Brain Gourmet

Warning: Pathetic rambling gibberish to follow that does The Man Without Qualities no justice.

Finally! My sentence is over. This book kept me imprisoned for more than two months and I am now thrown back into the real world.
Prison is a strange place. It made my heart heavy, longing for the company of all those books running at large out there – piling up on my reader, staring at me seductively from my shelves, calling me from bookstore windows.

Yet, as much as I craved freedom, I found comfort being boxed in between hundreds and hundreds of pages. The existence within these paper walls was monotone and illuminating at the same time. It was overwhelming at times. Sometimes it was more than what I could process. It frustrated me and it calmed me down.

My inmates were an interesting bunch of people as well (if only they talked less and did more). I would probably have fallen for Ulrich in the end - I have a soft spot for wiseacres. Me and Agathe would certainly have become friends had she not left the party so suddenly and had I not been set free.

Prison was actually a place of humility. It forced me to restrain my desires and it taught me that there are some subjects I know nothing about, quite a few topics I am ignorant of, many concepts I don’t understand. It taught me that perseverance pays off in the end and that confinement doesn’t necessarily mean lack of freedom.

The Man Without Qualities was a hard book for me to digest. It was too boring. It was too dense. It was too long and it was too short. It was amazing. There was genius lurking in every page, in every sentence almost.

I am now excited about all the books awaiting me, but a small part of me will always remain in that cell of thousands of pages, millions of words and an infinity of ideas.