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I'm loving the Oz books by L. Frank Baum
As stated in the title, I am loving these books. I know they are written for young adults /kids but the older style English is really beautiful (the first book being published in 1900) I have the whole set and I'm looking forward to getting to know Oz better. I've had the set for awhile and I'm so glad I finally picked them up.
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Gormenghast - madness and loneliness in the story made more devastating knowing what happened to the author
I just read chapter 45 where >!lonely Flay in the labyrinth of underground tunnels fights his terror to try to find the mad creature making the terrible laughter and realises it’s weakening but despite all his searching he can’t find a way to get to it. Yet his conscience won’t let him keep away although logically he knows his presence isn’t really helpful. And the description of the Ladies Cora and Clarice on the other side of the wall, descending deeper and deeper into lonely madness and an eventual lonely death together!<.
Knowing that Mervyn Peake was dealing with a neurodegenerative condition that would eventually kill him when he wrote this makes this hit so hard. The devastating and terrifying madness. The physical proximities that can’t break the barrier of loneliness. Ugh. Need to sit with this for a while.
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'The Devotion of Suspect X' is twisty and smarty
This was the first time I read one of Higashino books and I was blown away by it. This was Christie level plotting + Chandler level moral ambiguousness combined in one book from Higashino.
The suspect here is a recluse mathematician (Ishigami) who wants to save his neighbor and her daughter from the terrible crime they have done under duress. He is able to fool almost everybody except his own college classmate, a brilliant physicist (Yukawa), who happens to be helping uncover the case. While the police takes everything on face value following a protocol, Yukawa wants to question more, knowing well enough how Ishigami's brain works. This is power of creating elegant and flawless solutions meet power of acute observation and deep understanding of how reality works.
And its always fun to see someone trying their hands on the Millenium problems :). Gripping till the end and deserving of all the accolades it gets.
PS: After finishing, I went on the internet to remind myself the details on the Riemann Hypotheis, which I researched a bit about some 10 years ago.
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"Over the Edge" by Jonathan Kellerman is a good book, but a fascinating reminder of queer history.
Kellerman is, to my knowledge, a straight author. His protagonist, Dr. Alex Delaware, is a straight character. Yet Delaware's best friend, Officer Milo, is gay, and the focus of this book revolves around a troubled and brilliant teenager, Jamey, who is also gay.
The plot is full of twists and turns, and his descriptions are visceral in the best (and worst) ways. But what kept me invested was seeing how the straight characters treated the gay ones, and how the narrative treated them both.
Published in the 80's, Kellerman's antagonistic characters refer to gays as "deviants", and bully and belittle them. Milo briefly discusses his own internalised homophobia in a surprisingly realistic way, discussing how feminine men make him uncomfortable. Several characters talk about how crimes committed by gay men are often more violent than those committed by straight men, as measured by the number of stab wounds. And yet not once does the narrative itself come across as belittling.
Delaware is mistaken for gay by a homophobic officer, and responds with anger - not for the mistake, but for the injustice of knowing that this cop will mistreat other queer people. He doesn't respond with words but rather with actions, by stepping in to help his former client Jamey have the best chance of receiving justice in a system that is rigged against him with bigotry.
Milo's discomfort with the flamboyant aspects of Pride and the queer community are treated as character flaws, with honesty and regret that he isn't more accepting of them, and with the hope that one day he will be.
One notable gay character is a predator who uses his authority over Jamey to instigate a romantic relationship (remember that Jamey is a teenager here), but this is contrasted against several other straight characters who are all dating women much younger than themselves.
The two most homophobic characters in the novel are both dead by the end.
Given the time the novel was written in, I found it unexpectedly progressive, and a reminder of how far our community has come in terms of beating back such daily bigotry.
And having just finished it, I wanted to share my thoughts.
What do you think?
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reading project hail mary and can't stop thinking about it
I picked this up after seeing it recommended everywhere, and for once the hype was completely justified. I expected a hard sci-fi story full of complicated science, but it turned out to be one of the most entertaining and surprisingly emotional books I have read in a long time. what really caught me off guard was how attached I became to the characters. There were several moments that genuinely made me laugh, and a few that hit much harder emotionally than I expected from a space survival novel.
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Another return to the Paperbacks from Hell series: David Fisher's "The Pack".
Returning once again to the Paperbacks from Hell series again with another animal attack novel, David Fisher's "The Pack"! It's another of the shorter reissues in this series, and a pretty tense one too!
The novel revolves around a family vacationing on a resort island in the middle of winter, where they soon find themselves under siege by a pack of dogs, who have been abandoned by their owners who come to it in the summer. And these dogs have become wild, and extremely vicious.
This is one super fast paced novel! "The Pack" leans more heavily into thriller territory, probably just as much as the horror element. And this is a 100% difference from the subtle psychological horror of Greenhall's "Hell Hound". This one goes full speed ahead, with extremely tense moments with some gory scenes.
It's not as darkly introspective as "Hell Hound", but it is quite the fun and horrifying ride! It doesn't really go heavy on the character study as much but that's ok. It's definitely one of those books that can act as a refresher after reading some really heavy ones. I still got another of these reissues that I'm going to read tomorrow, and this one's going to be slightly longer than "The Pack" and is going to go more into supernatural territory this time around. So good to be back on this series for a bit!
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Colby Chamberlain’s Fluxus Administration: George Maciunas and the Art of Paperwork
https://brooklynrail.org/2026/06/books/colby-chamberlain-fluxus-administration-george-maciunas-and-the-art-of-paperwork/
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Is The Count of Monte Cristo better on the second read through?
I’ve been chipping away at The Count of Monte Cristo for months, and so far very much enjoying it… but my goodness the second half gets so complicated. I understand that the foreshadowing and connections are some of the best in all of literature, but I feel like I’m using my mental energy trying to just keep track. Has anybody read the book twice? Once you know the characters, I imagine it’s a whole new experience the second time through.
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I just last week read The Summer After the Night Before by Lisa Williamson. It's so powerful and thought-provoking (TW: sexual assault and rape themes)
Lisa Williamson is probably my favourite YA novelist (I've written about her a couple of times on here), so I was delighted that after a few years focussing on a different genre she's brought out a new one. And it's such a topical and thought-provoking book.
The basic premise is that a girl goes to a house party with a big group of friends, gets very badly drunk and her best friend's brother offers to take her home. The following morning, she wakes up in his bed and can't remember what happened. She gets this strange feeling that during the night he had sex with her when she was too drunk to consent - but she asks him and he swears blind he didn't. Which puts her in quite a tricky situation, because she's really not sure she believes him, but she's not certain, and it can't be proven either way. And there's also the added complication that he's not just any guy, he's her best friend's brother, and it would severely impact their friendship if she accused her brother of having raped her, especially if she wasn't sure.
It's told in the first person by the three main characters - the girl, the boy and the boy's sister who finds herself caught in the middle between her brother and her best friend and isn't sure what to think. All of them are very flawed characters - wasn't sure I really would get on well with any of them in real life, but also that means you're never quite sure who to side with. The boy's extracts are quite cleverly written so as to very much leave out going into detail about what happened when they got back from the party, meaning that for most of the book the reader doesn't know what he did or didn't do either, so you really have to work out how much you trust him as a character. (The truth is eventually revealed, but obviously I won't say because spoilers!)
I found it such an important story for dealing with issues surrounding consent, both for the accuser and for the accused. One criticism I've seen raised online is that it ends without all that much of a resolution - but I actually like that. With a subject as serious as this, you can't wrap everything up in a neat package. The ending, and how the characters all move forward once everyone knows the truth, is kept fairly ambiguous, so you as the reader can think how you think they'd move forward, and how you would in that situation.
(As an additional note, one thing I've always thought Lisa Williamson is really good at is slipping in representation of minority groups without it feeling forced or artificial. There's one point where a character goes to stay with her sister, they go to a party at the house of the sister's female friend, and during the party it becomes apparent that the sister and the friend are actually an item - clearly, the narrating character already knew her sister was gay or otherwise LGBTQ+ and isn't remotely surprised, but prior to this point we'd never explicitly been told that, because clearly it wasn't relevant up until this point. There's also the suggestion that someone's boyfriend is Jewish without the text explicitly ever saying that. The suggestion comes firstly from the fact his name is Caleb, a Hebrew name, and when talking about when he's going to meet her parents, he jokingly says, 'They're not rabid anti-Semites, are they?' I really like this kind of thing - just making minority characters benignly part of the crowd, rather than making their minority status their defining characteristic. She does it well in her other books as well.)
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Researcher turns wi-fi smart lightbulb into a Banned Book Library
https://www.tomshardware.com/maker-stem/researcher-turns-wi-fi-smart-lightbulb-into-a-banned-book-library-open-source-project-makes-digital-books-available-via-a-server-and-open-wi-fi-access-point-hacked-into-an-esp32-powered-bulb
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In the micro world: Michael Crichton's "Micro".
Now I have one of the posthumous novels by Michael Crichton. This one's a book that he had been working on before his death in 2008 and was later finished up by one Richard Preston. And that book is "Micro".
In a building in Honolulu the bodies of three men are discovered, with literally no signs of struggle to be found, save for ultra fine lacerations that cover them. Meanwhile in the forests of Oahu new and groundbreaking technology has been created and a revolutionary era of biological prospecting has been ushered in.
A microbiology tech startup company has brought in seven highly brilliant graduate students, and both are thrust into an extremely hostile wilderness filled with profound and very surprising dangers on every turn.
Now they have become prey to technology that is radical and filled with unbridled power. With their knowledge of the natural world as their only weapon, they have to harness the forces of nature if they are to survive.
Since this was one of the novels posthumously after Crichton's death (and was later finished by Preston as Crichton was still working on it), so I didn't really have an idea if it was going to be good or not.
After reading for the past several days I found it to be decently good. Nothing in the way of greatness of something like "Congo" or "The Andromeda Strain", but good enough. It's a fine techno thriller with some heavy adventure to go along with it, with the story being very fast paced. And also an extremely fun one too, while also having me on edge!
Not a really bad novel as I've still got a lot of pleasure reading it. But still I have to get my mits on either "Sphere" or "Jurassic Park" if I want some Crichton at his very best, and I hope I do very soon!
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Simple Questions: June 23, 2026
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!
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Dracula
35 1897 H.G. Wells - The War of the Worlds
36 1899 Joseph Conrad - Heart of Darkness
37 1903 Jack London - The Call of the Wild
38 1906 Upton Sinclair - The Jungle
39 1912 Edgar Rice Burroughs - Tarzan of the Apes
40 1913 Marcel Proust - The Way by Swann's
41 1915 Franz Kafka - The Trial
42 1920 Edith Wharton - The Age of Innocence
43 1921 Yevgeny Zamyatin - We
44 1922 James Joyce - Ulysses
45 1922 Hermann Hess - Siddhartha
46 1924 E.M. Forster - A Passage to India
47 1925 F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby
48 1925 Virginia Woolf - Mrs Dalloway
49 1929 Ernest Hemingway - A Farewell to Arms
50 1929 Erich Maria Remarque - All Quiet on the Western Front
51 1930 William Faulkner - As I Lay Dying
52 1931 H.P. Lovecraft - At the Mountains of Madness
53 1932 Aldous Huxley - Brave New World
54 1933 James Hilton - Lost Horizons
55 1934 Henry Miller - Tropic of Cancer
56 1936 Margaret Mitchell - Gone with the Wind
57 1938 Daphne du Maurier - Rebecca
58 1939 John Steinbeck - The Grapes of Wrath
59 1939 Agatha Christie - And Then There Were None
60 1942 Albert Camus - The Stranger
61 1949 George Orwell - Nineteen Eighty-Four
62 1951 Isaac Asimov - Foundation
63 1951 J.D. Salinger - Catcher in the Rye
64 1952 Ralph Ellison - Invisible Man
65 1953 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451
66 1953 Ian Fleming - Casino Royale
67 1954 Richard Matheson - I Am Legend
68 1954 William Golding - Lord of the Flies
69 1955 JRR Tolkien - The Lord of the Rings
70 1955 Graham Greene - The Quiet American
71 1955 Vladimir Nabokov - Lolita
72 1957 Boris Pasternak - Doctor Zhivago
73 1957 Jack Kerouac - On the Road
74 1957 Ayn Rand - Atlas Shrugged
75 1958 Chinua Achebe - Things Fall Apart
76 1958 T.H. White - The Once And Future King
77 1959 Shirley Jackson - The Haunting of Hill House
78 1960 Harper Lee - To Kill a Mockingbird
79 1961 Joseph Heller - Catch-22
80 1961 Robert Heinlein - Stranger in a Strange Land
81 1962 Anthony Burgess - A Clockwork Orange
82 1962 Ken Kesey - One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
83 1963 Sylvia Plath - The Bell Jar
84 1965 Frank Herbert - Dune
85 1967 Gabriel Garcia Marquez - One Hundred Years of Solitude
86 1968 Philip K Dick - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
87 1968 Arthur C Clarke - 2001: A Space Odyssey
88 1969 Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse 5
89 1969 Philip Roth - Portnoy's Complaint
90 1971 William Peter Blatty - The Exorcist
91 1973 Thomas Pynchon - Gravity's Rainbow
92 1976 Anne Rice - Interview with the Vampire
93 1977 Stephen King - The Shining
94 1981 Salman Rushdie - Midnight's Children
95 1984 William Gibson - Neuromancer
96 1985 Margaret Atwood - The Handmaid’s Tale
97 1985 Cormac McCarthy - Blood Meridian
98 1987 Toni Morrison - Beloved
99 1991 Brett Easton Ellis - American Psycho
100 1996 David Foster Wallace - Infinite Jest
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During Covid I made a list of "100 Most Influential Novels". I just finished the last book on the list resubmission
(Note: original post deleted, now re-edited for more content). In 2020, when Covid lockdowns started happening, I decided to curate my own list of "100 Most Influential Novels to Read". Note that this doesn't say "Best" or even "Greatest", but my goal was to take the challenge to curate a list of novels which have most broadly influenced culture from the standpoint of a White Anglophone Millennial.
