Author: Andres Kabel

Bruce Springsteen has always tested the bounds of his brand of guitar-based singer-songwriter music. On the thirteen songs of “Western Stars,” he upends his normal tropes into a mix of C&W, Americana, and sixties crooning. It can be a shock. The first track, “Hitch Hikin’” begins with a plaintive “thumbs stuck out as I go” and an earworm C&W melody yoked to Bruce’s bruised voice, and all seems normal if muted, so that when the song concludes with a gentle orchestral wash … what the? The next track, “The Wayfarer,” turns on a full symphonic sweep and voice, honeyed up, ignites a memory of Al Martino, yet it is imbued with that Springsteen gravitas that instantly makes it memorable. “There Goes My Miracle” is direct from the Gary Puckett 60s. The title track, an elegy for cowboys, is barely recognisable as the “man who was once the next Dylan,” but it is as sweet as. The aching “Stones in My Mouth” ends with a Springsteen refrain over a long twangy orchestral section that works magnificently well. Overall, it’s an emotionally strong, adept exploration of a new palette.

Can Ian McEwan, author of some especially fine literary novels, tackle science fiction? In “Machines Like Me,” a geeky failure in his own mind, Charlie, besotted with younger neighbor Miranda, is one of twenty-five people across the globe to buy the first real humanoids. Charlie and Miranda each program half of perfect Adam’s personality, and McEwan quickly plunges the threesome into a domestic maelstrom of sex, love, a murky past, and attempted adoption of a waif. All of this in an alterna-historical setting of 1980s Britain in which the Falklands War is lost and Alan Turing still lives. The author needs to cover plenty of ground and in less skilful hands, the explication of this imagined world and Adam’s nature would weigh down the plot, but McEwan is masterful. From the outset, the core theme of the book relates to how robots, when they’re indistinguishable from humans, will use their vastly superior mental processing to negotiate a human-filled world, and I was delighted by how deeply “Machines Like Me” delves. I suspect many sci-fi readers, among which I count myself, will point to far bolder and transgressive examinations of future ages of machines, but to my mind this novel hits the spot, zooming futureward just far enough to ask questions the next generation might well face. A triumph.

Deep reading and deep reflection, leading to lyrical musing, that’s what we’ve grown to love in Maria Popova’s wonderful Brain Pickings blog. Her first book, “Figuring,” transcends the blog, with a staggering sashay through the lives and achievements of a range of geniuses such as astronomers Maria Mitchell and Caroline Herschel, mathematician Mary Somerville, writer/critic Margaret Fuller, artist Harriet Hosmer, and poet Emily Dickinson. Popova is not afraid to meander off course, nor to wax hyper lyrical, but somehow she still wrests a reasonably cohesive narrative out of a huge number of sources. A patient reader is required; sometimes the hyperbole fails, though I loved it when it succeeded, such as with this ardent sentence: “It is a life’s work to reconcile ourselves to the fact that none of the things we gain by force of effort—admiration, awards, wealth, chiseled abs—ever make up for the unbidden gifts we are given and inevitably lose.” Popova’s final hero is the one I championed most during reading, the luminescent marine biologist/environmentalist Rachel Carson, author of “Silent Spring,” the book that kicked off environmentalism. I revelled in her life, her philosophy recreated, and Popova’s paean. Brilliant, brightly brilliant.

In the How-To field, Gretchen Rubin is one of my favorites. From each of her previous books on happiness, betterment, etc., I’ve gleaned at least a couple of great ideas for organizing my own life, and I’ve always admired her clarity of purpose and thought. Now, with “Outer Order Inner Calm: Declutter and Organize to Make More Room for Happiness“,” Rubin takes on Marie Kondo. Her central thesis, that being tidy and organized, even with small matters, can calm the inner beast, is one she’s always espoused, but now she tackles it systematically. The five steps she prescribes are: decide why you’re doing it; declutter vigorously; don’t listen to others, do it your own way; once decluttered, stay habitually neat; and finally, avoid an antiseptic, decluttered life by seeking beauty for your home. As ever, Rubin doles out helpful ideas and methods, while moving the reader along the path of righteous organization. If you’ve been hankering to rectify your lifetime of hoarding, this could be a lifesaver. Me, I’ve already downsized, decluttered, and generally slimmed down my footprint, so for the first time, there’s nothing in this Gretchen Rubin book that I’ll seek to apply to my life. And I also have the feeling that decluttering is a minor topic for this imaginative life guide.

Fans of Frank Kennedy’s Asimov-league series The Impossible Future began the journey with “The Last Everything,”a breakneck adventure featuring three teens: James the hidden Jewel with hidden powers, Samantha with a hidden time-spanning past, and “normal” Michael. The finale of that first volume involved some of the best action scenes of my recent reading, but I had no idea what “The Risen Gods” might involve in terms of storyline. Well, reader, jump in for a treat, for within a page of the Book 2, we’re in the vastly intergalactic Earth of the universe-domineering Collective, and now James, Samantha, and Michael are plunged into a space opera adventure within a brilliantly conceived world as evocative as that of the master, Isaac Asimov, and as politically intricate as James Scalzi’s. Nothing is as it seems, the headlong pace sucks you in, and our three heroes evolve and mature rapidly. Plot twists gyrate, new key characters sizzle, and the action stage keeps expanding. A highlight of this year’s reading, “The Risen Gods” presages an enduring, mind-blowing, kinetic sci-fi feast. May the series’ volumes come thick and fast!