r/books

Just finished reading *The Exorcist* and I want more. The ending was very anticlimactic in my opinion. Other than that, it was such a great read. Had me hooked up during my boring night shifts.

I think I will have to watch the movie and see if it was tweaked or faithful to the book. The author made sure to confuse us if this is a psychological thriller or a supernatural horror till almost the end. Of course, reading a horror genre book isn’t going to give the jump scares but it didn’t fail to give me some creeps (maybe because I work night shift alone and recently I’ve watched the Obsession movie, but you never know).

Funnily enough, Regan cussing had me laughing out loud.Father Merrin’s minuscule subplot could have been avoided as I don’t see it adding anything important to the main plot. >!He came, he saw, he died!<. Adding nothing substantial to the plot.

Detective Kinderman is one of the characters I found very annoying. It’s his beating around the bush kinda talk and those profuse apologies, and his somewhat pretend civility.

Doubts:

&gt;!Father Karras killed himself or was he killed?!<

&gt;!Why was Regan staring at Father Dyer’s Roman collar in the epilogue?!<

I finished a 'Kite Runner', 'A Thousand Splendid Suns' and 'And The Mountains Echoed' in this order a few weeks ago. This post is mostly about ATSS because I felt as though it was the most impactful of Hosseini's novels and I will reference these other novels in a generalized way to avoid spoilers if you haven't read them yet.

To start, I just wanted to say how reading this book made me feel so helpless. The gravity of having your life dominated by where you can go, what you can wear, and who you can even be seen with is such a hopeless existence. it's unbelievable that this still currently happens and that this book is probably not far from the existence of real women during the Islamic emirate/rise of the Taliban and modern day Afghanistan. in contrast, I did appreciate Hosseini's ability to show that even with such a hostile takeover, there's still a beautiful culture and people underneath.

When I first picked up ATSS after reading The Kite Runner, I thought it was going to be another book about the escape from a war ravaged country, the obstacles of immigration, and the difficult retention of your culture. To my surprise, ATSS was about the opposite. It was about the people who couldn't escape their situation and had to survive under incredible difficulty while their own culture was being destroyed and replaced around them.

Some parts of this book were very difficult to read. >!Laila having to save herself after her parents are killed by a stray rocket. Her only option is to be married and used by a degusting man to avoid detection is one of the most disturbing and heartbreaking things I've ever read. !<

This book also has one of the bravest and most heartfelt stories I've ever read. >!Laila and Mariam's friendship and love for their children. Their attempt to escape and Mariam's sacrifice to save Laila so that she can live a live a full life with Tariq. !<

It's not often that I read a book and think that it's important. Not entertaining, interesting, or educational. But important. This books importance comes from its ability to illustrate a perspective in so many enlightening angles that makes the reader feel so small and helpless that you can feel nothing by empathy for the characters. My goal is to find more stories like this and to share them with others so we can all be better for it.

I just finished *Lonesome Dove* by Larry McMurtry. I heard about it on TikTok and bought a used copy soon after. I enjoyed it a lot. I laughed, I cried, and at times I struggled to keep reading. 857 pages felt incredibly long and short at the same time.

Gus made me laugh the most. So much so that I hardly had time to feel sad when he died, though his absence is strongly felt in the last stretch of the book. From then on, it’s just Call feeling bad about himself and the son he never named as his son.

Clara is a very compelling character. It’s easy to see why Gus was enamored with her for so many years, and I also understood why she turned him down in their youth. Her assessment of Call, as he left with Gus’s body, was also astute, if a bit harsh and simplistic.

Newt, as McMurtry said in the 2010 preface, is the titular lonesome dove. He’s a lonely and innocent young man plagued by tragedy. Unfortunately, I also learned from the preface that Newt was to die. I expected it to happen in *Lonesome Dove*, but he was still alive at the end, so I guess I have to read the fourth book of the tetralogy, if none else. And here I thought I was done with Westerns!

Some people feel the book is too slow, and at times it was, but I can handle a slow plot as long as the characters are interesting enough to carry it home. I was not disappointed. However, I must admit it’s not my new favorite book of all time. So many people say it’s topped everything they read, but either they haven’t read very many good books or I’ve been lucky enough to read lots. Not that I could tell you what my favorite book is. I have trouble ranking things by giving them a score out of 5 stars or a number out of ten, so elaboration is always necessary. Taste is far too subjective.

TL;DR thumbs up, good read, yes I recommend it, etc etc.

I first read the Hobbit when I was very early teens (13-14ish) and really enjoyed it. I've read it twice since in my 20's. However, when I tried LotR I remember it being a total SLOG. I was a strong reader in my teens and 20's, I devoured everything reading a couple books a week for years.

I tried LOTR a couple times and eventually got my way through it around age 24-25 but I did ALOT of skimming so a) my comprehension of it is low and b) I barely remember it. All I mostly remember is it was over 100 pages straight, uninterrupted of them leaving the shire and just hiking in the woods. It drove me frigging nuts :D (now I run ultras so 100 pages of two dudes hiking is probably awesome lit). I also remember the Aragorn guy was just as or more badass than in the movies.

Not long after my reading habit fizzled out as I got into other things and I'm only now just kick starting it back in my mid 40's.

I've been going through lots of fun "popcorn" books or "page burner" books like the Robert Langdon series (ridiculous but fun), Jurassic Park, some 80's fantasy cheese I found at a second hand store (Jhereg! So good, what a surprise) and some Jack Reacher early work.

