The Breakers

 I'd put off reading The Breakers because I was afraid that it was the final Sharon McCone novel, leaving only VI Warshawski left of the three godmothers of the female PI. As I read, it felt like a series finale, with Sharon's rumination on her age and career and worries about her failing mother. Sharon wraps these thoughts around the search for her former neighbor, Chelle Curley. We first met Chelle as a hustling teenager, primed to be a millionaire by 30. Now in her early 20s (thanks to some handwaving and retcon), she's a property developer specializing in flipping distressed buildings. The Breakers is a derelict former hotel and night club, and the room where Chelle had been essentially camping during the renovation was decorated with pictures of serial killers. Is there a connection between the macabre decor and Chelle's disappearance? And what secrets are Chelle's parents keeping from Sharon while begging her for help? The Breakers isn't prime McCone, but it was well crafted and entertaining. And it's not the last McCone - after finishing it, I went to Muller's website and found out that there's a new installment due later this year.

The Great Indoors

I'm an incredibly indoorsy person. When lockdown started a year ago this weekend, I thought "This might not be too bad, once I stop panicking over the fact that there's a deadly disease out there. I like being home." A week or two in, I realized that I need more outdoor time than I thought - my evening walks (during the dinner hour so as to minimize contact with others) when it wasn't too wet and raw were not enough. I was shocked to learn that I didn't just need the exercise to burn off my stress, I needed to be outside. Things got better when I started taking regular walks and making sure some of them went through the local parks. The weather's been lousy the last six weeks so I've stopped, and I can't wait until the cold and mud recede enough for me to restart.

The Great Indoors explains how our built environment affects our lives, and how we can improve them. After a few chapters on the generalities of our need for light and nature, Emily Anthes gets into specifics including a tour of a grade school built with natural light, curving surfaces, and setting set to both absorb and encourage fidgeting. That experiment was thwarted by a growing population and shrinking budget which ended up filling in some of the open space but the chapter on adaptive living spaces was more inserting. Focusing on an apartment building for people with autism, I think that several of the adaptations (soundproofing, light levels that can be fine-tuned) could, like some of the physical accessibility advances of the last 30 years, come into general use. Beyond that, The Great Indoors made me think more about my personal environment and how it affects me more than I realize.