2001: A Space Odyssey

I finished reading 2001: A Space Odyssey about an hour ago. I'd come upon this book randomly while meandering through the sci-fi/fantasy section of the recently opened local library (previously, it had been closed because of the pandemic since I moved here last year, and this was my first time inside). The book started off interesting, then became frustrating because the story seemed to be mostly irrelevant descriptions. Every time the story reached a point at which the plot seemed it would finally progress, that part of the novel would end and another, seemingly unrelated part would begin. I considered abandoning the novel halfway through, but I hate leaving books unfinished, and one or two of the Amazon reviews I read gave me a bit of hope that the story would pick up.

The story did pick up, but the book ended shortly after that, and the ending was too abstract and fantastic to be satisfying. As I recently found out, however, there are three or four sequels, so I may get satisfaction yet.

I've never seen the movie that shares this book's title. I have considered it (because I love sci-fi and consider a lot of it), but some synopsis or other gave me the impression that the movie has no plot, so I passed it up. I'm glad that I've never seen the movie; I hate seeing movies before reading the books they are based on. Unless a book is quite bad, I generally do not want to see any movie based on it at all, because the visuals of movies interfere with the visuals I create in my mind's eye while reading the book. Also, movies that from the books they are based on annoy me.

My diet seems like it's going amazingly well; it's almost unbelievable how little hunger I feel despite my eating so little. However, I'm still losing weight but slowly, and this is a bit frustrating even though things should be this way so that I don't lose my precious muscle.

I've been even less productive than usual lately, and this bothers me. My apartment has been going much longer without being cleaned, and I've failed multiple times in my attempt to re-start my language study routine. I'm trying to get my sleep back to my baseline of five hours per night so that I can at least do as much as I was doing before. I've read part of a book on "optimum hydration," and, since I have the signs of dehydration mentioned in the book, I've implemented a couple of the suggestions: starting off each day with a bit of natural salt in a cup of water, and keeping my bedroom more humid. I was hoping the lack of humidity was the answer to why I always have shit in my nose that I need to clean out, but that situation has not improved, and I've not noticed any other improvements either; however, it's been only two days, so I probably need to wait.

I haven't been very motivated to post in this journal. Maybe I should have taken that as a sign that I should have kept the other journal.