This was a tough one. Although I didn't technically finish it, I'm counting it as finished due to the fact that reading the introduction (Written by an expert on Kierkegaard), plus half of the book, was more than enough for me to get the core philosophical concept. Because of the stellar introduction; as I made my way through Kierkegaard's "Fear and Trembling" I felt like I was walking over already well tread ground. I'll be honest too; I understood the summary of what Kierkegaard was trying to say in this much better than what Kierkegaard actually said, his writing is convoluted and very repetitive.

With the preamble out of the way, I can say that I really did enjoy this glimpse into Kierkegaard's philosophy on faith and ethics. It helped me better understand my own views and formulate more coherent takes on certain aspects of faith. However, at the end of the day, I feel that what Kierkegaard is attempting to say is actually rather simple, he's just making it endlessly elaborate and purposely obfuscated.
At the core of Fear and Trembling is this phrase:
 “Faith begins precisely where thinking leaves off.” 

And you can pretty much leave it there in my opinion, the leap of faith is just that, it's a leap away from reason and into something higher and much trickier to understand. Kierkegaard himself says that in the end; the power, mystique and the beauty of Abraham's faith is one which he does not understand and yet aspires towards.
Take the leap of faith or don't. If you can do it, you can do it. If you can't, you can't.

Me when there's a ridiculous, unrealistic, graphic and pointless smut scene a third of the way into my book 🤓👍

This book was a finely crafted, mini masterpiece in my humble little opinion. It was tight. Wharton fills every page with exactly what needs to be on it to provide an engaging and beautiful concoction of characters, emotions and setting. Ethan Frome is bleak and borderline claustrophobic, the trapped in setting of a rural village cut off by snow, and the out of the way farmhouse inhabited by three people who certainly don't get along very well with their current arrangement. It all provides for a story that hooked me from the first page to the last.

I see people complaining about the ending, which I don't understand as a criticism, I think the ending works perfectly. Ethan and Mattie realise they can't escape their rather miserable fates in the material world, so they opt for a lover's suicide instead. But it turns into an even more depressing parallel to Romeo and Juliet, it turns into suicidal ideations biggest nightmare: What if you don't die? And instead cripple yourself for life. This is what happens to the pair, and they end up back on the farmhouse with the testy, difficult Zeena looking after them, who happens to be Ethan's wife. A crippled pair of forbidden lovers, trapped in a place they don't wish to be, taken care of by a woman they don't want to be taken care of, and unable to express their love. What a horrible fate.

The reason this ending works perfectly is because it's a terrific example of what Wharton was primarily concerned about when it came to the poor rural folk. She thought about how horribly stuck they were in life due to a lack of money; they're forced into conditions and destinies because they simply don't have the cash to up and leave. Ethan Frome's ending makes you really contemplate this unfortunate dilemma; that Mattie and Ethan's fates would have worked out a lot happier if they'd just had a bit of money.

The descriptive writing talent Wharton possesses shined throughout this entire novella, I was honestly incredibly surprised and impressed, and just for that skill alone I'll have to read more of her works in the future. There's this ethereal, almost cosmic ambience to the setting of Ethan Frome, all due to Edith's masterful word craft. 

Long story short: Read this, let yourself be fully consumed by the atmosphere, and while reading ask yourself this question the whole time: Would this story be as miserable if these characters had access to more financial means?

The Liar by Martin A. Hansen was certainly one of my weirder reads this year. You’ve got yourself an unreliable narrator in Johannes Lye; a schoolteacher who’s stuck in an existential rut between nihilism and spirituality. Then there’s the writing style; no quotation marks, poems interlaced throughout the narrative, and it’s an epistolary novel set on a tiny Danish island to top it all off. 

I really enjoyed my time with this, I took it very slow, wrote A LOT of notes (4000 words), and I very much appreciate the rather innovative and subtle artistry which Hansen weaves throughout this dream-like domestic tale. 

The amount of philosophy, morality, existentialism, mystery and emotional drama included in The Liar is the absolute perfect sweet spot for me, it’s the goldilocks zone. My major takeaway after my reading is that Hansen, through Johannes Lye, is trying to show the harm of a spiritual no-man’s-land and the restlessness that this can cause particular people. 

“When you get to the very utmost point of that despair and pointlessness, you discover that life is one huge battleground in which two powers are locked in eternal combat. No-man’s-land doesn’t exist.” 

