currently reading: Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

Best 2021: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke

 The best book of 2021 was easily Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. Exceptional world building and character development. I loved the atmosphere Clarke creates with small details. And some parts and lines were quite funny! Definitely going to reread this one.

2. Ben Hogan's Five Lessons by Ben Hogan

 I'm new to golf so I have both the thrill of learning and the frustration of being a beginner. I watched a lot of golfing channels to get ready for my first season in a local league, and played with my friends as much as I could to practice. And I exhausted every golfer around me asking for recommendations and any tribal wisdom they could impart. One book that kept coming up was this tiny book of advice from golfing legend Ben Hogan. 

It's hard to imagine that you could learn something as complicated as the golf swing from a book, but it did help. Hogan reviews his principles of a solid swing: grip, stance and posture, the first part of the swing, and the second part of the swing. I got the most out of the grip chapter and the placement of the feet. I expect I'll read this little book more than once, coming back to it as I - hopefully - improve my game.

I liked Hogan's style - it had that encouraging style that good teachers use when they are trying to impart their wisdom in a conversational, accessible way. The wisdom that comes from experience, from thousands of golf swings, could be too ephemeral to put into a book, even with the killer illustrations by Anthony Rivielli, but Hogan believes in us. He believes it is a thing that can be learned and constantly improved upon.

Of all the golfers who played every week, I came in DFL. But that didn't matter at all. I gained some XP, approached every week with a student-mind, and got a little better even if my score didn't show it. I played with a great group of guys, who were patient and super-encouraging. Already looking forward to next year.

1. The Surgeon's Mate by Patrick O'Brian

 Happy New Year!

One of my resolutions this year is to be better about logging the books I read. I read a lot of books in 2021 - and no, not just high seas adventures and Napoleonic naval warfare - but I didn't keep track of how many or what I thought of them. And the plan here is for shorter, clippier reviews. I just can't match the reading pace and review quality of say, the Dean of the 50 bookers, Olman Feelyus.

Where have I been? Ah, off doing Dad stuff, and sailing, and trying golf, building some stuff out of wood, and making a ton of new great friends.

In September I started Spanish on Duolingo, Drops, and Fluent Forever. Fluent Forever was good, but it just didn't work for me. You should check it out if you are trying to learn a new language. It starts from the nuts and bolts of the alphabet and the sounds, and does a good job teaching you vocabulary. Drops is similar, but does words and phrases by topics (the name Drops is from the way vocab words drop in from the top of the screen). I like this one for focused learning and review, like colors, days of the week, or seasonal words. But what works best for me is Duolingo. It reminds me of language class in HS and college: vocab, in context, and useful phrases and actual sentences that you can imagine yourself employing in a conversation. As of this writing I know 938 words, according to my Profile, and I feel quite...able to get along with simple sentences. Fortunately I live and work surrounded by so many Spanish speakers, and so I'm able to practice speaking and listening. All of these apps use the spaced repetition method, or process to get your brain to learn and remember. I am committed more than ever to becoming a Spanish speaker, so I feel like with all of the apps, my friends, and my work-mates, I'll finally have some success.

Most of 2021 was spent in rereading Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series because I stalled midway through Book 7, The Surgeon's Mate, and I wanted to be able to start that one over. And so I reread the first six to get reacquainted with the sailors, the ships, and the plots. There's not a lot of contextualizing the life and times of the two main characters, so we are left to fill in some blanks on our own. And O'Brian's writing style sometimes jumps narrative time or even the highlighted character. In one paragraph we'll be at Jack Aubrey's Ashgrove Cottage and the next we'll be with Stephen Maturin dashing about Spain or Ireland. Gotta pay attention!

I also read a couple of spy novels, a couple of sailing non-fiction books, a bunch of graphic novels, and two books about fishing.

But on to this year!

The Surgeon's Mate follows the two central characters of O'Brian's books, Captain Jack Aubrey and his friend Stephen Maturin, doctor, philosopher and spy. We start in Nova Scotia, where we left Maturin, Aubrey, and Diana Villiers after their escape from Boston (and engagement with the USS Chesapeake). 

This mission brings them to the Baltic where they have to do some tricky shallow water sailing in fickle winds. Their goal is to get Maturin to the island of Grimsholm, which is being held for Napoleon by Catalan soldiers. His goal is to persuade them to leave the island behind to weaken the Emperor and help the English. Once that is achieved they are to escort the troops back to England, but getting out of the Baltic is a little bit more difficult thanks to headwinds and stormy conditions. Their ship runs aground and they are captured by the French. After a brief imprisonment in Brest they are taken to Paris where things get a little more dicey, as the French have figured out who Maturin is and what havoc he has been causing for them (his exploits in the first six books). Another extremely narrow escape and they are headed back to England on a covert little sailing boat called a cartel (skippered by our old pal Babbington!).

I can't get enough of these books and I'm looking forward to more in the next 12 months. I imagine that when I finish the series I'll start it all over again.