I don’t like ‘lol random’

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 …