I don't consider this or any list perfect; part of the fun is setting the limitation of 100 novels and then trying to cover as much as you can without omission or redundancy. Blood Meridian or Lonesome Dove? Invisible Man or Their Eyes Were Watching God? Pedro Paramo or 100 years of Solitude? t should go without saying that this is not a list of the ONLY books worth reading, and many entries on this list have "hidden" entries behind them; ie before reading tom Jones, I'd read Moll Flanders and Pamela in order to follow the development of the novel. Before reading Udolpho, I'd read Otranto.
My biggest takeaway was seeing how certain tropes develop and branch off. The “virtuous damsel” trope obviously dates back to before Pamela, but putting it against the “brusquely-spoken unlikable man” eventually developed into both Pride & Prejudice and Jane Eyre, but also the kidnapping and threats spun off into Gothic fiction via Mysteries of Udolpho. Likewise, the first half of Gone With the Wind is just a straight rip off of Vanity Fair, beat for beat. But VF's Becky Sharpe wouldnt exist without Defoe's Moll Flanders.
Favourites: Wuthering Heights, Blood Meridian, Moby Dick, Les Mis, Doctor Zhivago. Some of the entries on this list, maybe 10 or so, I had already read and were longstanding favourites, such as Lord of the Rings and 1984.
I struggled most of all with Tristram Shandy. The first quarter was fun, with the naming mixup around his birth, Old Yorrick, the introduction of Uncle Toby. But after the first volume things spun off into senseless meanderings, which I understand was the point, but I never managed to get back into enjoying the novel.
2025 was the year I dedicated to the “big honkers”: Don Quixote, Ulysses, Gravity’s Rainbow, and Infinite Jest. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed Ulysses, and whilst some chapters were more opaque than others, it contained some of the most memorable reading experiences I’ve ever had, particularly the chapter following the evolution of the English language. Likewise, Infinite Jest was way more enjoyable than I expected, though I still have not come to terms with the non-ending existing outside the scope of the novel. Gravity’s Rainbow was my fifth Pynchon and I’m sad to say it’s the only Pynchon I’ve not yet enjoyed.
The very last book which I read, finishing it on Sunday, was Henry Fielding's Tom Jones, which I read after a run of Beowulf, Gawain and the Green Knight, The Canterbury Tales, The Pilgrim's Progress, Moll Flanders, and Pamela, in order to follow the evolution of English literature, as Tom Jones is widely considered, if not the first English Novel, at least a benchmark culmination of that literary form.
Disclaimers:
1. This is not a list of "Best" novels, but Important and Influential, and formative for the "Zeitgeist", as I understand it. Many of them are therefore very good books. There are a few novels on this list I detested.
2. As an Anglophone, this list is rooted in the Western Canon. You should obviously read more widely than this. A few influential non Western books are included but you could probably create an entire list just with Japanese or Latin American books.
3. Further to point 2, the Western Canon is itself reflective of a history of patriarchy, chauvinism, colonialism, and prejudice. There is no real way my list can be 50% women and appropriately racially diverse, because Western history is not.
4. One entry per author - I attempted to select a compromise between their most popular, most revered, or most representative. For Dickens
Conrad a racist, by any standard? What did you think of the book?
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‘Beautiful and terrifying’: the best American LGBTQ+ books, chosen by Samuel R Delany, Kaveh Akbar, Eileen Myles and more: From 20th-century classics to little-known treasures, queer authors share their favorite books about LGBTQ+ life
https://www.theguardian.com/books/ng-interactive/2026/jun/24/best-american-lgbtq-books-authors
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Reading Log 2026 midway
I got back into reading last year as an escape from the hell around me.
I had been reading on and off for the past few years but it wasn’t until, about October of last year I really set myself time, and not a goal but just I wanted to make a habit of reading. Both fiction and non fiction.
Some highlights of 2025 were
Dune, and Kitchen Confidentials.
This year, however I’ve been consistently reading, I’ve found what works for me.
I love reading fiction physically, and non fiction I love to listen because it’s more engaging for me that way. I can physically read nonfiction but I like to listen to it.
I’ve read alot of classics this year, classics I find are like my methadone for my wanderlust and yearn for escaping.
Especially from different countries I think classics give you a window into the culture and history of a place and time, based on where and when it was written even if it’s a complete fiction like Don Quixote.
With that my favorite Author might be John Steinbeck, I’ve dubbed this year “Steinbeck summer”
What I love about Steinbeck is that he has such a pure authentic, unapologetically honest understanding of people, in the same way that makes Shakespeare still relevant centuries later.
