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Most readable mega-novel ever.

"How can I prove that I am the real me?"

This is merely one of the strange questions you'll be asking yourself as you plunge into this ridiculously complex, reality-shattering, yet ironically very readable and gorgeously smooth novel. Without a doubt this is the most engaged I've ever been in a novel of immense size. This definitely doesn't feel like it's more than 1000 pages long.

Finished the stories Fade to White and Killswitch, as well as the poem "The Emperor of Tsukayama Park".

There's this feeling of walking into odd rooms where the entire world is hermetically repelled each time you enter. These stories and poems penetrate my strangest thoughts, and they also probe harsh, deep emotions. I'd recommend that everybody read this collection: Valente is a sorceress.

I'm on page 119, in the middle of the story "Fade to White", and I've basically decided that Velente is running on some other server unknown to the common computer, where words are not sterile tools for surgery but instead tailored for sorcery. She's the real shit.

I read the story "Ink, Water, Milk" from this collection. This is exceptional stuff, a master-class of metaphors and lyrical, tasteful writing. Not to mention funny and heartbreaking.

Basically, it's gorgeously written and thought-disturbing as immaculate literature should be. Yet, I can't be bothered to read on. Another time, perhaps, and I'll see this adventure out to its end.

I'm never sure if I like the excessive description and aimless depiction of violence and eating and witty, badass one liners or if I feel conned by a novel that, between moments of philosophical brilliancy and some gorgeous language, is actually just rambling on about fucking nothing and masquerading as a book by just describing a lot of things that happen with no point to them. Or maybe that is the point.

Empty space, violence, fire, science and philosophy, hell, the soul of man and his condition as equally beast and human, youth and old age, the cycle of history and of war; the inscrutable meaning of existence and our forever childlike unknowing -- nihilism and further scenes of bloody violence; the immensity of the Earth.

This is an absolutely insane novel, if not just a bit repetitive.

An intensely sophisticated novel, highly layered, employing an unreliable narrator, frame story, a heavily erudite and colorful, surreal style loaded with alliteration, wordplay, crossing of languages, and reference to the reader. Humbert Humbert's affair with the sultry 12 year old Dolores Haze (Lolita) parries simple analysis, as this seems not like a story of purity succumbing to depravity. No: more is at work.

Some novels are good, some novels are excellent, and some leave you staring at the wall questioning your life and contemplating the state of the universe with a frown and heavy silence.

I'm not even done.