PASADENA, California — If you’ve ever played Gran Turismo or watched Top Gear, you’re familiar with Pagani. The tiny boutique builder builds one of most desirable — and unattainable — cars on the planet, the 740-horsepower, carbon-fiber-bodied Pagani Zonda. To real driving enthusiasts, the purity of the Zonda, not the excess of the Bugatti Veyron, represents automotive perfection.

Pagani builds cars in numbers that likely can be counted on your fingers and toes. That makes them almost unattainable in Europe and Asia and completely unattainable in the United States, where it has never passed...

I’ve got a weak spot for pulp fiction, especially when it involves a mysterious twist. I like unironic thrillers and mediocre Agatha Christie imitations. Basically, I like any kind of fiction that lets me forget for vast stretches of time that I’m sitting in an airport terminal.

I read these books in an unusual way: I begin with the last five pages, seeking out the final twist first. The twist won’t make sense at this point, but that doesn’t matter — I enjoy reading the story with the grand finale in mind. (Hell, I even cheated with Harry Potter.)

I’ve always assumed that this reading style is a...