Like in Grapes of Wrath when Rose a Sharon is being harassed by the Bible Thumper
That’s a real person, and I’ve got nothing against religion inherently but, we all know that person the type of person where all the problems in your life anything that happens is because you didn’t believe in god hard enough.
A condor could crash into your house and it’s because you didn’t pray enough.
Same thing in The Pearl how the idea of wealth changes everyone’s reaction and relation to Kino and his family’s
I’m trying to expand beyond classics but I do adore them, and I want to read from other countries too .
Here is everything I’ve read this year
Fiction:
Dune messiah
Jurassic Park
No country for old men
Cyrano De Bergerac
The Grapes of Wrath
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Frankenstein 1818 text
Don Quixote
Misery
To a God Unknown
Botchan
Cannery Row
The Good Lord Bird
The Pearl
Non fiction :
Marco Polo Venice to Xanadu
Dear Leader
In the Weeds
Mao’s Famine: The Great Leap Forward.
The Power of our Supreme Court
River of Darkness
Mind Hunter
A short history of Ireland (1500-2000)
Killer Across the Table
The Free State of Jones
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Enjoying reading again!
I have set a goal to myself to read some "harder" books (mostly some classics and philosophy) for a year. I managed to read around 15 books (dropped two of them halfway through), but it was not pleasurable, more like a chore regarding some of them. This period felt like there was something wrong with me because I couldn't read as much as I used to and I was falling asleep after five pages.
Now I started reading Dune, which is closer to my preferences, and finally I can stay up all night reading for hours on end again.
The conclusion to which I arrived is that, if reading isn't something you do for work/school, then don't step too much outside your comfort zone (maybe a bit is okay but not like I did).
Do you have similar experiences where you found your passion for reading again?
Also please don't think I'm performative I've actually read those books
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reading a trilogy back-to-back
how do you like to read a series? do you read them one after another, or do you read something else in between to cleanse your palate? i just ripped through the first two books in the wolf hall series by hilary mantel, and as soon as i finished the second book i wanted to start the third. but its big, almost 800 pages, and i’ve been thinking about taking a break to read something else first. i don’t read many book series, so i’m curious to know how other people tackle them :)
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Reflecting on America’s 250th anniversary: Rupture and reconstruction
https://press.princeton.edu/ideas/reflecting-on-americas-250th-anniversary-rupture-and-reconstruction?srsltid=AfmBOop6A8azTKdvpso0fmP2KSOVDimjzELdGREGfY_I4JkmE7iJHpwe
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Just finished Jurassic Park and WOW
This is the first time I have ever read a Michael Crichton book and I absolutely loved it. I really like his writing style and the way he incorporates the science in an easy way for the reader to understand.
Now, for the book. I can't believe how long I had gone without reading it. It just keeps you on your toes almost the whole time. The dinosaur attacks are so brutal and the way they get described easily paints a picture in your head. The amount of serious dread you feel in some parts too feels insurmountable. It is almost more of a horror book, honestly. >!T Rex out here being Mr. X from Resident Evil 2 wasn't on my bingo card.!<
Lex is VERY annoying, but what do you expect from a 7 year old in that situation?
I know Crichton was a screenwriter for the movie, but I am actually pretty surprised on how much he omitted from the book for the movie and how much was changed.
I highly recommend reading if you haven't. It is great. On to The Lost World!
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Review: “Hell House” by Richard Matheson
“Hell House” by Richard Matheson is one of those classic haunted house novels that every horror reader should read at least once in their life. While it isn’t a perfect novel for me, it is still one of the best of the genre that is guaranteed to send chills down your spine while reading.
Before I dive into my horror book review, here are all the trigger warnings I found while reading:
\- Suicide
\- Religion
\- Violence against animals (cats)
\- Sexual assault
\- Sexual abuse
\- Incest
\- Drugs
\- Necrophilia
\- Cannibalism
\- Alcoholism
\- Rape
\- Cancer
If any of these trigger you, please do not read this novel. Moving along, I loved Matheson’s writing style, as this is the first book of his I’ve ever read. He has excellent writing skills, especially in the atmospheric, brilliantly detailed depiction of the house itself. Even the horror events and situations were next-level creepy and well executed.
Having this take place in my home state of New York was also awesome, and especially the story itself of the epic battle of science versus supernatural. Reading how the main character, Barrett, defended his stance with scientific evidence that there’s no such thing as haunted houses against Florence and Fischer, who were mediums, was great. It reminded me of those old found-footage/ghost-hunter TV episodes I used to watch while growing up, deep into the night.
The main antagonist, Belasco, was also pretty frightening and set the tone for some wild, disturbing horror. Don’t worry, no spoilers here, but everything involving Belasco was crazy, while also having some nice horror mystery elements going on, trying to figure out what transpired in Hell House over the years. Once that all started to unravel, it was mostly a genuine page-turner.
