Existential reading

I'm feeling very existential at the moment, having finally found time to read the last few pages of Albert Camus' The Plague which I started reading last weekend. Not only did I enjoy the moments of bleak humour more, but this time I found myself amused by the character of M. Grand, working by day at his civil service job, constantly overlooked, working on the plague statistics for Dr. Rieux and toiling at night on the first line of his great novel — someone with whom, I'd like to point out, I have nothing whatsoever in common.

Now that I've read it, I think I'm finally ready to tackle Blindness by José Saramago. I'm not particularly sure I want to read it, but my parents gave me a copy last week and suggested that I read it before xmas so that I'll have something to talk to my grandmother about. Basically my cousin gave the book to my grandma when he was dying and she suspects that there's something deeply significant about his choice. I suspect that there probably isn't: he probably thought that she'd like it and wanted to free up the space on his bookshelf. He might even have been following the great family tradition whereby certain people buy books for themselves then, having read them, give them away as Christmas or birthday presents...