Books I Read August 30th, 2026

I return to Los Angeles browner than a walnut and ready for war.

Shifu, You'll Do Anything for a Laugh by Mo Yan – A suite of short stories about the underside of modern China, ranging from social satire to magical realism, bound together by a sense of tattered humanism resistant to the whip-lash brutalities of communism and hyper-capitalism. Excellent. Between Mo Yan, Xu Zechen and Zou Jingzhi I've had a really good run with Chinese fiction lately, something I think I'll be reading more of in the days to come. Lucky you! Look out for that.

A Canticle for Liebowitz by Walter M. Miller – Various stages in the recreation of civilization after a nuclear apocalypse as experienced by three monks of the Catholic Church. For one of the more famous works in the genre canon, I went into this not knowing much about the story line, which was the way to do it, experiencing appropriate surprise at the shifting timelines. It's well-written and not without moral weight, albeit of a Catholic flavor towards which I'm generally unsympathetic. If I had a complaint (and really I'm only offering it because this is considered such a classic) I felt that the language and custom of the reborn society too closely resembled that of our own, losing some of the evocative power of, for instance Riddley Walker. Still very good though.

Out by Natsuo Kirino – Four women working the midnight shift on an assembly line in a dingy Tokyo suburb try and cover up a murder, survive the unpredictable fall out. 'Disillusioned Lower Class Edoite Commits Unspeakable Act' seems like a popular subgenre of Japanese fiction (midway through I realized I'd already read another entry by Kirino) but this was definitely the best I can remember. The characters are deftly drawn and evocatively awful, the sexual tension is discomfiting, and the greyscale plot appropriately murky. All and all, a really excellent noir, skillful and engaging.

The Witch by Marie NDiaye – An unassuming woman and mediocre witch struggles with her brilliant, monstrous daughters and their equally horrifying grandmother, although really that suggests somewhat more plot than undergirds this existential nightmare of a novel. NDiaye is Dostoevskyian in her pitiless exploration of the failures of the human spirit and Kafkaesque in the labyrinthine cruelties which she inflicts on her characters, her perspective as a Black French female adding a nuance which is never predictable let alone didactic. She's great, you should check her out.

A Short Stay in Hell by Steven L. Peck – A devout Mormon goes to hell, spends a not-quite-eternity in a not-quite-infinitely large library based after the Borges story. Weird, swift, engaging, strangely sweet.

The Ghost Pirates by William Hope Hodgson – Early genre fiction. With the exception of Kipling, I can't really think of any early 'adventure' writers that I've enjoyed. Maybe Sherlock Holmes? But those are honestly more fun in theory than practice.