Books I Read November 14th, 2021

I wrote this story. I read these books.

Strong as Death is Love by Robert Alter – Alter continues his magnificent translation of the Old Testament with this scattershot selection of scripture that doesn't fit in any of the broader biblical categories – erotic poetry and fairy tale satire. It's an ongoing source of fascination what the Jews decided to keep in this book, and Song of Songs is genuinely beautiful.

The Bar on the Seine – 63 in the 178 Maigret books. Those numbers are fictional but the impact they convey is accurate, both in so far as these are all kind of the same and I enjoy them enough to keep going.

The Book of Psalms by Robert Alter – I confess that Psalms was the least engaging part of my Old Testament readings. What you see – endless lines of praise and worship – are kinda what you get, there's less of the dawning sense of genius that I've got from other parts of the corpus. Still, there was something in the constant repetitions of desperation and despair that struck a note three millennium on, the hope of a caring God and a just universe, noble and recognizable if sadly untrue.

Cold Snap by Thom Jones – Literally 3/4 of these are about a doctor working in Africa who's really seen some shit, man, and so what if he has to cope with the occasional ampule of morphine, if you'd been forced to grapple with the raw wound of human existence you'd be doing the same, not that you'd ever have the courage of a man like that, or of men who write about men like that.

To be clear these are not the same character, just the only character that Thom Jones likes to write.

The Stone Face by William Gardner Smith – An African American artist moves to Paris in the Chester Himes / James Baldwin days, grapples with the universality of bigotry and the struggle to oppose hate. Thoughtful and energetic.

The Double Mother by Michael Bussi – A young child holds the key to a violent crime. Engagingly if predictably batshit.