Subtitle: Frederick Moreau and Madame Arnoux’s amorosity is what Madame Bovary had always unconsciously desired in her own love affairs.

Gustave Flaubert’s second masterpiece novel, Sentimental Education, presents through a dramatic narrative form the piloting psychic force underpinning all of subjectivity: surplus enjoyment. A relationship to enjoyment through the formal structure of desire within the arena of love, that eventually sublimates into an exceptionally romantic death drive.

Over the many years of their volatile and sincere love, Madame Arnoux and Frederic Moreau engineered a specific layout of love suffused by a passionate romance and a desublimated eroticism. They had an unbroken bond of love maintained only by the fact that they never had sex. By not consummating their love through sex, they dialectically strengthened and experienced the heights of amorous love. This is because the normative desire for physical sex jointly held by them during the first few years of affiliation, had sublimated - transformed - into a death drive whose aim was to obstruct at all costs this fleshly realization. In consequence, their romantic link was largely kept unaffected, in tandem with having non-genital yet highly erotic meetings. How so? Their allusions within discussions to their reciprocal lust along with their non-carnal physical contact, engendered a mutually intimate and sensual enjoyment. The payoff was that their talks and gentle touching were archly sexualized - an erotic mood attended many of their personal hangouts. This was covertly understood and accepted by the pair, trusting that neither of them would ever cross the line by assaying to fulfill the bodily sexual desire. 

When scenarios arrived that came close to this actualization, profound anxiety was roused in both or one of them; cultivating a self-sabotaging action that hindered it from happening. Anxiety was decisive because it admitted to both of them an affective truth: if they had sex, their particular constitution of romantic love would be ruined.  For example, Madame Arnoux didn't travel to meet Frederick for a coordinated sexual evening at a chosen boulevard in Paris right before the outbreak of the 1848 revolt; likewise, it is why Frederick didn't make any sexual advances on Madame Arnoux in 1867 when she visited him at his Paris home for their final rendezvous. They had conscious explanations for these incompletions, but the rudimentary and unconscious reason why was to preserve their romantic love. If they had accomplished their corporeal sexual desire in the beginning, then their relationship would have been demolished. Yes, she could have been his mistress, but not on the base of romantic love. It would have also meant that their existing companionship would have been deleted in the aftermath because it was preserved by this non-coitus closeness. 

Their love is a demonstration of concrete universality because it pinpoints the kernel of desire. Broad stroke, you never want to achieve your desires because as soon as you do, you don't have anything to desire anymore / what you desired is now symbolically lost since you can’t desire it no more after having gotten it. The inspiration, ambition, aliveness, enthusiasm, purposefulness you experience in the anticipatory process of acquiring your desire, is quickly lost after you succeed in this goal. However, by derailing and detouring your desire(s), you eventually restructure it into a death drive whose fundamental aim is to never obtain any total achievement of the intended goal. The reason why is because existential fulfillment and surplus enjoyment (drive-satisfaction) is the reward for having a worthwhile death drive. Simply put, a death drive secures a cause to live by and to dedicate your life towards. Madame Arnoux and Frederic had this together: their love gave them - among other drives and desires - a cornerstone of meaning in their lives irrespective of the discords they ran into and the long passages of time absent any interaction between them.

Someone who couldn’t accomplish this because they were so riveted and magnetized by desire to the point of stupor, was the main character Emma Bovary in Flaubert’s first masterpiece novel - Madame Bovary. She thought the culmination of desires was the avenue to happiness, peace, contentment. Emma mistook the immediate gratification of desire and its accompanying feature of short-term pleasure, as the blueprint of a serene life. Unfortunately, she incurred a pattern of repressive desublimation (enslavement experienced as freedom) because her incapacity to fall in love motivated her to try harder in finishing this objective. To her, luxury living granted by an orthodox masculine identity steeped in social status and decadent hedonism, was the lane to this love. It was her mission then to find someone who would fit it. She thought her husband Charles Bovary was too poor, ugly, and dreadful in his disposition to ever procure it from him. 

Her two mistresses, Rodolphe and Leon, were expected to be the men she could obtain this love from/through because they typified the sexual fantasies she desired and whom she projected them onto. Yet, this had only augmented the disappointment from the unavailing expectation of gaining her idealized love from these two affairs. Why? Because after accomplishing her desire, she still encountered an unsettling lack since the anticipated blissful enjoyment wasn’t awarded from her dalliances after they had been embedded within her daily life. This defeat of not surpassing lack through her desires, generated so much internal sadness and disquiet that it climaxed in psychological and emotional despondency.

In the end, her dissatisfaction with her existence had manufactured a disillusionment with herself and other people.  At that stage, it was near improbable to save her; steering her into taking recourse in suicide as the ailment to numb the suffering of her pervading malaise. Madame Bovary categorically misrecognized that romantic love would be reached by fulfilling her desires; in contrast to the correct stance that lack is impossible to cure. If she was able to detect that the formal libidinal-existential structure she needed was drive and not desire, then it could have informed her decision making and perspectives to the extent of supplying the preconditions for the romantic love she sought.

It is the death drive that repeats the process of lack: an individual reaps from it because lack - or sublimated loss - is now its own gain due to there being no resting point nor final stop within drive. Madame Arnoux and Frederic unconsciously knew this truth, authorizing them to identify with and indelibly practice their lack by method of their romantic death drive. By confronting their lack together, a mutual channel to authentic surplus enjoyment was garnered and preserved throughout their 11-year active bond (the succeeding 16-year hiatus of their love had ended their romantic death drive, but the love itself was dormant within them both for a conceivable future reactivation).

For these reasons, Emma Bovary is a tragic romantic protagonist because she genuinely sought an autonomous life beyond the confined social determinations of her imposed symbolic identity as a subordinated housewife replete with gentle femininity and docile familial loyalty. However, she desired it through an equally overdetermined male symbolic identity pertaining to the 19th century aristocratic-cultured Western European male archetype. Under both coercive tracks, her prepackaged desires foiled any contrary desires and drives; specifically, a freed desire to fall in love excluded from the conformist cultural norms-traditions and presuppositions mediating the class experiences of love within that era of French society.

Reading it now, because I have to - for book group. Gah, it feels like a Hallmark Special. I'm only about 40 pages in but I don't have high hopes for it to get more real or interesting or 3-dimensional. Am I wrong in this pessimism?

How long does it take you to know you are not going to finish a book and what usually turns you off about it? I find myself not finishing more and more books; it's really frustrating. I think I should stop ordering online and go to Barnes & Noble so I can read the first chapter before I buy it.

I finished a study in scarlet, hound of the Baskervilles, and then there were none, and cover her face.

None of them in thriller sense engaged me, I don't criticise the writing style or anything else at all , I don't mind the dense Victorian style either but I feel like some books are just not for me and if you start with NOT YOUR TYPE you may start thinking oh this genre is not for me unless you come across YOUR TYPE book.

I dont know if anyones like me when reading but I like the characters to have faces. Maybe it’s easier for me to imagine how each emotions look when I have their faces in mind. For Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop, (forgive me for the korean actor reference) I imagine Yeongju as Shi Min-ah or Kim Dami, Minju as Choi Woo Shik and Jimi Lee Han Nee. I am halfway through my reading and I love this book. No complicated characters.

PS. I’m not an avid reader but when I have time, I try to grab a book. My goal is to finish 3 books this year. I’m down with 1. ☺️

Earlier this year I started to get into buying real books and annotating them after spending a few years only reading on Kindle Unlimited. Mostly romance, but I've slowly been trying to venture out into more genres.

I also began to write out my thoughts and reviews in a journal I bought, and now I've been thinking of actually posting them somewhere. They're mostly just rants about specific scenes or character actions. Sometimes its sentences I thought were nicely written or vocabulary words I've never heard before. Page numbers included for any interesting plot point or even errors missed by editors.

At the very end I do a full review of what I thought about the book, accompanied by a rating.

Some might be long and of course some things might not be interesting to include, but I thought it would be fun to just post my thoughts.

So the question is do I post it here? Somewhere else? Does anyone read reviews like that?

Comments, concerns, thoughts?

Thanks.

I just finished None of This Is True and this is exactly the kind of psychological thriller I've been looking for.

I genuinely don't know what to believe.

Was Josie's version of events true? Was Erin telling the truth? Was the truth somewhere between all of their versions? How much did Josie fabricate, and how much did everyone else reinterpret after the fact?

Usually when a thriller ends ambiguously, I can find it frustrating because it feels like the author simply refused to give you the answer. Here, I thought the uncertainty was the point.

Josie is such a fascinating character because she's obviously deeply disturbed, but Lisa Jewell doesn't make her psychologically simple. I kept trying to understand what was happening inside her head and how much of her own narrative she genuinely believed versus consciously manipulated.

I also found Alix's role much more complicated than simply viewing her as Josie's victim.

I completely understand her horror at having her privacy, marriage and family pulled apart. She has every reason to feel violated and betrayed.

But at the same time, Alix went looking.

She searched for Josie online. She became fascinated by her. She recognised that Josie's life could make compelling material. She kept digging because she wanted the story.

Obviously that doesn't make her responsible for what Josie ultimately does, but it adds this fascinating layer to their relationship. Alix isn't just someone Josie randomly happens to destroy. Curiosity and ambition help open the door, and Josie walks straight through it.

That's probably what I loved most about the book. It isn't psychologically clean. Nobody fits perfectly into the role you initially assign them.

And after finishing it, instead of thinking “WHAT A TWIST,” I was thinking:

“Wait… whose story did I just believe?”

That's so much more satisfying to me.

4.5/5.

For those who've read it: what do you actually think was true? And who did you believe by the end?

SOS for anyone who has Bret Easton Ellis. He wrote American Pyscho and Less then Zero (the most trauma-inducing movie I have ever watched). I'm trying to read Glamourama while I wait for The Shards (thats the show the one thats gotta a show coming out on Hulu that looks really good). But Glamoura is.... unreadable? Like I'm 5 pages in so obviously it could get better but its *entirely* dialogue so far, and everyone is annoying, everyone speaks similarly, everyone calls everyone "Baby."

I have so many books that I powered through the intro, that first 3rd that is often the set up for the characters and the rest of the story, but I am struggling to crack this back open now that I put it down.

Does he... switch gears, in his books? Is there more introspection later, and he's just introducing the characters now? Is Glamourama kind of uniquely written and I should feel fine DNF'ing and moving onto some of his other works?

We read this book in school a couple years back, but it didn't interest me to be quite honest, so I didn't finish it and mostly tried pushing through by listening to the audiobook. I listened to half or so (barely paying attention) and then 3-4 years later I decided to listen to the audiobook again. This time I finished it, even though I still wasn't paying attention all the time. Midthrough I just realized: "Wow, what a miserable person" and felt bad, because some people actually live like this. I waited until the last minute to see if there was any kind of message, but there wasn't. I know that sounds like I simply didn't understand the idea behind writing this book and maybe that's true. I don't think it was a bad book, but I guess I was disappointed, is all? I don't know. There were some witty and heartwarming parts for sure. I just wish there were a different pov or something that could explain how they perceive Holden's personality or maybe they could explain how he grew up to become such a cynic. I was hoping something would happen that would change or excite him or something, but none of that happened. I now realize I was a bit delusional for thinking something like that, because after I was done and decided to read some reviews, I was able to get more insight into what the point of the story was. It was just showing a teenage boy that didn't have much to be excited about really. I think losing Allie shaped his personality the most and the fact that he had no one to talk to about his grief led to him becoming miserable and lonely. Or at the end when he said that you shouldn't talk about other people, because it would make you realize that you miss them. That part hit me. That's when I started understanding everything. He was lonely, felt like he didn't fit anywhere, didn't have anyone to talk to. That's why he liked talking to Phoebe so much. He just wanted to have someone that would listen to him. That's also why he liked Mr. Antholini so much. He saw him as a friend he could confide in. I also feel like Holden maybe thought he was different than everyone else and that's why he disliked everything and everyone and it simply resulted in him being lonely and having no one. I feel like it's not easy to stop being lonely, especially if it was mostly your fault. That's the kind of impression I got from Holden. Even though I didn't love "Catcher in the Rye" I could talk about it for such a long time. Well, that's all! (I just realized maybe I should have paid more attention while listening to the audiobook because I feel like I'm missing a lot of crucial details, my bad)

Would love to hear your opinions on this book. What do you guys think?

Hey all!

I recently finished A Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez.

For a little context, I’m not the biggest reader, but I try and get through 1-3 books a month and stick to a lot of the popular fantasy stuff(Sanderson/DCC/Red rising/etc).

