Drama-Lovers Book Club

Finished Kafka's Opowieści i przypowieści (Tales and parables) and it was an interetsting read of 70+ short stories and other quite uncatecorizable miniatures, but I get why they are not as popular as his full-length novels and are mostly talked about in the acamedic circle (I remember a huge portion of them from my time at university). The themes of loneliness, existencial anxiety, hopelessness and isolation in society are kinda the same, but he couldn't make it work. It felt like the topics are too big for such a small format, thus it comes off as unpolished or unfinished.

I feel like Kafka was basically experimenting with forms and concepts at that time, hence most of those 1-2 pages long works are just "meh" at best. Of course, there are absolute masterpieces in this publication, like Metamorphosis - aforementioned in m previous post - or A letter to father (this one is, in my opinion, one of the most important work of Kafka. Not only it is crucial to understand him as a person, but as a writer as well. With all of his paranoias, anxieties, the enormous feeling of guilt, shame and inferiority complex. I feel like it's also very insightful look at the problem of parental emotional and psychological abuse), oneiric and kinda Freudian The judgement or an absolutely mindblowing In the penal colony (I really had to go for a walk after reading this because it was too heavy for me). I really liked The village schoolamster and The dream for its absurdism too. The rest was kinda mundane and unremarkable. So I'd say this book is a treat, but only for Kafka enthusiasts.

Next in line is actually a birthday gift I bought for myself.

Yukio Mishima Confessions of a mask. 

I've actually never read Mishima's books, but I know his work as a model. One of his photoshoots was an inspiration for my tattoo artist's interpretation of St Sebatian that's tattooed on my arm. That's all that I have to say for now lmao.

 Wandering_Queen:

Oh that book gets checked out a lot . Kate do you always read non-fiction?

nope. I usually try to read one non fiction book a month, but sometimes i don't do even that. Like right now, I had 4 books for February: 2 non fiction (one psychology, and one law related), 1 fantasy/supernatural novel and one historical fiction. 

Tho I don't even know if the law one can be classified as non-fiction, since it tells the true court cases that happened in Soviet Union, but some one them were "reconstructed" from just the court documents and some notes the authors mom made, or his colleagues. Not all cases he describes are the ones he took. 

 Wandering_Queen:

What historical and fantasy are you reading?

Historical is The Living Reed by Pearl S. Buck. Since the history of Korea is quite similar to Polish one in terms of occupation and all that, I can relate to some stuff. 

and the The Paradise Prophecy by Robert Gregory Browne. It's just an easy fun read. I don;t feel like I need to use a lot of brain. Tho some lines are so... unnatural and poorly written I am laughing from time to time hahaha

 Wandering_Queen:

I have never heard of those two books, let me know how good they are when you are done! 

I have a lot of random not popular books coz we have this small cheap bookstore in my town and they always sell stuff like that hahaha

Hi all,

I just finished reading Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo and it got me interested in her Grishaverse books. Will read those after I finished my TBR for Feb. 

Updates on other books:

Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux - already halfway done through the audiobook. I usually listen to the audiobook when I am doing other stuff so my progress with this is kinda slow. 

Chasing Hurricane by SerialSleeper - I am really not a fan of Wattpad teenage flicks written in Filipino but will try to finish this. 

Maybe will start with Artemis Fowl: The Eternity Code instead because it seems more fun. 

 Wandering_Queen:

Finished: 

Haven't figured out what to start :(

the second one, maybe_

How was it? its comedy?

 Kapetria:

the second one, maybe_

How was it? its comedy?

Its a murder mystery, it wasn't bad. Enjoyed the protagonist and other characters. Gave it a 3.5/5. I will likely read the next books in the series as well.

 LucianYaz:

It does my heart good to see so much reading going on! As for me, I haven't read anything since last week Monday. Well, I have been reading, but not for pleasure, though most of it is interesting. And, to add spice to it all, tonight I get to do peer assessments. 

The paper I'm checking now is a riot - claims thrown in with no source to support them, sentences lifted word-for-word from the textbook with no quotation marks/no intext citations, grammar issues, typos, the works. And this is just the first page! Yeah, not pleasurable but interesting :P

Hoping to do some pleasure reading on the weekend but, for now, I'll live vicariously through all of you :-)

*shooook* what school level is this?