I have been a bit behind with doing my own reading assignments so I am lightening the load for now.  I think it will be pushing it on my part just to read this one book that I never even had a chance of starting last month and it is 800 pages or something like that.  If I only read 3-4 days a week how many pages will I have to read each day to complete that in the month?  Hmm, I am guessing quite a few.

Now, on to bigger and better things.  I did finish reading The Metamorphosis by Kafka so I guess I can voice my opinion on it a bit.  On a whole I did not feel the book was all that spectacular.  However, it appears as though I am in the minority in these regards.  Let me elaborate on this subject and you will see what I mean.   When I bought the book I took a quick glance just to see how many pages I was getting myself into (with obvious concern given the fact that I was supposed to read that 800 page Martin book in the same month).  As it turns out, the book is quite thin and appears to have just under 200 pages.  Oh, I thought to myself.  This will be no problem.  As it turns out the number of pages was not what held me up this past month but that is another story entirely and maybe I will expound on that down the road.   As for now I am still giving my literary review of "The Metamorphosis".   So as I was explaining it appeared to have just under 200 pages so I bought the book and was on my way.  Hold on, there is another story in that process as well so let me go on a little tangent here about that.

I had a $5 gift certificate to Walden's Bookstore, which was what lead me to go buy a new book in the first place.  So I wondered to the store with just 2 novels in mind.   Kafka, of course, and "Fountainhead" by Ayn Rand or however you spell that first name.  Naturally, Kafka's was not only much shorter in length, and given my time constaints more suitable to my needs at this time but also it was much cheaper as well.  Ergo, I bought "The Metamorphosis".  But wait, there is more.   When I took the book to the checkout I gave the clerk my $5 gift certificate, which by the way I earn for free simply by using my Walden's book Visa card, along with my Preferred Reader Membership card and was all set for checkout.  As things turned out, with the discount I get with my membership card and the gift certificate I not only walked out of the store with a new book but they gave me something like a dollar back in change.   How is that for smart shopping.  Okay, back to the book review.

So I finally had some time to sit down and read some of the book, 8 pages to be exact.   I was not overwhelmed but it had a decent start to it.  A few days later I groggily made my way through another handful of pages.  And a week or so goes by and I decide I am going to sit down and do some serious reading.  Naturally, at this point I need to go right back to the beginning because I have no idea what this book was about when I left off.  So I did some serious reading and managed to reread all the way through page 25 and am dead set on cranking through at least that many if not more pages every day until I finish it.  So the next day I am about to fall to sleep as I just finished page 42 when I look to see when the chapter ends.  This is the point that I realize the entire book is only 55 pages long  The other 140 pages or so is all text written by others that are attempting to elaborate or explain what Kafka was writing about.  Like I wasn't surprised to no end by all this.  Well, to make a long story short I finished off those last dozen pages or so and thought to myself, do I really want to read what everybody else has to say about this book or the various interpretations there they have about what Kafka was saying.  Needless the say the answer was no!  I did try and read about a half dozen or so and that was enough for me to fully understand these people really have too much time on their hands.  And for there to be 140 pages of insights from all these people about a book that was only 50 pages long blew my mind.  Personally, I thought the book really lacked volume (and I don't mean pages) and depth.  Conceptually, there was a story there to be developed.   Unfortunately, the author failed to take advantage of this idea and didn't do justice to the opportunities it presented.  More could have been done to appropriately describe the dung-beetle for starters.  And a lot more could have been done to create a more entertaining ending.  As for what goes along throughout the middle, how about putting some thought into it and supplying a life to the main character and take the reader through a few adventures.

Allen-As a Man Thinketh

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