Books I Read February 16th 2025

In the unlikely event that anyone reading this page voted for Donald Trump, know that you have my abiding acontempt.

In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan – A surreal 60s fable. Slender, odd, fun. Reminded me a bit of John Crowley's Engine Summer but with a lot less world building.

Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga – A young girl in rural Zimbabwe struggles against the corruption of native society by the stricture of colonial thought. Despairing but well-observed.

The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age by Simon Schama – Schama's magisterial cultural history of the Dutch's brief reign as European superpower and how it helped formed modernity. Longtime readers will know of my affection for William the Silent, for the besieged at Breda and the stolid burghers who threw down the might of the Western Hapsburgs. Those who lack this peculiar affinity may find less of interest in this long, dense volume but it remains an admirable attempt to retrace the opinions and thought processes of a vanished people.

Wizard of the Crow by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o – An everyman turned shaman inadvertently sets himself against a corrupt dictator. Engaging if didactic.

On My Aunt's Shallow Grave White Roses Have Already Bloomed by Maria Mitsoara – Esoteric micro-fiction of the erotic and faintly ominous variety. I dug it.

The Story of the Jews: Finding the Words, 1000 BCE – 1492 CE by Simon Schama – An idiosyncratic history of the Jewish people from their entry into Israel to their exile from Iberia. I remain endlessly fascinated by the peregrinations of my ancestors, and of the world-sustaining fantasy they built.

Morning and Evening by Jon Fosse – The life and death of a Norwegian fisherman as told in a hundred glittering pages. The prose is rapid and lovely.

The Joys of Motherhood by Buchi Emecheta – The profound misery of being a woman in late-colonial Nigeria, lucidly expressed. Shades of Doris Lessing in the utterly unromantic depictions of motherhood.

The Left Handed Woman by Peter Handke – A woman arrives at an arbitrary-seeming decision to end her marriage, grows because of it. Of a type, but brief.