A perfect action flick set in Kowloon Walled City, a brilliant literary debut, and more
Roundup 02/18/2025
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:
An effectively perfect martial-arts movie by one of the great living action directors set in Kowloon Walled City;
a terrific new novel about friendship and ambition in 2000s New York City;
essays, articles, columns and posts about Jeffrey Epstein, Infinite Jest, and Criss Angel’s restaurant
four tracks I’ve been listening to a lot.
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Now, the roundup:



