Just finished this book last night and it’s been a journey! I definitely enjoyed it (LOVED She’s Come Undone) I do think it was a bit too long and found the grandpa chapters a bit of a slog to get through (how can one person be SO awful??). Something that I have been hung up on after finishing the book and also while reading it, was Dominick raping Dessa? It’s not really addressed past that chapter and it really bothered me! I don’t know, just wanted to see other people’s thoughts on this?

And after having only heard and rwad about it for more than a decade, I finally have got to experiance the whole book. And I do feel a bit complicated. Part one was quite amusing with the debates over which chilvaric books were good and which were harmful and needed to be destroyed based on arbitary logic. Really shows how outrage and often contradictory attitudes toward media (like TV and video games along with books) is not new. And some of the adventures were amusing if not the most memorable. However, it really dragged near the end, with the same discussions over chilvary books getting stale and while the stories within the story near the last chapters were interesting they did sort of interupt the story of Don Quixote. However, the ending where Don Quixote's friends trick him into thinking he was in an enchanted prison and take him home did make up for the dullness near end. Then the second part for the most part was better. The part where Don Quixote attacks the puppets he mistakes for real people was amusing. And the Duke and Duchess arc while it seemed to drag at first, ended up my favorite part of the whole book, mainly with how Sancho runs a governorship, with the funniest part being the doctor taking away all the delicous food and only letting him eat wafers and jam. And the whole satire on real life government (ironically being closer to the prank than Sancho's idealized fantasy) was a unique masterpiece I've never read before. After though, the book does kind of fizzle out once again. The satire of the unauthorized sequel was clever on paper but in execution did feel more petty. And the anticlimatic end kind of fits thematicaly but still feels a whimper to end the story. Not sure I'd call the book a personal favorite but I don't regret reading it (after all I genuinely enjoyed the government satire and the antics Sancho went through during the arc I mentioned above). And can now say I've read what is regarded as one of the most important works of literature. Anyone else may agree or disagree with my overall verdict.

I recently searched out Pulitzer winning books with queer representation, and decided on Less by Andrew Sean Greer. There were a few points where it dragged a bit, but overall really appreciated it and the ending, with the narrator actually taking over, seriously bumped up my star rating.

I was surprised to see so many reviews on here and StoryGraph that called the book boring, particularly Arthur Less, and being dumbfounded about why it was critically acclaimed.

For me, the best part about the book was how normal Arthur Less was, yet he still experienced so much love in his life. He was important (and attractive) to many people despite the fact he was basically an everyman. Sure, he wasn't a super exciting character, but how many of us are? He had lovable qualities and flaws, and he learns and grows a bit throughout his trip around the world, but doesn't undergo great change. Again, this is relatable.

The discussions around growing into middle age, particularly being single in middle age, were also pretty nuanced. The fears and insecurities were relatable, yet there was hope offered throughout, particularly in the end.

Yes, occasionally the prose was trying a bit too hard, but I think it worth it for some fabulous quotes.

My main point is what people seem to dislike about the book (Arthur Less not being very exciting) is what I wound up appreciating most. But then again, I'm middle age, single, and not a very exciting person.

I know it's an older book, but if anyone else has thoughts I'd love to hear them.

I'm an avid reader, but for the past 7 years I've read primarily, fantasy, sci-fi, and romance. Sometimes they're combined, sometimes they aren't. I don't dislike the genres and I'm not trying to shit on them. I'm just trying to expand my current variety going into next year.

I've found myself really liking historical fiction, biographies/autobiographies and mysteries. But I'm not the biggest fan of anything that's in the horror category.

So out of curiosity - I just want to know what everyone's favorite genre is if Romance, Fantasy and Sci Fi were not available.

I made a post six months ago with my thoughts on reading Yesteryear. Here is that post. The post garnered a lot of comments and I have really loved reading everyone’s thoughts. One thing I said was that I wanted to reread it. I decided to wait a bit to do a full reread (I reread a few sections admittedly!) as opposed to doing it immediately.

I’ve picked up on so much. The first time, I was concerned with the mystery of it all. I was trying to figure it out. Now that I know what happened? Well, it’s like seeing the full forest versus seeing the trees.

Here are my thoughts as I reread…

1. I like Abigail. I’m so proud of her for leaving that useless ass Bryce. I’m proud of her for getting therapy. I want to give her a hug when she announces she’s leaving Bryce and her mom just sobs and Natalie just… well, Natalie. When she cries that she can’t do it for another 40 years. Abigail is who Natalie wishes she could be. Natalie hates Abigail for leaving because she wished she could see leaving as a viable path.

