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.

Books I Read November 23rd, 20205

It rained this week, which meant I got to feel cozy inside my house, and also that everything has turned gloriously green. LA autumn is underrated.

The Wolfe at the Door by Gene Wolfe – On balance, this is probably not the strongest collection of Gene Wolfe's shorts—that would be the sublime and appropriately titled Best of Gene Wolfe – but there's still some strong stuff in here, and it's always a delight to read Wolfe's short fiction period. He probably works best in short fiction—some of his issues with characterization are removed, and it allows for his astonishingly original mind to flourish.

The Second Round by Lenrie Peters – An understandably popular sub-genre in mid 20th century African literature is 'talented youth returns from education in the West, struggles to re-acclimatize with the culture.' Lenrie Peters is one of about five authors this week who were returned ex-patriots, most of whom specialized in practical matters (medicine, education, engineering) with the intention of being a part of the post-colonial development of Africa and writing being a sideline. Some are more explicitly political but others, like this excellent entry, focus more on the sense of existential and emotional dislocation of re-entry, an inability to combine with the movements of then modern Africa and a heightened sense of the tragedy of the human condition as expressed by their particular milieu. Peters didn't write much else, which is too bad because this shows evidence of real artistic talent.

And a Threefold Cord by Alex la Guma – A week in a bitterly impoverished 'coloured' Capetown ghetto written by one of the forgotten heroes of the anti-apartheid movement. A 'kitchen-sink' book about the small struggles leading to larger tragedies of an average family. Well-observed and deftly drawn.

No Longer at Ease by Chinua Achebe – Turns out that I read this and completely forgot. That's an odd feeling. Anyway, the grandson of the protagonist of Things Fall Apart returns to Nigeria after being educated abroad to work as a civil servant, struggles with the pull between modernity and tradition, family and future, etc. Quick, sharp, strong.

One Man One Matchet by T.M. Aluko – The first African head officer of a district in rural Nigeria finds himself continually off-footed by the machinations of an unscrupulous demagogue. Aluko was one of the aforementioned returnees who seems to have drawn on some life experience for this book, and the result is a caustic and funny depiction of a dysfunctional democracy.

Obi by John Munyonye – A Christian husband and wife return to their ancestral village, struggle to uphold their faith in light of the native traditions regarding childlessness. Munyonye was had the same CV as Aluko and Peters and was (obviously) focused on some of the same themes, although this is less focused on the struggles of the African intelligentsia and more on the interactions of then prototypical post-colonial Nigerians. It was good, like most of what I read this week. I really enjoy the use of the novel to explore the existence of unfamiliar populations.

The Kingdom of This World by Alejo Carpentier – An ensemble cast of slaves and nobleman experience the Haitian revolution and the horrifying regimes which displace it. The writing is strange and evocative and the plotting extremely deft, with seeming sidelong segues suddenly slotting into place. Ruminative and strange and very good, I will definitely pick up another by Carpentier.

Outcasts by Bonnie Lubega – The patriarch of a clan of outcast herders employed as quasi-slave labor by a village of agriculturists gets his own. The cultural and ethnic complexities of the human race are astounding, and this is strange and funny.

Maru by Bessie Head – I get all my books these days from the library (Holler back LAPL) which is absolutely ideal except that a fair number of the books have been marked up. This annoys the shit out of me, as a rule, although it usually ends after fifteen pages or so, the disrespectful reader rarely having the endurance to see through their task. But whomever read this largely forgotten work of mid-century African literature was of a different stripe. The book is filled with their notes, highlighted passages, and sidebar definitions. Whomever did it was not a big reader, as evidenced by the long division they did on the back flap...

...normally this sort of thing annoys the heck out of me, but I confess in this particular instance I found myself impressed with the readers endurance.

Also, curious as to why they chose this book, a strange sort of Dickensian fable about a Masarwa (pejorative: bushmen) girl trying to find a place in Bechuanaland where her people are despised by the locals. Bessie Head was herself a mixed-race South African who led a fascinating and tragic life, and the protagonist's journey obviously references the author's own, albeit in a mystical and optimistic sort of way. Whoever predated me could have done a lot worse.

