jakewelch's bookshelf

jakewelch

Joined 2025-09-05

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Reading on a bench somewhere in Prospect Park https://jakewel.ch

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My favorite place to read is probably in my kitchen on a quiet sunny early summer morning with the windows open and a cool breeze passing through. I have a good cup of coffee and a tasty pastry, maybe a scone or a croissant, and I just had a good nights sleep and my mind is fresh and alert. My partner is still asleep and the house is totally still, maybe I'm playing some soft piano music. Luckily I try and create these conditions semi-frequently because I love it so much, so this isn't totally out of the norm for me.

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To Read 🌱

Reading 🌿

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To Read 🌱

Uncertain Sons and Other Stories

Antisocieties

Mrs. Dalloway

Affinity

The Tanners

The Sirens of Titan

God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

Froth on the Daydream

War and Peace

Walden

Dracula

Mouthful of Birds

Franny and Zooey

Gilead

Motorman

The Third Policeman

Cyclonopedia: Complicity with Anonymous Materials

Invitation to a Beheading

Temple of Dawn

The Temple of the Golden Pavillion

Perdido Street Station

Moby Dick

Lonesome Dove

Suttree

Rebecca

The Moon and Sixpence

It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over

The Magic Mountain

Picnic at Hanging Rock

The Third Realm

The Wolves of Eternity

My Struggle, Book 3

Metropole

The Vegitarian

The Trial

The Metamorphosis

An Artist in the Floating World

Mr. Norris Changes Trains

Berlin Stories

Les Miserables

The Sun Also Rises

The Old Man and the Sea

Light in August

Absalom, Absalom!

Last Days

A Collapse of Horses

The Sea Came at Midnight

Days Between Stations

The Name of the Rose

The Count of Monte Cristo

The Brothers Karamazov

Mount Analogue

Piranesi

Hebdomeros

The Vorrh

The Invention of Morel

Solenoid

Blinding

Invisible Cities

Void Corporation

The Master and Margarita

Nadja

Farenheit 451

The Savage Detectives

2666

The Etched City

The Idiot

Rashomon and Other Stories

Martyr!: A Novel

The Other City

The Golden Age

Reading 🌿

El Aleph

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Fictions

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Swann's Way (In Search of Lost Time, #1)

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Read 🪴

The Winter of Our Discontent

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If on a Winter's Night A Traveler

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If on a Winter's Night A Traveler

Italo Calvino

finished: 2025-09-07 04:00:00

07/17/2025 – 07/28/2025 – I've never read anything quite like this one. Calvino continuously broke the rules weaving a complex conspiracy that moved in and out of the chapters like a web. I appreciated the alternating chapters of short stories and main narrative, although even this rule wasn't always honored. It felt like watching the X-Files and picking up on the "myth arc" vs. the "monster of the week" episodes. The language used throughout was beautiful and thought provoking–the short stories explored the deepest of sensations and the most subtle of experiences forming brilliant metaphors of life and they always built towards a genius (purposely) sudden ending. I loved the short story chapters, reading them made the book go by quickly for me. The reason I deducted a star was for the main narrative chapters, which I found to be more of a slog. I appreciated their insanity in challenging the way narrative fiction is written and understood, and I liked how they tied the stories all together in the end. I didn't even mind how speculative and strange the story became in the end. I suppose what I disliked is something I dislike in most modern/post-modern novels. The experimental writing left me feeling empty in the end. I didn't care about any of the characters, certain plot points were left unresolved, and I felt like the points Calvino was trying to make became a replacement for a solid, interesting story. By the end I was ready for it to be over, and I guess that's a bit of a shame. Still, it was a brilliant book and a great intro to Calvino's work. I imagine fans of this type of story telling wouldn't have the same complaints as me and would love this. I might try reading more of him sooner than later. 4/5 stars

