I've started listening to my first Proust, and it's not very engaging. It is interesting though. Mainly I'm thinking "this guy is just going on about inane memories that can have no importance to anyone other than himself, and yet this is a classic." I think that goes to show that you really can write …
Mystery on the side
I'm listening to another Nabokov novel, and no surprise, it's great. This one is about a struggling businessman who also seems a bit mentally unstable, running across a vagrant who happens to look exactly like him. The instant he sees this face, a plan sparks in his mind. You can tell, but, you don't know …
Language is a tool not a box
After much recommendation, I am reading a book that on the surface is about a subject (American History) that holds mostly no interest for me. But boy is it good and weird and written in a strange way. Would you read a novel made of citations? That's what this seems to be... a large portion …
Starting at the action
I'm listening to Kafka's Metamorphosis, and the first sentence is him waking up as a giant insect. This is how stories should be told. So many other writers, amateur or not, would write however many thousands of words about the day before it happened--but why waste time getting there? Since the story is about him …
The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde
Reading this was a bit of a wake-up call to how vapid and soulless(hehe) vampire movies and books are today. Dorian Gray, in a fit of youthful exuberance, trades his soul for endless youth, and gets more than he expected. Not only does time not affect him in any noticeable way on the exterior, nothing seems …
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Jonas David 