A Monster Calls – Patrick Ness
At the heart of this story is the fact that, yes, life is scarier than any monster our imaginations can come up with.
Fiction
Broken April – Ismail Kadare
A short little novel about a side of Albania travelers hopefully won’t see – bloodfeuds
Never Deal with a Dragon – Robert N. Charrette
The first book in the novelized series from the Shadowrun RPG universe
Use of Weapons – Iain M. Banks
The third Culture Novel, wherein the weapon is a not particularly nice person.
The Player of Games – Iain M. Banks
Second Culture novel was as good as the first
The File on H – Ismail Kadare
A funny short novel of the ‘strangers come to town’ variety by Albanian writer Ismail Kadare
The Lies of Locke Lamora – Scott Lynch
A fantasy novel set in a fantasy Venice, with what feels like a pretty good feeling for what medieval Venice was like
The Sparrow – Mary Doria Russell
There seems to be a lot of weird overlap between science-fiction and religion. I don’t think it always ends well though
The Humans – Matt Haig
A book whose story may be a metaphor for… something
The Things They Carried – Tim O’Brien
There is an anecdote about the acclaimed film director Stanley Kubrick that goes as follows: when Kubrick told a friend
Failures in Polymathy 