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Accurate copy from the back cover: "Intrigue; the sins of the father; the fraudulent and the genuine; marriage and strange repetitions of violence[.]"

Frosty and creepy. Secrets are held back by pages of ruminations and philosophizing, making the secrets just sit there, aching to spill out into view. Quite an emotionless book—characters go about their (similar, repeated) actions almost like wound-up dolls...no, that's not quite right, but...there is a certain emphasis placed on obligations, relationships, duties etc. that seem to have trapped these people in a dreamy series of actions. And details, phrases, situations, etc., repeat themselves so that by the end, the novel feels like an exercise in oulipian deck-shuffling. Hints of Lynch, or The Ruined Map by Kōbō Abe, but not enough to take this book into completely surreal territory. Kudos for the sustained light dread. An ending that made me cold inside.

Not what I expected; much more interesting. Keeps expanding into new planes of plot, symbolism, etc. I got this bc it was an influence on one of my favorite novels, The Combinations by Louis Armand, and I definitely see a lot of ideas pulled from here. Will read more Meyrink soon.

Read it, dang it!

Some decent passages, but the author is determined to make life about style over substance. Hard disagree.

Eh, it's ok. Has an NPR flavor to it. Would blow your mind, if you'd never heard of ideas like growing your own food, shipping lettuce across the country is a waste of fuel, etc. Some touching parts about holidays and family traditions. One thing I didn't know much about was turkey mating (!), but otherwise, you probably already know most of this. Many paragraphs are extended with cracking wise in a subtly patronizing tone.

Left me wanting much more about the music. Interesting references to hauntology, post-modernism, the emergence of this kind of music due to late-stage capitalism commodifying everything and the trauma of missing dead futures that never came to be, etc. An expanded version would be great. Feels a bit like a paper for college, with various sources lined up to make a line of argument, but not much depth. A fine intro.

Just...no. The book alternates between little stories that are meant to help you understand complex ideas in physics, and lectures that give the grittier equations and explanations.

The "stories" are just about a guy who hangs around a physics professor and falls asleep during his lectures, and so he has weird dreams about the topics. Anthropomorphized electrons that dance waltzes, gazelles that somehow symbolize waves, passing through slits of a wall and into the clutches of waiting lions, etc. Invariably, the examples used in the stories only muddle and mislead from the actual science.

The science parts get it all wrong as well, veering from too simple to overly particular, with a strangely-specific ending about every little thing known about quarks. A total mess.

Half a star for the rating, just because the science itself is fascinating and it's stimulating to think all of it through.

Entertaining anecdotes, but ultimately it's just a collection of amuse-bouches. The kind of book you read on a subway and then leave on the seat when you're done.

Nice historical factoids, then a head-scratching over-simplification, followed by an assumption, etc. Sometimes felt like reading a puffed-up Wikipedia article.

A group of people from a few different nations travel from Mexico to Europe via boat, and they do not get along. Almost everyone is extremely repressed by the rules of society, their culture, etc., and they chafe mightily. It's like watching a juicy episode of The Real World, except it's on a boat, it's 1931, and most everyone is racist and messed up. They all have some sympathetic or relatable qualities but slap you in the face just as you're feeling bad for them. Engaging and entertaining. Everyone in book club is liking it, which is unusual!