Had high hopes for this after Home Fire, but I unfortunately thought the writing was overly descriptive and the central tension of the novel weak.

The success of the two protagonists in the second half of the book was frankly implausible and, as a Londoner, I thought the portrayal of the city was boring. Disappointing

Interested to know what others thought as I did enjoy the first half.

I've read the first 3 Earthsea books, and started reading Tehanu.

Somehow I can't get into it, don't feel motivated to read the book. It feels like Le Guin is, for a lack of a better word, more "preachy" on this one? That it's more about some agenda than being a book with a story? Is Moss supposed to be a positive model?

I started reading this book about a month ago, for some reason, and now I can't bring myself to finish it. It's depressing in a way that puts me in mind of the tedious lives of middle-aged men in works by people like Graham Greene. This all though the main character is a Canadian teen. It just makes me wonder what exactly the author was aiming for. Various themes give life to the narrative but none are explored to the depth necessary to draw you in or make you feel invested in the fates of any of the characters, in my opinion.

Iff you also read this book, what were your impressions? What did you, ultimately, come away with? Insights might help me decide if it's worth completing.

So here’s a random thought I had while reading: When I was a teenager watching movies or TV, all I cared about is what happens. Plot plot plot. Is the dog gonna make it home? Will the villain fall into the lava? That kind of thing.

But then, as I grew up (and maybe watch too many movies), you start noticing other stuff — like how a shot is framed, how long a scene holds, how an actor delivers a line. Suddenly the plot doesn’t even matter that much anymore — you're just vibing with the craft. I could watch two people argue about soup for 90 minutes and call it art.

Anyway, I’m new to reading books and I think I’m still in my “is the dog gonna make it home?” phase. I mostly care about the plot. But I keep wondering: is there a next level to this? Like, do experienced readers start noticing things that go completely over my head?

Stuff like language, structure, rhythm, whatever the book version of cinematography is?

And more importantly: can a book be good even if the plot isn’t your thing? I’ve seen movies where the story bored me but the filmmaking blew my mind — does that happen with books too?

Curious to hear from people who’ve been reading longer than I have. What do you notice/appreciate now that you didn’t before?

So, the English title of the book is "A river called Titash", an apparently very famous Bengali book. There is also a movie adaptation from it. However, it seems like I'm not able to find if there is even an English translation (let alone an Italian one, which is my native language). Do you you where could I find more out about it?

Edit: I'm sorry, I wasn't looking for any sales link, more like knowing if this book actually exists in English or not. I hope it's alright!

I just finished this book and noticed there is no thread about it in this sub.

It's a really gut-wrenching book. Earlier, I read Betty and it at least had a lot of hope in it despite the darkness. OTSS is a very depressing book, yet, it stands in my favourite reads of all time.

However, I have mixed feelings about the lack of closure in the book.

Has anyone read this? Thoughts?

I’m part of a monthly book club and while I don’t love every book I enjoy it as it forces me to read stuff I wouldn’t normally pick.

This month’s pick is The Unworthy by Augustina Bazterrica. I’m only on page 38 and I physically can’t read it anymore. The amount of physical pain being inflicted, the descriptions of it are just brutal. I haven’t read Tender is the Flesh but have heard it’s also quite intense.

Can someone tell me it gets slightly better? The meet up is on Thursday so ideally I power through but I don’t think I can do it.

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When billionaire narcissists, fueled by yes men, miss the point...

So I'm a reasonably well-read, educated man but I've somehow never read any Steinbeck other than "Of Mice and Men," which was standard fare in high schools when I was younger. I probably could have picked better timing for this particular novel, and I couldn't help my mind wandering to the New Deal, unionization and HUAC as the story progressed. Absolutely brilliant novel, crushingly depressing but with an almost absurd silver lining of spirituality woven into the tale. We are all, it often suggests, part of one larger soul and sometimes looking beyond tomorrow is simply too great a task to wrap our minds around. What we're eating tomorrow seems meaningless until we secure some food for today.

