Books I Read March 20th, 2022

This week I read these books.

The N'Gustro Affair by Jean-Patrick Manchette – A morally reprehensible Frenchman plays a minor role in the morally reprehensible politics of a morally reprehensible world. Manchette applies his noir sensibilities to the spy novel with predictably excellent effect.

A Bright and Guilty Place: Murder, Corruption, and L.A.'s Scandalous Coming of Age by Richard Rayner – An engaging work of popular history.

The High Window by Raymond Chandler – Yeah he's pretty good.

Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewess by Hannah Arendt – Arendt sets out to write the biography of a a prominent if largely forgotten figure of the German Romantic-era in the Romantic style, which is to say, with enormously self-indulgent melodrama. Its a fascinating exercise that elicits some interesting points about Judaism but also I really can't stand Rahel Varnhagen or the Romantics generally so I had to kind of drag myself through this.

The Netanyahu's by Joshua Cohen – A fictionalized retelling of the time Bibi Netanyahu's father met Harold Bloom while applying for a job at Cornell. Funny and sharp, though I suspect a lot of the humor would be lost on a goy.

Primeval and Other Times by Olga Tokarczuk – A fantastical re-imagining of Poland's tumultuous 20th century/the grand and inescapable tragedy of human existence. The weird parts are weird, the scary parts are scary, the sexy parts are sexy, the sad parts are sad. I dug it.