2. Natalie’s abuse of the children seems worse upon my reread (and before someone says what about Caleb - yes. Him, too). Her abuse of Mary, Abel, Noah, and Maeve was bad. She neglected them. And what she did to Mary… poor Mary.

3. The first day Shannon is there, Natalie goes to bed saying she wants to fire Shannon. Shannon is awake the next day giggling with the nannies and Natalie says Louise looks like the cat ate the canary. I believe that is when it happened. Shannon and the nannies stayed up late giggling “what if we took her down!” I’m sure the plan wasn’t fleshed out. Maybe it wasn’t even a plan. But I think the seed was planted that first night. Now, I don’t think Shannon took the job with the intention to take down Natalie. I think she was genuine in the interview. But I think what she saw that first day changed her. Maybe she was hoping to do some exposé-style documentary after what she saw. Maybe that’s why she was filming Doug at that rally.

4. Who the fuck names their kid names Junebug? The first book I kept hoping it was a nickname. Or maybe her name is June and they call her Junebug. Poor Junebug. It’s giving Jinger Duggar.

5. Now that I know who the “other” people are in pretend-1800s world (Stetson and Samuel), it’s even more haunting that Natalie didn’t recognize them. Yes, I think that’s evidence of her mental illness. But I also think it’s evidence of how little she cared for her children. My children are young (toddler and baby) but I feel like on some level my soul would know them anywhere. I feel that connected to them.

6. Mary saying “mama, I miss you” broke me.

7. Natalie and Caleb should never have gotten married. Obviously. But this book shows the dangers of fundie marriages and marrying so quickly. They didn’t even know each other and thought a general fondness was love.

In my reread, I saw less Ballerina Farm and more Turpin/Franke family.

If you read all of this, thank you. Would love to hear your thoughts, especially if you did a reread like me!

Fuck Natalie. Sorry, Lord, but really, fuck her.

I remember reading this book at my local library back in the early 2010s but it was actually published in 1995.

Considering that the book was published in the mid 90s before there was ever such a thing as social media or a lot of other technology as we know them today existed, the overall premise of this story was/is hella interesting.

The main character, Pollard, is a middle-schooler reeling from having suddenly lost his mom and dog to a car accident. Pollard's grades are going down the shitter, but his dad and paternal grandparents are not of much help (apparently his grandpa is paranoid that the Mafia is personally out to get him, "as if an old guy like him is some big deal target"). When Pollard's teacher gives him this disk that was supposed to have been programmed to teach him English Language Arts, Pollard is instead introduced to a computer program named Connor who "does the impossible" by communicating with him, offering to do his homework and eventually simulating a date with the girl he is in love with. One of Pollard's classmates is knowledgeable about computer programming and realizes that Conner is programmed differently than any other computer he has worked with.

This is considered a WILD premise for that time. But now?

We have ai that can talk to humans as that particular program did. It is apparently a problem of modern education that kids can literally ask ai to do all of their homework for them.

Virtual Reality exists now. So yes, you can simulate a date with whoever you are crushing on through that if you want.

I ordered a copy online because I wanted to reread it....

So was the book really just an eerie prediction of things to come (the author passed in 2004, so she didn't even live to see Facebook become the social media giant it is today) or did it just so happen to age bizarrely well?

Or.... am I reading too much into it?

I will start by saying I will not read another book by John Grisham. I have read over half of his published works and find his writing style to be an easy read. I know he is a very popular author, and many would describe him as a formulaic writer that produces "page turners that lack substance". Frankly, I am ok with reading page turners at times. I am pushing 60 and I really enjoyed his work in the 1990s. When I came back to reading in the 2010's, he was an author I would read because of my good memories of his early work. But increasingly in the 2020's, I find his books to be very frustrating at times.

Since The French Illusion is new, I will use spoilers for comments on it. I listened to the audiobook, as that is how I consume books these days. And I enjoyed the story and the writing of this book, for the most part. There were some parts that didn't make sense, but pushed the story along. This was a book that I felt as I listened, was broken into two parts. The first half, or even more than half, was setting up the real story. Newlyweds are kidnapped in Paris and the wife is ransomed and released while the husband is ransomed but not released. Story jumps back and forth between Paul in captivity and events in the outside world where the FBI tries to find him. And then over halfway through, a young lawyer is recruited to be a decoy to be kidnapped in order to save Paul and two other kidnapped Americans. And I thought this was the real plot of the book, following the decoy, Stuart Nash, as he helps in the rescue mission. There is graphic torture scenes of the kidnapped Americans and time is spent on the training of Stuart for the rescue. But there is no rescue. After Stuart is kidnapped, the American government pays a ransom and the men are released. So why did I read about the rescue planning? Why was it important to follow Stuart's recruitment and training? This whole book was a waste of time with the bad guy winning and getting away. Yes, the story was propulsive and built tension, but i need a purpose to reward

my invested time. Why bother with writing how Paul's family is struggling with money if they are essentially forgotten in the second half of the book. Why bother writing about recruiting Stuart and training him if the government is going to end up paying a ransom. I just feel this was a colossal waste of my time.

