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.