July 21, 2012

  • Week 28: Slowness

    My Pocket Frogs game informs me that we're in the 29th week of 2012, which means I'm only one week behind now! Well, two weeks really since tomorrow is the start of a new week too.

    I just finished reading a book called Slowness by Milan Kundera, apparently originally written in French. This version was translated by Linda Asher. I picked it out of a box of books that Mike had when we were unpacking, but when I mentioned it to him yesterday he didn't recognize the title or the cover, and didn't think he had read it before. It was with his other Tech books if I recall correctly, but it doesn't have a Caltech Bookstore sticker on the back. Mike thinks maybe he borrowed it from his mom for something to read on the plane. But my limited knowledge of his mom's reading habits don't lead me to believe that this book belongs to her either. Oh well.

    It's a very strange book, and very short. If you're like me and you suspend all disbelief when you're reading, then you can go through the whole thing happy as a clam, and only in the last few chapters realize that nothing has really made sense, and that the relationship between characters is very confused.

    The book centers around an 18th century novella, which is actually quite interesting and thought provoking. Although this book, apparently a national bestseller (in which nation?), feels more like the type of book that seems to be deep and meaningful but vague and hard to understand, to the point where someone who didn't understand it would be hesitant to critique it for fear of others discerning that he was unsophisticated? That was a hugely offensive run-on sentence, but  hopefully the message got through...