2026 #31 Artificial Condition - Murderbot Diaries #2 (Wells)

 

Artificial Condition by Martha Wells
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I listened to the Graphic Audio version, and unlike others, I didn't care for it. The underscoring felt very gratuitous, although some of the foley and fight sequences reminded me of old radio shows (in a charming way).

Murderbot seeks out the mysteries of its past and finds a friend-bot ("ART"). I liked the premise, and the human characters are more dimensional. We also finally get to meet a "Comfort Unit" (aka sexbot). Definitely a bit more culture-building in this one, so I'm in. There's a lot of techno-speak, which I found tiresome in certain places and probably would have skipped over pages had I been reading it in hard copy.

While I did not enjoy the reading as much, I thought the story overall was more interesting and we certainly get a better sense of all that Murderbot is negotiating as it tries to hone its own identity and autonomy. 3. 75 stars


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2026 Reading Goals 31/60

#192030 Challenge: 2018

2026 #30 An Experiment in Criticism (Lewis)

 

An Experiment in Criticism by C.S. Lewis
My rating: 5 of 5 stars


"In reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself," C.S. Lewis offers after 140 pages of the most wonderfully vexing postulations regarding that which is "literary" and "unliterary." This is definitely a "MBF" -- a "must-be-finished" book. I've read too many reviews that seem to have bristled at the beginning and either stopped reading closely or just stopped reading altogether. To be sure, Lewis's tone befits his Oxford professorship, but there are so many moments when his tongue is planted firmly (but elegantly) in his cheek, and his provocations are intended to prove perhaps his largest point: literature is to be received, not used.

"Using", he says, is "inferior to 'reception' because art, if used rather than received, merely facilitates, brights, relieves or palliates our life, and does not add to it." (88). Lewis advocates deep reading, a "resting" in the literature, rather than using it as an opportunity for "castle-building" as he calls it. A good book coexists in a rather symbiotic relationship with good reading. The work should work on us, rather than the other way around. He writes, "In good reading there ought to be 'no problem of belief' meaning we should be able to receive that with which we do not agree, thereby possibly entertaining a time and space otherwise when we might agree.

I think he loses people with his attempts to parse "literary" from "unliterary" in the first few chapters. But he offers nuance: "Let us be quite clear that the unliterary are unliterary not because they enjoy stories in these ways, but because they enjoy them in no other." (38) Here he refers to a desire for excitement and an arousal of certain emotions, which he is not condemning, as I understand it, but offering that it is only part of literary engagement.

Lewis has one moment that I felt was truly classist: he decides that grocers and gardeners will have read few books, but perhaps have seen more films (76). It is an unfortunate moment in a book that otherwise seems to have a fair amount of equanimity, versus a critique (in the negative sense). "The literary," he notes, "sometimes 'use' poetry instead of receiving it. They differ from the unliterary because they know very well what they are doing and are prepared to defend it." (100). But he also, supporting his "good reader" theory, offers that there are really, at the end of the day, no so-called "guilty pleasures": "If ... we found even one reader to whom the cheap little book with its double columns and the lurid daub on its cover had been a lifelong delight, who had read and reread it, who would notice, and object, if a single word were changed, then, however little we could see in it ourselves and however it was despised by our friends and colleagues, we should not dare to put it beyond the pale." (108)

If you are a reader (whatever that means to you), it is worth spending some time with what Lewis had to say. It has made me re-evaluate why I have a numeric reading goal every year. I know part of that is there is SO MUCH I wish to read and I am extrinsically motivated when my time is not always my own. But Lewis has given me a lot to think about in terms of the reading experience. If he irks you at the beginning, read more slowly. Underline. Receive what he is actually saying. You may come away from it still irritated and thinking he's a pretentious prig, but you might find some value there too.

