Books I Read July 12th, 2026

I work very hard to see the flowers.

Fools of Fortune by William Trevor – The devastating weight of history and violence on several generations of minor Anglo-Irish gentry. Trevor's language is subtle and complex, with great passion expressed via silence and omission. It's a style I find myself increasingly drawn to as I get older. William Trevor was a great talent.

The Book of Ebenezer Le Page by G.B. Edwards – A crusty iconoclast journeys across Guernsey to find an heir to his minor fortune, reflects on the 20th century, friendship, love, the unknowable vagaries of fate. Charming, sweet, sad.

The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling – Even Edward Said could agree that Kipling wrote some gloriously engaging pulp. In a short handful of stories Kipling vividly limns the laws and culture of an imaginary world. And Ricki-Ticki-Tavvi is still a lot of fun.

The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling – Steampunk.

Woman of the Aeroplanes by Kojo Laing – Inexplicable surrealist post-Colonial African fiction. I will be honest and just say I could not make heads or tails of this one at all—and I'm pretty into inexplicable surrealist post-Colonial African fiction. I'd even go so far as to say I dig inexplicable surrealist post-Colonial African fiction, but this was just beyond me.

The Fifth Had of Cerberus by Gene Wolfe – Three short stories set on a pair of distant backwater planets consider which firmly establish Wolfe's place the canon. One of the great things about reading Gene Wolfe is that he's one of the very few—maybe the only?--writer where you can never be entirely sure if a mystery is intentionally unanswerable or if you just haven't figured it out. I'll just throw out one here if anyone has an answer: to judge by the first and third stories, the human colonists are only aware of one alien species which preceded their arrival, but the second story speaks clearly (or does it?) of two. In any event, its essential opaqueness allows for a variety of readings, bound together by Wolfe's compellingly bleak conclusions on the nature of identity, death and decay.

All My Cats by Bohumil Hrabel – All of the books I've read by Hrabel have been manic comedies stiffened with a shot of Soviet despair, so I was a little unprepared for this genuinely harrowing depiction of a manic breakdown brought about by the author's love for the stray felines whose ever-expanding clowder force him to engage in increasing acts of post-natal abortion. A sensitive if horrifying contemplation of the core of violence which is a through line of all organic life.