Danny Hane > Recent Status Updates

My colleagues: I'm island-hopping in Thailand. Just lying on the beach and drinking cocktails.What are you doing on summer vacation?

Me: Oh, nothing much. Just reading some books...enjoying life

Three weeks later: a couple of books deep into an existential abyss.

It’s the wrong book for my new neighbor to ring my doorbell repeatedly and wake me up at almost midnight to tell me aggressively to stop making “those noises.” I was almost naked and had to explain to him that I don’t think he’s imagining “those noises,” but it wasn’t me either and that I was alteady sleeping. And still he wouldn’t leave my door. Maybe… I’m the trawler and I don’t know it yet.

I’ve always wanted to reread “The Shards,” mainly because I was very heartbroken when I read it the first time and the sex scenes progressively disgusted me.
Now I have to say that I find it quite funny, especially when I imagine BEE as an old geezer writing about his permanent horny teenage self. He also has a lot to say about culture. And the comparison with “Less Than Zero” is also interessting.

Bin leider etwas zu dumm für das Buch. Interessiert mich aber dennoch sehr!

Lyrische Ergüsse: "Er entsperrte sein iPhone. Es war 12.12 Uhr. Arnold dachte: 12.12 Uhr. Er dachte: Mir kommt es vor, als sei alles um mich herum gemacht. Arnold schaute aus dem Fenster. Arnold blickte auf sein iPhone. Es war 12.14 Uhr. Er ging in die Küche. Er nahm ein Glas. Er füllte das Glas mit Leitungswasser. Er trank das Wasser. Er füllte das Glas auf und trank es wieder aus."

In this moment I’m watching over a small girl named Stella(her real name). She is born with a rare condition and without eyeballs. She can’t speak and I don’t know if she knows she or the world exists. Stroking her head, lines like that hit different:
„Part of the puzzle of how we get from the mind to the world. A hundred billion synaptic events clicking away in the dark like blind ladies at their knitting“

This happens rarely, but when I started reading this 3 months ago, I really had to put it aside, because I could sense that it would mentally destabilize me too much. So I started from the beginning again, and I’m now back at the same passage where I left off, where he gets into those psychotic, manic thought loops, and I could feel the muscles in my face contort in consternation and aversion. Ugly, brutal stuff.

'Transit’ has already earned my award for ‘Most Times Fallen Asleep While Reading’ — which sounds negative, but it actually speaks to the absorbing, dreamlike quality of Rachel Cusk’s prose. It’s not a book I can read casually, because I read it dangerously slowly, but whenever I do, I’m left in awe of her mysterious way of thinking.

Back to business. Finally I have a good book going … I was already sinking into reading-slump-territory. I should write more reviews, but fuck my life, these past few months were stressful.

Completely flew over my head like psssh. Time travel, pandemic, hoverspaces. What is going on? Who is even speaking? Already past the halfway point and I didn’t care about anything. Maybe I’m the problem… I don‘t know… maybe I was always the problem, but I have honestly no idea why I should care about this thing.

Back from a very exhausting week-long class trip, and what I missed most wasn't food, the internet, silence, sex, or a cozy bed. It was the contemplation that arises especially through reading.

Yay, Sunday! What could be better than diving into a headache-inducing book?

🚨🚨🚨 Breaking: Elias Hirschl really made me laugh.

Everything in "Schleifen" happens on an idea level, similar to "Content", but much more playful and complex. It's mental (in the literal sense, but also in the British slang sense.).

Back at it, like a crack addict… and I thought I have overcome my Murakami addiction.

A second narrative voice was added, which was a good idea and felt refreshing at first, but it didn’t add much to the story… sooo I was able to eat again.

Even on the first couple of pages I could sense that this book has that magic “Oh wow, this is great and I have no idea why.” The narrative progresses in such a smooth, organic and psychologically convincing way. I’m getting into that territory where I forget to eat because I want to keep reading.

Stella Maris is slowly advancing to become a personal favorite. My mind is getting into a really special metaphysical state. All the big questions I have are discussed in here: reality, the self, sanity, the subconscious, life, death. On rereading I could focus on so many more subtle nuances — e.g. the names Alice and Bob are the placeholders used in cryptography and physics to refer to sender and receiver.

As my reading turned increasingly negative, I tried to approach the story purely for entertainment reasons, just to remain open.

I don’t even dislike the characters… I just don’t care about them, mainly because they feel like clichés. The whole book has a pseudo-deep smugness to it. A real audience pleaser.

Spoiler alert: This won’t be my favorite book.

It’s very apparent that Donna Tartt wanted to create a Harry Potter-type protagonist that you feel pity for. That didn’t worked out for me…I need a reason first to care about a character. I’m immersed in the book and it has a great, melodic language; however, I’m still not convinced that this is a story that needs to be told. In fact, it feels like a story I’ve heard many times before.

Finished the first chapter about Dutch art and an explosion and I’m already surprised how underwhelmed I am with the storytelling. Branch after branch with filigreed descriptions. Only 700 pages to go, yay!

Chapter 14 was so good that I read it three times, then set the book aside for a while and had to start all over again. The migration of the family has an almost biblical quality – and rereading only made the story better. Once the family reaches California, though, the narrative loses some of its grip in the endless succession of camps and work.

Some narrators are unsympathetic, disgusting, or just misguided. But this one plays in a league of her own. I don't know what went wrong with her, and I'm already at a point where I'm not sure I want to know. Third time googling the author's pictures and being like "But she looks so normal?!"

John Steinbeck = Luigi
William Faulkner = Waluigi

Faulkner's style is really hard to describe: It's unpredictable without being erratic /arbitrary. He doesn't seem to follow any pattern – the same is true for the narration. Only around page 100 do we get to know a protagonist, and I'm still not sure if this is the main plot strand or if this book even has one. Head is spinning. Certainly not a boring book.

I'm completely in the dark about what direction this book could go. So far, quite a lot of tension. Can't really put my finger on the prose as well- it's neither bad nor good... a bit unwieldy?!

Lying a bit sick in bed and my head not working all that well, I was really in the mood for some good ol’ conventional fucked up horror story. Some say it’s the most disturbing book they’ve ever read…*sipping ginger tea*… ok, I’m ready!

After 11 long pages of how great the dick of Israel is (her affair), she now raises the central question:

„I don’t know why you’re all reading books instead of letting Israel fuck you in the ass, spit on you, or slam you against the headboard—with every thrust, your skull smacks against the headboard.”

Now I need a reading pause and I‘m thinking to myself: Hm, maybe Israel should fuck me too.

With every Sheila Heti novel, I fall in love with her voice all over again. It has the honesty and lightheartedness of a child who whispers a precious secret to you, like: 'When I grow up, I want to be a genius' …it just makes you laugh out loud.

Ew, the Goodreads app has started showing me ads. Really bad timing, when left and right other reading apps are popping up that manage to handle such highly sophisticated and complex things as being able to reply to someone’s comment directly via the app.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​