From what I've read of them, I really like these Jacana pocket books. Excellent, easily-digestible history and politics books that nonetheless manage to cover a very broad scope. In this case, not just a very broad history of poverty in South Africa, but a look at how particular political and economic decisions have shaped the landscape of poverty today, and what that means for our political future.

I would love to see a post-COVID, updated version of this book. I get the feeling that the Ramaphosa presidency and the pandemic would provide a lot of additional material for an update. Until I find that update though, this is a bite-sized must-read for anyone interested in the modern political and economic landscape of SA.

I found this a little disconnected and disappointing. It was interesting enough, but felt as though the chapters could have been shuffled and presented in any order. Perhaps it would have been more enjoyable to read if presented as a collection of essays, but as far as books go, there is certainly much more compelling writing on the topic available.

An absolute standout work of historical writing. Miéville has the most remarkable ability to communicate both the minutiae and the milestones of history with the same thrilling enthusiasm.

The introduction to the book is a perfect example. It sweeps through the entire history of St Petersburg, and with it all of Russia. Miéville covers hundreds of years all without losing sight of small details. Characters and political factions who will remain relevant all the way to the glossary are introduced and developed with a eye to both their personal characters and motivations, and the role they'll play in the grand narrative of history. Amusing anecdotes, small milestones, digressions into historical minutiae all build together into the beginnings of a narrative that, by the time the first chapter arrives, already feels primed to explode in a dozen different directions at once. There are so many moving parts, characters and groups and political ideologies, all jostling to be heard above the din of history and Miéville does an excellent job of giving them all their moment.

The sheer number of things going on, and characters involved can sometimes make for a very dense narrative. I recommend making frequent use of the glossary of important characters and, where that doesn't suffice, using the index or outside sources to frequently remind yourself of who all the important parties are. However, the breathless emotional undercurrent which drives the book makes it infectiously readable. It is very easy to feel engrossed in even seemingly banal details of bureaucratic hair-splitting, letter-writing, and endless committees and proclamations.

This is a (very well narrated) story of one of the most interesting moments in  political history, and any writer would be hard-pressed to explore it with the nuance and infectious vitality that Miéville brings to its events. October is a must-read for anyone even vaguely interested not just in the October revolution, but in the chaotic and lively workings of history and politics in general.

I adore Han Kang's writing, and if you are a fan, then Greek Lessons will almost certainly appeal to you.  For those who aren't familiar with the author, this would be a great first novel to read.

Han is a writer strongly fixated on metaphor. Greek Lessons, like her other novels has a central narrative conceit which is less a focus of the novel than it is a vehicle for Han's philosophical concerns. In this case, a woman who has lost speech but is fascinated by the linguistic and textual structures of language, and a man who teaches a dead language and is slowly loosing his sight. The history and relationship between these two become Han's basis for exploring the limits of expression, connection, and experience.

Some of these explorations stray into "philosophy first year getting a little wasted and speculating about existence with friends" territory. Characters have a tendency to wonder to themselves questions which could have been left implied, but the novel is not badly hampered by this occasional heavy-handedness. The novel is quite blunt, but Han never condescends or forces a conclusion on the reader. Instead, the novel pushes a reader back and forth between questions about language and trauma and human connection, provoking thoughts, but never settling on a particular one for long.

Beneath it all runs a deep and powerful emotional current. A kind of bittersweet reflection on the characters' lives and experiences. It shapes the novel well, and connects what might otherwise become disordered and overly-intellectual meanderings.

If you want a collection of thematically-connected Imagist prose-poems then Han's The White Book is pretty much exactly that, but Greek Lessons leans a little more towards the prose side. Its thematic concerns a little more direct and its narrative throughline more concrete. It is an excellent journey into Han Kang's wonderfully affecting style and her challenging, ruminative content. Highly recommended, whether you are a returning fan, or someone stumbling upon her work for the first time.

Very good. Brodie's writing has the quality of the very best non-fiction, a capacity for both breadth and depth. Not only does she investigate very particular details of the popular discussion around farm killings, but she draws in context from a great variety of sources. The book covers the history of agriculture in South Africa, the complexities of studying and reporting on violence, and some of the thornier political complexities of how violent crime is discussed in South Africa.

This is the most thorough and informative writing on the subject of farm killings in South Africa. Anyone who wants to understand or discuss the topic should read this book.

This book was so good. Right off the top, if you like weird horror and experimental, boundary-pushing fiction then you should just go read this right now. I guarantee that Crom Cruach can offer you something unusual, thought-provoking, and worthwhile. But I've already read this twice, and I've had a lot of time to think about it since, so here comes a longer review.

---

This novella reads very quickly. It's short to begin with, and the verse form makes it fly past. Not only are there fewer words on a page than there might be if it were written in prose, but I found the flow of the prose really pulled me along. The writing is fluid and engrossing. The result being that Crom Cruach can essentially be read in a single sitting—for  maximum thrilling effect I recommend reading it overnight in the dark. Even if you don't read it in one go though, the novella's divided into three parts (as well as a short interlude) which offer nice natural breaks.

