A Map of Life by Frank Sheed

 Excellent short primer on the Catholic Church and its place in our lives.

The Dark Hours by Michael Connelly

 Another novel in the Harry Bosch series, this one primarily featuring Renee Ballard, an LAPD cop who works with Bosch in his retirement. It's another good entry by Connelly.

The book was written in 2021 at the height of the COVID hysteria, and it seems Connelly bought into the nonsense while writing the book. It's implied that anyone not fully on board with mask and vaccine mandates is a science denier. That attitude hasn't aged well looking back four years later.

There are also some takes on the Jan 6 "insurrection" which look silly in retrospect, like this one:

"The late-night cable news was all a rehash of the day's staggering events in Washington. There was now word that a police officer had succumbed to injuries sustained while defending the Capitol. All cops go to work each day, thinking it could their last. But Ballard doubted that officer ever imagined that he would give his life in the line of duty in the way he did. She went to sleep with dark thoughts about the country, her city, and the future."

This, of course, is a reference to Brian Sicknick, who the media tried to turn into a Jan. 6 martyr at the hands of those violent MAGA insurrectionists, claiming he was injured by a thrown fire extinguisher.  In fact, he died of a stroke a few days after Jan. 6, and the medical examiner determined he died of natural causes.

The only Jan. 6 death definitively caused by the days events was that of Ashli Babbitt, an unarmed woman shot by a Capitol Hill guard while she was climbing through a window. 

Retrieving Realism by Hubert Dreyfus and Charles Taylor

 Excellent book defending realist philosophy by critiquing the "mediational" presupposition in modern philosophy.