Simon's Book Club

Day 2 of Reading “The Books of Jacob” by Olga Tokarczuk

“And then that horrific pain that governs the body and rules the mind; pain, the emperor of this world.”

I’m not getting into this book as quickly as I’d like to, but I know it’s because my mind is so obsessed with this app that I’m building, and I’m starting my reading later than usual, and my mind is still racing with app ideas. Ironic: I’m building an app to help my reading that’s getting in the way of my reading. Even as I’m writing this I’m hopping over to Claude and asking it more questions about things I want it to do.

It could also be that I’m not captivated by the book yet. I hear many people talking about Tokarczuk’s other books, but not many are talking about this one. Maybe because the length is so intimidating? I’m not sure. But I’m just about to sit down now and work my way through it for a couple of hours. Hopefully it grows on me more.

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1 month ago | [YT] | 16

Simon's Book Club

Day 1 of Reading “The Books of Jacob” by Olga Tokarczuk

"The idea that all of that arises out of his own mind is both terrifying and alluring in equal measure. What if we are imagining all of it? What if each of us sees everything differently? Does everyone see the color green the same?" p861

Thrilled to hold this beefy book in my hand. I’m finding myself enjoying longer books more than regular sized books. Give me something 700 pages plus please. This thing is a hefty book, and I’m excited at the idea of losing myself in another world. So far, I haven’t experienced much here, apart from getting the sense of a Big Fat Jewish Polish Wedding. The bits of metaphysics thrown in there is very Tokarczukian. She used this same line in the Empusium as well. We’re never sure that what we’re seeing is what’s actually out there. How do you cope with that?

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1 month ago | [YT] | 11

Simon's Book Club

Finished reading “House of Day, House of Night” by Olga Tokarczuk

I’m leaving this book feeling a sense of sadness like I did for Flights. This style of novel, the constellation novel, that doesn’t follow one story but offers many stories and fragments, has such a different feeling to it.

So gentle, so noncommittal, so undemanding. A little taste of a story here, some rumination about language there, another tale, another touching anecdote, a taste of magic, a mushroom recipe (a bunch of mushrooms recipes at that). This is how life actually feels for me.

My life isn’t a series of major events. I’ve not murdered anyone nor do I know anyone murdered, and there’s no mystery to solve, no bad guys to punish, no justice to be meted out. Life is a lot of puttering around and farting about. This is what I want to feel in the art I experience. I haven’t watched Perfect Days yet (I can’t find it with English subtitles here in Portugal), but from how I heard it described, it feels like this book.

Our lives are more behind the scenes than they are highlight reels, and I’d like to see more art and fiction representing that.

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2 months ago (edited) | [YT] | 4

Simon's Book Club

Day 3 of reading “House of Day, House of Night” by Olga Tokarczuk

This is such a light and easy novel to read. There’s no compelling story pushing me forward, no major conflict that needs resolving. The book putters around and feels like small chatter amongst friends, as opposed to The Empusium, in which we had a death to understand and future horror to worry about. It’s great for me to read right now, as I’m spending so much mental energy now in building new features to my Book Reading app that the time I spend with this book feels relaxing.

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2 months ago | [YT] | 2

Simon's Book Club

Day 2 of reading “House of Day, House of Night” by Olga Tokarczuk

“People call this ‘imperfection’ because, for some reason, they are sure that perfection exists.” What a great line! I love how relentless Tokarczuk is in challenging ideas of boundaries and identities. She attacks it conceptually and, even in this book, linguistically, and she challenges how the language we use shapes the way we interact with the world. 

I know Sapir-Whorf isn’t trendy, but I do think it holds some weight in examples like this, in examples of how gendered language impact how we interact with others, and how absolute language, binary language, affects how we interact with the world and with ourselves.

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2 months ago | [YT] | 5

Simon's Book Club

Day 1 of reading “House of Day, House of Night” by Olga Tokarczuk

I love this so far! It has the same constellation narrative structure of Flights, and I find the format so comforting. Rather than it being a short story collection with a set of standalone pieces, it also has these shorter sections, from one to a few paragraphs, that glue the pieces together, and blur the boundaries between each.

I’m also starting to get a strong sense of Tokarczuk’s recurring ideas: challenging mind/body dualism, non-binary language, boundary muddling with gender and nationality, linear vs circular time, movement vs stasis, ego dissolution, and psychedelics. I think all of her books have mushrooms in them. It’s clear she has a background as a psychotherapist. I think she’s a great entry point into contemporary fiction for those fluent in Instagram pop psychology and therapy speak.

Maybe she can inspire people to think less about their childhood wounds and fierce boundary setting.

