Books I Read February 20th, 2022

I only came here for two reasons – to read books, and chew bubble gum. And I'm all out of bubble gum.

Southern California: An Island on the Land by Cared McWilliams – An engaging and insightful cultural history of Southern California between like 1880-1930. Did you know there was a running joke in the first half of the century that everyone who lived in LA was from Iowa? Or that the city once had a professional rain maker on contract, but refused to pay him after he summoned a deluge which flooded downtown? It's a strange town I live in.

The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh – As usual with Waugh, this is funny and cheap. He knew as much about LA as he did Abyssinia.

Woman in the Dark by Dashiell Hammett – A forgotten work by a great master, probably not really worth uncovering.

The Hot Spot by Charles Williams – It's tough to keep track of which Black Lizard's I've read, and I picked this up without realizing I read it years back. Which is just as well because this story of a rowdy who robs a bank is tight and mean as it comes. I'll have to read more Charles Williams.

Mildred Pierce by James M. Caine – In the midst of the depression, a housewife escapes poverty but not her shitty, ungrateful daughter. Mean, good. Caine applies his noir chops and eye for human weakness to the inhuman cruelty of the petit-bourgeoisie family.

Masters of the Dew by Jaquees Romain – A prodigal son tries to save his rural Haitian village from infighting, drought.

Hitchhiking: Twelve German Tales by Gabriele Eckart – A series of shorts from the waning days of the DDR, Eckart's depictions of builders, drunken janitors and embittered old woman are witty, sympathetic and thoughtful. I dug it.

Behind the Lines by Jaroslav Hasek – Comically fictionalized retelling of the author's experiences fighting for the Red Army during the Russian civil war. Uneven but I'll read more.

Books I Read February 13th, 2022

This week I've been iterating versions of a cinnamon-raisin swirl loaf and trying not to notice it's 90 degrees in February. Like everyone else here in LA I've suddenly remembered I'm a longtime Rams fan, since back when they were playing in South Bend, or even Poughkeepsie.

Iza's Ballad by Magda Szabo – After her husband dies, a peasant woman moves in with her upright, emotionally stunted daughter, is slowly strangled by a lack of empathy and understanding. Effective is slightly manipulative, but it does remind me I need to call my mother.

A Game for Eagles by Oakey Hall – A California stringer of dubious morality gets involved in a coup attempt against a small Caribbean nation on behalf of the sugar company he works for. Excellent 70's paranoid thriller, shades of Ambler. A fun digression, I'll pick up more by Hall soon.

Haiti: The Aftershocks of History by Lauren Dubois – A first rate popular history of the island nation of Haiti made for my second book about American imperialism in two days. We really fucked some shit up there, amiright? Anyway this was an excellent primer on a complex topic, nuanced, thoughtful and well-written.

Rachel and Her Children: Homeless Families in America by Johnathan Kozol – What's disturbing about this classic account of homelessness in America – and many similar volumes I've been reading lately – is of course that they are written in the midst of crises that have only been compounded over the succeeding decades. This account, primarily of the experiences of unhoused families living in shitty hotels, presents a homelessness services system of horrifying decrepitude which is nonetheless far better than anything we work with here in LA in 2022. By coincidence I was reading this the same day I got to tell a woman I know who lives behind a chain-link fence next to the 5 that her housing opportunity had been revoked and the whole time I was thinking that things have only gotten worse. Also, I hope some devil somewhere is giving Ronald Reagan a high-colonic with a heated corkscrew.

My Merry Mornings by Ivan Klima – A series of semi-fantastical vignettes depicting Prague in the 80's, and the author's own peculiar position as a writer banned by the communist state. Fun, funny, sharp and strange, with the idiosyncratic black humor characteristic of Czech writing.

The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone by Tennessee Williams – An aging actress takes refuge in a love affair with a Roman cad. Sharp, insightful, sad, an excellent short work.

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner – I've read nearly everything that Faulkner ever wrote over the years but somehow skipped over this story of a family of white trash dragging their mother's corpse from their homestead into town. Obviously Faulkner's style is, well, Faulknerian, and although the narrative leaned a bit too much into the Southern Gothic shtick of having everything that can go wrong go ruinously (I'm looking at you, Flannery) it has an absolutely ferocious ending.

Books I Read February 6th, 2022

Good stuff happened to me this week but I'm not going to tell you about it. You're just some internet stranger, you're lucky I even tell you about all the books I read. To whit...

A Cup of Coffee with my Interrogator by Ludvik Vaculik – Samizdat feuilletons from the a Charter 77 signatory during the late stage of the Czechoslovakian Socialist Republic. Witty and human, like meeting your thoughtful, funny friend for an Urquell on a sunny day, except that he’s being tailed by the secret police.

Fools and Other Stories by Njabulo S. Ndebele – Short stories from the waning days of apartheid. The eponymous didn't do much for me but most of the rest of them, dealing with the youthful customs of township adolescents, were excellent.

A Memoir of the Warsaw Uprising by Miron Bialoszewski – A chronicle of the demolition of the Polish capital by the Nazis in a deliberately rambling, conversational fashion, intended to express the chaotic nature of the time and the impossibility of offering a coherent explanation for the events. I remember going to Warsaw many years ago and having a friend take me to the old city and explain that it was a Disney facade built over rubble, and I can still remember the Praga district which had remained standing, apartment blocks like fortresses shielding Catholic shrines, still extant despite the bombings and 50 odd years of Communist rule. Anyway, this was a difficult, interesting, tragic read.

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America by Barbara Ehrenreich – Gonzo journalism meets poverty porn. Actually for a book about the writer's personal experiences it wasn't that self-indulgent, I'm just being nasty because I've read 3 more or less identical works in the last week or so (did you know Reagan ruined everything? He did! He really, really did. Rot in hell, Ronnie!)

Animal Triste by Monika Maron – An old woman recalls a doomed love affair over which she has long obsessed herself into madness. It's a loose plot but the execution is perfect, the language thoughtful and lyrical and funny and sad. Maron is a treasure.

The Periphereal by William Gibson – Corporate dictocrats from the far future interfere with the life of roughnecks from the near future, chaos ensuing. Gibson is a clever cultural critic and this is fun and moves fast, although it does that thing he does where since the protagonists are all pawns in a much larger scheme the narrative unfolds as a series of Deus Ex Machinas. Still, lots of fun.

Days of Longing by Nirmal Verma – An Indian student living in the Czech Republic has a doomed love affair with an Austrian single mother. Nostalgic and lovely. I spent a lot of time thinking longingly of Eastern Europe this week, actually.

Books I Read January 30th, 2022

Winter in LA is a slice of paradise. Everything is green and the light is clear and you can wear a sweater in the evening. After a long period of laziness I'm back on my reading grind, evidence of which is to follow...

Silent Close No. 6 by Monika Maron – In the last days of the DDR, a listless intellectual takes on a position as private secretary for an aging Communist bigwig. A sharply written, funny, not entirely unsympathetic of the generation of Germans who built East Germany and tried to force it on their children. Maron is very talented, I've got another by her on the shelf.

First Light by Peter Ackroyd – A collection of archaeologists, astronomers, and various others try and make sense of a pre-historical find in Dorset, the complexities of human existence. This was fine. I'm not quite sure what possessed me to read a bunch of Peter Ackroyd lately.

I Dreamt the Snow was Burning by Antonio Skarmeta – A jock from the provinces come to Santiago in the days before the assassination of Allende. A Faulknerian recreation of the golden moments before hell came to Chile. Funny and energetic in defiance of the subject matter.

Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies by Reyner Banham – The classic work of LA boosterism. I always love reading enthusiastic discussions of my adopted homeland, and Banham brings a lot of insight into the world's premier postmodern city, even if his encomium to the freeway system falls a little flat.

The Gold Coast and the Slum by Harvey Warren Zorbaugh – A depiction of inner city Chicago in the mid 30's, and some thoughtful if overheated commentary on the destabilizing effects of city living. Also, surprisingly not that racist given its time.

The Irish Stories of Sarah Orne Jewett by Sarah Orne Jewett – Sympathetic if mawkish depictions of Irish immigrants to Jewett's native New England. Pleasant if slight.

Nomadland by Jessica Bruder – You probably saw the movie.

Voltaire in Love by Nancy Mitford – A chronicle of the occasionally passionate romance of two of the great thinkers of the French enlightenment. Nobody does caddy social history like Nancy Mitford, and this was a fun read.

Book I Read January 23rd, 2022

I wrote a lot and I read a lot and I ate a lot of tofu. Enjoying my days of exaggerated solitude.

False Starts: A Memoir of San Quentin and Other Prisons by Malcolm Braly – A fascinating and readable history of the first half of the author's life. This is fascinating simply as a (seemingly accurate) account of the life of a small time criminal, but Braly is also a perceptive and sympathetic critic of his society and his own circumstance, the injustices and personal failings which led him to waste 25 odd years in state correctional facilities.

The World Elsewhere by Nirmal Verma – Verma was (is? He might still be alive) of Indian descent but he spent much of his life in the communist Czech Republic, and there are shades of the Eastern European short story tradition in his listless narrators, oppressed by shadowy forces and the relentless turmoil of their own mind. Some hit harder than other but basically I thought these were strong.

Wings of Stone by Linda Ty-Casper – An expatriate Filipino returns to his homeland in the days before the ousting of the Marcos regime, attempts to reconcile the mysteries of his own heritage, homeland, purpose. I can't say it was my favorite thing I ever read in this vein, but I didn't hate it neither.

A Man's Head by Simenon – I'm going to stop trying to think up funny lines for these.

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond – An exhaustively researched, tragically compelling examination of the ways in which our housing market and laws perpetrate inequality and injustice. I gather everyone read this about 10 years ago but it was worth your time then and if you haven't picked it up it's probably worth your time now. Engaging, fascinating, and horrible.

Anti-Education by Friedrich Nietzsche – A series of lectures the author gave at the beginning of his career attacking the German university system. His essential thesis – that the expansion of education to less capable individuals, along with academia's increasing obsession with minutia, would ruin the ideal of classical education as creating truly thoughtful, cultured individuals, seems indisputable, and looking back some 130 years on one is, as always, impressed with Nietzsche's prophetic powers. Of course, as is always also the case with Nietzsche, once we get beyond diagnosis the entire thrust falls apart into a lot of vague, soaring, dull Teutonic pseudo-poetry. I remember telling my favorite professor that Nietzsche was the best philosopher to read on the can, because he was funny and you could get through him quick, and my mentor replied something to the effect of he was best kept there. Which is mean and not altogether true but it's a little true.

Cathedral of the August Heat by Pierre Clitandre – A tale of the Haitian slums, told in part through myth and legend and in part through the earthy and despairing misadventures of its inhabitant. Vivid, lyrical, horrifying, good.

Not a Crime to be Poor by Peter Edelman – An exhaustive if not exactly narratively fascinating account of the many ways we screw poor people in this country. I knew about a lot of them, but not all!

Books I Read January 16th, 2022

I had a lovely week, thanks for asking. Got a lot done, baked some good bread. Feeling energetic. Purposeful. Positive. Read the following books.

The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston – A compelling and bleakly funny account of growing up an impoverished Chinese immigrant in post-war San Francisco. As a rule I'm not big on the 'my family was absolute batshit' form of literary nonfiction and occasionally this gets a bit overheated, but basically I thought it was strong and weird and I dug it.

The March of Folly by Barbara Tuchman – I had basically completely forgotten the existence of Barbara Tuchman which is both weird cause I used to love her but kind of great cause I remembered how great she is. This is really first rate popular history, brisk and entertaining but also measured and thoughtful. Tuchman is an astute and atypical commentator even on events with which I was already pretty familiar, and she's genuinely funny, which is unfortunately a rare quality in historians. Fun stuff.

The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein by Peter Ackroyd – Entertaining if indistinct literary horror.

Bleak House by Charles Dickens – Last I dipped into Dickens I was 19 and found Great Expectations an absolutely ponderous melodrama but I don't put that much stock in the opinions I held at 19 (in retrospect American Beauty is a horrible movie) so I figured I'd give him another shot. Negs—the characterization is effective but one dimensional. This results in some engaging minor characters but the majors are pretty insufferable. It does that Victorian era thing (Jane Austen does this also) where a character is sketched in thumbnail as soon as they come onto the page ('Richard is so charming and kind-hearted but also inconstant, I hope terribly he doesn't find himself bogged down by this Jardyce inheritance') and then spending the rest of the book confirming this initial impression ('Poor Richard, so sweet and amiable, but alas his lack of direction has doomed him!'). Its mawkish—Esther is an absolutely insufferable Mary-Sue and her Guardian somehow even worse. Pros—Dickens is a masterful critic of his age, funny and savage with a core of genuine outrage. His ability to set a scene by turning a metaphor tighter and tighter over the course of a paragraph is fabulous. And he has a number of observations about dire poverty—and particularly about the street child Jo—which reminded me of my own experience working with the unhoused to an uncanny and frankly horrifying degree. It ain’t Dostoevsky, but I’d take it above Victor Hugo.

Books I Read January 9th 2022

Happy New Year. I spent my December too busy to read much or to write about reading. I got to talk a bit about homelessness in the LA Times. In brute truth, the back half of the year was not what it should have been reading wise, and after a decent start my total for 2021 puttered out at just north of 175 books. Not what I was hoping for but I enter 2022 committed to self-improvement in that, as in many other areas. In any event, these are the books I read the last month or so...

Maigret at the Coroners – Maigret's trip through Arizona offers Simenon opportunity to make some engaging but ultimately oddly off-base criticisms of America. Engaging stuff, even if it ain't quite Toqueville.

Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian – Engaging historical fiction of the sort which is really accurate about how many guns a ship of the line has. I read it beside a fire, in a cabin in Big Bear while watching the snow fall. That benefits you very little, admittedly, but it's mainly what I remember about this book.

The Gourmet and Other Stories from Modern China by Lu Wenfu – Wenfu was one of post-war China's most talented writers, whose fame caused him to become a casualty of the cultural revolution, These series of stories, written shortly after Mao's death and the resuscitation of the his reputation, offer an oblique and measured criticism of a society experiencing rapid and unprecedented change. I dug it.

The World of 'Mestre' Tamoda by Uanhenga Xitu – Rabelesian fables about a fast-talking good-for-nothing and post-Colonial Angola. Despite being written while the author was imprisoned by the Portuguese regime, they possess an earthy joy at the daily realities of Angolan existence. Fun and strange.

Mothers and Shadows by Marta Traba – Faulknerian recollections of two women united in suffering caused by the wave of fascism then sweeping across South America. It reminded me of Bolano in the potency of its monologues and in its willingness to stare at the nastiest aspects of the human experience without looking away or degenerating into pornography. Strong stuff.

The Laughing Cry: An African Cock and Bull Story by Henri Lopes – The rise of a thuggish African dictator as chronicled by his man servant and cuckold. Slim but large in scope, a tragicomic commentary on the unrealized hopes of post-colonial Africa. Sexy, funny, sad, excellent.

Strange Beasts of China by Yan Ge – A bestiary of a magical modern China. Part of that strain of modern East Asian fiction which intertwines the banal and fantastic/horrific in compact prose. Generally that's not really my taste but this worked – there's a genuine weirdness here combined with enough narrative pay off that you don't end the thing infuriated.

Haiji Musa and the Hindu Fire-Walker by Ahmed Essop – Another fascinating series of shorts, this time by a member of South Africa's Indian diaspora. Essop depiction of his community is lively and self-critical, with an eye for comic detail. I really dug it, one of a lot of good books I read this month.

Books I Read December 6th, 2021

Another week, during which I read these.

The Life of Thomas Moore by Peter Ackroyd – This readable history of Catholicism's first English martyr really hammered home to me how glad I am not to have lived in the middle ages.

Mother Spring by Driss Chraibi – A peculiar, challenging story of the advance of Islam/civilization into pagan North Africa. Chraibi is strange and lyrical and confounding as ever, though I am getting the increasing sense that these are not well translated.

The Book on Ending Homelessness by Iain de Jong – Probably unfair to give a capsule review of a book of this sort. It did reinforce how utterly awful LA's homelessness situation is, even by the standards.

The Years by Annie Ernaux – A history of the author as an archtype for her generation. Whistful and clever if sometimes self-indulgent.

The Fetish and Other Stories by Albert Moravia – Post-war Italians suffer existential breakdowns. Spare, clever and engaging.

Books I Read November 28th, 2021

Happy Thanksgiving. Hope you felt bloated and well-loved. I read these books this week.

Renewal Time by Es'kia Mphahlele – A collection of shorts from the doyen of South African fiction. I enjoy everything I get from Mphahlele, sharply observed mid-century prose in unfamiliar settings. Miss Plum is really gorgeously nasty.

Imagined Cities: Urban Experience and the Language of the Novel by Robert Alter – Alter chronicles the changing perception of the modern city through a selection of novelists. Basically I just was so enjoying Alter's translation of the Old Testament that I didn't like the idea of being finished. I virtually never read this sort of literary criticism so I vaguely enjoyed the challenge of pushing myself through it. Apart from those two caveats there were a lot of thoughtful stuff in here, I appreciated someone explaining to me what I didn't get out of Bely and it actually made me want to give Dickens another shot. Take that as you'd like.

São Bernardo by Graciliano Ramos – A self-made rural tyrant laments his brutal past.

Books I Read November 21st, 2021

I finally managed to sit my ass down and read a few books this week, so bully for me. They were;

The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett – Actually I read this a month ago and somehow forgot to write anything about it, which is strange because I found this affectionate recreation of a fishing village in turn of the century Maine a genuinely charming idyll. A series of interconnected character studies offer an evocative and wistful view of a pre-modern world already fading from view, affectionate without being cloying. Lovely.

In the Freud Archives by Janet Malcolm – At a brisk 200 pages I found it impossible to avoid enjoying this engaging depiction of a scholarly feud between several Freud obsessives.

Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations by Ronen Bergman – This history of the modern state of Israel as depicted through its extra-judicial killings, often as told by the people executing them. A riveting depiction of spycraft at its most savage, and the inevitable moral decline resulting thereof.

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie – A pair of teenage boys are exiled into rural China during the Cultural Revolution, find a cache of Western novels, have misadventures with the eponymous tailor. Lyrical and unexpected, elegiac and strange and meaner than I anticipated. Fun stuff.

Inspector Ali by Driss Chraibi – An returned-expatriate Moroccan writer of genre fiction grapples with his place in society and his role as an author. Sort of like if Saul Bellow was Moroccan and less pretentious and Herzog was 200 pages rather than 500. Madcap and meandering in the best sort of way, Chraibi deserves rediscovery.

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.

Books I Read October 10th, 2021

What can I tell you man, it's been a busy couple of weeks. Been doing things and driving places and seeing people and whatnot. Been writing about things. Been cooking a lot, but that isn't much use to you. One thing I basically haven't been doing is reading, which I'm a little ashamed of but fuck it man gimme a break.

The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie – A sprawling, chaotic, almost vertiginous novel about men and women, god and the devil, the East and the West, basically everything. Reminded me a bit of Pynchon with the madcap pacing and the large cast of semi-fantastical characters, though I found Rushdie's underlying humanity warmer and more profound than Pynchon's shrill anti-technocratic obsessions. Complex and entertaining, a rare book worth its reputation.

Ancient Israel: The Former Prophets: Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings: A Translation with Commentary by Robert Alter – 'Go and stand on the mountain before the LORD, and, look the LORD is about to pass over, with a great and strong wind tearing apart mountains and smashing rocks before the LORD. Not in the wind is the LORD. And after the wind is an earthquake. Not in the earthquake is the LORD. And after the earthquake—fire. Not in the fire is the LORD. And after the fire, a sound of minute stillness.'

Books I Read September 19th, 2021

Autumn is slowly arriving in LA—yes we have autumn, seasons are different all over the world you halfwit parochial bastard. Would you fucking someone in Delhi that monsoon season isn't a thing? Eat shit. Anyway it's getting darker here earlier and there's this nice little crispness in the air which reminds me of all the other times the air has been crisp in my life, you know how memory does. Anyway I read these books the last two weeks.

Names on the Land by George R. Steward – A history of North American place names. Framing the settling of the continent along these lines offers a fascinating insight into how humans think about land, ownership and community, and a lot of the throw away stories are entertaining in their own right. It drags a bit after Manifest Destiny wraps up but you can't really blame it for that.

The Heat's On by Chester Himes – Saw this on a stoop and figured I'd take any opportunity to re-read part of Hime's magnificent decalogue chronicling the investigations of two black detectives responsible for keeping peace in Harlem. As always, Himes' swirling panorama of black New York is more interesting than the actual investigation but that's more advertisement than knock.

A Chill in the Air: An Italian War Diary 1939–1940 by Iris Origo – An American ex-pat chronicles the approach of WWII from her peculiar position as madam of a farm in rural southern Italy. It made me want to read the one she's more famous for writing, so I guess that's a rec.

