Just one more book I stopped reading: Slowness, by Milan Kundera. Not sure what’s wrong with me that I cannot enjoy the modern novel — or at least, modernism in a novel. The nonlinear timelines, and being stuck in either a character’s mind and his narcissistic obsessions or else a narrator’s mind. Few grounded scenes or action. I think I read Ulysses in my youth, but I didn’t like it either.

I can handle the style in short stories, because the short story is so different. But an entire novel, no. All I seem to like are really old books, even (or especially) with those intrusive narrators who comment on all the characters whenever they like, like the book Middlemarch or anything by Thomas Hardy.

Even Stephen King has changed this way — I think his best novel that is grounded in real time and plot was Salem’s Lot. Since then they’ve become more and more nebulous, and much, much longer books. But that’s because they don’t bother editing him, really. They let him ramble on.

I’d be interested to hear what others think of novels they’ve read lately.