Author: Luke Harding
Rating: 3 Stars
Review By: Shana

Solid journalistic recounting of Edward Snowden's exposure of extralegal surveillance by the NSA. The book reads well and offers some perspective that was not possible to get in real time as one headline after another assaulted the world. While the author sometimes seems a bit dramatic (which can color the objectivity of certain passages), overall the facts and events are recounted with a fair amount of balance. 

Author: Liz Jensen
Rating: 4 Stars
Review By: Shana

Another book in the long line of horror and horror-adjacent stories that casts children as antagonist, monster, an inscrutable and malevolent force.  

Author: Augusten Burroughs
Rating: 4.5 Stars
Review By: Shana

Augusten Burroughs may be my favorite memoirist. His sense of humor is ribald, irreverent, self-deprecating, and decidedly flamboyant. It is also, I imagine, an acquired taste. Here Burroughs is chronicling his alcoholism, a work-staged intervention, his month-long stay at rehab, and his subsequent efforts at sobriety.

Author: Anthony Horowitz
Rating: 4.5 Stars
Review By: Shana

Having read this absolutely wonderful novel, I understand why this is the first time the Arthur Conan Doyle Estate authorized a new Sherlock Holmes novel. Horowitz is masterful, giving period appropriate details, weaving a plot and conspiracy as complex as it is deplorable, and hitting all the right notes to make this feel authentically Holmes-ian without merely aping Conan Doyle. 

Author: Frans de Waal
Rating: 5 Stars
Review By: Shana

As usual, Frans de Waal does not disappoint. He brings his keen eye, open mind, and sense of wonder to this exploration of animal cognition, how we assess it, and how humans must overcome their own limited view of the world to craft tests and evaluate results if we are ever to truly appreciate our fellow animals. 

Author: John Markoff
Rating: 4 Stars
Review By: Shana

This is a thorough and thoughtfully written history of the sometimes-at-odds scientific pursuits of AI (artificial intelligence) and IA (intelligence augmentation). Markoff does an admirable job of giving enough detail and technical information to truly explain the scientific developments, but not so much as to make a lay reader feel overwhelmed. He has interwoven the technical feats with the biographies and personalities of the key players, as well as the dueling philosophies at the heart of how we currently interact with automated and robotic technology, how we should do so in the future, and the attendant dangers.

Author: Bessel A. van der Kolk
Rating: 4.5 Stars
Review By: Shana

​This book managed to be both scientifically grounded and rich in the personal and anecdotal. Simultaneously harrowing and hopeful. My own personal preferences and personality are grounded much more in the hard sciences than the soft, and that preference means I found the first 60% of the book much more engaging and convincing as the author spends that first part explaining the neurological, physical, and psychological mechanics of trauma and its lasting effects. This part of the book is clear and detailed, and van der Kolk’s crisp prose cannot help but to open one’s eyes to the reality of what trauma does to people. Even in this section he does not merely expound the nuts and bolts of how trauma works. Instead, he interweaves thumbnail sketches of patients he has encountered and though done in broad outlines, the stories can be horrendous.  

Author: Charles Stross
Rating: 4 Stars
Review By: Shana

​This turned out to be a clever, satirical, well-plotted SF/techno-thriller. It is the near future (well, since this was written in 2007, it actually takes place in what was then a future 2018), and the action centers on a rather unique bank heist. Of course, the bank in question is located in a virtual world peopled by fairies, wizards, dragons, and orcs. So when the police are called in, this is no easy crime to solve.

Author: Laurie R. King
Rating: 3.5 Stars
Review By: Shana

​Entertaining variation on the Sherlock Holmes canon. King imagines the famous sleuth, now in his 50s, and introduces him to the similarly gifted but unpolished 15-year-old Mary Russell. She becomes his apprentice, friend, and eventual partner.  

Author: Eric Manheimer 
Rating: 2.5 Stars
Review By: Shana

​I am very conflicted about this book. The author, a former medical director at Bellevue Hospital, uses twelve patients (himself included) as a touchstone to discuss his life, his career, and numerous social issues surrounding medical care. As such, each chapter is its own vignette, though themes and some of his colleagues and family make repeat appearances.