Ben O'Connell

I recently solicited recommendations for the best books I’d never heard of, and @jayjenni.bsky.social suggested Gilbert Rogin’s work. I’m grateful for the tip—it’s unlikely that I otherwise would have encountered Rogin’s WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?, which reads like a Woody Allen/John Updike collaboration.

Les Daniels was best known as a comics historian, but he also wrote a historical horror series about an aristocratic Spanish vampire, each novel set in a different era. THE BLACK CASTLE contrasts the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition with more otherworldly horrors of the undead.

Daniels’s character work is excellent, and the story is surprisingly intricate, even if his prose tends toward the melodramatic.

I finished Halik Kochanski’s exhaustive—and occasionally exhausting—massive RESISTANCE, a history of armed, political, and social opposition behind Axis lines. It is ambitious but possibly better for dipping in and out or reference than reading in one fell swoop.

Younger Kid and I listened to Paul Sussman’s THE LOST ARMY OF CAMBYSES on back-to-back roadtrips over the last week. We were looking for an adventure novel with a tie to ancient history, and I’d read references to this as an “intelligent” alternative to Dan Brown. It was…fine?

The more I think about this, the more annoyed I get. There have to be smart, well written thrillers rooted in history. But every one that I read has a major flaw. Thin characters, limp prose, reliance on deus ex machina, etc. Good ones exist though, right?

Younger Kid and I listened to Paul Sussman’s THE LOST ARMY OF CAMBYSES on back-to-back roadtrips over the last week. We were looking for an adventure novel with a tie to ancient history, and I’d read references to this as an “intelligent” alternative to Dan Brown. It was…fine?

A sign that Election Day approaches: I have not finished a book in at least two weeks, and I have six books going. At least two of them are fantastic.

I had a couple hours to kill tonight, so I bought a few used books and went to my local dive bar for dinner. The bartender has a killer playlist of newer punk. Great way to kick off my birthday week.

I’m halfway through my latest library loan, Halik Kochanski’s RESISTANCE, an exhaustive history of armed, political, and social opposition behind Axis lines. Suspect I’ll be purchasing it soon—I feel a years-long project coming on: using it for reference as I read Alan Furst’s NIGHT SOLDIERS series.

Vicente Luis Mora’s CENTROEUROPA (trans. Rahul Bery) may be the strangest book I’ve read this year. After a Viennese emigre—deceased wife in tow—lays claim to a Prussian farm, local officials continually put off deciding what to do with frozen corpses of soldiers buried throughout the land.

Maylis de Kerangal’s EASTBOUND (trans. Jessica Moore) is the most claustrophobia-inducing novel I’ve read since Kōbō Abe’s WOMAN IN THE DUNES.

Proof that CGI is a scourge upon filmmaking.

Terrible movie.

Proof that CGI is a scourge upon filmmaking.

Some personal news: 25 years (and 7 months) at C-SPAN

Bummed to find that the Berryville Old Book Shop has closed. I rarely found anything, but I always enjoyed browsing for the few minutes I could take the smell of cat piss.

A pleasant surprise awaited me at Third Rail Records & Books this afternoon