I've been reading Satantango by László Krasznahorkai, and it is formatted in an unusual way, in that it is basically a wall of text with no paragraph breaks. While this sounds odd, and annoying to read (it was at first) it gives the words a kind of overwhelmingness, and endless pressure and urgency that really …
Back on the wagon again again
All that talk about blogging again and I go on vacation for 2 weeks and don't blog. oops. I read a book while I was away, called How Fiction Works, by James Wood. It was great, I read it in just a few days cause I couldn't stop. I learned a lot from it, and …
A clear idea of right and wrong
I've been listening to Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy, my first Tolstoy, and am enjoying the lack of moral relativism. It's somehow refreshing to have a narrator with a clear opinion of what is evil and what is good, and a character who also knows this and is trying to be good. All the shades of …
The Castle, by Franz Kafka
This is the first writing by Kafka I've read that I haven't been impressed by. And unlike the Trial, when they say it is unfinished, they really mean unfinished, like it cuts off in the middle of a sentence. I don't understand why this was published, or why people continue to read it today. The …
Scent in writing
I'm reading Perfume: The story of a murderer, by Patrick Suskind, and am impressed with the amount of detail he's put into describing smells. It is an underused sense, in writing, and maybe that is part of why it seems so amazing, but I'm really being drawn into the strange way this character perceives the …
Jonas David 