Status Updates From Penguin Modern Box Set

47: ‘Fame’ by Andy Warhol. I’m thinking I might not understand this one. I hope I didn’t, because I found it to be very bad. It was just surface level, nihilistic opinions presented in rambles. What’s worse, I disagree with nearly all of them. I feel like it was only included because Warhol as a person was important, not because his writings are. It feels rather vacuous.

48: 'The Survivor' by Primo Levi. This was some breathtaking, powerful poetry. Not exactly entertaining, but it struck me as meaningful, even as someone who's not very well read in the poetry genre. It's pretty easy to catch on to Levi's past as a Holocaust survivor, and realizing this early on will interestingly contextualize his poems. 4.5/5

49: 'Lance' by Vladimir Nabokov. These three short stories were unfortunately not very entertaining to my subjective tastes. Regrettably, I had to look up the meanings of the first and last stories, so maybe it was an issue of my comprehension skills. Nonetheless, I can appreciate Nabokov's beautiful prose and range of styles. 3/5

50: 'Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer' by Wendell Berry. This collection of articles was very thought-provoking and exciting to read. At first it comes off as an unremarkable opinion piece complaining about modern technology. The companion article, though, 'Feminism, the Body, and the Machine,' makes very interesting and compelling points about bodily autonomy, some conservative but most progressive. 4.5/5 stars