Even though there was a nice plot twist from the 50% mark onward, the overall pacing slowed. It started to get too heavy with dialogue and not enough of the horror that blew me away. If this novel were trimmed down a bit and made tighter, it would have been a perfect horror novel masterpiece. It was close to being that, but every time Matheson wrote in that third-person omniscient style, it became a bit of a slogfest. The story dragged on just when it was getting good.
With four main characters, trying to write in this style can get a bit confusing, especially since two of the main characters have somewhat similar names: Florence and Fischer. It wasn’t a huge deal, but if they had used two completely different names, it would have been easier to read.
The overall horror here more than made up for it, though. I loved all those evil, demonic, perverse scenes. They were insane and horrifying, especially the race to the end. Unfortunately, that ending left more to be desired.
I was expecting a lot more from the ending, or at least an unexpected final plot twist. Something that was a final drop-the-mic moment, but it was pretty underwhelming and felt a bit unbelievable. After all the chaotic events of the past and present at Hell House, it ended in a way that just didn't feel that it would ever be possible. It was an okay ending, but I was just expecting so much more.
I give “Hell House” by Richard Matheson a 4-Star rating out of 5. It’s considered a staple in the haunted house genre, and rightfully so. This is up there with “The Haunting of Hill House” by Shirley Jackson, “The Shining” by Stephen King, and “How to Sell a Haunted House” by Grady Hendrix. It gets a bit heavy with excess dialogue and had a lackluster ending for me, but the horror, writing, and overall story were fantastic. It’s a classic for a reason, and even though it wasn’t a perfect 5-Star read for me, I will still recommend this to everyone who loves a good old-fashioned haunted house novel with a perverse demonic twist.
Belasco was here.
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How do you feel about the Earth's Children Series by Jean Auel?
First read this series when I was a 14 year old teenage boy and found it fascinating. Really sparked an already keen interest in anthropology, archaeology, history. The sex scenes also helped haha.
Re-reading it at age 35 and wow, just an insane amount of description. Super fascinated by the interplay of the two species, descriptions of all the flora and fauna. The Mary Sue status of Ayla gets a bit annoying, and I do skip over the copious amounts of sex scenes now. But still just as fascinated by the history of it all, even if much of it is fantasy/speculation.
I feel like as a man, I'm probably in the minority here, but I think it's an incredible series for its attention to detail.
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Read with your Teenagers (and Kids!)
I mentioned this in a thread and I wanted to highlight it as a post: If it is at all possible, join a teen/adult or kid/adult book club. (Libraries often host them!) Read The Hunger Games with teens in your life, or The Mysterious Benedict Society with younger kids! Choose for your adult book club something all the local kids are reading, and have that as your next book and invite the kids whose parents are in your book club to read along with you and come to the meeting. Nothing will reignite your love of reading like reading some kinda dumb teen fiction, but discussing it very seriously with teenagers who ADORE it. It's an easy and quick read for you, but it's an intense read for the teens in your life, and hosting a discussion where the kids talk about their takeaways and the adults share (carefully!) their thoughts is an absolute delight.
Another idea in this vein is, my middle schooler's English teacher told me he wasn't doing very well at "annotating texts" or reading closely. So I thought long and hard about a book he'd enjoy, and I settled on "Good Morning, Midnight" (2016), which is about a non-specific apocalypse on Earth where the only survivors are a grumpy astronomer and a spaceship coming back from Jupiter. I read one chapter and annotated it as if I were reading it for a college class, writing thoughts in the margin and underlining important passages, and then he'd read my chapter and argue with my annotations in the margins, and then read the next and annotate it. And then I'd read his chapter and argue with him, and go on to the next one, and we went back and forth, having a conversation in the margins and highlighting everything we thought might be worth writing a paper about (or arguing about).
The "carrot" at the end of the "stick" of reading a novel he wasn't totally sure he wanted to read (although he liked it!) was that he'd get to watch The Midnight Sky, which is the worst possible movie adaptation of a book ever, because it's not really a book that lends itself to adaptation AND ALSO the science is insane, which pleased my science-loving kid.
On the very last page we both signed our names and dated when we finished it, and I've seen the book on his "most important books" shelves next to the novels he's reading for school.
Read with kids! Reignite your love of reading dumb books, and discuss books with kids and teenagers that are HUGE to them, even if they're routine to you. You'll learn to love dumb books again if you get to read them with kids!
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Review of Live Forever by John Robb
As an Oasis fan, I was so happy that this book was published in Hungarian. I was eagerly awaiting it, especially since the release was timed to coincide with his birthday. It ended up being delayed by two weeks, and I should have taken that as a sign.
