I know this is a classic to many, but my introduction to The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings was the movies. Three action packed, gorgeous movies with incredible scores. Absolute cinema to a 11,12,13 year old.

Of course I was curious about the books after seeing them so I remember picking up the hobbit fresh off of seeing RoTK in theaters. Underwhelmed was an understatement. I wanted action and adventure and grand battles and I remember DNFing after the troll fight, unsure why there was 10 pages of a feast but only 1 page for a fight.

Fast forward to now and my toddler (3yo about to turn 4) and I read every night to bed. On a whim I bought a nice copy of The Hobbit with illustrations and started to read to her every night. It was a bit darker than I anticipated which required me to often have to subtly skip words or sections which were violent or scary, however overall it was the perfect book. It took us about 8 months of reading a few pages every night. Most nights it'd be the second book we'd read, her choosing the first. Whenever she chose it first was a night I knew she was just trying to fall asleep ASAP and she'd be out within a couple paragraphs.

She loved the picture of Smaug in the book, regularly having me swap back to the full page picture of him and then she'd gobble up all the gold on the page. She also loved the songs, frequently asking me to find one to sing which I was more than happy to oblige (I can't sing at all but doing a low 'dwarf' voice worked for every song in the book).

As we got to the last few pages she kept asking "how many pages did we read?" and I'd say "340 pages!" and she'd go "Wow, that's crazy!" Finishing it felt monumental and bittersweet. She really enjoyed the book. Loved Smaug and loved Bilbo. She started calling her brother Bilbo because he was short with curly hair and big feet.

Anyways, since then I've been trying to fill the void with another book and... failing.

I've tried Tale of Desperaux (this one seems great but she's not into it), Narnia (not nearly as fantastical so far, hard to get her into it) and I looked at Redwall (a bit too advanced). I was really taken aback by how well structured the hobbit is. She loves the songs, the supporting characters jump off the page (she was aware of Gandalf, Bilbo, Smaug, Bard), the songs were plentiful and really helped with engagement and lastly the illustrated version was just enough to keep her engaged without it being purely a 'just words' book. Also the narrative style worked super well with each chapter feeling self contained as a story. It made it really easy to recap events when we'd pick up after a hiatus. Finding something to replace it has been super hard. I didn't respect this book growing up but now I see it for the masterpiece that it is.

5/5. An absolutely fantastic, extremely thought provoking book. I've read four Cormac McCarthy books before this one, with two I loved (The Road and No Country for Old Men), one I enjoyed (Child of God), and one I felt mixed on (All the Pretty Horses). Good thing too because this was easily the most dense book by him so far, and unfortunately his artistic writing choices (not using typical punctuation) make reading Blood Meridian unnecessarily difficult at times. But, that being said, I think the book is well worth reading if you're able to handle the writing style, you're interested in the themes, or you can handle the violence in the story.

At it's heart, I think Blood Meridian spends the most time focusing on the ideas of war, violence, and the human condition. I don't even know where to start because there's so much to chew on in the book. Maybe the best place would be to address how the violence is depicted in the book to help determine if this is something you would want to read. The barebones story is that there is a 15 year old kid who joins a gang of men who are hunting Native Americans to scalp them and get monetary rewards for each one. Obviously, with a premise like that, there is some pretty gruesome material here. There are multiple depictions of murder, scalping, senseless violence against men, women, children, and even infants, people getting shot, stabbed, decapitated, set on fire, and basically anything that could have happened to a person in the mid 1800s. For the most part, the violence is graphic but not explicit. McCarthy writes everything very matter-of-factly but you won't be reading gratuitous descriptions like you would in an extreme horror novel (although arguably the base level of content here would fit in the genre). I could see people saying that the violence seems unnecessary and pointless, but I would argue that that's exactly the point McCarthy is trying to make and that it fits thematically.

Speaking of the themes, McCarthy has a lot of interesting ideas here. As addressed already, violence and domination are probably the biggest and also the central themes of the book. This is most heavily illustrated by Judge Holden, one of the most well written evil characters that has ever graced the pages of a book. Talk about an absolutely terrifying, creepy, and just completely unsettling character. The judge is this satanic, seemingly supernatural and immortal, charismatic, agent of chaos and warfare that is utterly compelling to read about. His ideas about how war is the only God, and how domination over creation is the most important concept make for great discussions. There are so many examples from the book to illustrate these themes that it'd be impossible to talk about them all here so, suffice to say, if that interests you just know that you will be well rewarded.

Tied into the ideas of violence and domination, we also get to see moments of mercy which, in this story, particularly stick out. The kid does a handful of things that contrast tremendously with the actions of those around him, and yet he himself is an incredibly violent individual. This brings us around to the good ol' free will versus determinism debate. Are the characters fated to the lives they have? Can they change things? The judge and the kid play off each other and ask these questions, but the reader is never given any definitive answer. Blood Meridian also tackles religion, the existence of God, racism, nihilism, knowledge vs wisdom, natural evils, identity, morality, and more.

I am not a prose snob by any means, but I just have to address McCarthy's writing style real quick. The prose is absolutely wonderful. There were multiple times while reading this book that I just took a moment and thought to myself, "Wow. That is some really well crafted writing." This happened especially in McCarthy's descriptions of the landscapes and weather; early in the book there is a scene where the host of characters is traveling and the descriptions of the mountains and the thunderstorms seen in the distance was just so dang good that it felt like I was transported to that time and place. It's not all good though; there were also times where I would read a sentence, reread it again, try to tackle it a third time, and then give up because it was so obtuse that I had no idea what it was trying to say. This is probably a personal problem and I'm not intelligent enough to decipher it, but I figured I'd address it anyway.

All in all, I think this is a really great book if you're looking for a lot of thought provoking material. Reading it was not always an enjoyable experience; in fact I think I'd give the reading enjoyment a 3/5, but the literary merit a 5/5, which more than makes up for the difficulty I had at times. The book is also only 350ish pages which makes it way more approachable. This is one I would reread, especially now that I am more familiar with the story and the themes, and I would recommend others do as well (with the caveats already mentioned above).

I'd love to hear your thoughts if you've read it, whether you liked it or hated it!

Here was the most polarizing question: if an author runs their writing through an LLM to ask for advice on structure, does that make the finished work "AI-written"?

I don't say this lightly, I just finished E.F. Benson's Mapp and Lucia series (all six books) and I am bereft. In the best way. I need to talk about how good these are, because I feel like they don't come up nearly enough.

If you haven't heard of them, they're a series of comic novels written in the 1920s-30s, set in small, impossibly charming English villages (Riseholme, then Tilling) among a cast of "idle rich" characters whose entire lives revolve around social one-upmanship. Who hosts the best garden party. Who "discovers" the next fashionable fad first. Who can out-manoeuvre whom over a bridge table or a recipe for lobster à la Riseholme. That's it. That's the plot, for six books. And it is an absolute delight.

The comedy is razor-sharp but never mean. Benson clearly adores these ridiculous people even as he's skewering them mercilessly. Lucia (self-appointed queen of Riseholme, then invader of Tilling) is a monster of vanity, ambition, and reinvention, and you root for her anyway. Miss Mapp is her equal and opposite-- paranoid, scheming, endlessly plotting from behind her garden hedge. Watching the two of them go to war is one of the great pleasures in English comic fiction.

It's a peek into a world that doesn't exist anymore, and honestly, may never have quite existed the way Benson paints it. Small towns where everyone knows everyone, days structured around callers and correspondence and elaborate social rituals, crises measured in things like who got invited to whose bridge evening. It's nostalgic in a way that feels almost fantastical, and that's exactly the appeal. You get to live inside it for a while.

And it's just so cosy. For all the scheming, there's real warmth here. It's gentle in a way a lot of satire isn't; there's no cruelty underneath it, just people being magnificently, entertainingly petty about very small stakes, in a world that feels safe and enclosed and full.

If you like Barbara Pym, Wodehouse, or just want something funny and warm and slightly wicked to disappear into, start with Queen Lucia and just keep going. You will not want it to end. I didn't.

I'll be honest; I entered this quest as a skeptic. After the first 100 pages, I assumed I knew that I've signed up for a disappointing, sloppy read of an author who is indeed in his 'eleventh hour'.

I've been — to my immense joy and pleasure — been proved wrong.

Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote boasts an influence on world literature as large and all-encompassing as Karamazov, War & Peace, or Ulysses (not considering the great Greek epics). To stand upon its shoulders and construct a world that seeks to look further, examine deeper, and ask harsher questions is challenging — to put simply.

But Rushdie has taken upon the challenge and come out victorious. There aren't many authors who are looking at the new, ever-changing world so closely and with such concern. His penchant for the 'magic real' puts us face-to-face with a world that is declining, becoming more extremist and uninhabitable.

As always, his literary genius binds together a tale as old as time with a world that is hyperfixated on social media, apathy, and extremism, and asks fundamental questions about the soul, the self. This, with the recurring theme of a father and a son (having read Midnight's and Haroun before).

Is there a simple synopsis that I can roll out (like a carpet, not flying for now) for the fellow review-reader? No. Go in blind. See if it works for you. It worked for me, but only after I was patient and surrendered to the text. Do I speak like the Don? Has he hopped out of the pages and inhabited my mind? We'll never know.

I devoured this book in two days (270 pages). I wasn’t expecting to like it so much, but I just couldn’t put it down.

We follow George throughout his 20s and 30s, spanning 2000-2020, mostly in Brooklyn. Privileged but troubled, your initial sympathy for him turns into intense frustration. Anyone who has read Stoner will recognise the passivity and inaction that makes the reader want to tear their hair out.

A lot of the Goodreads reviews say “we all know a George…” but I don’t think we do. I think we all have been George. George is what happens when we succumb to the most negative thoughts we have, if we don’t get up keep going.

The ending is what made this book for me. 10/10. Greathead’s prose is also excellent.

Up front, Messiah felt like it lacked depth. The conflict is there and in multiple directions, but it doesn't feel like it's actually gone into in any real detail. Character development feels the same way, moments are short, lacking fullness about them that you feel the actual development. The prose and style of narration are different. It feels less like a proper sequel and more like something convenient to write about.

I do want to take a moment and talk about a letter from Brian that's at the front of the copy I had. He talks about how people felt that Messiah is bad because it's not about Hero of Arrakis Muad'Dib, rather it talks about a lot of the negatives and darkness associated with Paul. He goes on to call out a few small moments from Dune about the problems to be had with such a Hero and why Paul shouldn't be seen as one at all. To me that felt apparent anyway, because while there's still a lot of "Hell yeah, get your revenge" in Dune Paul talks about the fear of his Jihad that he cannot stop, and it's also not terribly shocking you're not exactly a good guy if you hold the galaxy hostage in destruction of a major product to coerce your way to being Emperor.

It's still alright there's still parts and pieces that I did like, but it left me uncertain which side of the execution I'm getting with Children of Dune.

