essays on art by octavio paz
-didn't even come close to finishing this, but by the time i had finished struggling through a fascinating essay on glossolalia and native languages the brooklyn library was sending me you-owe-us-money e-mails. perhaps i'll try another time.

perdido street station by china miéville
-this fantasy novel didn't fuck around. miéville likes to make you lose faith in his main characters before he kills them off ignominously. it became a slog towards the end, and i found it too over the top. miéville also overuses s.a.t words like chitinous and puissant and bathos and blench. every once in a while i stumble across an adjective i suspect he straight up invented, but if i paused to look up all the words he uses that i'm not sure about i'd end up owing more money to the brooklyn library than i did to the irs this year. on akie's advice i went ahead and borrowed the second one, the scar, from rebecca. it was much better. the third one, the iron council, i liked less.

the jungle by upton sinclair
-slogged through the first few chapters of this and realized it was the grapes of wrath set in the meatpacking district of chicago. i've already read the grapes of wrath, thank you very much, so instead i read the extensive introduction. it sketched out the plot for me and told me what i was supposed to get out of the book (not that meat is bad, but that capitalism exploits the workers), and i left it at that.

the death of ivan ilych by leo tolstoy
-i read this because stephen harper was reading it. it was good. i've never particularly liked short stories. there's no time to get lost in the story, and there's usually some moral getting crudely bashed into your head. the death of ivan ilych was no exception, but i did find that certain stillness to which yan martel was referring when he chose this book to send to stephen harper. ummm, to summarize: ivan ilych does everything that he's supposed to adequately. he never rocks the boat, he works just hard enough, and he achieves pretty much what he wants to: family, friends, bourgie house and lifestyle. since he's never done anything special or really loved anything, he dies disappointed. everyone mourns him exactly as much as society dictates and not one jot more. food for thought at a time when i'm seriously wondering why i struggle so hard to work in the arts when i could be doing exactly the same kind of work for reasonable people and making twice (or more!) as much money.