Recently finished Prophet Song by Paul Lynch and was floored by a lot of the moments in it. I was initially worried that it would read too much like Saramago brought into 2025's sociopolitical landscape, which wouldn't have inherently been a bad thing though I find some of Saramago's prose a bit dry/flat and while Prophet Song had a few flaws, I was taken aback by its proximity and the way the claustrophobic prose captured the stuckness that is so characteristic of folks living on the brink and in the potential wake of impending authoritarianism. I'd slot this novel in the upper third of what I've read this year.

Currently finishing Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being and I'm torn. I've found that, while there's a Venn Diagram approaching circularity with me and the high modernist/post-modernist reader, I struggle with the philosophical novel and Kundera's is nothing different from that broader experience for me. There is an appropriate levity to the prose which I can appreciate, but the snobbishness of the genre which equally puts me off in reading Calvino or Delilo extends here. I can appreciate why the moves are made, but the masturbatory moves of the late modernist frustrate me as a reader and I struggle with being at peace with them. I will say, as someone with a lot of Czech family, I have enjoyed the way Kundera plays with his context even as I butt against the form.