Origins of Rhodesia by Stanlake Samkange – An occasionally over-specific description of the various chicaneries by which Cecil Rhodes and his crew of utterly unscrupulous Europeans convinced the British Empire to support the invasion of a sovereign African nation. All English colonial stories tend to read the same, with both local leaders and reactionary parliamentary leaders being bamboozled by swift-thinking hyper-capitalists. Strangely, whomever was marking up this book seems to have been pro-imperalist, at least to judge by their peculiar facet of underlining the occasional ethical failing of the native nation, and expressing margin enthusiasm about the speed and potency of the European troops. Weird! Weird!

Books I Read November 16th, 2025

I made bagels for the first time since I left the bakery…

And with those bagels, I made a monster BEC.

Also, read the following.

There are Doors by Gene Wolfe – A lovestruck everyman is pulled into a foreign dimension—sort of like if IQ84 didn't suck. This doesn't reach the heights of his sublime Peace but it's more coherent and human than most of his later works, while still being full of his usual odd asides and seemingly irrelevant details. Good or bad, no one wrote like Gene Wolfe—he was a genre unto himself.

Existential Psychotherapy by Irving Yalom – An (the?) attempt to utilize existential psychoanalysis as a practical guide towards therapy. Yalom is of the first generation of psychotherapists who didn't imagine they were creating a new religion of which they were the foremost prophet, and while this is more philosophical than, say, Martin Beck's book on depression some weeks back, it does a much better job of focusing on the practical application of existential ideals to human behavior. This is to say that there are tables and references to scientific studies and whatnot. I enjoyed it, as I have this entire foray into existential thought. Constant focus on my own lack of specialness and the inevitability of my demise has been very therapeutic. Still not really sure how it relates to say, schizophrenia, though.

The Skin Chairs by Barbara Comyns – An upper class family reduction to genteel poverty as observed by a precocious young girl. There's nothing in this story of arrogant relatives and unlikely characters that you won't have seen before, but it's nevertheless effective. I found myself emotionally engaged and Comyns is a subtle and excellent writer.

Autocorrect: Stories by Etgar Keret – More of Keret's uncanny humanistic shorts. These are more the dreams of a middle aged man than the quasi-erotic misadventures which characterize his earlier work, but they remain bright and funny and sad. I've said this before but I really always enjoy Keret, his style doesn't grow old to me and his hit rate is really impressive. Doesn't hurt that each story is such a light ask.

Of Dreams and Assasins by Malika Mokeddem – A motherless girl survives a youth in the choking patriarchy of post-colonial Algeria. Strange to think that the the defining post-imperial leftist revolt ended up in oppressive Islamofascism (do we still use that term, or did it go out with the Neo-cons? Remember when Neo-Cons were all we had to worry about?). This is sharp and sad and anger inducing.

The Amputated Memory by Werewere Liking – A girl survives a youth in the surreal patriarchy of pre-Colonial animist Cameroon. After last week's book I was expecting something a bit more conceptually complex, but what I got is a semi-autobiographical account of the author's (mostly horrifying) misadventures (Liking was married at 12 and pregnant at 13, but spent much of her later youth as a cabaret act) re-conceptualized as a feminist epic celebrating the lives of her beloved ancestors.

Blood Feast: The Complete Short Stories of Malika Moustadraf by Malika Moustadraf – Various parties attempt to survive the brutal patriarchy of urban Morocco. I swear this was not a deliberate theme on my part. Moustadraf was a rocket in Moroccan letters, writing a small handful of sharp, vulgar stories about outcast homosexuals and maltreated women before dying of kidney failure at 40. Disturbing and effective, it's a shame there aren't more of these.

The Legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa: A Quest for Inter-religious Dialogue by John Allembah Azumah – Can I stop for a moment to give a shout-out to the Los Angeles public library system, without which I'd be an illiterate barbarian? I asked them to buy this book like nine months ago and then they went out and did it, which is pretty awesome. What a fabulous institution. Anyway, this is a brisk overview of the impact of Islam on sub-Saharan Africa, well-documented and humanistic.

The Madman and the Medusae by Tchicaya U-Tam'Si – The death of two men in wartime Congo as told in a polyphony of local voices. Expressionistic and odd, but I pretty much dug it.

Books I Read November 9th, 2025

I've got a pecan pie in the oven right now, and it smells unreal.

The Damnation Game by Clive Barker – An ex-con gets drawn into the terrifying past of his unscrupulous, mystical new employer. I still think that long novels are really not the best way to tell a horror story, that they invariably introduce other genre elements – adventure, romance – which ultimately only detract from the terror. That said, this is a very good example of the form. Barker is a better writer than most of the people writing this sort of thing, and he has a rare talent for creating genuinely disturbing moments (there's a lot of stuff in here about coming back from the death that's pretty awful).

Black Sunlight by Dambudzo Marechera – The history of a leftist group fighting against an abstract totalitarian regime would be far too coherent a way to describe this riff on Beckett and Burroughs. Frankly, a lot of it is just vivid descriptions of horrifying acts, but the stuff that isn't is edgewise and clever. Marechera was a rare mind.

The Precipice by Ivan Goncharov – Love and custom play out in a small Russian village, as written by Dostoevsky's less famous friend. Readers of the blog will know that I believe only about a half-dozen non-Russian speakers wrote a decent novel before the start of the 20th century (that short list including the Bronte Sisters, Melville, maybe Zola), but this is more Pride and Prejudice than The Idiot.

The Color of Money by Walter Tevis – Twenty years after becoming the greatest pool hustler in America, 'Fast' Eddie Felson tries to reignite his killer instinct. Tevis is a ton of fun, he's got a great handle on the masculine ego, and the way in which sports have been sublimated for combat in the modern age.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Confession by Leo Tolstoy – I should really keep a list on goodreads of things I was supposed to read in high school but did not. This was my first encounter with Tolstoy's iconic existential novelette detailing the slow death by disease of the eponymous, a bourgeois judge whose superficial, meaningless existence is figuratively, than literately, brought to an end. A soaring and profound meditation.

Faulkner, Mississippi by Edouard Glissant – A literary and social critique of Faulkner's ouvre by a French-speaking Caribbean author. I enjoy this sort of thing on principle but found this a bit florid.

Limbo Tower by William Lindsay Graham – The inhabitants of a TB ward ponder death, God, etc. Would not have expected the writer of the horrifying Nightmare Alley to be capable of anything this optimistic, indeed even slightly mawkish.

You Dreamed of Empires by Alvaro Enrigue – The meeting between Cortez and Moctezuma, as told in casual, engaging prose. Engaging, it effectively centers you in an extraordinary historical moment.

Book I Read, November 2nd 2025

Happy belated Halloween! I read a lot of horror this week and made some pan de los muertos which I should have taken a picture of but didn't, alas.

It Shall Be of Jasper and Coral and Love-across-a-Hundred-Lives by Werewere Liking – Post-modern African fiction, poems and fragments of stories interrupted by digressions on art and colonialism told by a complex variety of perspectives. Complex and multi-layered. My test for this kind of book is two-fold – 1, does it give enough on a first reading to warrant a second? And 2, if I was reading a page of this blind, without being aware it was critically acclaimed, would I think it was nonsense? And the answer here is yes, and no. Liking is very smart, her language is beautiful and her perspective uncommonly optimistic.

You Like it Darker by Stephen King – I do, though, Stephen, I like it darker than this collection of mostly upbeat, sweet-natured shorts. I think it's possible that King is just too decent of a human being to write horror any longer.

The Dark Country by Dennis Etchison – A surprising number of these short horror stories are about organ donation.

The Kind Folk by Ramsey Campbell – Fey horror.

The Crowd by Gustave le Bon – 19th century proto-psychoanalysis of the behavior of mass man throughout the ages. This is a period of intellectual history where you could get away with a lot of sweeping general statements, which makes for an engaging if somewhat simplistic read.

The Wishing Pool and Other Stories by Tananarive Due – A lot of these horror shorts are a little too much 'the real monster is racism!' but some of the meaner ones are strong.

