The seventy-second book: #61 Jacques the Fatalist - Denis Diderot
In writing Jacques the Fatalist, it felt like Diderot wanted to be clever. The novel leads with a lot of imaginary conversations with the reader about how the writer isn't going to explain things or skips the boring bits, in a way that I found quite off putting. On the other side, when we get to hear the stories (and stories in stories) Jacques, his master and his compatriots tell, as well as the few bits we get told off that they experience, they are amusing and interesting. There are a lot of digressions and not all the stories actually finishes, but it tells enough that you need to know.
It works when Diderot doesn't try to be too clever, but in the end it ends up feeling a bit unsatisfying as a whole - an okay experience, but done better elsewhere.