I live in the Adirondacks where we have plenty of black bears. I cannot picture a scenario where these smelly musty creatures are at all desirable. And I don’t want to picture it.

Granted I read The Nightingale last year, so I may have misremembered things, but I don't remember Vianne thinking the pregnancy was a blessing. In fact I remember her being worried when she realised she was pregnant.

No worries, no harm done. :) Let us know if you have any questions.

Took me a few days with a whole schedule but if you sit down early and don’t do anything else you could do it.

Should I read it in a day?

Lots of people are suggesting bookstores and libraries. I'd like to suggest "Used Bookstores" for a couple reasons.

1. is the obvious fact you can save tons of cash.
2. They tend only throw out really wrecked books so you have a great deal of options.
3. Every time i have ever gone the people there know what they have or how what kind of books to direct you to. They are there because they like books, not to collect a paycheck like the big box stores. Or at least in my experience.

Places like this may be able to help you find stuff you like and save you money.

You can just use Goodreads or some of the similar websites to keep track of what you've read.

I motivate myself by thinking of my TBR pile. The longer I take on this book, the longer it'll take me to get through my TBR pile. Helps push me along!

I may also play some soft music so I don't feel too stuck. Something like instrumental music or music in a language I can't understand helps me focus on a task better.

I understand, I apologize for my mistake, will post in the thread these kind of questions.

I don’t want to spoil anything for you. It’s a short read. But yeah. Get into it.

Yes.

So is the post deleted now, honestly asking?

I've been using Goodreads the last couple of years. The recommendations it comes up with are terrible, but otherwise it works perfectly well for me. I can rate and review all the books I've read, add books I want to read, create categories and see how many books and pages I've read each month.

Apologies, but your post does not contain enough for people to engage in conversation. Do you have something else to say about the book that you could edit into the text? Let me know if you edit it and I will reinstate your post.

Or, if you would prefer to share quick/brief reactions to a book you are currently reading or recently finished, you can comment in our weekly What We're Reading thread, accessible from our header atop the sub. Your book may even appear in the sub banner! Thank you.

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What books work well for you are tied to directly what cultures and narratives you're experienced in.

I read Lord of the Rings in elementary school so when I discovered Beowulf and Shakespeare I threw myself down that rabbit hole because it was something related to a culture I already was directly adjacent to so I latched onto it as familiar. And ended up pairing nicely with C.S. Lewis, go figure they knew each other.

Reading Once and Future King makes an insane amount of sense if you're already familiar with Sword in the Stone, Frankenstein makes more sense if you've seen Brook's Young Frankenstein. Dracula makes more sense if you've read Frankenstein. Alice in Wonderland and Shakespeare. Lord of the Flies and Heart of Darkness.

That's kind of thing. Strong writing doesn't come out of nowhere, it's built on other strong writing, and the culture of that time. Shakespeare's writing was based on other stories, and those stories based on other stories.

Canterbury Tales for example arguably is the story that Once and Future King critiqued, just as it itself is a critique of feudalism.

That's the thing, if you're not already familiar with the culture and the story the work is about, you're not going to get the devilishly good bits that make classics classics.

Paradise Lost and Dante's Inferno are pretty meh if you're not already familiar with Christianity and varying retellings of those stories.

To do the examples you're doing Ulysses is tied to Joyce, the Odyssey, the Iliad by association, and his personal cultural background in the UK. Strongly suggest reading both Tale of Two Cities and Dubliners first, because Tale of Two Cities does a strong job of setting up the power of class division in historical Europe, which people outside of Europe may not fully understand, and Dubliners is tied to Joyce's personal background, as well as a subtly Jewish familiarity which has its own history. That's a long story.

Atlas Shrugged is great if you're looking at similar political lit, 1984 pay attention to doublespeak, BNW, paying attention to mass complacency, Mein Kampf, 1920s Corporatism in the US, something about Botox and Butter. Industrialism in London. That's all a rich pool, but you have to start with the introductions before you get to the meat. You can even look at classical Greek philosophical arguments and contrast it with Atlas Shrugged, but again, if you don't have bread around your meat you don't have a sandwich.

The living thread that connects all these stories is the relation of history to storytelling, something I'm involved deeply in, and that link is what allows me to rotate between cultures. Godzilla makes a hell of a lot of sense when it's read in connection to the hush hush horror of the 50s atomic bomb, and the cold war looming around it.

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Please post 'Should I read X book''What do I need to know before I read X' questions, in our Weekly Recommendation Thread.

Bears have all the fun

Judge books based on their cover.

Hmm, I’d have to go back and check again but I definitely got the feeling that there was some kind of reincarnation/rebirth. Maybe it was just kindred spirits.

I've kept up a Tumblr blog for a few years that I've used as a means to collect favourite quotes from books I've read. They can be quotes I find profound, relatable, or funny.

It, in a way, helps me track what books I've read because I keep a list for easy quote-finding. The blog really is just for me, even though a decent amount of people follow it. I love revisiting quotes that really speak to me, and it's fun to see the books I've almost forgotten I've read (but enjoyed).

Yay! Let me know what you think.

I agree!

I honestly forgot I read this book until seeing your post. It was that forgettable