james approved reading list

A neat feature of checking books out from the library using your Kindle is that, so long as you do not read any other book or browse your library, so long as as there are no updates that restart your device, you can keep the book on your Kindle indefinitely. This is very handy for me as I continue working my way through Rebecca West’s Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, one of the most bizarre and entertaining books I’ve read this year. Is it as good or truthful as some of the other things I’ve read or gotten obsessed with? Does it adhere to any standard of journalism that we may recognize today? Is it true that she fucked HG Wells and had his baby and raised the baby as her nephew???

Black Lamb and Grey Falcon is ostensibly a travelogue, one of my favorite narrative forms, but also a history of Yugoslavia (yeah. old) and Europe more broadly, from the Roman Empire to World War 2. You may notice an unintentional theme of my reading choices this year of “reading books leading up to World War 2” and honestly of them all Lies and Sorcery is still the best, but I do think this one will probably hold a special place in my heart for having a better sense of sentence and hmm the strong authorial persona.

( Black Lamb and Grey Falcon continued )