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Nervous System meets The Echo Wife in today's Morning News Tournament of Books match. Neither of these books is flawless and I don't expect either to go much further. But Nervous System is my pick: it is thought-provoking and features some exquisite writing, whereas the main merit of The Echo Wife, to my mind, is its memorable protagonist, a scientist who is maybe a shade too melodramatically evil but still exquisitely drawn.

I almost never bail, but I just do not have the mental capacity or patience for this right now. Not a fan after the first 20% and based on reviews, it‘s not going to get any less abstract. A somewhat disappointing way to finish off my #tob22 reading but I‘m incredibly proud of myself for reading all 18 books this year (counting this one even though it was only an attempt!) 🥳

After sticking with this one through the first 3/4 I skimmed the last bit, like, it's really not going anywhere, it's not going to improve, you're still going to randomly italicize four emotion words in the middle of this paragraph, okay.

It's about illness and family and writer's block, and also it's not. Everything is fragmented. Nothing goes anywhere.

There are aspects of this novel that I enjoy, like Meruane's use of time and place ("country of the past" and "country of the present," designations that mean multiple things) and the way the world and culture and history manifest within the characters' bodies, but the flow is too disjointed for me to lose myself in the story as I'd have liked. #ToB2022

I found this book intriguing. It reads like an exploration of a family‘s medical history. The author used an odd, repetitive linguistic tic that I kinda liked, though I‘m not sure I entirely understood it. Thought provoking.

I‘m not gonna do this. Another book that asks way too much of me at the moment. A hypochondriac and time snippets. I just can‘t. I haven‘t yet read a book I really loved this year and I so want to. I keep escaping in podcasts and even television while I really want to read. I just can‘t seem to find the right book for me at the moment. #tob22

(Pic: The swimming pool I live across, where I start my day three times a week)

This short tome took me forever to read. Nervous System is a kind of fable where none of the characters or places are named and is written in mostly short snippets of thought. While some of the snippets were compelling or thought-provoking, I found the time-jumps to be confusing, and the narrative didn‘t come together for me.

01. Nervous System; The Honey-Don‘t List
02. The Trees, by Percival Everett
03. Birthday party for my kid 🥳

#weekendreads @rachelsbrittain

When I finished Nervous System, what stuck with me were not the moments with doctors in hospitals, not Ella‘s flailing love life nor her flailing career, but the side notes about stars and planets. These seeming diversions are as central to Ella‘s story as her dissertation or the scans of her spine. The universe is part of her. She is part of it.

https://sophronisba.com/2022/01/18/nervous-system-we-are-made-of-star-stuff/

A case of not the right book for my mood and time-sense. I think I would have loved it if not stressed/anxious. So, what I ended up doing is jumping over the middle and reading the last 40 or so pages. I don‘t feel like I missed anything. Is there a term for this? A bridge skip, perhaps? I am giving it a pick because it did make me think, I was intrigued by the italic word drop sequences, and I could relate to her relationship with her father.

I admit that the novel grew on me the longer I stuck with it, but personally I felt it was a lot of effort for the payoff.

Ella (“She” in Spanish) has a complicated relationship with her family back in the unnamed (but probably Chile) country of her past while in her current country of residence (we only know it is “north”) she procrastinates in writing her doctoral thesis and wonders about her boyfriend El (“He” in Spanish). #ToB #Tob2022

This ended up a surprise hit! Exactly why I read the #ToBshortlist.

Ever worried yourself sick? PhD candidate Ella becomes a hypochondriac in response to her inability to finish her degree. In each of the subsequent sections, you are taken through maladies faced by members of her family, all while the presence of her physician father looms in the background, foreshadowing the guilt she feels for taking his money for a degree she never finishes.

Frosty cold here (below freezing), but I got an early morning Amazon package! Here are the last three from the #ToBshortlist and #ToBplayin. I‘m reading them all this year, including the play-in, so I have this + two audiobooks left. Let the Christmas reading binge begin! 🎄

I also have two reviews coming today, including the final one from my #AlgorithmExperiment. 🤔

This book will stay with me for a long time. Illness and death follow and haunt the unnamed main character of the story (ella), along with memories and indecision. The imprint of childhood experiences is long-lasting. Beautiful and unsettling. #ToB2022

I read about 30% of this and just couldn't get engaged. The fragmentary style and the gloomy subject matter were a bad combination. #tob22