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John Williams

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John’s Bookshelves

to-read‎ (75)
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John is Currently Reading

John Williams is currently reading

Orlanda

by Jacqueline Harpman

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progress: On page 124. — Sep 13, 2026 08:59PM

Sep 13, 2026 08:59PM

John Williams is currently reading

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup

by John Carreyrou

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(page 250 of 339)
— Sep 15, 2026 07:32PM

Sep 15, 2026 07:32PM

John Williams is currently reading

Infinite Jest

by David Foster Wallace

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Reading for the 2nd time

read in September 2025

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John Williams said: " After a couple chapters of prose that is deeply imbued with the voices of the chapters' subjects, I thought to myself, "Oh, I get it now. Now I understand why." And the thing I thought I understood was WHY Infinite Jest and WHY David Foster Wallace. After a couple chapters of prose that is deeply imbued with the voices of the chapters' subjects, I thought to myself, "Oh, I get it now. Now I understand why." And the thing I thought I understood was WHY Infinite Jest and WHY David Foster Wallace. And then, a few chapters later, I got to the first chapter that attempts AAVE, and that gave me pause. And then I got further along and encountered certain slurs, and despite how closely DFW melds his prose with the perspective of his characters, his authorial voice is so distinctive that it becomes hard to distinguish whether the slurs are coming from the characters or from DFW Himself. And so but like, a quarter of the way in, I come to the understanding that, "Oh, I get it now. The empathy in DFW's prose is almost exclusively reserved for white male drug addicts." Which shouldn't come as a surprise, I suppose. The thing is that this book was weirdly compelling for something so intentionally mired in the perspectives of bigoted characters, and in minutiae and in deliberate attempts to make the process of reading the book itself a maddeningly inconvenient experience, from the page-long sentences to the obstacle course of endnotes. I still finished it, and quite often was entertained, at the least intrigued, when I wasn't trying to keep from blacking out or from cringing at the more poorly-aged excerpts. I finished this book at a time in my life when I've shed my previous compunction about not finishing every book I start, but I absolutely empathize with anyone who logs this a DNF. Here's something I'm grateful for. This book was once at the top of a mental list I'd been keeping of books I was so intimidated about finishing that I figured I'd never even pick them up in the first place, another being Dune, which I surprised myself by finishing last year. Having survived Infinite Jest without having my own personal map eliminated for keeps in the process, the rest of that mental list I'd been keeping has begun to evaporate. If I can make it here as a reader, hopefully I can make it anywhere. ...more "

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(page 300 of 1088)
— Aug 25, 2026 04:44AM

Aug 25, 2026 04:44AM · see review

John’s Quotes

“At first glance, the key and the lock it fits may seem very different," Sazed said. "Different in shape, different in function, different in design. The man who looks at them without knowledge of their true nature might think them opposites, for one is meant to open, and the other to keep closed. Yet, upon closer examination he might see that without one, the other becomes useless. The wise man then sees that both lock and key were created for the same purpose.”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Well of Ascension

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