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What a wackadoodle read is Christopher Pike's The Last Vampire\Bad blood.
How did I end up here, you may ask?
I wanted to read The Midnight Club. I'm a fan of Mike Flanagan's, I love retro and vintage looking covers, I love second-hand books. But what I've found was The Last Vampire bind up and nothing else, so I got it. I'm guessing my book is pretty old, since the series were rebranded into Thirst and my cover is orange.
Reading this after slowly going through Vampire Chronicles is wacky. The main character's POV is Lestat x200, but she's also a hot...teen? Between the two books, Sita (the main character's name) claims she's either stuck in eighteen or twenty, which isn't a big difference. But even in the most crucial of moments she never fails to mention how acute her hearing is and how powerful or beautiful she is. Sure, there's a couple of dudes to rival her strength, but if she's not mentioning her abilities, there's always Krishna.
I might be dumb. I am not a history buff. But Aryans in India? Like, white people coming from India? The main character Sita is 5000 years old, born in India and is a white, blue-eyed, long-haied blond. She also had a husband and a daughter before she was turned into the vampire. Which also makes her to be one of the first 10 vampires ever created.
The whole love bit was hilarious. She just finds herself a teen, steals him from his girlfriend, he gets mortally wounded and then doesn't take to vampirism and sacrfices himself. And by the end of the second book, she makes another, after he told her no, while passing out. Important to mention, there's another highschooler, who is a horror writer and gets cured from AIDS, but he's also not gay, cause he was staring at Sita. He also has prophetic dreams. Smells like a self-insert, yet not the worst one.
What also brought me to Anne Rice's vampires, was the creation. In Queen of The Damned, there's a spirit that takes over a body and that condition spreads to other people. Feel free to correct me, but I'm shortening things. In the Last Vampire, a priest calls out to a yakshini, a demon that manifested through a dead pregnant woman (Sita's best friend) and the first vampire is named Yaksha, who is the child in that womb. Vampires also cry blood, vampires are made by the exchange of blood, vampires can hypnotise. Which are simple traits, but the The Last Vampire was published in 1995, so by the time at least the first four Vampire Chronicles books were out. I do not mean to say that there's plagirism, but It was so funny to see the influence.
Reading the first two books (around 200 pages each) was fun. Some stuff is certainly r/menwritingwomen worthy, like men objectifying Sita, which turns into 'go get 'em girl' scene, often gory, which was quite fun. It's fun. Reading about different vampires is fun. My eye is twitching though.
I gave it a three. I won't be buying the Thirst covers, because they are abhorrent, so I don't think I'll be reading further. No hater to the author. I apologize for any typos, I am indeed not a native English speaker.
https://redd.it/1j3l3ph
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Has Joyce Carol Oates ever written a truly happy, lighthearted scene?
Hey team
Ive read some JCO in my day and enjoy her greatly
But good fucking god everything ive read by her has been suffused by this grim dark claustrophobic anti-light
Her play The Perfectionist gets pretty funny but i’m looking for prose
Know of any scenes or books that are lighthearted and happy?
One step further, know of any scenes in her novels that are genuinely funny? Playful?
Michael Dirda, speaking of William Gaddis’ A Frolic of His Own, says “HOW IS IT that the greatest fiction of our century has been so funny? Joyce and Proust, obviously; but think too of Evelyn Waugh, Catch-22, Lolita, much of Invisible Man, Pynchon, The Master and Margarita, Beckett, Borges.
“Nothing, it would seem, dates so quickly as the earnest.
“Really Serious Novels -- by D.H. Lawrence, Hemingway, or Virginia Woolf -- now sound tendentious, a bit histrionic, often downright embarrassing.”
Shes a wordsmith but she gets me down
https://redd.it/1j3fl4v
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Women's Prize for Non Fiction
I am really excited about this list, my mother and I read the entirety of the Women's Prize for Fiction a couple of years ago, it took us 14 months but we are still proud of it.
So this year we decided to try reading some of the books from the second Non Fiction year.
Only I realized Why Fish Don't Exist (a book we are both excited to read) was published in 2020... what gives? I would have assumed the books in the 2025 list would be from 2024. Are there so few good non fictions written by women? Are we also scoring the books on impact?
I looked at their website and they don't seem to have an answer....
https://redd.it/1j39f5n
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Simple Questions: March 04, 2025
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!
https://redd.it/1j37fl7
@r_books
the most readable English translations of Don Quixote?
