THE BOOKS OF JACOB (Tokarczuk, 2014)

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This will, by no means, be a complete and incisive look at a Nobel-winning doorstop of a novel and its mesmerizing and often frustrating leaps and bounds. Not sure I'm equipped for that after one read, or even two, but I will re-read JACOB eventually – along with everything Tokarczuk has written.

What I can tell you / me is that I'm in love with her rhythm and voice – which speaks volumes about the brilliance of Jennifer Croft’s 2021 translation – and that, with JACOB, she has pushed the bounds of what a novel can do (see: mesmerizing and frustrating; I was happily mesmerized in my frustrations). Among those frustrations was that I couldn't keep the names of several of the characters straight, even after more than a month and a thousand pages together – though I suspect that this is a result of my own limitations as a reader and will be rectified in a revisit.

(This is also not an unusual occurrence for me, especially in books involving more than three or four characters. Or in life, really.)

Recommended – though with the caveat that it, like the history it mines and explores, requires diligent and mindful dedication: be prepared to not absorb all of it in one go – but also to witness a staggering exploration of all that a novel can do.

My complete list, from 2013 to the present, lives here.

frequencies, updated

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Shifting this space over to being my primary and only online stream (Masto/Insta break) so wanted to think out loud to myself about some of the things that will evolve or fade. Attendance Cards will stay, certainly: not only are they an integral part of my daily practice / ritual but I also just love doing them – have done since the very first, back at the start of November last.

Want to get more diligent about posting text posts here, not quite in the daily fashion as this site originally began, but something different. Like this, but more: Informalities tag has returned to its place as the home for those undeveloped, half-baked notions that will remain, for the most part, just that. While I’ve wanted to get an end-of-day post up in the evening, I’m doubtful that that will happen: by the time the intended time rolls around, I’m mentally spent and incapable of social interaction, even if it’s talking to myself in public.

One of the things I do want to figure out in this time is how to make better use of the comment system here – beyond as a means for me to add and update and etc and self-reply, which it will remain – and how to encourage others to use it as well.

Let me quote the pre-comment text here because I fear it could turn off readers from commenting: “Please note that YOU DO NOT NEED TO SIGN UP OR LOGIN TO COMMENT: that's a Hyvor Talk thing that I can't (yet) turn off. We're all guests here...”

Indeed. More as it comes to me.