Status: Quit
Date: 06/03/2025
Rating: 2/10
I've been wanting to read something by Kafka for a bit due to seeing him lumped in with Dostoevsky and Camus, so my experience was disappointing to say the least.
2025 Book Reviews
All of my book reviews from 2025. Keep in mind that 'Date' means the date that I've finished/quit a book rather than the date the book was published.
The Castle by Franz Kafka
The first chapter of The Castle was promising, as it had a strange and surreal feeling, but after that it's beyond boring. Literally nothing happens, it's just some guy talking to someone connected to The Castle and being told that he doesn't have permission to be in the village. K. is a wooden plank with no notable traits, making the book even more dull to read.
To make the already repetitive and snooze-worthy plot and characters worse, Kafka is unaware of paragraphs. Even when two characters are talking a new line is never started. I often got confused over when one character had finished talking due to missing the speech mark and the fact that each character sounds the same and the dialogue is unnecessarily lengthy. Besides the blocks of tiring text, Kafka's writing style isn't great nor special in any way.
I quitted after 120 pages, slightly more than a third of the book. I don't see the point of reading a book which is mind-numbingly boring and isn't even a finished novel: it ends mid-sentence. Apparently, Kafka was going to end it by having K. die not being able to gain permission from The Castle but instead receiving a slip of paper saying that The Castle doesn't recognise him as a citizen of the village but are fine with him working there. So, it's ultimately a pointless and unfinished book.
Perhaps I'm just a cretin which doesn't understand Kafka's genius.
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Süskind
Status: Finished
Date: 02/03/2025
Rating: 8/10
A very unique novel, not quite like anything else I've read. It was a bit slow though.
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
Status: Quit
Date: 25/02/2025
Rating: 6/10
Quitting 300 pages in. It's not bad by any means, but just readable and I'd rather read other things. I'm also not a huge fan of how Murakami has to have at least one sexual dream sequence in every book.
Dune by Frank Herbert
Status: Quit
Date: 16/02/2025
Rating: 3/10
I typically read 100 pages of a book before deciding to quit, but I couldn't stomach Dune for more than ten. Something about the writing just doesn't sit well for me.
Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
Status: Finished
Date: 14/02/2025
Rating: 8/10
I loved Hesse's writing and found many good lines and points in Steppenwolf. It feels like a book I'll need to read many times to understand though, so I'd like to return to it in a few years time.
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Status: Quit
Date: 01/02/2025
Rating: 5/10
Slaughterhouse-Five just didn't click with me for some reason. The only thing I liked was the aliens and the casual style of writing. Besides that and despite the time-travelling, it just wasn't very interesting and I'm not sure why this book is supposed to be great. Maybe the fragmented storyline is why, but I doubt it because I'm usually fine with that. I just think this book isn't for me.
The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien
Status: Quit
Date: 30/01/2025
Rating: 5/10
I wish I loved LOTR. I thought I would when I began reading The Fellowship of the Ring, but after the first sixty pages my opinion shifted, and when I reached part two I decided to just quit.
The problem? It's just okay. Whilst I found the story absorbing initially, I found myself becoming more bored as I continued to read. There isn't much going on -- 220 pages of walking, eating, singing, black riders appearing, and then that cycle repeating.
The characters also weren't the most interesting. Gandalf was easily the coolest, but he isn't in it much and I thought Pippin and Merry were interchangeable with each other.
My biggest complaint? All the singing. I swear, every chapter had at least one paragraph of singing and the songs just get longer and longer as the book continues on. I hate Tom Bombadil. Can a book be considered a musical? If so, this is a musical.
I know Tolkien cared the most about world-building and his favourite part was creating all the different languages, and I can understand why some people love this but it isn't for me. Anyway, I'm glad I gave LOTR a shot, even if it wasn't my thing.A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
Status: Quit
Date: 25/01/2025
Rating: NR
I couldn't finish this one. I've been wanting to read A Clockwork Orange for a while and I was aware that it did many things with language, but I found it completely unenjoyable to read. I really tried to like it, but couldn't push myself to read more than two chapters. I may try again at a later date, but I'm not excited to.
Idol, Burning by Rin Usami
Status: Finished
Date: 23/01/2025
Rating: 4/10
Quite disappointed with this one. I went into Idol, Burning thinking it'd be about how an obsessed fan deals with finding out about a terrible scandal involving the idol which they've viewed as godly, going through the stages of grief when finding out that their hero isn't who they thought.
Unfortunately, the book isn't really about that. Sure, there's the scandal, but it's not about that or how the protagonist deals with finding this truth out. Instead, it's more focused around the idol group breaking up and the protagonist dealing with this.
I also wasn't a fan of the writing. Maybe it was just the translator, but it felt like a boomer trying to understand teens at some parts. For example, the narrator compares her friend's facial expression to an emoji. I cringed a lot, I'm a teenager and we don't speak or think in emojis all the time.
The Outsider by Albert Camus
Status: Finished
Date: 10/01/2025
Rating: 8/10
An interesting book. I'm a fan of absurdism as a philosophy and found myself agreeing with quite a bit of the themes and things said in The Stranger. It was also easy to read, which is always a positive. I liked Mersault's narration.
The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Status: Finished
Date: 8/01/2025
Rating: 10/10
I loved The Idiot, which is to be expected as it's Dostoevsky. I thought it started off quite slow, but by the end of it, it had left a profound impact on me. I couldn't stop thinking about it for days. I did another review here.
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