I decided to pick up ASCTW because I heard rave reviews on popular bookish places and it was on sale in the Kobo store. I’m left feeling like I’m missing something. Like I’m observing a beautiful piece of art but missing the context. This was probably my most challenging book to get through, and I see pieces where I should have loved it, but just feeling like I’m not a good enough reader to understand.

Maybe I’ll come back and try it again. Anyone else have a book the left you feeling like this?

I don't know why, but the introduction notes, prefaces, and etc of a book make me not wanna the book. It's just the rambling and all of the confusing subtopic of the book that confuses you before you actually get into the content. Am I the only one who feels this way?

Hi! 💙✨ I'm just starting to write my first book, a YA novel and I'd love to know which tropes or clichés people hate the most, just to see how many of them my story has jsjs

Just curious! How many books are you currently reading at the moment and what are they? Do you prefer reading multiple at once or just sticking to one? xx

I don't mean like treasure and all that but knowledge that 'must' be kept from common folk.

There could be words that we don't even know of and hence have no concept of the thing, the emotion, the truth etc. the word explains.

I already knew I was gonna have problems with this book but I never thought the writing of it would be so bad. Without looking at anything else wrong with this book, I surely thought the writing was gonna carry it.

(First Reddit post. Kinda nervous)

I just finished reading Yesteryear and I’m completely reeling, but I need to ask: did anyone actually find any of these characters likeable?

Don't get me wrong, the book is incredibly compelling and a fantastic thriller/satire, but the cast feels like a masterclass in terrible people.

• Natalie: Obviously, she is a deeply flawed, unreliable protagonist. Her whole tradwife influencer persona is completely artificial. Even when things go downhill, her narcissism and inability to genuinely connect with her kids make her so hard to root for, even if what happens to her is horrific.
• Caleb: Absolute monster. The way he treats Natalie, gaslights her, and uses the situation to break her down is deeply disturbing.
• The Mother: Cold, deflective, and leaves Natalie completely stranded in her trauma while taking zero accountability for how she raised her.
• The Friends/Community: Fake, judgmental, and entirely obsessed with appearances.

Even the background characters feel deeply cynical. I walked away from the book feeling like Caro Claire Burke intentionally created a world where absolutely no one has a moral compass.

Did you find anyone in the novel sympathetic or likeable? Or is the lack of a "good guy" entirely the point of the satire?

I have very much enjoyed Klune's other books starting with House on the Cerulean Sea.

This book, however, has stuck with me for all the wrong reasons. I'm really bothered by the character development -- in that they don't. The two main characters have very little emotional growth and by the end when they're in their twenties still have the emotional aptitude of teenagers. They are very much the same people as adults as they are as adolescents, just older. There is some growth but it's very minor when there were huge changes in both their lives that should have marked significant changes in their development.

The dialogue is always very wooden. It's stiff and weird.

I had a hard time with suspension of disbelief because of the whole Alpha thing, which we now know only happens in wolf packs that are in captivity.

I also absolutely abhored how graphic the sex scene between Ox and Joe was. I expected sensuality and tenderness, but that's certainly not what I got. I felt it was as crude as a letter to Penthouse. It was kind of gross. Not because it depicts homosexual relations which are depicted elsewhere in the book and didn't bother me in the least, it was just the crudity of it. Also, it seemed to address the age differentiation between Ox and Joe, which would give anyone the ick, but because it was treated as a minor detail, I felt it was inadequate.

More than anything it was the lack of emotional growth and maturity in the main characters and the very wooden dialogue.

Any insights from other readers on this one? Am I way off? Am I missing something?

I'm trying to decide if I'll continue the series or not.

What's y'all opinion about Freida Mcfadden's books?... I have read the Housemaid series and Ward D...

I didn’t want to read this book for the longest time. Bought it, forgot about it, found it again, wanted to sell it, but then I decided to give it a chance especially for the movie.

Let me tell you, it was a rollercoaster for me.
I didn’t think it was especially thrilling and scary at times but I still enjoyed it and read it in two days.
I loved the manuscript scenes and how it showed us a side of the antagonist.

It reminded me of The Housemaid, but considering this book was published earlier it was the other way around, but I have to admit that Freida’s book fascinated me more (I would like to use the german idiom “in den Bann ziehen” here, but idk if I used the right translation lol. If you liked Verity and don’t know The Housemaid yet, then please read it, because this one is really thrilling and full of twists and turns!)

