3 books, 1 weekend

The Space Merchants by Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth
Old school dystopian sci-fi. The main character is basically Don Draper except for the part where he travels to the moon and performs a couple heroic feats, all the murder and sinister corporatocracy aside.

The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler
It’s impossible for me to not like Chandler books, and chances are I could reread them happily over and over until the day I too am found dead of apparent suicide in a Mexican hotel room. This one stands out from the others, though: it’s notably darker, and it’s less-concerned with plot or economy. The plot is still airtight, mind you, and the prose is still gorgeous in its efficiency. Chandler just let himself write about more stuff, and he used that extra space for social criticism and some amount of self-criticism.

Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple
Genius epistolary comedy pulled along by a mystery plot. I loved this book. It’s probably the best fiction you can buy in a tiny airport book stand right now. Once you get over having to read all these rambling email screeds by characters who will annoy you in unique and endless ways, the book is just a delight. You’ll likely read the last hundred or so pages in one sitting, like I did, and then it will be wayyy past your bedtime.