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2 months ago | [YT] | 6

Simon's Book Club

Finished: “The Empusium” by Olga Tokarczuk

These last 70 pages were my favourite. The time spent with Semperweiss was the most fulfilling. His takedown of binary thinking, of black and white, good and evil, man and woman, left and right, all or nothing reasoning was subtle, because he didn’t simply dismiss people who think in these terms; he understood that people don’t have the intellectual resources to handle nuance. It’s just too difficult. It’s unfair to expect a lazy person to run a marathon, and it’s equally unfair to expect someone living a simple life to understand nuance and complexity.

We’re not really patient or kind to people who aren’t intellectually capable. Commenting on someone’s lack of intellectual ability is a deep insult, almost a slur, adjacent to supporting eugenics in some way. It’s trendy to think of everyone as having a beautiful soul and inner world, all of our minds equal, and so to acknowledge someone’s abilities to think or understand is - I think - seen as deeply offensive. I’ve noticed how defensive people get when I challenge their black and white arguments, how activated their responses, how defiant they are of their position.

Major Spoiler Alert!!!

And I was thrilled that the main character was intersex, an incomprehensible middle ground for a group of very simple minded people. Wojnicz embodied the middle position, and, in doing so, we were able to see his connection to both worlds, his understanding of both sides. I loved how at the end of the novel, all of the men are put into a fever, in which they march into the forest, with a stupid murderous urge, and where one needlessly dies, as a sacrifice to the landscape. It deeply mirrors the insane ending of the Magic Mountain, where Hans joins the war. It’s a ludicrous fever that affects men rather than women, and so Wojnicz, neither fully one nor the other, wasn’t overcome with bloodlust.

Part of me, though, wonders if there’s any sympathy for the men here, or is their fever ridiculed and dismissed as lunacy?

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2 months ago | [YT] | 1

Simon's Book Club

Day 3 of reading “The Empusium” by Olga Tokarczuk

I’m reading this book not as a Horror Story, as the cover suggests, but as a direct comparison to The Magic Mountain. I can’t help it. I so loved that experience that it has flavoured how I connect with this book and these characters, like someone who brings their past relationships into their new ones.

And so I delight at any allusion to the Magic Mountain. Wojnicz being referred to as Engineer excited me, and he rejects the name. For a lot of the book, Wojnicz is pressured into being someone he doesn’t want to be, as everyone projects onto him, and I just noticed that I’m doing the same. I’m not pressuring him into toxic masculinity, but I definitely am trying to make a Hans out of him, instead of being with him as he is, a rejection of norms and influences.

Frommer warning Wojnicz that he fits the type to be murdered up here makes sense. He won’t be able to acclimatize to these men and this country, and he’ll be pulled apart, this way and that, fragmented and dissected, and then buried and forgotten, when the town gets a new patient, and I get a new book.

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2 months ago | [YT] | 6

Simon's Book Club

Day 2 of reading “The Empusium” by Olga Tokarczuk

Ah, I’m feeling so sad for the hero, Wojnicz, the more I hear about the very unhealthy relationship he had with his father, and was completely gutted at the memory of the tenderness he experienced from the only woman in his life, when he was able to feel comfortable in his body, and not shamed. It was such a well placed scene, so well timed. I felt such an appreciation for Tokarczuk’s brilliance here.

I’ve been feeling resistant to the book otherwise, because all of the men are gross, and there are no moments in which I feel happy to be in their company. I can understand Tokarczuk’s aim here, to share how problematic men have been and how horribly they’ve treated women and other men who don’t live up to their standards, but, yuck, it’s not an enjoyable read. Except for this moment here.

Time heals all wounds, does it? In The Magic Mountain, the healing never fully occurred, and you could wait for the rest of your life before you felt ready to face the world again. And here, the wounds of childhood never fully healed with Wojnicz. Tokarczuk’s past as a psychotherapist is super apparent at times.

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2 months ago | [YT] | 10

Simon's Book Club

Day 1 of reading “The Empusium” by Olga Tokarczuk

I’m very much enjoying this book directly on the heels of The Magic Mountain, which I can see has deeply influenced this book. The main philosopher in Mann’s work is Settembrini (once confused as Septembrini), and the main one here, so far, is named August August. Both heroes in both books also have erotic experiences with pencils in school. And, in both books, men jabber a whole lot and women are ignored, though in this book, Tokarczuk makes it a lot more explicit, where the men are grossly misogynist.

I’m not losing myself in this book as much as The Magic Mountain, because I don’t really like any of these characters so far. The main character is anxious and paranoid, and the men are all gross. I wouldn’t want to spend time with any of them, and would be happy to leave this mountain while I’d love to lose myself with Mann. But I am reading this pretty quickly. I should be done in a couple more days.

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2 months ago | [YT] | 8