I was recently stuck without internet for a couple of weeks so got in a bunch of reading.
Emile Zola: The Belly of Paris (plot summary: people are assholes); The Happiness of Women (young girl from a small town has to fend for self and two younger brothers in the big city by working at a big dept store). Both well worth reading. They deal, respectively, with Les Halles, the Second Empire covered market that facilitated food distribution for Paris, and a large department store (grand magasin) modeled after Le Bon Marché.
Friedrich Durrenmatt; The Judge and his Hangman. Probably best as a movie script. I found it kind of lacking as a noir detective novel.
Tim Powers: Dinner at Deviant's Palace. Recommended by a friend and a winner of the Philip K. richard prize. It has faint reminiscences of richard's shifting reality and deals with a cult manipulated by an alien, but I prefer the darker perspective of PKD's fiction. It was ok for a quick scifi novel.
Jonathan Karl: Betrayal: the last act of the Trump show. More engaging insights into the megalomaniacal former President's inability to believe he lost the last election and his crew of enablers. It's readable and depressing. If Trump wins another time, I may be joining you guys across the pond.
The only Vonegut novel I read was pretty depressing. Slaughterhouse Five. I wasn't inspired to read anything else by him. I just checked the plot of Harrison Bergeron and wasn't tempted. It sounds like a downer. He was amusing in the film, "Back to School," featuring Rodney Dangerfield and with an appearance by Oingo Boingo.