The verse form also makes for a very affecting tone. Throughout, the writing is evocative and portentous, and complements the horror of the story well. Like many of the best horror stories, Crom Cruach blends supernatural horror with the everyday horrors of (in this case) colonialism, bigotry, religious persecution, fascism, and more. Prose can have a tendency to make the metaphorical renderings of these real social horrors seem especially clumsy. There's a tendency to draw connections too explicitly, resulting in the novel equivalent of a movie monster that is very obviously a person in a rubber suit. Not necessarily a terrible thing, but sometimes a little damaging to the overall experience. Verse, however, excels where metaphor is involved. The structure of the novella makes it feel absolutely uncomfortably natural that

neo-nazi cults and avenging archangels

could be stalking the night together, bringing violence and persecution, death and undeath. If anything, this tone sells the themes of the novella better than anything else. It might be easy to trivialise atrocities like colonialism and religious persecution by lining them up them alongside hauntings and the living dead, but Loughcrewe wields metaphor well. The ultimate effect is a strengthening of the novella's themes, and a more powerful impact to its most important moments.

I won't post any details, even behind a spoiler warning—just go read it, it's very short—but the final scene of the novella is especially powerful. Moving, tense, unpleasant, cathartic, the kind of thing that makes you want to jump up and yell and shout at the sky and shake the world by the shoulders! A real triumph of horror writing.

Lastly, while it's not necessary for an enjoyment of or understanding of (much of) the story, I'd recommend pairing Crom Cruach with some general reading. The Crom Cruach Wikipedia page[^1] is some convenient background if you've never heard of the deity before, but I found a study linked there called "The Plain of Blood"[^2] to be especially interesting reading and a lot more in-depth background. I read these, and several other articles on the history of Ireland and the various religious figures mentioned, in-between my two reads of Crom Cruach. As someone without much more than a surface-level understanding of the history here, it really enriched my second read through.

[^1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crom_Cruach
[^2]: http://www.templeport.ie/magh-slecht-dara-fort/plain-of-blood.pdf

A strange, enchanting little story about falling in and out of love with a kind of melancholy self-seriousness that I actually really liked. Certainly not for everyone—I imagine it could easily come off as too pretentious—but I found it very charming.

The novel can be whimsically funny, insightful, and emotional in a kind of stilted way that reminded me of some of Sally Rooney or Jeanette Winterson's work. It's more academically-minded moments have the kind of bizarre metaphorical bent that's common to writers like Borges. The sort of thing that can come off as pretentious waffle if you dislike it, but which I enjoy.

At its heart though, Bonsai is a story about falling in and out of love. Finding and then losing connections. And how even brief relationships can change us forever. I think that's a theme worth getting a little pretentious about.

This was bad. I hope DeLillo's embarrassed about this one, but he's probably not. The man's in his eighties, and he comes across as someone trying very hard to write the way people expect Don DeLillo to write.

There are some nice ideas in the book, but they're not very well executed, and the result is a bit of a boring slurry. But the bad ideas are what really put the nail in the coffin.

We get some "phones bad" pontificating about how digital connectedness has shaped society for the worse,  which doesn't actually do much to explore how digital connectedness has shaped society. There's a lot of references to Einstein and the theory of special relativity, although DeLillo never gives a good reason why. It seems that he simply thinks it would be appropriate for a physics student to be obsessed with Einstein (though the student's former teacher doesn't seem to know anything about relativity and the student mostly talks to himself for the apparent purpose of acting like a physics student). While he could be aiming for some kind of pop-science slant on relativity as a metaphor for human connection, DeLillo doesn't even go that far. There's some meditations on how humanity would behave in a crisis, which aren't very interesting or original (for a much better novel on the topic, try José Saramago's Blindness, which has its issues, but is actually well-written and has something to say).

But perhaps the worst, most comically embarrassing moment is a passage that I'll just type out in full between spoiler tags. I really lost all hope that the novel was redeemable when I reached it, because it is just impossible to take anything seriously after reading such absurd, pretentious bunk. If at this point you still feel like the novel is still worth your time, then I hope this dissuades you. If it doesn't, please read more books, you deserve better.

Don. That's embarrassing.

Wow, this was such a charming, wonderful, fun story. Absolutely great. Highly recommended. Go read it! More than anything else, the characters are genuine, well-written, and a joy to encounter.

The story is not very complex and that's fine. It's a novella which already includes several separate sub-plots; for each of them to be satisfyingly resolved within the space of the novella requires that they're relatively straightforward. The real joy here is getting to spend time with the characters.

Queens of Noise includes some of the best-written queer characters I've ever read. I can't over-estimate just how much they feel like people I might actually meet at a local queer event or in the pit at a punk show. If for nothing else, the book is worth reading just to get to hang out with Mixi and their crew of queer, punk misfits. What better fun could you ask for than queer romance, punk music, lycantrhopy, witchcraft, and a battle of the bands?!

(Also, I think its very funny that the Mangy Rats are a literal band of were-coyotes.)