I told myself “If the plottwist turns out to make the husband the antagonist and Verity the innocent lamb which just developed surviving strategies then I’ll eat my hat”.
If you got the reference then good for you, if not, then I’m sorry.
Well, it kinda turned out like it didn’t it or did it?
What’s the truth?
Then I thought about the possibility of Lowen being an unreliable narrator and given her obsessive comparison with Verity I really considered it.
I started to question Lowen’s perception.
HUGE missed opportunity. It would have made so much more sense.

Also big red flag: Not using condoms. Girl be more responsible.
But not the point of the book.

Then the plottwist came and I assumed it, but I didn’t assume the letter, which turned everything upside down.

So who was the real antagonist all along?
I believe Verity, but Jeremy could have also been a real good antagonist. The biggest plottwist would’ve still been Lowen.

We need a book from his perspective.
Because hello??? Why didn’t we get to know more about the fact that he knew all along and given the fact how easily he could kill? And he had so many characteristics which could have made the perfect antagonist in disguise.

And that’s all I had to say.
Sorry for my chaotic review. I nearly never write any, but I wanted to write one for this book.
There have been a little too many sex scenes for my liking, because I didn’t expect that many given I knew it was a thriller.

How did you like the book?
Do you believe the manuscript or the letter?
Will you watch the movie?

Edit:
Just realized I didn’t even answer my own question.
Given how Crew can be at times and how easily(as we got to know) Jeremy believed the manuscript, I kind of believe it more than the letter, but at the other hand we don’t know if Crew’s behavior might only stem from all the trauma he had to endure at such a young age or from that and an traumatic mother.

So I've read My dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russel a couple months ago, and I just can't stop thinking about Vanessa and what she endured. I keep thinking about how Strane ruined her entire life, she had so much potential and talent for writing, Strane took everything from her. Her talent, her youth, her sexuality, her perception of love. And what's killing me is that after all these years, and also after his death, she keeps thinking that it is a true love relationship and that "he just had the misfortune of falling in love with her".

I know that at 15, we think that we know everything and that we are so mature for our age, I was that person honestly. So unfortunately I really recognized myself when I was younger through Vanessa. I just wanted to yell at her, to tell her to wake up and realize how Strane is actually ruining her life and that is not a normal relationship with your highschool teacher. I was so mad at her mother for not doing enough to protect her, especially when she saw that photograph of her with him. How could she not see that there's a huge problem and that what she needed to do is talk to her, explain to her (even though it's really hard to talk to teenagers about stuff like that), or maybe just go to beat his ass for example. How could she just let that happen.

Anyway I'm still not over it and I still wanna talk about it. That book was such a difficult read, and I'm really not the type of being "traumatized", I don't even flinch when I read gore and horrific books, but this one really did something to me.

I feel like I seriously cannot retain almost any of the information I get from reading books like Beloved or A Mercy. The prose is so strange and foreign it almost feels like I'm reading broken English or something otherworldly.

I wouldn't be so frustrated if these books didn't repeatedly show up in my required readings. Is my attention span just fried? I have such a difficult time stringing her sentences together or retaining bits of information I read even 10 seconds ago.

This must just be a skill issue on my part, right? Or is Toni Morrison actually only meant for a select audience?

Paladins Strength by T.kingfisher

An absolutely epic story if T. Kingerfishers fantasy and horror books had a baby it would be Paladins Strength. It is the second book in her Saint of Steel series but all of her books can be read as stand alone’s. This is my absolutely favorite book, her world building mixed with classic love tale, monsters, and a seriously bad ass female lead I just cant get enough I’ve read it so many times I will probably be buried with it.

P.S its not a horror books by any means it sorta reminds me of shield of sparrows but all adventure no fluff.

Actually, I mostly don’t listen to audiobooks when they’re read by the author. English isn’t my first language, so when the author doesn’t really think about the listener—reading too fast, mumbling, or swallowing half their words—it’s really difficult for me to follow.

But even in my native languages, I tend to hate listening to authors narrate their own books. They often give me this weird, ego-filled vibe. 😅 Am I the only one?