Hoping to tackle Don Quixote this year, I discovered that the book has been blessed with some solid translations, and I need help picking one from the few options below. I think readability matters, considering the length of the novel, but I am also looking for something that conveys the flavor of the original.
I also wonder if any particular translation incorporates historical commentary or notes explaining the context, which would be helpful in case of a novel written 400 years ago.
Many thanks in advance.
* Grossman's 2003 translation is considered accurate and lively.
* Raffel's 1995 translation is considered to use spirited colloquial language.
* Montgomery's 2006 translation is considered good all-around.
* John Ormsby's translation is considered complete and unabridged.
* The most recent translation was by Gerald J Davis in 2012.
https://redd.it/1j35grl
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How many books do you read at once?
I've been trying to get back into reading the past year and I've found I can get into it faster if I've got 4-6 books I am reading at the same time to rotate through. Eg I have the bedtime book. The lunchtime book. The public transport book. The couch book. And just started my first audiobook for when driving.
https://redd.it/1j2v3wn
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Anyone else experiencing the worst reading slump of their life?
Last year, I read 111 books. Since the beginning of 2025, all I’ve managed is 2 pathetic books. I genuinely don’t know what’s wrong with me. I love reading, but I just can't right now. I’ve switched genres, from sci-fi to romance to horror, and I even decided to ditch setting a reading goal this year, but nothing seems to catch my attention. I feel sad and devastated because books are my major hobby, and I’d even go so far as to say my coping mechanism.
I don’t even know what to do now. I keep giving myself time in hopes I’d get back in the mood, but it only seems to do the opposite and drag me further away from them.
https://redd.it/1j2rrx3
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I can't get "Old Soul" by Susan Barker out of my head
It's probably the best written horror novel i've read in years and it's strange I can't find any posts about it on here.
To give you the jist of it: a chance meeting between a man and a woman who are both late for a flight leads to a strange realisation. They've both lost loved ones in horrifying circumstances where a mysterious european woman was involved. She inserts herself into strangers lives, photographs them and moves on. Then they lose their minds and die horribly.
This leads the man, still traumatised by what happened to his closest friend, down a rabbit hole to discover who this woman is and what she's actually doing to cause this. Unveiling the decades of carnage she's wreaked all over the world.
Meanwhile we follow the woman as she seduces her latest victim on a hike in the New Mexico desert.
I don't want to give too much away but the way this book can make you empathise with, even like, what is essentially a serial killer is chilling. I gorged on all 288 pages in the space of a day and days later it's still haunting me. The epilogue especially is sublime. I can't recommend it enough.
https://redd.it/1j2k8jg
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Weekly Calendar - March 03, 2025
Hello readers!
Every Monday, we will post a calendar with the date and topic of that week's threads and we will update it to include links as those threads go live. All times are Eastern US.
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Day|Date|Time(ET)|Topic|
-|-|-|-
^Monday|^(March 03)||^(What are you Reading?)
^Tuesday|^(March 04)||^(New Releases)
^Tuesday|^(March 04)||^(Simple Questions)
^Wednesday|^(March 05)||^(LOTW)
^Thursday|^(March 06)||^(Favorite Books)
^Friday|^(March 07)||^(Weekly Recommendation Thread)
^Saturday|^(March 08)||^(Simple Questions)
^Sunday|^(March 09)||^(Weekly FAQ: What is your favorite quote from a book?)
https://redd.it/1j2g66b
@r_books
Circe by Madeline Miller
I just finished Circe by Madeline Miller, and I’ve been completely hooked for the last few days.
Despite being a goddess, Circe wasn’t spared the struggles of womanhood—heartbreak, rejection, the burdens of motherhood, and even ravishment by those she sheltered. She defied even Athena, the goddess of war and pride of Zeus, to protect her son.
And that ending? I did not see Telemachus and Circe together, or her choosing mortality, coming. It completely caught me off guard and kept me hooked till the last page.
If you have read the book, please share your favorite moments from the same!
https://redd.it/1j2h9pu
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Reader’s Conundrum
For those who oscillate between two categories on your To Be Read shelf (ex.: fiction & nonfiction; certain genres; etc.) do you struggle with choosing what to read next?
For example, you have piles of nonfiction & fiction, with more in the fiction pile. You feel like you should read these because you need to get through them but you’re truly just on a nonfiction kick and aren’t wanting to pursue anything else?
