you're not going to slow it down

 Finished Reading:
Pride & Prejudice, Jane Austen - I didn't really like anyone in this book and I just kind of wished they'd all stop being mean to each other and realize how stupid they all are, but I respect Jane Austen's ability to make me feel that 200 years later, because I get the impression I SHOULD feel that way about the whole of the society at the time. Her writing is good, the characters were all uniquely conveyed and well expressed, they were just all terrible people. A couple of folks have suggested Northanger Abbey to me and I'll give it a shot after I've put some distance between me and the old P&P.

A Scanner Darkly, Phillip K. Dick - This is a reread of one that I've loved for a long time. There's something about Arctor and his slow ceasing to function as a self, and only then could he be rendered into a tool for the use of others, as well as the general absurdism prominent throughout the whole book and the series of interactions between he & his friends that resonates with me. Dick's 'futurepast' sci-fi is still some of my favourite today, where he imagines a future of video rentals and tape recorders and treats the people as the means through which to express the future. I enjoyed this just as much this time as I have every other time.

Still Reading:
The Stoneware Monkey - Currently the bathroom book. I chug through it int the tub.

The Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison - this is hard hard hard, and I can only listen for a few hours at a time. The writing is good, so good you can't help really feeling the impact of each event. Ellison is amazing at conveying the sometimes near-panic state of what the protagonist's existence must have been like and I feel like it's an important novel to read as part of self development, but it really dicks my anxiety hard to listen to it for too long, so I'm taking it in chunks. 

Just Started:
Murder on the Orient Express, Agatha Christie - I'm trying to pepper in some female authors to break up that list of '100 books to read before you die' which even with some modifications is still a sausagefestival (not that kind of sausage festival, toki.) This seems like a safe bet even though I've never much loved Poirot, I did enjoy the recent film adaptation of this. 

Orphan Train - On the fence about this one. The book shop ladies recommended it to me but it doesn't really jive with me so far. I'll give it a few more chapters and see how it goes.