Sky, Sea, Salt, Stars

( Books read - Egan, Eco, Kadare, Le Guin, Eggers ) 
( Books to read & Current book )
( Read around the world )

Other books that I've read recently:

( Beloved by Toni Morrison )

( Gulp by Mary Roach )

So, I've unexpectedly had a lot more free time on my hands than I was expecting, and have thus to my surprise started reading fiction for pleasure for, er, the first time in a long long time. I'd like to informally set a goal of reaching the 50books_POC challenge, which means that I already have two down, forty-eight to go.

Kafka on the Shore, by Haruki Murakami: As I've gotten older, I've started to have less and less patience with a certain style in literary fiction where the more abstruse and difficult to follow a writer's prose is, the more sophisticated and profound we're meant to consider it. No, if I don't really understand what's going on and I'm bored out of my mind while I'm reading your prose, I don't care if you've won the Man Booker prize or Pulitzer or what have you, I'm just not going to waste my time trying to figure it out. Murakami skirts the border of being too abstruse and philosophical for my tastes - I'm pretty sure that there was a lot of subtextual commentary on philosophy and metaphysics, etc. that completely flew over my head, but his prose style manages to be readable and accessible enough that I finished it in the end. On writing this now, I'm actually struck by how smooth and effortless his writing seems to be; the whole surrealistic narrative with all its gruesome whimsy seemed to unfurl like a bolt of silk ribbon. Or perhaps that was how I felt because very early on, you realize that there's not a whole lot of point in questioning why sardines are raining down from the sky or what the entrance stone is supposed to mean, etc.

The Round House, by Louise Erdrich: I just finished this book yesterday and I can say that this is the first book in a while that I've really, really liked wholeheartedly. I've read some reviews where people felt that Erdrich was too heavy-handed in exploring the issue of rape of Native women on reservations, but I personally thought she was very deft in incorporating information about the life, culture, customs, and internal and external laws governing the reservation into the narrative. One thing that I was surprised that other reviews never mentioned is that Erdrich is *hilarious*! She has this wicked, fierce sense of humor that had me laughing out loud several times throughout the novel, which is rare for me. Usually I'll smile or at most chuckle, but Erdrich throws in these one-liners out of nowhere that had me genuinely laughing; I'm smiling thinking of one of the lines right now. I really, really enjoyed this book, and I'd be interested in picking up a copy of 'The Plague of Doves' when I have a bit more time.

Okay, maybe that metaphor doesn't exactly make sense, but for me the problem when I write slowly (I should actually say when I write *particularly* slowly, because I don't think I've ever written anything quickly in my life) is that all sorts of plausibility issues start popping up all over the place, like Whack-a-Mole except for writers. :( And then I have to backtrack and try to patch it over, except then that takes even more time, which makes me even more frustrated with the pace of progress, etc. *Bangs head on table* Obviously the answer here is to blithely ignore every plothole and implausibility that comes along, except I've never been able to do that, unfortunately.