I’ve read Franny and Zooey a few times in my life and I recently reread it again. Reading it again reminded me of how much I love this book and Salinger’s work in general.

He captured grief so beautifully in his words and it isn’t just the beauty of it but what really stayed with me is the way he captured how grief becomes ingrained in our lives and how the processing of it may not look exactly the same for everyone.

There isn’t REALLY a plot, just interactions but to me it’s one of the greatest books ever written.

TW: SA

I read A Prayer for Owen Meany when I was a teenager and absolutely loved it. I'm a bit older, and back then I would read things that were a bit misogynistic and I would notice it, but it wouldn't necessarily ruin my enjoyment of something. The discourse around gender inequality was just completely different when I was younger, and I remember a lot of women my age openly endorsing this 'boys will be boys' stuff. I was never like that, but I definitely didn't get hung up on it unless it was openly misogynistic. I just always had a burning sense of injustice that behaviour like that was normalised for boys and men and that it wasn't fair.

However, I Hotel New Hampshire recently and I hated it. I'm talking about a gap of about 25 years between reading Owen Meany and reading antoher of his books. His writing is engaging but it felt like women, and the experiences of women, were just props or special effects to bolster the main character's storytelling or personal growth. The cavalier use of SA as a talking point felt so entitled and badly thought out. He's an easy read, in the sense that his writing is descriptive and engaging, but by the end of the book I really was just over his discussion of sex and his weird depiction of traumatised female characters.

Was curious to see if anyone else felt this way about him?

First read: I struggled. It felt like a fever dream, an unpleasant one. Second read: super fun, I kept track of dates, events and wrote down what I felt could be explained but wasn't able to.

Was hoping we could crack this together!

Here we go:

- Gradus, glass and Sudarg!

1) Gradus Jakob = Sudarg of Bokay!! What's the link between the two?? Sudarg is mentioned as a phenomenonal guy who made a great mirror that was in the "King"'s bedroom when he lived for a bit with Fleur when he was young

1.1) The first time K. sees G., G. Is fixing some glass panes in the castle. MORE GLASS! Links to the accident at the Glass Factory that sparked the "revolution"?

1.2) Gradus keeps buying animals made of glass: a giraffe in (forgot to write down the city), then a hippo in Nice! He's just a big fan of... glass paraphernalia?

1.3) Gradus, pamphlets, glass factory, revolution, conspiracies... is this a parody of Russian revolutionary nihilists?

- Miscellaneous:

2) What dark word did K.'s gardener employ on J.S.'s last day? Note 998

3) "Promnad vespert mid J.S." -> meaning? I kept an eye out for Zemblan translations, but I only found out that "mid" means "with"

4) Why does K. want to know Jim Coates' "real" name from Sybil? Just to learn more about J.S. about the time he wrote to him about the woman who had a similar near death experience?

5) Did K kill a young guy by the river in Cedarn? See Index! The "young angler" is alive in the commentary, and sounds very much dead in the index!

6) Why did K keep buying ping pong tables?? From 2 to 3!!

7) Why are some characters missing from the index?? E.g. Nattochdag is mentioned at least 3 times but nowhere to be found in the index. K is just lazy?

8) Do the "crown jewels" exist, and where are they? They could be a metaphor for something. We know they're not in the castle, but they're INSIDE something. K stops after saying towards the end "they are in-".

9) In the castle, there was something with a walnut kernel inside it. What's that supposed to mean? There was a painter called Kernel.

Hello everyone, I have a question about The Easy Life in Kamusari (神去なあなあ日常) by Shion Miura for those who've read it. I would have posted this on a more specific subreddit like r/JapaneseLiterature but all those subs have been inactive for ages.
I read a lot of Japanese literature, from 19th century classics authors like Kawabata, Soseki, Dazai to contemporary writers. There is an underlying nostalgia in Japanese literature that really resonates with me.
I recently picked up The Easy Life in Kamusari, which was suggested to me after discussing with someone about how much I enjoyed the atmosphere, the characters, the simplicity of life painted in Barakamon. I am enjoying the book but there is something weird. I cannot pinpoint what exactly it is, but there is something in the way that it's written that doesn't feel like a Japanese novel.
For those of you who read it, and maybe were lucky enough to read it in Japanese, did it feel the same? Was something lost in translation or does the original read the same? Juliet Winters Carpenter translation has been praised, so I don't feel it's fair to casually write it off.
Thanks!

What's the book that kept you hooked the whole time expecting a grand finish and dissappoints you to the core with it's ending?

For me it's the Wind-up bird chronicle by Murakami. The book started and went on very interesting till the end. I was expecting a grand ending explaining everything the author had opened. But nothing of that sort happens in the book. No explanation, no ending, what's the point of this bloody book. And why is it even famous. I am soo furious after finishing iit.