All the books I read in June and what I thought of them

There's no update on my life or anything like that this month because I have nothing pleasant to say and I think it gets old. I read 7 books in June.

First, I reread The Rachel Incident which is about two young Irish people who live together and have an entanglement with one of their professors which makes everyone feel sort of dumb. There's a really good line where Rachel, whose best friend (the other protagonist) is named James, meets another person named James at a party, and she tells him, "sorry, I already have one of those." I thought when I first read it, that's clever, I'm going to steal it, AND I'M PLEASED TO REPORT THAT BETWEEN THEN AND NOW I HAVE HAD THAT EXACT CONVERSATION except my friend is PJ not James. This book is really a lot of fun. 

Then, I read the new Haruki Murakami book The City and its Uncertain Walls, which I realized while reading it steals the plot from Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World, which is a Haruki Murakami book from the 80s. I didn't realize you can rewrite a book you wrote and publish it. Can I do that? I'm very okay with this choice because this book is better than the original version. There are two vaguely parallel worlds, or, rather, the book is set in our world as well as a parallel underworld where people go, it seems, when they feel like they have no future in this world. It's very unclear throughout the book whether characters are themselves or a shadow of themselves, or, if there are two versions of them, which one is real. This is the best Murakami book maybe ever; I think it's better than Kafka on the Shore, and I want to reread The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and we can reevaluate then (I haven't actually read every Haruki Murakami novel, only, like, half). I guess I can say that The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle has left me with a perpetual yearning, years later, to sit in an empty well, but The City and its Uncertain Walls has not left me with a perpetual yearning to divorce myself from my shadow or read dreams or anything like that. Sorry to Bella if she's reading this for my relapse into reading Murakami books.

Then, I read Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green, which is a good book and made me care about tuberculosis. I also read Lolita, but I've already reviewed Lolita to death.

I read the Christopher Marlowe play Doctor Faustus which was vaguely fun, but the ending was disappointing and I don't think Christopher Marlowe is capable of imagining any perspective of the world besides that of a good Christian, so it feels completely unrealistic when he writes a character who is very un-Christian. I don't understand why anyone would act this way; I bet the German version is a lot better, but I don't think I'm going to read it because I get the idea. 

My book club read The Poison Keeper for June, which my aunt chose, and it was the first book club book I liked that I didn't choose. The writing style is sort of awkward sometimes and nothing to write home about, and the book categorically fails whenever it tries to be sentimental, but, in more subtle ways, it is having interesting conversations with itself about self-defense and euthanasia and why people do bad things. There is so much euthanasia in this book. I wasn't expecting it at all. 

I am going to copy paste my goodreads review for the Greek plays I read this month:

"ANDROMACHE is probably the most interesting play in this collection. i think it is really neat that first we focus on a love triangle with two women (hermione and andromache) and one man (neoptolemus) as if we are criticizing women for being crazy and jealous, and then instead we focus on a love triangle which is two men and a woman (helen). the moral of the story is don't do adultery, just do monogamy. i liked HECUBA also and it really got me when polyxena says she doesn't mind dying because she feels like she has no future. i like how hecuba worries about polyxena because my mom worries about me, too, only i don't get human sacrificed by invading armies (yet!). SUPPLIANT WOMEN is just sort of depressing. not sure how it works out when you invade thebes to establish that two wrongs don't make a right!! but i guess fighting just wars is not really a violation of religious rules, it just causes a lot of collateral damage. i like the line where the suppliant women say, we would have thought it was so terrible if we didn't get married, but we realize now that isn't true. i also like when adrastus advises, ἀλλὰ λήξαντες πόνων ἄστη φυλάσσεθ᾿ ἥσυχοι μεθ᾿ ἡσύχων (stop doing difficult things and become quiet people protecting your city with other quiet people) (this is my best effort). it reminds me of the world is quiet here. we should all just sit quietly together, that's a lot better than war. i haven't read ELECTRA in years, i'm having some trouble with my editions, but i have read electra."

The Rachel Incident by Caroline O'Donoghue ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

The City and its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe ⭐⭐

The Poison Keeper by Deborah Swift ⭐⭐⭐

Andromache by Euripides ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Hecuba by Euripides ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Suppliant Women by Euripides ⭐⭐⭐

Electra by Euripides ⭐⭐⭐