When I read The Trial years ago, I have also looked into some secondary literature about Kafka, and it is true that the arrangement of the chapters in The Trial was largely decided by his best friend Max Brod, it even goes so far that Kafka has asked Max Brod to destroy all his writings after his death, but Max Brod published the majority of his work posthum and against his will.
America is a rather quick read, you might really like it ^^

As you can imagine, I have never heard of Tom Holt and I also have never read Beowulf, heh, but dry humour sounds good, it’s so… british? XD For me, british humour has always been either completely not understandable (Three Men in a Boat) or absolutely, absolutely brilliant (Monty Python, Oscar Wilde).

@Prog: Ah, unfortunately not. I think I have read chapters 1, 2, 3, 5 and 8 – something like that. I have skimmed through the rest though and seeing Karl’s powerlessness with people makes me facepalm, heh.

The idea of the ‘journey’ in Kafka’s books rather than the ‘destination’ is really important I think – especially when all his novels were published in an ‘incomplete’ state. I’ve always wondered whether the version of The Trial we are all familiar with is what he originally intended the final version to be, so I try to reserve judgement on certain points. I’ll add America to my ‘to read’ list then. ^_^

I’m currently reading quite a bit Tom Holt – a friend of mine lent me Who’s Afraid of Beowulf?/My Hero and I’m really enjoying it for the dry humour and playful (mis)use of famous characters and events from history and literature. It reminds me a bit of Terry Pratchett, but I think he has a great style of his own.