1. Begoña Gómez Urzaiz, The Abandoners: On Mothers and Monsters.  A wonderful book about mothers who abandon their children, and properly unsentimental.  You will never think about Muriel Spark the same way again.  Vashti Bunyan gets a section too.  Recommended.

2. Evan Gershkovich, This Cursed Beautiful Land: A Russian-American Story.  Yes he is the WSJ reporter who was arrested by the secret service in Putin’s Russia and held for eighteen months before being traded back home.  He starts off naive, but does not finish that way.  A compelling read, with good background information on what it is like to live in Russia in recent times, namely early years of the war with Ukraine.  In prison it seems he was treated better than most.  Excerpt: “I remembered what Eugenia Ginzburghad written about her two years in a maximum-security Yaroslavl prison before being sent to the Gulag — that during this period she was the best version of herself, at her most patient, kind, and thoughtful.”

3. Reinier de Graaf, architect, verb: The New Language of Building.  A fun read, with chapters on the various prizes in architecture, Vancouver and city liveability, Richard Florida, and more.  The book closes with a fun list of b.s. terms often heard from both academics and bureaucrats.

4. China Mieville, The Rouse.  This novel is 1200 pp. plus, with pretty big pages, and I am on p.350 or so.  It seems very good.  At what point can I judge it?  Can it sustain itself?  Is “ah, but it fell apart on p.1137” actually a possibility?  Past what page number is it in the clear?  I guess I will find out.