What Are You Reading? (November 2019) Be Thankful for Books

[Coyote Zamora]

I was browsing through a local used book store's online store, found a book from an author I kind of maybe remember hearing she might be decent (Red Wyvern by Katherine Kerr), checked it up on Goodreads. Searching the book, it gave another result not from Kerr called Rise of the Wyvern from the Lesbian Space Pirates series. I took a double look there, lol.

Anyway, I picked books #1-3 from Wheel of Time. I had them up unti book #14 in Finnish (they made 1-3 books out of one OG English one...) but they stopped (later turned out they just paused) translating them at one point so I gave them away with the intent of getting them all in English at some point. So now I've started this journey agai. Even though I don't think the series is among the best, I still got deep enough into it that I want to finish it one day. Also got Neverending Story, American Gods, and something called The Immortals of Meluha by Amish. Not sure what the last one is, never heard of it before, but it had over 4 as its overall rating on Goodreads and the premise/mythology seems India-based so that's a nice change of pace to the middle age European setting, so I decided to check it out. It's fun to try out new names ever so often.

Obligatory "what the fuck am I reading?" post. She's undeniably a top tier fantasy author. One of the all time greats, sitting right there with Tolkien, GRRM, Le Guin, Pratchett, McCaffrey, Gaiman and such.

Her books have incredible characterization, a cast filled with great characters with well developed & deep relationships to each other, insane long-term world-building & foreboding, great unique takes on well worn tropes, and twists that can put GRRM to shame. The worst one could say about them is that there can be a bit of repetition and they can be a bit slow to start, but the things that eventually happen once the books start hitting their stride are engaging & exciting, often tragic to a devastating degree.

EXCEPT for the the Soldier's Son trilogy. That's easily her weakest work. Not horrible but the protagonist is just such a horribly whiny, insufferable prick that it made reading the books hard. I'll have to read them again sometimes, often knowing what I'm into can make for better subsequent re-reads, but as of first read basis, Soldier's Son, Forest Mage and Renegade Magic are the worst books Hobb has written.

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You kinda stepped out a bit too far onto the ledge here

 

[woo]

I absolutely adore Hamilton's work. I'm reading the second book of his new trilogy set in a new universe. The Commonwealth saga is great though and I thoroughly recommend all the books in the series

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I read some more yesterday and am really starting to get into it now and am enjoying it quite a lot. I've got quite a few different characters that I have to juggle in my head but they are so well drawn that I grok who they are as distinct characters easily enough. I think I mentioned before that I don't like when writers drop new characters on the reader one after the other as I find it hard to keep track of them all but here I am grokking it all pretty quickly. I think I love Hamilton a little bit for not stressing my tired old man brain too much 😸 .

I am up to the point where

Spoiler

Adam the socialist terrorist nutjob is getting his gear together from the arms dealer but has discovered that his nemesis (the fantastically drawn badass Myo) is on the planet so he has given additional instructions to the arms dealer to presumably help him slip the net. I love the hint that the terrorists are actively protected by the Commonwealth hierarchy, the very body that they are railing against. I do love a good conspiracy theory and dystopian bunch of aholes behind everything.

I am really looking forward to digging back into it later.

 

[Deleted member 16516]

The Alexiad by Anna Komnene.

Never has a daughter eulogised a father to this degree...

 

[Captjohnboyd]

I read some more yesterday and am really starting to get into it now and am enjoying it quite a lot. I've got quite a few different characters that I have to juggle in my head but they are so well drawn that I grok who they are as distinct characters easily enough. I think I mentioned before that I don't like when writers drop new characters on the reader one after the other as I find it hard to keep track of them all but here I am grokking it all pretty quickly. I think I love Hamilton a little bit for not stressing my tired old man brain too much 😸 .

I am up to the point where

Spoiler

Adam the socialist terrorist nutjob is getting his gear together from the arms dealer but has discovered that his nemesis (the fantastically drawn badass Myo) is on the planet so he has given additional instructions to the arms dealer to presumably help him slip the net. I love the hint that the terrorists are actively protected by the Commonwealth hierarchy, the very body that they are railing against. I do love a good conspiracy theory and dystopian bunch of aholes behind everything.

I am really looking forward to digging back into it later.

