What I’ve been reading

1. Eric Ambler, Cause for Alarm.  Are all his books so good?  So far yes.  With very simple means he redefines what it means to be a good writer of thrillers.  Very English, written and set in Italy 1937, with a foolish Englishman who could be out of a Hitchcock movie.  They still called it Laibach back then, the menace of the pending war casts the proper shadow over the whole novel.

2. Futurism & Europe: The Aesthetics of a New World, Fabio Benzi and various editors.  “By their aesthetics ye shall know them!”  What were the aesthetics of the futurist movement in the early 20th century?  Should we approve of those aesthetics?  This book is a good starting point for asking that question.  Nice color plates.

3. Philip Shenon, Jesus Wept: Seven Popes and the Battle for the Soul of the Catholic Church.  A very well-written and useful book, I cannot say I have a stance on the issues per se.  It is one of my defects that I cannot care enough about the politics of the Catholic Church — I feel there are already too many separate countries with their own politics.  Nor do I feel close to either “the liberals” or “the conservatives” in this debate.  I do think the current American Pope — who seems “pilled” on many things — will be a big deal, I suspect mostly for the better.

4. Renaud Camus, Enemy of the Disaster: Selected Political Writings.  Interesting enough, and if you can read the French lefties why not this guy too?  That said, he could be more specific on “the Great Replacement.”  The most likely scenario is a France that is about twenty percent Muslim, wracked with periodic ethnic issues, but doing more or less OK.  In any case you should not be afraid to read this book, even though for a while it was considered cancel-worthy.

5. Tom Arnold-Foster, Walter Lippmann: An Intellectual Biography.  With so many forms of liberalism in semi-collapse, Lippmann is suddenly relevant again.  He had faith in experts, and also was not crazy.  But somehow is not deep enough to hold my interest?  Still, this book is very well done.

I will not soon have time to get to Joseph Torigian, The Party’s Interests Come First: The Life of Xi Zhongxun, Father of Xi Jinping, but it looks excellent.