Books I Read October 11th, 2026

Limited reading gains the last two weeks. Two weeks ago was brutally hot—couldn't bake bread, that's how hot it was. This week I've just been kind of lazy.

On the other hand, I did pick up this absolute banger...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGrihjMhFws&xstg=CAMSEBUJ_b-oH-PhF0yjBgbwzzE%3D

You're welcome.

The White Bear by Henrik Pontoppidan – Two novellas from a Nobel prize winner, albeit coming from that early era when the judges seemed mostly to be reading Scandinavian literature. The eponymous is a charming tale of an idiosyncratic ursine minister who returns to a staid, small town Danish life after a life led among the Greenland inuit. The second is a remarkably facile discussion of art and politics. So, mixed, but I enjoyed reading descriptions of snow while immersed in hellish heat.

Blood Money by Anna Seghers – The embittered inhabitants of an impoverished German village are drawn beneath the growing sway of National Socialism. Seghers was a very talented writer, limning souls gone brutish through poverty and hopelessness, as well as the occasional honest if in sufficient moment of compassion.

Coup de Grace by Sofia Ajram – A lost soul in a labyrinthine hellscape contemplates their depression.

After the People Lights Have Gone Off by Stephen Graham Jones – Horror shorts effectively walking the line between literary merit and genre thrills. Very well done. Jones has this impressive trick of delaying even an indication of what the horrific/supernatural turn is until deep inside the story, it's something I can't remember having seen before. And he's just generally a skilled writer, able to quickly develop complex characters and dealing with serious themes in a subtler and more interesting way than most of his competitors.

Linghun by Ai Jiang – A family moves to a nightmarish suburb in which beloved ghosts can be drawn back from the dead. Also, several shorts. The eponymous novella is excellent and disturbing, an original premise effectively exploited into a larger discussion about loss, love, despair, family, memory, etc. I dug it.