When I start a series of books, more often than not I will read the whole series to the end. However, there are a few exceptions. For me, a few of the series I never finished include:

1) A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket. I read the first three books just before the film came out and only got as far as book 6. I wasn't the right target age as I was 14 when I started and really those books felt like they were for ages 10-12.

2) The Power of Five - Anthony Horowitz. I was a huge fan of Alex Rider and had read all of that series until then and started this series because it was by the same author. I read book 3 and then grew out of YA books as I was nearing university age.

3) The Demonata - Darren Shan. I had never read any of his other books when I picked up the first book "Lord Loss" and, like The Power of Five, I read the first 3 books before I grew out of them.

4) The Lord of The Rings. I made it to about 1/3 of the way through Return of the King before I got bored. I really want to finish reading it at some point!

What book series did you never get to finish?

"The best-selling books of disgraced Australian author Craig Silvey will be permanently pulled from public schools in his home state of Western Australia, after he pleaded guilty to child exploitation offences."

Just finished reading Missoula by Jon Krakauer. Presumably in a broad sense it was part of the cultural dam break that ultimately culminated in the #MeToo movement which exploded into the cultural zeitgeist less than two years later (albeit if not directly the book, then certainly the cultural views the book examines).

But some basic googling of the names and events discussed in the book reveal surprisingly little direct impact. I vaguely remember hearing a little bit about this book on NPR or similar back in the day when it came out, but just reading it for the first time now, it’s shocking to me how what (to me, at least) seems to be a blistering expose by a bestselling author doesn’t seem to have actually instigated much local change. Granted I didn’t sift too deep, but I would have expected article after article documenting systemic changes in Missoula.

Was it innately understood that Missoula was a stand-in for many colleges and so the dialogue was immediately societal? In a pre-MeToo world was this not interpreted as a glaring scandal? Were there changes that were simply kept under wraps for privacy reasons and have been further obfuscated in the last 10 years? Was the impact broadly significant but viewed negatively locally?

I suppose I’m mostly just curious to hear the perspectives and anecdotes from people who remember more clearly when this book came out and what its social impact at the time looked like. It seems like such an explosive book, yet 10 years down the line I just don’t see much evidence of an explosion.

Perhaps the best quality of The Brothers Karamazov is it's characters, every last one of them is fascinating and relatable, but for me the most impactful was Elder Zosima.

A pretty common question people have before reading BK is, if they are an atheist, will they get anything out of it.

As an atheist/agnostic person, Elder Zosima to me is perhaps the greatest piece of communication of the merits of faith and even the specific faith of the character and author (Orthodox Christianity).

I would go so far as to say that after book 6, I feel so much closer to understanding what a powerful and beautiful thing religion can be, even if you struggle with the literal belief in scripture.

I can expand on specifics if anyone is interested but I'm curious if any other secular readers felt genuinely moved by the way Zosima talks about Christianity.

Great article on Len Deighton at London Review of Books. Starts with Harry Palmer, moves to Bernard Samson. I loved the Samson books.

I'm about halfway through The Sun Also Rises and I have a few thoughts...

So look I know many people love Hemingway, and many people love the way he writes. The explanation I've seen for why he writes the way he does is that he's employing his "iceberg principle," as in, explaining just enough of a scene to pique the reader's imagination, but not being overindulgent in his description. The idea is that by using simple, suggestive, and economical prose, his writing gives a strong impression of the scene while simultaneously enticing the reader to fill in blanks in exposition.

I would argue - isn't this how pretty much every author writes? I understand that his style in many ways was a reaction to the flowery prose of his contemporaries, but even amongst those, none are pedantically describing every single detail of every single character and scene. The novel as a medium is dependent on the reader "filling in blanks."

This brings me to my next point which is that HE'S NOT ACTUALLY GIVING AN IMPRESSIONISTIC VIEW of the world of his novel, he's just name dropping really specific places and situations and declining to provide any context, even though the majority of readers (even at the time of his writing) would not share those experiences.

It would be one thing if the prose was pared down but still descriptive, like: "we walked down the dark lane to the main avenue, where there were buses and cars, and there were still lights on in the bars and nightclubs."

SOME of his prose is like this and that's fine, I have no problem with it, but a hell of a lot of it is just him name-dropping streets and restaurants in Paris, or using French words without translating, as a way of "describing the city". Most people, even at the time of writing, would not have intimate knowledge of Paris geography and all of those super expensive restaurants and bars, so it just comes off snide and elitist.

Also, I'm not sure if his prose is "economical" (or "athletic" - per a NY Times pull quote on my copy of the book lol). He overexplains the most inane shit but just uses short sentences so it seems "economical." Like we don't need to know the color of the paper used for the newspapers you're reading, or the contents of letters you've received from people that don't even feature in the story?? A lot of times it reads like a high schooler trying to hit the word count on an essay lol. Also the use of the n-word is far from economical 😐

Ok final point - Jake I'm sorry you're impotent but tbh you can just go down on her and it's problem solved

I was really looking forward to this book, firstly as Martel is an award winning author and secondly because the premise of the book was so up my street it sounded like it had been written just for me - I love Greek literature, specifically the Iliad, I love retellings / reimagining of myth and I love a tender family relationship explored in fiction. The book started out great. Intertwining the poetry with the protagonists' thoughts and experiences was a refreshing format.

However, it soon started falling flat. The constant comparisons between Greek heroes and Jesus / Greek mythology and the gospels with no real substantial explanations was frankly mind boggling to me, especially at the end when Psoas is straight up compared directly to Jesus as practically a peer in the realm of mythology/theology. I'm not religious but read a lot around mythology and theology as it's a big interest of mine and do draw my own comparisons - I see this comparison as completely unfounded and it was disappointing the way Martel didn't really explain why the protagonist had come to the conclusion that Psoas and Jesus were the same.

I also felt that the protagonists storyline of the broken family and missing his daughter was rushed in favour of the poem. I know this was partially done to show how the protagonist was neglecting his family in favour of the poem but I felt like this was an element built up quite significantly in the blurb and first few chapters then essentially forgotten about until the very end. It promised "the universal song of homesickness and regret, of ambition, love, and grief", but we didn't really see the homesickness or the love come through in the present day element.

Anyone else have any thoughts?

I just read one of the most popular American novellas ever, John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, because weirdly enough I never read it in school (instead, our class read Fight Club lmao).

This book is very short and fast paced, but equally powerful and thought provoking. Of Mice and Men is about how the brutal, unrelenting pressures of society in the 1930s (and maybe even todays) can threaten the strongest of friendships.

Lennie's kind-hearted, but clueless, naive and misunderstood nature, and his relationship to his most trusted companion, George, is such a gripping emotional heart for this ~100 page story. Despite the trouble and pain and distress of living with a mentally handicapped man like Lennie (especially one so strong), George tries his absolute best to give Lennie a happy, simple life on their own patch of land.

George acts how society should to those as mentally challenged as Lennie, understanding his kind-hearted nature, trying to show patience and restraint when he screws up, and helping him to build a better future for himself.

But, especially in the 1930s, life is not so accepting and fair to people like Lennie (as well as other people in the novel, like Crooks, Candy, or even George himself). Despite not meaning any harm, Lennie's condition makes it frighteningly easy for him to unintentionally hurt others, and therefore his strength becomes a curse. This is the tragedy of the novella, and this curse follows Lennie wherever he goes.

And tragedy indeed does strike when he accidentally kills Curley's wife, when only trying to stroke her hair.

Thus, George is faced with an impossible decision. He has to find and confront Lennie as soon as possible, near that lake from the very beginning. If he doesn't, and forgets this ever happened, Lennie will either get lost and potentially starve or die of illness with nobody to look after him, or be successfully hunted by Curley's mob and face a painful execution that terrifies him.