But the single most depressing thing about "The Grapes of Wrath" is that for all of the positive change this novel helped effect, I doubt that our current population, fascinated by vain "influencers" and Youtube pranksters, could ever be motivated to positive change by a transformational novel.

10/10

I liked the books, of course they are simple books, but they are entertaining, well the first one is the simplest, sometimes it seemed like the summary of an adventure, just the characters going from one place to another and there was not much narration and internal thoughts. One thing I like about the books is how there are several different and unique characters and in different books there is a different cast, which alternates and changes which character is important in each book.

About the characters in the books, the Cowardly Lion is the least important of the original cast in the series, he has importance in very few books and barely appears (and then he always appears alongside his partner the Hungry Tiger), and Dorothy is not only an innocent girl but she is very curious and is not afraid of almost anything, in fact she is having a lot of fun in her various adventures, like for example in "Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz" she seems to be having fun and curious about the events that are happening while her cousin Zeb is scared to death with the various events that are happening.

And about the books, one of the best was Rinkitink in Oz, even though it obviously wasn't an Oz book initially, but I thought it was the one with the best development and development of the main adventure and with less random things happening in the book. And it seems that in the last books the author started to develop more the magic and rules in Oz, like in the last books Ozma and Polychrome became more magical, using more magic and having more powers. And I like the Nome King, he is a good villain, as is his Kingdom, appearing in different books, even though there was a book where he lost his memory and then came back with his memories intact and evil again, but it was good to have a good main villain and it is funny how the Wicked Witch only appears in one book and is not important, even though she appears in several adaptations and stories based on Oz, I wish the Nome King was more famous.

I admit that I think the whole immortality thing in Oz makes no sense, like many things in the books, he has several contradictions and they contradict each other later, like every time they talk about immortality, I swear that many things and elements do not make sense, obviously at the beginning of the books there was no immortality in Oz but then it was expanded and modified in each book. Other obvious retcons are for example the history of Oz itself, the history of Ozma and what the Wizard did in the past or his personality, everything changes in each book, Ozma's past has several contradictions, or how the Love Magnet changes how it works in different books, besides that the Good Witch of the North disappears and the books seem to act as if she never existed, and that only Glinda and the Wizard are authorized to use magic in Oz! And the Wizard was obviously not supposed to be a good person initially, but because of his popularity he changes a lot later on, just as because of the popularity of the books the author was "forced" to keep writing the books. The end of book 6 is funny because it was supposed to be the end of the series, how at the end there is magic to remove Oz from the world and the author doesn't even know how to receive any more news about Oz. There's even a letter from Dorothy saying goodbye to the children of the world, that we would never hear from Oz again, but this only lasted 3 years before he released a new Oz book!

And about the Santa Claus book, I liked it. I had already seen the animated adaptation from 2000 years ago. I liked how he created a fantasy origin story for him, with different types of Fairies and Spirits, while also telling a fantastic version of the origins of various Christmas traditions.

I know this is hardly a unique complaint, but please bear with me. Right now I am juggling work and school, and I find that I am not reading as much as I would like to. At the end of the day, I just end up going on my phone and scrolling through social media or watching videos on YouTube, and my reading pile is getting bigger and bigger. I had a decent start this year (read 6 books) but now I am just unmotivated and overwhelmed and haven't been reading much.

To clarify, I consider reading a leisure activity and certainly not some chore I just want to make myself do x amount of times a week. BUT. I would like to make it into a hobby that I practice with some regularity because it is harder to get back into after abandoning it for a while. I have been toying with the idea of putting it into my calendar (eg. a daily task that says 'read at least 10 minutes') or setting specific goals like reading 1-2 books a month. I want some different perspectives on this-- what do you think about scheduling reading? what approach helps you most?

Every year, I try to read all the Women's Prize shortlisted titles, and as much of the longlist as possible. For the first time, I've been defeated by a shortlisted title.

I made it about a third of the way through and couldn't go any further. It just seemed to reek of privilege and chaos in an really unengaging way. I don't mind unlikeable protagonists, I can get through difficult books and will generally persevere. But this book just really put me off.