Johannes states that this in-between zone of good and evil doesn’t exist, but the story says otherwise. Johannes is the exemplification of this grey area. He deceives others, pursues passions of the flesh, is borderline possessed by some evil spirit at one point, and yet he also, out of the kindness of his heart takes an abandoned pregnant woman into his home, loves his dog, cares for the people of the village and finds great joy in his job at the school. Because of this strange contradictory personality he has, he feels as if he’s a stranger on the Island, impermanent and unimportant. 

All humans commit good and bad deeds, but when a human believes in nothing greater than themselves, they start to see the utter unreliability of their own character, they start to question the point of all their actions, and most never come to a conclusion. It feels obvious to me that throughout the story Johannes is seeking the presence and comfort of God. He directs his diary entries to a made-up character named “Nathaniel”, and Johannes explicitly mentions that he views him as the biblical disciple of Jesus who is incapable of deceit, and throughout the novel Johannes desires Nathaniel’s attention and seems to constantly beg him to listen to him. The way Johannes writes to this fictitious Nathaniel is the exact same way a person would try to speak to God or something higher than themselves. Johannes often asks Nathaniel not to judge him too harshly, he asks for Nathaniel’s opinion and he seeks his presence on all tricky matters of spirituality. You could replace the world Nathaniel with God, Jesus, Buddha or Allah and nothing about this novel would change in the slightest. 

We see throughout the story the turmoil Johannes’s existentialism and borderline nihilism cause him, the alienation he feels at having nothing to tie himself too. Without recounting the entire story, we see a change in Johannes in his last diary entry. He quite literally begins it with. 

“Pigro is dead (his dog). Now I’ve only God in whom I can place my trust.” 

Johannes now seeks something more permanent, he still sees the supposed meaningless in human behaviour and activities, but now he wishes to tie himself to the land in some way. He’s taken up a project to document the Island’s history, residents and geographical features. It’s given him a bit of purpose, and it appears that he worries a little less about the women and events that were pulling him in every which way. But still, he’s not entirely at ease, he says at one point that he often thinks about drinking himself into oblivion. Johannes, despite his attempt to create his own meaning, still isn’t content, he’s still in that spiritual no-man’s-land. 

I suppose the argument of the story, is that to stake your entire life on things that are impermanent or purely material is a foolish endeavour, one must cling to something eternal or everlasting, something with grand meaning. If we give in to fickle human emotions at every opportunity we become like Johannes was in his notebooks; deceitful, manic and “The Liar.” 

“Maybe that’s another reason why I’ve written the words “The Liar” in my other notebooks that deal with my own life. Because what I have depicted therein sails past you and me like the shifting clouds in the sky. Loose, everchanging and drifting. Never permanent.” 

This was disappointing in all honesty. Siddhartha by Herman Hesse is one of those books that has an interesting premise with a lot of potential but fails to really deliver on any of it. Perhaps it's because lately I've been engaging in a lot of theology, philosophy and metaphysics; but Siddhartha just felt really simple and childish in comparison to other things out there that deal with similar spiritual topics.

I feel like this is such a popular book for a couple reasons which I'll quickly go over.
1: Easy writing style. No kidding, I was shocked going from Steppenwolf by Hesse to this, Siddhartha is very, very readable in comparison, but not in a good way, it's bland and pretty unengaging. When you're dealing with topics such as universal unity, reincarnation and the beauty of the world; you have such an opportunity to show off your writing chops, go crazy with descriptive metaphors and allegories, whip out the dictionary. But no, the most famous Buddhist-inspired fiction book requires the reading comprehension of a 5th grader.
2: It tells you everything you want to hear, especially if you're a teenager. Life sucks? Parental control got you feeling down? Just run away from it all and "Find your own way". Also, there's no bad or good in the world, everything just is. Murder and rape? Don't worry about it, it just is. Plus, Women are sexual objects that will want to immediately have sex with you if you're chill and act like you're wiser than them.
3: The spiritual guidance of Siddhartha is the most generic and repeated "White guy tells you about eastern Asian mysticism" slop you've ever heard. How do you achieve spiritual purity, everlasting calm? Stare into a river and say "Om". Not kidding. Also, what does the world need? More love. Yeah, we get it Siddhartha, Peace and love, like we don't all know that already.