Not sure - overthinking, too much typing and not enough reading, yadah yadah. Curious for your thoughts.
https://redd.it/1j28g5m
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Hyper, the debut novel by Agri Ismaïl, a Swedish-Kurdish lawyer, was written in two iterations, in Swedish and English: "It was a give-and-take: Swedish blesses you with lots of interesting compound words, and English blesses you with a variety of sentence structures."
https://www.odalisquemagazine.com/articles/2025/02/20/pluto-interview-agri-ismail-written-by
https://redd.it/1j21myx
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We Do Not Part by Han Kang is Brilliant!
Loved this book, though maybe love is an odd word to use for something so dark. Definitely her best book yet. I feel like some themes from her earlier novels are easy enough to see but this one really does a great job of balancing the horrors of what happened and the people who survived, their emotional journey and relationships to others.
Kinda odd that I haven't heard as much fanfare about this one, especially given how she just won the Nobel Prize for Lit. So wondering if there are other fans here.
https://redd.it/1j1wxpj
@r_books
I haven’t read Stephen King in years, but I feel like every time I look up, he has a new book on the bestseller list. Is his new stuff actually worth it, or is he just a churn machine these days?
I used to love old school King, but he lost me on some of his newer works, so I mostly stopped reading his stuff. I think the last book of his I read was 11/22/63. I enjoyed it, but that came out a while ago at this point. What are some of his more recent works that I should check out that I’m missing out on?
https://redd.it/1j1uw3v
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Borges complete fiction
I currently have and have read Ficciones. I want to read all of Borges fiction in English translation but it’s not clear to me how to go about it. If I get Aleph and Labryinths would that do it? Are there stories that are duplicated across all of those? It’s surprising to me how hard it is to figure this out.
https://redd.it/1j1stc8
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Mated & Alone by Talia Rhea - Review (Sci-Fi Romance)
Review- This was a middle of the pack book for me. The story was good, it just didn’t grab me the same as the books I’ve really liked but also didn’t give me anything to dislike about it.
My favorite parts of this book were:
1.) the FMC, she was written so well. 2.) The romantic mishaps, adored them. And 3.) The General’s little side story arc. The General is Misty’s cat, I quite literally laughed out loud while reading. 4.) The build up of what I believe to be a future series. (Which I am frothing at the mouth for… it won’t be the next series she releases if i read the authors note correctly.)
Also, Talia Rhea is amazing at writing her characters. It feels as though she has lived their life prior to writing about it. All her characters are full beings, and it comes across that way in text. (I’ve read my fair share of authors that write the same characters with different names, she is definitely not one of those authors.)
Words I learned:
Didn’t learn any new words this round.
"Spoilers, Spoilers" - River Song
The following is an open discussion about the book. Details will be discussed here and in the comments. If that's not for you, this is where we part.
>!Hey, if you are reading this I don't want to hear "but spoilers", you had ample warning. lol!<
Okay, let’s get into it.
Misty: Love her, she is a black goth woman and her sense of style is chef’s kiss. She also has a breeding kink and is a ‘switch’ in the bedroom. ( I can relate. 😂😊).
Her business idea to create full body braids on her clients was ingenious. I was wondering how she was going to bring her own style to this species since they are covered head to toe in fur.
Now, Misty was not killing it in the understanding, portion of this relationship. And that was killing me but i understand that you can only be so open minded and you will default to how the people you grew up with act. A lot of their problems would have been solved if she just talked to Tsok instead of letting it fester and jumping to her own conclusions.
Tsok: whew. My notes on this guy… would make a grown man cry. Lmao. This dense being. He was killing me. Why didn’t he ever stop and ask Vigo and Jeanie for advice, or ask them what to expect. He let his arrogance get the best of him. His date idea was so cute though. The Arrows… so good.
Mating: Tsok really should have looped Misty in to his plans. Let her know why he was doing the things he was and what his peoples history was. Idk why he just assumed she would 1.) know or 2.) understand.
I’m glad they worked it out and I love the wedding idea they settled on. It is a good way to assuage their concerns about the males loosing their minds. (Though we know from Vigos book that the event that prompted this entire society changed was not exactly what everyone makes it out to be. That dude was a straight predator and an all around bad guy. He chose to violate that girl. We know this because Vigo was able to control himself (to some degree) and was worried about Jeanie’s safety the entire time.)
The High Imperium: They definitely were taking the data so their people can build their own machines to find their mates.
I’m am so excited for their series. I have theories on who they could be but it’s all over the map.
Overall, this book sits solidly in the middle for me, it didn’t make me extra excited for the next series and hyped for the High Imperium series.
Pre-ordering the next book as we speak. 😂🤣
https://redd.it/1j3hbm2
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Read ACOTAR for the first time (someone who doesn't like fantasy or romance)
This was one that I kept telling myself I wouldn't enjoy or get into. I was recommended this book and was told "just read the first one". So, to see what all the fuss was about, I complied.
