Wednesday, August 10, 2005

I cannot escape it

I found an English language bookstore when I was walking around town on Sunday, so I decided to buy a few books to read during the evening. So, I bought Catch 22 since I haven't read it, and then I thought I should just pick a random fiction book. It was my goal to pick a book that was different from the usual books I read.

So, I see this book called Atomised. It's got a picture of a depressed girl in her underwear on the cover and it won some book award. I figure what the hell. Here's where our little friend irony comes in. One of the main characters of the book is a physicist (sigh), who goes into biology (that sounds familiar), and essentially brings an end to the human race(I hope I don't do that one). Needless to say, I manage to pick the one fiction book in the whole damn bookstore with a main character that has chosen a career path quite similar to my own.

The book itself is actually an excellent book, which is kind of a commentary on the latter half of the 20th century, sex, and the rise of science. The book's characters are pretty horrible people, with the physicist being a character who essentially has almost no human feeling whatsoever. I guess next time I'll just close my eyes, point at a random book, and maybe I'll have better luck in the "book that has no similarity to my life" category.