ANGEL DOWN by Daniel Kraus

 

ANGEL DOWN by Daniel Kraus

During the First World War, 5 American soldiers are tasked with crawling through the no-man’s land between trenches in France to rescue a wounded comrade. But what they find isn’t another soldier; it’s an angel, fallen from the skies.

Or is it?

What follows is what critics like to call a “tour-de-force” and it’s a real blockbuster, the kind of fantastical, phantasmagoric (with an emphasis on gore), cinematic, headlong story that, in my opinion, constitutes a consequential artistic achievement deserving of many laudits, including, believe it or not, the 2026 Pulitzer Prize in fiction.

I’m a fan of when artists take big swings, and Daniel Kraus has hit a dinger with this book. It’s got everything: war, religion (including all the cardinal sins), love, existential angst, race, more than a little gallows humor, some satire — all told in a unique way.

Kraus has written Angel Down as a single, book-length sentence.

Sure, it’s a run-on sentence. But that lends the narrative a kind of breathless energy that made this reader thankful for chapter breaks. And Kraus also manages to shift the narrative viewpoint wildly from one character to another (often within a given scene), all without losing narrative focus. There are no slow stretches, no dull sequences in this book.

And the ending? Well, it’s a doozy.

I highly recommend it.

Get Angel Down by Daniel Kraus here: https://a.co/d/0jdOjZqS

READINGS FROM JULY 2026

READINGS FROM JULY 2026

...included a lively re-telling of Homer's Odyssey by Stephen Fry, which I picked up to re-aquaint myself before seeing Christopher Nolan's blockbuster cinematic version (which I also enjoyed).

It also included Cathy Scott's in-depth biography of Ann Rule & Carly Anne York's defense of scientific research, no matter how esoteric, as a basis for innovation.

Two books that I consumed in audiobook format this month were Lincoln In The Bardo by George Saunders and Live From New York by James Andrew Miller & Tom Shales. Saunders's novel is a multivocal, chaotically-structured work that is wonderfully performed by an all-star cast led by Nick Offerman. And Live From New York is a compiled oral history of Saturday Night Live from its inception through its 40th season. Both books were well-served by the audiobook format, in my opinion, which is something I can't say for most books that I try to listen to.

All of these books are recommended by me, though, of course, your mileage will vary.

 

Cleanup On Aisle Five by Ann Larson

 Cleanup On Aisle Five by Ann Larson

As someone who has worked my whole life in customer service, spent a big chunk of it in retail, operates a food-service business, and nowadays spends part of just about every workday in various grocery stores, I will attest that every word of this book rings true — from the insane customers to the put-upon staff to the overmatched managers whose harebrained reactions to every contingency wreak of spendthrift inhumanity.

The book’s premise is this: author Ann Larson spends a year working in a grocery store in Utah, during which she advances from cashier to supervisor, getting to know both her crew and her customers, all while exploring the phenomena that is the American grocery store.

It opens with an incident so familiar and so gross that I had to laugh ruefully, having had to personally deal with public defecation so many times that it barely fazes me anymore.

But beyond the headshaking antics and messy anecdotes, there is real heartbreak here, in crewmates forced to work in excruciating circumstances and in customers forced to humiliate themselves, all because they aren’t rich — all because we have built a society that over-rewards capital while stripping dignity from labor.

Cleanup On Aisle Five is an important document, shedding light on what life is like in what, for many communities in the U.S., functions as a kind of public square, a meeting-place where people come together and interact under the guise of common need under corporate watch. This book is both a fascinating record and a sharp indictment of how we live now.

Get Cleanup On Aisle Five by Ann Larson here: https://a.co/d/08GyzSPq

THE SALMON CANNON AND THE LEVITATING FROG by Carly Anne York

THE SALMON CANNON AND THE LEVITATING FROG

by Carly Anne York

Discovery & innovation cannot, by definition, be pre-ordained -- which is why basic research & exploration are so important. (I would argue, in fact, that American investment in basic research is one of the primary reasons we have been *the* international superpower ever since World War 2.)

After all, who knew that research into Gila Monster venom would lead to the development of GLP-1 drugs? Who knew that observations of lab-rat mothers would lead to hands-on therapies for premature babies in NICUs? You just can't predict these things.

And this book, detailing all kinds of unlikely & unforeseen innovations born from the kind of research that gets dunder-headed conservatives screaming about "wasted" tax dollars, is a full-throated defense of science for science's sake.

Carly Anne York is herself a scientist, so she's able to interpret & break down the esoteric into understandable chunks, and she's also a gifted storyteller, making this book a fascinating and fun read.

Get The Salmon Cannon And The Levitating Frog by Carly Anne York here: https://a.co/d/0aavcK8R

Lincoln In The Bardo by George Saunders

Lincoln In The Bardo by George Saunders

My readings for July, 2026, began with a large-cast audiobook of Lincoln In The Bardo by George Saunders, a novel which won the Booker Prize in 2017.

Being a big fan of Saunders, I had read the novel when it first came out, and I found it a difficult read. Its structure is complex —  even purposefully chaotic — and it consists of dozens of narrative voices that often interrupt each other. It’s a book I respected (even admired) but did not really enjoy.

But then I heard that Nick Offerman and his wife Megan Mulally are friends of Saunders and that they put together an all-star cast to record an audio version of the novel, a cast that includes David Sedaris, Don Cheadle, and even members of Saunders’s family.

So I gave Lincoln In The Bardo another listen. And I was enchanted.

Now, I have a love/hate relationship with audiobooks. For most books, the recorded audio version bothers me, mainly because it conflicts with the voice that I imagine as I read the actual book. And I don’t want to belabor the point here, but I believe the act of reading is an active act of imagination that listening to an audio recording undercuts. There’s something to be said for imaginatively constructing a narration as you read. It’s like you’re acting a part to yourself as you read — something that mere listening doesn’t really evoke. And that evocation of your imagination enlarges it in ways that being a mere passive audience member does not.

But then there are books like Lincoln In The Bardo, whose subject and structure lend themselves well to the audiobook format. And Saunders has always been an author who is more interested in portrayal than explanation, no matter how outlandish a premise he’s working with. And one of the ways to contend with the structure of this book is to see it as a script.

Also, the premise of this book is as outlandish as it gets. Saunders takes a real historical event (the death of Lincoln’s young son while the President was in office) and spins a fantastical tale (involving spirits inhabiting a graveyard) that encompasses all the major themes: love, death, politics, gender, race, and the meaning of life itself.

And, being something written by George Saunders, Lincoln In The Bardo is also funny. Sure, much of its humor is arch and arcane. But I found myself chuckling constantly.

Lincoln in the Bardo is a book that rewards re-reading, especially if you pick up the audiobook.

Get Lincoln In The Bardo by George Saunders here: https://a.co/d/0bw3Ea5x