The David Story translated by Robert Alter – I was largely unfamiliar with Samuel and found reading Alter's once again magnificent translation to be an enormously engaging and valuable experience (and during holy week, no less!) The attempts of the ancient Israelites to reconcile the brutal realities of existence with their dream of a theodical world are potent and fascinating, and as you begin to grasp it (aided by Alter's notes) the style of the narrative becomes engrossing. I liked this so much I'm thinking about breaking down and buying the complete text, which is excessively unlike me these days.

Inspector Cadaver by Simenon – Detective Maigret something something something. The plots of these are kind of pointless but it does have that charming feel of a good sitcom where you're hanging out with a dude you like, even if that dude in this case is an phlegmatic Parisian pipe-smoking giant.

Talk by Linda Rosenkrantz – In the early 60s Linda Rosenkrantz went to the Hamptons and recorded her friends saying things and then worked them into this narrative. It's a clever idea and makes for an interesting and entertaining read. My main takeaways are 1) it's crazy that people ever took Freudian analysis seriously, I mean more appalling than crazy really, and 2) Linda Rosenkrantz knew some shallow fucking people.

Brotherhood by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr – Citizens of a fictionalized West African city start a revolutionary journal in opposition to the occupying Islamist regime. Uneven but valuable.

Books I Read September 5th, 2021

Though the world grows daily more terrible our means of combating the decay remain unchanged—small acts of compassion and creation; courage, especially when pointless; the strength to find joy amid the growing shadow; the slow and almost imperceptible accumulation of wisdom. They are blunt weapons by which to contend against apocalypse, but as they are all we have we had best hold them tight. I read the following books the last two weeks.

Motley Stones by Adalbert Stifter – A collection of vignettes in the bucolic, Teutonic mold, vivid descriptions of the alps and the soaring emotion of the human heart. For the sort of book I usually don't like I didn't mind this. Also, best name ever.

Amsterdam Stories by Nescio – Another old favorite. For my money, not many people ever did youthful longing as well as Nescio. Potent enough that even though it's like 100 pages it took me forever to finish because I kept finding myself getting midway through a sentence, sighing wistfully and staring off into the distance.

The Immortals by Amit Chaudhuri – The relationship between the son of a wealthy industrialist and his music teacher in 1980's Bombay offer opportunity to ruminate on the disconnect between the reality and idealization of the artist. Sharp writing and I found the insight into traditional Indian music fascinating.

The Five Books of Moses by God (trans. Robert Alter) – Continuing my journey through Alter's translation of the Old Testament. It's been a long time since I read through the adventures of the Patriarchs and I was struck by the efforts of the ancient Hebrews to reconcile the dichotomy between the savage world in which they live and the moral framework which they desperately wish undergirded human reality. Later generations found themselves appalled by the veneration of heroic figures who are often dishonest, drunken leches, but to my mind there's a courage in enshrining into the founding myths the essential facts of our own complex and often unsavory natures—this is what we sprung from, this is what the very best of us look like. The endless contradictions of the Old Testament, even down to character and place names, reflect a world as chaotic, tragic and unknowable as that which we find ourselves facing. Good stuff, though I'll admit I skimmed the genealogies. Quick postscript – probably someone has suggested that the point of God interrupting the Exodus narrative with an elaborate description of the Tabernacle is to inspire in the reader the same sort of boredom which will, in part, drive Aaron and the Israelites to built their infamous calf in the next section?

Earthlings by Sayaka Murata – A social misfit attempts to escape the social and practical demands of Japanese society through the elaborate fantasy (?) that she is an extraterrestrial. Quick, effective, weird, but I confess to feeling that the territory is pretty well-mined.

The Outcast by Selma Lagerloff – A fantastical Christian romance which didn't do a lot for me. I think maybe this project of re-reading Ms. Lagerloff has come to an end.

Maigret in New York by Simenon – I mean I couldn't really be bothered to follow the actual plot but it's fun to watch Maigret ramble around Manhattan bitching about things.

The Stalin Front by Gert Ledig – The collapse of a German salient on the Eastern Front as depicted through the individual actions of a handful of participants. This is every bit as grim as you can imagine, with Ledig's WWII experience offering both an endless ream of horrifying detail and insight into the pitilessly miserable nature of the experience. Bleak, excellent.

