Book report for January 2025

A good month for good books. Only one work disappointed, and two were excellent. Good books at hand are not always conducive to my writing hours: “I’ll get back on that project after one more chapter.” Eh. So many fine books, so few waking hours.

Should you linkclick to buy a book, Bookshop.org kicks back a few nickels to me. So you know.

Completed

• The Perfect Spy, John le Carré. Superb. Ranks with The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy as le Carré’s best. Rick and Magnus Pym are unforgettable characters. A novel rich in insight and narrative momentum. Nearly 600 pages and every one is worthy of close reading.

• Do/Photo, Andrew Paynter. Short text that’s short on insight. I’m interested in how photographers think and their process and how they see. Paynter has approached his career in a fascinating manner, but doesn’t offer much here.
• Cosmic Scholar: The Life and Times of Harry Smith, John Szwed. Fine biography of Harry Smith—filmmaker, anthropologist, folk music scholar and anthologist, bohemian street character, frequent pain-in-the-ass. Szwed does very well sifting a jumbled, spotty record.

• North Woods, Daniel Mason. A novel easier to like than admire. Mason writes fine, often superb sentences and engaging narratives. The book is a chronological sequence of stories and other textual material, all linked to a cabin in Western Massachusetts. Mason has great fun mimicking all sorts of storytelling, with a true crime narrative here, historical fiction there, a real estate listing, a tale of the supernatural, and more. But occasionally the novel feels like a series of literary tricks that favors cleverness over insight. I wanted to like it more than I did.

In progress

• The World of Odysseus, M.I. Finley
• A Year with Swollen Appendices: Brian Eno’s Diary 1995, Brian Eno

Purchased

• A Divine Language, Alex Wilkinson