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If I didn’t have work tomorrow, I would probably finish the rest of this in one sitting. It’s like literary crack cocaine. Such a compelling puzzle told in such a unique way. There’s something new to grasp onto and think about on every single page.

This kind of reminds me of The Truman Show and also kinda reminds me of Severance. Really really good so far. I still have absolutely no idea how to describe it to people if they ask what I’m reading though.

This book is really great so far. It kinda tonally reminds me of the video game Outer Wilds, in the way that the entire world is one big mystery and the protagonist is exploring to try to figure things out. One of my coworkers saw me reading it and asked what it’s about and I had absolutely no idea how to explain it.

Fine Omi, I’ll read the fuckin book

I think I only have one more chapter left. I am so excited to watch the movie because this feels like the most unfilmable book I’ve ever read.

Morse Code is undefeated in fiction. I need to learn it just so I can write a story where it’s an important plot device. I wonder how this book is gonna end, I feel like Trumbo is gonna pull the rug out from under Joe right as he’s starting to get some hope.

In this chapter Joe finally made contact with another human being outside of his own brain. A nurse traced the words “Merry Christmas” on his chest and then he started thinking about his family and the story of the first Christmas. I will say it again, this does not at all feel like a book written in the 30s.

In this chapter, Joe has a drug induced hallucination that he is at a train station in a desert, playing cards with Christ and a bunch of dead men, and when he tells the dead men what happened to him, they all said “damn he’s worse off than us” and then Christ rode away wearing purple robes on top of a train. There’s some allegory or symbolism here that I don’t fully get but I don’t care in the slightest!

In this short chapter Joe (and by proxy I guess Dalton Trumbo) compares being drafted into war with the slaves in Ancient Rome who were forced to fight in the colosseum as gladiators. I never made this connection before. This is the best book ever. Imagine being trapped inside your own brain with absolutely no way out and no one even knows you’re still conscious in there.

In this chapter Joe thinks about all of the prostitutes he’s encountered in his life and then starts to go a little insane

I should really learn Morse code, it always comes so in handy in books and movies.

I can see why conservatives like banning this book. It took 150 pages for there to be an actual war scene in this anti-war novel, and it’s just a scene about a bunch of British soldiers who don’t want to bury a Bavarian corpse stuck on the barbed wire fence, so they just shoot it down whenever they get the chance hoping it falls into a hole in the ground. It kinda gave me “Paths of Glory” vibes.

Really insane chapter where Joe tries to figure out what time of the day it is while he’s trapped in his sightless, soundless, limbless existence. This book is making me question and reconsider things about my own existence. It’s so good that I actually bought a DVD for the first time since high school instead of a Blu-Ray/4K (the film version doesn’t have a Blu-Ray release so I had to get the DVD).

If anyone ever unironically says “men used to go to war” to me ever again, I’m just gonna throw this book at them. I wish I could print out thousands of copies of this chapter and hand them out at every military recruitment center in the country.

Is this the best book I’ve ever read? Maybe I’m just being a prisoner of the moment but goddamn. It’s affecting me so deeply in ways that I didn’t expect. This chapter was all about Joe the protagonist’s last fishing trip with his father, and it’s so beautifully devastating that it made me start to tear up. Dalton Trumbo was a genius, can’t wait to see how he made this into a movie.

This guy has no arms, no legs, no eyes, no ears, no nose, no mouth, he’s getting fed through a tube, a rat is picking at his wounds, and he’s trying to find a way to violently roll his body onto the metallic pieces of hospital equipment so that he can kill himself. Obviously, he’s got it pretty bad, but I think I have it a lot worse, because I am a fan of the New York Jets.

Fantastic chapter about a guy named Jose from “Porto Rico”. There’s a part where he says “But there should be many jobs for a young man like himself with ambition in a business as great as the movies” (67). God do I agree. A rich girl is in love with him but he doesn’t feel the same, but he thinks it would be rude to tell her that, so he considers faking suicide instead. True kindness right there Jose!

I can see why people say this book is harrowing, Jesus fuckin Christ. Imagine having no arms, no legs, no face!!! I can’t wait to finish this and watch the movie, because I have absolutely no idea how Dalton Trumbo could have possibly adapted this for the screen.

This does not feel like it was written in the 1930s. Aside from a few words and phrases that have clearly fallen out of the vernacular, this feels so modern.

I decided to read this because I recently something about how conservatives want to ban it because it’s “pro-communism”. I know it’s a very famous anti-war novel, but I always assumed it was about WW2 or Vietnam. Turns out it was actually published in 1939, and it’s about WW1. I’m also fascinated by Dalton Trumbo’s life, and wanted to check out his most iconic book. Will certainly watch the movie after.

I wish I had finished this faster back when I was still fully invested in it. Now I’m just trying to get to the end and I’m not really appreciating it enough.

I am truly an embarrassment for taking this long to read a book this short. I am sorry Colson Whitehead. You deserve better than this.

I really regret marking this as “currently reading”. Goodreads really needs a dedicated “re-reading” section. I wonder what this will say when I finish listening to it. Will it still show the first time I read it in 2020? Or will that be gone and replaced by this year long reread? Sometimes I really hate this app and wish it was more like Letterboxd.

This story, “Lockdown” by Bev Vincent, was my favorite so far. It’s about the few residents of a remote island off the coast of Maine who are isolated from society as the world is ending. It felt so consistent with Stephen King’s writing style (not surprising considering Vincent has written multiple books about King) and was an interesting, small scale story. Had a few nods to the original book that I loved.

The next story, “Every Dog Has Its Day” by Bryan Smith is a very grim story about a teenager who ends up all by himself in the wake of the superflu. I liked it for the most part, and think it fits the tone of The Stand very well. But man some of the dialogue is really bad. I feel like the author forgot the original book takes place over 30 years ago. But luckily this story wasn’t very dialogue heavy.

This next story, Bright Light City by Meg Gardiner, was much better than the last one. Interesting to get a picture of what Vegas was like right after the superflu ended the world, which we don’t really see in the original book (that I can recall). This story felt like a chapter that would have appeared in the first half of The Stand. A bit rushed but enjoyable for sure.

I’m going to take my time with this one (it’s 800 pages). First story, Room 24 by Caroline Kepnes, was amazing. Such a disturbing protagonist, and felt very in line with the world of the Stand. Second story, The Tripps by Wrath James White was horrible. It read like bad fan fiction, filled with superfluous dialogue and gratuitous violence. Genuinely so fucking terrible. Makes me nervous for the rest of the book.

There was a sentence in this chapter that was just “This must be the place”. I wonder if Colson Whitehead likes Talking Heads. Just realized right now that they both have head in their names. This means absolutely nothing.

I don’t even know how to categorize this book. Is it nonfiction? Is it poetry? Are these chapters essays? Are they very creative memoirs? What I do know is that Colson Whitehead is perhaps the best writer alive. In the exact same paragraph he can write sentences like “Contemplate dimensions, this citified dimentia” and “Hey, here comes the league of sexy moms”. That’s Literature right there fellas.

This book is so cool. Each chapter is like an omniscient stream of consciousness of countless different New Yorkers.