Robert Breen 📚 -

Stoner by John Williams

October 25, 2026 / ★★★★★, Literary Fiction, Reading

This is no suspense yarn. The whole plot is spelled out clinically in the first paragraph. William Stoner is born in rural Missouri to hardworking farmers, works a dreadful job to make his way through college, then abandons his farming roots to follow his dream of becoming a professor of literature. He has an unremarkable career in academia, then dies, making no lasting impression on his colleagues or students.

It seems like a bleak story, but here it’s the journey that matters.

By the first third of the book, Stoner has it all: a fulfilling tenured professorship teaching exactly what he loves, a beautiful wife, an elegant home with a study surrounded by his books and papers. Stoner finds himself and gets a glimpse of true happiness.

As he worked on the room, and as it began slowly to take a shape, he realized that for many years, unknown to himself, he had had an image locked somewhere within him like a shamed secret, an image that was ostensibly of a place but which was actually of himself. So it was himself that he was attempting to define as he worked on his study.

But we knew it could not last. A series of unfortunate events, most stemming from a poor marriage, derails Stoner’s life. The downward spiral reminds me of the saddest of country songs.

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Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

October 19, 2026 / Literary Fiction, Reading

This spare, reflective novel is narrated by 76-year-old Reverend John Ames, who, dying of heart failure, shares lessons from his life in a letter to his seven-year-old son. The letter takes the form of a confessional journal that reveals a man who wonders at the choices he’s made, the paths not taken, an uneasy faith, and the near impossibility of living up to a father’s expectations.

There are deeply religious themes here as you would expect from a Reverend narrator (whose father and grandfather were also Reverends). The story is thick with Biblical allusions and symbolism that a Christian scholar would quickly grasp over this unchurched reader. Still, everyone would appreciate the humanistic undercurrent that marvels at the sheer joy of being alive, the mystery of it all, and the sadness of needing to leave it so soon. Again and again, this dying man implores his young son (and us) to witness and celebrate the incredible miracle of life.

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A Walk in the Park by Kevin Fedarko

October 14, 2026 / Nature, Reading, Travel

As many as five million people visit the Grand Canyon each year, but few venture beyond its rim, and only a handful of people have trekked the full length of it. Novice hikers Kevin Fedarko and his longtime friend and photographer Pete McBride decide to tackle this challenge. What ensues is a humorous and often harrowing story of just how difficult and rewarding an adventure this turns out to be.

It’s not unusual for men on the threshold of middle age to find themselves flirting with fantasies of turning the road map of their lives upside down. But most men are smart enough to abandon those visions after giving the matter some thought.

They plan their hike in stages, beginning with an almost ridiculous level of unpreparedness. Fedarko writes with a beginner’s eye, making the writing and their ordeals all the more accessible to an inexperienced reader. Through experience, persistence, and often sheer grit, they eventually become competent hikers and come to see the sublimity of the experience.

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Blindness by José Saramago

October 4, 2026 / Literary Fiction, Reading

What would happen if blindness became a contagious epidemic? That’s the premise of this highly allegorical novel by the Nobel Prize-winning José Saramago. We learn how fragile the underpinnings of civilization really are, how ugly humans can be to one another when hungry or when given power, how quickly we adapt to even the most inhuman conditions.

This is a bleak book with a bleak message: the government, the church, all of us are blind to the misery around us. We turn a blind eye to injustice, prejudice, cruelty, hypocrisy. We see, but we do not observe.

I don’t think we did go blind, I think we are blind, Blind but seeing, Blind people who can see, but do not see.

Two unusual literary techniques reinforce the message of complicity: none of the characters are named, implying both anonymity and universality; and dialogue is presented in long run-on sentences without any attributions, as if it doesn’t matter who is speaking. It is all of us.

Despite the grim conditions of this dystopian novel, an underpinning of generosity and family allows the main characters to navigate this unthinkable world with their humanity intact. It’s this kindness in a miserable world that gives any meaning to an otherwise inhuman existence.

If there’s a moral here, it’s that our civilization hinges not on the resources of the government or the church, but on ourselves and how we take personal care of one another.

Rage by Stephen King

September 30, 2026 / Horror, Reading

In a quest to read every single novel that Stephen King ever wrote, there must come a time when you reach the very dregs. I found the bottom with Rage. King wrote the first draft of this one in high school and later dusted it off and published it under the Richard Bachman pseudonym. It tells the story of a troubled high school senior who brings a gun to class, kills two teachers, then takes a classroom of students hostage.