This book reminded me of The Alchemist a lot. It's fictional self-help for teenagers and adults who've barely read anything before. But, let me go over the main themes of the book for fairness' sake.

Self-discovery/Wisdom through experience, not knowledge.
A major theme of the novel is this belief Siddhartha has that knowledge and teachers are essentially useless, and to really know the world and how everything works, we must instead seek it through experience. This is fine, I somewhat agree to an extent, But the novel has a sort of self-defeating prophecy as the last thing Siddhartha does is attempt to preach and teach a fellow spiritual person. Also, Siddhartha's experience with the world is very, VERY unrealistic. We just know that as a kid he's smart, and then he becomes an ascetic monk, which we hear pretty much nothing about apart from the fact he doesn't really eat. Then he meets the Buddha and is like "Hm cool". Then he has sex with a lady and wears nice clothes for a decade. Then he's like "I've had enough of this" and goes and lives next to a river for the rest of his life.
If my description sounds weird and simple, that's because it's reflecting the tone and pacing of the actual novel. Everything in this book so obviously occurs for the sake of the plot, people randomly rock up, die, have sex, and all these other events occur with no logic or depth behind them, they simply happen to progress Siddhartha's sloppy discovery story.

The interconnectedness/unity of everything.
See, this was the part that could have been very interesting. Judging by other reviews some people did find this part of the story groundbreaking for their personal worldviews, but again, I feel like that would only be the case if you've never been exposed to this concept before.
Siddhartha has this revelation towards the end of the book, and although we do get one decent metaphor about a rock and the river, that's it. When you're trying to convince or show a reader a concept like the infinite chain of cause and effect, or about how everything blends into everything else; it's ok to spend more than a few pages on the topic. Instead, we get: "Rock is rock, but rock become soil, soil become plant, plant feed cow, cow feed human, human die, human become soil."
Great, cool idea, write about it with more depth next time.

In conclusion.
Siddhartha isn't egregiously bad or anything, it's only egregiously surface level. Baby's first spirituality. I'm honestly really glad this book has helped other people, that's great, if a book like this can grant you a profound understanding of the world and inner peace then all the power to you. I just didn't see any ideas or concepts that ancient humans two-thousand years before Herman Hesse hadn't already discussed. Plus, the pacing is really bad and the characters are bland. Ka-Chow.

 

Genuinely the best short story I’ve ever read, the only story I’ve read four times in one year, and I doubt anything will ever top it. Every time I read this it cements its meaning deeper and deeper in my psyche and I’m always the better for it, I really should keep it on me at all times in case I’m having a crisis. As someone who’s been afflicted with “Mental illness” and dealt with many things I struggle to understand; the story of the black monk always makes me realise how a person like myself should go through life, how they should perceive it, and what they should prioritise. 

It's a question of faith and perception. 

What is real? How can we truly quantify what exists and what doesn’t? As René Descartes's once said “Cogito, ergo sum.” = “I think, therefore I am.” This is his basis for his philosophy and it’s the closest anyone has ever gotten to establishing a foundation for the evidence of “the self”. Our lives are entirely lived through our senses and perceptions, we cannot import ourselves into the brain of a bird, nor another person, and we certainly aren’t omnipotent; therefore our understanding of life can only be our opinion, but as our opinion, the self, is the only thing we can truly understand as being “real”, anything we believe in, anything we choose to perceive, is as real as anything else. True proof of anything apart from “I am, I think, I exist”, is a fallacy. Language is limiting, we all understand that, but we often don’t stop to realise that our senses are also limited, our brains are also limited. Science is the field of attempting to understand every aspect of the universe through the lens of the human brain, as the human brain does not possess the ability of omniscience, we will never understand the universe. So, how do you process all of this without having a complete existential crisis? Well, you go back to Descartes’s axiom, you build a foundation upon that. 

It’s a philosophy of: The only thing I know to be real is my own opinion, and my opinion is entirely up to me, therefore reality is whatever I want it to be. 

The story of the black monk is incredible in of itself. It tells the tale of an overly conscious and nervous man called Kovrin trying to find his way through life, he visits friends in a rural estate to recover his mental stability but in the process begins to see the figure of a monk dressed in black who offers him guidance. The man knows the monk is a hallucination, and the monk himself admits he is purely a figment of the imagination, but he also offers this little nugget of metaphysical philosophy. “I exist in your imagination, and your imagination is part of nature, which means that I too, exist in nature.” 

