Dune

I finished Dune today. Next books up are Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!, Don Quixote, and Dune Messiah.

Dune is considered by a good number of critics to be the best science fiction novel ever written and is pretty much universally considered to be in the top 3-5. It is also reportedly the best-selling book in the genre.

100 Days!

My coach.me app informs me that today is the 100th day in a row that I have stuck to my goal of reading for at least 30 minutes a day.

Lolita

I finished Lolita today. With my new cycle of classic -> sci-fi/fantasy -> non-fiction, my next books will be Dune, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!, and then Don Quixote.

Lolita was, as promised by different people, simultaneously some of most beautiful prose I've ever read and deeply disturbing. There can be no doubt that Nabakov is one of the best writers in English literature. Even limiting it to English literature is probably unnecessary. It is so much more than the words themselves. While I definitely got some references on my own, it was only by reading the annotations that I found just how much is packed in there. It seems as though each and every single word was chosen with care and precision.

Infinite Jest

Having an abundant amount of free time recently, in two weeks I finished not only Infinite Jest, but also a 500 page reader's guide to Infinite Jest. Next up is Lolita. After Catch-22 and Infinite Jest, I am really just hoping for a relatively straight-forward story that proceeds in at least a semi-recognizable chronological order.

I found my feelings about Infinite Jest well summed up by Dave Eggers. Not Eggers' introduction to the 10th anniversary edition, where he said Infinite Jest is “1,067 pages long and there is not one lazy sentence. The book is drum-tight and relentlessly smart and, though it does not wear its heart on its sleeve, its deeply felt and incredibly moving.”

No, I don't agree with that at all. But I do agree with Eggers' review when the book came out and he was (presumably) not being paid for a positive review: