A fun alternate-history Saxon-England noir, a great Carpenter x Kurosawa arctic horror movie, and more

Greetings from Read Max HQ, and welcome to our weekly roundup column, in which I pick out some worthwhile and often overlooked books, articles, movies, and music to recommend to paying subscribers. First, some housekeeping!

• I'm on this week's episode of the great British-culture excavation podcast "What's All This Then?" with Libby Watson and Charlotte McDonnell, discussing The Wicker Man. It's on YouTube and Patreon here. (As well as the podcast platform of your choice.)

• I was on the Sam Sanders Show last week, talking about my Times Magazine gambling piece from the other week. You can check that out on the podcast platform of your choice, or on YouTube here.

• I joined the guys at Chapo Trap House to discuss the same piece, as well as Hugging Face and other AI developments. The episode is behind their paywall here. (And may I say — it's a good one!)

• Finally, my endless apologies for the lateness of this missive, which I attribute to a shifted schedule, the vagaries of childcare, laziness, etc. etc. However: The recommendations here are very, very good despite their lateness, and I promise most Read Max readers will enjoy them. I will probably be "experimenting" with changing the delivery days of Read Max newsletters over the next few weeks, some portion of which will be actual intentional experimentation and some portion of which will just be "the way my life is going." Your patience, fortitude, grace, continued support,etc. is appreciated as always.

Anyway, for this week's round-up, I've got:

• An alternate-history noir set in a Great Britain divided among Celts, Saxons, and Norse Scots;

• essays, articles, newsletters and more on You Can See Everything, AI and math, insurance fraud, and Yuen Woo-Ping;

• a great arctic horror movie that's part John Carpenter and part Kiyoshi Kurosawa; and

• four tracks I've been listening to a lot.

If any of that sounds interesting--and if you want to support Read Max in its continuing mission of explaining the future to relatively normal people--please subscribe below. Subscribers get access to these weekly emails and to the comprehensive Read Max Master Lists of Good Movies to Watch and Good Books to Read.

Please note! If you were a paying subscriber on Substack, your paid subscription will transfer over with a free trial. If you're already a subscriber, thank you!

I love to hear from readers who want to recommend a cool book or movie (or whatever!) to me, or from readers who are looking for specific kinds of recommendations. Just leave a comment or drop me a line at [email protected].

Finally, please note that I may receive a small commission if you purchase books via links in this email.

Now, the roundup:...