Depression: Causes and Treatments by Aaron Beck and Brad Alford – An attempt to codify depression as a medical condition by the father of cognitive-behavioral psychology. Beck's attempt to define despair as a condition related to underlying inaccurate intellectual schema is far more persuasive (if perhaps less interesting and fun to write about) than any of the existential psychoanalysis that I've been reading lately.

The Grip of It by Jac Jemc – A couple moves into a haunted house, go collectively crazy. The plot isn't unfamiliar but the execution is excellent, evocatively horrific and well-written, an insightful and not altogether unkind portrait of a relationship on the rocks.

The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm – A thoughtful discussion of art as a continuous act, with frequent references to eastern mysticism and Meister Eckhart. A pleasant way to spend 150 pages, although the ubiquitous prejudice against homosexuality in the pre-modern era weakens some of the thinking, as the idea of a healthy romantic love outside of a male-female dynamic is denied out of turn, limiting the scope.

Book of Days by Gene Wolfe – Always love Wolfe's short stories. I've probably read Forlesen like 10 times over the years and it still stands out.

Books I Read October 27th, 2025

Just sort of quietly baking bread while the Republic burns.

The Black Insider by Dambudzo Marechera – A postmodern evening in an apocalyptic Zimbabwe destroyed by ethnic strife, as told by an authorial analog. Marechera was brilliant, and very much wants you to know it. There's a pretty constant stream of literary references in addition to the philosophical asides, linguistic deviations and switches in perspective usual to this genre. But, Marechera was brilliant, and there's a lot of very insightful stuff here. There's a sensitivity to Marechera which I think would come across even if you didn't know his tragic life story, a rawness to him, as of a burn wound. I've enjoyed my foray into his writing, for which, as it happens, I have Binyavanga Wainaina to thank, who recommends him in one of his short stories. Always enjoy following ladders of inspiration.

Bachelors: Novellas and Stories by Arthur Schnitzler – Shorts from one of turn of the century Vienna's many insightful psychoanalytical authors. There's one in here which is the stream-of-consciousness of an unlikable anti-Semitic officer who experiences a devastating social shock that's particularly excellent.

In Sickness and in Health by Ruth Rendell – A creepy noir ruined by its ending.

The Woman from Sarejevo by Ivo Andric – In a dying Dual Monarchy a Bosnian woman dedicates her life to greed to predictable effect. Interesting fact, according to Goodreads I am the first person to read this book.

The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker – The underlying theme of all human existence is not sex, as per Freud, but death and the paradox of existing as a being of thought chained to a rotting corpse. All our problems come from being a god that shits. As a philosophy I pretty much share it, but still it is probably a mistake to suppose that the same sense of existential angst which is the concern of humankind generally is also the root cause of mental illness, rather than the failure of some other process generally possessed by the better functioning members of the species. An attempt at the end of the text to define schizophrenia and sexual perversion in line with the overall concern is spectacularly unpersuasive. Still, this was engaging as thought and philosophy, if not in any particularly clinically useful way.

Through the Doll's House Door by Jane Gardam – Toy Story but done with a precious smallness. A lovely digression, very different from the other stuff I read by Gardam, all of which if memory serves were well-drawn character studies of serious English people. Always impressive to see a skilled writer break successfully in an unfamiliar direction.

Books I Read October 19th, 2025

This week I sacrificed in service of my better nature, then had several cocktails to celebrate.

Scrapiron Blues by Dambudzo Marechera – Posthumous work of several genres by Zimbabwe's mid-century enfant terrible. Marechera's mental health issues saw him spend the waning years of his short life on the streets of Harare, and this is certainly evidence of diseased mind's take on a diseased world. At all searing, sometimes quite funny, not quite universally bleak (though close), all in all a fascinating way to spend a few hundred pages.

A Way of Being by Carl Rogers – Rogers' late life writings reveal an exaggeratedly optimistic view of the human species and an unfortunate interest in the clairvoyance, life after death, and the general esoteric.

Far from Home by Walter Tevis – Did you know the guy who wrote The Hustler also wrote some really excellent, psychosexual sci-fi? He did! The paired stories about a middle-aged man's dead parents coming for lunch is a particularly weird standout.

