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Finished this a few days ago. Easily the most visceral read of my life. But from a purely intellectual POV, I'm still struggling. Review in progress.

This is torture porn. I'm setting it aside for a while, I may not come back. For those of you who haven't read this but are familiar with films like Oldboy, it's sorta like that. Only hours and hours and hours. Relentless agony.

Why is this author so intent on making this a difficult read? At the start of each section, one has to read several pages to understand who is who. There are pages devoted to math proofs. It's as if the author is announcing, "This is a very important and difficult book". And the timelines are nonsensical. Or something.

I was instantly confused on the first two pages as I couldn't figure out who was who. Normally, I would have re-shelved it, but the title, apparently a riff on the French term for orgasm which translates into English as "a little death" is intriguing. So I kept reading. I think this is going to be a very sad book.

I just finished Spiro's amazing "Captivity" set in about 50 A.D. And here in the Old Testament I'm in 1050 B.C. and the world portrayed is a mess, it's shockingly violent. Flash forward to today's news, which I try to avoid, and there is shocking violence in this world. Have we learned nothing?

Eerie. The real world, what we are now today experiencing, has stepped into this "fiction" work. It's uncomfortable..

Palahniuk writes this kind of book because no other mainstream writer will. And the interesting thing about this one is setup: who is #72, exactly, and what will he do? Will he take the advice of #137? Or the pill offered to him by #137? And will #600 turn into the hero of the day? Will any of these 600 men, or the wrangler, or the porn queen actually die? And finally, with only one toilet, will it be flushed?

Honestly, page 69. And I'm only reading this cause I've read three Pulitizer Prize winners this year and must wash the taste out of my mouth from those horrendously bad books: The Road, Humboldt's Gift, and All the Light.

Uri's heroism is of a different sort than what we are used to: he is smart and he knows exactly when to lay low and watch, when to speak up, when to walk away. He has spent his childhood buried in books/scrolls, then continues his education daily by listening, observing. At this point in history, the name of the game is simply surviving. As he ages, he becomes less attractive physically, but beauty can be deadly.

Yes, I read just one page yesterday. But that's like a large piece of chocolate cake with too much icing. Swann is the "vulgar show-off"? Really? Well, perhaps, along with Marquis de Norpois and with "Cottard of distinct mediocrity" and of course Proust himself, a show-off of penmanship for the ages.

I'm reading this in conjunction with Allen Ginsberg's poetry. Without a doubt, Ginsberg's "Howl" is a descendent of Whitman's "Song of Myself." That's not a bad thing at all, though. And I'm also reading Joyce's "Ulysses". These three books definitely represent a lineage of sorts: one hundred years of edgy prose/poem art.

When we talk about truly weird books of the 21st century, we must include Renner's "The Man from Primrose Lane." I'm enjoying "The Great Forgetting", but I'm watching for Renner to pull the rug from beneath my feet like that amazing "Primrose" hat trick. I hope Renner isn't a one-trick-pony, though. M. Night Shamalyn (sp?) never has topped his "Sixth Sense" twist. Will Renner suffer the same fate"

I'm 3/4ths of the way through and it feels like Uri's road trip/quest is superfluous to history happening all around him. The last couple hundred pages or so feel like a history text book, albeit an interesting one, but one in which Uri is just a side character. It's almost like Spiro wrote a history book and an editor told him he needed to insert a character and a narrative. Perhaps this is a translation issue.

Of late, I feel a need to have a Murakami here at home on my literal "to-read" shelf.

Stunning. Brilliant. Imagine: an 864-page page-turner! Not a lot of those around!

Picked this up to read a few pages as I was curious and suddenly was on page 40 or so, standing in an aisle at the library. Natch, brought it home! What a stunning, thought-provoking opening!

I'm suddenly 300 pages in! Great comedy!

Just getting started, and it's about time!

This is funny! And odd! How did I miss this for 40 years, it's publication in 1975?

I really liked the BBC series :"Hamish MacBeth" and didn't realize the source material was from M.C Beaton's work until a goodreads friend mentioned it. This is sort of police procedural cozy, and I like it, not too violent.

If one enjoys perusing library shelves for new books, new authors, new finds, how can one not pull this from a shelf? The spine reveals Mona Lisa's enigmatic smile atop the words, "The Ten Greatest Conspiracies of all Time." One must take a look! I had to check it out, literally! Now, on to Conspiracy #5, "The Spear of Destiny: The Key to the Rise of the Nazis." Admit it, you want to read this also!

Tolstoy is a five-star master at bringing exciting narrative to a screeching halt.

Halfway through! It's sort of like James Joyce, only with slightly shorter sentences, but probably written under similar pharmaceutical influences.

How have I never read this? It's beautiful!!!

On reading list in grade school but had already moved to New York Times bestsellers, just getting around to it now! It's a surprise!

I'm also reading Ginsberg's poetry and I just finished Burroughs auto "Junky." I'm putting the pieces together: Ginsberg, Kerouac, Burroughs and their "Hollywood boy" Neal Cassidy had a complicated thing going on, to say the least.

I've read these stories previously, one here, one there, but have never read this third volume all the way through with the short stories in order. There will be bittersweet stories, I know.

Capote's first effort, set aside in 1943, never published, then found and published after his death. A fascinating companion piece to Harper Lee's early draft of "Go Set a Watchman."

Don't much care for this so far. Pretty much a yawner but am halfway through. Might as well give up another hour of my life so that I can talk about why Harper Lee never wrote To Kill A Mockingbird anyway.

My 9th Bond. So far, there is Smersh and Spectre and Bond's folks. Then a plane is hijacked. There are bombs. Who is who? This is uncomfortably real reading. But it's fantasy, right?