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I actually only vaguely remember most of the characters in the first book. There's several that are the main characters moving forward though. I also found the main antagonists of the trilogy to be fascinating. Some of my favorite bad guys in a sci-fi series. As the series moves forward, if I recall correctly, there's fewer people to follow as well

Also I think you're the first time I've ever seen someone use grok lol

 

[woo]

I actually only vaguely remember most of the characters in the first book. There's several that are the main characters moving forward though. I also found the main antagonists of the trilogy to be fascinating. Some of my favorite bad guys in a sci-fi series. As the series moves forward, if I recall correctly, there's fewer people to follow as well

Also I think you're the first time I've ever seen someone use grok lol

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Oh, well it shall be interesting to see which of them turns out to be main characters in the long run, then. Fewer characters am gud too.

Well it is a science fiction book so I thought I might just be able to get away with it 😝 .

 

[Dec]

I finished The Priory of the Orange Tree. I went in with very high hopes and just felt it was middling. Just going to vomit some shit out my brain I guess

Spoiler

Too many perfect characters with no real personality, they are so great at every thing that all the bad shit in the book happens to their friends. Tropes all around but with the genders reversed, which is probably intended. Generic good vs. evil. One character inadvertently causes most of the bad shit to happen because the actual bad guy is a dormant dragon. Everyone is constantly falling asleep. No cut in time is ever anything but I was injured and I lost consciousness, when I woke up this next plot point happened. Sabran is basically not a character, which makes Ead's entire motivation to do anything she does pretty unbelievable. The resolution of the story being "people with differing beliefs must come together" is pretty on the nose, but whatever.

No subtlety in anything.

 

[citrusred]

I finished The Priory of the Orange Tree. I went in with very high hopes and just felt it was middling. Just going to vomit some shit out my brain I guess

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That's funny, I came away from it thinking that Sabran was the only character that was looked at in any real depth.

 

[Donthizz]

I am up to the point where

Spoiler

Adam the socialist terrorist nutjob is getting his gear together from the arms dealer but has discovered that his nemesis (the fantastically drawn badass Myo) is on the planet so he has given additional instructions to the arms dealer to presumably help him slip the net. I love the hint that the terrorists are actively protected by the Commonwealth hierarchy, the very body that they are railing against. I do love a good conspiracy theory and dystopian bunch of aholes behind everything.

I am really looking forward to digging back into it later.

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it's going to get craazy

 

[Dec]

That's funny, I came away from it thinking that Sabran was the only character that was looked at in any real depth.

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I think I agree with you actually.

Spoiler

I think I mean more that the relationship between her and Ead is done poorly and tanks both of their characterization when it becomes their main motivation. It feels more like lust than love and yet Ead is throwing her life away for it, when she seemed like one of the most wise/level-headed characters until then.

 

[Palette Swap]

I'm halfway through the Broken Earth trilogy, and I'm liking it more and more as I progress. It's kind of a slow burn, which I like, but it keeps getting better. There's some really strong writing and characterization in there.

 

[WascallyWabbit]

Just started Talking with Strangers, pretty good so far and some fascinating stories, but feels a tad disjointed. He starts some stories (case studies really) and then jumps on to the next rather quickly. Though I do recall that's kind of his style but it's been awhile since I read a Gladwell book

 

[woo]

it's going to get craazy

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🐱

I'm halfway through the Broken Earth trilogy, and I'm liking it more and more as I progress. It's kind of a slow burn, which I like, but it keeps getting better. There's some really strong writing and characterization in there.

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I'm pleased for you; shame it didn't really click for me.

 

[fakefaker]

Currently reading Pachinko by Min Jin Lee. The writing is well done and all but for some reason I feel kinda detached from it.

 

[Dec]

Currently reading Pachinko by Min Jin Lee. The writing is well done and all but for some reason I feel kinda detached from it.

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Just started this tonight! Have read very little so far

 

[Necrovex]

Currently reading Pachinko by Min Jin Lee. The writing is well done and all but for some reason I feel kinda detached from it.

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Loved this book. Though my friend disliked it.

 

[gosublime]

I need to stop reading bad books just because they happen to be in my house and I'm a cheapskate. Read Every Secret Thing by Rachael Crowther and it was not a good read. It jumps back and forth between a group of Cambridge students in 1995 and their reunion in 2015 and the main problem is the way every character has their thoughts written down as if it's a Jane Eyre novel, which makes it read so unbelievably trite it makes the whole book poor. The plot itself is pretty obvious - one late twist is so straightforward that it almost feels like a double bluff, but it's not.

 

[fakefaker]

Just started this tonight! Have read very little so far

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Loved this book. Though my friend disliked it.

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I'm on page 202 and yeah, I'm totally engaged with it now. Though the writing is simple, it's effective and has a subtle power to it.