Now that my reading habit is slowly coming back, I'm getting the itch for something slower, longer and everlasting and my first thought of course was Lord of the Rings. I have read other fantasy novels, namely the Song of Ice and Fire books and it is something I want to dive much deeper in and this seems like probably the best place to start before I work on finding all the other crazy series I've missed over the years.

For those who initially found LOTR to be a total snoozefest or dryer than a sandpaper martini on first go, did you eventually get into it? Did you have to 'learn to like it' like your first scotch? Or did the maturity of going back to it over X amount of time suddenly just make it click for you in your older age?

I'm 27 now and have been struggling to use my hands (especially thumbs) after 14 years of chronic joint pain.

I usually read on my phone because I can't hold physical books, but I can no longer click the remote I bought for my phone to turn the pages and highlight. (I listen to audiobooks but that just doesn't satisfy me)

I'm trying to think of workarounds. Voice commands? Projecting book onto TV? iPad? Lmk

I read The Rebel and the Final Blood War by K.A. Linde and I just hated everything about it! I don't know if the other two books in the series were this atrociously written and I somehow overlooked it, or if this was ghostwritten by a middle schooler. The author has no concept of sentence structure, and every other sentence is a partial/incomplete thing like "A woman who had delivered a death sentence with a candy bar."

This is an actual paragraph in the book:

"Reyna's eyes darted to her friends. Meghan and Jodie gave her an encouraging nod. Gabe winked. Tye smiled. They were all counting on her."

The ending was rushed and unsatisfying too. Spoiler: >!the villain of this whole trilogy gets de-vamped (turned back into a human) and just decides to stab himself to death immediately.!< This deus ex machina occurs on page 307 of the 320-page book.

What have you read recently that made you genuinely angry like this?

I started reading Strangers from Belle Burden because I like messy relationship and family dynamic stories and somehow ended up thinking about my own relationship way more than I planned to.

Something about the idea of spending years with someone and still not fully knowing who they’d become under pressure or during conflict stuck with me way more than I expected. It brought up conversations between me and my partner that we’d avoided for a while around money long term security and how much people can change over time. I used to think topics like that meant something was wrong in the relationship or that people were secretly expecting things to fail but now I’m not so sure anymore. I think sometimes being realistic about life and people changing is different from being pessimistic.

Still feels emotionally weird though because nobody grows up dreaming about having practical conversations alongside romantic ones. Part of me misses when love felt simpler before real life started attaching practical decisions to it.

I stayed up until after five in the morning here in Taipei to watch the announcement of the prize and could not be happier for 双子 and Lin. This is so huge for Taiwanese literature and for Taiwan as a whole.

Alright people, prepare for a rant.

I am quite a fan of the modern American playwrights. I have read multiple Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, and Eugene O‘Neill plays.

Nothing could have prepared me for this.

Jocasta complex, incest, non-consensual solicitation, passing mention of pedophilia, colonial segregation, cannibalism, and forced lobotomies - all packaged within 50 pages.

I could not have predicted 24h prior that I would be saying that „cannibalism was the least fucked up theme in there“.

Excuse me, while I spend the rest of my evening browsing r/cats to cleanse myself.

I've been on a biography kick this year and this one is worth mentioning. It's interesting for a number of reasons, the first being that that it was written at three distinct points in his life and really has three distinct voices and narrative styles.

The first part, written in 1771 explicitly for his son to read is absolutely the most interesting and compelling. It covers his misadventures as a young adult and his struggles with his family who he seemed to think underestimated him at every turn. It's pretty interesting as it details the evolution of the printing and newspaper industry in the 18th century. It also gets into his love life which is pretty interesting too. He developes his own moral philosophy and gets involved with another printer who tries starting his own Christian sect, honestly fascinating.

The next voice, being written in 1780-81, seems quite a bit more circumspect and self assured. He talks about advertising contracts for the English army, financial concerns and a bit (really not enough) about the American revolution. At this point his voice seems thoroughly self aware, he is no longer willing to admit any mistakes or defects or character. He developes a system for perfecting his morality, and his only flaw is that he is disorganized. Certainly starts to seem like an unreliable narrator in my opinion. This is the point in his life that others claim to be characterized by his whore mongering and general unseriousness. He doesn't hint at it at all.

The last voice, parts 3 and 4 in the book were written in 1788-89. He basically ceased being a character altogether in my opinion, this section attempts to use his lifetime as a textbook in civics and public administration. The narrative is completely absent. Others claim he's infected with syphilis at this point in his life. He never admits a single sexual act in the entire book, let alone with a prostitute, but the cognitive decline is evident.

He dies in 1790, book is published in 1793. Pretty interesting book in my opinion. Anyone else read this? Any other autobiographies has similar discrepancies in voice?

I read Sky Daddy not too long ago (loved it and highly recommend it!) and when I was looking up discussion on the book, I was surprised to find that some people interpret the ending as the characters not dying in a plane crash, because it seemed pretty direct to me that that’s what happened when I read it—the description of feeling of inevitability, the plane struggling, “I held my best friend’s hand until I couldn’t anymore,” etc,and it really worked as a bittersweet ending—the main character finally both finds human connection and gets her fondest wish, but at the cost of loss of life. For others who have read it, how did you interpret the ending?

I know this post might make some people on here squirm a little bit, but I think that's what makes it fun and challenging. Any reader should explore works they disagree with on some level because exposing yourself to only those things that you agree with is by definition confining yourself to an echo chamber and I want to prove that this sub is not an echo chamber.

I'll start with two of my favorite very obvious ones:

The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu and No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy.