Josh Ray > Recent Status Updates

"It was just what happened to certain places, to certain people: they became balls of pale white light. What mattered was, it wasn't us."

This is not even nearly the most harrowing line in the first chapter. Omar El Akkad pulls no punches, as he shouldn't.

It's funny and inventive, but it really just hasn't clicked with me. It's so short that I feel like I may as well finish it. I don't think I'll score it though, because my lack of enjoyment doesn't really reflect upon the book itself at all. It may very well be a victim of my current mood.

I'm not sure there's much point in updating page numbers on here just the way reading this book works haha
I think I read like 25-30 pages of it last night, but am technically only 8 pages further in.

This one's gonna be a project, that's for sure. Feels like I'm gonna need an investigation notebook to make sense of it. Gonna have this as a long term book and read some normal ass novels in the meantime.

Slow going on Pale Fire the past few days because I wanted to really engage with the titular poem. The cantos all come together into something poignant, personal, frequently beautiful, and occasionally funny. I think that Nabokov didn't have to work so hard for this book to work, but it's all the better for it. Some bits have me dreading Kinbote's commentary, and some have me excited for a laugh.

Reread Canto One and read Canto Two. Canto Two suddenly has me dreading reading that f---er Kinbote's commentary on it

This is such a bizarre concept for a book, and I'm already loving it. Dr. Kimbote is one of the most accidentally hilarious narrators I've ever read. The book had been so damn funny so far that I was surprised that Canto One of the poem was actually beautiful and sad and touching.

Left off where Giovanni is about to meet Hella after David has disappeared from their home to be with her. Man this book is good and I am dreading picking it back up and seeing how that goes (I'm sure it's a disaster).

So far the romance has felt pretty thin. It's starting to get me curious about where it's going though, and there's plenty of book left.