The protagonist is filled with happiness and hope by his encounters with the monk, but he also understands that other people would think him crazy for his beliefs and experiences, so hekeeps it hidden from them all. Everyone else does notice an incredible change in Kovrin however, he’s happier, has more purpose and seems entirely content with life. This continues on for a long time, He sees the monk regularly, has an incredibly happy relationship, his friends like him, he sees purpose in his work and imagines greater things for himself and the world, but unfortunately his wife wakes up in the middle of the night and sees Kovrin talking to nothing. She immediately panics, calls him insane, convinces him he’s insane and then takes him to a doctor. From this point in the story we see a sharp decline in Kovrin’s happiness, technically in psychological and scientific terms he’s more mentally sane, but he also despises life now. When Kovrin loses his faith, his spiritual companion and his purpose in life, he becomes a very angry and irritable person, unfortunately his friends and family blame him for this negative change. 

There’s a quote I love around here. “How lucky Buddha and Muhammed and Shakespeare were that their kind relations and doctors did not treat them for ecstasy and inspiration!” 

In the modern day, so called “genius” is often associated closely with madness, and the story asks… what of it? If that person is happy, has purpose, has a goal, their family and friends love them…then why try to change that? Why call them mad? 

An interesting observation brought up in the story is also this; We all strive for consistent happiness, and yet if we ever run into someone who is consistently happy, we view them as being unnatural in some way. Why do we assume someone’s smile is fake? Or that their ecstasy is forced, their inspiration hollow. A state of perpetual wholeness is the key to a perfect life, and yet we call those who achieve that state as weird and insane. 

“Is joy a supernatural feeling?  Should it not be the normal state of man? The higher man is in his mental and moral development, the freer he is, the greater the pleasure that life affords him. 

The apostles say: ‘Rejoice evermore.’” 

Moral of the story; Believe whatever you want so long as it makes you happy and benefits those around you, sanity is an absurd scientific theory anyway, our perceptions are all we can truly base anything off, and in the end if you find true wholeness in your soul; don’t let others' opinions dissuade you from your inner ecstasy. 

"The invisible man" by H.G. Wells is a fun romp through the English countryside, adorned with an entertaining villain as the story's protagonist.

I don't have too much to say about this one, it was just a casual read to chip away at before bed, I enjoyed my time with it but that's about it.

There's nothing very exemplary going on in "the invisible man", it does a lot of things decently, but I couldn't pinpoint anything I thought it did exceptionally well. The prose is decent, the idea is fairly creative, the setting is mundane, the dialogue is alright, and the pacing is standard. But it was also fun, and that's important, sometimes all a story needs to do is be fun. Not everything has to be an incredibly dense exploration of human suffering or whatnot, not everything requires the prose skills of Wilde or the dialogue of Dostoyevsky.

If there's one concept I think the story somewhat explores: it's the concept of power without morality. Give someone an exceptional amount of power; and the havoc they'll wreak, or the good they'll do, depends entirely on that person's inner morality. 

A 160 page book that deals with metaphysics, transcendentalism, the human soul, fascism, the nature of the universe and all wrapped up in a layer of Kantian philosophy?? Sign me up brother.

First thing of note is how paradoxical the writing style feels. It's incredibly detailed and all the while totally ambiguous. The author might lengthily describe how Torless is feeling for a page and a half; yet never quite paint a totally clear picture for the reader.
It reminds me a great deal of Henry James'  The turn of the screw, as in you have these sentences which are very long winded, yet structured in a way in which the reader must piece a puzzle together to try and fully grasp the text. 
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I feel that Törless's first "confusion" so to speak; is in his discovery of the grime in the world, the nastiness he thought he could keep wholly separate from what he finds to be clean and respectable, his inability to confine people and his thoughts to strict parameters. When Törless realises his class of people are not so perfect, that they also commit deceit and do nasty things, he almost can't wrap his head around it. He wants them completely removed from his presence. When he starts to engage with and think about women sexually, he struggles to limit his sexual thoughts; Boys, and even his own mother pop into his head with sexual connotations and he's entirely disgusted by this. 

