Thank you for your answer. That’s great point about AI as a tool for writers not their “enemy”. I don’t know much about the AI or the chatbots itself, so thank you for the info about its history with connection to literature. It’s just something new… maybe when the typewriter was invented people thought that it will be the end of well handwritten pieces of art… ok bad examle, but you know what I mean 😁

That never bothered me- it kinda reminds me of Stranger Beside Me. But I did have to bail on the show when it came to the episode where she died. I lost a parent at home when I was around the same age as her daughter, so I couldn’t do it.

This is reassuring to me. OP is experiencing the exact same thing I went through. Every sentence is a long slobbering rambling soliloquy. I thought maybe novels were imitating theatre plays and so this is what people were expecting at the time, but I know other books from the time and much older that still read as more conversationally contemporary than Brothers K.

Just added it to my list!

wow, really appreciate all your detailed thoughts about this book! i can't be quite as generous w/ my time today, but I did want to chime in re: sadie.

you asked "...why was sadie completely blameless?..." for me, it's because she was basically a child when dov seduced her! she was sort of manipulated into that relationship by someone w/ significantly more power than her, which for me makes it hard to want to shift blame onto her for mistakes she's making w/r/t dov.

that said, i'm with you overall. it's a good, not great, book. but I did think one of its strengths was that the characters are somewhat realistic in terms of their messiness; as a reader (or at least as this reader), it's easier to identify w/ characters that are trying their best, but are still making bad choices sometimes

Robin Cook books - but only pleasure no guilt ☺️☺️☺️

Nice one! I agree. King would not do something like that unintentionally, and his twisted sense of humor is definitely the kind that would prompt him to include that little reference.

most likely an error, but also, who gave them the information about him being sadistic as a child towards animals? I'd like to think it was him messing with their tests. He was too sophisticated for the tests afterall according to chiltern in silence of the lambs.

The terms psychopath and sociopath have been thrown around so thoroughly by fictional media that they have very little actual meaning any longer. Neither one is an actual medical diagnosis.

Thomas Harris also didn't want to write Hannibal Rising. He wrote the book and adapted it to a screenplay under threat of losing his rights to the character altogether. I suspect he wrote himself in circles until he felt like he was done and slapped a cover onto it. Some continuity errors are to be expected.

I totally agree, I couldn't stand Sadie and have minimal patience about relationships based on miscommunications. I also felt like there was some apologist writing for Dov? There was an undercurrent of, well Dov's an abusive asshole, but at least he's brilliant, and Dov sticks around for the entire book for the purpose of continuing to provide brilliant tidbits.

The main thing I loved was the exploration of a creative work relationship/friendship, which is not generally the type of relationship that fiction explores. And maybe it's realistic in such a relationship that there would be miscommunication and jealousy.

Wait, did Sam confess that he loved Sadie? I read it as, he was jealous of Marx and Sadie's relationship in the way that many of us might be at first when two of our best friends start dating each other. I thought he was actually asexual.

Yea just prop it on a pillow or your knees and hold the base with a finger or two. But I totally get your grievance because some of these hardbacks are like unwinding with an encyclopedia lol

For me it really relies on a good narrator. Especially if one is not native to the area and is faking an accent like southern US based books read by someone from California Lol no hate to booking the gig but The Clampetts aren’t the base for a good rustic vernacular 😅

Ok thank you :)

Are people who like this kind of stuff generally new readers, or people who don't read very often?

I'm trying to find out how exactly people enjoy cheesy books like these. And I have nothing against science fiction, I love Bradbury, Stanislaw Lem, Philip K Dick, JG Ballard, Gene Wolfe, etc. But this particular brand of science fiction, with cheesy humor and dialogue and awful prose, I just don't really understand who the intended audience is. STEM lord's? Facebook moms?

I love Flatland. Great book.

Great book, he does a good job of mimicking the original style and story

I think a place to read about serial killers is the John Douglas books. He (John D.) told Thomas Harris about the 2 or 3 serial killers that Harris combined to make the fictional Lecter.

I agree with u/madchad90. It's likely a continuity error that the psychologist says that many or most serial killers start by harming small animals when they're young. Maybe Lecter din't. Maybe it was just his extra finger that caused him to be a serial killer.

I haven’t read this and refused to watch the documentary becuase I always felt she was a Johnny come lately that got credit for work detectives did for decades simply because she was that goblin Patton Oswald’s wife.

If you’re interested in some sci-fi which really explores the limits of the concepts in Flatlands (among other concepts) I highly recommend The Three Body Problem Trilogy.

Let’s not get too dramatic. Local communities that fund libraries can choose what content they find acceptable to distribute in their community. Not funding books they find antithetical to their values isn’t an attack on the right to read.

Let the publishers publish what they will, people can choose to buy the content or not.

As to librarians, whom I love, why would they disappear and if they did what harm would it cause. Here are some counterpoints to the references narrative.

If the librarian disappeared and they didn’t notice at first, that supports the reduction of staffing not negates it.

If they don’t have an agenda how would they know where to go…to find the good stuff. It’s an inherently subjective analysis. You don’t need a librarian to show you where the Stephen King novel is but perhaps to recommend you a good book in a certain genre.

I should note that I actually donate money to library and support spending public funds on upgrading them and offering other services (within reason) so I’m not anti library or reading.

OP nailed it. Felt exactly the same. Cannot understand how Amazon had this as their number 1 book of the year

I wanted to slap Sadie and Sam through the whole book. They're so annoying! Marx was ok, and Dov was a given character wise. I didn't hate the book, just irritated by it. No surprises in it.

I liked it but when that “sad” thing happened, I just didn’t care.

I really loved this book, but I loooooove a story with unlikeable characters. It’s super interesting to me. That said, you listed these reasons to be able to relate to the characters/plot that you felt like made it so you should have enjoyed it more. While I think that’s fair, I’d argue that this book is more of a character story than a story about video games/programming/etc. It’s more about those things being the things that are important to those characters than the story being about those things, if that makes sense? So maybe that’s why those things weren’t enough to make it so you enjoyed it more. That being said, there’s nothing wrong with not being able to connect with the story—like I said, I loved it, but I can see where it might not be people’s cup of tea. Are there any other books with similar aspects that you did enjoy more?

Copy pasting the book description is not a discussion.