Not only have I taken the habit of reading, it’s become more and I look forward to it at the end of the day. This was a far easier read than Moby Dick :). A real page turner once Faria shows up, and I didn’t have to fight sleepiness. Something I never thought I’d say about any book. I really hated books for most of my life, I’ll never forgive the adults who forced them on me when I had all the time and energy in the world. I could have built 10 houses then instead of sitting still for hours on end pretending to listen, pretending to read, and pretending to write about what I didn’t read. Now that I’m older and more intellectually curious, I barely have time and energy to build one. That’s completely up-side down, I’d love today to have more time to read in one of my 10 houses. Maybe forcing immature teenage boys to sit still and hear about Madame Bovary’s boring and completely unrelatable life isn’t the best idea. Who the fuck came up with that? And that’ll be my contribution to the French student anger.

I’m at peace with reading but recommendations are a hard no. Nicole doesn’t like it because she has much to share, but I’m just too afraid to have an allergic reaction if I perceive I once more have to read to make someone else happy. I’m going to wait for the following tomes of Monte Cristo to not overdo it. And it’s English’s turn anyway, though I’m not sure yet what I’ll pick. I’ve been oscillating between the languages to preserve one and enrich the other.

I done did it, I read another book! I stuck to classics again to better my chances of not hating the experience. But the choice was blinded by the ebook format, which does not give you a chance to weight the amount of paper you’re about to tackle. I read Moby Dick, inspired by a comic I read (Achab by Patrick Mallet, meant as a prequel) which made me curious about the real book. And it’s a big book, the contents of which are very dense. Since I only seem to find time to read at the tail end of a day, my mental energy is usually depleted which makes it hard to go through more than a few pages. But it kept me coming back, which is saying a lot about its quality. Once I got used to the unusual words and turns of phrases it got easier, the same thing happened with the Grapes of Wrath. This is making me realize my English is lacking a certain range, it’s a struggle to grasp older turns of phrases. I wasn’t particularly apt with the seafaring vocabulary either :).

The book is very rich with many references, most of which I didn’t know, which left me wishing for annotations. It describes the world of whaling very, very, VERY, exhaustively. It can sometimes be a little much, some of the encyclopedic indexing of whale types, and bones were very dry. But it has the merit of not making assumptions about what a reader may know about a world which no longer exists. These details give texture and meaning where imagination couldn’t fill the gaps.

I thoroughly enjoyed it, I understand why it’s a classic. I liked understanding how a world once worked, I liked the characters, the metaphors are inspired, and a few sentences are so salient with meaning as to give one pause.

Great short read. Saint-Exupery just has a unique sensitivity for describing life in a way that pulls out the child you buried under layers of adult responsibilities. And the story is a cool glimpse into the operation of the aéropostale and what it meant to fly then.

This is why people hate books. It’s not meant to tell an interesting story, it’s an exercise in the absurd by the author. I only finished it because it was short and I thought something must happen eventually. The dude doesn’t even get his head chopped off at the end. I picked it because it’s a classic and I heard a journalist I like talk about it as a life altering book. I don’t see it in the least. Nicole told me Camus is responsible for the stereotype of “ennui” as seen in Inside Out 2, makes sense. This book has zero purpose, it’s written to be boring and it’s quite effective in that regard.

Do I feel any shame being the uninstructed critique of renowned authors? Not at all, this book sucks.

How to pick a first book in decades, and not get burnt? Well I decided to stick to classics thinking they were well liked for a reason. The current economic context led me to pick The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck.

It took me a while to get through it, reading is really not natural and I need to establish the habit. And I loved it. I loved recognizing a uniquely American hardiness in Tom & his fambly. Nicole & I have observed well before this book that Americans have a particular way of going through hardships. Resigned, no push back, just acceptance and enduring. Sometimes, and that may be the latin in my own cultural mix, you kind of want to shake them and ask why they are just accepting things that could be pushed back on. This cultural trait is well illustrated in this book. It was rough to read at first and it took me a while to understand some of the words. The illustration of economic exploitation was also well received and helped me understand a pan of US history, and present state. Everyday economics here is objectively a lot more cutthroat than western Europe. This can be good or bad, much like unquestionably enduring hardships. More freedom to do great things, and more freedom for greedy predators to help you hang yourself.

I know it was a good book because it stays in my mind well after having read it. I hope I can keep fanning that flame going forward.