Books I Read July 27th, 2025

Sorry for the week's delay—the Bible took longer to finish than I'd anticipated.

The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born by Ayi Kwei Armah – A civil servant in post-Colonial Ghana suffers the temptation of corruption, the indescribable agony of existing in a fundamentally entropic reality. Sympathetic, scathing, beautifully written, really excellent.

The Hebrew Bible translated by Robert Alter – Finally got around to finishing off the handful of prophets and minor books which have kept me from logging this off my list. What's their to say about the Hebrew Bible? It's pretty good. It's a pretty good book. It is incongruous. It contains multitudes. It is extraordinary to watch the development of Yahweh the sky god, with his mighty sword and petty ethnic concerns, develop into the universal God of all creation, guarantor of a system of morality which, loosely expanded, continues to govern us today. Qoheleth and Job remain my favorites, although the per-deutoronmist bits of Kings are pretty wild, and Jonah is a beautiful and engaging portrait of a loving God rarely seen in other books. Endlessly fascinating and rewarding.

Granma Nineteen and the Soviet's Secret by Ondjaki – A pair of children in rural Angola scheme to stop a Soviet plot to destroy their village. Fun.

Every Man is a Race by Mia Couto – Surrealist shorts from a white Mozambican. Brilliantly odd dreams of Africa, youth, and war. Very good.