“Platform Decay” is the latest installment of a series of books from Martha Wells nicknamed “The Murderbot Diaries.” I read it in two days and enjoyed it, but then I enjoyed all the books in the series, although I enjoyed the earlier books more than the later ones, if I’m honest. The books chronicle Murderbot’s struggles with its new-found agency, sentience, and, worst of all, emotions. I can relate.

“A Canticle for Leibowitz” has been on my TBR pile since last month. The library repo team will be coming for it soon, so I’m digging into it next. I read this book for a high school English lit class and recall that I enjoyed it, but remember almost nothing else about it.

“Encounters in Wild America” by John McPhee is a collection of four of his more well-known books: “The Pine Barrens,” “Encounters with the Archdruid,” “The Survival of the Bark Canoe,” and “Coming into the Country.” If I recall correctly, all but the second one were required reading in my course of study in college. I read “The Survival of the Bark Canoe” last week, and started “The Pine Barrens” this week, which I’ll probably finish before I launch into “A Canticle for Leibowitz.”

I finished “Glory Road,” the second book in “The Army of the Potomac Trilogy” by Bruce Catton, last month. The book opened at the battle of Fredericksburg and closed at the battle of Gettysburg, pretty heavy stuff. After so much gore, I felt a need to set it aside, however reluctantly, and flip through a few other books in my TBR pile.

I picked up “The Best American Short Stories of 2025” on a whim when I visited my local independent book store, “A Room of One’s Own” in Madison. I try to pick up one book every time I visit, because there just aren’t enough independent bookstores around, and the few that have hung on deserve whatever support I can give them.

Half-Price Books is a chain store, but I haunt it because every so often I can pick up a gem like “The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson” for a couple bucks. Who wouldn’t want that on their shelves? Boring people, that’s who.