Well, I gave it the old college try, but in the end I couldn’t finish James Gleick’s The Information. Later chapters proved to be so dense and so dry I just couldn’t stay interested in it. So instead of trying to tough it out through a book I wasn’t enjoying, I sent it back to the library. I usually enjoy non-fiction, and there were parts of The Information that I did enjoy, but the deeper into the book I got, the less I liked it.

So I moved on.

As part of my ongoing project of reading books from all around the world, I went in search of authors and novels from different lands and came across Kim Young-Ha’s I Have the Right to Destroy Myself, a short, strange novel about two brothers in love with the same woman who tears at them both while they try to connect to the world around them. All the while, there is a strange narrator hovering at the edges of the story who moves through the world with a dark, strange purpose.

I found this story to be immensely readable, though not enjoyable, per say. The narrator opens the novel, and you can’t really tell what he/she is doing or looking for, or what they do for their clients- only that they’re particular about them, and that their life will somehow touch C and K’s- the brothers in love with the same woman, Se-yeon. The story is frightening at times, and strange, but I flew through it in the span of a couple of afternoons.

Cassandra Clare’s City of Bones arrived from the library for my e-reader. Several of my friends have told me that they loved the story and have all the books, but I’m not sold yet, though I’m not very far into it yet. I’m going to read 20% of it before I decide if I should keep going or not.

I don’t know if it has anything to do with the season- it being dark, gloomy, and snowy outside- but I’ve been too tired to read when I crawl into bed these past several days. I’d been reading about a chapter a night of John Baxter’s A Pound of Paper: Confessions of a Book Addict. It’s weirdly interesting so far, being about the world of rare book collectors and what makes a book collectible. Normally when I read books about books, it’s actually about reading books, not the actual book-as-an-object. I’m about halfway through it, and intend to keep it as my before bed book.

I finished re-finishing the nightstand I rescued from being thrown away, and it has been perfect for holding those books I’m in the process of reading. The cat also enjoys sitting on it and staring at me in the morning. Because that’s not creepy or anything.