 

[the_bromo_tachi]

all of David Mitchell's books are connected into a much wider battle between two forces (the Anchorites and Horologists) so you could get more of the overall ideas. It does feel like Cloud Atlas just stops but that kind of ties into the themes of everything being reincarnated time and time again (although it's been about a decade since I read it, so I'm very fuzzy on the details!)

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This does make me want to read his other books.

Took today's afternoon to finish reading Cloud Atlas. Overall, great book and I loved Robert Frobisher's, Luisa Rey's, and Sonmi's stories. I've completely forgotten about Adam Ewing's story and just rushed it to finish the book up. Though, the last sentence is lovely: "What is any ocean but a multitude of drops?". Now back to finding a new novel to read...

Edit: Damn it autocorrect...

 

[gosublime]

This does make me want to read his other books.

Took today's afternoon to finish reading Cloud Atlas. Overall, great book and I loved Robert Frobisher's, Luisa Rey's, and Sonmi's stories. I've completely forgotten about Adam Ewing's story and just rushed it to finish the book up. Though, the last sentence is lovely: "What is any can but a multitude of drops?". Now back to finding a new novel to read...

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They are all good but the overarching plot has a tendency to disappear up itself in the later books - particularly The Bone Clocks. I can heartily recommend Ghostwritten though - fantastic and similar to Cloud Atlas in some respects. I also enjoyed the Thousand Autumns but I know some people think that is where it became a bit pretentious.

 

[the_bromo_tachi]

They are all good but the overarching plot has a tendency to disappear up itself in the later books - particularly The Bone Clocks. I can heartily recommend Ghostwritten though - fantastic and similar to Cloud Atlas in some respects. I also enjoyed the Thousand Autumns but I know some people think that is where it became a bit pretentious.

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Thanks for the recommendation! I'll add this to the list.

 

[Sidewinder]

Reading Dan Simmons' "Hyperion" right now and this is some mighty fine SciFi literature.
Gonna have to buy some more of his books, won't I?

 

[Kill3r7]

Reading Dan Simmons' "Hyperion" right now and this is some mighty fine SciFi literature.
Gonna have to buy some more of his books, won't I?

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The rest of the series/cantos is very good. I find the rest of his bibliography to be hit or miss.

 

[Sidewinder]

The rest of the series/cantos is very good. I find the rest of his bibliography to be hit or miss.

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Nice, should last me for some time.

 

[Blue Skies]

I can't stop getting new books. I prolly have 70 unread books in my personal library, finish maybe 1.5 a month, but add like 2 a month

well, finished World War Z, gonna go back to reading the Ta Nehisi novel

 

[Madds]

The rest of the series/cantos is very good. I find the rest of his bibliography to be hit or miss.

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There were parts of The Terror that seemed to drag, but it is one of the books that stayed with me for a long time after I completed it. (It also got me really into the recent archeological discoveries of the real life Terror and Erebus, so theres that.)

 

[RepairmanJack]

Finished:

This may be one of my favorite things I've ever read. It's like the Breaking Bad of super hero stories with a layer of Brandon Sanderson-esque world building. A constant string of amazing characters, character interactions and development wrapped around in a story of a broken high school girl with bug powers trying to do the best she can in the world.

Fuck this may have one of the most satisfying and perfect wrap up and finishes of a story I've read in a long while. It lands so damn perfectly.

 

[ara]

Oh wow, you actually finished worm? Nice, congrats! I wish the pace had been snappier and fights way quicker and/or less frequent since they ultimately ended up being the reason why I dropped it maybe 20% in, but for the most part it was pretty enjoyable.

 

[Kiddo76]

I have really slacked off in the reading department this year (under 20 books). I'm currently reading the works of H.P. Lovecraft and " The Hate U Give," by Angie Thomas.

 

[RepairmanJack]

Oh wow, you actually finished worm? Nice, congrats! I wish the pace had been snappier and fights way quicker and/or less frequent since they ultimately ended up being the reason why I dropped it maybe 20% in, but for the most part it was pretty enjoyable.

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I would definitely say it has some issues when it gets in to the big fights. They just kind of drag on, even though they're pretty important to see the development of the main character and how she handles these struggles, they still just kind of linger a little too long. There's kind of a string of them around arc 20 to 24 or so where I honestly was losing touch with the story because I didn't care about the fighting as much as I cared about the characters and relationships. But I can't say enough how much the story landed it's mysteries and it's build up and landing.

