First and a half book: The Crying of Lot 49:

Actually read this while reading The Brothers Karamazov, so I started reading it after but finished it before. Real good. Probably should have just read more Pynchon instead of reading all this other crap. I watched Under the Silver Lake before I read it and turns out that movie just ripped off this book (I still consider that one of my favorite movies, certainly my favorite movie of 2018). It's about a woman who thinks all these people are out to get her and she notices all these random numbers and images and thinks they mean something specifically to her. It takes place in LA and after visiting I can see how one’s paranoia could be exacerbated by the city. It feels like you don't belong there, but no one is stopping you, because maybe nobody belongs there, except for maybe the Indians who were there before everybody. Everything is temporary but everything is stable. There could be something bigger going on but even that is tiny compared to the city itself. The book is short you can read it in a day. I spent a bunch of money on this one which was dumb, just get it from the library or a used book store or get it on kindle. Recommend.

First book: the Brothers Karamazov, translated by Constance Garnett

Some people are super annoying about translations. “You have to read it in its original language or you can’t truly understand it.'' That’s dumb. Like you gotta take a special class on early twentieth century southern dialects to understand Faulkner. As if the inner workings of the author’s brain are perfectly preserved provided you speak the language. Maybe that’s not far off when it comes to Proust, but Dostoevsky is like any other Russian big book guy- it's about the story and the message. It's not some James Joyce ‘look at me i'm a writer’ book, it's just a nice story about a possible pedophile named Aloysha who tells people not to be so mean to eachother. I got the Barnes and Noble Classics edition, which has super-light pages and feels really nice. I bought it in 2014 and brought it to school so my english teacher and classmates would think I was smart and then went back to reading Vonnegut because it was too hard for my baby dumbass brain to understand. Which is crazy because it's really not that hard. After flipping through it just now, I believe I have found the most difficult word in the entire book to be “acquisitive”. Anyway, the book is good and I would recommend everyone reads it. The characters are all deep and interesting (the way only Russian characters are written) and the philosophical stuff is actually written out and not presented in the usual self-congratulatory manner of haphazardly name-dropping Spinoza or Hegel or some other thinker whose work is barely tangential to whatever ‘society is bad, why am I sad’ retrospection the author is trying to conjur up. Recommend (I’m writing ‘recommend’ at the end of every one because I need to practice spelling it).

Second book: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

This one’s pretty neat, it's like he starts out talking like a little kid then he gets old and the writing becomes less stream-of-consciousness and more structured like a narrative. Especially good for young men who think society doesn’t understand them. There’s not much else to say really. People who like Joyce are weird so I don't like to tell people I read this one. Also a B&N classic, but not as light as Karamazov.

Third Book: As I Lay Dying

Yeah this one’s cool. The first Faulkner book I read was Sanctuary, which was probably a good one to start with because it was written for regular baby dumbass brained folks like myself. Then I read The Sound and the Fury which I thought was fun to look at, like strobe lights. This one is pretty much in between in terms of style which makes it the most entertaining of the three. It's written in the changing point-of-view style like TSATF but each chapter is short so you don't have time to get lost. Maybe I should just go home. My favorite Faulkner so far, but I still have a lot more to read. I got the version made by Vintage International, one of my favorites. The book smelled nice and the text was large. Recommend

Fourth Book: Fear and Trembling

Ah I suck at this one. I was really wanting to like it and I gave it my best try, but ultimately I failed. I can’t tell the correct amount of effort the ‘knight of faith’ is supposed to use in decision making, if i'm over-thinking or under-thinking, when I’m supposed to question and when to blindly move through life, if I'm supposed to be happy or sad. Maybe that’s the point. Going to give this one another try sometime. It's a penguin classic, big margins and tiny text, so you can write notes, which is what I should have done. It smelled fine, I guess. It’s hard to not recommend it. If you like philosophy it's kind of a must-read.

Last Book: The Screwtape Letters

This one is DFW’s favorite book. I don’t really need to explain it. It's short, you can read it in two days, just go get it from half price or the library and bring it back. It was printed by San Francisco something or other, fine book I guess, it didn't fall apart or anything so can’t complain. Double Recommend, if you don’t read this one you’re uninvited to my birthday party.

Books I attempted to read over the summer but stopped:

On the Genealogy of Morality

Honestly probably would have finished it if the version I got didn’t suck. Printed by Chartwell Books, bundled with Beyond Good and Evil. I should have figured something was up because the Half Price Books where I got it had like 30 copies. It took up a good chunk of the philosophy section. It was the only version of Genealogy they had so I got it anyway. It's hardcover, which already sucks, and it has these awful sharp corners that could slice a bagel, and then you could put cream cheese and smoked salmon on it and eat it if you wanted to, I’m really hungry but it's too late to cook and it's sunday so nothing is open so I’m probably just gonna sleep for dinner. I’ll read this one eventually, the parts that I did read were easier than Kierkegaard.

The Flamingo’s Smile: Reflections in Natural History

This one I’m still kinda reading. Really good, double recommend if you like animals and triple-recommend if you also like statistics. It's all about how evolution and natural selection are imperfect processes, which make mistakes and then compensate for those mistakes, sometimes to the detriment of the animal. Sometimes after reading a lot of fiction or philosophy, you just want something real and concrete, and when that feeling comes I run to this book.

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