Last year I read 123 books, 22 more than in 2022. Bizarrely, my total for 2021 was also exactly 123 books read.

First as a man, then as a woman, Jan Morris has travelled the world and written about it, showing it to readers through her unique vision. Her journalistic exploits include covering the first conquest of Mt. Everest, the 1956 Sinai War, as well as the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem, the South African Treason Trial involving Mandela, the construction and destruction of the Berlin Wall, and the 1997 British handover of Hong Kong to China when the lease had expired.

Rovelli writes with enthusiastic reverence about our amazing universe. Marvelling at our scientific advances, he emphasizes the recurring need to change our minds about what we thought we knew. This is challenging, “and the difficulty lies not so much with the new concept as it does with becoming liberated from old ones.”

I knew David Cornwell—the man the reading and moviegoing world knows as John Le Carre—worked as a spy and a diplomat, but I knew nothing about his family. This series of vignettes, published when he was 85, provide some wonderful glimpses into his life.

“If a tech company is not trying to sell you a product, you are the product they are selling.” The setting of this tale is up to the minute, and like other great contemporary mysteries, it comments on society as currently constituted.

Among the chief delights of reading Osman’s work are his fresh turns of phrase and flights of fancy. Chris, the local policeman is bitter after being ruthlessly sidelined by the high-handed SIO Jill Regan of the National Crime squad. Fantasizing about solving the murder ahead of both Regan and the Thursday Murder club, he imagines retired MI6 officer Elizabeth and her three intrepid pensioner friends “starting a gunfight in a hollowed-out volcano.”

Yesterday afternoon, I sat down on the back porch to take a quick peek inside Uncontrolled Flight before plunging back into some editing work I needed to finish. At 11 pm, I was in the same chair, reading the last page of the novel. 

…Indeed, existentialism heralded all kinds of social revolutions. Along with producing Beauvoir’s foundational feminist text, it “offered gay people encouragement to live in the way that felt right, rather than trying to fit in with others’ ideas of how they should be.” It also appealed to “those oppressed on grounds of race or class, or…fighting colonialism…a change of perspective.” While he worked out his philosophy of non-violent resistance, Martin Luther King read Sartre, Heidigger, and Paul Tillich.

If today’s horoscope is any indication, AI can’t quite replace human writers yet. Witness the scattershot list of purportedly flattering adjectives describing today’s birthday baby in the Sun’s Astrology column. Concise? maybe… Aggressive… well, okay; sadly, these days that seems to be something that many aspire to… Being labelled passionate is unlikely to raise any ire. But sumptuous?

In March, Eleanor Catton visited Vancouver to converse with Bill Richardson about Birnam Wood. Lesley Hurtig, artistic director of the local Writer’s Fest, characterized the novel as “a stunning takedown of late capitalism,” and Bill Richardson found many parts of it laugh-out-loud funny.

Some say ruthless cutting is a sign you’re a real writer. According to novelist Bianca Marais, other milestones are finding beta readers to critique your drafts, and critiquing the work of others. Reading other people’s unpublished manuscripts can reveal their uncut darlings, which inspires me to find and cut my own.

Scott J. Shapiro is a Yale professor of law and philosophy. For a change of pace, he directs the Yale Cybersecurity Lab. Built around the historic “five extraordinary hacks” mentioned in the sub-title, the book is full of charm and humour. It is also strewn with fascinating bits of historical and sociological detail.

Books are doorways into other lives. Through her non-fiction, I’ve been visiting the life of this Irish journalist, who came to professional writing after other lives as a university lecturer and a television producer for BBC and RTE.

As usual, Khan delivers a fast paced story even as he grounds us in a post-independence Bombay we can see, hear, feel and smell. The characters are interesting and believable. Add a few sly cultural references, some historic detail, and a couple of philosophical questions, and presto — an unputdownable book .

Author Joseph O’Connor grew up near the house where Synge lived with his mother, and was strongly aware of its atmosphere — redolent of Edwardian Dublin. Though the story of the star-crossed theatrical lovers is well-researched, Ghost Light is entirely a work of fiction and takes “immense liberties with fact.” The author even apologizes to the “noble ghosts” of Lady Gregory, WB Yeats, and Sean O’Casey for “not changing the names of the innocent.”

In promulgating his original and unorthodox philosophy, Tim Freke reminds us of Einstein’s idea that the human mind is incapable of understanding the universe. Even so, Freke puts forth some fascinating and credible thoughts on the nature of reality. In doing so, he addresses some of the pressing moral problems of our time and offers great hope.

In the second of this series, ex-Kolkata police officer Kamil Rahman is still working illegally in London, but he’s gone up in the world. Formerly a lowly waiter in Tandoori Knights, he is now a cook. There are other changes as well. His friend and roommate Anjoli is running the restaurant while her parents are away on a long visit to India. When Kamil falls for a beautiful green eyed nursing student, the duo of amateur investigators expands to form a triumvirate: “the cook, the nurse, and the restauranteur.”

Kamil Rahmin, recently arrived in London from Kolkata, is staying with friends in Brick Lane and working as a waiter in their restaurant. “Tandoori Knights,” the sign proclaims, “Keep calm and Curry on!”

In Durton, everyone knows everybody else, people are unwilling to give up secrets to an outsider. In the face of this resistance, Michaels must unearth a variety of unsavoury truths to get to the bottom of what happened to the missing child.