Double Occupancy Costs Extra

I finished Guy Vanderhaeghe's The Last Crossing, a great book about journeying through the harsh moodswings of Canadian weather, where one character has to act quickly to escape a winter storm, something that most prairie dwellers can relate to, except, perhaps, for this part:

Simon scrambled to his knees, knife upraised. Drove the sixteen-inch blade into the horse's chest, sawed the belly down to the legs. Guts spilling, a thin stream sifting out of the lips of the incision. Plunged his hands into the mess of entrails. Tore away, scooping offal behind him, hacking with the knife at whatever resisted, whatever clung. Moaning, hunching his shoulders, drawing his knees up to his chest, wriggling away at the mouth of the wound, he burrowed into the balmy pocket.

I thought about starting a list of books I do not recommend that people read, but I didn't get very far. Mostly, I think people should steer clear of Yann Martel's first novel Self. I did all I could to find a compelling explanation for "what this book is about", but all I could come up with is that it's a book-length exercise in characterization. Nothing happens in this novel, which isn't to say that I demand that things happen in every book I read. But if nothing is going to happen, I think it should be an interesting nothing that I'm reading. Has anyone read Virginia Woolf's Orlando? I haven't read it, but I thought for a while that Martell was remaking and deconstructing Woolf's book. I don't want to reopen debate about Life of Pi (which I gather was rather heated), but I liked Pi, and it seems to me that Self was a practice run at writting a novel.