u/landomonium

Question is basically in the title, I’ve had this thought before and then it got brought back when somebody shared a video the other day about the woman saying ‘everything you like about China is because they’re communist, they’re a ML country… etc’.

Other regimes or parties have expressed that they are Maoist so I guess is it just that it’s assumed that China is obviously Maoist so no need to mention it, or do people think the country has moved so far away from Maoism that even the tankies don’t believe / consider it to be a Maoist country anymore?

Sorry for the wording here, this is a nightmare to try and put into words.

I finished reading GR over the weekend. I read it with a friend, it was my first Pynchon and we met up 5 times (once per part but twice for the longest part) to discuss. Although I didn’t use a guide, I like to write down passages I like a lot longhand as it helps me remember and it turns out….. there’s a lot of passages in the book that I loved.

So it took me about 4 months to read it, including re-reading the first 85 pages or so (this helped a lot) but it involved me really investing 1-2 hours on most days to this book. Looked up like everything I did not know about (torn on if I’d recommend this to somebody who hasn’t read it yet) and overall I had a great experience.

It feels so bittersweet that it’s over since this schizoid book was the backdrop of my life for most of 2026. Anyways, it was awesome and I can’t wait to reread it in 2 years. I liked taking notes because just reading back my notes from a few months ago is really interesting.

Also this was the most difficult book I’ve read by a pretty wide margin so proud of myself for that. Taking a break from Pynchon for a while now but my next will either be Vineland or Bleeding Edge.

That’s all, happy to be part of the club.

And most importantly: >!"Hubba, hubba! Hey, she's pretty sunburned herself. Ain'tcha? You got a leetle mulatto in there, a leetle Mayheecano, honey? You sabe es pañol? You sabe fucky-fucky?"!<

After reading my first Richard Price book, Clockers, I decided to give Pelecanos a read since he’s been on my list and, like Price, wrote for The Wire.

I read his 2018 novel, The Man Who Came Uptown. I’ll give a quick synopsis but none of this is a spoiler, it’s all from early chapters or even the blurb, but just in case, I tried to use the spoiler tool…

>!It follows a Black man, Michael Hudson— who, while in jail pending trial, discovers a love for reading after they expanded the jail’s library program and is multiplied due to a bit of a crush on the librarian.!<

>!With the help of his attorney’s investigator, he is released from jail with the charge dropped with prejudice. Once Hudson is back in society, he continues his love for reading and with a pretty-healthy support system, he just wants to keep his head down and stay clean.!<

>!As you can imagine, his past comes back to haunt him, it’s that kind of book but actually not as trope-y as I’m making it out to be.!<

Anyways, I say this because I was reading reviews from people I really trust for noir recs and they seemed to have loved it and meanwhile I just did not connect with it at all. It’s short and easy to read but maybe I went in expecting Price-level dialogue and certainly did not receive that in this book. Although I like the themes discussed in the book, it veered into preachiness which I feel like the ‘greats’ tend to avoid doing.

Ultimately, it felt like it couldn’t decide on being more of an Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned by Walter Mosely type of book (which I did really enjoy) or a more conventional crime novel so it ended having a weird tone and poor pacing.

I don’t want to count him out just because I didn’t like 1 book of his, so I was wondering if any of you have read any Pelecanos, even better if you’ve read The Man Who Came Uptown as well as others by him and could guide me to what else of his I should give a shot?

Thanks!

If somebody orders 10 boxes of Cheerios, for example, and the store only has eight does that count as a found item or a refunded item if there’s no alternative for the other two?

Thank you!

I went from like 88% found items and was deep in the red for found items my SQ score. Then had a few good days of finding almost everything on larger orders and it jumped up immensely each day although my found items % only got up to 89-90%.

Next day it jumps to almost the greenest of green in good and I get the message above the stats that changed from saying (the negative thing, I forgot the wording) to “we adjust your score up if blah blah blah’ and even though my found items is now back at 88% after a few weeks of lots of shopping but apparently not the best days of stock…. My score thing continues to raise on the meter.

All I’m saying is damn this thing is so janky that all you can really do is try to find everything and hope for the best. Don’t stress it too much as it’s going to do what it’s going to do.

Hello all.

I listened to about half of Filth by Irvine Welsh via audiobook on some janky YouTube video (I read the other half) and it was great but it seems like a lot of his books only have abridged versions available in the US.

So does anybody know where I can find an unabridged audiobook or Glue by Irvine Welsh, if it even exists?

Thanks and I highly recommend checking out the Filth audiobook on YT! I left timestamps for ton of chapter breaks in the comments, so hopefully that helps! Also the janky sound in the audiobook at parts is on purpose and makes sense when you see the physical copy, it’s not an audio error and you’re not missing anything in the story

I’ve seen posts about batches being accepted by them even though they did not actually accept it.

