What I've been reading

1. Sunil S. Amrith, Crossing the Bay of Bengal: The Furies of Nature and the Fortunes of Migrants.  Not thrilling, but a well-informed, readable book, full of good information, about a part of the world which is growing in importance rapidly.

2. Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony.  This is a remarkably good, serious, detailed, and documented work on what we (possibly) know about the Gospels, if we read them through the lens of being eyewitness testimony.  Anyone interested in The New Testament should read this book.

3. Lara Feigel, The Love-Charm of Bombs: Restless Lives in the Second World War.  This book chronicles some fairly intense love affairs, albeit in an intellectual sort of way.

4. Jonathan Franzen, editor, The Kraus Project.  The Karl Kraus texts in German are energetically written, but one remembers how cantankerous and idiosyncratic he was.  The Kraus translated into English doesn’t work and probably the works are untranslatable.  The Franzen in English is cringe-worthy.  The Michael Hofmann review in TNYRB is one of the best book reviews I have read, ever, gated here.

Arrived in my pile are:

5. Brigitte Granville, Remembering Inflation, and

6. Dwight H. Perkins, East Asian Development: Foundations and Strategies.

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