“Robert Browning had the clap. And he caught it from Charlotte and Emily Brontë.” A theological philosophical masterwork disguised as Catch-22. While mainly known for its 1980 film adaptation, a film that has surprisingly good ratings for Rayourmovies’s standards (anything higher than a 3.39 means the movie’s pretty excellent), I haven’t seen it or the very cheesy biker bar segment everyone mentions when discussing the movie (although the portrayal of the scene in this book isn’t particularly cheesy), therefore I am not fit to comment on whether the book is better. I’m not sure why Blatty thought I’d care about Bennish, Krebs, or Fromme enough for them to deserve an epilogue considering the book is only 160 pages and I’d honestly mostly forgotten about them when they weren’t being outright mentioned. Although I’m glad we got all that info on Reno’s dog adaptation of Hamlet, that was pretty important. The ending is sobering. Interesting how when you first start reading, you think Cutshaw is just faking the craziness, and by the end, you realize he’s actually crazy. Anyway, I really liked it. I haven’t read The Exorcist though and I never intend to bye

You Can't Win is a book I've wanted to read for a long time now, one that ever since I saw the title and cover of, I knew I had to read, with the fact that it was a major inspiration to the beat generation authors (most notably Burroughs) as another key point as to why. The best way to describe this is as proto-On the Road. In a sense, it's that same sort of book about chasing life and finding meaning, yet You Can't Win exchanges the out-in-nature drive-by-car stop-and-get-a-milkshake feel of On the Road with this harsh and oppressive atmosphere. The second half of the book is greater than its first, with Black talking more about his personal philosophies. The title shows Black's state of mind during the period of his life where he was a burglar- life is a game. You can't win.

Some people have said "If it don't rhyme, it ain't worth my time" in regards to poetry. I personally disagree with that, but I do agree with "If it don't got a meter, don't consider me a reader." I hate free verse poetry, but without a doubt, David Berman is an absolutely amazing poet. He just kinda has a special way with words. I could probably reread one of his poems over and over for days on end, his writing is simply beautiful. I'm not entirely sure what to say about a poetry collection because (obviously) my criteria for rating will be different than if I'm talking about a standard novel, but this book is really something.

Like yesterday, I was able to put a lot of time aside today to reading. Because Giovanni’s Room isn’t even 200 pages, one night and a day, or four sittings later, I was already done with it. And I finished the book with nothing to say. I don’t love it and I don’t hate it, this is all to say. Well, in all fairness, I like it- it’s a good book- not even just an ok book. But sadly, for a deeply historically significant work of queer fiction, I just… felt nothing. The book suffers Gatsby syndrome- it’s too short to make me feel anything real. Unlike Gatsby it at least is aware of the fact that it’s short and doesn’t try to cram as much melodrama in as humanly possible (I say this as a Gatsby fan, too), but instead the opposite. The book feels almost eventless, which I obviously know isn’t true, but it’s just such a dull and empty book, which is a tremendous shame. But, however, I did like it. It’s just that I felt a complete sense of apathy through a large portion of it. Anyway man, I dunno. Baldwin’s a great author and from a craft perspective is beyond talented, but for the life of me, I didn’t care about David. Typically, with a book like this (or Pale Fire) I just wouldn’t finish it and remove it from my shelves. But like Pale Fire, I was able to convince myself I’d eventually find myself liking the book more, which unfortunately wasn’t true. I didn’t feel the heartbreak you’re supposed to feel by the end, is my point.

My sister bought me this book as an early Christmas gift so I decided to give it a read since it looked to be only 200 pages long. I tend to go into books from the 2000s and after with a bit of a sense of dread because of how, uh, "hollywood-ified" they tend to be. In other words, if a book from the 2000s and after is really out-there and different, there's a slight chance I might like it, otherwise I most likely will not enjoy what I'm going to read. Fortunately, this book is kind of brilliant, serving as a parody of your average horror novel by telling an incredibly dull tale of... exactly what this book's name would tell you it's about. This book is really good at keeping you on edge, especially considering 99% of it is just the characters doing incredibly boring tasks while making the slowest amount of progress they possibly can towards further uncovering the mystery. It's a really great satire- you find yourself sucked into the mystery despite how unsatisfying and dry the whole thing is. It feels like you're reading the Nate the Snake joke for the first time.