I am braving my paternal grandmother's favorite author out of utter boredom, having indeed now possibly come to the very last door of literature.

That said, enjoying it so far - 15 year old French schoolgirl full of feeling and audacity. Much unlike my Nana.

Authority: Essays by Andrea Long Chu

 

Viciousness is the attack dog who has not eaten in three days. Cruelty is the person calmly holding the leash. These days I aim for cruelty.

Essays and reviews by the noted trans scholar Andrea Chu. I enjoyed her biting tone in the reviews, but am suspicious generally of critics, whom I tend to judge mostly by what they tend to criticize. And PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, Bret Easton Ellis, and Zadie Smith hold little interest of me. 

The cultural entity she praises most highly is the streaming junk, THE LAST OF US.

She is funny, and brilliant - but reserves her emotional energy for her essays on her own trans journey.

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

 

Incredibly odd novel, story within a story within a story, essentially about a man and a woman and their two children living in a house with an infinitely expanding hallway on the second floor. Sort of gothic horror story, I guess. Massive appendices, illustrations, kooky diagonal pages and pages where you must rotate the book to read text. All to what end I don't know. So far (100 pages in, 500+ to go) unimpressed with the actual prose style (somehat purple and mundane) but impressed with the scope. And the parody of academia and scholarly citation is funny if overwhelming.

So far, a bloated slog. Stephen King is a fan, which should be a warning sign.

Was surprised I hadn't heard about it before, as it came out in 2000.

Wilt in Nowhere by Tom Sharpe

 

Pretty good one. Eva and the quadruplets visit America, and Wilt goes on a English walking tour with no planning whatsoever. Naturally chaos ensues in both Britain and America.

Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett

 

Re-reading this after seeing it superbly performed by Scena Theatre at the old Source Theatre building at 14 and T Streets NW.

A Clockwork Orange by Anythony Burgess

 

Dusting off my disorganized bookshelves and allowing myself the luxury of reading by alphabetical whim, I stumled on this and am enjoying re-reading it. The vocabulary lexicon is daunting - and one learns to ignore it and just read and comprehend the strange words by context. All leading to an imminent re-watching of the superlative movie.