A cult occult fantasy novel, a great drug-war neo-noir, and non-algorithmic algorithm jaxx

Roundup 08/20/2023

Greetings from Read Max HQ, and welcome to our weekly roundup column, in which I pick out some worthwhile and often overlooked books, articles, movies, and music to recommend to paying subscribers. For this week’s round-up I’ve got:

• A beautiful, weird novel about John Dee, Giordano Bruno, academia, and occult history;

• a great, stylish, incredibly acted American neo-noir in a Hong Kong “heroic bloodshed” style; and

• a beautiful EP of “songs to code to,” sort of.

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Now, the roundup. First, as always, a dispatch from the future: