Have you ever read something so good, so skillfully subtle and thoughtful and emotional and striking and shocking and beautiful, something that pulled at your mind and heart so softly and strongly that you wonder how it can possibly exist? That makes you wonder if it even does exist in this same, perfect way for …
Dead Souls: more shitty rich people
I read Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol recently, and found it quite agreeable, as the narrator would say. The story features an enigmatic land owner named Chichikov, who, at the beginning of the story is a stranger in town who everyone finds intriguing. He travels around to all the landowners in the area, and attempts …
Too many books
I keep buying them. There will be a sale on kindle, or I'll buy one book thinking I'm going to read it next, then get another one instead... many reasons. But it's led to me having more than a dozen books waiting in line to be read. If only I could read faster! But if …
Book catch-up #3 The Unparalleled Borges
I read Labyrinths, a collection of short stories by Jorge Luis Borges, and I can't overestimate how amazing these stories were. I could probably write a post about every story, but I'll stick to a few standouts. The Library of Babel: A library that contains not only every book ever written, but every possible arrangement …
Book catch up #2, good ol Nabokov
Whenever I've read something boring or confusing, or just plain bad, I read some Nabokov as my next, cause it's guaranteed to be good. This time I read Pnin, and as always, it was beautiful, funny, and just lovely. Pnin is a Russian living in America, and teaching Russian at a college. He is absent …
Jonas David 