A great, fun, strange translation of Homer; a rich, poignant 2000s time-travel thriller; and some new songs I love

Roundup 01/05/2025

Greetings from Read Max HQ! Astute readers will note that I unexpectedly missed last week’s regular column (for the first time in three years of doing this!) due to an unfortunate household incidence of norovirus (i.e., I was *****ing and ***ing my brains out). Please accept my apologies; this is not how I wanted the year to start! We are returning to regular rhythms of correspondence with this email: 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:

• An insanely good and readable “translation” of Homer that’s not by Emily Wilson;

• a rich, romantic, poignant, and often quite silly 2000s time-travel thriller;

• and four tracks I’ve been loving.

If any of that sounds interesting--and if you want to support Read Max in its continuing mission of explaining the future to relatively normal people--please subscribe below. Subscribers get access to these weekly emails and to the comprehensive Read Max Master Lists of Good Movies to Watch and Good Books to Read--as well as preferred pricing on merchandise like the Read Max “EMAIL SUPPLY” caps. If you’re already a subscriber, thank you.

I love to hear from readers who want to recommend a cool book or movie (or whatever!) to me, or from readers who are looking for specific kinds of recommendations. Just leave a comment or drop me a line at maxread@gmail.com.

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Now, the roundup.