Since last I wrote about books, I finished both Order of the Phoenix and Manhattan Beach, by Jennifer Egan.

I really liked Order. Despite its length, no sentence feels wasted. The themes were far more adult and relateable to me than the other books. I don’t know if it bests Goblet for favorite, but it is a better book thant the others, and it’s always good to read a well written book.

Continuing the Potter series, I’ve moved on to Half Blood Prince. I’m only a few chapters in, but it too is tonally different than the rest of the series. It feels like a spy story, and it also doesn’t feel like it’s a story with Harry at the center. Crucially - it’s about 50 pages in before we get to Potter waiting at Privet Drive.

Outside of the Potter world, I really liked Manhattan Beach. It’s got a stock Genre plot for a noir, but Egan’s research (she gets every period detail correct), and her remarkably dexterous writing abilities elevate the book. This is the second book of hers that I’ve read (the other being her Pulitzer winning A Visit from the Goon Squad), and her vaunted reputation as “perhaps America’s greatest living novelist,” is, to me at least, well deserved. Egan’s ability to break and remold her own style is why she’s on my short list of authors that I’ll read their work, no questions asked.

Over in non-fiction, I’ve started Behave: the biology of humans at our best and worst. It’s by Robert Sapolsky, he of Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, and if you liked that, you’ll really like this. However, despite Sapolsky’s skills as a writer, this book can feel like studying. It’s not a difficult read per se, but definitely one where you want to tread slowly and grasp what is being said. All of that disclaimer to say: I love it, in large part because the research and approach here take dead aim at popping the Pop Psychology bubble (and replacing it with interdisciplinary thinking and a biopsychosocial model refined by research and evidence). In fact, you could sum up the book with this lone sentence:

It actually makes no sense at all to distinguish between aspects of behavior that are ‘biological’ and those that would be described as ‘psychological’ or ‘cultural’ Utterly intertwined.

I have a few other books on my nightstand, like Composed and Sapiens (which was a kick ass gift from my boss Julia), and will give Lincoln in the Bardo another crack later this year. Too many readers who I admire tell me that they love it and therefore I know I’m missing something. I’ll also finish the Potter series for the first time.

My plan for reading this year is also straightforward. I want to read a little - about a chapter’s worth - each day, alternating between Potter and another book or a fiction and a non-fiction after I finish Deathly Hallows. I’m not taking precise notes, even with Behave, but I do marginalia out of habit. And I’ll track it on the Goodreads app, but again, not obsessively. Just going to be steady in my approach and hopefully steady in my enjoyment.

So far, so good.