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.