Pale Fire, by Vladimir Nabokov

This is the epitome of genius. Nabokov must have some kind of freak literary gene that makes him so good with words. This is one of the few books I've wanted to start reading again the moment I reached the end. (I think Lolita was another...) On the surface, Pale fire is a 999 line …

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 …

Too many books for patience

I started listening to Remains of the Day by the new winner of the Nobel Prize for literature, Kazuo Ishiguro. After 15 minutes of nothing happening, and multiple restarts cause I zoned out thinking about something else, I gave up and returned it. I know I have criticized today's people for having no patience, for …

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 …