The Communist Manifesto

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The Communist Manifesto

Karl Marx

finished: 2025-09-07 04:00:00

07/04/2025-07/17/2025 – I decided to give this an honest read with notes considering its notoriety and the flippant use of the adjective "Communist" in contemporary politics. This particular edition is from the 60's and has a lengthy intro from Francis B Randall that I didn't particularly care for. It's immediately evident in his writing and point of view that he was an American man living in a time where the entire system was working rather well for people like him. He has this obsession with tying all of Marx's ideas, writings, and behaviors to Romanticism, which, isn't a completely moot point, but was overused in the intro and rather dismissive. The first chapter of the manifesto itself is perhaps the most relevant. It lays out the basis for the rest of the manifesto and does a good job of describing the class struggle. I found it especially interesting to read knowing it came from a mid 1850's context when the industrial revolution was in full swing, and that, while certain things like child labor are no longer as pertinent in the west today, the points Marx was making have become all the more relevant. I found myself reflecting on things that I hadn't before (except maybe when I read News From Nowhere by William Morris) such as the concentration of power in cities and its effect on rural people. Throughout this section I kept thinking "it's ironic that the modern right is so predominantly rural people, because this is written for people like them". Where the manifesto lost me is in chapter 2 when Marx starts to lay out what should be done about this. Things like heavy taxes, centralization of transportation, communication, and free education aren't totally irrelevant and are the focus of modern leftist views, but his ideas of abolishing private property, forming a central national bank, abolishing inheritance, and equal liability of labor, raise red flags for me in that I don't see how extensive violence and risk of corruption are to be avoided. I feel like the ideas are idealistic, but ignore human nature and its complications. I don't know what the answer is and I think these systems ought to be questioned and heavily regulated, but these interventions, in my opinion, aren't and shouldn't be in their final form. The rest of the manifesto is perhaps the least interesting. It is very contextual to when it was written and I didn't get a lot out of it. All in all, I'm glad I understand communism more and am interested in reading some of his other works (like Capital), and I know for a fact that I don't think capitalism in its current state deserves to continue to exist–but I am no communist and disagree with a lot of Marx's views. More people ought to read and understand this, especially with how much modern Americans don't understand what it actually means to be communist even though they are so deathly afraid of the label. 3/5 stars

The City & the City

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The Stranger

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Fifteen Dogs

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Leviathan

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Breakfast of Champions

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Wuthering Heights

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The Morning Star

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The Morning Star

Karl Ove Knausgaard

finished: 2025-09-07 04:00:00

1/24/2025–2/17/2025 – The Morning Star is a real page turner. 666 pages long (I see what you did there, Karl Ove) and yet a breeze to read. I really enjoyed the blend of personal narratives and characters, sometimes connecting with each other, sometimes only relating to each other thematically. I did have to return, occasionally, to previous chapters to remember who someone was, but by the end I was following along no problem. It's obvious this book was an excuse for the author to explore ideas of death and the afterlife, the final chapter literally being an essay on death under the name of one of the characters we followed throughout the book, (and I confess I did not enjoy it nor did I want it to be the final note to end on, especially after some of the exciting chapters leading up to it prior.) The style of predominant personal narrative with supernatural woven in was both fun and mysterious. I'm left with so many questions that I hope will be addressed in Wolves of Eternity and the Third Realm, but something tells me he'll cover a lot of the same ground while leaving the mysteries open-ended. Regarding the narratives of the characters, they almost all felt familiar to how Karl Ove Knausgaard writes about himself in "My Struggle". It felt like, in many ways, seeing his worst thoughts and feelings about himself leeching out into his characters. Many times I thought "very few people are this insecure and afraid to appear weak, that's a you thing, Karl Ove". Also, everyone is such an alcoholic, I can't believe the amount of drinks all these characters are putting away, Jesus. Anyway, I really really enjoyed this and am looking forward to reading the next book in the series sometime later this year. Knausgaard is a reliable pleasure-read author for me now and I find his style approachable and relatable. I give this a strong 4 stars.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

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My Struggle, Book 2

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My Struggle, Book 2

Karl Ove Knausgaard

finished: 2025-09-07 04:00:00

08/20/2024 – 10/08/2024 – My Struggle Book 1 was one of my favorite books of all time, and my second favorite this year. But book 2 was an absolute slog. There’s a lot of things I think factored into this. One, the main idea of this book is to focus on his relationship with his wife and his experiences becoming a father. It also revolves a lot around his friend Geir and their various conversations, as well as other adult friendships and conversations. I think I would have liked it more had I read this during a similar time of life, but his frustrations with fatherhood did not land well with me. Furthermore, reading about his strained day-to-day relationship with his wife Linda was very difficult for me. Honestly it felt like it heightened my own daily anxieties and dragged me down with him. Regarding Geir, I just do not like the guy. He’s arrogant, pessimistic and an asshole. He rants like a know-it-all and unfortunately, his rants took up a lot of real estate in this novel. It’s also boring to keep up with the constant exposition-less references and theories to other writings mentioned by the two. You just have to know to know. There were highlights, namely the face-cutting sequence and the portions of discovering his MIL is a secret alcoholic, but I eventually had to skim the last 100 pages after “struggling” with the book for over a month and a half. I still have a desire to read the other books (maybe next year sometime) because they go back and deal with his earlier life again, but I hesitate to recommend book 2 to anyone. I’d give it a 2.5/5 stars, so a weak 3/5.

