Brian J. Dolan's Blog: Brian Dolan's Goodreads Blog
June 1, 2025
Notes is a Finalist for Next Generation Indie Book Awards!
Hey all! I'm super pumped to announce that Notes from Star to Star was a finalist for a Next Generation Indie Book Award. To celebrate, Notes is free to download until June 8, 2025.
In Notes from Star to Star Jessica Hamilton awakens from suspension in a vast spaceship, her memories gone, the crew missing. Where is she headed? Why is she alone? How did she get here? Join Hamilton as she unravels the mystery behind her mission's purpose and its origins in a story that explores the outer bounds of communications and the nature of life in the universe.
Check it out here and add it to your summer TBR list: Notes from Star to Star
In Notes from Star to Star Jessica Hamilton awakens from suspension in a vast spaceship, her memories gone, the crew missing. Where is she headed? Why is she alone? How did she get here? Join Hamilton as she unravels the mystery behind her mission's purpose and its origins in a story that explores the outer bounds of communications and the nature of life in the universe.
Check it out here and add it to your summer TBR list: Notes from Star to Star
May 6, 2025
Six books I can't believe I hadn't read yet (Lit, YA, NF)
I'm in the middle of a sort of DIY English Lit degree and reading like a fiend. So if you're looking for ideas about what to read next, here's a selection of literature, YA, and nonfiction for your enjoyment.
Literature
Plainsong, Kent Haruf: if you ever wondered what would happen if Cormac McCarthy had written the Heart is a Lonely Hunter, the answer is Plainsong. It's a spare, lucid story of several interrelated characters in a small plains town: two young boys grappling with their mother's departure; their dad, a high school teacher standing up for his principles; a pregnant high schooler; and a pair of elderly twin ranchers. Beautifully written, brief and affecting.
Atonement, Ian McEwan: Ducked this one for years because the title sounded angsty and depressing. Nope! Instead it's the gripping tale of a number of characters observing a single event from different perspectives, and how that difference has a spiraling impact over years and years when a crime occurs. Set in late 30s London, the story takes us to Dunkirk before landing back on British shores. The literary awakening of one of the characters, a 13yo girl, has a Woolfian angle that works really well.
Robinson Crusoe, William Dafoe: Now I see why this has stuck around for four centuries! This badboy was already old af when Dumas penned the Count of Monte Christo and it remains a good read. If you have any interest in adventure, apocalyptic, dystopian or anything related, this is the OG and you should know it. Theres some racism, but I love that Dafoe is horrified by Spain's genocide in the New World and expresses that horror as universal among thinking people. A glimmer of wokeness? I could do without some of the religious epiphany, but that's part of what's kept this on reading lists forever.
YA
Every Day, David Levithan: What if you woke up in a different consciousness every day, and lived that person's life for a day? A few constraints make this story work: you don't move too far geographically and you follow a rough age progression. Who are 'you' in that case? What's your gender if you occupy males and females evenly? And what happens when you fall in love? This story is cleverly executed and I found it surprisingly deep.
House Arrest, K.A. Holt -- Write a novel in verse?! No way that can work without being annoying! Oh wait, it's actually fantastic! Hey, is that something in my eye? Who's chopping onions in here? This is the story of a 13yo boy grinding through the juvie system after stealing medicine for his baby brother, who is chronically ill with a malformed trachea. Abandoned by their father, the boy's family is on the edge, but the narrative (told in the form of a court mandated journal) doesn't wallow, it perseveres and leaves you full of hope and compassion.
Non-Fiction
A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf: Another book I had been avoiding because I thought it was angsty and depressing. Wrong again! While this is basically a long complaint about how women are treated in 20s England, it's totally gripping! Woolf is yelled at for walking in the grass in Oxbridge and denied entry to libraries there because she's not accompanied by a man. While it's vivid reminder of progress over the past century (for Woolf there were zero social and cultural history works available, today they abound), for Woolf the vote was brand new, misogyny was rampant and accepted, and women being able to have property or money had occurred during the living memory of people she knew. Brief, vivid and has really stuck with me. A must read if you are, know, and/or have interest in women.
Literature
Plainsong, Kent Haruf: if you ever wondered what would happen if Cormac McCarthy had written the Heart is a Lonely Hunter, the answer is Plainsong. It's a spare, lucid story of several interrelated characters in a small plains town: two young boys grappling with their mother's departure; their dad, a high school teacher standing up for his principles; a pregnant high schooler; and a pair of elderly twin ranchers. Beautifully written, brief and affecting.
