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Okay, wow. They should stock this thing in the bible section. Or the adult erotica section, because either way it gives you some pretty intense experiences.

In a nutshell: this book is kind of like an existentialist essay in the form of a diary. It's about this red-haired writer guy Antoine Roquentin, who's recently been overwhelmed with an intolerable awareness of his own existence. Like, super intolerable. Like, a soul-crushing, mind-blowing, nausea-inducing kind of intolerable. It's pretty awesome.

And the best thing - the best. thing. - was the accessibility of it all. Sartre, the fiend, satisfied me in ways that Dostoevsky and Camus never could. I mean, when has an existentialist exposition ever been made so readable? So ironic and captivating, so funny - there were times I actually laughed out loud. Moreover, Sartre gets me. I honestly cannot describe the feeling of holding a crummy paperback filled with words written over 50 years ago, and finding one of your own thoughts in amongst those of a fictional character. I guess it's what Christians must feel like when they read the bible. Or what middle-aged single women feel while reading a particularly steamy passage of Passion in the Prairie.

This is the kind of book you could read again and again, discovering some new detail every time, and getting something different out of it with every read. A new favourite!