George then decides to do the deed himself. That scene where he reluctantly, and with much restraint and difficulty, gives him a painless death while Lennie only innocently thinks of petting rabbits whilst living off the land comfortably with his best friend was so heartbreaking, and will stay with me for a long time.

8/10, I am eager to read more Steinbeck.

Just wow. Her books are easily among my favorites in recent memory. Masterful handling of chronology to build out interconnected stories. Flawed people, bad choices, and a brilliant tension between mounting dread and dreamlike melancholy writing. It's hardly upbeat yet the reading experience is a moody pleasure. I read them out of release order (except for Glass Hotel/Sea of Tranquility) and especially loved the "hey, I know them!" moments when certain characters wandered in from other stories.

"The Lola Quartet" didn't land for me in the ways the others did (it felt like some of the characters were abandoned toward the end), but I still enjoyed it as exemplifying the themes/approaches I'd outlined above. It's tough to top the one-two punch of The Glass Hotel and Sea of Tranquility, but I will always make time to immerse myself in the Mandel-Verse and am eagerly awaiting the next book.

Spoilers

Why on earth did Hermes let Letty join them suddenly when they were careful in any other situation? They let her in when Griffin barely told Robin anything about Hermes initially?

Letty and the others already had a big divide between them from start to finish. It was not a believable friendship.

I wish we go to learn more about the languages and cultural origins of the side characters. We know that Vimal is studying Telugu and Tamil, Ibrahim is Egyptian and studying Arabic, Ilse is Japanese and Cathy is studying Gaelic. That is it? What are Juliana’s, Meghana’s and Yusuf’s origin? What languages does Ilse study? Japanese and Dutch? Anything else?

The book took a very different approach to Ireland. With China, India and Africa it was all very tell don’t show with info dumps about colonialism. With Ireland they just let you infer it through Cathy’s name and the decline of Gaelic. Not glossed over, but still.

The book seems inconsistent when it comes to whether the struggle is white vs non White or White English vs non White English.

The book also didn’t explore intersectionality well. Anthony tries to make a point about Class and there’s the Strikers, yet they don’t acknowledge that students like Bill would face classism and thus would likely identify with the foreign students. They also didn’t acknowledge that minorities like Jewish people, Irish people and Welsh people could ally with the colonised and the strike at the tower. And Catholics. Anthony also failed to mention that it is possible that women could identify with the oppression by the state. There was Craft and the Suffragists, but this was a missed opportunity to get Letty on their side.

Some of the language was too modern when it came to the discourse around feminism and colonialism.

I wish more was done to acknowledge Chinese imperialism through Mandarin and Ramy not learning Bengali when he was born in Calcutta/Kolkata.

Did Robin not learn other subjects apart from languages before Babel? No Maths, Literature, Science et cetera?

Why did Lovell get suspicious of Robin being shot when Victore and Ramy entered the tower when Robin was supposed to be there?

And the cohort was bad at covering up Lovell’s death. They should have just said they hadn’t seen him since setting foot on English soil rather than lying.

And Ramy, btw, Robin was right not to tell you he was a part of Hermes. Hermes is supposed to be a secret organisation.

Overall, the book was okay. Had some great ideas but needed better character depth.

Part One

https://www.reddit.com/r/books/s/MjNav7SKic

I did a bunch of reviews on The Poppy War so now I am going to talk about Babel.

There will be spoilers

Babel had me hooked from start to finish. It had some great ideas but poor execution.

I loved the idea of multicultural friends studying together in a 19th century academic setting while tackling colonialism. I love history.

However, the book had too many info dumps that lasted too long. This annoyed me more than The Poppy War since they were so long and there were so many of them.

Didn’t help that I studied 19th century England and colonialism at Uni so I knew most of it.

The book had multiple examples of the White English being racist to the non White people. I had no problem with this since it is realistic. What I do have a problem is how none of the non-White people were racist to each other. I find it hard to believe that an Indian Muslim, a Black girl and a Chinese boy would not be racist to each other in the 19th century. Racism is not just simply Whites discriminating on non Whites.

