Currently Reading, Again

Theodor Fontane, Effi Briest
I think it was Zola's Nana, or maybe it was The House of Mirth, where I formulated the rule: "If it's the early 19th century and you're a plucky, loveable woman with no money, you'll be fine; if it's the end of the 19th century and you're a plucky, loveable woman with no money, your options will ultimately prostitution, drug addiction, dying in the street from poverty, or some combination thereof". 

And in that spirit I say: Effi, girl, you're in danger.

 

Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations
I am 500+ pages in, which is to say about halfway through in my edition. One once learned, but one forgets, that it's impossible to take on everything in a book on a first reading. It's pretty easy to read a passage, get the point, and then zone out a bit as Smith demonstrates that it's true in England, and France, and Holland, and Scotland, over and over again. (The digression on silver, whose point I took to be in part that the price of silver fluctuates in addition to the price of the things it buys, is a fine example.)

 

Marcel Proust, The Prisoner
Finally, one of these without a long party sequence, though it does have a short party sequence. The narrator is obsessed with Albertine, whom he keeps as the titular prisoner in his apartment, closely monitoring her actions in the fear that she's leading a secret life, lying to him, a lesbian, or some combination thereof. 

If you've been in your 20s, you've likely been on one side or the other of this kind of relationship: two people who should just break up, but don't for some stupid g-d reason. Narrator, just let Albertine go already! You clearly don't like her that much!

The place where it becomes interesting is somewhere behind all of this: the Narrator is trying to understand what Albertine is thinking and why, and neglects the primary step of "communicating in any way" with her. He makes little tests and finds inconsistencies between days and over years; does it mean anything? Probably not! But it does produce an interesting side effect: the thing he's cataloging so meticulously is not Albertine, since he is selectively introducing and ignoring evidence, and not talking to anyone else about the conclusions he is drawing: no, by accident (and perhaps on purpose for Proust) you end up with a very accurate picture of how his own mind works, the unintentional revelation.

 

Olga Tokarczuk, House of Day, House of Night 
I love Tokarczuk, but some of the themes have started to become obvious across her books: mushrooms, gender and sexual identity beyond male-female dichotomies, mushrooms, real and metaphorical borders, mushrooms, mystical consciousnesses who like to use "we", mushrooms, mushrooms, and, of course: mushrooms.