I'm looking forward to eventually moving on to Ward, the sequel(ish), because I've heard it goes back to the character and relationship aspect and doesn't build quite as much as Worm does.

Like 1.6 million words in a little less than a month. Geesh.

 

[ara]

The thread about the Eragon guy writing a scifi book managed to put me in a sort-of-scifi mood, so anyone got any good recommendations for what would essentially be fantasy books, but in space? By which I mean something like: character and story heavy and a grand story at that, multiple POVs if possible, smaller or even nonexistent focus on constant tech jargon and technology explanations, at least some amount of actual space traveling stuff (so not confined on a single scifi planet or anything like that).

Is The Expanse series something that might fit this criteria? Been meaning to check it out. I suppose Peter F. Hamilton's books are also something that I could check out, though they're (going by the time I spent with Pandora's Star some years ago) maybe a bit too grand and slow-paced and epic for a boring Tuesday evening such as this.

I would definitely say it has some issues when it gets in to the big fights. They just kind of drag on, even though they're pretty important to see the development of the main character and how she handles these struggles, they still just kind of linger a little too long.

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Oh yeah, there's definitely importance to a lot of what happens in those fights and there were some very clever sequences, but in general I just find reading about fighting dreadfully boring. It's always kind of hard to follow, I never really get any vivid images out of it and would have to actively slow my reading way down to be able to actually imagine and follow the fight sequences and so on. If a book has violence, I much, much prefer swift, deadly, gruesome, hard-hitting, gut-punching stuff.

 

[Kill3r7]

The thread about the Eragon guy writing a scifi book managed to put me in a sort-of-scifi mood, so anyone got any good recommendations for what would essentially be fantasy books, but in space? By which I mean something like: character and story heavy and a grand story at that, multiple POVs if possible, smaller or even nonexistent focus on constant tech jargon and technology explanations, at least some amount of actual space traveling stuff (so not confined on a single scifi planet or anything like that).

Is The Expanse series something that might fit this criteria? Been meaning to check it out. I suppose Peter F. Hamilton's books are also something that I could check out, though they're (going by the time I spent with Pandora's Star some years ago) maybe a bit too grand and slow-paced and epic for a boring Tuesday evening such as this.



Oh yeah, there's definitely importance to a lot of what happens in those fights and there were some very clever sequences, but in general I just find reading about fighting dreadfully boring. It's always kind of hard to follow, I never really get any vivid images out of it and would have to actively slow my reading way down to be able to actually imagine and follow the fight sequences and so on. If a book has violence, I much, much prefer swift, deadly, gruesome, hard-hitting, gut-punching stuff.

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-Dune
-Star Wars is basically fantasy in space. There are several books in the SW universe that are worth your time such as the Thrawn Trilogy.
-Red Rising series.

 

[Dec]

The thread about the Eragon guy writing a scifi book managed to put me in a sort-of-scifi mood, so anyone got any good recommendations for what would essentially be fantasy books, but in space? By which I mean something like: character and story heavy and a grand story at that, multiple POVs if possible, smaller or even nonexistent focus on constant tech jargon and technology explanations, at least some amount of actual space traveling stuff (so not confined on a single scifi planet or anything like that).

Is The Expanse series something that might fit this criteria? Been meaning to check it out. I suppose Peter F. Hamilton's books are also something that I could check out, though they're (going by the time I spent with Pandora's Star some years ago) maybe a bit too grand and slow-paced and epic for a boring Tuesday evening such as this.



Oh yeah, there's definitely importance to a lot of what happens in those fights and there were some very clever sequences, but in general I just find reading about fighting dreadfully boring. It's always kind of hard to follow, I never really get any vivid images out of it and would have to actively slow my reading way down to be able to actually imagine and follow the fight sequences and so on. If a book has violence, I much, much prefer swift, deadly, gruesome, hard-hitting, gut-punching stuff.

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I'm not sure I ever thought of The Expanse as fantasy, but it does fit all of those points you request very well. I fell off after book 4 or something, but I think the first couple are pretty fun.

Dune is very fantasy, but is pretty much only on one planet.

I haven't read enough scifi, which I should fix.

Nice, should last me for some time.

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The Terror and Summer of Night are also worth checking out.

From what I've seen of his more recent stuff... it is very problematic and avoid at all costs.

 

[Rivenblade]

Just finished reading...

A very good Star Wars book and an excellent movie universe tie-in book. Really explores the Jedi code and puts to the rest the idea that Jedi aren't allowed to feel anything.

Now listening to...