It happened to me today! My phone was plugged in as I was having dinner and I guess I didn’t click ‘go offline’. I had dinner with my family and 90 minutes later I unplug my phone and have notifications from IC saying that my batch is in jeopardy if I don’t begin shopping soon and the likes.

1. I never accepted this batch
2. I don’t know how it could have clicked the ‘start shopping button as I was over 3 miles away from the store
3. Crazy they didn’t cancel it that it said I was an hour into shopping at this point without a single item picked up

Anyways, I call batch support and I only had a 1% cancel rate so when she said she would remove the batch, I wouldn’t be paid, that I should return all items to their shelves etc, and that it may effect my cancellation rate I didn’t mind as I just wanted it cleared off so I can actually take orders if one came in. The support person was not great as it was a 3 order batch and removed one order at a time and would tell me to refresh and I should be good but we had to go through it 3 times with me explaining that it had multiple orders but eventually it got resolved.

Here’s where the question comes in… I still have it in my app marked as an order where I’ve received the base pay and (I’m in california) it has me marked as working an hour and 15 minutes more than I actually did this week because of that. It’s been 2 hours since speaking with support, what will happen when tonight at midnight if they do the auto cash out of the base pay from this cancelled batch and what will happen when it’s time for adjustments for hours worked?

I’m concerned that I will be paid out for it but they will then want the $ back and id rather not be paid for it then to deal with that headache.

Should I reach out to support about this ASAP?

The Cold Six Thousand by James Ellroy ruled.

I particularly like chapter 42 and 43 although there’s a ton to love. The style is what? Maximalist minimalism? It’s certainly 5x American Tabloid with that writing style but I just couldn’t get enough of it.

Typically reading while stoned can be tough for me but I’d go straight to Cold 6k after smoking and have a great time.

For the rest of what I’m reading- I’m finishing up Gravity’s Rainbow with a group and I found a copy of Clockers by Richard Price and I’ve been struggling to put that down…

Anybody finish Ellroy’s Underworld Trilogy? If so, how’s Bloods a Rover?

Hi I always thought that Hoopla had the same list of titles regardless of what library you’re a member of, but I just became a member at a new library and they have virtually nothing on Libby but a ton of great options on Hoopla, which is the opposite of my main one… is this normal?

I really loved the 2026 Pulitzer for Fiction, Angel Down by Daniel Kraus! Very light spoilers, I’ll mark when they will appear below.

After a 3 month wait for a library copy, I received mine 1 day before it was announced that Angel Down is the winner of the 2026 Pulitzer for Fiction. It truly felt serendipitous to give this book a real shot.

Immediately I was drawn in by the language. I can’t exactly put my finger on it but it’s very anxiety-inducing language and at times quite religious or apocalyptic. I had a similar experience with the revolutionary language that was used throughout The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson.

Then there is the elephant in the room for anybody who has heard about this book, and that is that the entire book is 1 long run-on sentence and yes, that’s TECHNICALLY true but you stop noticing it after a couple of pages and on page 6 it’s addressed head on. With the page breaks for paragraphs and the short chapters, there’s plenty of places that you can naturally pause your reading.

Below is basically the blurb of this book if I were to have written it, I won’t go into spoilers just the set up for the story itself and then the themes that follow… if you want to go in blind I’d stop reading any more of this now although I won’t be going into depth:

——

It’s ww1 in a French battlefield where Americans and Germans are engaging in some very brutal trench warfare, the Americans think a soldier is injured and dying in No Man’s Land so a motley crew of 5 of the most ‘disposable’ soldiers are sent on a mission to ‘mercy kill’ the injured soldier as he is letting out a shriek that borders on the supernatural, and its really a mission to stop the shriek more than it is out of any compassion from their power-hungry commander, General Reis, an insecure leader with a napoleon complex.

The de facto leader of this ridiculous group is Cyril Bagger, the son of a Bishop and swindling small time con man, who first notices that it’s not an injured soldier who is shrieking, but it’s actually a fallen angel. Once the team truly acknowledges that they have an angel in their hands, the soldiers try to get her to safety and A LOT goes on in the process.

——

Little extra ‘review’ from me:

Cyril and the crew deal with past and current traumas, how faith can play a role within several facets of life, angels of both the evil and holy persuasion, loyalty an selfishness, and the many complexes of war that truly started with the weapons and mass industrialization that happened in WW1.

