Author: Andres Kabel

Eli Burnstein’s Dictionary of Fine Distinctions: Nuances, Niceties, and Subtle Shades of Meaning is in that class of books you must have if the title tells you you must have it. Any serious wordsmith should consider this precise, deftly humorous presentation of a hundred slippery group of words close in meaning. Take the sixth distinction, ”Bay vs. Gulf vs. Cove,” it begins with a stylish, explanatory drawing (by cartoonist Liana Finck, whose contribution to the book is major) of: “Bays are recessed bodies of water. Gulfs are very large bays.” Then a drawing of a scrunchy tiny nodule of water, labelled “cove,” followed by: “A small bay, usually with a narrow entrance and sheltered by steep cliff walls.” It couldn’t be better expressed nor clearer. Number 32 is of similar orientation: “Harbor vs. Port vs. Marina.” Some of the distinctions proved immediately useful: I assume too much when I should be presuming (that is, with decent confidence). Others are revelatory. Who knew that ball = gala + dancing? Or that sarcasm = irony + insult? Or that monks live in monasteries, while friars don’t? I commend Dictionary of Fine Distinctions to anyone fascinated by word choice.

American noir novelist Lou Berney shines out from the pack (just go read his November Road, okay?) but with Dark Ride, he has sashayed to write about a meek twenty-one-year-old stoner without an ounce of violence in his bones. When “Hardly” Reed spies two young kids with clear cigarette burns on their legs, something in him awakens for the first time, and after pursuing official channels for rescue and justice, decides to bumble his own way forward. Part of the pleasure of the read is the support characters who stumble into his adventure: a geeky dork who wants to be loved, a young Goth woman working as a public servant. Hardly starts to learn, often the hard way, how to find, track, and discover, while his increased knowledge inflames his sense of injustice even further, while menace hovers and builds. Berney writes the tale close-up, in Hardly’s confused but intelligent frame, and the tension cooks and cooks toward a fitting climax. I recommend you read anything Lou Berney takes his fancy to write, and Dark Ride is an excellent introduction.

What a treat My Life in Orbit is, as both captivating read and deep illumination. Fantasticus Austisticus is the tag given to the hero of this tale and that tag tells us we are reading one of those renderings of a life on the spectrum, a kind-of-sub-genre I’ve read often for the simple reason it fascinates me. How to portray the inner life of such a hero varies dramatically from one novelist to another, and Richard Blandford adopts a persona that is dense, ritualistic (the “orbit” of the title is the hero’s rigidly set daily meander in his British village), and anxious, yet bursting with intelligence and hugely self-aware. The result is a wonderfully immersive experience, as Fantasticus Autisticus proceeds through a day like any other, but hey, it’s not at all the same, an event looms that will shatter it all, and events spiral and niggle until the hero reflects on his entire troubled-yet-triumphant life while waiting for that life to shift, to shift at last. My Life in Orbit is necessarily solipsistic but a small supporting character group is vividly portrayed, as is the hero’s humdrum yet vibrant landscape. The writing is flawless. Overall … latch onto this and revel in the experience.

Master of the space opera, Frank Kennedy has now turned his narrative focus to the murder mystery genre, albeit set on a space station in his capacious Collectorate universe. In Quiet War, Deputy Trevor Stallion, aboard the massive Amity station that houses the heart of the People’s Collectorate, battles his personal struggles and his own relentless, detail-driven personality as he deals with something rare: the death by apparent drug overdose of a brilliant young scientific student. Against official whitewashing efforts, Stallion races to uncover the truth, something far more sinister and with ramifications throughout the Collectorate. Our detective hero is a classic detective, sharp-witted, obstinate, and conflicted. The author is, as ever, a fine stylist, with a firm grip on a baffling, intriguing plot. Quiet War, the first episode of a trilogy, makes for a thoroughly enjoyable, intelligent read.

I am tiring of reviewing diet/health books but the flood of quality advice continues unabated. Dr. Neal Barnard is a physician with a prodigious output of books recommending my dietary regime of choice, the Whole Foods Plant Based (WFPB) way of eating. He heads an influential, patient-centric nonprofit. His latest is The Power Foods Diet: The Breakthrough Plan That Traps, Tames, and Burns Calories for Easy and Permanent Weight Loss. I see this book as a gentle, persuasive polemic in favor of WFPB, focusing on three properties of WFPB’s preferred foods (vegetables, fruit, legumes, nuts, whole grains): they reduce appetite (a natural equivalent of the latest pharma fad, Ozempic), trap and flush calories, and boost metabolism. As a result, Dr. Barnard and many others have had tremendous success at putting overweigh patients onto a path to a lesser girth and enhanced health. Using simple, chatty language, the author walks through the same WFPB terrain as a number of recent authors have done, but with a directness and clarity that astonished me. My understanding of several key dietary issues shot up after my read. After the education and advice, Barnard does what all diet books must do, namely presenting a huge array of simple recipes (plus general practical eating and cooking advice) intended to launch a WFPB beginner on a fresh path. The Power Foods Diet is intoxicating and, for those new to the concepts in play, potentially lifesaving.