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2026 Reading Goals 30/60

#192030 Challenge: 1961

TYPTBR 15/18

#2026 #29 All Systems Red - Murderbot Diaries #1 (Wells)

 

All Systems Red by Martha Wells
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I absolutely see why this popped up in my algorithms after I finished (and LOVED) Andy Weir's Project Hail Mary. I'd heard good things about this series outside of that, so I figured I'd give it a try here at the end of when I actually have a life before school begins. I won't judge it against PHM, especially since it is a novella. Both do share a similar sense of humor.

It is entertaining! I was disappointed in the ending only because I was enjoying what developed between the bot and the crew. The short length was a bit of a let down in that regard. It is a very interesting negotiation of non-human sentience, and I applaud that. Kevin R. Free's reading was quite excellent, and Dr. Mensah became my favorite character. I definitely enjoyed it enough that I've already started no. 2 Artificial Condition, but the only one available via Libby was the Graphic Audio production and I'm already not excited about the abundance of underscoring...

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2026 Reading Goals 29/60

#192030 Challenge: 2017

2026 #28 Small Things Like These (Keegan)

 

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The writing here is beautiful. Keegan manages to do so much with just a few words. There's little in the way of hyberbole or superlatives, but there is a clean rhythm that is almost poetic and draws you in. It is a touching story, but also relatable in how most of us face moral quandaries at one point or another. Bill Furlong is just a coal merchant delivering fuel to a Magdalene convent laundry in Ireland during the 1980s. But over just a few pages (it is a novella), we start to walk with him. We feel what he feels, and we see what he sees. You can almost feel the knotted tension forming in the pit of his stomach as he grapples with what he's witnessed at the convent. This is a very good book about the "small things" that can be opportunities to test or own moral courage.

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Challenges 

2026 Reading Goals 28/60

2026 #27 The Queen of the Valley (Hughes)

 

The Queen of the Valley by Lorena Hughes
My rating: 3 of 5 stars (3.5)

I picked this book somewhat at random for the Read Around the World Challenge. This historical backdrop is the 1925 earthquake in Cali, Colombia, so starting it just two days after the awful earthquake in Colombia on August 10th this year felt rather eerie. The book is engaging with a reasonably interesting story/mystery, but I wonder if I would have connected better if I had read the first book, The Spanish Daughter, which introduces the character Puri (short for Purificación). Reading this one without the first didn't thwart enjoyment, but the (minimal) references to the first book would have been more meaningful. How Puri winds up "as a nun" might have been more believable, as well.

The other major context for the story is a cholera outbreak, and Hughes deftly handles descriptions in the cholera ward without sensationalizing the misery. The female characters are particularly strong, and Lucas is nicely complex. Martin is known mostly through the lens of those in his orbit, and I wish that Farid had his own chapters too. There's a web of entanglements that at times was hard to keep track of (Angélica, in particular, felt a bit happenstance and underdeveloped), but keeping the main narrative focused on just three characters (Lucas, Puri, Camila) helped. The circumstances of the disappearance of a certain character also felt a bit patched together near the end.

Overall, a solid read and good piece of historical fiction.

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Challenges 

2026 Reading Goals 27/60

Read Around the World: Ecuador (4/14 for South America)

2026 #26 The Opposite of Cheating (Gallant/Rettinger)

 

The Opposite of Cheating: Teaching for Integrity in the Age of AI by Tricia Bertram Gallant
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is particularly useful for early-career teachers (or on the flip side, late-career teachers who have upheld the status quo in their teaching for the last twenty years) but almost any teacher in higher ed can benefit from parts of this book. Despite the subtitle, it isn't particularly "AI" oriented, but this is somewhat understandable because it is very difficult to keep up with AI as a specific context.

The authors' primary aim is to advocate for a culture "accepting of errors." This framing of "cheating as error-making" can be a bit tough to embrace when we picture in our mind's eye the student who seems to cheat because they believe they can get away with it. Gallant and Rettinger offer that we should try, however, to bring nuance to our understanding of cheating and resist painting with too broad a brush.

