Finished in a day. Loved it. Felt a vast expanse of emptiness. So I decided to get weirder with it.

Read in five days. Parts I found exceptional. Other parts escaped me. The end left me for dead on the side of the road.

Not sure what I will start next, either Piranesi, Stand out of our Light, Notes from Underground, or Vita Contemplativa.

Or more Hesse and start Demian.

Read Demian, it’s excellent and short. Liked it better than Steppenwolf

Just started reading the stranger (like ten pages in), I’ll finish it tonight. Excited

yoo I just read it a couple of days ago too lol

Good s***. Challenging/rewarding but very simple read. Anyone leaving the book fully identifying with Mersault though is missing the point imo.

I did not like Hyperion. I read it after finishing A Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy. That was a mistake. That series was closer hardcore sci-fi, while I’d say Hyperion is more Sci-fantasy, which wasn’t what I was looking for at the time. I only ended up liking only 2 of the 7(?) travelers story’s.

I need to give it another chance. If I had read it after reading the Dune novels I think I’d have a different reception to it.

Book club still active?

Yessir we’re reading Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro this month!

fable.co/club/book-club-to-the-with-jael-mino-448448206794

I loved it but the sequel is a bit of disappointing and idk when I'll read the next duology. How is A Remembrance of Earth past btw?

Finished Catch-22 and overall I loved it. It definitely is guilty of repeating itself, and Heller overuses the “stream of consciousness” delivery. But it actually is kinda funny as f*** with some really memorable moments, characters and chapters. Definitely one I’ll revisit someday.

My homie got me a copy of this some months ago and I’m just now cracking it open. I don’t really know much about Dostoevsky or Russian lit, but it’s still been pretty engaging so far as I’ve knocked the first chapter down.

Gangland by Chuck Hogan (2022)

crime fiction based in the 1970's in Chicago that follows an up and coming Irish gangster trying to investigate a robbery and stay alive in an Italian mob war. entertaining read with some unique characters but nothing too special. nice in-between read or slump breaker

7.6/10

How I Became A Nun / Cómo me hice monja by César Aira (1993)

short novella about a young girl(?) whose dad forces her to eat an ice cream she doesn't like and the unintended consequences of that action. I enjoyed the beginning and the ending was unique but the middle lost me a bit. second novel I've read from Aira this year, and though I can see his talent, the execution of his stories left me a bit unimpressed and unsure of why he received so much praise from Roberto Bolaño

7/10

The Border Trilogy by Don Winslow
The Power of the Dog (2005)
The Cartel (2015)
The Border (2019)

when it comes to genre fiction I feel like crime fiction gets overlooked too often and this trilogy is a perfect example of the potential of the genre. follows a DEA agent and mostly Mexican d*** kingpins throughout the d*** trade in Mexico from the late 1970s-2019. the scope of the trilogy was astounding and the books toed the line between crime fiction and historical fiction, with so many of the storylines based on real life events. there were times where I would read a harrowing chapter only to look it up and find out it really happened

the first book focuses on how the d*** trade got started and the corruption of the DEA/CIA in the 70s/80s. the second book focuses on the d*** wars and horrific violence of gangs like the Zetas in the early 21st century. the third book takes place around 2016 and follows the money and war on d**** from the US perspective covering both political corruption and addiction

coming in at all together nearly 2,000 pages, these were action packed books and Winslow's strength lies in getting you to care about characters quickly. most violent books I've ever read but the critical look at the war on d**** combined with the entertaining storylines made it an excellent read, one where I will miss the world and think about the characters for a long time

would definitely recommend for anybody who's a fan of Sicario or Narcos

9.7/10
9.9/10
9.8/10

the crime ficition genre needs more respek

good read from a former google employee turned ethics philosopher. makes me want to go full Theodore on som mfs or at the very least ditch my smartphone lol

Will be back in for my what now seems to have become a quarterly musing on my recent reads shortly

Will read through the last 4-5 pages to see what everyone’s on in the interim

Breakfast of champions by Vonnegut. WTF did i Just read? still trying to figure out

Same lol

Old Man and the Sea

Martyr! - Kaveh Akbar (2024)

Orphaned late 20s something Cyrus (pronounced Karoosh) Shams has spent the majority of his life haunted by addiction and grief; grappling with the concept of existence in a physical, religious, and personal sense. Cyrus finds himself enamoured with the concept of martyrdom until a fateful encounter leads him to understand what it means to die — and more importantly live.

I simultaneously loved and loathed this novel. At times, deeply engaging, with profound excerpts and gritty accounts of Iranian culture. Concurrently, I’d find the novel falling foul with edgy dialogue and even meme-like paragraphs. The dream sequences fell short, the chapters chronicling other characters felt one-note.

Worth the read, but I still found myself a bit underwhelmed despite the modern literature craze.
3.5/5

———————————
A Man of the People - Chinua Achebe (1966)

The novel is set in a fictional African country and follows the story of a young idealistic teacher from a small village who ends up being recruited by his ex-teacher who is now a man in a position of power in the country's political sphere. The protagonist finds himself caught in corruption and complexities of the desire for power.

The novel is an excellent insight into the complexities of African politics; underscored with a tesnion of a post-colonialism and the ambition and criticism of government.
I think, most impressive, is how just spookily prescient the novel is - the author wrote this novel in the mid 1960s, and not more than 6 months after release, the country found itself with a political uprising culminating in a manner eerily similar to how the novel ends!
4/5

———————————
Samarkind - Amin Maalouf (1988)

A blend of fact and fiction, the novel chronicles the life of Omar Khayyam, poet (dubbed then ‘astronomer’) in 11th century Iran — navigating the politics and uprising with his own philosophical and personal beliefs, culminating with his opus of quatrain poems titled the Rubaiyat. The second half of the novel is then set up in the 1900s dealing with the characters tribulations in locating a final original copy of the same.

Whilst the first half of the novel had me hooked; transmitted away into the world of Iran -- colourful clothes, dishes, carpets, oriental palaces etc. the second half of the novel loses spark and begins to tell rather than show.

Still a recommended read for any historical fiction fans.
3.5/5

Completely forgot to update but I liked it! I agree with you and I feel like you can't really take much away from the book but it's an entertaining read for sure. I like Camus' writing so I'll be checking Sisyphus out next

I thought it was humourous if anything

i think there's a ton to take away from the book. It's a very powerful read even if it's like sub-200 pages. There's a reason it's a classic.

I'm saying that people seem to misinterpret it as endorsing Mersault when I'm not sure Camus would feel that way given his actual beliefs on the subject.

What are your takeaways? I agree w the Mersault bit, he’s meant to be a character that resides on the edge of society anyway

Mersault sees life as mostly meaningless and only really finds enjoyment in physical pleasures, finding no discerning importance in things like love or the fact his neighbor abuses someone, but being willing to marry his gf for the sexual gratification (and if she would prefer it) and to help his neighbor because his neighbor hasn't done anything against him specifically. When he kills a man, he expresses no remorse and he says the sun caused him to do it as if that's a reasonable explanation - the only things that affect him are the things that physically impact him. He sees the annoyance of a heatstroke as equal with the death of a man in terms of actual significance. The lack of caring and the thoughts that "nothing matters" (which is in line with absurdism, which Camus somewhat agreed with) are all given pretty reasonable explanations and logically all make a lot of sense. He just cares about what gives him pleasure and what he finds "interesting." But that sense and logic is completely devoid from any emotion regarding life, which is why Mersault comes across like an outsider/stranger to human customs. He's not really getting put to death for his actions of killing a man; he is getting put to death for being unempathetic about it all. He stirs up discomfort in literally everyone he's around because they all don't like seeing what he represents and they wholeheartedly want to reject it.

A lot of people (at least online) seem to be taking this as the other people in the book being weak and unable to face the truth of absurdism, but Camus himself was in favor of rebelling against absurdism together as a species.