One of the book’s few positives is that it’s about Oasis and gives readers insight into how the songs were recorded, even adding some context to the meaning of a few of them. But unfortunately, it’s terribly edited. The author, a producer close to the band, allows “name-dropping” to dominate the text: mentioning every conceivable acquaintance and figure associated with the band, no matter how distant or loosely connected they were. There are 4–5 such instances per page, which makes reading very difficult. The book also mentions all kinds of musical attempts, which were really just a few casual get-togethers in a bedroom in a housing project, without any recordings or concerts.
The quotes gathered from the tabloid press are repetitive and jump around in time, again, making it difficult to follow the timeline.
It’s a missed opportunity that most of the book focuses on the first two albums, while the rest is covered in a single chapter each, and conflicts and departures among the members are dealt with in half a page only. Yet these were supposedly tensions that dragged on for years.
The author wraps up the band’s recent reunion and the year-long tour in a final chapter of just a few pages.
The Hungarian translation is particularly jarring, one can clearly tell the translator is not part of this world. Mis-translations, typos and conjugation errors are common all along.
So the book is a disappointment and isn’t worth its price. I’m very lucky that the local library did the dirty work for me; I returned it today without feeling particularly disappointed—in fact, with a bit of annoyance.
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Was Donna Tartt inspired by John Fowles’ The Magus when writing The Secret History?
I read The Secret History first and later The Magus. I can’t exactly put my finger on it but TSH seemed obviously inspired by the latter book despite no similarity in plot.
I think it’s something to do with the self-loathing and pathetic internal monologues of Richard and Nicholas respectively, as well as the intellectual and slightly pretentious vibe of both books.
Both authors also expect the reader to put the work in to understand the text (lots of untranslated latin, french, greek etc. and highbrow literary references).
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The memoir of a man who survived the horrors of Hiroshima is to be published for the first time this summer after its discovery in a US archive. The 230-page memoir was written almost 80 years ago by Kiyoshi Tanimoto, who witnessed the city’s destruction in 1945.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/23/lost-memoir-of-hiroshima-survivor-found-after-decades-in-us-archive?CMP=share_btn_url
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and Tolstoy this was a challenge, YMMV.
5. This is a list of 100 novels. Whilst the definition of a novel is debatable, epic poems, religious allegory, conduct literature, mythic retellings etc do not typically qualify. Don Quixote is widely dubbed the first modern novel, but even it is a satire of existing chivalric romances.
6. The list arbitrarily terminates before the 21st century. The rise of the internet, the demise of the monoculture, the proliferation of home media and prestige television has fundamentally altered the reading landscape. There are many worthy books published after the year 2000, but it's hard to picture any with the kind of impact of the rest of the list without ending it on Twilight, Fifty Shades, or The DaVinci Code.
7. Influence is a difficult thing to measure. Ann Radcliffe was foundational to the Gothic genre, but also an influence to Austen, Dickens, Thackeray, though she is not a household name today. Were the Sherlock Holmes novels influential, or mainly the collected short stories? Were the James Bond novels influential without the movies? At the very least, I wanted to investigate the origins of these widely known characters.
8. I tried to shy away from series and rely on standalone novels, but the distinction is often blurred. Don Quixote includes its own sequel 10 years later. Monte Cristo was moreso a serial publication than a single novel. A Game of Thrones is enormously influential but is just one in an unfinished series.
9. Literary fiction and genre fiction often blur, but I've tried to maintain a 60/40 split. Similarly, I've wrestled with the inclusion of children's literature. Alice in Wonderland, The Jungle Book, Peter Pan, Narnia, and Harry Potter are all as influential as any entry on this list. Their omission is very debatable.
10. Finally, this is my list, for my own fun and a personal challenge and intellectual exercise to curate. It's reflective of my own reading preferences and goals. But I'd love to see what essential books I've missed.
1 1605 Miguel de Cervantes - Don Quixote
2 1719 Daniel Defoe - Robinson Crusoe
3 1726 Jonathan Swift - Gulliver’s Travels
4 1749 Henry Fielding - Tom Jones
5 1767 Laurence Sterne - Tristram Shandy
6 1787 Johann W Goethe - The Sorrows of Young Werther
7 1794 Ann Radcliffe - The Mysteries of Udolpho
8 1813 Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice
9 1818 Mary Shelley - Frankenstein
10 1819 Walter Scott - Ivanhoe
11 1826 James F. Cooper - Last of the Mohicans
12 1844 Alexandre Dumas - The Count of Monte Cristo
13 1846 Emily Bronte - Wuthering Heights
14 1847 Charlotte Bronte - Jane Eyre
15 1848 William Thackeray - Vanity Fair
16 1850 Nathaniel Hawthorne - The Scarlet Letter
17 1851 Herman Melville - Moby Dick
18 1852 Harriet Beecher Stowe - Uncle Tom's Cabin
19 1856 Gustave Flaubert - Madame Bovary
20 1859 Wilkie Collins - The Woman in White
21 1861 Charles Dickens - Great Expectations
22 1862 Victor Hugo - Les Miserables
23 1866 Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Crime and Punishment
24 1869 Leo Tolstoy - War and Peace
25 1869 Louisa M Alcott - Little Women
26 1870 Jules Verne - 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
27 1872 George Eliot - Middlemarch
28 1883 Robert L. Stevenson - Treasure Island
29 1884 Mark Twain - Adventures Of Hucklberry Finn
30 1885 H Riger Haggard - King Solomon's Mines
31 1887 Arthur Conan Doyle - A Study in Scarlet
32 1890 Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray
33 1891 Thomas Hardy - Tess of the D'Urbervilles
34 1897 Bram Stoker -
Why did NO ONE tell me that Animorphs was NOT a good palate cleanser from Dungeon Crawler Carl?
