Just finished: Mr. Muo’s Traveling Couch by Dai Sijie in which the author of Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress loosens up and tells a shagy dog story of a befuddled Freudian in search of a virgin in semi-post-communist China.

Just started, for book club: Giraffe by J. M. Ledgard

Just picking up again after a pause: The Russian Debutante’s Handbook by Gary Shteyngart in which I realized that Absurdistan is to a great degree a retread of this first novel by Shteyngart, which makes it not much less enjoyable.

Read during that slog through Europe: The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson.  Unputdownable non-fiction about Chicago at the turn of the 20th Century.