Published almost 50 years ago, it was the first popular novel to introduce student-led gun violence. After actual school shootings started to happen, and this book was found in the possession of several pioneering shooters, King allowed the book to fall out of print. The only way to read this book now is to find a rare copy online or in a used bookstore.

And that’s probably for the best, and not simply because of the gruesome subject matter. The book is written from the perspective of the shooter, Charlie Decker. King climbs inside the mind of this extremely gifted, terribly abused student and proceeds to rationalize his actions, first torturing school officials and certain students, and then seeming to rally his fellow classmates to his side in a bizarre and violent conclusion that felt like a feeble retelling of The Lottery by Shirley Jackson. Indeed, the book feels like something written by an angsty high school student. If it weren’t for the byline, I would have stopped reading this after ten pages.

Joe Country by Mick Herron

September 22, 2026 / Reading, Spy-Detective

The sixth volume of the wonderful Slow Horses saga by Mick Herron. Jackson Lamb is as disgusting and brilliant as ever, and the Slow Horses must work together to save one of their own. Each character in these books battles their own inner demon: an addiction, the loss of a loved one, a betrayal, or a past mistake that cannot be undone. As usual, they are continually undermined by the senior leaders of the intelligence service they serve. This one is the darkest of the books so far, with an ending that hints at even more trouble ahead for the Slow Horses.

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The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen

September 20, 2026 / Reading, Travel

In 1972, Peter Matthiessen lost his wife to cancer. The following September, he embarked on a quixotic trek across the Himalayas to catch a glimpse of the elusive Snow Leopard. At one level, this book is a day-by-day account of that journey written feverishly within his tent each night, amidst rain and mud, ice and snow. We soon understand this is ultimately a spiritual quest for Matthiessen as he processes his grief. He relates lessons of Zen Buddhism and shares flashbacks to the time leading up to his wife’s death that I found both instructive and moving.

This is a difficult book to read on a couple of levels. There is a lot of unfamiliar vocabulary for places and plants and animals that I could never quite penetrate even after three hundred pages of practice. The journey itself is a slog, with either waiting for weather or supplies, or feeling utterly exhausted while hiking. And Matthiessen himself isn’t very likable. He often complains about the porters and sherpas who carry his supplies, or the ignorance of the local people he meets. He left his eight-year-old son behind, who must have been awash in grief for his dead mother (what kind of father does that?). He is so caught up with capturing everything he experiences in his journal, then complains of the elusiveness of enlightenment.

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The Far Side of the World by Patrick O’Brian

September 6, 2026 / ★★★★★, Nautical Fiction, Reading

The Aubrey-Maturin seafaring novels by Patrick O’Brian are so dear to me. I’ve read the complete 20-volume set three times, and I’m slowly working my way through a fourth reading, which aficionados call a circumnavigation. I discovered these novels shortly after O’Brian passed away in 2000 and have been reading them almost continually ever since.

In this tenth volume, The Far Side of the World, O’Brian found his stride. The nine previous books created such a rich tapestry of backstories for the beloved characters that here they simply shine in their strengths and lovable weaknesses. There are storms, crew troubles, and miraculous rescues, all aboard the dear old Surprise, a ship that features prominently in most of the series.

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Tinkers by Paul Harding

August 15, 2026 / Literary Fiction, Reading

I can’t decide what to make of this first novel by Paul Harding, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 2010. Harding is a graduate of the famed Iowa Writer’s Workshop, and there are similarities in style and tone to Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping, though perhaps lacking that book’s substance and depth.

The book begins with the hallucinatory thoughts of a dying man surrounded by family, but soon widens to include his father and grandfather. Mental illness weaves through this family, and we observe in touching vignettes the pain and beauty that accompany a different way of seeing the world.

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Being Mortal by Atul Gawande

August 6, 2026 / Reading, Science

A sobering look at the inevitable and merciless certainty of our mortality. No matter how much we exercise or how carefully we eat, death is unavoidable. Further, the process of getting old is not for the faint of heart. A quote from Philip Roth starkly clarifies our predicament: “Old age is not a battle. Old age is a massacre.”

The point of Being Mortal is not to frighten, but instead to invite us to open our minds about a topic most of us would rather ignore. Alongside his talents as a writer, Gawande is foremost a practicing surgeon. He uses his personal medical experience to help us think ahead about our eventual demise. His advice runs contrary to the medical establishment. Doctors are good at fixing specific ailments, he says, but often do more harm than good with a dying patient.

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