Booknotes 4.27

The Touchstone, by Edith Wharton, published 1900, fiction. My goodness, I loved this. The interiority! The prose! So good. I really like Edith Wharton and look forward to reading the rest of her novellas soon.

The Coming of the Third Reich, by Richard J. Evans, published 2003, nonfiction. It’s what it says on the tin — an in-depth look at what led up to the Third Reich, covering things like World War I and the Treaty of Versailles, horrible economic conditions as a result, political parties frothing at each other, frequent political violence, the Great Depression, etc. — and it’s quite good. Even suspecting whence their inspiration comes, I was still surprised to see how many similarities there were to the malevolent dumpster fire that is the current administration. (And, to be fair, many differences, too. I am grateful for those.) And the hyperinflation! I’d heard about it before but it wasn’t till reading this passage that it really hit me: “The most dramatic and serious effects were on the price of food. A woman sitting down in a café might order a cup of coffee for 5,000 marks and be asked to give the waiter 8,000 for it when she got up to pay an hour later. A kilo of rye bread, that staple of the German daily diet, cost 163 marks on 3 January 1923, more than ten times that amount in July, 9 million marks on I October, 78 billion marks on 5 November and 233 billion marks a fortnight later, on 19 November.” Madness.

The Dagger in Vichy, by Alastair Reynolds, published 2025, science fiction. Enjoyed it. Digging the future medieval thing. (Which is not a spoiler, by the way — it’s made clear very early on in the novella.)

Washington Square, by Henry James, published 1880, fiction. At last, after itching to read him all year, my first Henry James. Really liked it. The prose wasn’t as crisp as, say, Edith Wharton’s, but it was still good. Characterization and interiority were good, too. I found myself empathizing more with the father, Dr. Sloper, which shouldn’t surprise me given my age but somehow still does. Looking forward to reading the rest of James’s work.