Books: July 2022

The Temptation of Saint Anthony — Gustave Flaubert

⭐⭐⭐⭐ I think about this book a lot. The famous story of Saint Anthony in the cave, tormented by the devil, but the way he does it is very interesting: he shows Anthony all the religious groups, cults, etc., that arose during early Christianity but were ultimately violently stamped out by the Church. The challenge to his faith is: look at the wild variety of beliefs one can have about the same material, why does your interpretation win? The foreword by Foucault is killer too, fits perfectly into his ideas.

Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928 — Stephen Kotkin

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Powerhouse biography. I get the criticisms of Kotkin, but this is just gripping stuff. Can’t wait for Volume III to find out how WW2 ends!

On Such a Full Sea — Chang-rae Lee

⭐⭐⭐ Memorable update on Octavia Butler’s work, the crossing of racial politics and human-made post-apocalypse in what seems like California.

The Water Knife — Paolo Bacigalupi

⭐ Pulpy, not a lot going on beside the main conceit. Nauseating sex scenes and torture scenes that seem pointless. A friend said it was like someone took the book’s premise and fed it to an AI text generator with the search “+ hard-boiled”.