I've been reading Burial Rites by Hannah Kent with a book club I just started with some friends. It's much more enjoyable to read a book when you have people to discuss it with, but how can anyone ever get their friends to read the same books... if you're even fortunate enough to have friends …
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. …
uh oh, the French are at it again
I've started reading The Plague, by Albert Camus since I liked The Stranger so much, and .... sigh. It's the same problem I had with Madame Bovary and to a lesser extent, Swan's Way. There are no characters, and just descriptions of things happening in a very passive, drawn back way. I don't know if …
My Name is Red, by Orhan Pamuk
I love reading about artists. I can usually identify with those kinds of characters pretty well. This story was an interesting look at the 'miniaturists' of 16th century Istanbul. And what held my attention most, was the way they looked at art. In that time, 'style' was seen as a flaw. If anyone could tell …