Camus thought God wasn't real and that there was no greater meaning in life. He didn't want people to join religion to find purpose. But he also thought that the fact all humans were in the same place, dealing with an absurd and meaningless life, gave them an inherent motivation to persevere and succeed as a species. Mersault in the book only comes to that latter conclusion in the very end. Throughout the book, he's making very careless and harmful decisions to everyone around him due to indifference. And in the end, he realizes it would better for people to find a collective purpose in hating him and wanting him to die than it would be for him to be put to death and have it mean nothing to anyone.

I feel like a lot of edgy teens read The Stranger and misinterpret it in the same way edgy teens watch Fight Club or the Wolf of Wall Street and misinterpret it.

Mersault is not a "he's just like me" kind of character. And if you do find yourself deeply relating to him being an outsider, the book is repeatedly prodding you to re-evaluate things.

Open Veins of Latin America by Eduardo Galeano

A history of Latin America (South and Central America, and the Caribbean) through an economic lens. The pull quote on the cover is from Hugo Chavez and in the foreword Isabel Allende claims it is the only book she took when she fled the military coup in Chile, so I kind of felt like I had to read it. It's definitely interesting, and full of quantified descriptions of the impact of extraction on Latin America. However, it's a lot of numbers. The description on the back claims that this book is "an overwhelming narrative that makes history speak" and I'm not sure I identified the strength of the narrative, but it absolutely lays bare the connections between the slave trade, colonialism, resource extraction, and how that all continues to the modern day. The throughlines Galeano draws extend to modern day regime change efforts by the US and other Western nations. Definitely educational, but not what I would consider an exciting or engaging read.

Point Omega by Don Delillo

It's short, which I love. A filmmaker with a bad self-centeredness problem visits a retired Department of Defense spook to record an avant garde documentary about his life. The two main characters spend a lot of time talking about loneliness, how they feel different from those around them, how the world is uncaring. One of the more interesting parts is the DoD spook's involvement in war planning - an academic and a linguist, he was tapped by the military to find a way to abstract their language surrounding war, to make it more palatable and less disturbing. The military was particularly interested in his writing about the word "rendition", trying to strip it of context and make it less threatening. Seems pretty prescient in our time of patently illegal ICE raids! The book is pretty uneven, much of the middle sections are sleep inducing. But it's short, so at least it's over quick.

Brown Girl in the Ring by Nalo Hopkinson

A young woman and her infant child in a crumbling Toronto fight d*** lords and evil spirits. This book rocks: it's well written on a sentence level, the world is rich and full, the characters are lovable and hateable where needed, and the story never stops moving. It centers on Afro-Caribbean spirituality and plant medicine, the detail Hopkinson lends this makes it feel real and lived in. It's also a fascinating setup for a "post-apocalypse": Ontario's indigenous people sue the Canadian government with a land claim that bankrupts the province and garners attention from Amnesty International, causing businesses and commerce to almost completely flee the city of Toronto. Please read this book!

Open Veins is a clásico! not quite an engaging read but definitely an important one as most people don't know the extent to which colonialism and exploitation affected Latin America

such a monumental and influential book but it's interesting that in 2014 Galeano disavowed it claiming it was poorly written and he didn't have enough training to cover the topics adequately

it's been criticized for factual inaccuracies as well but I still think it's a must read to put the history and current events of Latin America in perspective

Brown Girl In The Ring sounds crazy btw, adding it to my list

I did catch that Galeano disavowed it, which I thought was interesting. It's not written in "prose" by any means, but the writing isn't bad either, not by a long shot. I thought he did amazing work showing how extraction evolved in symbiosis with industry, but it has always been based in stratifying class and the industrialization of labor only serves the capitalist class. I also loved the idea he introduced of the (US) American South as an internal colony of the larger United States. Kind of a mind-blowing idea for the 1970s

I really want to read his Memoria del Fuego trilogy. A more prose-oriented work that covers similar topics sound amazing.