The Interpreter – Alice Kaplan, 2005 ★★½

Separate and Unequal

Two different American armies marched through France in World War II, united only in name. One was all-white, the other black troops led by mostly white officers. An injustice in itself, the practice led to other kinds of injustice that is the subject of this book.

The Interpreter presents two cases in which a Frenchman was shot to death by an American soldier. One killer was African-American, the other white. The black killer was hung for his crime. The white killer went free.

Franz Kafka: The Complete Stories – Edited by Nahum N. Glatzre, 1971 ★★

Kafka: Thinking Outside the Bug

The term “Kafkaesque” is part of our language. What does it mean? This comprehensive collection of Franz Kafka’s short fiction begs more questions than it answers.

One common definition is “darkly surreal.” In “The Metamorphosis,” Kafka’s best-known story and one included in this book, a guy wakes up one morning to discover he is a giant bug. Dark and surreal, right?

The Simpsons Uncensored Family Album – Matt Groening, 1991 ★★★½

The Way They Was

You can’t hurl a dead Snowball I across the internet without hitting an online debate around the question: When did the longest-running sitcom in American history jump the shark? Everyone knows “The Simpsons” today is no longer the show it was; when did the rot set in?

As a former bigtime Simpsons fan whose devotion fled sometime between the rise of Britney Spears and the fall of Enron, I feel I have company in my lack of clarity. Some cite specific episodes as their turn-off points; for me it is not that simple. Re-discovering the early Simpsons, in the form of this tie-in book published in the second year of their 28-years-and-counting run, brought that home.

The Black Mountain – Rex Stout, 1954 [No Stars]

A Mountain Not Worth Climbing

There are two kinds of challenges reading a mystery novel. One is figuring out the guilty party. The other is soldiering through when the plot doesn’t gel, characters are dense and/or unsympathetic, the setting is bland and thin, and you don’t give a damn whodunit. The Black Mountain proved a textbook example of this latter experience.