Books I Read June 1st, 2026

Been a while. May was a busy month, too busy to read much or even chronicle that modest catch. But a good one! Mine are healthy and well, at the moment, at least, and that's all there is.

Riders inn the Chariot by Patrick White – This was a big part of the reason I didn't read much in May. Most of the stuff I've been re-reading has been noir or short, punchy weird fiction, this was the first really significant thing I've worked through. And it was well worth the effort, a brilliantly written, surrealist fantasy of an almost-second-coming taking place in a suburb of Sydney. White's vision of God is so strange and potent, a searing vision of the impossible beauty and awfulness of existence, that I could only read it in bits. It sat on my night table a while kind of challenging me to get back to it. The language is incredibly good, almost every sentence feels fresh and strange and needs to be considered closely for meaning, but the work invariably pays off. A side plot depicting the pair of demonic crones supernaturally willing their neighbors towards mob violence compares to Dostoevsky in its insight into the savage punishment life enacts for selfishness and cruelty. And it's heroic cast of outsiders, ruined creatures united in their shared capacity for suffering, is equally uplifting and tragic. I think I'd have to put this somewhere on the list of top novels of the 20th century, full stop. Definitely pick it up if you don't mind a challenge.

The Strangers in the House by Simenon – A washed up lawyer, long given over to introversion and alcohol, is stimulated back to life by the discovery of a corpse in an unused bedroom. This is great literature but second rate mystery, with a fascinating anti-hero and an arbitrary conclusion. Still lots of fun.

The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller – A pair of couples in rural post-war Britain feel things, notice the weather. I didn't hate it, but it does feel like something that would be shortlisted for the Booker.

A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood – A lovely little novel about growing old, loving a man, Los Angeles, time and death. Isherwood's surrogate is sad, desperate, sympathetic, and admirable. Life-affirming though never mawkish

Roadside Picnic by the Strugatsky Brothers – Maybe the best sci-fi book of all time? Re-reading it I was struck by how interesting it is that it's set in America, and also how structurally strange and fun it is. Scary and mean and smart and sad and sweet.

War of Time by Alejo Carpentier – Short stories by an under-appreciated master. You can see the similarities between Marquez, but on balance these more resemble Borges, tightly-crafted pseudo-mysteries set in vividly limned antiquity.

Man on Fire by A.J. Quinnell – A hollowed out superkiller discovers his humanity through his relationship with a child he's sworn to protect, goes on a mission of vengeance one she's killed, becomes an Italian folk-hero, in this enormously enjoyable basis for about 5 different films and television. Although this is weirder and more fun than any of those, a first rate pot-boiler with sharp, funny language. I totally enjoyed this.

During the Reign of the Queen of Persia by Joan Chase – The loves and feuds of a country matriarchy as written by the collective spirit of the youngest generation of woman. A profound and illusive depiction of family, gender relations, and the hard edges and soft contours of the human spirit. This remains a really excellent book.

Books I Read May 12th, 2026

I'm late a week and the catch has not been impressive, but in my defense I've been putting out a lot of fires—some figurative and some, sadly, quite literal.

Late Fame by Arthur Schnitzler – An aging bourgeoisie discovers a second lease on life when his forgotten volume of poems inspires the enthusiasm of a new generation of artists. Extremely funny, if perhaps hitting a bit too close to home in its (really quite sympathetic) portrayal of the unalterable vanity of the writer, and particularly the hack. In short, still great.

Saga of Brutes by Ana Paula Maia – Three short, loosely connected stories about hard men doing the tasks societies likes to ignore. Tight, mean, very well-written, melodramatic, excellent works of genre fiction.

Flight to Canada by Ishmael Reed – Reed's raucous, slapstick, inspired re-creation of the last days of a Confederacy as overlaid by the late 1970s remains funny and original.

Warfare in Atlantic Africa, 1500-1800 by John K. Thornton – Insightful revisionist history detailing the complexities of native warfare on the coast of central east Africa. A useful counterpoint to the commonly held misconception that politics and its inevitable violence remained in a 'tribal' status on the continent. Valuable.

Books I Read April 28th, 2026

Fell down on my reading a bit the last few weeks, but I've been busy with different projects, not to mention the extraordinary beauty of the spring flowers which are everywhere in bloom here in LA, such that the air is always thick with rose and jasmine, and you can walk across the city and never lose sight of some or other prismatic bouquet.

Biafra: A Military History by Roy Doron – According to Goodreads I'm the first person to have ever read this book, which I suppose suggests there were not that many other people hoping for a close account of Nigeria's Civil War (1967-1970). So I suppose it's up to me to personally thank Mr. Doron for this well-researched, seemingly balanced, and certainly thoughtful account of a one of Africa's many misunderstood post-Colonial conflicts. In truth, almost any post-Colonial history of Africa is difficult to find, and I commend him for filling in a small gap in the literature.

Civilization and Its Discontents by Sigmund Freud – The first in a stack of old favorites that I want to re-read. This remains fascinating and batshit.

The Black Cloth by Bernard Binlin Dadie – Re-tellings of African folk stories. Admirably weird.

God's Country by Percival Everett – The first and best of Everett's exercises in revisionist genre fiction, twisting the conventions of the western through an African-American perspective. I still find Everett really funny line to line, he reminds me a lot of Charles Portis. But this also functions effectively (if a bit obviously) as a meta-critique of the genre and America's deeply racist past.

All Shot Up by Chester Himes – Also still excellent. Himes did something really unique with his decalogue of noir, exploring the vices and hypocrisy of post-War Harlem through his violent anti-heroes, agents of the powers-that-be barely staying ahead of the corruption endemic in their role. Left me wanting to read another.

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson – I still appreciate Ms. Robinson enormously, and this is as effective an advertisement for Christianity as you'll find short of being healed by a statue of the Virgin Mary.

Books I Read April 13th, 2026

Keep your head up.

Yeah, you.

The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka– In a Sri Lankan version of the afterlife curiously akin to that of the movie Beetlejuice, the ghost of a hard-living homosexual war photographer searches for his killer, tries to save his loved ones. A perfectly engaging work of urban fantasy in an unfamiliar setting that also apparently won the Booker prize. On balance, I think I probably preferred the Alain Mabanckou book from a few weeks back which has basically the same plot.

People From Bloomington by Budi Darma – Short fiction loosely detailing the lives of middle-Americans in the eponymous Indiana locale, in which Darma completed his doctorate, written in the author's native Indonesian. In the introduction he explains it as gentle reversal of the Westerner tradition of exoticization when writing about the East, with his goal being to write stories which could be told anywhere. The result is a successful if curiously deracinated series of stories about lonely souls slowly going mad in tiny rooms in shared houses which does seem meaningfully accessible to individuals of many different cultural swathes. I enjoyed it.

Exhalation by Ted Chiang – Short science fiction of the sort which consists of working through the ramifications of an abstract intellectual premise, i.e. a universe in which divine creation is an irrefutable scientific fact, the development of AI humanity in a capitalist society. I generally don't care for this style of genre fiction, in part because the people writing it usually aren't very good at writing as writing but also because it's just really difficult to extrapolate in this vein in a way that feels interesting and original. Hughes is one of the few writers I've read capable of it. These are genuinely thoughtful, the questions they raise are serious and the answers they offer valuable. Good stuff.

Reasons of State by Alejo Carpentier – A surprisingly kindly entry in the genre of 'Dictator Fiction,' books written from the perspective of a tyrant. South America seems largely responsible for the creation of the genre, although in recent years the best versions have come from Africa. Carpentier's anonymous anti-hero is an amiable, cultured monster, whose amoral charisma keeps him atop his unnamed nation despite repeated attempts at revolution. Carpentier seems oddly fond of his creation given his monstrosities, which doesn't really detract from the fun of the work but is an odd perspective to take from a man who fled his native Cuba during the Batista regime. Update: Apparently he wrote this on a bet with Gabriel Garcia Marquez? Which makes sense.

The Rage by Gene Kerrigan – Competent Irish noir.

This Other Salt by Aamer Hussein – Short stories from a wealthy Pakistani living in self-imposed exile.

Creole by Jose Eduardo Agualusa – Epistolary adventures from a Portuguese aristocrat fighting against slavery in Angola and Brazil. Perfectly enjoyable.

Running Through Beijing by Xu Zechen – The misadventures of a pirate DVD salesman in Beijing, one of Xu's impoverished yet strangely honorable urban immigrants in a new China which feels at once infinite with possibility and cripplingly stifling. Totally up my alley, this was a lot of fun.

Under the Eye of the Big Bird by Hiromi Kawakami – Far future science fiction.

When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamin Labatut – Exaggerated retellings of the mental collapses of some of the major contributors to mathematics and quantum physics. This was perfectly engaging and philosophically coherent but I admit I was sort of hoping to have learned more about the actual subjects involved. Perhaps they're simply too abstract for a layman to grasp in even a simplified version.

Books I Read March 30th, 2026

RIP Taix, the greatest faux-French restaurant in the greater Los Angeles area.

The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma – A madman's curse shatters a large, middle-class family, in this highly-stylized, almost biblical analogue for the internecine warfare of post-Colonial Nigeria. I thought it effectively portrayed the sentiments between the cadre of brothers who serve as the novel's protagonists. Very solid.

Pilgrim's Way by Abdulrazak Gurnah– An introverted, misanthropic immigrant suffers the indignities of an ex-colonial living among former colonizers. Shades of Philip Roth or John Fante in the internal monologue of a repressed intellectual obsessed with sex and status, with a touch of Naipaul's skepticism about the multicultural project.

Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa – A severely disabled woman contends with the miseries inflicted on her by cruel nature and the restrictions of an uncaring society. Disturbing, at times erotic, provacative in the best sense of the word. A work which will challenge the perceptions of most people who read it.

Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq – The Muslim woman of southern India struggle, not always in vain, against the patriarchal society which restrains them. Thoughtful and piercing, a fascinating look at an extremely foreign culture. Oh, the power of literature to express diverse points of view!

Books I Read March 24th, 2026

I spent the weekend in the mountain and the desert, looking at bewildering species of plant growth and avoiding several basking snakes. I read relatively little.

Xala by Ousmane Sembene – A Senegalese plutocrat is cursed with impotence, finds his entire life collapsing in this satire of post-Colonial greed. I guess it was also a movie? It was effective, if maybe a little on the nose.

Reservoir Bitches by Dahlia de la Cerda – Short fiction.

Delicious Hunger by Hai Fan – Short stories by a guy who spent thirteen years fighting a Communist insurgency in the jungles of Malaysia. Which is obviously a fascinating premise, but I found these to be a little over optimistic, despite the subject matter, both in terms of there being a lot about losing limbs to land mines and also that the insurgency (as least as I can gather from the minimal role given to it in the West) fizzled out kind of pointlessly. Some lovely descriptions of the jungle, though, and fascinating insights into this peculiar lifestyle.

Self-Portrait in Green by Marie Ndiaye – An enigmatic narrator reflects on a live dotted by combative, intimate, re-ocurring relationships with a feminine archetype and her philandering, amoral father. Moody and dreamlike, an opaque narrative with subterranean rumblings of sex, women and hate. I liked it.

Books I Read March 16th, 2026

A friend died on the streets last week. She was 46. She had been homeless for about ten years. At one point I tried very hard to help her, but in retrospect it's clear I was too late. I'm left pondering the last possible moment of intercession, that final instant where the outcome of her story could be effected. Was it before she had taken to living in a tent? Before her first hit of meth? Before whatever misfortune and suffering led her to seek that refuge? When she was a teenager? When she was a child? When she was newly born and slick with after birth? How deep goes our rot?

There are some very fine things about being human and there are some things that are very terrible.

The Lesser Bohemians by Eimear McBride – The well-written stream-of-conscience of a precocious acting student devolves into a Mills & Boon novel of the 'tortured genius is saved by the love of very special woman'. I read McBride's excellent and difficult Hotel Dreams last year and was unprepared for this very peculiar novel, which (I think unintentionally?) mixes literary stylings with the most absolutely banal plotting. There's this odd quality one usually only finds in self-published novels (or novels that should be self-published), in which the author too clearly relates to her Mary Sue-esque heroine and the entire escapade serves to function as this kind of tawdry exercise in literary masturbation.

Your House is on Fire, Your Children All Gone by Stefan Kiesbye – Having read a few books recently which did a shitty job of genre-izing the Holocaust, I had an urge to re-read this small-town Gothic horror, which at once serves as a truly disturbing work of nightmare and as consideration of inherited guilt.

The Deep by John Crowley – A sharp, strange, difficult but riveting work of fantasy. If Gene Wolfe hadn't written Book of the New Sun this would be the foremost entry in the Dying Earth subgenre (sorry, Jack Vance).

The Chill by Romano Bilenchi – A sensitive Tuscan youth suffers through late adolescence, the discovery that he is surrounded by a society of cruel hypocrites from whom he will forever be estranged.

Beijing Sprawl by Xu Zechen – A rural immigrant to early 90s Beijing reports the tragic misfortunes of his group of his roommates and acquaintances – alternatively violent and innocent, cruel and kind, all desperate trying to find meaning in a society which is rapidly changing beyond conception. Sad an lovely. It reminded me a bit of Steinbeck's Cannery Row and Tortilla Flats, in its depiction of a scuzzy urban underbelly redeemed by its inhabitants somewhat eroded sense of morality.

Orbital by Samantha Harvey – The contemplations of the crew of the international space station over the course of a single 'day' in space, 24 hours spent engaged in the minutia of life as an astronaut along with scattered reflections on the nature of humanity, our relationship with the earth and each other. It's an excellent work of scientific writing, as well as being uplifting without being cloying. I like it just fine.

Kissing the Sword by Shahrnush Parsipur – A memoir of the author's five odd years spent imprisoned by the Islamic Republic. By God, I've read a lot of prison memoirs in my life. Oh, the sickening and universal brutality of man! Anyway, this was good I'll pick up some of her fiction.

The Pastel City by M. John Harrison – Derring do on a Dying Earth. This week's second dip into that sub-genre was a lot less enjoyable than the first.

Of Cattle and Men by Ana Paula Maia – A crew of secretly decent brutes working in a slaughterhouse in an impoverished corner of Brazil investigate a terrible mystery afflicting the herds. Many years ago I spent a few weeks on a cattle ranch in the Pantanal, helping mend fences and drinking cold mate. I can vividly recall the vacqueros, illiterate physical geniuses who could roll a cigarette with newsprint while riding a horse, and carried heavy revolvers to deal with wild boar. They also loved dulce de leche, during meals in the messhall we’d sit on these rough hewn wooden tables and they’d eat it by the spoon full. That's neither here nor there, I suppose. But this is very good, blunt, bleak and brutal, full of masculine swagger without going into excess or absurdity. I really liked it and will pick something else up by Maia shortly.

Books I Read March 2nd, 2026

My bread came out badly this week, and I didn't really like any of the books I read. Also, the world is ending.

Lonliness by Clark E. Moustakas – Existential pablum..

The Negro Grandsons of Vercingetorix by Alain Mabanckou – A woman documents the division and collapse of her country, family.

Doomi Golo—The Hidden Notebooks by Boubacar Boris Diop – An aging elder recounts his personal and national history in a series of interwoven, surrealistic texts.

Study for Obedience by Sara Bernstein – A miserable Jewess returns to a country which is not Germany to suffer a psychological breakdown, contemplate the ubiquitous guilt of man. I think there's something tacky about exploring the tragedy of your grandsires as if it was your own, and tend to be hyper-sensitive at the attempts of Semites to co-opt the moral force of the shoa for contemporary works of fiction.

Books I Read February 23rd, 2023

Went to the New Year Parade in Chinatown yesterday, watched a band of mostly Latin bagpipers play the Caledonian March in front of distant mountains left snow-capped by the week's rain. I would also like to add that there is a very big difference between a short list and a long list.

This Other Eden by Paul Harding –The inbred descendants of a freed slave and his Irish wife live out their final days on a tiny island off the coast of Maine. A genuinely odd, interesting setting, along with a story full of rich detail and vibrant characterization. There's something maybe a little...over-clever about it? Stylistically and philosophically, it seems very in sync with the literary trends of the moment. But you can't deny the artistry or skill.

Religion and the Rise of Capitalism by R.H. Tawney – Modern capitalism and the notion that economic activity should be unencumbered by conventional ethics was the unintended offspring of the Reformation. I picked this up completely arbitrarily because it was mentioned in a Walter Tevis book—I have a thing about following authors I like into author's I don't know, it helps me read things I wouldn't have otherwise. This was dense but brilliant, and it left me with two thoughts, one regarding the content of the essays, the other their quality; the first is that it's always kind of staggering to think that there was a long period of human history where people actually cared about God, and the second is how much smarter everyone used to be. There isn't a public intellectual alive who writes with this much clarity and vigor, and if there is you can sure as shit believe no one is reading him.

The Road Does Not End by Olubunmi Familoni – A street child finds fame.

The Book of Chameleons by Jose Eduardo Argualusa – A soul reincarnated into a gecko and his master, a forger of identities, navigate the tragic and turbulent history of modern Angola. If asked, I would say that I'm pretty much over magical realism, but every so often you do read something which works and this is one of them. The writing is lyrical and evocative and it doesn't overstay its welcome. I like Argulausa and am looking forward to the next thing I've got by him on the shelf.

The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden – A repressed young woman in post-war Holland finds her life shaken by the arrival of her cad brother's girlfriend. An enchanting and well-realized queer romance, if extremely predictable. That I knew what was going to happen basically from page 2 didn't stop me from enjoying it.

By the Sea by Abdulrazak Gurnah – Two Zanzibari exiles whose pasts are miraculously intertwined recount existences marred by misunderstanding, bitterness, anger, and a corrupt and totalitarian government. Sympathetic, well-executed, Gurnah has an earthy humanity to him which makes for a morally satisfying read.

Books I Read February 16th, 2026

Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood – An embittered atheist flees her bourgeois existence for the shelter of an order of nuns in the distant outback, survives a mouse plague, considers the enormous guilt incumbent in human existence. Shades of Marilynne Robinson in this somber examination of Christian morality, albeit of a less enthusiastic hue. But it was thoughtful and kind and I enjoyed it.

Abyssinian Chronicles by Moses Isegawa – The childhood, adolescence and early manhood of a precocious rebel in post-independence Uganda, surviving the despotic violence of his parents, school officials, and the actual governmental despots installed in Uganda during that period. Excellent. A deeply considered, wide-ranging bildungsroman, full of humor and vital insight. I was surprised and a little saddened to see that Isegawa doesn't seem to have written much besides this.

The Marriage of Anansewa by Efua Sutherland – A wily everyman cons several local chiefs into getting engaged to his daughter. Lyrical and entertaining.

West by Carys Davies – A late 18th century farmer travels west of the Mississippi to look for dinosaurs, leaves his daughter back East.

Books I Read February 8th, 2026

Gonna bring it together this week. Gonna push.

The Lost Steps by Alejo Carpentier – A hack composer ensconced in bobo Manhattan is drawn to the fecund wilds of South America, journeying up-country into the dawn of man. It reminded me of Henderson the Rain King and of Saul Bellow generally, a masculine, verbose and conspicuously brilliant narrator grappling with sex and art and various other vital forces which compose human existence. Actually, Bellow is an interesting comparison to a lot of early Spanish American magical realism, with his sex obsessed protagonists undergoing hyper-real torments. I digress. I actually tend not to love books written in this style these days, but this was very strong. Carpentier was brilliant and his knowledge far-reaching and idiosyncratic, and this is excellent if a little racist.

Murambi: The Book of Bones by Boubacar Boris Diop – An exile returns to post-genocide Rwanda.

We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo – A girl grows up in a slum in Zimbabwe, emigrates to America.

A Different Bed Every Time by Jac Jemc – Experimental short fiction.