I was shocked with how much I actually enjoyed this book. The character arcs, the world-building, the plot. I loved it. I don't usually read romance books and really don't enjoy fantasy (or so I thought). I said I would only read the first one but since finishing it I can't stop thinking about Feyre and the other characters and what is going to happen next.
I get the hype.
https://redd.it/1j3bmjd
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Celebrated author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: 'I have always longed to be known'
https://www.npr.org/2025/03/04/nx-s1-5136636/chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-dream-count
https://redd.it/1j38hcr
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Stuck on Infinite Jest...
Struggling to find motivation to keep reading.
a) The narrative style is perhaps the thing throwing me off the most, I can't tell who's brain I'm supposed to be living in. It's confusing in a way that's mildly frustrating (perhaps that is the point?)
b) The author's ... strangely excessive detail about this Steeply guy(?) unconvincingly dressing as a female; then a girl recounting a tale of when she was eight and found her father being a "cross-dressing transvestite" and wearing her leotard; then a guy who licks up other's sweat (Wallace decides to append "it isn't like a faggy or sexual thing"); then the very next page there's a Wardine section with "I can tolerate fags when alone but together yrstruly I cant' fucking stand fags" sic.
I do like some of these chapters. Kate Gompert's psych ward checkup (p68) and Erdedy's freight train of anxiety (p17) are my favorites so far. The tennis boys have an interesting moment here and there but I'm not smitten by them. The rest is ... a slog, especially the Wardine/Roy Tony bits. Wallace's writing (when coherent) is sharp and uniquely descriptive of mundane phenomenon. I enjoy his wordplay.
I'm taking notes trying to piece together the timeline, my first notecard filled up with haphazard scribbles and character relationship graphs so I switched to a full sized sheet of paper, trying to nail down the noneuclidean squirming of the plot.
I keep telling myself "give it til page 300 before you drop it. give it a chance". But now Wallace is yapping about a "transvestite purse stealer" (p143), and if I'm gonna have to deal with this author telling me every dozen pages about how off-putting these transvestites and fags are, I can't say I'm excited to continue.
I'm not opposed to long, dense reads (I thoroughly enjoyed Cadillac Desert and Seven Pillars of Wisdom), but this is a different kind of behemoth and the frequent prickly comments on lgbt stuff make it hard to justify continuing. Is Infinite Jest worth it?
https://redd.it/1j30lzh
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Rip Joseph Wambaugh, 2/28/25, Bestselling Police Crime Novelist
Joseph Wambaugh, LA cop who wrote 'The Onion Field' and other bestsellers, dies at 88 | AP News
I read a lot of his cop novels in the 80s & 90s - they were good, solid fast-moving police novels- not so much procedurals as reality-based. Often the cops were the good guys and the bad guys. The books are rowdy and rude, occasionally funny and always tragic.
I think the first of his books to hit bestseller status was The Blue Knight.
My favorite was The Choirboys, which looked at a tightly knit squad of LA cops, on duty and off, as people who were subject to stresses most of us can't imagine and how it all fell apart. If you want a slice-of-cop-life read, this would be the one I'd recommend to start with.
A good number of his novels and non-fiction like The Onion Field were adapted as movies or TV series and he created so you might recognize him from that medium.
He had a lot of NYT bestsellers and sold millions of books.
https://redd.it/1j2ya9a
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Waiting for the Paperback? Good Luck
https://www.wsj.com/business/media/waiting-for-the-paperback-good-luck-7e698165?st=sTVNCn&reflink=mobilewebshare_permalink
https://redd.it/1j2rra9
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The Steel Hit or The Man with The Getaway Face by Richard Stark A.K.A Donald E. Westlake
Well the title says it all as I have finished reading the second Parker Novel The Steel Hit or it's alternative title The Man with the Getaway Face.
As much as I enjoyed the first novel The Hunter and finished it within a day, life was little busy so The Steel Hit while great did take me about a week to read.
The further I delve into Parker's stort the better it gets.
I enjoyed the story for sure in the Steel Hit but also the characters. I felt bad for Skimm because Parker was right about Alma.
Let me say the descriptions of the areas and situations were a lot better in this second novel and the first novel was already well done.
The simplicity of the heist in this novel was beautifully figured out and if this were a modern novel or film the heist itself would have been 10 times more complicated and maybe 20 pages long, the book though laid everything out and the actual heist I think was maybe 3 and a half pages after all the set up that was done for it in the lead up.
