Books Archive

I am attempting to get back into reading intentionally... I will put some stuff here as I finish it... maybe...

The Twenty Days of Turin, Giorgio de Maria, 1975

June 2025. pretty unsettling; sometimes really funny; the texture of romance-language-translated-into-english always kind of makes everything feel more ironic or something to me. Borges comparison loudly suggests itself but it's a little less uhhh rigorous?? than Borges. Kafka also maybe?? Interesting imagery around violence emerging almost unaccountably out of the generalized malaise of a population... I guess I should know more about the 70s political violence in Turin that this seems to be grown out of... Sometimes this feels really focused, and sometimes it feels like a bunch of practically-disconnected short stories orbiting around ideas of 'collective unconscious,' 'psychogeography,' etc. I think I got something out of it.

Behold, the Man, Michael Moorcock, 1969

June 2025. really compelling... I had only read some Elrics and it's fun to see Moorcock do this. I am totally won-over by a political, pointedly anti-mystical angle on the Jesus story, personally. The big Reveals are a bit dopey and uhh science-fiction-magaziney, and the whole thing ends up being more about identity and myth as such than about the Jesus stuff in particular, BUT I liked it a lot and I want to get really into Moorcock more

The Dragon Masters, Jack Vance, 1963

June 2025. Great! Balances pulpy with otherworldly textures I thought. Detail and sense of place is kind of sparse but it's to its credit that it works extremely well and clearly even so.