Really good so far. 2019 was my year to listen to audio books about the POC experience in America (and Britain), and this is the 7th or 8th book I've listened to on the topic this year. It repeats much of what I've heard in other places, while adding new wrinkles and totally new topics (intersectionality). In short, this year I've received confirmation that white America flat out suuuuuuucks.

 

[RepairmanJack]

Oh yeah, there's definitely importance to a lot of what happens in those fights and there were some very clever sequences, but in general I just find reading about fighting dreadfully boring. It's always kind of hard to follow, I never really get any vivid images out of it and would have to actively slow my reading way down to be able to actually imagine and follow the fight sequences and so on. If a book has violence, I much, much prefer swift, deadly, gruesome, hard-hitting, gut-punching stuff.

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Oh boy would the last 10 arcs bother you lol

There's a period where it's basically one big confrontation after the next and I was honestly getting discouraged because it left behind what I was loving about the story. The characters and the interactions and how the main character was so obviously flawed in how she handled those relationships. The fights at times were really hard to follow. Especially the ending fight but that is kind of intended for spoilery reasons.

I hope if the work ever gets published that there is some heavy editing being done because the end result is absolutely worth the journey, but I feel like there's quite a few places where stuff could get trimmed or outright skipped when you have a full work in mind as apposed to having something you're releasing at a regular schedule.

 

[ara]

-Dune
-Star Wars is basically fantasy in space. There are several books in the SW universe that are worth your time such as the Thrawn Trilogy.
-Red Rising series.

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I'm not sure I ever thought of The Expanse as fantasy, but it does fit all of those points you request very well. I fell off after book 4 or something, but I think the first couple are pretty fun.

Dune is very fantasy, but is pretty much only on one planet.

I haven't read enough scifi, which I should fix.

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Oh yeah, I suppose I'm just using fantasy as an incredibly general short hand for the list of criteria so don't pay too much attention to that part. Aside from the glaringly obvious stuff like one usually taking place in a fantastical world and other having a heavy focus on science, I've just found that fantasy books tend to have a bigger focus on characters and stories and all that fun stuff which is what I feel like reading right now. But in space.

I think I'll start with The Expanse for now. Dune I'm definitely interested in, but the quality supposedly dropping rapidly after the first book? few books? has me slightly concerned. SW and RR I'm just.. Utterly sick of by now lol.

Oh boy would the last 10 arcs bother you lol

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Haha, yeah I thought that would probably be the case when I was reading it. As you say, all the character stuff was definitely a lot of fun, but I recall reading about it just getting bigger and more epic when I was in the middle of it and figured - okay, more epic is gonna mean more and/or bigger fights and since I'm not digging those parts right now, I might as well just drop it.

 

[Glasgow Mega-Snake]

Started Moby Dick. Let's see how I'll like the whaling infodumps, for now I'm actually really enjoying it. Melville's use of language is great, but what I didn't expect is the humour. The book is as overtly verbose and full of biblical references as expected, but the self-deprecating comments from the narrator are quite often laugh-out-loud funny. Maybe it won't take me ages to finish this.

 

[Amroth]

Oh yeah, I suppose I'm just using fantasy as an incredibly general short hand for the list of criteria so don't pay too much attention to that part. Aside from the glaringly obvious stuff like one usually taking place in a fantastical world and other having a heavy focus on science, I've just found that fantasy books tend to have a bigger focus on characters and stories and all that fun stuff which is what I feel like reading right now. But in space.

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If it's characters and stories you're after, also have a look at Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan series.

 

[Kill3r7]

If it's characters and stories you're after, also have a look at Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan series.

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Seconded.

 

[ara]

If it's characters and stories you're after, also have a look at Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan series.

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Oh snap, I 100% forgot about the Vorkosigan saga. Read (and really enjoyed) Falling Free earlier this year and while I did start Shards of Honor, I dropped it halfway through for some reason. I guess I missed the goofy characters of Falling Free.

I think I should actually pick that one up again right now. I have vague memories of where it was when I dropped it, so it shouldn't be too hard.

 

[arkon]

I'll third the Vorkosigan series. It's amazing. Especially if you're looking for more character-focused scifi. It works wonderfully when read in chronological order, which I finished earlier this year. Honestly has some of my most favourite ever books across all genres.

 

[Pellaidh]

I finally have some time for reading again, so I started Blindsight by Peter Watts. Currently a bit past the firsts chapter, although with how the book is structured that's several hours in.

After a short prologue, the first real chapter opens with this:

Imagine you are Siri Keeton:​

​

You wake in an agony of resurrection, gasping after a record-shattering bout of sleep apnea spanning one hundred forty days. You can feel your blood, syrupy with dobutamine and leuenkephalin, forcing its way through arteries shriveled by months on standby. The body inflates in painful increments: blood vessels dilate; flesh peels apart from flesh; ribs crack in your ears with sudden unaccustomed flexion. Your joints have seized up through disuse. You're a stick-man, frozen in some perverse rigor vitae.​

​

You'd scream if you had the breath.​

Vampires did this all the time, you remember. It was normal for them, it was their own unique take on resource conservation. They could have taught your kind a few things about restraint, if that absurd aversion to right-angles hadn't done them in at the dawn of civilization. Maybe they still can. They're back now, after all— raised from the grave with the voodoo of paleogenetics, stitched together from junk genes and fossil marrow steeped in the blood of sociopaths and high-functioning autistics. One of them commands this very mission. A handful of his genes live on in your own body so it too can rise from the dead, here at the edge of interstellar space. Nobody gets past Jupiter without becoming part vampire.​

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So, to recap, space travel in this universe involves modifying your DNA to turn into part vampire, dying, then using your newly acquired undead powers to resurrect yourself when arriving at your destination. Most sci-fi writers would just have gone for simple cryosleep, but not Blindsight. And this isn't even close to the weirdest thing in the book so far. The vampire is actually pretty normal compared to the rest of the cast.

Also later on there's a legit scientific explanation for why vampires evolved to have the power of resurrection. This is a hard sci-fi book after all. A hard sci-fi book with space travel via vampirism.

This is exactly the kind of sci-fi I love. The kind that isn't afraid to use the limitless potential of the genre to write something inventive instead of just relying on tired genre tropes.

Other than that, it's basically a first contact story with a side of cosmic horror. First contact stories aren't something I'm really all that into, but this one makes it work much better than the other attempts I've read. At the very least, it's putting in a lot more effort into the "contact" part than other similar stories I've seen.

And the entire book is actually available online for free, which is cool to see.

 

[Blue Skies]

Reading Cherry by Nico Walker
As a recently made veteran that also had some substance use, this book seems like it was written by me in an alternate timeline.
the protag even reads Vonnegut!
I was at MEPS the day of my swearing in with Cats Cradle in hand. I think I was able to read 2/3 of it. They make you wait so much.

 

[ara]

Oh snap, I 100% forgot about the Vorkosigan saga. Read (and really enjoyed) Falling Free earlier this year and while I did start Shards of Honor, I dropped it halfway through for some reason. I guess I missed the goofy characters of Falling Free.

I think I should actually pick that one up again right now. I have vague memories of where it was when I dropped it, so it shouldn't be too hard.

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This was a good idea - read a couple of dozen pages and I had forgotten how utterly effortlessly smooth the writing - dialogue in particular - is.

So yeah, back on that Vorkosigan train.

 

[Gigglepoo]

Colder season means I'll inadvertently end up with...a cold so my reading slowed down somewhat. I'm still going through:

After that - it's scifi month!

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Damn, that was one twisted book!

 

[Deleted member 7279]

Finished A Separate Peace today. Another of those books I was assigned in school and never read. I knew what happened in the end and thought I would be so much sadder than I ended up. It did strike an emotional tone with me though because I have known people who were like Finny in some ways. At times Gene almost romanticizes him in his narration. In a moment of weakness you wreck something that truly was great and in that moment you realize the true catastrophe of what you've done and you spend the rest of your life trying to recapture that great feeling but never can. It is almost the stuff nostalgia is made out of. Even at the end of the novel he's reminiscing about that summer session before Finny fell and how great it was. It's just a touching and poignant lesson.

 

[Xagarath]

It's the bicentennial of George Elliot's birth tomorrow, so I'm reading The Mill on the Floss:

 

[Donthizz]

Paolini finally releasing his sci fi book. YES...

 

[Forerunner]

Just started. Introduction was good, but I'll see how the rest of it turns out. People are saying it falls apart once you get to the panpsychism section.

 

[FlowersisBritish]

It's the bicentennial of George Elliot's birth tomorrow, so I'm reading The Mill on the Floss:

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Oh man its been a while since I've read that. If I remember right, the ending is kinda bonkers. Hope you enjoy!

 

[Xagarath]

Oh man its been a while since I've read that. If I remember right, the ending is kinda bonkers. Hope you enjoy!

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I liked Adam Bede and loved Middlemarch (which actually lived up to its greatest-English-novel reputation), so I'm hopeful!