing style that really gives you
18:34
Speaker 1: a sense of the space and makes the mysterious interesting.
18:38
Speaker 1: This book definitely falls into the category of like modern
18:42
Speaker 1: mythology that I think is really interesting. Particularly it feels
18:46
Speaker 1: adjacent to books that explore this question of what is
18:49
Speaker 1: the nature of books and reading and learning and language
18:51
Speaker 1: and the human mind? You know, I see a similar
18:57
Speaker 1: conversation happening toward the end of Snowcraft. The book Jennifer
19:01
Speaker 1: Government has a little bit of it, the book Lexicon
19:05
Speaker 1: has a bit of it. I think even the novel
19:09
Speaker 1: The Manual Detection by Jedediah Berry has a little bit
19:11
Speaker 1: of it. So there's a bunch of these books that
19:13
Speaker 1: have this kind of idea of the mysteriousness of language
19:19
Speaker 1: and books and encourage us to think about those in
19:23
Speaker 1: intriguing ways. So that's mister Pronumba, And of course all
19:34
Speaker 1: of that is kind of the introduction. This all happens
19:36
Speaker 1: in the first little bit and then after that something
19:38
Speaker 1: happens to throw the world into disarray and you can
19:41
Speaker 1: go from there. So that is mister p numbers twenty
19:44
Speaker 1: four hour books Storre. I enjoyed this one, definitely worth
19:46
Speaker 1: checking out. Next to read The Hobbit or there and
19:51
Speaker 1: back again. I last read the J. R. R. Tolkien
19:55
Speaker 1: sort of essential four books in middle school. I maybe
19:59
Speaker 1: read The Hobbit one more time since then. I definitely
20:02
Speaker 1: have not read The Lord of the Rings since then,
20:05
Speaker 1: and it feels like I should. So it's been long enough,
20:08
Speaker 1: so I decided.
20:09
Speaker 2: To reread them. I read the Hobbit. It was fun.
20:13
Speaker 1: The thing that I realized this time that I hadn't
20:16
Speaker 1: realized before is just how.
20:17
Speaker 2: Useless the dwarves were.
20:19
Speaker 1: That in the movies, I see them as having In
20:22
Speaker 1: the movies, I saw the Peter Jackson wanes, I see
20:25
Speaker 1: them as having some agency.
20:26
Speaker 2: I hadn't really thought about how useless they were before.
20:28
Speaker 1: But in following the narrative, the dwarves don't really do
20:31
Speaker 1: anything Bilbo.
20:35
Speaker 2: There.
20:36
Speaker 1: There's one part where they save Bilbo when the Wargs
20:39
Speaker 1: are running through the forest. They give him a lift up,
20:42
Speaker 1: but every other time it's him saving them he saves well,
20:45
Speaker 1: Gandalf kind of saves them from the trolls, but Bilbo
20:48
Speaker 1: helps a little. No, it's really Gandalf who saves them
20:51
Speaker 1: from the trolls. But then the elves save them, then
20:56
Speaker 1: Bilbo or they get captured by the goblins, right, and
21:00
Speaker 1: Bilbo helps them escape from the goblins. Did they escape
21:05
Speaker 1: on their own? Remember how they escape from the goblins?
21:08
Speaker 1: Now they think about it. Oh, yeah, Gandalf and Bilbo helps.
21:12
Speaker 1: But Gandalf helps as well, helps them escape from the goblins.
21:16
Speaker 2: But then when they.
21:17
Speaker 1: Get captured by the spider, it's Bilbo. When they get
21:20
Speaker 1: captured by the elves, it's Bilbo. Bilbo investigates, the dragon
21:23
Speaker 1: warns them the dragons coming for them. It just seems
21:27
Speaker 1: like Bilbo does most of it and the dwarves just don't.
21:30
Speaker 1: So I thought that was funny, and the dwarves are lame,
21:36
Speaker 1: lame dwarfs. I thought the Hobbit was fun to read.
21:39
Speaker 1: I enjoyed exploiting the story again. I'm looking forward to
21:43
Speaker 1: reading The Lord of the Rings. So the next three
21:45
Speaker 1: books are books that we read on our trip, and
21:48
Speaker 1: by saying, I mean my wife. Generally, one of our
21:52
Speaker 1: main ways to take long trips. Is that I will
21:54
Speaker 1: drive and she will read a book to me. If
21:57
Speaker 1: we listen to an audiobook, she falls asleep, but she's
21:59
Speaker 1: reading it a lot. She can read it and I
22:01
Speaker 1: can enjoy listening to the book. So over the years
22:04
Speaker 1: we've read many books that way. And so she brought
22:07
Speaker 1: a number of books along for our road trip through
22:10
Speaker 1: Canada and read some books to me. So here's the
22:13
Speaker 1: books read. We read two birding books, The Company of
22:16
Speaker 1: Owls and The Birds that Autubon Missed, Discovery and Desire
22:20
Speaker 1: in the American Wilderness. In the Company of Owls is
22:23
Speaker 1: a memoir but a woman who lives in a town
22:25
Speaker 1: where the they have a recurring couple or a set
22:29
Speaker 1: of breeding birds, of tawny owls, and this is in
22:32
Speaker 1: the UK. And she was just basically talking about life,
22:36
Speaker 1: the relationship of living in a town and relationship to
22:40
Speaker 1: observing nature, and a lot about owls. It was good.
22:45
Speaker 1: It got a little Both of these books were a
22:49
Speaker 1: little longer than they need to be or whatever, but
22:52
Speaker 1: it was good. It was very poetic and thoughtful ideas,
22:56
Speaker 1: so I enjoyed it. It wasn't as informative as the one.
23:00
Speaker 1: The other one I preferred more. This is the Birds
23:03
Speaker 1: that Audubon Missed. This is a biography about John James Audubon,
23:08
Speaker 1: warts and all it was. He's a complicated man, certainly
23:12
Speaker 1: has a lot of bad traits, but also kind of
23:16
Speaker 1: made the modern bird landscape the way it is with
23:20
Speaker 1: his art that ended up.
23:21
Speaker 2: Being very significant.
23:23
Speaker 1: So really interesting to think about that character and his
23:27
Speaker 1: role in the broader conversation about the world of birds.
23:31
Speaker 1: Lots of different stuff about the science of ornithology, about
23:35
Speaker 1: bird species, about the environment, about the author himself. There
23:39
Speaker 1: was some memoir stuff in there because he is a
23:41
Speaker 1: visual artist. So part of the project of the book
23:43
Speaker 1: is to do a bunch of bird illustrations of birds
23:47
Speaker 1: that Audubon could have seen but didn't.
23:50
Speaker 2: And this guy basically realizes he can't.
23:51
Speaker 1: Draw the way Audubon draws, which I think is interesting,
23:55
Speaker 1: and he says it was maybe hubrists.
23:56
Speaker 2: To try, which I liked.
23:58
Speaker 1: So all in all, while we're reading, and finally I
24:02
Speaker 1: listened to the autobook of the stand the Uninterrupted One,
24:05
Speaker 1: and that was the Delight is Lost. Well, thanks for
24:08
Speaker 1: joining me in my walk today. I hope your next
24:09
Speaker 1: walk is as pleasant as mine was.
24:11
Speaker 3: Bye bye.
24:32
Speaker 2: Brought to you by rattle Box