I'm trying to think of another novel that I've read where the main character is also the principle villain of the story, but none come to mind. While this story is couched in the framing device of it being H.H.'s retelling (so he isn't supposed to be the villain), obviously his thoughts and actions are vile enough to apply that label.

Anyway, the fact that the story starts out with H.H. trying to rationalize the evil that will come later is already a giant red flag. I've heard that people consider this book the pinnacle of the unreliable narrator, and I don't see it. Any story written from the first person is leveraging an unreliable narrator, and the fact that H.H. is aware of the criminality and immorality of his escapades shows that he at least isn't trying to sugar-coat the actual things he's doing and thinking. His attempts to justify this conduct is understandable from this vantage, as he is merely trying to explain how what happened ended up happening. Less unreliable, and more sleazy or duplicitous. He's trying to convince us of something, not trying to obfuscate it.

As an aside, I wish the author's note at the end of the book had come at the beginning, as it was the best part of the entire experience for me. Talking about getting the novel published, his intent, and some of the reactions to it made for more interesting reading to me than the majority of the word labyrinth I'd just completed. Not to mention his distaste regarding writing in English, as if it were a fun little exercise to write this nightmare fuel in (what he considered) a sub-par language.

But this leads into my next question - is the exceedingly-ornate prose of this novel supposed to be H.H. polishing his evil with a veneer of beauty, to lull the reader into a false sense of appreciation? Or is it simply Nabokov doing the same thing? I suppose this doesn't matter that much (since, in a way, it is always Nabokov doing it since he wrote it, and because of the framing device it's always H.H. doing it, too) but I still found myself wondering through the entire novel which it was supposed to be, which definitely affected my enjoyment. Maybe this was a blessing, as this definitely isn't the type of content I want to feel immersed in. The afterword is written a little more plainly, but I haven't read anything else by Nabokov to compare it to.

And that leads me back to that author's note at the end - as Nabokov (sort-of) states, this book is a "record of [his] love affair with the English language". I don't want to spend too much time wondering why THIS story is the form that that recording took, but I did wonder it quite a bit before hitting that little tidbit at the back of the book. I knew he was a Russian who had moved to the US and that this was one of his first works written in English. The fact that all of that culminated in creating this novel will probably always confuse me, as I don't think I can fathom the sheer gravity of artist-ness that would allow those feelings to result in this product.

Anyway, sorry for the rambling. I just needed to put some of these thoughts out into the world and you all are the ones I'm inflicting it upon.

Hi all! I wanna share my thoughts, feelings and everything I got in me. I need to express it somewhere, so I picked this subreddit. I start with a story of my own. 

I bought a “Shogun” book after I watched 1st episode of new FX tv show adaptation. It was when it premiere. I felt like I was robbed at 1st episode and I had a lot of questions and was interesting in the story. So I ordered book immediately.

By that time I was struggle how I wanna read it. I am not native English speaker, but sometimes I read books in English, so I started read it in English and in my own language back to back. But I wasn’t ready because it was huge and somehow manage to put the book away after 70-100 pages. 

Now in the beginning of July I got my leg broken, felt really depressed after that and just had boredom. So I remembered that I need to finish “Shogun”. And now only in my language and just that, I started to read it from the start again, handpaper book that I bought.

And you know when book and it’s story hit you in the right time. I somehow so connected to the world and characters that almost lived inside the story.

”Shogun” is amazing book, very immersive, big scale and so epic. 

-—— MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW ——-

Last chapters really broke me. John and Mariko story felt so great. I read posts now after finishing book and some people said romance was not so good. I can’t agree with that.

For me, it was a great love story and I am full grown man was cried like a baby at the end of the book and in the chapter where you know Mariko fate. 

i think it was interesting how these two people met in terms of circumstances by the plot story and somehow their souls felt so connected. It‘s great how Blacktorne learn many things from Mariko, how firstly he can’t understand some things but she explained everything so heartedly and with such patience and warm that you really understand why this woman so wonderful and can be loved. She changed him in a good way and brought him peace in his soul, that peace that he was looking all his life maybe. He wanted to find riches but find the most important person in his life. 

Also you understand why she fell in love with John too. He educated as she, knows many things and his different world inside of him felt captivate for Mariko. Despite of all he is very brave man, sharp mind (he saving Toranaga in Osaka was really bold move), his empathy to everyone so unique too. He always trying to save people , that impressed even Toranaga too. 

I think his empathy and how he can love, tell compliments and share his feeling openly really impressed and changed Mariko in a good way. It’s like she was in cage all the time and he made her free and showed what love is. 

Very beautiful story and how sad it was ended. Omg I want happy ending but somehow inside you know it can’t be in “Shogun” world. 

Her letter part and how John ”feel” her always around after tragic events really shattered me in pieces. That’s where men can cry I think. 

And I think James Clavell’s past Hollywood experience as a writer help him to make some “movie” scenes inside the book. For example, when Toranaga also admired by Mariko and sent his hawk to fly free in her name at the end felt so cinematic , beautiful and sad at the same time. It made me cried too. 

I can tell about other great things in the book. it was brutal, sometimes awkward, funny and had interesting intrigue parts and so on. But in this post I wanna shared these thoughts and feelings. 

I feel heavy post-book depression (or someone called it book hangover) and actually never cried behind the book before this one. I read for example Erich Remark books, they are very sad too, but I don’t express my emotion in tears.

But ”Shogun” story really clicked with me. 