There was a lot of symbolism, some of it was a bit too on the nose but keep in mind, I don’t think Kraut wrote this with the intent of it being considered for a Pulitzer or to really be in the ‘lit fic’ category. It’s a mix of historical fiction, war, adventure, fantasy, and horror (oh yeah, it’s very gory throughout, actually fukin disgusting at times lol). I think it was a great mix of fun and engaging writing vs thematic depth.

I’m not a christian and I definitely do not know much about angels in Christianity but any knowledge from that standpoint would probably enhance your experience.

As mentioned, I don’t think Kraus had any intention of this being considered for a Pulitzer but I’m happy that something like this won, not that I put a ton of weight into Pulitzer winners, but I did like this a lot more than many of Pulitzer for fic winners I have read.

Additionally I really loved Cyril Bagger, our protagonist, and his relationship and how his relationship with the young Arno who was assigned to the mission with him. I could have just hung out with them for 100s of more pages.

——

I’d love to discuss with anybody else who has read this book, I hope this inspires somebody to give this book a chance because it really is one of a kind and I couldn’t get enough of it, even when it was gross.

Oh and last thing, the writing felt very cinematic to me, and the whole time I thought ‘Guillermo Del Toro is one of the only active directors who could direct an adaptation of this book. And hey! I look up more about Kraus and it turns out he was involved with shaping the story for The Shape of Water.

If you read this whole thing, thanks for taking the time to read my review! I wrote it on my phone directly into Reddit so I’ve learned my lesson to not do that moving forward, so apologies for any formatting issues and what not.

Enjoy!

My question is in the title but yeah I don’t have a membership right now as I mainly used credits on very long biographies for when I’m driving or doing chores etc. would love to see if some of them are on sale since the long ones cost over $30 w the regular remember discount.

Hope that makes sense, thanks!

I loosely follow this account on YouTube but my friend always shares positive reviews if he is trying to get me to read a newer book and I’ve noticed that there’s virtually never really negative reviews of these books. Certainly not every professional book reviewer thinks all of these books are masterpieces, right?

So when I came across this video I immediately clicked and it has some really interesting points from varying perspectives and it’s not black-pilled.

He actually used a book as an example that I was struggling to find anything but glowing praise for although I thought it was quite horrible, and I know it’s a pretty divisive one but… it’s The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, possibly my least favorite book although most book reviews online by professional or semi-professional reviewers would have you thinking it’s the best piece of modern art there is.

One of the points in the video that shocked me the most is that there are less than 10 full-time, not-self-employed, professional reviewers in English-language media.

Due to changes in media consumption (online vs newspaper / magazines) and the pure amount of books being published— reviews really have become more of recommendations which is a semi-new phenomenon.

Anyways, I’ll stop trying to paraphrase the video and just drop the link, enjoy. Actually I think it shares at the top of the post, I’m not great at using Reddit.

Edit: the very kind big_actually has shared this in the comments:

It's a video version of a Substack post he made a couple weeks ago, if you want to read it here: https://open.substack.com/pub/belowthefray/p/are-book-reviews-gaslighting-us?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=6hz9h0

Edit 2: I shouldn’t have included Literary Criticism in the title as it’s not what the video or substack or my post is about, it’s really just about reviews, thank you!

So I’ve been in Needs Work for 3 months. So annoying because I wasn’t even getting the Gold orders which was bad enough. My found item rating was about 87% and I had 0s across the board for the negatives— missing items, damaged items, wrong items, unrequested refunds the entire time.

So here’s how I first got into Standard for a few days before moving into Good.

Absolutely nothing. I literally just kept doing exactly what I was doing but some of my larger orders I got lucky and they had almost everything so my found items went from 87% to 89%, it’s such a stupid system. I’m gold now about to hit platinum because of my order amount and SQ but still….

I guess the only thing it can boil down to is don’t worry too much and just try your hardest to find the right things. Wish I had actual insight to offer.

I’d like to first acknowledge that these books are very much genre and I wouldn’t put them even as slipstream literature, they really are just crime books. Hardboiled noir in contemporary LA with clear homage to Raymond Chandler and especially James Ellroy.

Everybody Knows is from a couple of years ago and follows Mae, who is a ‘black bag publicist’, and Chris who is essentially a Hollywood fixer. The reason I recommend these books here is because it takes on a lot of recent real life topics with one of the main antagonists being a version of Nickelodeon’s Dan Schneider and all those who helped protect him.

A Violent Masterpiece was released a month ago, although it was positioned as a loose sequel I’d say it’s more of a direct sequel with lots of continuity and the same antagonists kinda with new protagonists. There’s an Epstein element, a John Landis and son element, an Armie Hammer element, and one of the protagonists is a nightcrawler twitch streamer essentially and somehow this was written without being corny.

Anyways, if you like crime / noir stuff I don’t think many are doing it at this level in contemporary settings so I highly recommend.