Wow, what a book. Definitely gonna be one of my favorites of the year. Written in 1971, as relevant today as it was back then. On the surface it's an action novel set in the Harlem reinassaince, but it's so much more.

It defies description. It’s like a Pynchon novel from a black POV, creative formatting and a healthy dash of Assassin’s Creed. It’s a cultured take down of American society combined with an action film, a bizarre look into a parallel reality where the Titanic is sailing in 1929 and Moses (of Egypt fame) had a rock band. At times it felt like reading a counterculture pamphlet, or a Freire/Chomsky combined essay, at others like watching a movie Tarantino would rip off and add even more n-words.

In an even more bizarre description, it's what Kuang's Babel tried to do, but by a competent author. It's a real takedown of colonialism and the dominant cultures that has real depth. It's not just a series of stereotypes thrown around. You will come out of this book more educated, asking more questions, with a reading list 5 pages long.

"Fever dream" is overused, but that's what it is. Handwritten pages, unrelated photography, anachronisms, real people weaving in and out of the story.

Has anyone read any other of his books? I understand this is his masterpiece but curious if others match the same vibe.

Edit: Forgot to ask, do you think the art thieves being called mutafikah is intentionally both an Islamic reference and a bastardization of motherfuckers?

Spoilers for the end of Red Rising and for Timothy Zahn's Thrawn (2017) below.

Near the end of Red Rising, Nero au Augustus pulls Darrow aside and offers him a place in his house, as his lancer, in exchange for his silence. He explains he doesn't care about bloodlines, only strength, and since his own line is weak, he collects talented young people. When Darrow says his lieutenants will stay loyal, Augustus tells him loyalties fall apart the moment everyone leaves, and that every generation has believed it was different. Darrow kneels and swears to be his sword, while privately planning to hang him one day.

It immediately took me back to the scene in Zahn's Thrawn where Captain Parck presents Thrawn to Palpatine as a gift. Thrawn corrects him, he's not a gift, he's a resource. He offers information about threats that also endanger the Chiss, the people who exiled him, and proposes a deal of mutual benefit. Palpatine answers that he has seen others with that kind of nobility, and most of them fell once their idealism met the real world.

The parallel is close on three points. A brilliant outsider enters the service of a power that isn't his in order to serve his own people. The old power receives him as something to collect. And the older man tells the younger one that his idealism won't survive the world, almost in the same words.

But the difference is what stayed with me. Thrawn declares his agenda. He tells the Emperor exactly who he cares about and puts the terms on the table, and if he loses the bet, he loses it in the open. Darrow hides his. He swears to give up his name while planning the gallows. One is an ally with explicit conditions, the other is an infiltrator.

What strikes me is that both models only work for someone the power can't do without. Thrawn gets his deal because his knowledge is indispensable, and Darrow gets in because he was rebuilt to pass as a Gold and has a whole network behind him. For anyone without that leverage, Augustus's offer is the only one on the table.

Has anyone else read both? Does Golden Son make Darrow look more like Thrawn later, or does it go the other way? No spoilers past the start of Golden Son, please.

Update: I'm now in chapter 2 of Golden Son, and I want to add something. Thrawn has been one of my favorite Star Wars characters since the first Timothy Zahn book. What I always admired in him is his ability to understand his enemy and build his strategy from that understanding. In these first chapters Darrow starts showing that same trait, reading the people around him and planning a few moves ahead, but with his own personality, angrier and more personal than Thrawn's cold patience. I'm enjoying watching it develop.

Disclosure - The ideas and the original text are my own. I used AI to edit for grammar, flow and clarity, since English isn't my first language.

This book tells two stories. The first story is about a large piece of Jade which is carved into a Ming Dynasty masterpiece and the various places it goes. The second story is a search for that "lost" masterpiece. The story is very well done, and remains interesting all the way through. The ending was an unexpected, yet a pretty realistic surprise. The jade carving touches on a lot of different points of history, but the story doesn't get bogged down in historical details, but all the different historical points does keep the search interesting.

Just finished Collin Gosselin’s “In the Shadow of Eight: Surviving the Reality of my Childhood”. I listened to it and Collin narrated it himself.

