Yesterday was a highly momentous day in my existence. After in excess of no fewer than five months of trying and failing, I have *finally* got to the end of that monster of all books, The Tin Drum by Günter Grass. Or more precisely, I have just got to the end of the Esperanto translation, ‘La lada tambureto’, which I bought in Szombathely this summer. If I think back over my reading career to date, I am struggling to think of another book which I have disliked so intensely. I have read books which are boring, yes, but I haven’t found them to be simultaneously offensive. I have read books which are certainly offensive, but haven’t found them simultaneously boring. I have read books which revolved around some pretty unlikeable characters, but by and large even if a book essentially tells the story of a villain, the villain has some sort of redeeming feature, something which makes you think that after all he must be human and that perhaps he wouldn’t have gone down such a negative route in life if his mother hadn’t died when he was four, or some such. The main character in the Tin Drum is called Oscar, and I don’t believe he has any redeeming qualities at all. I actually only read to the end because I was hoping he might die a slow and painful death. He didn’t (more…)