Mockingbird by Walter Tevis – The last sentient robot watches the human species decay into solitude and idle pleasure, until an unlikely pair of rebels re-discover the written word. Walter Tevis is criminally underrated, and this is everything you could want in this form of science fiction satire—prescient, insightful, engaging. A more optimistic A Brave New World, in terms of content and quality.

Memory of Departure by Abdulrazak Gurnah – A young man surmounts the decrepitude, moral squalor, and constant pedophilia of pre and post-colonial Zanzibar. There is a lot of stuff in this book which is genuinely distasteful – I really cannot overstate the prevalence of homosexual child rape, which seems to have been a real feature of Gurnah's childhood – to the point where I was almost ready to wave it off midway through. But from this horror Gurnah manages to craft something meaningfully life-affirming, no small feat.

Books I Read February 2nd, 2026

Alas, another week with a weak tally. I'll be kind to myself and attribute it being busy in other areas. In any event.

Dealing with the Dead by Alain Mabanckou – As told in the second person, a recently deceased ghost struggles to return to the land of the living, meets a menagerie of characters personifying Congolese history and society. I like Mabanckou quite a bit, his books are different but always lively, and the various asides which make up the narrative strange and compelling.

The Redemption of Galan Pike by Carys Davies – Short fiction about lost souls on the prairie in a style reminiscent of but slightly kinder than Flannery O'Connor. Carys Davies does not actually live out on the prairie (best as I can tell), and there is something slightly performative about these, but still they're pretty great, bitter when they're supposed to be bitter, funny when they're supposed to be funny, and everywhere surprising. A lot of great stings in these, particularly the eponymous. Definitely dug it, will read another one of hers shortly.

The Son of the House by Cheluchi Onyemelukwe-Onuobia – Two women find themselves bound together by kidnapping, an improbable past relation, and the patriarchal evils of Nigerian society. Realism interwoven with the occasional impossible arrangement of fate is very much a trend within modern African fiction (come to think of it, this is actually a pretty established subgenre across the planet at this point), with last month's The Orchard of Lost Souls being another example, and this is a confident example of that form.

The Dilemma of a Ghost by Ama Ata Aidoo – A man and his black-American bride return go Ghana, feud with his extended family. Again, the struggle between modernity and tradition was a (the) major concern of post-Colonial African literature, but Aidoo was a great talent, and the language here really sings. I need to pick up more by her.

Books I Read, January 26th 2026

Didn't read up to my usual quota this week. Hope that doesn't become a pattern.

The Chase by Alejo Carpentier – A Cuban revolutionary is pursued by all sides at the end of the Batista regime. Very much in the Bolano vain (particularly The Amulet), though one wonders if this was because Bolano was referencing him or only that they underwent similarly formative experiences. Swirling and surreal, far the most difficult Carpentier novel that I've read, but nonetheless excellent.

Nonesuch by Francis Spufford – A independently-minded London business secretary finds love, apocalypse-inducing magic during the early days of the Blitz. Spufford marries an uncommon gift for crafting engaging characters with an original take on classic urban fantasy and an innate humanism that I can't help but find compelling. At that rare and poignant intersection of high literature and genre fiction. Great stuff.

The Seven Solitudes of Lorsa Lopez by Sony Labou Tansi – An anarchic Rabelaisian satire of modern Zaire. Magnificent. The writing is brilliant, funny and strange and powerful. The winding story of a forgotten people seeking justice in an uncaring world achieves a universal profundity far beyond political parity, speaking to the highest concerns of the human being. Really enjoyed it.

Dorodango: The Japanese Art of Making Mud Balls by Bruce Gardner – I make mud balls now.

Books I Read January 19th, 2026

I am concerned, at the moment and about other things, that they will never print a vinyl copy of Time: The Revelator by Gillian Welch. If ever there was a record that deserved to be pressed into wax! Maybe the greatest lyricist in popular music, with respect to Townes Van Zandt and MF DOOM. Everything is Free Now is a profound statement about existing as an artist in modern capitalism and as for I Dream a Highway, well, that's just in the American poetic canon full stop. What will sustain us through the winter? Where did last year's lessons go?

Indeed. Also worth noting that pretty much everything I read this week was fire.

Blackass by A. Igoni Barret – A desperate Nigerian man-child awakes to find his skin turned white, makes his way across a vividly drawn Lagos, quickly adopts the indulgent selfishness of a colonizer/all peoples. In lesser hands this could easily be bungled into the usual humorless polemic, but Barrett creates a genuinely thoughtful satire on race relations, capitalism, and general human shittiness. Good stuff, I'll look up another by the author.

The Lights of Point Noire by Alain Mabanckou – The author returns to his native Congo twenty-years after leaving, meets his extended family. A loving and vibrant exploration of childhood, place, past, etc. Mabanckou is a vivid talent.

Treacle Walker by Alan Garner – A surreal, fantastical sound poem becomes...something else, I won't spoil it. Fabulous. More than fabulous, unique. How often do I write that in a review? Not a lot. It's barely the length of a novella and worth pushing yourself through to the ending so you can read it twice.

A Mosque in the Jungle by Othman Wok – Engaging tales of pulp in an unfamiliar setting written by, apparently, a major Singaporean minister? For a book I picked up because it came up on my app while I was searching for a wok cookbook it was pretty fun.