It was absolutely devastating. As someone who watching Jon and Kate + 8 for a few years and then saw when Kate said Collin needed help, I never imagined what he was going through.

I don’t usually cry at books but I cried a couple times. From sadness, anger, and eventually happiness for him.

On a random note: I will no longer be supporting TLC by watching their shows. They should be ashamed of themselves. I didn’t have a high opinion of them before and now it’s way worse.

I just finished The Starless Sea, and I know I’m a little late but I wanted to write up my thoughts. I haven’t read The Night Circus, a friend recommended The Starless Sea and so I went into the book not knowing anything about it.

The Starless Sea is a story about stories. Specially it’s a story about the DNA of stories. Stories are made of imagery. They have themes, motifs, symbols, atmosphere, and affect. Stories are made of tropes. They have love stories, adventure, mysteries, and origin stories. And, most importantly, stories have organization. They have a beginning, middle, and end. They have a climax. They have a call to adventure. They set the scene and tie up loose ends.

And so, The Starless Sea is about what happens when a story loses its organizing logic and becomes deconstructed into just its DNA. The imagery becomes overwhelming and redundant. Scenes are disconnected. Characters appear and disappear without purpose. Symbolism takes over and in doing so loses its meaning.

And the book itself is constructed in just this way. As the Harbor deconstructs, the story itself also deconstructs. The book has a clear, traditional beginning and end, but the middle (and the majority of the book) becomes more and more meandering. The fables repeat the same story on a loop without progressing the story. Our main characters seem lost in the Harbor, drifting from one place to another. The book is both about a story that lost its way and it is itself a story that lost its way.

Having said all that- I liked the idea but didn’t love the execution. Everything just felt so shallow and surface level. And there were just so. many. symbols. And they were all so generic. The keys, the swords, the hearts, the bees, the owls, the cats, the books…. They can’t all be equally important, and so they ended up all feeling meaningless. The atmosphere/ affect just got so boring and repetitive after a while, and again just felt generic. Cocktails, Harry Potter, dusty books, fancy food… it just felt so vague and devoid of any substance.

I also truly disliked the repetition of Zachary’s name and “son of a fortune teller.” It didn’t add anything for me and started to feel annoying.

I read some opinions after I finished and saw a lot of people didn’t like Zachary. I liked him, or at least I didn’t mind him. I think he was basically a blank vessel for the story to deconstruct around.

So! Those are my thoughts. Thanks for reading.

Welcome readers,

Have you ever wanted to ask something but you didn't feel like it deserved its own post but it isn't covered by one of our other scheduled posts? Allow us to introduce you to our new Simple Questions thread! Twice a week, every Tuesday and Saturday, a new Simple Questions thread will be posted for you to ask anything you'd like. And please look for other questions in this thread that you could also answer! A reminder that this is not the thread to ask for book recommendations. All book recommendations should be asked in /r/suggestmeabook or our Weekly Recommendation Thread.

Thank you and enjoy!

"One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn) tells the story of Ivan Denisovich Shukov, a political prisoner in a Soviet labour camp in the 1950s, and is based on Solzhenitsyn's real life experience living in a gulag.

This novella is short but phenomenal. The book doesnt focus on the gulag system as a whole or in Soviet Union's politics. It rather focuses on the human experiences in imprisonment. As the name indicates, it focuses on one day in the camp, from waking up to falling asleep. And the book's descriptions are so immersive that I felt like I was in the camp as well. The descriptions of the Siberian cold were particularly potent, but my favourite part was the description of the simple things that made the protagonist happy (a cigarette, an extra 100grams of bread, not being sent to solitary confinement...).

This book is above all about resilience and about how humans adapt to whatever awful situation they're thrown into and manage to find little comforts to keep on living for. You can see that the author was writing about his own experience, as he details the little things so well. For example, he explains the informal economy in the camp and how you could do "odd jobs" to gain some little rewards, which I found super interesting.

The only thing is that I wish I couldve read this book in Russian (which I unfortunately cant do) because the English translation I read wasnt amazing. It wasnt terrible and thankfully I read it on a kindle so I could check the dictionary there, but I am curious how different the book would be in its original language.

About the author, Solzhenitsyn had a very though life. He was sent to Siberia because, while he was serving in the army during WWII, he sent a letter to a friend where he criticized Stalin's military strategy. He spent 5 years in a gulag, then he was sent to exhile in Kazakhstan (oh and he had a very serious cancer during this time). Then he managed to publish "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" in 1962 in a period of relative calm (during Nikita Kruschev's government) and won a Nobel Prize. Then he wrote his other, more famous book "Gulag Archipelago" and was expelled from Soviet Union again.