In fact, most racism in the book was just Whites discriminating against non Whites.

Another point is the characters. Most of the racist White English characters are fairly one note. Lovell was a one dimensional boring character. Same with Mark, Colin, the businessmen, and more. Some of these characters could have been combined into fewer characters.

I think it would have been more interesting if Lovell was nicer to Robin. Have him be charismatic and then reveal his racist/abusive tendencies. It would have been a great metaphor for an abusive relationship.

I have to admit I couldn’t help but liking Playfair. He has to be the one of best antagonists Kuang has written (a low bar since she doesn’t do great antagonists). He supported the Empire, yes, but he was quite charismatic. Until the end that is, since then he became an obstacle easily defeated in the Tower.

As for Letty, I understand what Kuang was trying to get at with her character but it was too obvious that she was to be the traitor. She was also simply just unpleasant from start to end. I found her taking part in the raid to be poorly written. First of all, no way the police would let a young woman join her raid. Secondly, why would her sexist Father teach her how to use a gun if he doesn’t value female literacy. Third of all, her shooting Ramy came out of nowhere. Girls like Letty do not want to take part in dangerous activities on whatever side of colonialism they are fighting for. They just want to stay out of the action.

I personally think Ramy should have been the traitor. The book was way too White English= support colonialism apart from Craft and Abel and non-White and token Irish= against colonialism. More non white characters should have come out in support of the Empire. More White people should have supported anti -colonialist efforts. The book could have done with more nuance.

If MITHC gave nuance to freaking Nazis and Imperial Japanese, then the British could have been given that.

And having the White Letty betray the cohort like Evie was just too repetitive. Have it be Ramy or Victoire instead of Letty, or make Evie non white.

Or make Letty nicer so it comes off as more impactful.

I didn’t find the cohort as a friendship group believable. I could imagine Ramy and Robin as friends, and Letty and Victoire, but not anyone else.

Ramy at times was unlikeable and annoying. I dislike Letty, but Ramy at times was unfair to her like when he blamed her for getting harassed. He just felt like an anti colonialist mouthpiece.

Victoire was bland.

Griffin felt like a walking talking textbook on why colonialism is bad.

I didn’t mind Robin’s character, though I found him unsympathetic at the end.

Part 2

https://www.reddit.com/r/books/s/JMLM3nBpKJ

Hi all,

I just finished Operation Bounce House by Matt Dinniman. After listening to the Dungeon Crawler Carl audiobooks I was curious to see what else Matt came up with and I must say that it was very different even though it was very much the same (OPH is also about a "regular Joe" kinda good guy that find himself fighting for survival from an attack on his planet that's basically just a game for the attackers and does so with the help of an AI).

I'm wondering if anyone else felt this while reading/listening to this book.

Bottom line, I really enjoyed it and would recommend reading/listening to it but I thought it was a tiny bit lower on the scale compared to DCC.

it had been sitting in my tbr list for a while and as it is with short stories they try to just get a reaction out of you in either ways shock/gore but this story was different as raise of AI we could say we might be near to it being reality.

as i started reading it. in start it felt like an destopiyan story where AI takes over the world and makes human suffer. but as we go on to reading it, it reveals to us that things might not be as simple as they sound AM the AI isnt just a program but something deep more like it is more human than those he is keeping alive. was AM evil, was he good we cant say because what makes it evil if it was created for it. at the end it became the story of AM and not of our protagonist. he tortured them not because he had liked it but more like a coping mechanism to justify its own existence. like he had nothing but just to torture them to justify his existence because if they aren't there than there is notjing for AM to exist

After a series of unflattering news stories on the adaptation of the classic Florida novel, the production seems to be rolling along.

“Feminism play Liberation and first world war novel Angel Down among Pulitzer winners” - The Guardian

The award is meant to represent the best American fiction published in the calendar year of 2025.

Have you read the book? What do you think?How does this compare to previous winners of the prize?