I'm thinking they meant that the actual cheeseburger represents pain. Like the character associates it with hurt. If this person was starving, but the guy bought her a cheeseburger with strings attached (like he expects her to do something she doesn't want to in order for him to give it to her) then it's "the cheeseburger of pain".

Especially as you get older and you have more limited free time, you want to be more selective with what you pick up. If I can’t get super into it, I move on rather quick to another read. I’m sure there’s a lot of good ones I’ve missed out on in turn tho.

I had never heard of it before this post. I'm pretty sure the classic Canadian novel is actual The Stone Angel by Margaret Lawrence.

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I have read and loved Cloud Atlas, 1000 Autumns, Bone Clocks, and Slade House. I have also read Utopia Avenue, but it was just ok in my opinion. I’m excited to read the rest. Based on your review I might go with Ghostwritten first!

I don’t especially care for her books, but I was a teenager in 1967 and plenty of young people from every economic background were denouncing colonialism. Things go in cycles.

I am reading Anna Karenina right now and it has very small chapters. If you just read a couple of chapters every day then it would be a breeze. So far it is very engaging and I am in love with it already. I think if you just start it you will find it to be pretty easy to finish. Also there is a reddit read along subreddit for it /r/yearofannakarenina/

What. The. Fuck.

Its for discussion. Doesn’t have to be positive.

Although it sounds like lyrics in 'Blinded By The Light'.

This gives “exit, pursued by bear” a whole new meaning.

I was using goodreads to keep track but ive seen a lot of things saying storygraph is better so thats what i am trying this year

Why is this sub so negative? We don't care what you don't like.

I am a big fan of the dark academia YouTube videos while reading

I’ve become a habitual reader over the last 18 months in large part due to the addictive nature of logging my minutes on an app called Beanstack that my kids’ school librarian introduced them to.

I hand track everything I read in a word document. I sort it by month, then I use a colour system for rating and also to mark if it's a reread. I then write out a little paragraph for myself summarising what I thought of the book and if it's a new book, if its worth rereading in the future.

There are websites that'd do it all, probably in a more efficient, quicker way but typing it all out myself and picking my own system is fun. Not to mention it's relaxing.

The first sentence of the novel makes it clear that he is basically talking to a therapist.

From this fact, we learn that there are 2 Holdens in the book: 1 who is younger and is the person who is did the actions (leaving school, going to NYC, etc.), and 1 who is a year older who is narrating the novel to the therapist, which is a narration of the events in his life from a year prior. And thus he is an unreliable narrator.

So it’s fascinating that we are watching the events of Holden from the perspective and diction of an older, post-consciousness-shift Holden, which we don’t see/hear happen until toward the end of the novel.

I didn’t catch that so much when I read the novel for high school, but when I picked it up again after college, it clicked for me and I loved the writing style/choices that Salinger managed to pull off.

Each book I finish is one line (or two if there's a really long title), so I usually go through a page to a page and a half a year.

It’s hard to pick honestly.

He’s been tied up in script writing ever since the very bad adaptation of Cloud Atlas

Yes, I am!

Though I have actually never read Premchand - my Hindi reading skills are abysmal (I'm Bengali). I keep meaning to find a good translation - will get around to it one of these days.

If you don't mind answering, where exactly in India are you from? Not too many people speak/read Farsi these days in my experience - though almost every well-educated man in my grandparents' generation did.

You’re living the life I want

It is! Although I don’t listen to classical music, I listen to techno or house music. And somehow it helps me focus more on reading. I love it.

It takes a little while to get into the flow of how he writes-especially for this book-, but it does start to come more smoothly.

Nope, can't do it. Any kind of music is just another distraction to me. I prefer to read in silence. When my fellow commuters or noisy teenagers upstairs have other ideas, I turn on he most generic, bland white noise I can find. It's the only thing I can tolerate while reading.