Finished: Heart of Darkness (Conrad). An interesting book, but I'm glad it was short! I found Conrad's writing hard to follow, especially because he doesn't indent for dialogue. He just includes it right in the middle of a paragraph, one person after the other. It can get confusing. He did have some profound thoughts, but I found this to be more of a guy's book, if that makes sense. The intense, profound man decides to take a journey up the Congo River to eventually pick up the other intense, profound man, all the while discovering his soul, or all of mankind's soul, in the intense, profound, darkness of the savage jungle. I can see my dad, who was very philosophical, embracing some of the prose. Like this:

"Going up that river was like traveling back to the earliest beginnings of the world....There were moments when one's past came back to one, as it will sometimes when you have not a moment to spare to yourself; but it came in the shape of an unrestful and noisy dream, remembered with wonder amongst the overwhelming realities of this strange world of plants, and water, and silence. And this stillness of life did not in the least resemble a peace. It was the stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention. It looked at you with a vengeful aspect."

Or this:

"The earth seemed unearthly. We are accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster, but there---there you could look at a thing monstrous and free. It was unearthly, and the men were----No, they were not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of it---this suspicion of their not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one. They howled and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity---like yours---the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar."

"...but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity---like yours---the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar." Now that my dad would have liked. :-)

My son really liked this book too. I'm not saying I didn't...just that I might have a more intense feeling reading about wild lions in Africa, rather than the solitary Congo River journey and love/hate affair with the jungle. Show me that video of Christian the lion reuniting with the men who raised him after being introduced back into the wild and I cry every time! :-)