Atonement, Ian McEwan: Ducked this one for years because the title sounded angsty and depressing. Nope! Instead it's the gripping tale of a number of characters observing a single event from different perspectives, and how that difference has a spiraling impact over years and years when a crime occurs. Set in late 30s London, the story takes us to Dunkirk before landing back on British shores. The literary awakening of one of the characters, a 13yo girl, has a Woolfian angle that works really well.
Robinson Crusoe, William Dafoe: Now I see why this has stuck around for four centuries! This badboy was already old af when Dumas penned the Count of Monte Christo and it remains a good read. If you have any interest in adventure, apocalyptic, dystopian or anything related, this is the OG and you should know it. Theres some racism, but I love that Dafoe is horrified by Spain's genocide in the New World and expresses that horror as universal among thinking people. A glimmer of wokeness? I could do without some of the religious epiphany, but that's part of what's kept this on reading lists forever.
YA
Every Day, David Levithan: What if you woke up in a different consciousness every day, and lived that person's life for a day? A few constraints make this story work: you don't move too far geographically and you follow a rough age progression. Who are 'you' in that case? What's your gender if you occupy males and females evenly? And what happens when you fall in love? This story is cleverly executed and I found it surprisingly deep.
House Arrest, K.A. Holt -- Write a novel in verse?! No way that can work without being annoying! Oh wait, it's actually fantastic! Hey, is that something in my eye? Who's chopping onions in here? This is the story of a 13yo boy grinding through the juvie system after stealing medicine for his baby brother, who is chronically ill with a malformed trachea. Abandoned by their father, the boy's family is on the edge, but the narrative (told in the form of a court mandated journal) doesn't wallow, it perseveres and leaves you full of hope and compassion.
Non-Fiction
A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf: Another book I had been avoiding because I thought it was angsty and depressing. Wrong again! While this is basically a long complaint about how women are treated in 20s England, it's totally gripping! Woolf is yelled at for walking in the grass in Oxbridge and denied entry to libraries there because she's not accompanied by a man. While it's vivid reminder of progress over the past century (for Woolf there were zero social and cultural history works available, today they abound), for Woolf the vote was brand new, misogyny was rampant and accepted, and women being able to have property or money had occurred during the living memory of people she knew. Brief, vivid and has really stuck with me. A must read if you are, know, and/or have interest in women.
January 5, 2025
25 Books for 2025
Hey all, I've been seeing a lot of requests for book recommendations. As luck would have it, I read a metric faction of books in 2024, and have a few ideas fresh in my head for you. These are a mix of new and old, and include a range of genres: sci fi, fantasy, literature, nonfiction, mystery and thriller. Hope you find something good:
Top Picks
James - Percival Everett: A short, fast-moving retelling of Huckleberry Finn from the POV of Jim, the slave.
To Shape a Dragon's Breath - Moniqull Blackgoose: A Native American girl finds a dragon egg. When the hatchling imprints on her, she must navigate the strange, lightly steam punk world of the white people who control and regulate all dragons.
Sci-Fi
Orbital - Samantha Harvey: An new, ambient, literary, and very technical account of a day on the ISS, filled with beautiful descriptions of our little home in space.
The Deep Sky - Yume Kitasei: When a bomb goes off on an interstellar mission, the all-assigned-female-at-birth crew has to scramble to find the culprit.
Fantasy
The Last Unicorn - Peter S. Beagle: A giant of the canon. Just read it if you're a fantasy person.
Howl’s Moving Castle - Diana Wynne Jones: You've seen the movie, but have you read the book? There's a cool twist in the original.
Post-apocalyptic & Dystopian
Parable of the Sower - Octavia E. Butler: A teenaged girl endures a quest across a ruined, future California.
Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood: Almost 20 years after reading this for the first time I still found it fresh. Must-read apocalyptic fiction.
The Plot Against America - Philip Roth: Lindbergh defeats FDR and institutes fascism in 1930s America. More timely than ever.
The Fireman - Joe Hill: When a fungus causes people to spontaneously combust, a small group tries to control the power and survive.
It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over - Anne de Marcken: A quick, literary zombie story from the zombie's POV.
Literature & Fiction
My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry - Fredrik Backman: Charming and hilarious story of a precocious 7 year old girl fulfilling the posthumous wishes of her beloved grandma in Stockholm.
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow - Gabrielle Zavin: A video game designer struggles romantically with his colleague and childhood friend.
American Dirt - Jeanine Cummins: A middle class woman flees Acapulco with her son as a migrant after her journalist husband is assassinates by a gang.
The Queen's Gambit - Walter Tevis: If you liked the show you'll love the original novel.
