The last book I finished was over a week ago, Carpe Jugulum. Since then it's been The Fellowship of the Ring downstairs, and-- I won't say Hizakurige/ Shanks' Mare upstairs, as endless games of solitaire to avoid reading Hizakurige. It's an Edo period picaresque novel about two ne'er-do-wells travelling the Tokaido road to Kyoto. It's long, repetitive, obvious, and adolescent. Edoites loved it, of course.
(I don't think I've ever read a picaresque novel in my life, unless Tristram Shandy counts, but that one's simply batshit. I have the impression that picaresque novels are all long, repetitive, obvious, and adolescent, is why I've avoided them.)