The aecondary storyline with Stubbs was great and I actually felt horribly for him, because he was just trying to do right by the Doc.
Overall this book was highly enjoyable and a pleasant read. I just started reading The Outfit so no doubelt my next post will be about that particular novel.
https://redd.it/1j2nuj9
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I think a scale of 10 would be really an upgrade to Good Reads
I saw a post earlier today about good reads ratings and i thought how much better a rating on a scale of 10 would be and how better i could review some books. Some books i don't like but are not really bad i would give them a 3 as i can't give a 2.5. If it was a scale of 10 i would be more specific with my ratings. Do you agree or do you find a scale of 5 working for you? I always see people rating a book in their review with a scale of 10.
https://redd.it/1j2kexw
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is GoodReads overly harsh?
The Title says it all.
Whenever I am interested in a book and want to do some research about whether to commit time to it, I check two sources.
One is amazon as I am likely buying the book there. The other is GR.
Amazon tends to have lots of positive reviews for said book (in the thousands) and GR tends to show on the front page of the book many very scathing 1* reviews.
I have noticed this pattern for years. GR seems to be a super harsh or more pessimistic cohort of reviewers than say amazon.
https://redd.it/1j2g1kh
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What Books did You Start or Finish Reading this Week?: March 03, 2025
Hi everyone!
What are you reading? What have you recently finished reading? What do you think of it? We want to know!
We're displaying the books found in this thread in the book strip at the top of the page. If you want the books you're reading included, use the formatting below.
Formatting your book info
Post your book info in this format:
the title, by the author
For example:
The Bogus Title, by Stephen King
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To help prevent errors in data collection, please double check your spelling of the title and author.
NEW: Would you like to ask the author you are reading (or just finished reading) a question? Type !invite in your comment and we will reach out to them to request they join us for a community Ask Me Anything event!
-Your Friendly /r/books Moderator Team
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In Malice Quite Close by Brandi Lynn Ryder
I just read this contemporary gothic novel, a tale of dark obsessions, art, and secrets. Parts of the tales are narrated from the point of view of Frenchman who becomes obsessed with, grooms and abducts a fifteen year-old girl, then passes her off as his daughter-well aware yet in denial that he is in Humbert Humbert territory. The two become part of small close knit group of art world eccentrics, many of who likewise become obsessed with the young woman. These people are all bound by secrets they are keeping from each other and when a cache of nude paintings of the woman is discovered, it sets in motion an unravelling of secrets that lead to murder. Well-paced, well-written and suspenseful, this a compelling story.
https://redd.it/1j21zjk
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I like Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery".
Let's talk about the most popular story by this author. I may have liked this story, but I didn't find this scary. Like, it was obvious from the beginning what would happen in the end. Although I understand why it scared others. >! The people you've known all your life, with whom you've been friends and socialized, are ready to kill you just because you won the lottery.!<
I rather liked him because of his direct criticism of traditions that become meaningless, but we continue to follow them, because that's always been the case, even if we know they can be cruel. I also liked one line (the quotation is inaccurate): "The locals felt sorry for Summers for not having children, and scolded his wife for the same thing." Maybe it doesn't have a deep meaning, but it still makes you think.
I also like the lottery image. A small, black box with sheets of paper inside, one of which has a circle drawn on it.
I'm also amused by the negative reaction this story has caused. Peoples even sent death letters to the author, although she didn't even really show the scary part of her story.
https://redd.it/1j1zxuc
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Book Ban: Trump Floats Law to Target Books Critical of Him
https://meidasnews.com/news/book-ban-trump-floats-law-to-target-books-critical-of-him
https://redd.it/1j1x31c
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Mockingbird by Walter Tevis
I just finished this book and wanted to share my appreciation for it. I read a lot of science fiction, the entire wide range of it. But this book since long really struck my SF-nerve. A beautiful book set with everything in it what makes me love science fiction. A world and story that is used to explore new ideas on the human condition. Anyone else like this book or for that matter didn't like it?
https://redd.it/1j1tcwk
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Weekly FAQ Thread March 02 2025: When do you give up on a book?
Hello readers and welcome to our Weekly FAQ thread! Our topic this week is: When do you give up on a book? We've all experienced this. We pick up a book and it ends up being terrible. Do you give up on it at some point? Or do you power through to the end for a sense of accomplishment? Please feel free to discuss your feelings here!
You can view previous FAQ threads here in our wiki.
Thank you and enjoy!
https://redd.it/1j1rgqc
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