Western Lane by Chetna Maroo – A recently-widowed Indian immigrant and his daughter take shelter in the pain of their mother's loss/the arrival of puberty in vigorous games of squash. Spare but lovely, Maroo's writing is stripped of anything extraneous,

Dream Story by Arthur Schnitzler – A post-war bourgeois Vienese doctor is driven to erotic nocturnal misadventures by his partner's theoretical infidelity. The basis for Eyes Wide Shut, but it works a lot better as a novella than a film. Schnitzler was an enormously talented writer, who worked effectively in a variety of genres and styles.

Books I Read January 11th, 2026

Back on that grind. That sweet, sweet reading grind.

Rainbow's End by James M. Cain – D.B Cooper lands outside the shack of an upright hillbilly and his buxom, insane mother in this implausible thriller. Thinking on it, this is actually not the first James M. Cain novel I read in which the threat of incest plays a major role. Take that for what you want.

Proust by Samuel Beckett – An exegesis more convoluted than the text.

A Few Nights and Days – Multinational sixties hipsters miscegnate their way to self-destruction. Sort of a Parisian beat vibe. Lively

Cemetary of Mind by Dambudzo Marchera – Apocalyptic ruminations of love, pain and madness. I liked the ones I understood.

The Orchard of Lost Souls by Nadifa Mohamed – Three generations of woman, bound by an unknowable series of coincidences, navigate the dissolution of Somalia. I can think of a lot of other books that fall within this general literary subgenre, but few that I enjoyed as much. The characters are deftly written and the narrative keeps to a good clip.

The Works of Vermin Hiron Ennes – Revolutionary exterminators hunt hallucinogenic spewing dragons in a Belle Epoque herbaceous metropolis captivated by beauty and death. Shades of Mieville and Pratchett. It's actually enormously difficult to write a good high fantasy, I say that both as someone who has read many bad ones and written a few himself. There are innumerable considerations – in terms of world building, naming conventions, language itself – unknown to writers working in other genres. Ennes does an excellent job here of creating an engaging and original world without over-straining the narrative, which offers all the joys of the genre (sword fights! love affairs! vengeance and daring do!) offered in a style a good cut above most competitors. Fun stuff.

Eating Chiefs by Taban lo Liyong – Engaging re-tellings of east African myths.

Books I Read, January 4th 2026

Happy New Year. Spent the better part of the last several weeks baking, cooking, eating, drinking, laughing with friends and family, and reading Proust. I hope that 2026 brings anyone exactly what you deserve, and maybe even a little more besides.

The Prisoner by Marcel Proust – The fifth book of Proust’s masterpiece details his obsessive, jealous love for Albertine, and his efforts to keep her contained for a long period in a wing of his house. Albertine is, for me, the great weakness of the book—or perhaps one of two, the latter of which I’ll detail further down. She never comes across as a fully realized character. To some degree this might be a deliberate choice, as Proust is much more concerned about the effect of love on our inner landscape than of love per se. His obsession with Albertine, rather than Albertine itself, constitutes the bulk of the narrative. But still, without some stronger anchor his jealousy seems arbitrary and inaccessible—something which is not improved by the sapphic lens of his obsession, itself a difficult peculiarity to share. Probably more importantly, the jealousy itself, although presented as a universal quality of romance – it being prefaced with Odette and Swan’s union, not to mention St. Loup and Rachel – isn’t that at all, but (seemingly) a particular obsession of Proust. So much of what Proust writes finds echoes in our own minds, even on the most complex and subtle topics, that this long, dissonant note can’t help but ring out.

The Fugitive by Marcel Proust – The sixth book of Proust’s masterpiece details Marcel’s forgetting Albertine and going to Venice. Further Proust points will be explored below.

Time Regained by Marcel Proust – The final book in Proust’s masterpiece acts as an extended epilogue, skipping ahead to the miseries of WWI, and further on still to a period where our protagonist, after an extended stay in a sanitarium, briefly returns to Parisian society, finally striking upon the grand understanding of time which will allow for the creation of his epic work. Speaking of the work as a whole, it is at once supremely brilliant and somehow less than the sum of its parts. Proust has a profound grasp of the human mind, as well as the subtleties of social interaction and the role which our subjective perceptions and endlessly shifting memory play in our experience of existence. Indeed, there are insights galore in these pages, complex but valuable. And yet, the peculiarities of Proust’s own character – his obsessive jealousy, his inability to feel genuine friendship, indeed his essential incapacity to love in a true sense – render much of his thinking alien, at least to me, and, I would suspect, to most readers. This would be fine—there is enormous value in elucidating even an aberrant mind state – except that Proust isn’t interested in the subjective, but only in (as he says many times throughout the book) the general laws which can be drawn from it. And Proust definitely seems to believe that the truths he articulates are universal, that all love is simply refined jealousy, that we exist almost exclusively within our own conscious, that social interaction is essentially a barren distraction from one’s own psyche, and that happiness is impossible as our desires, once granted, immediately cease to offer any satisfaction. But I don’t think these things are true, or at least are true only in part, and so much of Proust’s grand summations are somewhat lost on me. That said, this remains one of the seminal works of human letters, a profound and magisterial depiction of the movement of time, nostalgia, love, sex, so on and so forth. In short, it was well worth my December.

The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett – A pair of high-functioning alcoholics investigate a murder. Needing a break from Proust, I read half a dozen classic noirs as a palette cleanser. This is probably my least favorite of Hammett's slim ouvre, I don't really care for Nick and Nora does nothing but say 'you're amazing!' to him for about two hundred pages. Also, I'm far from a teetotaler but if anyone you knew drank like this it would be of serious and immediate concern. That said, there are some really stellar moments where you're reminded that Hammett, alone among the grand masters of the genre, had actual experience as a detective, glimmers of reality that his competitors can't really match.

After Dark, My Sweet by Jim Thompson – A mentally ill ex-boxer gets drawn into a kidnapping plot. One of Thompson's best, as swift and brutal as a punch to the head. The sense of dread builds from the first line. No one wrote better 'damaged people make foolish decisions'-style noir than Thompson.

The Ferguson Affair by Ross Macdonald – An upright lawyer gets drawn into a web of murder. MacDonald is a better plotter than Hammett or Chandler, and he's a few drops wetter as well. Some of the 60's sensibility seeped into his work, giving him a sense of sympathy which stands out.

The Lady in the Lake by Raymond Chandler – Marlowe investigates a pair of missing woman. What Chandler loses in narrative logic he makes up for by being one of America's foremost mid-century prose stylists. Excellent.

The Outfit by Richard Stark – An amoral gunhand goes to work on an extremely loose depiction of the mafia. I admire Stark's willingness to make his anti-hero an absolute prick, and this certainly moves quickly, but there's an element of fanboyishness to all of it that kind of sticks in my craw.

Middletown by Will Eno – A kindly, brief play about the absurdity and beauty of human existence. A nice little shot of optimism to start the new year.

Books I Read December 22nd, 2025

Just spent the week plowing through Proust and buying nice smelling things for people for Christmas. It turns out that about half the stores in my neighborhood sell nice smelling things, so that's been really helpful. Even the stores that aren't exclusively devoted to selling nice smelling things usually have a few nice smelling things they will sell you, potpourri or candles or incense or fresh sage or hand-made soap or lavender sachets. In any event—Merry Christmas if I don't speak to you before then.

The Guermantes Way by Marcel Proust – The third volume of Proust's masterpiece is a savage, not altogether subtle satire of the salons of the Belle Epoque, of the absurd pretensions of the cultural elite and the grasping desperateness of their social inferiors, with the meta-gag being that there is no distinction between any of them, that everyone's standards are based upon constantly shifting mores with self-interest being the only constant. As always, Proust's social insights are frequent and sharp, but I confess there were periods of the book where I was thinking 'I hate all of these people, so why am I reading so much about them?' Proust clearly wondered something similar. It left me wishing a bit that he had turned his extraordinary genius for psychological insight on a group of people more interesting than his cast of vacuous beauties, status-obsessed 'inverts,' pedantic intellectuals, desperate artists and monstrous narcissists. The first bit, about the sudden death of his grandmother, however, is utterly magnificent.

Sodom and Gomorrah by Marcel Proust – In the fourth volume of Proust's masterpiece our protagonist sketches the homosexual demimonde while growing obsessed with the loosely drawn Albertine. His insight into the complex world of male-to-male relations is sad and fascinating, filled with rich insight into the tortured existence of a maligned subclass. Everything about lesbians, however, is kinda weird. I suppose it's not shocking that Proust would have been more familiar with Sodom's side streets than it's neighboring metropolis. That said, and as always in Proust, moments of sublime beauty are intermixed with the most cogent social insight, and in general this has been a really fun project.

Books I Read December 14th, 2025

Gearing up for the pre-Christmas push, which for me will involve a lot of gift giving and cooking planning. And Proust reading. Such are my ambitions.

From a Crooked Rib by Nuruddin Farah – A rural Somalian everywoman escapes her home to avoid marriage, struggles against the oppressive weight of the patriarchy. Not that this was bad, but it probably hit harder in 1970.

Night of My Blood by Kofi Awoonor – At some point in my life I firmly expect to get into poetry, like I expect to get into jazz, but so far it's never been much of an interest. Reading this collection of post-colonial odes from one of mid-century Africa's most renowned poets, I realized the last time I'd read poetry was in the Old Testament. Anyway, this was evocative and powerful stuff, filled with sorrow at the decay of local custom in the face of several generations of imperialism, and fear or a future bereft of spiritual insight.

My Parent's Marriage by Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond – Seeking to rebel against her powerful, philandering father, a Ghanian marries a studious would-be emigre. The characters feel real and the story is well plotted.

The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus – Despite (because?) of essentially having adopted its tenants, I can't say I really enjoy reading existential literature, especially non-fiction. There's a great deal of hair splitting and a tendency to over-define relatively simple concepts until they seem odiously complex.

In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower by Marcel Proust – There's so much genius here, and of such a varied nature, that one hesitates to know where to start. Seeing as how I'll be writing (presumably) four more of these as I make my way through his opus, what I'll say struck out particularly about this segment was Proust's talent for misdirection. This is a book in which the protagonist talks about themselves for thousands of pages and still somehow leaves you with great gaps in his life and strange holes in his character. One particularly memorable example of this arises in the first section, during which, amid sumptuous descriptions of an adolescent romance so chaste as to suggest the most profound innocence, Marcel offers a throwaway line to the effect that he was constantly frittering away his evening in whorehouses, a seemingly noteworthy fact which is basically never brought up again. Another, less sordid lacunae relates to his academic career, which, despite occasional mentions of so-and-so as a friend from school, receives literally not a word of text. It's part of the fascinatingly oblique genius of the work, that so much is explained in such eloquent and logical detail, and yet so much else remains to the reader to ponder. Really enjoying this, glad I decided to make it my Holiday project.

Books I Read December 7th, 2025

What can I say, I like the holidays. The explosion of Christmas markets is a noticeable delight. LA looks wonderful by fairy lights. We pretend it's cold. I'm such a child that I bought myself a present, then had it shipped to my parent's house so I can open it on Christmas morning.

Admiring Silence by Abdulrazak Gurnah – A heart illness causes a weak-willed Zanzibari (sp?) exile to consider colonialism, family, romance, history, many other things in this extremely funny, cerebral text. Shades of Saul Bellow in the 'dazed man undergoes mental breakdown' as well as the humor and depth of thought. Really strong, I'll pick up something else by Gurnah soon.

The Stone Country by Alex la Guma – An apartheid rebel in the early 60s undergoes a stay in a penitentiary, based (presumably) on the author's own experiences. The plot is brisk and engaging, the writing clear and strong. These sorts of overtly political novels tend to seem a little naive after the struggle is over but that doesn't take away from the skill of this work.

The Myth of the Birth of the Hero: A Psychological Exploration of Myth by Otto Rank – Freud's apprentice inspects Western myth for evidence of psychosexual undertones. There's a lot of fuzzy logic, as is the case with most psychoanalysis of this period—coming out of water represents birth, but going into water also represents birth, etc. It's something much closer to literary criticism than scientific thought.

Swann's Way by Marcel Proust – A Frenchman feels things. I last read Proust some 15 years ago, and have very vivid memories of carrying the first volume of the Montcrief edition through Eastern Europe, reading it on busses and for several day's in a commune in Talin. That's neither here nor there, except to say that big works have a way of sticking with you, carrying their own weight, to the point where one starts to wonder if the work itself has not been overshadowed by the strength of memory. This is the sort of concern that Proust would have, and express over the course of seven or eight thousand words. Anyway, I'm really enjoying it. It needs to be consumed fiercely, voraciously, in great gasps so that you can maintain Proust's ferocious rhythm, packed onto a night train or (in this case) read while walking very rapidly on a treadmill. Last time I read it, I didn't really realize what a massive tool Swann is supposed to be—then again, no one really comes out well in this, as memory serves, except for a couple of his elderly family members. Excited to get to the next one.

Fate of a Cockroach by Tewfik Al-Hakim – Absurdist and romantic plays from early 20th century Egypt's most beloved playwright, no seemingly entirely forgotten? Which is too bad, because the eponymous Beckett riff is a lot of fun.

The Harp and the Shadow by Alejo Carpentier – Columbus's case for sainthood is dissected via a last testament, several ghosts. Very good, very modern feeling, the fantastic intimately threaded through the mundane. Carpentier writes well and in distinct styles, and for an expressly political novel it is never didactic or dull. I've got like 3 more by him to read and I'm looking forward to getting to them.

Books I Read November 30th, 2025

Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate. I hope that you ate well accompanied by people you love or at least tolerate.

The Concubine by Elechi Amadi – A beautiful, virtuous widow brings havoc to a Nigerian village. An odd little slice of pre-Colonial West Africa, small but charming.

Fixions and Other Stories by Taban Lo Liyong – Myths and strange parables by a writer who counts Brecht and (obviously, from the title) Borges as core influences. Enjoyable but insubstantial, I found myself wanting more.

Zambia Shall be Free by Kenneth Kaunda – An autobiography written while the author remained a Colonial rebel, before he became Zambia's president for life. Thoughtful and even lyrical, there's nothing in it that would make you think 'oh, this guy will betray all his principles once given the chance.' Which you can read either as 1) power corrupts or 2) he was always a liar.

Chaka by Thomas Mofalo – One of the first novels written in a sub-Saharan African language, a mystical re-telling of the rise of Chaka of the Zulus to the tyrant of south-eastern Africa. There's something almost Shakespearean about it, with Chaka our classic hero reduced and destroyed by his great vice (and, also, the machinations of an evil sorcerer.) A well-realized work of literature, rooted in indigenous belief and morality without being cloying or starry eyed.

You Were Never Really Here by Johnathan Ames – A cliché punishes a ring of pedophiles. Extremely on the nose.

Beautiful Feathers by Cyprian Ekwenesi – The marital woes of a political agitator.