Stoner

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Stoner

John Williams

finished: 2025-09-07 04:00:00

08/14/2024 – 8/19/2024 – Stoner is both simple yet rich in both its narrative and in its language. I found it incredibly easy to read despite it having some advanced vocabulary throughout. This is a read that I think I would have enjoyed more had I related more to it. Stoner was a man who lived his entire life both stoic and infuriatingly complacent. The way he simply settled for his situation without ever trying to make better of it made me upset. I know many love and resonate with this book because they see themselves in it, but I feel like I've spent my short life doing exactly the opposite of what Stoner did. On a subjective point, I generally struggle with novels dominated by a third person narrative and I find novels that tell decades of stories to be rushed and I struggle to connect with the characters and immerse myself in their experiences. Because of this, I give the book a 4/5, based on personal preference rather than on the quality of the book which was undoubtedly excellent. UPDATE: 8/20/2024 After some consideration, I've decided to bump this down a star. I still think I'd recommend this to certain readers, especially to people pursuing academy or people who are unhappy with the trajectory of their life, but in reflection, while Williams uses some big words throughout, the prose felt lacking and failed to make me feel very much, and I think that's a serious issue. The book is more elementary than people let on. It feels a bit overrated and I didn't find anything about it to be very memorable. Truthfully, I wanted to say and think it was excellent because of the way everyone else talks about it, but in my heart of hearts, I don't think it is.

Cat's Cradle

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My Struggle, Book 1

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Norwegian Wood

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As I Lay Dying

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The Sound and the Fury

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The Sound and the Fury

William Faulkner

finished: 2025-09-07 04:00:00

06/23/2024 – 07/03/2024 – I have so much to say about this book. I’ve never read anything like it. Starting the book with Benjy’s perspective was fascinating. As an intellectually disabled man, his narrative style was jumpy, terse, and repetitive. “I cried. Mother told me to hush. I hushed. I cried again. Mother told me to hush. But I didn’t hush.” His narrative also jumping between timelines without warning, often in the middle of the sentence, really put me into his mind. It was discombobulating and confusing, but I really loved that about it. It wasn’t until the following chapter when we followed Quintin’s narrative that I really grasped how phenomenal of a write Faulker is. Some of the most beautiful passages I’ve ever read were here – I especially loved Quintin’s memories of what his father said about time. Blending these with his own tortured thoughts surrounding his broken pocket watch, his sister’s various tomultuous relationships, it was so rich. Faulkner also employed a fascinating technique of using italics to insert traumatic memories into the middle of the narrative, and would often change timelines mid-sentence, rushing on with no punctuation for pages at a time – it would make you feel as if you were in his confused and broken racing thoughts. I’ve never read anything from the point of view of a suicidal person that was so vivid, and yet never once did he acknowledge planning on killing himself, it was all contextual by his erratic actions and hints at writing and leaving letters for his roommates and family. When the story shifted into Jason’s story, the same run-on passages were instead employed to put us into his unhinged and angry and racing thoughts. His chapter was my least favorite, but mostly because it was so frustrating. Jason is a terrible, bitter, arrogant man and his self-important rants felt all too familiar to people I’ve known in my own life. The final chapter ending in the third person, starting with following Dilsey, the family’s black servant matriarch, was some of my favorite writing in the book. It was beautiful and romantic and yet it was describing someone treated, up to that point in the book, as someone unimportant, watching the Compson family from the outside. It really drove home the Compson’s ineptness and pathetic legacy lost, and the beautiful humility of the Gibson’s who stand aside and work hard, trying to do what they can for the Compson’s left behind.   All in on, this book shattered my conceptions of narrative and gave me a whole new perspective on what it means to tell a story and put you in the mind of its characters. The prose was phenomenal, sometimes poetic and lush, sometimes simple, and even going as far to phonetically change the spelling of words to imitate an accent. The characters were interesting and memorable, the story was fascinating. I love when a book trusts its reader to understand things through context. This was one of the best books I’ve ever read.  I give this book a 5/5 stars.

The Woman in the Dunes

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Slaughterhouse-Five

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Kafka on the Shore

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The Crying of Lot 49

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For Whom the Bell Tolls

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The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

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Dune Messiah

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Dune

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All the Pretty Horses

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Return of the King

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The Fellowship of the Ring

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The Two Towers

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