Back to Delphi by Ioanna Karystiani – A mother takes her incarcerated son on a furlough to the center of the world. I can only assume this is something that actually is allowed within the Greek legal system? In any event, an exceedingly bleak if well-executed portrait of a malformed family and male psychosis (grimmer parts of this read like something from an early Joyce Carol Oates story). A difficult but rewarding read.

The Ardent Swarm by Yamen Manai – A parable for the rise of Islamofascism in North africa.

Love and Will by Rollo May – Many years ago, when I was an undergraduate studying philosophy I discovered there was no longer any real interest in ethical thought or general theories of the good life. It was seen as at best quaint and at worst mawkish, something like figure drawing in a modern art course. People preferred to fritter their energies away in service of post-modern linguistic trickery, or engage in paradoxical mind-fuckery i.e. philosophy of time (A professor who was hired the year I left wrote his thesis on whether you could go back in time to kill your grandfather, a question to which the only possible answer could be—come back when you've built a time machine). Anyway, it turned out a lot of that energy just sidestepped its way into analysis—Freud's writing is on the whole far more philosophical than clinical—and recent forays into existential psychotherapy has me putting my academic hat on for the first time in many years. May's work is full of interesting insight into the eponymous, particular in the first half where he skillfully expounds on the full meaning of eros, even if is does spend a lot of time exaggerating the importance of etymology, as if each word represented some cultural theory of recapitulation. At bottom, though, reading this reminds me of the other reason that I didn't continue further into philosophy (apart from my grades being garbage), which is that logic is an insufficient tool for compelling belief. I've never learned anything important by result of a succesful argument.

As a quick side note, is there any more pointless question than that of free will vs. determinism (and I mean this on both a psychological and materialistic level)? Our minds are composed such that it is impossible to imagine functioning except in the belief that you are in control of your decisions, irrespective of the validity of that belief. You could prove beyond any shadow of a doubt that what passes for my personality is nothing more than electrical impulses in my brain and it would not effect one's behavior in the slightest.

Books I Read October 12th, 2025

I made some pretty fabulous sandwich loaves this week.

Look at that – ain't she a beaut? I did some other things too, but that's probably what I'm most pleased with.

The Eye of the Storm by Patrick White – A loveless, dying matriarch is visited by her two horrible, horrible adult children, desperate for her to die so they can inherit her estate. Patrick White wrote two kinds of books—the first are this surreal or hyper-real depictions of Australian existence, and the seconds are bloodless drawing room novels, of which this is obviously the latter. Told mostly in inner monologue, it's the kind of book were nothing really happens but all the characters seem perpetually on the edge of a nervous breakdown, where all food exists as reminders of the entropic nature of existence (can no one in Sydney cook a lamb chop correctly? How many times must we be subjected to descriptions of fat congealing on a dinner plate?) and all sex is awkward and awful. Finishing it's 600 pages was an act of literary masochism for which I can only condemn myself.

Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder by Marsha M. Linehan – The bible on the subject. Also, about the length of the bible.

Young Blood by Sfiso Mzobe – A young man in a Durban township finds himself caught in an underworld of car theft, drug dealing and death. Energetic and full of lived experience.

Fly Already by Etgar Keret – Keret's usual brand of surreal, modern, urban, sympathetic stories. Sad and sweet and always very human. I really enjoy Keret.

Texas by the Tail by Jim Thompson – The best craps mechanic in the southwest tries to roll his way out of penury. One of Thompson's 'sweeter,' less surreal works, but it's still got some remarkably insightful/horrific bits of psychosexual insight. No one straddled crime and existential despair like Jim Thompson.

Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death by Irvin Yalom – America's foremost existential psychoanalyst does his best to fill the yawning catacomb above which we all awkwardly straddle. Is there something wrong with me that I find Yalom a bit too much of an optimist for my tastes? Probably, but there we are.

Jaime Bunda, Secret Agent: Story of Various Mysteries by Pepetela – An obese Angolan detective raised on American crime novels investigates the murder of a teenage girl, becomes embroiled in the internecine government plots which plague modern Luanda. A satire of a profoundly corrupt society, ultimately more bitter than funny. Pepetela is a fascinating voice.

Enchiridion by Epictetus – Always useful to spend an hour or two with the stoics.

'You are a little soul carrying a dead body.'

'If you are ever very thirsty, take a draught of cold water, and spit it out, and tell no man.

'If a man has reported to you, that a certain person speaks ill of you, do not make any defense to what has been told you: but reply, the man did not know the rest of my faults, for he would not have mentioned these only.'

Books I Read October 5th, 2025

Autumn has arrived in LA. I wear my slippers in the morning but a tank top in the afternoon. Might need to make some apple butter—anyone got a food mill they recommend? As a rule, I dislike single use tools but having made it for several years by mashing the apples through a strainer I can tell you how much of a hassle that is.

Why Are We So Blest by Ayi Kweh Armah – A brilliant African student loses himself amid American academia, returns to Africa with a soulless harpy girlfriend intent on destroying him. Ruthless to the point of nihilism, particularly as regards interracial romance. Makes V.S. Naipaul look like a puppet in 'It's a Small World After All.' Bits of brilliance, but I'd regard it as a misstep from an enormously talented writer.

The Heroic Client: A Revolutionary Way to Improve Effectiveness Through Client-Directed, Outcome-Informed Therapy by Barry L. Duncan, Scott D. Miller, Jacqueline A. Sparks – If you get passed the horrible title, what you find is a scathing indictment of the modern mental health system, from its false identification with conventional medicine to its over-prescription of pharmaceuticals. Fascinating and insightful.

Flaxman Low, Occult Psychologist - Collected Stories by E. and H. Heron – A supernatural Sherlock Holmes investigates the surreal and impossible, written by a mother and son duo who themselves seem to have come from a pulp novel.

How to Write About Africa by Binyavanga Wainaina – When I read last week's One Day I Will Write About This I was unaware that the author was 1) very famous and 2) dead. I was disappointed to discover both of these facts, the first because I like to feel that I'm outside of the mainstream and the second because Wainaina was a really talented, insightful writer, as this collection attests. While his writings about Westerners views of Africa are themselves sharp and funny (particularly in writing about the African-diaspora's perceptions) his writing about Africa itself are better, rich and thoughtful. His writing leaves you with the impression of a man who was never happy with a superficial reading of a situation, an outsider who brought his critical gaze to whatever he saw. We lost a great talent in his premature death.

Dark Times in the City by Gene Kerrigan – An ex-con's good deed gets punished, embroiling him in a vicious Dublin gang war. Nasty and cleverly plotted.

The Hustler by Walter Tevis – This book still rules.

Books I Read, September 28th, 2025

At this very instant, the Almighty writes your future into his book of life. There is still time, through prayer and desperate apology, to earn forgiveness for your manifold sins of the past year.

Or, you know, not.

Hope by Erich Fromm – Humanistic optimism from a largely forgotten psychoanalytical socialist.

Transparent City by Ondjaki – A frantic, surreal depiction of Angola's capital city in its decadence, squalor, and beauty. There's definitely a tendency among African authors to use magical realism to accentuate the chaotic nature of their metropolis – see Mwanza Mujila Fiston and Alain Mabanckou for Francophile versions – which, having spent some time in the continent's urban areas, I can appreciate. But really the unnatural and impossible aspects of this are much less important than the sympathy and sensitivity with which Ondjaki depicts his home city. Strong stuff.

The Face of Tresspass by Ruthn Rendell – A dissolute writer decays in a country hovel, reminisces about a dangerous lost love in this psychological noir with shades of James M. Cain. Apparently Rendell was a ubiquitous crime novelist in England in her day, which surprised me a little in that her books are slick and small and (seemingly) a little too clever to reach mass market appeal. Good on her for bucking that trend, even if she seems largely forgotten on our side of the pond.

The Shadow of What We Were by Luis Sepulveda – A squad of aging ex-revolutionaries come together for one last job in a Santiago which seeks to forget its dark past—but a comedy! Brisk and funny and enjoyable, you get the sense that the author is enjoying himself.

Strange Hotel by Eimear McBride – A nameless woman experiences a series of meaningless love affairs in lonely hotels, reflects on the history which brings her to those points. Shades of Djuna Barnes. Largely (although not completely) plotless, your enthusiasm for this will depend on your feeling for McBride's artful, compulsively confusing writing style. I enjoyed it, but then I tend to enjoy these sorts of literary high-wire acts, especially if they top out below 200 pages.

Books I Read September 21st, 2025

Mornings are the blues.

One Day I Will Write About This Place: A Memoir by Binyavanga Wainaina – Scattered reminiscences of a lost soul growing up in a turbulent East Africa. Sharply written and insightful, Wainaina is a real talent, putting his skills towards understanding the complexity of his personal and national existence. An African writer, and not a Westerner's idea of an African writer.

Understanding Human Nature by Alfred Adler – The first major psychologist who doesn't seem to dislike people, which is nice. On the other hand he still has the Freudian tic of seeing all human development as being the product of certain singular childhood developments, in this case the inferiority/superiority complex, to which Adler assigns an absolute and exaggerated position.

Selected Writings on Client Centered Therapy by Carl Rogers – The father of client centered therapy describes his model of psychoanalysis. By denying the therapist a position as expert and making the patient/client's thoughts the focus of the therapeutic relationship, Rogers revolutionized the field and defined much of modern counseling. Also, he seems like a real sweetheart.

The Politics of the Family and Other Essays by R.D. Laing – Oof. I'd forgotten how unreadable existential philosophy/thought can be. Mundane, even banal truths obscured by unreadable academic language. Did you know that we often internalize the teachings of our elders without realizing it? If not, you'll struggle to learn from these ludicrously opaque writings.

Yaka by Pepetela – A multi-generational narrative of the whites (mostly ex-convicts) living in a small city in southern Angola, impoverished vagabonds exploiting the native population in a miserable quest to survive. Pepetela is the pseudonym of a Portuguese-Angolan who fought with the MPLA, and this feels like a very personal mea culpa. Excellent in any event, a sympathetic but not at all forgiving depiction of the strange struggles of colonial existence. It's really astonishing how much excellent fiction came out of the relatively small population of Lusitanian Africa.

The Story of a Seagull and the Cat Who Taught Her to Fly by Luis Sepulveda – One thing about ordering a dozen-odd books from the library based on the authors and without really reading the (sometimes limited) descriptions is you occasionally end up reading a charming YA novelette.

Real World by Natsuo Kirino – A cadre of angst-ridden high school girls find themselves aiding their matricidal neighbor. Coming from a country that actually is in a state of collapse, it's kind of odd the degree to which Japanese writers seem so focused on the existential malaise afflicting their culture. Not that I'm in a position to say they're wrong, but some part of me is always like 'I'll see your materialist isolation and raise you the complexities of a multi-ethnic society and the ludicrous ubiquity of gun ownership.'

Creatures of a Day by Irvin D. Yalom – Brief retellings of the author's experiences with different clients, speaking to the essential concerns of existential therapy, i.e., that we're all going to die and how much this sucks. Thoughtful and compassionate.

Books I Read September 11th, 2025

Did you really have a vacation if you didn't sit on a beach and read 21 books? Or bake apple pie and various breads for your family? Or swim in the Atlantic? Or walk along a dusty road, remembering your past selves and what is to come?

The Name of a Bullfighter by Luis Sepulveda – An Chilean ex-revolutionary expat becomes embroiled in post-Cold War shenanigans. Skillful literary noir.

Fragments by Ayi Kwei Armah – A sensitive writer returns to his native Ghana after years in a Western university and struggles to deal with the brutal capitalism of post-Colonial Africa. Armah is at once a remarkably talented writer as well as a perceptive social critic, and this is excellent if perhaps not quite as strong as The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, which was a bit more esoteric.

Time of Silence by Martin Santos – A provincial doctor is drawn into the Madrid demimonde. Very funny page to page.

Mass Psychology and Other Writings by Sigmund Freud – Is there a more frustrating writer than Sigmund Freud? A shrewd writer capable of the most extraordinary insights into the human condition who nonetheless wrote a great deal of errant nonsense. This is a mix of both, with the chapters on mass psychology fascinating and much of the digressions into religious thought absolutely incoherent (Moses was not an Egyptian, nor did Judaism spring from the long forgotten worship of the sun God Aten, as both historical scholarship and common sense would show.)

The Storm Lord by Tanith Lee – I'm always fascinated by how we train ourselves to read whatever we read. Once upon a time it would have been no trouble at all to work my way through this epic tale of a prophecied god-child saving his people from destruction, but these days I struggle to with high fantasy irrespective of its merits.

Where Late the Sweet Bds Sang by Kate Wilhelm – The environmental collapse of human society and the cloning project of a small group of survivors is the starting point for this fabulous, insightful sci-fi novel. Lyrical and strange, one of the best post-apocalyptic stories I've ever read. I liked it so much I went ahead and read two more Kate Wilhelm's in rapid succession.

Good Morning Comrades by Ondjaki – The childhood reminiscences of a boy growing up in post-Colonial Angola, finding beauty and excitement in a society which threatens to collapse at any moment. Funny and poignant.

Sleepwalking Land by Mia Couto – A surrealist vision of the Mozambican civil war, as experienced by a youth and his elder guardian. I can't say it did a tremendous amount for me, though I can appreciate the skill.

Beggars in Spain by Nancy Kress – A group of genetically modified individuals, created to live without the need for sleep and functionally free of disease or aging, struggle to survive in a society which comes to loathe them. There's nothing fabulously original about the premise but Kress has a gift for characterization and plotting which make this an excellent example of intellectual sci-fi.

Changes: A Love Story by Ama Ata Aidoo – A career driven African woman leaves her traditional marriage to become the second wife of a man with whom she is passionately in love. A thoughtful dissection of (then) contemporary African norms, as well as an engaging romance.

Panama by Thomas McGuane – A faded rock star undergoes a drug-fueled misadventure through the Florida Keys. Hyper-masculine gonzo literary fiction is another genre that I struggle with these days, although at least it's shorter than most high fantasy.

Hardcase by Dan Simmons – A two-fisted ex-con shoots a shit ton of people. Pulpy action is another genre for which I don't have much tste.

The Goddess Chronicle by Natsuo Kirino – A mythical retelling of Japanese mythology high-lighting the eternal struggle between men and woman and the savage and bloody nature of love. Strange and haunting, I quite enjoyed it.

Dark Echoes of the Past by Ramon Diaz Eterovic – A leftist PI investigates a murder with roots in the mass murder of the Pinochet government. Competent but familiar.

A Judgment in Stone by Ruth Rendell – The slaughter of an upper class English fantasy by their illiterate maid as minutely detailed by a first class writer of noir. Excellent and disturbing, one of those books that maintains its narrative force despite the plot being laid out on the first page. Very strong, I'll definitely look for more by the author.

Huysman's Pets by Kate Wilhelm – A journalist discovers strange secrets when investigating the experiments of a dead scientific genius. Not as good as 'Birds,' but not so terrible neither.

Ombria in Shadow by Patricia A. McKillip – A crew of misfits attempts to save a princeling from his monstrous great-aunt. Fun and evocative if a bit fay.

Song of Kali by Dan Simmons – A journalist travels to Calcutta to investigate the re-emergence of a poet thought dead, has a worse time than VS Naipaul. Ominous, well-written, debatably racist.

Idoru by William Gibson – An investigative savant and a teenage girl travel to a rebuilt Tokyo to discover the fate of a reclusive rock star. A cyberpunk Lost in Translation. As usual with Gibson the plot feels arbitrary but the experience is enjoyable.

Death of an Artist by Kate Wilhelm – The death of a turbulent painter is investigated by her daughter, mother, and an ex-detective. Engaging if pat.

The Glass Key by Dashiell Hammet – A consigliere of dubious morality tries to navigate a gang war in an unnamed city. If you've seen Miller's Crossing you've got most of the plot down. The plots mechanics are a little fidgety, but Hammet's prose remains a joy.