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January 2026

	l'étranger (camus) ★★★★ [read for class] [read in french] this is my third read of the stranger after the first time for leisure and the second time for another class last semester. there is a contrarian impulse in me to call camus overrated but I have to admit that his book is satisfying to reread. the first impression might be that it's very short but you realize after the second and third read how intentional every sentence really is. the monotony seems to intensify, though. and I have a hard time getting along with absurdism's hostility against nonmeaning.
	la vagabonde (colette) ★★★ [read for class] [read in french] it always takes me a moment to get used to an author's style, but in english this means the first chapter and in french this means the entire first half of the book. I struggled to understand at first (I thought renee was cheating on hamond for a while) but the second half made me believe my french instantly improved by 3 levels. though what I really enjoyed in the beggining was renee's complaints about her ex-husband. I was reminded of the way miranda talks about G.P. in john fowles' the collector, there is something interesting about women analysing the psychology of men in an almost scientific way. but this rationality later gives way to the very french melodrama between renee and maxime which was a little too much for me. colette was sucessful in making maxime absolutely insufferable except that it makes you wonder why it took longer than the realization that he was jobless for renee to leave him. (hover to view spoilers) the only way I can forgive her overly-devoted letters is to think of that stupid tumblr quote, "if he writes her a few sonnets, he loves her. If he writes her 300 sonnets, he loves sonnets." it was also hard not to feel that the book was entirely navel-gazing … but I want to forgive it for the lack of interiority usually granted to women in literature. I've read too much of men who don't like their girlfriends so it's nice to read about a woman who doesn't like her boyfriend.
	not to disturb (spark) ½ [read for bookbug] I don't get it. though its short, I had a hard time paying attention; nothing invested me in the story or writing at all. the whole time I was wondering "who is the audience for this?" and then I read high rated reviews on storygraph and felt like I was from another planet. nothing to enjoy in the prose, either: "the parquet glitters obliquely, not having been trodden on today." a forgettable first book of the year.