Tag: Albert Camus

WWW Wednesday – September 17, 2025

Ryan2 Comments
www_wednesdays

WWW Wednesday is a weekly book meme run by Sam over at Taking on a World of Words. Check out her post and others over on her blog!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading

This week I started reading The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents by Terry Pratchett, the 28th novel in the Discworld series. As a series first, if memory serves, this book is apparently more of a children’s novel. So far, it reads more or less like any other book in the series, except it is perhaps more straightforward in its approach and more concretely divides things up into chapters (a change I really welcome). I’m just in the early phases so far, but I’m enjoying its take on the Pied Piper folk tale by shifting the focus to sentient talking rats and a cat. Already I’m especially enjoying Pratchett’s exploration of beings that previously couldn’t think like people suddenly being able to and how they come to grips with that.

Recently Finished

Over the last week I read through The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus, a book containing the author’s essay on absurdist philosophy. I’ve got to say, this book was a real struggle for me. Part of it was the writing style, which had syntax I found awkward (no doubt due to it being a translation), and a lot of it was just fully trying to process the ideas he was laying out. I used a number of tricks to help keep myself focused on the text, including reading along to an audiobook until that became annoying, as well as watching videos breaking down what certain chapters are getting at and then rereading them. I’m glad I put the effort into really understanding what this philosophy was all about rather than letting the words wash over my brain and fall away like droplets off a duck’s back. I believe I left with a decent grasp of the core ideas, but this was an unfortunately arduous reading experience.

Reading Next

I’ve started to compile books that I want to read for the Halloween season next month, though I haven’t decided on which will start things off.

Until next time, thank you for reading! Feel free to share your own post down below.

WWW Wednesday – September 10, 2025

RyanLeave a comment
www_wednesdays

WWW Wednesday is a weekly book meme run by Sam over at Taking on a World of Words. Check out her post and others over on her blog!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading

This week I started reading The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus, and despite its short length, I’m definitely in for a challenge. It’s not often that I read philosophy as it is, and so far I have found this a little difficult to digest, with me currently at about 30 pages in. After finishing one of the early chapters, in fact, I looked up something explaining it more plainly and then reread the entire thing; if I’m really going to do this, I ought to be as steadfast about understanding it as I can. Despite my issues, I am finding it legitimately fascinating, and I’m hoping that I will have to seek secondary sources for clarity on meaning less and less as I get further into it. I’m especially intrigued by the notion, as I understand it, that the absurdity in absurdism is not the inherent nature of the universe but an experience human beings have when their need for unified meaning from the universe clashes with its uncaring inhumanity.

Recently Finished

Last week I finally finished reading A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers. I really liked this book, but I feel like Pepper’s upbringing kind of stole the spotlight away from Sidra and her experiences coming to terms with living in a humanoid body. It still made for a really interesting book, and the two plot lines ended up coming together really well, but the more interesting aspect was Sidra figuring out how to be a person with bodily autonomy, not the story of a discarded waif living in a junkyard being raised by a ship’s AI and wanting to get off-world. Despite this, I have a much greater impression of the latter situation and all that she went through than the former, which is a shame. They never cleared the air on holding the crew from the first book accountable in some way either, which is a pity. There’s just so much untapped potential over what to explore with Sidra as a character.

Reading Next

I’m not sure what I’m going to read next, as The Myth of Sisyphus is commanding all of my attention.

Until next time, thank you for reading! Feel free to share your own post down below.

WWW Wednesday – August 27, 2025

RyanLeave a comment
www_wednesdays

WWW Wednesday is a weekly book meme run by Sam over at Taking on a World of Words. Check out her post and others over on her blog!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading

Finally, after half a decade and goodness knows how many to-read lists including this book, I have finally started reading A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers, the second novel in the Wayfarers series. I actually could’ve posted about this last week, but I had so much going on that I entirely forgot about posting that Wednesday. Whoops! I’m about 150 pages or so in and I’m enjoying it quite a lot. I don’t find myself quite as endeared to the characters as I did the crew in the first book, but it is making for fascinating science fiction to witness an AI meant to be housed in a ship, with all the sensors and viewpoints at its disposal there, try to exist limited to a humanoid body. An especially interesting consideration is how memory would actually work, as there’s only so much space for data storage that is limited to technology rather than a brain when it doesn’t have network access. So far it’s a going concern for Sidra, our protagonist, and I’m curious to see if and how it is resolved. Also, I’m convinced Blue wants to get freaky with Sidra but I can’t prove it.

Recently Finished

The very week I started it I finished reading Strange Houses by Uketsu, and I must say I was kind of let down by it by the end. The integration of floor plans was certainly interesting, especially as it has you follow the characters’ back and forth speculation about what such design choices could indicate and why, but in the end I just found it to be too bland. I thought the author and his friend’s predictions were entirely too accurate to what was really happening, and the revelatory breakdown of what was truly going on was such a formal and straightforward explanation that it was hard to really feel swept up by any of it. It’s just a bunch of names and being told who, what, and where outside any traditional narrative style; it was almost like reading a report of events. I will say, I like that certain things remained obscure and don’t quite add up if you tally it all together, but my intrigue isn’t strong enough to keep me thinking about it either. I hope I enjoy Strange Pictures more.

Reading Next

I’ve been meaning to get to some nonfiction books for a while now, so tentatively I think I will read The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus next, especially since the Halloween season is right around the corner, at which point it will be all about the spooky.

Until next time, thank you for reading! Feel free to share your own post down below.

WWW Wednesday – December 7, 2022

RyanLeave a comment
www_wednesdays

WWW Wednesday is a weekly book meme run by Sam over at Taking on a World of Words. Check out her post and others over on her blog!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading

Tracking the ChupacabraI’ve managed to make some more decent progress in Tracking the Chupacabra by Benjamin Radford since last week. The chapters I read through were a lot more up my alley, as they dealt with looking into actual supposed sightings and even recovered bodies of supposed chupacabras, as well as the experiences of the people who found them. I was especially interested in one account where the woman who found the body, who has turned it into something rather lucrative for herself, remarked about assumed photos of the creature from 100 years ago. It’s fascinating that the common assumption among people, including myself growing up, is that the chupacabra is old folklore. The most startling thing about this book is still the fact that accounts of the creature only date back to 1995. I want to try and get this done before next week, as I really need to move onto other books if I’m going to get them finished before the year is out.

Recently Finished

Nothing this week either. I really need to crack open some comic books.

Reading Next

The Myth of SisyphusWith only three weeks remaining in December, I’m really not sure if I can start anything bigger than graphic novels or Galatea by Madeline Miller. I really want to try though, so we’ll have to see how things go. What is most important to me is that I finish reading A Carnival of Snackery by David Sedaris rather than something I haven’t even started yet, though, so I will be prioritizing that. Another prospective read that has popped up for me though is The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus, which I bought a little while ago. It’s only a little under 150 pages long, despite looking longer than that, so I’m considering maybe squeezing that in. We shall see.

Until next time, thank you for reading! Feel free to share your own post down below.