Hannibal rising was written after red dragon. So this is just a continuity error.

Animal cruelty is a common occurance in individuals with sociopathy, and serial killers, so it's not surprising for that to originally be a trait of Lecter.

This isn't promotional, it's a discussion

You keep throwing arbitrary rules at removing this post, when I address any of them you just remove it for another arbitrary reason

People see through this shit

Hi there. Per rule 3.1, Promotional posts and/or comments need to meet the promotional rules requirements: please see the wiki for more details. Thank you!

oh no! someone on reddit is mad at me! I'm so shook

Maybe take the hint.

I have that same dilemma.

My Spanish is conversational, but there are enough gaps in vocabulary that I have to have a dictionary open to read anything too challenging in Spanish.

My French is excellent, but I still read about half the speed in French compared to my native English. I’ve been putting off reading the Count of Monte Cristo for years because I don’t want to read it in English but I don’t want to commit to a slow reading of nearly 900 pages. It would probably take me 3-6 months.

I don’t know which you have, but the Pevear & Volokhonsky translation of BK is wonderful.

stop censoring it?

It's a book, why can't we discuss it

Currently making my way through the Ice Planet Barbarians series by Ruby Dixon and even though the first one feels like she read Clan of the Cave Bear and watched James Cameron's Avatar and thought "these need to combined and at least 20x hornier" I AM EATING IT UP.

I also LOVED The DaVinci Code and Angels and Demons by Dan Brown. I still own the beautiful illustrated versions of each and reading the story and looking at the art pieces and locations referenced is a fantastic experience.

Stop spamming this shit.

A little back ground, I'm not a huge book reader I've read a handful of books in my 30 years ( the hobbit, gears of war, fluke by James Herbert, and some auto biographies). In my spare time when the little one gets to sleep I normally jump on the Xbox or fall asleep 🤣 . My SO loves to read and would be nice to just zen out together. I've tried getting into the Witcher books , game of thrones and I just get lost and give up 😢. Love the games and TV series but the books just don't. Just wondered if anyone has any suggestions for me to try? Thanks in advance :)

Agh yeah u fortunately the goofyness seems to get lost in the confusion, although couple parts did make me chuckle.

Gotta grow some chest hair and read it in Russian, just that my reading level has fallen to around grade 4 probably (or fourth class of gymnasium as they’d say)

Are you suggesting everyone read shitty self help books?

Yeah, George Saunders seems like a nice guy from the interview I heard on the radio. But I'd bet if you asked him he'd say that Amis is a big influence: especially the execution of comic set-pieces. I personally enjoy their similarly clever "verbizing" of nouns and (literally) ironic names of places. people, and products.

BTW, what did Amis do? I'm just a rando who likes to read so I probably miss 99% of the lit world gossip. I am old enough to vaguely remember Larkin being posthumously cancelled which seemed like a tragedy since his poems were so great.

Thanks! Yeah I’ve heard about the last minute reprieve, how that affects a person must be nuts.

Definitely going to search up that movie!

This is a really good insight, thank you!

Her work and notes did not directly, or even indirectly, lead to the capture of the Golden State Killer. Genetic genealogy led to his capture. They uploaded his DNA profile to a DNA database, where they found several distant relatives. They then used genealogy to trace them all back to a common source, and from there created a list of possible suspects. They then used what they already knew about the Golden State Killer to eliminate possible suspects until only Joseph James DeAngelo remained. This was a shitload of work done by investigators, and Michelle McNamara had nothing to do with any of it

The book is meant to be entertaining and doesn’t strive for absolute realism. The characters being dramatic is completely intentional.

In fact, it’s hard to think of many creative works that don’t feature overly dramatic characters. Everyone in any Shakespeare play or most characters in modern film and TV, for example. Think of the “I am the one who knocks” scene from Breaking Bad - excellent stuff, but no one talks like that in real life.

And one thing that doesn’t come through in some translations is that the book is supposed to be really funny at times. Obviously there are serious moments and philosophical moments, but a lot of the book is supposed to be goofy. Several parts made me laugh out loud.

Yes, but it had Anne Frank's book cover. I got about 1/4 through and got suspicious because we still haven't met Anne or seen the attic, or even mentioned WW2

You accidentally read the fake Freud diary instead of Anne frank? Beautiful

Dostoevsky's characters tend to be 'heightened' rather than realistic. Most of them have rich, complicated inner lives and are also symbolic of larger cultural or philosophical ideas, so this style makes it clear why everyone is doing what they're doing when they clash with each other.

From a contemporary eye it looks like everyone is one outburst away from going nuts, but that's because these characters are not actually in control of themselves for the most part, they're ruled by their passions and inner contradictions, half of which are caused by the pressures of society and inherited trauma that they may or may not be aware of. Dostoevsky's recurring themes are how actions are driven by ideas so we should be careful what we think, and this dramatic style works well for that theme, though it certainly isn't subtle.

Mines a trope but I could be on tik Tok or instagram and the video literally just says, "take your hand off of her or I'll f'ing kill you" and I'm sold. I absolutely love touch her and you die stuff. I don't know why because in real life if a guy were like that I would be like eww unattractive but in these books I EAT IT UP like it were ben and Jerrys.

I thought this book was good, but, like you, I cannot classify it as the best book I read last year. Not even close. It does some really interesting things with friendship, and I loved a lot about the first half of the story, but you are right about the characters. Although not perfect by any means, I think Sam gets treated very poorly by Sadie for reasons that are more in Sadie's mind than legitimate. Thus, Sadie is probably the most unlikable of the main characters (aside from Dov, of course).

As I said, it's a good book, and I enjoyed it, but I am a bit perplexed about the gushing it elicited from so many people.

My guilty pleasure is buying more books when I have unread ones sitting on my shelf.

Absolutely. There's a really important aspect in being a broad reader, too, in that you get to hear a lot of voices that have traditionally been excluded by an Establishment that proclaims in a very authoritative way that "THIS IS PROPER WRITING!". Élite snobbery long excluded writers that were working class, low-educated, outsider, female, non-European, etc.

I'm reading to please my own brain. Who cares what someone else judges as good or bad? Read on, everyone!

For the first half of the book I actually thought/wondered if Sam might be under the umbrella of asexuality which I thought would've been really cool were it so, as we don't often at all have asexual protagonists buuuut yea turns out that wasn't the case unfortunately. I was a bit worried towards the end that with Marx no longer in the picture that Sam and Sadie might get together romantically but I'm so glad they didn't!

Hmmm... I might need to check out 'The Great Believers' too! :O