December Readings
Major reading slump this month, only read one book and got carried away by my next big project for the new year (subject to an upcoming article on the printhouse)
La peste – Albert Camus
Everything seems calm in Oran, a city in french occupied Algeria. The flower fields are blooming outside the city, the ocean breathing on its edge, the trams running throughout it and an old man is spitting on its cats. Deep in its bowels though, something is amiss. The rats start surfacing by thousand and start to die in the open, leaving many inhabitants perplexed. This includes Dr.Rieux, which discovers a strange disease during his rounds, one that is fatal. Upon deliberation with a colleague, there are no doubts; it is the plague.
Camus is just the GOAT. The way he writes characters is simply human, they feel like people, not characters. The way they act, either as individuals or when part of a group, just feel authentic and real. I will spare you a comparison with covid19 but I will say that what transpired reinforces the book's realism. As the characters in the books, I got tired of the plague about ¾ of the way through it, but pushed nonetheless, and I'm glad I did. You are made to care about the main characters and they are all very coherent. Camus writing style is good as always and reading is almost effortless, at least in the french version.
That's it for this month, I will most likely not have many books next month either, but my upcoming article will make it clear why.