Books I Read January 10th, 2024

Happy New Year. It is actually kind of cold in LA at the moment, which has made me lazy and sleepy and low. Here are the books I've managed to push myself through so far this year.

House of a Thousand Floors by Jan Weiss – An amnesiac seeks to overthrow the tyrannical leader of a towering city-state in this very early work of Czech science fiction. Ahead of its time.

The Cook by Mayis de Kerangal – An engaging if not particularly innovative or insightful examination of the chef as as a young man.

Six Thousand Years of Bread: Its Holy and Unholy History by Heinrich Eduard Jacob – The history of human civilization through the frame of wheat/farming generally. The sort of idiosyncratic work which had already become dated by the time our Austrian polymath wrote it in 1942 (having only recently escaped a concentration camp). There's lots of fun stuff in here but little of it really holds up to scrutiny.

The Necrophiliac by Gabrielle Wittkop – The erotic ramblings of the eponymous pervert. Wittkop's capacity to create beauty out of the most disturbing imagery is impressive on its own merits but even at 100 pages I really had to push myself through this one. Not for the faint-stomached.