Books I Read August 23, 2021

Since getting back to LA it's been a lot of work on a lot of projects and I haven't been reading like I oughta. Which, frankly, I feel bad enough about already so maybe don't yell at me. I read these few books the last few weeks.

Barn 8 by Deb Olin Unferth – A team of environmentalists try and heist some chickens.

Ghost Story by Peter Straub – Still for my money one of the best works of modern horror, and obviously an inspiration for like 2/3 of King's ouvre.

Skylark by Dezső Kosztolányi – When a middle aged spinster takes a vacation from the provincial Dual Monarchy city in which she lives her reactionary parents re-discover their zest for life.

The Ten Thousand Things by Maria Dermout – A profoundly beautiful elegiac to a lost world and the inevitable if eternally horrifying nature of time and death. I read and loved this book years and years ago when I was leaving New York and am pleased to find it held up.

The Queens of Kungahalla by Selma Lagerlof – The first female Nobel prize winner for literature tries to make sense of the Christianization of Scandinavian. Lyrical and odd if occasionally a bit preachy.

The Gravedigger's Bread by Frederick Dark – A guy falls in love with a girl, kills her husband, pays for it, in this well-executed if unremarkable French noir.

Muhammad by Maxime Rodinson – A biography of the prophet. My knowledge of early Islamic history is spotty so this was a good primer.

The Longshot by Katie Kitamura – A mixed martial artist gears up for his last fight.

Little, Big by John Crowley – One of the top 5 all time works of fantasy.

Berlingeles by Stefan Kiesbye — Tales from a post-apocalyptic LA. I dug it, Kiesbye has some nastiness to him and some feel for LA as a place.

Books I Read July 4th, 2021

It's just been a complete bullshit month as far as reading is concerned. I don't even know why, really, because I was on the beach a lot and normally that's prime reading time. I even had a long plane ride where I didn't read a book. It's been weird. Anyway, I'm back in LA now though and I'll have to apply the spurs. These are the tiny, tiny number of books I read since whenever.

The Devil's Mode by Anthony Burgess – Short historical fiction from the author of Clockwork Orange. I didn't love and it don't remember much from it.

The Belgariad by David Eddings – A beloved childhood high fantasy that I re-read for a thing I'm writing. They are terrible.

The Word of the Speechless: Selected Stories by Julio Ramon Riberyo – A collection of short fiction from whom I gather to be the grandmaster of Peruvian letters? If my understanding is accurate his position isn't unearned. These are strong and wandering and weird, unified in their themes of quiet regret, as well and the use of laconically effective language, but distinct in terms of the individual plots and even some of the genres. Quite enjoyed.

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.

Books I Read June 2nd, 2021

Spent the last few week sunning myself on hidden Cornish beaches, taking long London walks and rambling briefly out to Oxford, and not reading or writing so much, which is why I'm behind on this and not up to my usual standards. I plan to make up for it this week, which will be spent revisiting Brooklyn haunts, taking ferociously long treks out towards strange side corners of a city I once loved (and even wrote a book about). In any event, these are the books I read since the last entry.

The Floating Republic by C.E. Manwaring – A history of two mass mutinies by the British navy during the early (losing) portions of the Napoleonic conflict, during which the sea tars rose up and demanded an extra shilling and to be whipped slightly less often. I've largely lost my taste for this sort of minor military history but this was an interesting subject at least.

The Sandcastle Iris Murdoch – An aging Don reconsiders throwing over his shitty wife and crappy family for the love of a young artist. The characters are well drawn and the language is subtly skillful. My only complaint really is that it was English as hell, but then I've been up to my neck in that lately so its probably on me.

Rogue Justice by Geoffrey Household – Unable to assassinate Hitler, an unnamed, archetypal English big game hunter wages a personal war against Nazi Germany across southern and central Europe. Household is a ton of fun and this is cleverer than the synopsis.

Family Lexicon by Natalia Ginsberg – The mocking if ultimately loving recollections of the author's family, childhood, and life. Coming from a large, loud, sort of Italian family myself I found the power struggles and confused affections engagingly familiar, even if the Polansky clan did less to fight fascism.

People of the City by Cyprian Ekwenesi – A cad makes his way in a bustling metropolis, grappling with the morals and mores of modern Africa.

The Last Two Weeks of Georges Rivac by Geoffrey Household – A cosmopolitan businessman is drawn into the world of international intrigue. Competent but I didn't love it.

The Mask of Demitrios by Eric Ambler – A hack mystery writer is also drawn into the word of international intrigue, only some fifty years previous. Ambler was brilliant and has a real insight (one feels) into the authentically nasty nature of pre-War Europe, and there's a ton to like about this but also a few too many chapter-long monologues.

The Great Fire of London by Peter Ackroyd – An attempt to film Dickens results in a series of minor misfortunes culminating in terrible catastrophe. Caustic and well-observed..

Calamities by Renee Goldman – An experimental text intended to differentiate between the act of writing and the conscious progress of thought, I guess? I mean this isn't really the kind of book to which you give give a concrete summation.

So Long, See you Tomorrow by William Maxwell – A semi-autobiographical count of a youth spent in rural Illinois twinned with the fictitious history of a provincial murder. A poignant meditation on regret, love and despair. I dug it.

Books I Read May 9th, 2021

Writing this in distant, rural Cornwall, with bread rising and this...

...view behind me.

So, you know it's not all dystopia.

The Blizzard by Vladamir Sorokin – In a post-apocalyptic vision of the Russian Empire circa 1820, a curmudgeonly doctor tries to reach a rural village infected by a zombie plague. Sorokin is fabulously, fabulously weird, and this is a work of fiction which has no real counterpoint in English literature, being at once a genuine work of science fiction and also a bizarre and discomfiting satire. Bleak, but engaging.

Piranesi by Susanna Clark – Best to go into this knowing as little as possible, but do go into it all the same. I tend to get a little too bullish on things right after I've read them, but a week on I would say this is one of the best works of fantasy ever written, a work of great cleverness and enormous beauty, to be set on a shelf with Little, Big, Peace, Ficciones, and maybe nothing else. That rarest of genre works which elevates itself into the ranks of high literature. Sublime.

A Graveyard for Lunatics by Ray Bradbury – Bradbury's youthful surrogate solves a mystery at a movie studio circa 1950. It was a bit mawkish for my tastes, particularly given how much I liked the first of these.

Traveling Light by Tove Jannson – A collection of subtle shorts by my favorite Finn. I liked the eponymous tale in particular, as well as the one about the old woman getting lost in transit.

The Wolf and the Watchman by Niklass Natt och Dag – The tagline says 'the Alienist set in 18th century Stockholm, which pretty much sums it up completely. Then again I don't like anything.

Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead by Barbara Comyns – A series of very nasty events befalls a village of horribly unlikable and dreadfully sad people. I love Comyns, but this was so unrelentingly mean it bordered on self-parody.

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes – An old man reflects on his life, the suicide of a teenage chum. I appreciate Barnes' talent but find everything he writes a little bit too neat for my tastes.

Books I Read May 3rd, 2021

All that reading Leo Perutz led me to write about Leo Perutz over at the LA Review of Books. I cooked Paella for the first time, not entirely unsuccessfully. Did you know that in England, they call an elevator a lift? Madness. Just madness.

Peach by Emma Glass – The story of a young woman terrorized by an older man, her body, society, told in surrealist, food-influenced prose. It was a little bit too much of a final project for your MFA but it was effectively unpleasant and at 150 pages I can dig some adventurous prose.

Cold Hand in Mine by Robert Aickman – Horror stories in the 'there's a creepy house at the end of the lane don't go in there why would you go in there you went in there' sort. There's a deliberate attempt to forego the usual sting that lies at the ends of these type of stories, but honestly I found it only occasionally effective. The one about the clock wife was cool though.

The Treasure by Selma Lagerlof – A story of love and vengeance in the magical realist mold. I'm really digging the Lagerlof I've been reading, maybe I'll try and work something longer up about her.

Mythago Woods by Robert Holdstock – The woods behind a house are a primordial nexus of energy creating physical embodiments of the myths of the surrounding people. I liked it more in premise than execution.

The Harpy by Megan Hunter – A woman drives herself mad in the pursuit of vengeance against her philandering husband. Nasty, quick, well-written, I dug it.

Who Censored Roger Rabbit by Gary K. Wolfe – The basis for the beloved 80's movie is less charming than one would hope.

The Rice Mother by Rani Manicka – Several generations of a Malaysian family are destroyed by the things they love.