Small books to read when when the reading slump hits! 📚

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I often find myself struggling to pick up a book. I work full time, and I love movies (and TV shows tbh) a bit too much!

This year I've not read as much as I usually do, part of that is because I'm not a student anymore and I don't have to read 1 million books to pass an exam, and it's also because I'm a slow reader and I get tired of reading long books.

So in an effort to re-ignite the reading spark, I've started reading short books and here I will share some old faves and some recent discoveries and also somehow talk about movies again...FFS.

August tbr

in

In the attempt to find myself basking in the glory of finishing several books by the end of a month I have set myself the colossal task of reading 5 books in August. Watch the video to find out what books I’ll be tackling throughout the rest of this month.

Let me know what books you are reading this month in the comments section!

21 Books I want to Read in 2021

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Like Byron, I am mad, bad and dangerous to know...why you ask? Because these books will take over your life!

Me and my sister recently re-charged our joint youtube channel and I must say it feels great to be back making videos, there’s just something really fun and creative about it.

September Books

in

Full disclosure, I have been reading a little less recently because I have been watching too many films (although the Swedish master director Ingmar Bergman would disagree, the man was known to watch three films a day when he was alive!) but nevertheless I did manage to read four books in September.

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

I really liked this novel and I feel like I am going to devour more of Flaubert’s prose ASAP as I really enjoyed his realism and wit. I also found Madame Bovary to be a bit alarming too as I found myself sympathising with Emma quite a bit even though she was ungrateful, adulterous and selfish. But I could understand her distaste for the banality of marriage and provincial life because of all the exciting and sweeping romantic novels she read in her youth.

Diary of an Oxygen Thief by Anonymous

This is quite a naked novel, in the sense of rawness that is. However, a review on the blurb does claim it to be a ‘kinky, artsy’ novel which I didn’t really see myself, but perhaps that’s because I’ve watched far too many European films for me to consider something like this ‘kinky’. Mostly, I am intrigued by the fact that this novel (and its sequels) was published anonymously, I wonder what possessed the author to detach themselves from the work.

All in all, Diary of an Oxygen Thief is not spectacular writing but it’s an interesting portrait of humiliation and human fragility and that was enough for me.

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Venus in Furs (Venus im Pelz) by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

Yes, the surname of this author is why Masochism is called Masochism. And while you might think Venus in Furs must be a rather depraved book as a result, you must remember that this was published in 1870, so by modern standards, it’s pretty tame. Go read Bataille if your looking for something more transgressive. Overall, I found this book rather dull, in some places the writing was beautiful but for the most part, it was too repetitive and I found myself willing the story to end.

Colourless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage (色彩を持たない多崎つくると、彼の巡礼の年) by Haruki Murakami

Wow, it’s been a while since I’ve read Murakami, which was completely intentional as I want to slowly plod through his work as he is one of my favourite authors. However, I found Colourless Tsukuru Tazaki to be quite a mediocre entry into the author’s oeuvre, sure I read it all and enjoyed it but it didn’t hit me with anything new or particularly profound (not that all literature needs to do that) which I guess I was expecting. I don’t know, there was a great passage towards the end but, the novel as a whole…it was fine, I guess.