Also I found some Clavell’s interview insight from some person on Reddit. He wanna make a story about Mariko from the start but he was advised that it can not interest many male viewers so he rewrite a story in different angles and characters perspective. And you can see in the end chapter John and Toranaga thinking a lot about Mariko and what a person she was and how important she for them, how much respect and love she deserved. I think Clavell gave her character a lot of credit In the book.

Thank you all who read my post. Please share your feelings and thoughts too. Ready to discuss)

Author Adam Johnson criticises Waverley council saying ‘reality is often upsetting’ while Palestinian group says libraries should hold ‘challenging’ books

A Sydney library has removed a book critical of Israel called How to Sell a Genocide, following a complaint reportedly from a survivor of the Bondi beach terror attack.

Waverley library at Bondi Junction is in the same council area as Bondi beach.

A Waverley council spokesperson said: “The book has been removed from library shelves for review, and council will further consider processes to ensure closer oversight of book selection.”

The Jewish news outlet JWire last week reported it had approached the council after a survivor of December’s antisemitic attack at Bondi, during which 15 people were killed, saw How to Sell a Genocide on the “new release / hot item” shelf and wrote on Facebook that the display was distressing for survivors and bereaved families.

How to Sell a Genocide critiques what it claims is the US media’s “complicity in the destruction of Gaza”.

The decision to remove the book was criticised by its author, Adam Johnson, who said calling Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocide was not “a fringe or radical position”.

“They seem to be objecting largely based on the title using the word ‘genocide’,” Johnson said.

The author Siddhartha Mukherjee wrote this biography of cancer after a patient asked “what is cancer?” It was originally published in 2010, and has been updated with four major new chapters in 2025.

I read this book because I waged my own battle with cancer last year. As of today, I am considered free of cancer. Does that mean I have won the war? I’m not sure because the same cancer might recur in the future or perhaps I will be stricken with a new form.

Cancer has been found since ancient times, but we think of it as being a modern disease. In the last 15 years, there’s been great strides in cancer research and new treatments as described in the book. So, there is hope.

But, there is some thought that cancer is actually a chronic illness, that it has become a “new normal”:

“… as the fraction of those affected by cancer creeps inexorably in some nations from one in four to one in three to one in two”.

If cancer becomes more and more common, and those who are afflicted either die or are deemed “cancer for life” and eventually die from it anyways, are we winning the war?

Or, are we winning because screenings, prevention and new treatments are helping to potentially “cure” some cancers or prolong the life of a cancer survivor?

These are not easy questions to answer. The author wrote this book as a biography of cancer, but it is also a biography of ourselves and our fight against cells in our own body that go haywire.

This was a difficult book to read at times because of my own experience with cancer, but I feel it was a masterpiece of storytelling, history, science writing and possibilities for the future.

10/10 rating

I recently ordered all three volumes of Peter Weiss’s novel The Aesthetics of Resistance from Thriftbooks. All three of them arrived as cheap, pulpy, print-on-demand editions from Lightning Source LLC, the bane of my book-collecting existence. Even worse, Volumes I and II are printed on acid-free paper, so they‘re pure white, while Volume III is not, so its pages are bronze.

Since these were published by Duke University Press, I assumed they had legit printings. And since they were only available new, they were $25 each. I paid $75 for books that won’t hold together for one reading, let alone a lifetime of ownership. In my view, these POD editions are no different than bootleg rips of CDs or DVDs, and they should not be sold without some kind of disclaimer.

Welcome readers,

Have you ever wanted to ask something but you didn't feel like it deserved its own post but it isn't covered by one of our other scheduled posts? Allow us to introduce you to our new Simple Questions thread! Twice a week, every Tuesday and Saturday, a new Simple Questions thread will be posted for you to ask anything you'd like. And please look for other questions in this thread that you could also answer! A reminder that this is not the thread to ask for book recommendations. All book recommendations should be asked in /r/suggestmeabook or our Weekly Recommendation Thread.

Thank you and enjoy!

At long last, my journey through the myriad corruptions and catastrophes of the French Second Empire has come to an end. It was an immense time investment for me, taking a little over a year, but overall I’d say it was well worth the effort.

I originally read Germinal in college as part of assigned reading and enjoyed that book so much that I eventually decided to revisit Zola all these years later, beginning with the first of his Rougon-Macquart volumes: The Fortune of the Rougons. From there, I steadily proceeded through the rest of the series in publication order. Though I’m aware of other recommended reading orders (including one from Zola himself), I feel that publication order is the only way to reliably trace the author’s changing attitudes toward his project over the more than twenty years he spent writing these books. The Zola who wrote The Kill (1872) is simply not the same Zola who wrote its sequel Money (1891).

These are my personal rankings for the series, mostly just based on how much I enjoyed reading each book:

1. Germinal
2. La Bête Humaine 
3. La Débâcle
4. The Fortune of the Rougons
5. His Excellency Eugéne Rougon 
6. The Ladies' Paradise
7. The Masterpiece
8. Money
9. The Kill
10. Earth
11. The Assommoir
12. Nana
13. Pot Luck
14. The Belly of Paris
15. The Sin of Abbé Mouret
16. The Bright Side of Life
17. The Conquest of Plassans
18. The Dream
19. A Love Story
20. Doctor Pascal

Additionally, I've spent around 30+ hours over the past few weeks writing and editing ~11,000 words of my thoughts about these novels if you are curious about any one of them. My hope is for these journal entries to serve as simple guide and introduction for anyone looking to dive into the Rougon-Macquart series. Since the full text of my series reflection is over the word limit for a single post, I will be including my journal entries for the first ten books here and then the entries for the last ten books in a second post.

The following books will be covered in this first post:

1. The Fortune of the Rougons
2. The Kill
3. The Belly of Paris
4. The Conquest of Plassans
5. The Sin of Abbé Mouret
6. His Excellency Eugéne Rougon 
7. The Assommoir 
8. A Love Story
9. Nana 
10. Pot Luck

1. The Fortune of the Rougons (1871)

>Zola’s opening fusillade for his grand, experimental project of Naturalism; three distinct family branches sprout from the same unstable trunk and a new generation of ravenous appetites is birthed into the world amid vile intrigues and indiscriminate violence. A brutal new empire is christened in the blood of young lovers on a night of foul deception, betrayal, and massacre. The first volume of the cycle is Zola’s thesis statement for the entire series, introducing the themes of heredity, class, corruption, and decadence that are more thoroughly explored in subsequent entries. The origins of the Rougon, Mouret, and Macquart family branches are communicated to the reader via a montage of flashbacks intercut with the main plot of the novel—focusing on the young Silvère and his sweetheart Miette marching to certain doom in the countryside uprisings against the pro-coup forces of Louis-Napoleon.

>The epic cycle of novels following on from this spirited first entry traces what Zola calls the “Natural and social history of a family under the Second Empire,” with each book exploring the livelihood, temperament, and environment of a different member of each of the three family branches. The Rougons are the disgustingly rich aristocrats feasting on the rewards of their family’s treachery and ambition; the Mourets are the pretentious bourgeoisie, the emerging middle-class who wrestle with the strict etiquette of respectability that their caste enforces; and the Macquarts are the wretched scroungers consigned to the miseries of hard labor and filthy living. More than anything else, the fates of the many disparate members of this crooked family tree are fixed in place by the momentous events of the first volume in their saga.

>The Fortune of the Rougons is one of my favorite books in the whole series; its well-crafted genealogy of the Rougon-Macquart clan and the tragedy at its core provide the fertile soil on which many more tragedies will flourish. I may have begun this journey with Germinal, but Fortune is the novel that convinced me to see it through. There is no better place to start if you are resolved to attempt the journey yourself.

2. The Kill (1872)

>A dual narrative following the middle Rougon sibling, Saccard, at the center of the mad rush of land speculation and reconstruction in Paris during the early period of the Second Empire (and the sordid affair said man’s wife carries out under his nose). It’s a book that captures the excess and debauchery of Paris’ upper crust as they seek to remake the city and rake in obscene amounts of profits. 

>Though its direct sequel Money achieved much greater fame and recognition, The Kill remains an excellent read for its unabashed depiction of the insatiable hungers awakened by the acquisition of immense, impossible wealth. Saccard himself is a highly amusing character, always ready to chase profits over the edge of a cliff, but somehow managing to keep himself aloft with his scurrying legs alone. The dream sequence where he swims in a pool, then an ocean of money (à la Scrooge McDuck) is hardly subtle, but then these types of people rarely are.

2a. The Kill Spoiler Thoughts

>>!The affair in the novel is between a step-mother, Reneé, and her step-son Maxime; it is presented as a ruinous depravity, the height of upperclass decadence. The sequence of Reneé biting into the leaf of a poison plant as she resolves to begin this affair is another enduring (if likewise unsubtle) image from the series for me. Saccard, for his part, is initially infuriated when he discovers the affair, but quickly bounces back when he sees an opportunity to blackmail his wife into signing away her properties. There is no humiliation that money cannot easily bury in the heart of such a man.!<

3. The Belly of Paris (1873)

>The story of a starving man surrounded by abundance, The Belly of Paris centers on the iconic marketplace of the Second Empire: Les Halles (which sadly no longer exists today). The protagonist Florent is an escaped prisoner from the Devil’s Island, a prison colony off the coast of South America with appalling conditions, where he was sent after being falsely accused of taking up arms against Louis-Napoleon during the coup of December 1851. Having made his way to Paris and reconnected with his half-brother Quenu (who owns a well-kept charcuterie with his wife Lisa Macquart), a family friend is able to set Florent up with a job as an inspector for Les Halles, where he bears witness to the mighty rivers of produce, poultry, and pork flowing through the sprawling Paris marketplace. And yet, the former prisoner is still haunted by memories of his empty belly, and Florent finds himself incapable of reveling in the gross plenty of his new surroundings. Only an elaborate, ludicrous fantasy of revolution can satiate this man who starves himself at the table of an endless feast, placing him at odds with the “respectable” bourgeois sensibilities of his sister-in-law Lisa.

>This novel is famous for its lavish descriptions of the marketplace at Les Halles and the many vendors and goods therein, but what fascinates me most in this book is the very literalized symbiotic relationship that emerges between people and product. The young woman selling fruit seems to imbue the produce with her own freshness and beauty, and yet she herself also seems enhanced by the characteristics of the fruit in turn, her cheeks turning a rosier shade of red to match the apples displayed in her stall. Zola is extremely preoccupied with the impact of environment on the development of individuals, and so it follows for him that the merchants peddling their commodities day in and day out at Les Halles become themselves commoditized.

