Reading roundup

Catching up...

The Sound and the Fury
Light in August
William Faulkner

The only Faulkner novel I remember having actually read before now was As I Lay Dying– not an easy read, but a good bit easier than these challenging books on challenging subjects. To me, The Sound and the Fury holds up better as a coherent novel... but Light in August is stunning too, and should be read by anyone interested in race and racism in America. Not woke, but deeply insightful. Absalom, Absalom! is up next.

The Singularity
Dino Buzzati

A psychological sci-fi novella first published in 1960, it is entertaining and prescient in its fashion. Nice translation by Anne Milano Appel. 

Going Zero
Anthony McCarten

This near-future paranoid thriller "ripped from the headlines" got some good reviews, but is contrived and rather underwhelmingly written. Barely adequate for a long plane ride. 

Indigenous Continent
Pekka Hämäläinen

The subtitle is The Epic Contest for North America, and that is a good description of this survey of the military and political history of the centuries-long struggle between Native Americans and the colonial powers. Hämäläinen has a lot of ground to cover, both temporally and geographically, and at times his writing becomes schematic. But overall the narrative is dramatic and well told. His take is that a sequence of major tribal confederations were in control of much of the continent up until their final defeats in the nineteenth century, and that their successes had to do with features of their political systems as well as their shrewd ability to play off the European and U.S. powers against each other. Disease, trade, and horses all played major roles, as did women tribal leaders. Remarkable, if tragic and appalling.