Ruben > Recent Status Updates

Very excited about this one, even if it sounds VERY sci-fi

This is fun!

"One could finally tell that the winter was over. What’s more, a week ago the Hungarian had packed up his stove and left. The town no longer smelled of the petroleum jelly the parents rubbed on their children’s frozen hands and cheeks."

Petroleum against the cold, really? I had no idea...

Deeply boring thus far....

And I’m happy to see you got around to reading Lolita—I pointed at the open page—a profound, tragic novel that idiots all over the world, losers with soft confused brains, cretins and neanderthals who have never once looked life in its face, often mistake for salacious pro-pedophile smut.

I had taken a double dose of my stimulant before class because I knew, deep in my heart, that I was a horrible teacher, prone to irrelevant and rambling digressions about my personal life and the childhood maltreatment of Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin at the hands of his drunken shoe-cobbler father

"True politicians have the ability to believe the words they speak."

It starts with a family tree. Good!

...the writer had enjoyed some good luck of late. After twenty years of putting his words out into the world to decent reviews and aggressively modest sales, his most recent novel, a relatively gentle affair (harsh critics might call it twee) (...), had, against the odds, unexpectedly found a home - and gone on to become a bestseller - in Germany.

....a chorus of voices, each one pleased with him- or herself almost to the point of ejaculation, "Kinski is a fascist Kinski is a fascist" when in fact their artless interpretation of performance as literal truth and their inability to extrapolate meaning beyond words on the page, words from the stage, instead makes them the fascists of the worst kind: intellectual fascists policing the thoughts of others...

Only 60 pages in, but this is excellent!!

Very good.

"Why don’t you film in Venice, he had asked, and Danilo laughed. Because the film is not set in Venice. It is set in Fellini’s Venice, and that has to be made from scratch."

Why aren't more people reading this?!?!

Time for number 5!

Fascinating....

Back to Scotland!

One of my most anticipated books for 2025...the premise sounds a bit like 'The Rain Heron' - I hope it's just as good.

20,000 elephants in Berlin... intriguing...

Possibly a bit too cynical for me...

Rich daughter kidnapped by Corsican independentists....sounds like a good summer read!

Let's see what all the fuss is about...

Very engaging so far, but no sign of any metafiction yet....
..yet....

This is excellent!

Another 'Perfection'?

Oh my, this is really good

This is toooo slow....

I am loving this one!