3a. The Belly of Paris Spoiler Thoughts

>>!My favorite part of this novel is the section detailing Florent’s harrowing imprisonment and escape from the Devil’s Island penal colony. Learning of the brutal privations that he went through makes it hard not to sympathize with his absurd, completely unattainable dreams of revolution, and makes his fate of being sent back to the prison colony at the end all the more heartbreaking. I also really enjoyed the appearance of the eccentric painter Claude Lantier in this book—his remark “Respectable People… What bastards!” is a brilliant line to close the novel with. Claude returns as the tragic protagonist of The Masterpiece (1886), where he meets a fate that appropriately echoes that of his friend Florent here.!<

4. The Conquest of Plassans (1874)

>Zola returns to the setting of his first Rougon-Macquart novel for another tale of political scheming, mental illness, and senseless death. The ambiguously disgraced Abbé Faujas arrives in Plassans with the express goals of securing the provincial town’s unquestioning support for the Empire and stamping out burgeoning resistance—all at the behest of the eldest Rougon sibling Eugéne, ever the shadowy puppet master of the fledgling Empire. Faujas is initially aided in his ambition by Eugéne’s mother, the formidable matron Félicité, who has long been the true power behind the throne in Plassans for her husband Pierre following his unofficial “coronation” at the end of the first novel. Félecité and her husband’s star has begun to wane in Plassans, however, as skepticism toward the Empire has become more pronounced, and so she is all too eager to assist Faujas with his intrigues as long as their goals remain aligned. And while Faujas steadily tightens his grip over the town’s most prominent citizens, tension mounts between him and his landlord Francois Mouret, who gradually feels his wife (Marthe Rougon), his home, and his sanity slipping through his fingers due to the Abbé’s sinister influence. 

>The Conquest of Plassans is one of the least read and least discussed entries in the Rougon-Macquart series, and while I wouldn’t count it among Zola’s strongest works, it still manages to tell a fairly solid story and is elevated in my opinion by its remarkably cruel and operatic ending. I also found the political tug of war depicted here between the interests of the Empire, the church, and the locals of Plassans to make for a compelling backdrop against the more personal drama unfolding between Faujas and Mouret.

4a. The Conquest of Plassans Spoiler Thoughts

>>!The scene where Faujas rejects Marthe’s romantic advances is absolutely brutal and perfect. Zola’s original plan was for Faujas to carry out an affair with Mouret’s wife, but altering it so that he instead contemptuously rejects Marthe after she has already given him her full devotion (and essentially chosen him over her husband) feels so much crueler and more appropriate to Faujas’ rancid character. But the ending of the novel is of course my favorite part: a fully deranged Mouret locked in vicious combat with Faujas and the Abbé’s mother and all three of them burning to death (along with the Mouret house) in a single horrifying blaze of impotent rage and psychosis. Beautiful.!<

5. The Sin of Abbé Mouret (1875)

>A novel centering on Abbé Serge Mouret (son of Francois and Marthe), a priest torn between absolute religious devotion and the most fundamental instincts of nature. In the beginning, Serge obsessively seeks out the holy annihilation and ecstasy described in the stories of the Catholic saints, and therefore spends many long hours in solitary worship and contemplation of the Virgin Mary. But, in his overzealousness his frail body is stretched beyond its limits, and he finds himself amnesiac in the beautiful but forlorn Paradou—the immense former pleasure estate of Louis XV abandoned for more than a century and overgrown with an abundance of flourishing plant life. Serge’s doting nurse and guide through this veritable garden of Eden is the young Albine, a girl raised almost wild in the Paradou according to the free-thinking ideas of her eccentric uncle Jean Bernat. As Serge and Albine blissfully explore the green, forbidden depths of the Paradou, it seems that lingering ghosts of the past and nature itself push them into each other’s arms until they find themselves inadvertently re-enacting the story of Adam and Eve. And likewise: when the two of them consume the bitter fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, it can only lead to the irreparable loss of paradise.

>Another of the less popular volumes in the series, I was initially convinced that I hated this book due to its distasteful romance and a plodding pace bogged down by seemingly endless, ponderous descriptions of a thousand plant genera. And yet, my feelings have significantly softened toward it on several months’ reflection. Serge’s inner conflict between his religious training and the innate human desire to live and love as a normal person is an aspect that resonates with me in spite of his troubling romance with the too-young Albine. Religion is presented here almost as terminal disease, hollowing out Serge from the inside and consuming everything human in him. And there is something about the foreboding, haunting descriptions of the isolated Paradou that continues to linger with me long after I put this volume back on the shelf.

5a. The Sin of Abbé Mouret Spoiler Thoughts

>>!The most iconic sequence from this novel is undoubtedly the extended vision Serge experiences of the church being overwhelmed and demolished by all-conquering nature, a powerful and yet ironic image given that the vice grip of religion ultimately proves inescapable for the poor young Abbé. And so here the reader is presented not so much with a manifestation of Serge’s hopes for the future, but more so that of Zola himself—as well as that of Doctor Pascal Rougon (Zola’s self-insert), who plays a supporting role in this novel and is the protagonist of the final novel in the series.!<

6. His Excellency Eugéne Rougon (1876)

>Zola turns his gaze to the political system of the Second Empire, a thinly-veiled excuse for the preeminent mediocrities of France to fleece the nation with impunity and gleefully pin as many medals on themselves as possible in the process. Eugéne Rougon—the all-knowing puppet master lurking behind the events of The Fortune of the Rougons, The Kill, and The Conquest of Plassans—emerges from the shadows at last to lead his own novel: a political satire emphasizing the corruption, sycophancy, and sheer pettiness of Napoleon III’s short-lived government. Eugéne is a composite figure based on a handful of the Empire’s highest ranking ministers (most notably Eugéne Rouher, whose influence was such that he was nicknamed “Vice-Emperor”); this book traces his changing political fortunes within a government that seems exclusively staffed by up-jumped conmen and glad-handing fools. Unlike many of his peers (or his incorrigible brother Saccard) Eugéne has no interest in wealth or women, but simply the raw exercise of power for power’s sake. The “great man” finds his equilibrium threatened, however, when the ambitious femme fatale Clorinde begins a brazen, relentless campaign to seduce Eugéne and bring him to heel—making it quite clear that rejection is not an answer she will accept. No matter how high the minister soars in the Emperor’s graces, making the wrong enemy can always send one tumbling into ruin.

>His Excellency is in my opinion the most underrated and overlooked of the Rougon-Macquart novels. The humor and viciousness with which Zola skewers the charade of the Second Imperial government make for an extremely entertaining read, and I count the book among my favorites in the set. One of the biggest draws of Rougon-Macquart for me in the early stage of the project is the way it captures the feeling of being ruled by the greediest, cruelest, tackiest people alive. His Excellency and The Kill together paint a very vivid picture of the excesses and follies of the Imperial ruling class, the former from the perspective of politics and the latter from one of property speculation. Though The Kill is more shocking and provocative in its content, the low-stakes, self-interested squabbling that dominates the bulk of His Excellency still leaves the reader with a feeling of outrage in the context of the previous R-M novels. All the horrific violence, all the grisly bloodshed of the 1851 coup and the Rougons’ machinations in Plassans has been for the sole purpose of elevating this small group of incompetent clowns to power and enabling their sad pantomime of the First Empire’s glories.

7. The Assommoir (1877)

>A woman slowly suffocates in the inescapable filth of her destitution. Gervaise Macquart (half-cousin of Eugéne and Saccard, sister of Lisa) toils away as a laundry woman in the slums of Paris, hoping only to scrape enough money together to keep herself and her family in relative comfort. At first, her industriousness pays off and she is almost able to glimpse the modest life she dreams of. But, the crushing grip of poverty and alcoholism proves overwhelming, and her story becomes one of the bleakest tragedies in fiction.

>In contrast to the previous entry, The Assommoir is one of the most famous and celebrated books that Zola ever wrote—rocketing him to national fame overnight and sparking fierce controversy and debate over its raw, brutal depiction of slum life in Paris. The filth and degradation that had long been commonplace for so many of the city’s unfortunates was simply too mortifying for many (more privileged) readers to accept at face value. Faced with the discomfort of confronting the harsh reality they had so meticulously ignored, it was easier for certain critics to accuse Zola of sensationalism and perversion than to consider he might be telling the truth—that people were, in fact, every day living in filth and starving to death neglected on the streets of Paris as they did (and continue to do) in every major city of the modern age. Despite obscene wealth, despite an over abundance of food, despite all the technological innovations of industrialization, we cannot, or rather choose not to ensure that everyone is fed and housed as befits their humanity.

>The juxtaposition between the standard of living we see in The Assommoir and what we see in The Kill and His Excellency is one of the major reasons I prefer publication order to any of the other recommended reading orders for this series. Where the recommended orders typically enforce a rigid separation of the three branches of the family—encouraging you to read all the books for one particular branch before proceeding to the next—publication order compels the reader to oscillate back and forth between the different branches, highlighting the extreme disparities between them. While Saccard drowns in money, while Eugéne wields near-absolute power, their very own cousin, their own blood Gervaise can barely scrounge a meal together in the same city. The many and varied members of this sprawling family tree all share a ravenous appetite in common, but only some are in a position to gorge themselves; others must go hungry.

8. A Love Story (1878)

>The story of a widowed mother caught between two irreconcilable loves: the maternal love she feels for her daughter, and the passionate love she feels for her married neighbor. Hèléne Mouret (sister of Silvére and Francois) had only been married a short time before she suddenly lost her husband—an older man who inspired her respect if not her passion. Now, raising her sickly daughter Jeanne alone in the bourgeois suburbs outside Paris, Hèléne suddenly finds herself swept away in a devastating whirlwind of romantic desire when she falls for the kind, handsome doctor who treats her daughter’s chronic illness. Doctor Deberle is a married man, but hardly close with his wife (who is plotting an affair of her own even before the start of the novel) and so takes little convincing to fall hard for Hèléne in return. The two become much more intimate after the doctor saves Jeanne’s life, but are hesitant to act on their feelings and become locked in a prolonged cycle of mutual yearning. Also vying for Hèléne’s affections during this uncertain period are the kindly family friend Rimbaud, who wishes to marry Hèléne and “save” her from widowhood, and the possessive little Jeanne, who does not wish to share her mother with anyone—Deberle, Rimbaud, or any other. Ultimately, Hèléne finds herself without any good options as the expectations of society and motherhood come into conflict with her desire to be happy; tragedy awaits her no matter what decision she makes.

>This is definitely one of my least-liked entries in the series. I found it to be a bit too judgy about Hèléne’s situation, and I thought Jeanne was an incredibly grating character—she is meant to be twelve but behaves more like a whiny four-year old for the book’s duration. Jeanne’s stunted development and over-dependence on her mother are very much baked into the narrative, however, and she is so far the most extreme incidence of the accumulated genetic disorders that will plague many of the young children in the R-M family tree. But unfortunately, my main takeaway from this book cannot be shared without spoiling it.