A Good Family - A. H. Kim: Total page-turner about a woman unravelling the web of intrigue that lands her sister-in-law in prison.
Classics
As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner: A brief, grim, and affecting tale of a family fulfilling the dying wish of its matriarch.
To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf: I was surprised how accessible I found this story of the people gathered at a family's summer house in Scotland.
Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison: A Black man navigates an early HBCU and 1950s Harlem providing a vivid account of post war racial politics.
Henderson the Rain King - Saul Bellow: A fat, useless Connecticut WASP finds meaning living with an African tribe.
Non-fiction
Man's Search for Meaning - Victor E. Frankl: Part Holocaust survival account, part recipe for maintaining sanity in insane times. Best self-help book ever.
The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder - David Grann: Gripping, early 1800s tale of shipwreck and escape off the coast of Chile by the author of Killers of the Flower Moon.
Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI - David Grann: Could not put this down. People are horrible. When Indians struck it rich in 1920s Oklahoma, whites lined up to rob and murder them.
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft - Stephen King: Part autobiography, part how-to, this is an uncharacteristically concise book from the horror master.
...and last, I have to plug my own novella, Notes from Star to Star. It's the story of a woman who finds herself alone in space and must unravel the mystery of a strange alien communication.
Top Picks
James - Percival Everett: A short, fast-moving retelling of Huckleberry Finn from the POV of Jim, the slave.
To Shape a Dragon's Breath - Moniqull Blackgoose: A Native American girl finds a dragon egg. When the hatchling imprints on her, she must navigate the strange, lightly steam punk world of the white people who control and regulate all dragons.
Sci-Fi
Orbital - Samantha Harvey: An new, ambient, literary, and very technical account of a day on the ISS, filled with beautiful descriptions of our little home in space.
The Deep Sky - Yume Kitasei: When a bomb goes off on an interstellar mission, the all-assigned-female-at-birth crew has to scramble to find the culprit.
Fantasy
The Last Unicorn - Peter S. Beagle: A giant of the canon. Just read it if you're a fantasy person.
Howl’s Moving Castle - Diana Wynne Jones: You've seen the movie, but have you read the book? There's a cool twist in the original.
Post-apocalyptic & Dystopian
Parable of the Sower - Octavia E. Butler: A teenaged girl endures a quest across a ruined, future California.
Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood: Almost 20 years after reading this for the first time I still found it fresh. Must-read apocalyptic fiction.
The Plot Against America - Philip Roth: Lindbergh defeats FDR and institutes fascism in 1930s America. More timely than ever.
The Fireman - Joe Hill: When a fungus causes people to spontaneously combust, a small group tries to control the power and survive.
It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over - Anne de Marcken: A quick, literary zombie story from the zombie's POV.
Literature & Fiction
My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry - Fredrik Backman: Charming and hilarious story of a precocious 7 year old girl fulfilling the posthumous wishes of her beloved grandma in Stockholm.
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow - Gabrielle Zavin: A video game designer struggles romantically with his colleague and childhood friend.
American Dirt - Jeanine Cummins: A middle class woman flees Acapulco with her son as a migrant after her journalist husband is assassinates by a gang.
The Queen's Gambit - Walter Tevis: If you liked the show you'll love the original novel.
A Good Family - A. H. Kim: Total page-turner about a woman unravelling the web of intrigue that lands her sister-in-law in prison.
Classics
As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner: A brief, grim, and affecting tale of a family fulfilling the dying wish of its matriarch.
To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf: I was surprised how accessible I found this story of the people gathered at a family's summer house in Scotland.
Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison: A Black man navigates an early HBCU and 1950s Harlem providing a vivid account of post war racial politics.
Henderson the Rain King - Saul Bellow: A fat, useless Connecticut WASP finds meaning living with an African tribe.
Non-fiction
Man's Search for Meaning - Victor E. Frankl: Part Holocaust survival account, part recipe for maintaining sanity in insane times. Best self-help book ever.
The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder - David Grann: Gripping, early 1800s tale of shipwreck and escape off the coast of Chile by the author of Killers of the Flower Moon.
Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI - David Grann: Could not put this down. People are horrible. When Indians struck it rich in 1920s Oklahoma, whites lined up to rob and murder them.
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft - Stephen King: Part autobiography, part how-to, this is an uncharacteristically concise book from the horror master.
...and last, I have to plug my own novella, Notes from Star to Star. It's the story of a woman who finds herself alone in space and must unravel the mystery of a strange alien communication.
Brian Dolan's Goodreads Blog
My thoughts about books, writing, and reading.
- Brian J. Dolan's profile
- 5 followers
