Books Read: August 2025

This is what I read last month; as always, it's mostly an index to the blog and primarily useful to me  rather than you the home viewer. But there it is:

Richard Sala, Night Drive (digital, 8/2)

Ruth Goodman, How to Be a Victorian (8/2)

Doug Savage, Laser Moose and Rabbit Boy (digital, 8/3)

Mark Chiarello, editor, Wedne4sday Comics (8/9)

William Goldman, The Princess Bride (8/9)

René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo, Asterix the Gladiator (8/10)

Sophie Goldstein, House of Women (digital, 8/16)

Jack Vance, Trullion: Alastor 2262 (in Alastor, 8/16)

Sergio Aragones' Groo: The Hogs of Horder (digital, 8/17)

Jeff Lemire, 10,000 Ink Stains: A Memoir (digital, 8/23)

Various, The Mystery Science Theater 3000 Amazing Colossal Episode Guide (8/23)

Peter Bagge and Gilbert Hernandez, Yeah! (digital, 8/24)

Ambrose Bierce, In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (in The Devil's Dictionary, Tales & Memoirs, 8/24)

Kazuo Koike & Goseki Kojima, Lone Wolf & Cub, Vol. 7: Cloud Dragom, Wind Tiger (digital. 8/25)

Carol Lay, Murderburg (digital, 8/26)

Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage (in Prose and Poetry, 8/26)

Stan Sakai, Usagi Yojimbo, Book 8: Shades of Death (digital, 8/27)

P.G., Wodehouse, The Small Bachelor (8/27)

Kenji Tsuruta, Wandering Island, Vol. 1 (digital, 8/28)

Philippe Riche, Bad Break, Chapter #2 (digital, 8/29)

Loren D. Estleman, The Left-Handed Dollar (8/29)

Michael Sweater, Everything Sucks: Kings of Nothing (digital, 8/30)

Denis-Pierre Filippi & Silvio Camboni, Walt Disney's Mikey Mouse and the Amazing Lost Ocean (digital, 8/31)

Dashiell Hammett, The Glass Key (in Complete Novels, 8/31)

I plan to keep reading books in the future.

Better Things: Weight of the World

"Better Things" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year or Portions For Foxes series. See the introduction for more.

I think this is another obscure one: a song I found randomly and loved, by an artist that might be bigger than I know, or might be as obscure as I'm afraid he is.

This is Weight of the World by Shayfer James.

Another almost honky-tonk song, over a rolling piano line. Long, rolling lines, wordy and detailed, giving vignettes of a dangerous, nasty world - maybe made more nasty by the singer and his gang of...whatever.

One woman whistling a wounded lullaby
And preaching pain to every unsuspecting passerby
We knew her well before this, she promised portraits of us
We cut her throat while she was waiting for the paints to dry

It's an ominous song, sung straightforwardly by James with some background singers adding color and depth - but it's mostly that piano and his voice, supported lightly by other instruments. It's a dark vision of Hobbesian world, told precisely and tautly.

And what can you do about it?

But that's just the weight of the world
We do what we must to get by
That's just the weight of the world
The weak and the weary will never survive