what i read in october

Seize the Time - Hallelujah! I finished it! Praise Jesus! It’s only out of respect for Brother Bobby that I persevered.

The Haunting of Tram Car 015 - I was checking out other stuff the author of Ring Shout had written and this one had great reviews on Goodreads. They lied.

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - Been on my list for a while. I’m sure it was revolutionary in its time because we didn’t know anything about the gulags but my post-Soviet brain found this kind of boring. So I tried to read it as a character study but 1) there were a gazillion names and I couldn’t remember who was who, and 2) he calls the main character by a completely different name! There must be some reason behind that but I found it annoying.

Notes of a Native Son - I don’t know what James was on when he wrote this but there were many times I had to read paragraphs over and over and over. Long ass sentences of literary word salad - ugh. I’ve read plenty of his essays so it’s not that Baldwin’s over my head. A friend described it this way: like a student who had to write an essay about a book but didn’t do the reading so they just go on and one with as many SAT words they can muster. She nailed it.

Wuthering Heights - Loving it! There are two people in the book club that need to purchase some self-awareness because they seem to think participation means talking wall to wall. And they have annoying voices. And they don’t like the book because there’s so much “generational trauma”. EYEROLL.