The Liar’s Dictionary by Eley Williams 📚

It has been difficult for me to read new fiction these days, but this brief novel proved to be a page-turner and I finished it in just a few days. This was not because it was a light read; the prose is built out of a complex mix of words, ranging from the mundane to the obsolete to the purely fictional. The two intertwined stories are simple, the cast of characters is small, but it is really the words which are the central attraction, often witty and sometimes lyrical. The book is not a fantasy, it clearly doesn’t fall under the category of magical realism, but the main theme is the magic of words, where they come from, and the relationships they build, both in the romantic lives of the characters inside the novel and the interaction between author and reader on the outside.

The structure of the novel is also interesting, consisting of two separate protagonists in different timelines, one narrated in first person, the other in third, alternating between alphabetized chapters, and never communicating with each other directly; instead, the two are linked by the titular dictionary, a fictional multi-volume tome which is not the Oxford English but shares some historical aspects. Part of the page turning was inspired by a desire to see how these stories resolved, and each chapter reveals a little more of the links between the two. The ending did seem a bit abrupt with sudden events which knock the protagonists onto new paths. I am inclined to wish that the author had a few more letters to work with.

Not my usual genre, but still recommended.

Book cover of The Liar’s Dictionary by Eley Williams, an illustration of a peacock with book leaves instead of tail feathers.

I think the only hope for conviction in the Senate would be if the political donor class makes it clear that they will no longer donate to those who vote to acquit. Voting for acquittal is just as bad as voting to overturn the election while the insurrection was in progress.

I got a warning from my bank that “scammers are targeting customers like you.” I guess I am now old and not too bright.

The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking) by Katie Mack 📚

It has come to this, I’m trying to read nonfiction in the hope that it will be engaging enough to avoid the siren call of doomscrolling and the continuing failures of our government (at all levels) to deal with the combined crises of pandemic, climate, and political disintegration. And if you want to distract yourself from the possible impending end of the American Experiment, what could be better than learning about the eventual end of…well, everything?

This slim volume provides an accessible and very current overview of cosmology and high energy physics, including the Big Bang, various models both standard and alternative, the key observations which test the models, and what the implications all this has for the ultimate fate of the universe. The presented options for that fate are not appealing, ranging from fiery contraction to ever cooling expansion, or possibly the sudden evaporation of the entire works due to a phase change in the Higgs field. I particularly enjoyed the discussion of the current big mysteries of cosmology, such as the nature of dark matter, dark energy, and the exact value of the Hubble constant (still a problem after all these years). The author is a gifted writer with an offbeat sense of humor (you would need that to want to write a book about the destruction of the universe) and she manages to give a good sense of how all of the puzzle pieces fit together without getting bogged down in technical details.

The best part for me was the description of recent research in the field and the expectations for future observations to help answer some of those questions, in particular those from the Rubin Observatory here on earth and the Webb Telescope awaiting launch to deep space later this year. These will allow astronomers broader and deeper coverage of the sky, and might finally nail down the elusive Hubble constant. So at least the book has given me something to look forward to other than the end of everything.

Highly recommended.

Book cover for The End of Everything by Katie Mack, lines of force with a stellar nebular in the background.