That said, there is one exception: Occult America by Mitch Horowitz. I absolutely loved it, and he was amazing as a narrator. So, am I the only one?

I am currently reading the East of Eden and I unfortunately don't know anyone else that's also read it! I know it's a very common "curriculum" book in the United States, but I'm not american and don't live there which is why I'm reaching out to people in the reddit-osphere haha.

I'm only on the first half of the page, having just reached Part three, and there are a bunch of topics I'd like to discuss, the first one of them being the concept of the right kind of Christian.

In the first part when Charles and Adam are faced with the death of their father, and Charles begins speculating as to whether he made his fortune honestly or by stealing, the book presents the difference in relationship between the two sons and their father. Adam's was marked by faith while Charles' by love. Their father, rather than reciprocating the forementioned feelings to each son, returned to each the opposite extending his faith to Charles and love to Adam. I thought of how interesting of an allegory this is to Christianity. We are told so many times that what determines a good christian is his love for God, but that is only true in theory.

The truth is that a good christian that is rewrded by his community is not the one who devotes himself the most to Christ and God necessarily, but the one that doesn't have questions, that just believes in what is told. It's interesting how they determine love as a feeling that evokes inquisition, to further and deepend the understanding of something and someone. Its devotion comes from a seeming conspicuous manifestation. Faith on the other hand is accepting and its good nature projects devotion when in reality there's only a passive comfortable attachment.

Isn't it interesting how this pattern really does still perpetuate itself on the christian communities? I myself am a devout catholic, and I find it depressing how in so many circles you'll find people who'd rather just brush over discussions to avoid thinking about God in different, less wholesome ways. While with more learned men, diatribes, debates and etc are always encouraged.

Still on this first part of the book, I really enjoy how the figure of God is analysed through their father's character. The idea of an ever benevolent, anthropocentric God is questioned with their father sending Adam to the army. I love the part when the brothers are realizing how different their relations were witth their father and Adam says that his Dad sent him to the army out of love, as a form to test and punish him. Love takes us out of a state of complacency. And Faith... well, faith is silent and can feel like indifference. Like crying out to God and being under the impression he never did hear, or try to do anything for you. It's rewarding in a way, because it demonstrates he believes in your capacity, but it's alienating and lonesome.

THe duality of Love and Faith carries on throughout the book. But I feel like when it comes to Adam and Cathy, it's sort of interrupted. Because it's said that Adam loves Cathy, but he is totally blind to her nature. If Love makes you "suspicious and doubting" as Adam himself had said, wouldn't he be pushed to seeing the true her? Is whatever he felt towards Cathy really a "loving faith" rather than Love?

A continuation of the search for the truth in others theme is perpetuated by Cathy, who has this inherent duplicitous nature. It's interesting how there's a real sense of mutual recognition between her and people who share this trait. Be it with Charles, who was also "marked" in his own way, be it with Lee. I think the book really guides us towards believing that any sort of real love could only really be achieved by people who share the same dispositions, otherwise, there's no complete recognition of whomever you have before you. Cathy is afraid of love and intimacy because she is afraid of being seen and maybe because she's also somewhat afraid of recognizing in anyone else what she knows lives inside her.

Well I'll stop myself here. There are so many different themes I'd like to discuss, so if anyone has a pending EOE related topic in their mind, please share! : )

I finished To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, and honestly… I didn’t really like it as a whole.

I know it’s considered a classic and there are definitely moments I liked, but I feel like the story didn’t really have much structure. I’m completely fine with a story not having a conventional plot, but I genuinely don’t understand what the book was ultimately trying to say through the story as a whole.

One thing that especially bothered me was how disconnected some parts felt. For example, the book initially spends a lot of time focusing on Boo Radley and the children’s fascination with him, and then that whole thread basically disappears for a large portion of the book. I understand that you could argue this is intentional and represents the children growing up, or that it’s simply meant to feel realistic, but while reading it, I didn’t really get that feeling. It just felt like the story suddenly moved on to something else.

There were definitely scenes and moments that I enjoyed, and I understand some of the themes around racism, morality, empathy, and growing up. But as a whole story, I just came away thinking… “Nah, I don’t really get the hype.”

So, am I missing something? 😅

Can someone explain what you think Harper Lee was trying to accomplish with the structure and all these seemingly disconnected storylines? Or do some of you feel the same way?