What's Next

I'm just about to the end of Martin Millar's The Anxiety of Kalix the Werewolf and yeah, I haz a sad. I tried to read slow to make it last but, like a packet of dark chocolate mint M&Ms or a bottle of brill Chakana Malbec—once opened it was nearly impossible to put down.

While I wait for his next novel, I'll dive into his online serial, Simulation Bleed:

Due to certain peculiarities in the manner of their lives and deaths, Mixt and Nakishdan hunt through time for Geeda Lala, a mysterious interloper with a penchant for punk rock gigs in the 70s. Accompanying them is Rainith the Red, an unfriendly fairy with a sharp sword. Hindering them are some psychological problems, an assortment of hostile flying snakes, and 102 Woo.

AND I've plunged into the satchel of books by the bed. At the top of the pile were these three

The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker

Chava is a golem, a creature made of clay, brought to life by a disgraced rabbi who dabbles in dark Kabbalistic magic.
Ahmad is a jinni, a being of fire, born in the ancient Syrian desert. Trapped in an old copper flask by a Bedouin wizard centuries ago, he is released accidentally by a tinsmith in a Lower Manhattan shop.

Is this:

• An unlikely-pair love story like Madeline Kahn and Peter Boyle in Young Frankenstein?
• A mismatched buddy fiction similar to Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones in Men in Black?
• Maybe a wacky fish out of water story a la Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis in Some Like it Hot?

The Golem’s life began in the hold of a steamship. The year was 1899; the ship was the Baltika, crossing from Danzig to New York. The Golem’s master, a man named Otto Rotfeld, had smuggled her aboard in a crate and hidden her among the luggage.

Somehow, I suspect this will be more heartfelt and lyrical than comedic and that’s grand. Just maybe not quite what I need right now.

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If Not Now, When? by Primo Levi

“If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, then what am I? And if not now, when?”
—Rabbi Hillel

In the final days of World War II, a courageous band of Jewish partisans makes its way from Russia to Italy, moving toward the ultimate goal of Palestine. Based on a true story, If Not Now, When? chronicles their adventures as they wage a personal war of revenge against the Nazis: blowing up trains, rescuing the last victims of concentration camps, scoring victories in the face of unspeakable devastation.

When I picked this slender volume up, I was remembering the phenomenal impact that Levi’s book Survival in Auschwitz had on me. Yeah, it’ll be a hard story to read but the hell-for-leather determination to survive is, well, immensely inspiring to say the very least. Yeah, I know, this isn’t a witty burlesque. I can dig it.

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Then, near the top of the bag, I found The Ecstasy of Influence: Nonfictions, etc. by Jonathan Lethem.

I’ve been in love with Lethem ever since my pal Lydia turned me on to Motherless Brooklyn. I was fresh off a bit of the old brain surgery and spending a butt load of time in bed, staring at the ceiling, whining at The Amazing Bob and being generally headachy, peevy and annoying. The book lit me up, consumed and thrilled me. It transported me from that recovery bed into another world.

After Motherless Brooklyn, I was on to Gun, with Occasional Music, As She Climbed Across the Table, The Wall of the Sky and The Fortress of Solitude.

From a review of The Ecstasy of Influence on The Guardian’s site: 

This is a book that turns the reader into Mortimer Snerd, the ventriloquist's puppet who supposedly first uttered the immortal phrase "Who'd have thunk it?" Who'd have thunk that Jonathan Lethem – one of the most emotionally engaging and intellectually nimble of contemporary novelists – might prefer Barbara Pym to Thomas Pynchon? Who'd have thunk the first book he had autographed was by Anthony Burgess, or that he adored GK Chesterton, the essay on whom has the most appropriately ecstatic opening sentence: "How do you autopsy a somersault?"

Dazzling is what he is. I haven’t read any of Lethem’s stuff in the last year or three. I do believe I’m overdue.