8a. A Love Story Spoiler Thoughts

>>!When Hèléne finally sleeps with Deberle, Zola does not allow the reader or his characters to gain any satisfaction from it, saying that they had never loved each other less than they had in that moment. I found this to be a frustrating creative choice because it really didn’t seem like these two had much to feel guilty about. Hèléne is unmarried (and unaware of how deep her daughter’s obsessive attachment to her is) and Deberle is in a loveless marriage with a woman who is all but waiting for an opportunity to cheat on him. Let them enjoy themselves, Zola! As both The Kill and his next book Nana amply demonstrate, Zola has no qualms about writing—for the time—quite detailed descriptions of sexual acts, but there are flashes of a puritanical mindset whenever he writes about women choosing to pursue sex on their own terms (at least at this stage of his project). From his perspective, it is unnatural and unseemly for the woman to be the aggressor, and they are instead expected to politely surrender themselves (preferably with a “respectable” amount of resistance). And because Hèléne is not permitted by the author to feel a single moment of happiness from the affair that she initiates, I honestly think the tragedy at the end of this novel doesn’t hit nearly as hard as it could have.!<

9. Nana (1880)

>Arguably the most provocative volume in the entire series (and there is some stiff competition), Nana centers on the titular actress and prostitute as she sets about conquering the great men of Paris and bringing them low before her irresistible charms. Having previously appeared as a child and later teenager in The Assommoir (as the youngest child of Gervaise), we are quickly shown that running away from her squalid home has paid off quite nicely for Nana, who maintains a comfortable lifestyle of dissipation supported by a couple of regular gentlemen callers. Later, despite having no acting or singing ability whatsoever, Nana eventually lands a few starring roles in various theatre productions on the basis of her sex appeal alone, and becomes a massive celebrity in Paris as audiences inevitably fall under her seductive spell. Her stardom reaches such heights that she attracts the attention of one Comte Muffat—a very wealthy and influential member of the Imperial government. Muffat becomes so disastrously infatuated with Nana that he completely surrenders himself to her; there is no lavish gift, no absurd sum of money that he can refuse Nana once she holds him under her sway. And Muffat is but one of the lengthy queue of affluent gentlemen who will destroy themselves to gain Nana’s favor over the course of the book. Nana becomes an object of idolatry in the decadent new religion of the Second Empire, symbolizing its limitless debauchery, its frightening power over the hearts of men, its capacity for wanton destruction, but most of all: its intrinsic shallowness.

>I mostly enjoyed my time reading Nana; parts of it are a bit slow but there are a handful of extremely wild scenes that kept me very amused and wondering how much further Zola would take things. While I would’ve liked to see a bit more interiority for Nana herself, I understood that her being a shallow character was very much the point; Zola is simply more interested in exploring the men being ruined by Nana than Nana herself. After reading The Assommoir, I also enjoyed the idea of Nana as an avenging force for the impoverished multitudes of Paris, reclaiming the wealth stolen from the unwashed masses and robbing the upper-class thieves of their dignity in the process.

9a. Nana Spoiler Thoughts

>>!I think the moment I realized I was holding an all-time classic in my hands is when Nana forces Muffat to stomp on his own uniform and then crawl around and bark like a dog. A hilarious scene but also perhaps a none too subtle representation of Zola’s feelings toward the men willing to debase themselves for the Empire. The ending of Nana is another brilliant one for the series: columns of rowdy, chanting soldiers marching off to a doomed war against Prussia while Nana’s corpse decomposes just out of view. The Empire is already dead, and not a soul realizes it.!<

10. Pot Luck (1882)

>A laser-focused, incendiary takedown of the hollow, performative nature of bourgeois respectability. The young bachelor Octave Mouret (older brother of the Abbé Serge) moves into a pleasant-seeming apartment building in Paris where he is immediately drawn into the dank ecosystem of gossip and petty infighting that flourishes there among the well-to-do tenants. Bearing more than a little resemblance in temperament to his Uncle Saccard, Octave soon becomes involved in illicit affairs with some of the other tenants’ wives while also making grand plans for the expansion of the women’s clothing store that employs him. As Octave’s residency in the building continues, what is initially presented as a clean, wholesome environment filled with respectable families is steadily revealed to be a filthy cesspit of immoral, deceitful vipers who care only for maintaining the illusion of moral superiority over their perceived inferiors.

>Pot Luck follows directly on from the strain of criticism toward the bourgeoisie that Zola began in The Belly of Paris and continued with A Love Story, but this is a book that positively seethes with contempt in comparison to its predecessors. If there were any doubts about Zola’s perception of Paris’ increasingly influential middle class, their ruthlessly unflattering portrayal here surely laid those to rest. The mean-spiritedness of Pot Luck is characteristic of much of the first half of the R-M cycle, but this is an aspect of Zola’s writing that actually becomes less pronounced in his subsequent volumes (with one very notable exception: Earth). While I do think the back half of Zola’s project contains the majority of his strongest works, there is part of me that enjoys Zola more in this first half when he still burned with the anger of a younger man.

10a. Pot Luck Spoiler Thoughts

>>!There are two scenes in this novel that resonated with me a great deal. The first is the death of Monsieur Josserand, who dies broken by the discovery of his daughter’s affair with Octave; he is one of the few kind, honest figures in the book and the emptiness of bourgeois life chokes the life out of him in punishment. The second is the scene of Abbé Maduit collapsing and breaking down in tears in front of the final station of the cross. Confronted with the beauty and suffering of Christ’s sacrifice rendered in such loving detail, Maduit’s guilty Catholic soul is forced to reckon with his complicity in the laundering of bourgeois sins under the sheen of religious confession. And yet, he cannot  bring himself to change following this moment of self-revelation, instead resigning himself to imbibe the moral poison of his station forever.!<

If you've made it this far, thank you for reading. Part 2 link:
https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/1vrngw1/i_have_finally_completed_all_20_volumes_of_zolas/