The Metamorphosis and Other Stories by Franz Kafka

My most recently completed "Commute Classic" is the Recorded Books collection The Metamorphosis and Other Stories by Franz Kafka. In addition to The Metamorphosis, this collection includes Early Stories, Contemplation, The Judgement, The Stoker, In the Penal Colony, and A Country Doctor. The recording contains stories, short stories, and "prose poems" (all of which, by the way, can best be described as Kafkaesque). Also, there is an interesting introduction, which describes the cultural situation that Kafka found himself in, being a Jew in Austrian Prague at the beginning of the 20th century. Finally, there's an interview with the translator (Joachim Neugroschel) at the end.

Overall, I'd say that it's fairly interesting and accessible (unlike Faulkner). I'd recommend it to anyone interested in literature or culture. If you're not familiar with the author, which I wasn't, the first thing that struck me was that his writing can be very unpredictable. This was made worse for me because I initially didn't know the length of any particular piece. I mean, if you're reading a poem or one-page story, you know the approximate length, but if you're listening like I was, I had no idea if it was a 2-minute or 2-hour story. I eventually started looking at the length of the tracks: if something was only 90 seconds long, I'd know it was going to only take one track.

• The Metamorphosis: The title track and a classic. It was in one of my high school literature anthologies, but for some reason, my class didn't read it. My son was familiar with the idea from a Fox Trot comic strip.
• The Judgment: I really had no idea where this story was going until it got there, and then I didn't think it made a lot of sense.
• The Stoker: This is the first chapter of a posthumously published book called Amerika. It's interesting -- again you don't know where he's going with the story until he gets there.
• I enjoyed both A Report to an Academy and Jackals and Arabs.
• A Country Doctor didn't do much for me.
• I found In the Penal Colony to be very disturbing, but not to the extent that I wouldn't recommend it.