What I Read in August 2026

An enjoyable Poirot. The story revolves around the death of Poirot's dentist, shortly after his visit. It must be difficult to be Poirot, followed perpetually by the grim reaper. Perhaps he gained his detective skills simply through immersion.

Anyway, it's a pretty good one. It had a lot of worrying signs of being like The Big Four, which I thought was naff, but it deftly side-stepped my complaints with that.

This one also has some political commentary. As usual, all communists are silver-spooned heirs to fortunes. Poirot's own Conservative tendencies are shown, but – at risk of spoiling this approximately 80-year-old text – he manages to put the personal over the political.

A great Poirot. I remembered the plot from the television adaptation, but I have a habit of spoiling things for myself anyway. This one is a really clever plot, and a nice straightforward premise.

One of Tolkien's short stories, and one I always enjoy.

This is a very memorable Poirot for me – I remembered the plot from the TV adaptation completely. The conceit of this one is that Poirot is asked to solve a murder that took place 16 years ago, at which he of course succeeds. It's a really brilliant whodunit though, and I think the clearest I've read so far at showing Poirot's "psychological" methods.

I decided that it's high time I continued my attempts to read The Classics, and so picked up this novel based solely on my memory of it being in many classic lists. I went into this novel completely blind, and what an experience that was! After my first foray I had to go to Wikipedia to get something of an idea of what was going on. I somewhat regret this, as I wonder what the experience otherwise would have been.

The novel details the decline of the well-to-do Compson family, who hail from a fictional county in Mississippi. The Compsons have four children: Candice (Caddy), Quentin, Benjamin, and Jason. The novel is told in four parts. The first three are presented in stream-of-consciousness style from each brother, and a final chapter uses a third person narrator. The events of the novel mostly take place on Easter weekend, 1929.

The first part is from Benjamin's perspective, and is – as I learned later – notoriously difficult to follow. Benjamin has severe mental disabilities, and is completely incapable of speech. Faulkner leaps through time without any indication, and we experience events from throughout Ben's life seemingly contemporaneously with the events of the weekend. The confusion is compounded by multiple characters sharing and/or changing names and almost no descriptive text around dialogue.

Through this unconventional narrative, we learn quite a lot about the Compson family. Triggered by hearing a golfer call for their caddie, Ben remembers his sister Caddy. Caddy seems to have had responsibility for her brothers thrust upon her, which makes her rebellious. She becomes pregnant at a young age, and is to be married off to a banker before her condition becomes obvious. Mrs Caroline Compson is frequently ill, Mr Jason Compson is largely absent, although kindly when present. The care of the children is left to many black servants.

To me, however, the main thing this part left me with was the immense sense of loss Ben feels about the absence of Caddy. The simple vocabulary and shifting between memories gives a really potent effect and expresses the longing he has far more powerfully than flowery language would.

She smelled like trees.

The second part is told from Quentin's perspective. We travel back in time to 1910 for this, which is necessary because we're reading his narrative of the day he committed suicide. Stylistically this is a bit easier to follow than Ben, but Quentin's mental state is also obviously not great, and this muddles the narrative. Quentin is a quintessential unreliable narrator, and it's almost impossible to tell if you're experiencing memory, thought, or fantasy.

We follow Quentin through Harvard university and Boston as he desperately tries to avoid anything that can reflect the time. He breaks his watch deliberately, and we hear his dread about seeing his shadow, or hearing church bells. Through his thoughts, we begin to understand what has him feeling so trapped that he must take his own life. Quentin blames himself for Caddy's pregnancy, based on some bizarre sense of honour. He fantasises about fighting the man who slept with her (while actually fighting a fellow student). He (maybe?) claims to his father that he slept with Caddy himself. He (maybe?) attempted to go through a suicide pact with Caddy, but failed. We get an immense sense of guilt, despite there not really being any failing on Quentin's part. Likewise, he also feels guilt about his family selling Ben's portion of the land to pay for his Harvard tuition.

We also learn that Caddy's marriage fell through after her father told her husband she was already pregnant. Mr Jason Compson is a complete nihilist around these matters of honour, perhaps leading to Quentin's complete confusion on the topic.

The third part is told from Jason's perspective. This part is much easier to follow, which is great. Alas, we're also trapped in Jason's head, and he must be one of the most contemptible characters in literature. Jason is now the head of the Compson household, after his father drank himself to death. Caddy's daughter, Quentin, is a rebellious teen in the house. Caddy herself is away somewhere, forbidden from coming home, but regularly sending money to try to ensure a good life for Quentin. Jason works in a store in the town.

Jason was promised a job at Caddy's ex-husband's bank, which fell through after the marriage fell apart. For this, he blames Quentin, and takes it out on her. We spend all day inside his head as he tries to beat his niece and chases her around town, hearing every racist and misogynist thought he thinks while doing so. He's been stealing the money Caddy sends for Quentin and keeping it for himself, gambling it on cotton futures (and losing).

He complains constantly about how workshy his household staff are, yet in the whole working day at the store we see him serve one (1) customer, which includes a failed upsell. The rest of his day is spent going for refreshments, stealing money, chasing his niece around town, and losing money on cotton futures. His boss tells him to his face that he's only being kept on out of pity for his family, and also implies that Jason stole the money for his car from his mother.

The fourth part is told by a third-person narrator, and is easy to follow at last. Quentin steals $3000 that Jason kept in cash in the house (presumably stolen from her in the first place), and runs away with a man from a travelling show. We mostly follow the now-elderly household servant Dilsey, who is constant throughout the narrative. She takes Ben to a black church for Easter Sunday service, and returns home. We're subjected to more of Mrs Compson in this chapter, and her mistreatment of her household staff.

Jason, meanwhile, tries to give chase to Quentin. He tries the sheriff, but is refused help on the grounds that he 1. has no proof, and 2. probably stole the money in the first place. He then sets out alone, finds the travelling show, attempts to extort information from an old man, cowardly punches him and runs away, hits his head on a rail, and is saved from the old man by the show's proprietor. He learns that Quentin is not with the show, as the fellow was kicked out. Jason then has to pay to be driven home.

The novel closes with Ben being taken the wrong way around a confederate monument by his carer Luster, and wailing. Jason happens to arrive at the same place, and takes over, going the correct way around.

I was really impressed by this book. The dismal atmosphere was very powerful, and the way emotions were conveyed through the unconventional style was masterful. The characters will stick with me, especially Jason. I felt a great deal of contempt for Jason, but also pity. I think the only fitting punishment for Jason's actions is being Jason Compson.

I wrote a full review of this book here.

Pink-Pilled is a book about women and the far right. The concept is really interesting, but this book felt lacking in depth. There was a good amount of breadth covered, but all surface level.

This month's Verso Book Club book felt a bit different to prior months. Empire Ablaze is a historical narrative of the American Revolution, told through the life of arsonist James Aitken. Aitken, also known as John the Painter, attempted to burn down England's shipyards during the American Revolution, in the attempt to aid the American cause.

The book uses Aitken's life as a framing point to discuss the conditions for normal people leading up to the revolution on both sides of the Atlantic. Aitken is an interesting way to do this, as he lived in Edinburgh and London before sailing to the new world for a while. The historical context added was always fascinating. I found the chapter on ideas of Liberty floating around at the time especially interesting. English writers often wrote similarly to those in the colonies, but did not critique the monarchy for fear of reprisal. Thomas Paine, writing in America, did not feel any such compulsion, and pointed to the king as an oppressor above parliament.

Aitken's story itself is somewhat wild. Born the son of a skilled artisan in Edinburgh, he was fortunate enough to get a decent education. He sought fortune in London, but soon fell in with a bad crowd and became destitute. Naturally at this point he became a highwayman. He cut this career short to evade the authorities, and sold himself into indentured servitude in Virginia, with no intent to actually work his contract. In the colonies he remained loyal to the crown, but a few years later he returned to England and sought the help of European allies to sabotage England's shipyards.

None of his arson attempts had a major success, and his methods were rather bumbling. He was caught due to continuing to commit petty crimes, as he'd always done. He was hanged from the mast of a warship, after being tricked into confessing to the arson. I can't say I found him a particularly sympathetic figure to be honest, but the surrounding story was fascinating.

This was a good read, and short at around 150 pages. Well worth the effort.