I gave three books a 9 rating:
- The 1991 Argentine historical novel Against the Inquisition, a true story about Jews in Chile in the early 17th century
- Michael Pollan’s How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence
- The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life, argues that evolution is more complex than we thought, and that major changes have occurred by components from one organism migrating into the cells of another and being incorporated and then reproduced.
A bunch of 8s, including a notable Nigerian novel by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie about the Biafran war, Elana Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels, a couple more by Pollan, some Haruki Murakami.
| Against the Inquisition | Aguinis, Marcos | 9 |
| How to Change Your Mind | Pollan, Michael | 9 |
| The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life (a) | Quammen, David | 9 |
| Half of a Yellow Sun | Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi | 8 |
| The Savage Detectives (a) | Bolaño, Roberto | 8 |
| The Encyclopedia of Cacti | Cullmann, Willy et al. | 8 |
| My Brilliant Friend (a) | Ferrante, Elena | 8 |
| The Story of a New Name (a) | Ferrante, Elena | 8 |
| David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants (a) | Gladwell, Malcolm | 8 |
| Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin (a) | Gould, Stephen Jay | 8 |
| Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics | Greenblatt, Stephen | 8 |
| The Wizard and the Prophet (a) | Mann, Charles C. | 8 |
| Early life : Evolution on the Precambrian Earth | Margulis, Lynn | 8 |
| Moby Dick (a) | Melville, Herman | 8 |
| After Dark (a) | Murakami, Haruki | 8 |
| Sputnik Sweetheart (a) | Murakami, Haruki | 8 |
| Cooked (a) | Pollan, Michael | 8 |
| The Botany of Desire (a) | Pollan, Michael | 8 |
| Desert Queen: The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell | Wallach, Janet | 8 |