Event Factory, by Renee Gladman

Event Factory is a difficult book to describe. It is called a novel, but it is very short for one, and it is published in a small size with spacious margins and double-spaced lines. The content is harder to describe. An unnamed female narrator has come to a surreal city called Ravicka, and from there it gets weirder. She is a kind of linguistic traveler who operates in non-sequiturs and fantastical imagery. Thus the style of the writing is the bulk of the impetus for reading the book. Yet it is tough to get into, though eventually one becomes accustomed to the rhythms of the events, and it it does lead to a kind of oblique ending. Moreso it makes the reader question what they want in reading something like this. Does one really enjoy a mysterious puzzle held at a distance from the reader via language and perception? I didn't, but I soldiered on to the end primarily because the book is short, and I was curious enough to want to experience the whole of it, whatever that might be. This is the first of a series of small books set in Ravicka, but my curiosity is now more than sated, so the further aspects of Ravicka will remain unvisited by me.
 

The Twits, by Roald Dahl

I was inspired recently to look to some Roald Dahl children's books that I didn't read when I was younger, and I picked The Twits to read first. It's an odd tale, concerning a very unpleasant married couple, Mr. Twit and Mrs. Twit, who prank each other when they aren't tormenting monkeys or collecting birds to make up a weekly dish, Bird Pie. The only plot to the book concerns revenge, and how the monkeys and birds work together to end the terror of the Twits. A pleasant read, of its kind, but not one of Dahl's best. It's pretty short too, and many pages have characteristic Quentin Blake illustrations, which add to the charm of the book. I understand that Neflix has announced a new animated movie of The Twits coming out in 2025. It will need more plot to turn this book into a film.