Books I Read June 13, 2021

Spent the first half of the week taking very long walks around New York. Turns out Coney is still tacky, the Malaysian beef jerky place on the LES is still great, and it's still impossible to walk through central Brooklyn for more than an hour without seeing Maggie Gyllenhall. The second half of the week has mostly been spent throwing children in the air and cooking/eating food. Point being I've been lazy and haven't read as much as I'd like, alas.

Valentino and Sagittarius by Natalia Ginzburg – Two novellas about Ms. Ginzburg's shitty, selfish, stupid family. Actually these were lovely, she's a great talent.

The Girl with All the Gifts by M.R. Carey – A young girl breaks out of the world's shittiest elementary school. I’ll avoid writing anything else for fear of spoiling a fun reveal, but this is creepy and emotional, a weird and original take on an overworked genre, strong stuff.

There Once Lived a Girl Who Seduced Her Sister's Husband, and He Hanged Himself: Love Stories by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya – A series of short about untrue men, heartbroken women, Russia, and the occasional murder. Petrushevskaya's stories all waver on a knife's edge between romance and outright horror, and often its unclear until the last sentence which direction they'll tip in. I very much enjoyed reading this on a bench in Brighton Beach while watching elderly Slavs sun themselves like beached albino seals.

I Await the Devil's Coming by Mary Maclane – The journalings of a precocious proto-feminist in Montana in the early 20th century. Interesting as a found document but basically this read like having to listen to that chick in your Freshman seminar who just won't shut the fuck up about Ayn Rand rant for 200 pages. People without a sense of humor should not be allowed to read Nietzsche.

The Wisdom Books by Robert Alter – For my birthday a dear friend (and the only person – Goy or Gentile -- I ever met who taught himself Yiddish) bought me this translation of my two favorite books of the Old Testament (plus Proverbs which is kind of crap). As always, reading Job and Ecclesiastes I am struck by the willingness of the Jews to incorporate into their tradition texts which run essentially counter to the main elements of the rest of the religion. This translation was beautiful, and the footnotes offered new insights into works I have read quite literally dozens of times—even if he uses 'vigor' in place of 'black hair', which is one of my favorite biblical allusions.

'Light is sweet, and it is good for eyes to see the sun!' I do try and remember, I swear.

Your House is on Fire, Your Children Are All Gone by Stefan Kiesbye – The horrifying recollections of a group of youth growing up in a small town in Northern Germany (which, if you haven't been north of Bremen, is a stark and nightmarish landscape). Something like if Patrick Modiano met Stephen King, although honestly I kinda think that undersells it. Understated and horrifying, with a hell of a last sting.

Poems of the Late T'Ang translated by A.C. Graham –

'The danger of the road is not in the distance

Ten yards is enough to break a wheel.

The peril of love is not in loving too often,

A single evening can leave its wound in the soul.'

Day of the Oprichnik by Vladamir Sorokin – In a future Russia which resembles a past Russia, government sponsored hoodlums commit a series of bleakly comic horrors in their efforts to defend the motherland. Sorokin's sci-fi satire is as sly and original as ever. Funny and extremely mean.