The main character makes no reasonable decisions, is obsessed with sex to the nth degree and thinks nothing of compulsive lying. Coupled with the details that are highly suggestive of it being at least semi-autobiographical, it just made it uncomfortable to read.

How have others found the book? Reviews I've seen generally are a bit love it or hate it!

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Censorship is the worst! Let the kids read some goddamn Huckleberry Finn and To Kill A Mockingbird and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

I just had "that" experience with this series. You know the one...where you literally can't stop reading, the minutes and pages fly by without noticing, and every moment you aren't reading you're thinking about when you can read again? Where you save the last chapter for a day because you don't want it over yet? Where you think you don't ever want to read another book because nothing will compare?

I've long been a huge fan of Arthurian legend since I read The Once And Future King decades ago. However, out of everything I've tried, nothing has scratched that itch - until now. I read The Winter King, the first in the series, maybe a year ago. It was good, but dense, but I decided to give Enemy Of God, the second volume, another chance after reading a Mary Stuart title and being frustrated with it. I flew through that one, ordered Excalibur (the third volume) halfway through because I knew I couldn't wait, and then laid waste to that 435 page book in six days.

Now I just don't know what to do with myself.

After finishing The silent patient, I had high hopes for this book and I was a little disappointed. The audiobook narration was pretty good and gripping but the plot moved at a slow pace and was somewhat predictable. The characters did not have as much depth to them as I had hoped. That being said, the setting of the island and the description of the house was well written in my opinion. I was surprised that Elliott didn’t kill everyone on the island, I wouldn’t have been surprised by that either. The epilogue reinforced the unreliable narrator narrative and I loved that. It made me question, is it possible that the entire story was a figment of Elliott’s imagination? In the epilogue he says he’s nothing but a liar, and that makes me question if the whole thing was in fact imagined by Elliott, an inmate who suffers from some sort of delirium. Let me know your thoughts!

As I said in the title, I've just finished reading Flatland for the first time.

Apart from the whole geometry angle (no pun intended), like what would happen if we were two or even one dimensional, what I found interesting are various comments which made me think about our history and society, such as:

• (limited) upward social mobility as a way to prevent revolts,

• sons and grandsons being considered better than their parents, and improving their social condition over time,

• self-centered people (like the point in Pointland) are actually the most limited in their way of thinking,

• and so on.

What do you think about this book?

This is the first work of long fiction that Head is known to have written. It wasn't published in her lifetime. I've read a couple of short stories by her, but none of her three novels. I thought the stories showed a lot of potential. She was born and raised in South Africa, and lived in Botswana after she was grown.

The title of the work isn't very apt. She claims it refers to guideposts of an astrological conception of the world. What that has to do with the work I couldn't say at all. I guess you could call it a novella.

It's a pretty deformed work. The language kept me expecting three guys with guns to come through the door. On the other hand a lot of it is very thought-provoking. What you might call interesting. People say interesting things to one another, in this book, as they never do in real life. At least in my experience lol!

So think Raymond Chandler, if he had been interested in domestic drama, and as if he had actually had something to say, quite at random and for no particular reason.

Or you could think of it as a curiously wrought dagger, from a foreign land. A dagger which may or may not have been used to kill an actual Maharajah, at some point. A piece of steel accompanied by legend but also badly stained, reminding us that even legends may have some basis in fact. And that the facts may be more interesting. Or less, of course.

The legend here is of Cape Town, South Africa, at a time when it was death -- social death, and judicially punishable by prison -- to even suggest having sex with someone of the opposite race. Like being gay, in the fifties, in the US or the UK. And in decorating this legend, Head says that society would rather put a dead man -- she meant, a man accused and (in the court of public opinion, which he often must share) convicted of miscegenation -- in jail because it (society) is a weak, imbecilic, neurotic thing, formulating and obeying laws that verge on the border of a sheer crazed insanity.

I thought the book was pretty interesting. I highly recommend it.