I finished “A Parade of Horribles” and I thought to myself, <Self, you need some R & R. A return to the light side. Something weird and funny but, you know, lighter.> I hadn’t read Animorphs before. I read ONE post. I was like, <Cool, this sounds like a good pivot.> Right? Wrong. I read all 54 books plus the extras in like three weeks. And I have questions. How the HECK do these teenagers have a body count that rivals the winning warlord of Faction Wars? Not to mention the war crimes. I’m shooketh. Very shooketh. My flabbers are gasted.
Also, don’t tell me the Ellimist couldn’t have saved [character\].
Anyway, I need to talk about this with somebody. Sorry if this is the wrong sub.
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A (likely poor) first attempt at literary criticism: Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
I’m a regular person. My new year’s resolution a few years ago was to read a book a month, and I’ve kept up with that. I thought I would try my hand at interpreting a classic work of literature. I am holding myself to a simple rule, that being 1) Don’t seek any outside aids (wikipedia, study guides, reddit, AI, etc).
When I was in school, I was an average student. I did just enough to get by, and I never put any effort into understanding the literature we were reading. As an adult, I read almost exclusively popular nonfiction. But recently I’ve tried to make an effort to read more challenging fare.
I digress, here is what I thought about Heart of Darkness.
The only copy available was an academic edition which of course included a lot of historical context and criticism which I was intent on ignoring. But I did read the author’s introduction which mentioned that, in the 1970s, it became a common narrative that Conrad had been a racist. I assumed that Conrad, as a white European in the 19th century, probably had at least by contemporary standards a rather backwards view of race. Perhaps he did, I don’t know. But reading the book now, I am puzzled how someone could come to that conclusion except by the most superficial of readings that judged the author on his use of the “N” word alone.
To the extent I have a takeaway on Conrad’s message (which is kind of a false premise because I think he meant the book to be in some ways indecipherable, it is that he found the Belgian project in the Congo to be corrosive to the humanity of those who engaged in it. In addition, it seems to me that Conrad was remarking on the limited economic utility of the enterprise and the questionable character of those involved. I’m thinking specifically of the brick mason who has not made a single brick, and the delay of Marlow’s expedition for lack of rivets, despite thousands of them languishing in port hundreds of miles away.
As to the moral rot I’m hinting at, I think Marlow himself has some type of PTSD from what he witnessed while in the Congo, but can’t bring himself to reckon with it. He keeps mentioning Kurtz’s words, “The horror, the horror…” and is even starting to hear voices near the end of the book. While meeting with Kurtz’s betrothed at the very end, he cannot bring himself to tell her Kurtz’s true last words, I think in part because he cannot bring himself to be honest about what he saw there, the true nature of the colonial regime.
I wish I took notes throughout so I could articulate my thoughts better but in the end it was clear to me that Conrad must have thought that what the Belgians were doing in the Congo was profoundly evil. The tone of the book was menacing.
I want to make two notes here before I end my rant. Firstly on Kurtz himself who I took to be an avatar for the European colonist in general. Marlow keeps talking about him as though he’s this renaissance man, as does the photographer who basically worships Kurtz as a demigod. And yet, this man who could have been anything dies in the wilderness slaughtering elephants for a company that is actively plotting his demise. And then we learn when Marlow returns to England that Kurtz was kind of a failson who was trying to marry up and was clearly trying to speedrun a fortune in this terrible venture that cost him his humanity and his life.
Lastly, this was the first time in a while I’d noticed that form itself contributes to art. This novella is basically one long stream of consciousness which is meant to be disorienting like the jungle Marlow is penetrating. It’s difficult to follow at first, which I believe is intentional.
Anyway, I deeply enjoyed this book despite finding it disturbing. I think I’ll go rewatch Apocalypse Now, which I know was essentially an adaptation of this work.
What did I miss? Everything? I’ll take all the information now that I’ve given my honest two cents without contamination. What do you think the message, to the extent there is one, is? Was