I've been reading The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien, and am finding myself generally annoyed with it, and had some curiosity why, since it seems like the kind of humor I used to really enjoy, in 'Hitchhiker's Guide' for example. I think the difference is that in Hitchhiker, things that appear random at first are …
The Plague, by Albert Camus
I finished it, and though parts of it made me think and feel and were interesting, overall I was mostly bored and impatient with it. I enjoyed the close-view narration style of The Stranger a lot more, and maybe if I'd gone into it more expecting a sort of dry historical style account for most …
dying, now or later…
The Plague has been getting more interesting. One part I enjoyed was, as the characters are now all quarantined inside the town, and death is all around, one character is sitting in his house trying to write a book, and rewriting the same sentence for days and weeks, trying to find just the right words. …
A cool glass of sweet water
Every time I finish a particularly difficult book, be it bad, or odd, or just confusing, I take a break with a Nabokov novel. They are always so clear and crisp and enjoyable, it's like drinking a nice glass of cool water after a tiring time in the sun. This time I'm reading the Luzhin …
Out, by Christine Brooke-Rose
What did I just read? I'm not quite sure. At the end it became slightly intelligible that the POV character was of some higher or lower form of consciousness, and had a brain procedure performed on him. So that sheds a bit of light on the bizarre and confusing way this story was told. One …

