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A perfect action flick set in Kowloon Walled City, a brilliant literary debut, and more

Roundup 02/18/2025

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Max Read
Feb 18, 2026
∙ Paid

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.

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:

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