Decisions, decisions

I had hoped writing my long, long post yesterday would help me narrow my options to two or three, but it only made reaching any sort of decision that much more difficult. Last night and this morning I kept going back and forth between them all, torn, absolutely torn!

So, I forced myself to make a decision, and here's what it is:
Ulysses might be one that I want to read the most, but it definitely requires much attention. That being said, I will leave this one for when I have read some other ones and won't be so distracted. A similar thing can be said for Swann's Way, so this one was cancelled out, too (for now, I hope!). I hate deciding to read them later, I know that so many things can happen between now and "later," I can very well end up reading something completely different! Why can't I read them all?!

Ehm, so, anyways. That leaves Shōgun, Hopscotch, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward and The Meaning of Night. 
As for Lovecraft's The Case, it's so short that it doesn't bother me to put it off until any other time in the summer. I know I'll get to it eventually.
So I effectively narrowed down my reading to 3: Shōgun, Hopscotch, and The Meaning of Night. I'll focus in the last two for now, since that way I can satisfy both my desire to read a new book, as well as to restart an old one. Plus, as engaging as Shōgun is, after reading such authentic Japanese literature it just feels a little off! 

Hopscotch...It's probably a good idea I am not reading it at the same time as Ulysses, considering they both use language in such unconventional ways! The novel is extremely...strange, with the lead character being Argintinian Horacio Oliveira, living in 1950s Paris. "He was middle class...had been to an Argentinian school," but was now caught up in an affair with a woman he calls La Maga. 
Talking about the novel yesterday I noticed one striking feature of Cortázar's writing is his use of concrete terms to describe abstract ideas. I am still trying to find words to describe the way this novel reads, but it's hard, to say the least. 

Even this existence I sometimes try to describe, this Paris where I move about like a dry leaf, would not be visible if behind it there did not beat an anxiety for an axis, a coming together with the center shaft. All these words, all these terms for the same disorder. Pg 15

He had lived long enough to be suspicious of anything stuck to someone's nose that keeps falling off: the weight of the subject in the notion of the object.Pg 18

(What? Perhaps I'm thinking too hard, but I can't seem to grasp exactly what this sentence means. It's surrounded one one side by a declaration that issues of history shouldn't necessarily be mixed with issues of philosophy, and on the other by ruminations on how one's beliefs can be reflected on one's physiognomy) 

Anyways, I'm not even twenty pages in, so I can't say much. I don't know why I picked those two quotes; perhaps because they are a small sample of the beauty of the langauge of the novel ("where I move about like a dry leaf") as well as the intensity ("...of the subject in the notion of the object.") I will keep reading and aim to post frequently!