No I don't believe your standards are high. I think it's necessary as well.

This book has the most perfect control of voice I have ever read. It's so exquisitely real that they are obsessed with all these random schoolyard anecdotes while the heinous evil being done to them is just completely accepted as a presupposition of their existence.

Doctor Sleep is wonderful. It really feels like two books that merge together at the end. Danny and Abra both have their own plots at first. Dannys journey to sobriety alone is an amazing read.

Man, that is a major plot development I never knew.

I read his book "Pastoralia" in high school. I remember it was odd but pretty good. I don't have much else to say because I lost retention of most stuff I read back then, but that's a long story itself. lol

I think the main deal was like Tommy said - they should have been told the situation, instead of kept in the dark, bc that kept them from fighting for their rights for personhood before Tommy completed.

I've read all three of these as well. "Library" I thought was just OK, but I LOVED the other two. Easily two of the top 10 books I've read in the last 5 years.

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a bookghan is a crocheted book blanket based on what you've read. some people crochet rows based on what genre they read, how pages they read, and a five star rating. i am using a star rating since i don't read a bit of everything (psychological thrillers, horror, fantasy, slice of life, and romance are my go tos atm) and getting yarn for each genre would be pricey.

here's the following link to my post about the colors and the rating ive chosed: https://www.reddit.com/r/temperatureblanket/comments/1175w0h/new_temperature_blanket_idea/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

i hope this explanation has made sense!

Good thing he got sober over three decades ago.

About a decade ago I randomly picked up One More Thing by BJ Novak, which was hilarious and got me into the form of short stories. I immediately Googled something like "best short story writer" and was introduced to Anton Chekhov, which was the second collection I read, and a pretty funny leap from one to another in retrospect.

Since then I've read countless stories and collections. I'm always reading a novel or two as well, but short fiction is my favorite.

Yes! This is the biggest part- Bree herself saw and treated him like an invalid. She acted like he was a toddler and was incapable of living without her.

Even disregarding whether or not he’s mentally ready for a relationship, the fact that she saw him in that way alone makes the entire relationship unhealthy.

I loved it too! Worth noting that it's Russian short stories; personally I love them but they're not everyone's thing.

But considering I'll never be in the creative writing program at Syracuse, this is the closest I'll get to sitting in on a class with Professor Saunders.

The audio book is great with narration by the likes of Nick Offerman, Glenn Close, Keith David, Rainn Wilson, and BD Wong.

First off, it was all a slow burn. It was all implied, but with that British "Stiff upper lip" where they never acknowledged how fucked their situation was. It was all right there from the start, but easy to forget during all their chats about art and pencil cases and boys.

But to me the real twist was that these kids were the exceptions, ones allowed to lead idyllic if short lives up to the point where they went in for donations. Maybe 10% of all clones were like the and the rest were in factory farm conditions closer to the horror of cloned organ "donations" that would be the "norm." For everyone who had a chance to be a model for a gentler way of getting cloned organs, there were hundreds in unspeakable conditions, harvested at the first point where they would be viable doners. That was the part that kicked my ass emotionally.

I went back to look at my review for this book because I also did not like the way Bree was with Archer.

1. She called him her "silent boy" or something like that throughout the book and it just sounded gross to me, especially since she never actually calls him that to his face(iirc) but only in her thoughts.
2. When he leaves without her and she says "how is he communicating in the world" like she literally had a deaf father she knows people who can't speak are able to function in the world. This definitely helps your point that she saw him as almost childlike.

What’s this “our” stuff?? I only have a fake-crime obsession

I just read Fairytale, which is the first new thing I've read by him in 20 years and enjoyed it immensely. Getting sober did wonders for his endings.

Yeah, people are often too quick to dismiss a fascination with dark and taboo subjects as just being in it for the shock value. Shock value is often part of the appeal but there can be more to it than that.

Very cool for a teacher to reinforce the joy of reading in students.

Oh, maybe I should then as I'm particularly interested in this theme. I don't understand why it would be dark or why it's even still taboo at all, it's especially an Anglosphere thing I think.

It was part of why I wanted to read The Satanic Verses: it didn't go into it as much as I expected but definitely had a sense of accuracy to it. The Sorrows of Young Werther, absolutely loved that one, it's different in that Werther seems to have been depressed for a long time, but the psychological realism is what makes it stand out and part of why it's still a classic. Edith Wharton's >!The House of Mirth is less direct, it's presented as a possible 'accident' but a character clearly doesn't interpret it that way!<. Trollope's scene in The Prime Minister is amazing for the shift in the reader's perspective: also stands out that it was written by someone who'd actually experienced suicidal ideation. I appreciate novels capturing that it's not necessarily easy for a character to do, and that there can be a suddenness to it.

This one is on my To Read list for the year. Ishiguro has a way of making me feel sympathy for his characters from the books I have read; The Remains of the Day and Nocturnes.

I have read better fanfiction than the books I am referencing which I find pretty confusing considering the differences in medium between fanfiction and novels. I don't, I kinda expect an editor who is being paid to do something to do it at least as well as a volunteer beta reader lol

> The concept is flawed (the genre itself essentially is)

If you abd I will have to agree to disagree here? I don't think fantasy is a fundamentally flawed genre and in general, I enjoy most of the fantasy I read? I really enjoyed the Fifth Season so I gather we maybe have different preferences.

> Otherwise the amount of work to do is rewriting, not editing

&

> The editor isn't there to rewrite the entire thing

I've been using the words edit & revise interchangeably which is a fault on my part as they are different processes. Still, my expectation is that a book should be both revised and edited multiple times before publication. And of course the editor doesn't rewrite the book, but developmental editors (as well as critique partners, writing groups or beta readers etc which from what I know many authors use) should identify story problems and give authors options to fix. For instance, one of the books I'm talking about in the post House of Hunger features two characters early on in the book who serve as the main characters "ties" to her old life, except the main character doesn't care about her relationship with either of them (basically they do the same thing in the same way to the same effect, which is none). As a critique partner, if someone in my writing group has brought this book, I would've suggested either making the main character really value her friendship with the one character so their disapproval/leaving them behind actually caused conflict OR that that character be dropped completely so more time could be given towards developing the main characters relationship with her brother.

Like idk I'm not sure how many books are written, given a grammatical edit pass nothing else before being sent to the presses? Authors don't make a lot of money so aside from some cash cows I don't expect many of them are only interested in the bottom line and nothing else? I expect the vast majority of authors to care about their craft, and traditional publishers selection bias and process to ensure the majority of books are at a certain stage in the process?

There's a reason I'm excluding the self-published book from this discussion, and it is bc there are A LOT more barriers to entry for traditional publishing. If literary agents only accept a small percentage of submissions and only a small percentage of those are sold to publishing houses, then what are they selecting for if not quality? (I know the answer is marketability) but quality is part of marketability

This was my second Ishiguro novel and I loved it. The way information is drip fed for you to piece together is masterfully done.

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I was assigned this book in grad school. I started reading it and initially thought it was so boring. Once they started looking for Ruth’s possible, I WAS HOOKED! I devoured this book in one night, and cried my eyes out.

I didn’t realize the “twist” until AFTER reading it. Great read! I’m dying to read Klara and the Sun Next