To that end, the first chapter is a great overview of types of neutralizing behaviors and rationales for cheating, and looks into how "help" and "assistance" are tricky words in this world of AI (and also a variety of online "services" (legal and not)). Chapter Two's emphasis on communication is vital, underscoring that is our job to make a syllabus meaningful and relevant, and there's considerable emphasis on developing "actionable and measurable learning objectives." A later discussion of rubrics is particularly welcome: "Creating a full rubric can and should take time and effort" the authors opine, and I'm certainly glad to see this in an age of Khanmigo-generated rubrics being used by brand new faculty who aren't even sure what a rubric is. The authors do support using a ChatBot to (help) generate a rubric, but their Chapter Four should be required reading before anyone attempts using chatGPT or Khanmigo for making a rubric for the first time.

I was a bit surprised at the credit for Universal Design for Learning being given to Burgstahler and Cory rather than David Rose (and no mention of CAST's Guidelines), although their 2008 book certainly was a crucial contribution to UDL as it applies in higher ed. There is also not a whole lot about alternative grading, save for a brief discussion of mastery grading, specifications grading, and ungrading. That said, it isn't really within the scope of the book to dig in to how alt-grading might help deter cheating, but it is highly relevant to the general principles of integrity that the authors support.

I was surprised by the multiple references to "contract cheating" which made me consider that it may be more prevalent than I thought. But ultimately the book isn't about types of cheating as much as how to create a better culture within a class to discourage it, and this includes how to respond when it does happen. The authors encourage a balance between protecting assessment integrity (Chapter Six) and teaching ethical thinking to our students. I wished that the latter had more examples and case studies reaching across a broader spectrum of disciplines, but what is there is inspiring and offers interesting models to explore. Teaching ethical thinking is largely teaching critical thinking and offers a student an opportunity to examine the false dichotomy of good v. bad choice. Instead, borrowing from Rushworth Kidder, that choice is reframed into a "trilemma" and the consideration of what lies outside of the dichotomy is where the learning happens.

The book is well-researched, but more anecdotal in tone, which gives it an arguably more accessible voice, especially for those more interested in practice than theory. But the citations are there for further reading when needed.

Ultimately, the authors successfully frame academic integrity as something that needs to be injected into course design, assessment, pedagogy, institutional policy, etc. They do put some onus on institutions, and advocate that faculty should be proactive in impacting institutional policy, but there isn't a whole lot of guidance as to how to go about this. Even if an institution has "teeth" in their follow through of their academic integrity policies, the authors don't really address the very real economic motivations that are perhaps a stronger consideration at the institutional level and may be part of the issue of disconnect between academic integrity policies and what faculty try to uphold.

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Challenges 

2026 Reading Goals 26/60

2026 #25 The Caine Mutiny (Wouk)

 

The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk
My rating: 4 of 5 stars


One of the remarkable things about this book is that it isn't really about a mutiny. Yes, there is mutinous behavior, but I'd almost classify it more as a coming-of-age story of Willie Keith. It isn't your average war novel either, although it takes place during WWII. Wouk manages to focus on the world of the USS Caine, a clunky older minesweeper, commanded by various characters through whom we get to see Willie grow. There's also a love interest, but even there, the complexity and nuance sets this novel apart. The
The only thing that keeps it half a star away from 5 for me is the Navy jargon. If you aren't familiar with the various nautical and military terms applied to ships and the like, some of it can feel like a slog. But I'll also say that it was interesting enough that I looked up a good bunch of information on minesweepers and was happy to learn. Lieutenant Commander Queeg (played by Humphrey Bogart in the film), is an excellent character in that he navigates that in-between space between villain and flawed human--something Willie has to reckon with, alongside some of his shipmates.
For those interested in the real-life inspirations: https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-...

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Challenges 

2026 Reading Goals 25/60

#192030 Challenge:1951

Pulitzer Winners: 18