I've completed 23 books so far this year, with another 5 or 6 started and abandoned. These are the top 5 so far. At least a couple of these are destined to end up on my annual top 5 list. I have hundreds of other book reviews on this site.

The Ballad of Perilous Graves by Alex Jennings

Normally, you don't judge a book by its cover, but in this case, go ahead and do it. It's a stunning book cover and a perfect harbinger of what to expect in this book. If your reaction to the book cover is, “cool,” you can add this to your to-read list.

This is a stunning debut novel. It's fantasy, set in a post-Katrina New Orleans around 2015, IIRC. This New Orleans is soaked in magic, with a series of songs powering the magic and keeping everything in balance. Except that somebody is stealing the songs, throwing everything out of whack and opening a rift that allows spirits and humans to cross a usually forbidden passage between New Orleans and its mirror in the spirit world, Nola. Nola is a city of zombie cab drivers and a magical sky car system to get around. Our heroes are a trio of three young kids, aided by some magical artifacts obtained on a quest set up by Grandma. There is also a parallel story line involving a 20-something trans ex-pat who has returned to New Orleans. He ends up on his own magical quest to find his cousin, who is presumed dead in a magical accident, but no body has been found.

There are many players in this story, and keeping up with them as the POV shifts, and following where you are (New Orleans or Nola) can be a bit of a challenge at some points in the book. But stick with it. Ultimately, this is a love letter to New Orleans, both the place, the spirit, and the music.

Enrique's Journey by Sonia Nazario

The author won a Pulitzer for her newspaper reporting in The LA Times about Central American immigration to the US. Consider this book the extended version of that reporting. The journey is harrowing, with kids as young as 8 or 10 leaving Honduras headed North to the US, often in search of their mother's, who had gone North years earlier to earn enough money to support their kids from afar. The journey involves extended stretches riding on top of trains, with young kids dying or losing limbs from a fall just about every day. They also have to dodge gangs, corrupt police, the Mexican immigration police, and legit cops. Along they way they get help from churches and locals who sympathize with their plight. Even if they make it to the US and find their family, they live in fear of being deported daily. That fear is probably much more real these days versus when the book was written 20 years ago.

You'll learn a lot about immigration, and you'll also understand why Trump's send them all back strategy can not work. Enrique failed 8 or 9 times before finally making it into the US. Conditions are so bad in many places in Central America that the risk of death pales against the misery of staying home. Most of these folks are not criminals, they are refugees. And they should be treated as such.

Everything Burns by S.A. Cosby

This is Cosby's 5th book, I think. By now, you know what you are getting in a S.A. Cosby book. It'll be set somewhere east of Richmond, VA, within a few of hours drive of the city. There will be crime. It will be violent. People will die, and those deaths will be graphic. Almost all the main characters will be black, and the plot is usually driven by systemic racism in some way. This time the story revolves around a family that owns the local crematorium. A brother is on the wrong side of the local drug gang, and his successful, rich, older brother home from Atlanta has to fix things. In this case, fixing things involves financial fraud, crypto scams, execution style murders, and people burned alive in the crematorium. At the end of the book I wasn't sure if there were any good guys in this story.

When the Moon Hits Your Eye by John Scalzi

If the news reported, completely seriously, that the moon and all known moon rock samples instantaneously turned to cheese (or a cheese like organic matrix per the official NASA statement), how would you deal with it? How would the President deal with it? Your neighbors? Evangelical preachers? And then, what if the moon turning to cheese appeared to trigger a life ending event on earth?

Can an author really did into those meaty questions with this ridiculous premise? Scalzi can. Did I mention the cheese related puns? He bounces back and forth between chapters where he very seriously considers how an evangelical preachers would explain this to the flock, and then in another chapter we spend the day with a Hollywood producer sitting through pitch after pitch of bad cheese related TV and movie pitches. It's not a traditional follow two main characters through a story book. It's more like an anthology, which each chapter considering how one specific group or person is dealing. There is a light connection weaving through the story, but I'm not sure it was even necessary.

Somehow when you finish this book you'll find yourself thinking about the meaning of life and cheese puns at the same time.

The Book of Doors by Gareth Brown

An early leader for my book of the year. It's an inventive story involving books that bestow various powers on whoever has possession. The book of doors allows you to time and place travel simply by walking holding the book, thinking of where or where and when you want to go, and walking through any door.Our heroine Cassie comes into possession of the Book of Doors and upon realizing its power, finds herself pursued across time and space by dark forces that would possess the books for evil. So time travel set in the modern day world with good and evil, all very well executed.

This was a good month for concerts. Last week, a free ticket from a friend put me in the third row at The National for Aimme Mann, with Jonathan Coulton opening. Coulton came to fame back in Web 2.0 when he did a stunt where he wrote a song every week for a year, selling them all off his website. It lead to him walking away from his web developer job to be a full time musician. And here he is in 2025 opening for Aimee Mann. His music is very humor forward, which was an interesting contrast to Mann's more somber take on the world. Alas, Coulton did not play my favorite of his tunes, Code Monkey.

Aimee Mann played the entire Lost in Space album, in what was essentially a COVID delayed celebration of the 20 year anniversary of the record. She describes the record as her most depressing album. It definitely is not get up and dance music. Alas, she did not dip into her big breakthrough with Till Tuesday, so I did not get to hear Voices Carry live.

Two night ago the Indigo Girls sold out the stage at Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens. The opening act was Katie Pruitt. Katie is an up and coming County / Americana singer-songwriter with a powerhouse voice. You can check out her new single on YouTube.

The Indigo Girls were sans band for this tour. It was just Amy, Emily, and their violin player. I last saw them in a tiny club in Atlanta 30+ years ago. The heat index when Katie hit the stage was 100F. It was down to 95F when The Indigo Girls started at 8 PM. It felt like their song choices leaned hard into their more issue focused tunes, which is not a surprise given the state of life in the US. They were fabulous, as you would expect. Alas, they did not play my favorite Indigo Girls tune, Southland in the Springtime.

0 for 3 on hearing my favorite tunes live, but still 4 fabulous performances.

3 weeks on the dole. Boredom is becoming an issue. I did take some serious steps towards self-employment this week. I formed my legal business entity, got my Federal ID number, opened a business checking account, set up an email account for the business, and built a website. I also submitted a million dollar proposal to the State of Virginia. I'd put our chances of winning at about 2%, but wouldn't it be amazing if my first win was a 7 figure contract?

The website was interesting. I spent about an hour looking at dozens of open-source templates for single page sites, and I hated them all. So I described what I wanted to Google Gemini, and it spit out the site you see. All I had to do was replace the filler content and tweak a couple of minor things. I could have built that site myself. It would have been an all day project. I feel like the people that can use AI effectively are the people that don't actually need it most of the time.

I took Friday off from being unemployed. I refused to set up any calls and just ignored my issues. There is a new dinosaur exhibit at the science museum that I want to see. However, I got confused and went to the state history museum, which was fine. It's a great museum, and I always learn something interesting when visiting. Then yesterday we made the 70-minute drive east for a day of saltwater therapy. I read 1/2 of a book while sitting under the sunshade in the pleasant ocean breeze. We need to do that more often.

This very long blog post is an interesting look at what life is like for an indie musician doing a short 2-week tour in 2025.

From 2003. The most dramatic finding from the survey was that 66.0% of surveyed blogs had not been updated in two months, representing 2.72 million blogs that have been either permanently or temporarily abandoned. . The golden age of blogging was marked my the majority of blogs being dormant. Maybe the IndieWeb is doing okay!

Field Notes, like many cool things, started out as a side project.

I'll take jobs I would never, ever, ever do for $2000, Ken.

Do not depend on ChatGPT for wilderness routing. In related news, the popular hiking app AllTrails just added an AI tool to route hikes. Someone will die before the end of the year when AI leads them into a very dangerous situation. The kind of people that would use an AI routing tool are the same people that would blindly follow the directions into danger.

I'll end with the forecast for the week. Ugh.

And that is it for this week. Remember, in a world where you can choose to be anything, you can choose to be kind.

Over the years, I’ve used a variety of plastic “tupperdors” and a small electric “wineador” humidor from NewAir to store my cigars. Most recently, the NewAir housed my loose sticks, while the plastic containers held the few boxes I’d acquired. Boveda humidification packs did their part to keep everything in good condition. Still, I’ve long desired a large display cabinet humidor — something that could bring all my cigars together in one place.

As my collection grew, the NewAir unit became increasingly crowded, and its electronics had long since failed. Finding a specific cigar often meant opening every drawer and sifting through layers — sometimes repeating the hunt more than once before finding what I was after. More frustratingly, I began passing on deals — especially on full boxes — simply because I had nowhere to put them.

For the past year, I’d been researching the new generation of electronic all-in-one humidors. These modern units heat, cool, and humidify — a true turnkey solution. After reviewing the latest offerings and comparing features that mattered most to me, I settled on the Yohtron YC-488. Yes, I went big. This luxurious unit is rated for up to 2,500 cigars — ten times the capacity of my NewAir 250, though I expect the real-world number to be a bit less.

Getting this beast into the house was no small feat. It’s bulky and weighs over 200 pounds. With a friend’s help, we managed to get it inside. After letting it sit for the required 24 hours to let the compressor oil settle, I powered it on, set the humidity level 5% higher than my target of 69%, and waited. I let it run at that level for three days to allow the Spanish cedar interior to properly season. It’s now been running for a little over week with the cigars inside, and I wanted to share my early impressions.

First off, the construction is impressive. The unit is fully lined with Spanish cedar. (Trivia: “Spanish cedar” isn’t actually cedar — it’s in the mahogany family and native to Central and South America.) The seven cedar drawers are mounted on smooth cabinet rails. They lock into place when pushed in and, crucially, don’t tip when pulled out fully. The generous spacing between drawers makes it easy to see the contents, and there’s ample room to stack boxes if needed. Interior LED strips run the full length of both sides of the cabinet, making it easy to browse — something many units lack.

The 5-liter water reservoir for the humidification system is located at the bottom of the cabinet and is very easy to refill with distilled water — no funnel needed. The drawer includes water level markings on the front to prevent overfilling. One note of caution: the reservoir drawer isn’t on rails, so you’ll need to open it carefully to avoid spills. Above the reservoir is an accessory drawer of sorts — though it seems like filler space to conceal internal electronics.

Temperature and humidity control in the Yohtron have proven impressively stable. I installed three Govee WiFi hygrometer/thermometer sensors, along with a couple of other digital hygrometers, to verify the onboard display. I found that the unit’s display reads about 1.5% to 2% lower than actual humidity. 

That quirk sorted, I was able to adjust the settings to reach an average humidity holding steady around my 69% target. The Govee sensors show less than 2% variation throughout the day, with consistent readings from top to bottom — exactly the kind of stability I was looking for. I suspect the environment would be even more stable if the humidor were fully stocked with cigars. Before using the Govee units, I had never even considered measuring humidity in tenths of a percent. The temperature in the cabinet remains just as steady. 

This inside consistency throughout the unit is aided by the four circulation fans behind the shelves, which evenly distribute air from bottom to top. That airflow ensures a uniform environment regardless of how many, or how few, cigars are stored — a critical factor, especially since I don’t plan to ever fill the cabinet to its max capacity. 

The Yohtron provides an attractive display, and selecting a cigar has never been easier. I still use the Cigar Scanner app to track my inventory and browse my options, but I no longer need to open every drawer and dig around to find my choice. Even better, I can simply turn on the lights and browse before opening the door. To be honest, sometimes I turn on the lights just to admire the cigars inside. The cabinet currently sits in our dining room, across from my bourbon shelves. Despite its size, its clean design keeps it from feeling overly obtrusive — at least in my somewhat biased opinion.

Initially, I was leaning toward one of the smaller Yohtron units — they all share the same core features. But my wife made the most compelling case for going big: “You won’t have to worry about filling it.” I believe she’s right. And now, I can take advantage of cigar deals without wondering where I’ll store new additions.

Cheers!