I spent June organising battles, running an intense experiential learning course with great people (https://exp.camp/) and, well, working. I read just two books in June – so connecting June with July seems logical. Even if big part of July was spent at pair.camp, instructing, learning, walking around English countryside, I managed to do _some_ reading. After some thinking, Museum of Innocence and Self Compassion stick out as _interesting_.

Black Mouth

Ronald Malfi

I am normally an enjoyer of the classic horror scheme “let´s confront some adults with their teen crimes”. But I have a limit. Black mouth is so schematic, so empty, without any thrills and with an ending so overblown that it is just extremely boring. It is not “so bad it´s good”, it´s just offensively bad.

Solaris

Stanisław Lem

I re-read Solaris to prepare for EXP (some activities were inspired by some of the vibes) and I found out that it is still overall a great book, but its impact was very much limited this time around. Maybe it is knowing the point, maybe the long descriptive parts did it, maybe the world changed too much and contact with completely alien, seemingly cold intelligence communicating through fulfilling our wishes is now too real.

Still a clear recommendation though.

The Museum of Innocence

Orhan Pamuk

I loved it! Picked it up after visiting the accompanying exhibition in Prague: which is an experience on its own, a collection of memorabilia, art and random little props creating a simulacra of a whole fake life.

An upper class Turkish man destroys his own life by love obsession, slides into madness and obvious toxic behavior and then loses it all: to become laser focused on keeping memories of trivial things.

The main character being absolutely insufferable is the point here: and it is a great dive into madness, relationships and Turkey in the last fifty years. It will not be to everyone´s taste, but after seeing the actual exhibition I had to read it and it was well worth it. But it will be very, very controversial for people and following a horrible person through infidelity, sleaze, pain and cringe is not the most comfortable pastime, but well worth it.

Why the West Rules—for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future

Ian Morris

Longer review here https://www.dfw.cz/2025/07/09/why-the-west-rules/.

The Great Railway Bazaar: By Train Through Asia

Paul Theroux

Theroux spent almost a year practically living on trains, with only brief breaks for lectures, sightseeing, and the occasional adventure—and for much of the journey he absolutely hated it. From the very beginning he comes across as a sarcastic, unpleasant guy who sees more problems than beauty in the world around him.

When something exceptionally beautiful does shine through, it shines all the more. The fact that throughout the journey he staggers through frustration, exhaustion, alcohol, and at times outright sleaze (prostitution and minor infidelities), while his marriage slowly falls apart through small hints and signals, is a layer that can be uncomfortable—but it is authentic and brutally honest. Theroux is not a pleasant, likeable guy who will inspire you with the beauty of the world and charming adventures. He is a sweaty, angry man who hates most of his fellow travelers, falls into more than one fit of rage, and has many things go wrong along the way. Precisely because of that, once I got past the initial irritation, I ended up enjoying it a great deal.

(I also recommend reading the later interviews with him about the book—they add some useful context.)

Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself

Kristin Neff

Read in a day, needed to think about it for a week. In the end, I am not sure if I was able to finally mend some of my ways and get more compassionate outlook on myself and life. Some super quick take aways:

Self-compassion is much more practical and honest and something very different than self-esteem. Being honest with “you fucked up” is good, accepting the loss and moving on with “that happens, lets try more next time” is cool.

Relating differently to pain is not going to change how much pain is there, but how you can work with that. This simple stoic take away was something I did not expect in a book on self-compassion, cool.

Relating to other people´s pain is something that is mostly quite easy for me on rational level: being able to relate to mine pain is very different, but the book helped me a bit to bridge the gap.

For learning and growing and updating, self compassion is usually much better than rigorous self-critique.

Of course, somebody could pick these up randomly in life or by other, deeper readings. But I found value here.

The Great Indoors

Ginny Hogan

Short and sometimes sweet, sometimes genuinely funny and quite often awkward novel about personal growth. Passable as a read before sleep.

Never Flinch

Stephen King

Full of cliché, with structure that King itself popularised and now is not able to actually pull off any real emotional pay off or WOW moments. You know that Holly WILL make it, you know that everything will end up with convoluted and brutal violence and not a thing to point to „this is the key topic in there“. The writing is mostly great (dialogues were kinda rough), but if this would not be King, I would forget it in a day. 

Now this is a clear milestone for me: I probably should not devour everything he writes, this is just too average, too mid. It is admirable that he is still writing, but…what is the point of this writing?

The Reformatory

Tananarive Due

The Reformatory deals with crucial and still relevant problem through horror lens: recipe that usually works very well for me. Spoilers below.

But it just did not this time. I can´t yet put a finger on it, but some musings:

a) the pacing of the book is ultimately weird. It´s longer than needed, it slows down sometimes and breaks into a break neck pace later, it provides a plethora of characters that are not always going anywhere and it ends up with a happy ending that feels out of place.

b) horror is great to enhance, accent some problem. It´s just that here I felt that the whole concept of juvenile schools is horrible enough that there is literally no need to add any supernatural elements, no need for ghosts/ heints doing their thing while we see the bottoms of human cruelty. And that includes another aspect of the ending: justice given out by ghosts felt…weak, not appropriate.

It still is a good book, its just not a _great_ book for me.