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One of the strongest motifs of the novel is the inability to describe certain feelings and metaphysical concepts with words. This is probably why certain sections of the book feel so hard to grasp; Robert Musil is trying to put words to the indescribable. The epigraph at the start of the story is apt. 

A large part of Törless's sufferings seem to stem from him trying to understand things that exist, but exist in a realm outside what we can logically comprehend in a mechanical sense. The novel compares this feeling to trying to understand infinity, you know it's a real concept, but to try and fully grasp infinity? Good luck. It would be like trying to explain "the butterflies" or "true love" to a toddler. But just because the toddler can't grasp it doesn't mean it's not real. 

The inability to trace a pattern of thought from its original start to its final end, the inability to wholly comprehend the cause and effect of the mind and the way it links itself unto the physical word, the inability to identify the self and to see reason in the way in which are actions are picked by ourselves, or from something else.
These are all incredibly out-there and illogical trains of thought, but that is what Törless has found himself buried in by latter half of the story. Is it an artistic or poetic awakening, or sheer madness and delirium? Törless can't quite decide, but he's absolutely determined on reaching the depths of the abyss. 

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The connection between alienation and fascism is also remarkably ahead of it's time. Considering this book was written in 1906 the way it tends to predict alot of the future Nazi ideology in terms of power dynamics and superiority is extraordinary. Essentially the text is showcasing a prime example that when you start to view yourself as unique, as original, you can also start to feel incredibly alone and isolated. This leads to an inner turmoil of : "I like my individuality but suffer from alienation due to my individuality". This In turn can then give rise to ideas of individual superiority which can spread like a disease; after all, if you feel left out, a common coping mechanism is to view the people who've pushed you to the side as lesser human  than you, it's alot more palatable than viewing yourself as the lesser one. As the text puts this isolation to fascism pipeline quite succinctly:

Like the Nazi party's rise to power, what you see is pretty much a sense of isolation which turns into a victim complex that slowly turns into a superiority complex due to the self-inflicted victimisation. Bonus points aswell for the author evidently seeing the strong link between masculinity and homoeroticism, if everything effeminate is offensive to my sense of superiority, then boys are hot right? 

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There is a somewhat happy ending to the story atleast, although not typically happy, perhaps a relieving end would describe it better. In the end Törless realises that it's natural for himself to see things as paradoxical and constantly juxtaposing, that to reach certain conclusions one must jump over gaps, and to feel present one must feel distant. He realises that the solid walls of life aren't as solid as they seem, but it's important to focus on what is tangible even if it might not be as tangible as you'd like to believe. We learn that Törless eventually became a man dedicated to intellectual pursuits and artistic feelings, but also took comfort in the rigid boundaries of societal expectations. Törless learns to live life in the way a gardener might do, rather than attempting constant and reckless growth in all directions like a weed, he learns to set up a plot of land for himself, or a greenhouse, and within those confines cultivates his garden to the best of his ability. All the while understanding that there are things that go on outside the greenhouse, but it's better to remain within it. He begins to understand the limitations of thought and the necessity to not let yourself be consumed by them, thought is something natural, something that comes to you in moments and abandons you in others. But try to remember not to chase thought so relentlessly you plunge yourself into existential depths. The thoughts that really matter to you will rise up again in a future stage of your life without you having to force it. 
I'll end the review off with perhaps my favourite quote in the book.

A collection of maxims from the slay-king himself, the queer icon, Oscar Wilde.

A fun little book that I'll open up and peek through many times in the future, here's some random quotes.

I'm learning to put down books I'm not really enjoying/I actively dislike. The count of Monte Cristo is In its own little ball park however, as in; it's a story i believe is well crafted, exciting and I don't really have anything negative to say about it.....but im also just not really interested. There's not much point in continuing to read something that doesn't at all make me want to read it.

It's an adventure novel, it'  mostly plot with nothing too deep going on, and I just think that's not really my thing. If I'm going to read a story over 1000 pages long you have to be doing something I find really interesting. Unfortunately, although Edmond's story has been fun so far, that's all there really is to it, it's fun. Nowadays I read for other things, for engaging ideas, for explorations of complex topics or for incredibly interesting and multifaceted characters. Sure I'll occasionally read something more light-hearted and not as serious, but I'll pick something that's under 300 pages.

Maybe another day Alexandre Dumas, maybe another day. I think I'll try some shorter works instead.