I finally read Lord of the Rings in full. Between translations (both Polish and German, back when I could read German) struggling to capture the tone and Tolkien requiring a certain mindset, I still can't blame myself for dropping the book time and time again, effectively reading via spaced excerpts until recently. Still, it's good, but probably suffers from the same problem GEB does: because it's the first one to do its thing, it means a lot of the stuff it inspired have a better flow even if they only tackle one of its themes/aspects. It's appreciated, there's value in reading it as a classic/progenitor of sorts, but it probably will never become one of those books I can just pick up and enjoy. It did deepen my appreciation of the movies, though, and they don't require much of a setup.

Słowo jest w człowieku (The word is in the man/person) by Jan Miodek - a famous Polish grammarian writes about common/public mistakes, word usage evolution, and linguistic oddities in a fun way. I liked his TV program (yes, seriously) as a child, and seeing his name on a prominent place at my local library made my day. Unfortunately, it's one of those books that are not only untranslatable (or at least in a way that'd preserve his flair, cf. Tolkien above) but likely unapproachable without, like, C1 level of comprehension in Polish... which, as in most languages, includes a lot of natives.

I'm also trying to read the Vulgate Bible, and it's an uneven ride. There are whole chapters that go in smoothly only for me to stop and go "holy shit, future imperative outside a textbook or Cicero!" or "which of those comes first?" or be otherwise confused. Annoyingly, even though I was never religious, went through confirmation mostly because 'it can matter to certain people' advice from my priest... I didn't realize how well-catechized I ended up being. There are disturbingly long passages where I don't read Latin but recall Polish, and I haven't been to a mass in, dunno, 12 years?

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. Sherlock Holmes in SPAA... I mean, medieval HRE. Though I probably wouldn't have enjoyed the book nearly as much if I didn't have The Autumn of the Middle Ages in fresh memory considering all the 'change in the air and passing/ending of ages' themes. The whole story within a story within a story recursive framind device was a bit distracting, but I can't help but think people focus too much on it? I mean, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein dips down to what, a flashback in a dream in a memoir in a letter in a letter, all as hazy and unreliable as in Eco, and nobody who read Franky bitches about that? Dunno, I liked it.