If Joan Didion wrote 'Little Drummer Girl'?
An elegiac spy novel, a gnarly one-take action movie, and four tracks I'm listening to.
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 elegiac espionage novel set among Europe’s super-rich with hints of Highsmith, Didion, and Little Drummer Girl;
links to pieces on the Murdochs, A.I. centipedes, and strange mysteries about Maxim magazine;
a super-gnarly one-take action movie that’s like Assault at Precinct 13 meets Zero Dark Thirty; and
four songs I’ve been playing all the time lately.
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:
