Struggling a bit through James Ellroy’s Blood’s A Rover. I reread its prequel American Tabloid on an impulse back in February and decided this year was the year to tackle this book, which has been staring out at me from the bookshelf for years.

Picked up George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London after noting a reference to it in Anthony Bourdain’s famous essay that inspired Kitchen Confidential. It’s a diary of his time living near the margins in both of the titular cities in the 1920s.