Books I Read June 30th, 2023

Last week marked the end of my year in a bakery. I learned to do this...

But didn't read very much, so it's been fun getting back on the wagon.

A Man of Shadows by Jeff Noon – A down on his heels private detective pursues an heiress through a a city of perpetual light. The setting was striking and weird.

The Scholars of the Night by John M. Ford – A history professor finds himself embroiled in cold war shenanigans. It's a little life if Three Days of the Condor wasn't the dumbest fucking in the world.

Cowboy Graves: Three Novellas by Roberto Bolano – As someone with a Cesarea Tinajero poem tattooed on his chest, any return to Bolano's world of heart-struck pimps, would-be-revolutionaries and lost pimps is welcome, but on balance this is probably only for completists.

The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years by Chingiz Aitmatov – A camel ride to the cemetery offers a Kyrgystani everyman the opportunity to contemplate communism, tradition, family, mankind, in this classic of Central Asian literature. There's also a weird sci-fi component. It's heartfelt, I liked it.

I Spit on Your Graves by Boris Vian – In this remarkably odd work of allyship by the man primarily responsible for bringing jazz to Paris, a light-skinned black man seeks savage revenge on the white race. Violent, erotic, horrifying, weird.

Life Among the Savages by Shirley Jackson – An intimate autobiographical account the years of domestic bliss the author spent with her young family in rural Vermont. Yes, that Shirley Jackson. Apart from the ongoing incongruity of not having a Shirley Jackson book end in horrible tragedy I found it kind of dull.

A Mountain to the North, a Lake to the South, Paths to the West, a River to the East by László Krasznahorkai – The grandson of Prince Genji wanders through a decaying monastery, contemplates the fallen nature of existence in sentences that go on for a very, very, very long time. In an of itself that doesn't bother me (nor does the complete lack of plot) but at bottom there just really didn't seem much to this.