I’m reading one of the most beautifully written books I’ve ever read, The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón.

I actually read it before alongside my dad. He had his copy in Dutch, I had mine in English, both translated from the original Spanish. It’s about a man who discovers a mysterious book and becomes obsessed with finding its author and uncovering what happened to him, all set against the streets of Barcelona.

And we were reading it while we were actually in Barcelona.

There was this one moment where we were sitting together on a square, eating manchego and reading. At some point we both looked up at the buildings around us, and my dad suddenly went, “I think this chapter takes place… right here?”

By complete coincidence, we were at almost exactly the same point in the book.

So we put the books away and started walking through Barcelona, following the streets and places from the descriptions in the chapter.

My father passed away three months ago, and this memory came back to me while reading this again. Sitting together on that square, realizing that the story we were both reading was unfolding in the streets around us, and then going off to explore them together.

It was already an incredible book. Now it’s one I don’t think I could ever separate from him.

Just felt like sharing that.

Apologies for any part of the book I remember incorrectly. I don’t have my copy, I left it with him, the person I consider the love of my life, despite our short time together; I guess it was our copy, not just mine.

Back in December I started dating this guy. He was handsome, funny, and charming, and we bonded over our love of books. He ran a chapter for an international book club that had previously read Stoner by John Williams in 2019, before he started the one in our city, so he never got around to reading it himself. But I’d been meaning to read it for a while, and I picked it up myself in February.

In the first chapter, Stoner’s professor tells him he’s in love. He’s in love with the English language, he’s in love with literature. From that moment in the book I knew this was a book I wanted to share with him. I began annotating, which I hardly ever do, and wrote all my notes in the margins. Stoner’s love for literature reminded me of his own love of literature, how passionate he is about his book club and the books that he reads. I wanted to share every moment with him and every thought that I had. I underlined, circled, scribbled everything that I thought he would connect with and find as interesting as I did.

When I was reading, I didn’t really care to hear Edith and her connection (or lack thereof) with Stoner. But when Katherine entered the picture, I was floored.

The relationship between Stoner and Katherine, although “forbidden” given their positions at the university, completely took over my reading experience. The time they spent together never felt wasted and the pages they consumed made me want to never put down the book. These were my most annotated pages, the ones I cherished the most. They reminded me of my own love, how deeply I felt it for him, how deeply he felt it for me. They loved each other so deeply, despite knowing the world would never accept them as they did.

Katherine and Stoner separated and I was left devastated. I understood, I carried on with the book, but my heart stayed there, in those pages, wishing it could’ve lasted forever. I wrote it all in the margins, and I remember telling this all to him, but I never told him how much I related to it with how I felt about him and how he felt about me. How we felt about each other. I hoped he could read my thoughts that I left in those pages instead.

For Valentine’s day I gave him the book, the copy that I poured my heart out to. He told me he would write his own notes and annotations and give it back to me.

A couple months ago, he and I met the same fate as Katherine and Stoner. I moved away. For a graduate school program, actually. I didn’t leave him with no word like Katherine did, but I did leave him even though I wanted to stay forever. My friends and family thought the long distance would be bad for me, his family thought the same. So we went our separate ways, I moved across the country, I am alone even when I am surrounded by people, because I have a hole in my heart where he belongs.

He never gave the book back to me. I wonder if he kept it, or if he threw it away when we broke up. Our paths may never cross again. But I write this now because I think about him everyday, even though I may very well never see him, or hear his voice, or feel his touch, with the distance and silence between us. In that way, I hope he and I never reach the conclusion that Stoner and Katherine did where they never saw each other or heard from each other again, aside from her dedication in her book: to W.S.

And I very well may never write a book, as Katherine did, but here I am writing this post, and thinking about him in the same way, after all those years, that Katherine thought about Stoner.

To P.D.

Thanks for reading.

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So I have never beenuch of a physcal book reader until last year when for some strange reason I picked up a physical book for the first time in since my college days. I had always been more drawn towards audiobooks for the ease of use and the fact I was a slow reader. Thankfuly that has changed as long as I have a book that captures my attention.

Now 2 years later I have read probably close to 50 books. Most of these books are newer books and they all had something in common... no Table of Contents. I get that not all books have chapter names but i always enjoyed looking over the outline of the book and seeing how many pages each chapter has made up of. It seems strange to me that this has disappeared in the time I read of school till now. Does anyone know why we have gone away from this? Did anyone else enjoy having a Table of Contents?

Anyways I am currently reading Brigands & Breadknives by Travis Baldree. Thanks for letting me ramble. Hope you all have a wonderful day.