Living is the management of piles. Piles of laundry, piles of dishes, piles of books to read before we fade into the dirt…
Thank you NYTimes for publishing the list of your top books. It’s been awhile since I read a novel due to the pile (ahem) of New Yorker magazines on my coffee table, but it’s truly different to read a full length novel versus just a ten page short story.
Here are some notes from the past few books I finished:
- Exit West by Hamid: frankly, I thought the novel was for YA audience. I did not like it at all. The premise, while interesting, meant that the plot could be guessed by page forty or so.
- All the Light We Cannot See by Doerr: apparently bad Netflix adaptation, but solid novel. I really enjoyed the time jumps much like the Cloud Cuckoo Land with increasingly detailed world or anticipation, but the anti-war message is pretty heavy handed.
- The Emperor of All Maladies by Mukherjee: marvelous writing balancing hope with despair. It’s certainly a difficult topic to read about, but I couldn’t put my Kindle down for the entire book. I do wish it would be… actually more technical… but it’s understandable the level which it is written.
Currently working through Never Let Me Go by Ishiguro and have Austerlitz arriving in a few weeks.