Ya, I feel like people to judge booktok go straight for Colleen Hoover and Taylor Jenkins Reid specifically but don't think about the other extremely popular books like Song of Achilles, The Secret History, and A Little Life, where it takes slightly longer to get into but has a drastically different vibe than Ugly Love or Daisy Jones

Arthur Dent

>r/books

I am in the same boat as you where I enjoyed it Ends With Us. The thing is that I don't want to admit that just because CoHo is hated and I don't want to seem like "one of those" booktokers when in reality I should just say what I like and not fear being generic

What’s helped me is to stop buying books and use the library. I’m a time schedule to finish books so I can’t start a bunch. I usually just read two books at a time, one fiction and one non-fiction. It gives me a good variety at all times.

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Hopefully I like the Paris apartment more :)

I've had people people ask me for recommendations of what to read if they like Tolkien, expecting me to name contemporary fantasy authors. And that's fine, obviously more or less all modern fantasy has been inspired by Tolkien, in many cases directly ripping it off, and there's plenty to enjoy in that style of fiction. That said, The Silmarillion in particular always leads me to recommend religious and mythological texts, ancient epics and sagas, and that sort of thing over pretty much any post-Tolkien fantasy authors.

Interested in Tolkien? Read Beowulf, the Morte d'Arthur, the Books of Genesis and Exodus, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the Icelandic Sagas, the Kalevala, the Iliad and Odyssey, the Theogony, the Tain Bo Cuailnge, the Mabinogion. Tolkien wanted to create a mythology for England, so if you want to understand his motivations and influences that's where you should turn.

Nice! What did you think of all the twists? Personally I hated them I thought it was so dumb how >! The babysitter was Shane’s mom the whole time and they managed to somehow get a body into Tim’s house to frame him and the fact the kid managed to kill Shane with an icicle because of some random line Tim told him I swear it was like I was reading a manga !<

You’ve convinced me. While I don’t approve of the content of his comments, now that I understand WHY he said them a little better, I think I can give him more of the benefit of a doubt. If my partner more or less told me that he prefers to be with someone else, despite the very intimate nature of our intimate relationship, I would also be pissed… and probably would not speak very well of them.

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Yeah, my recollection is that Giovanni attempts to be blasé about David's relationship with Hella, but deep down he is incredibly jealous and possessive. This is fueled not only by his insistence that one is either gay or straight, no in-between, but also his status as "the other woman." No doubt, Giovanni is a very flawed and complex character. But while his comments are certainly misogynistic, I think his crime is bisexual erasure, not true-blue misogyny.

I just finished it!

Ahh, that’s a thought that never occurred to me before. Contextually, that does make sense… I’m pretty sure he makes the misogynistic comments I was complaining about in the middle of a conversation about Hella. I suppose he was criticizing David’s willingness to marry her, despite also being with him?

Mmhmm. I know. I just found this particular trait especially unlikable. 🤷‍♀️

Did I ever say otherwise? I’m literally just saying that I can dislike characters if I want to, regardless of whether I’m invested in them or not.

Ok but why does the camel's back have to break? You are completely missing my point. You don't have to "cheer" for anybody. You can be invested in a character without having to cheer for them or against them.

It's been awhile since I read Giovanni's Room, but I'll give my take. Giovanni doesn't hate women, he hates heteronormativity. And in this sense, his comments aren't attacking women but are instead underhanded jabs at David's perceived bisexual fence-sitting. His underlying emotions can be translated as "Can't you see we don't need women?!? We just need each other! Please, David...Just accept that you're gay."

Well, he's not likeable. Neither is David.

Been seeing that lately whenever people try to discuss Lolita. Turns into a flame war where people who support it are enablers and like that shit and people who don’t are better? for some reason or another

Certainly. The book is very well written, and I do appreciate it for all the reasons you stated. However, while most of the characters would not be as interesting as they are without their flaws, certain flaws are objectively distasteful, even if they are well-executed. That’s what I was aiming to express in my original post.

Why do we have to root for or like every character?

It’s a beautifully written piece of queer literature that has an imperfect main character. I don’t have to agree with Giovanni’s thoughts to find that interesting, appreciate what Baldwin was writing, or even enjoy the text. It’s worthy of discussing those attitudes is a broader context, but it would be vastly uninteresting if characters didn’t have major flaws.

Considering how much Tolkien studied Anglo-Saxon culture and works, it definetely isn't a coincidence

Youre cheating on a book with another book lol. Now seriously when i was to read 4 or 5 books at the same time i struggled too. Now its harder to focus even on one book.

I’m sorry you feel that way, but as a woman, I’m perfectly within the right to dislike characters who insult my gender. It’s not that I think people don’t have a mix of good and bad qualities— it’s that this bad quality in particular was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me. To be sure, Giovanni has good qualities (he’s eloquent, satirical, intelligent, a good read of people, etc), but his bad ones (he’s volatile, manipulative, violent, misogynistic, etc) don’t do him any favors.

Also LOL at the tribalism/polarization of society bit. It’s not that deep. People can have opinions.

Hi there. Per rule 3.3, please post book recommendation requests in /r/SuggestMeABook or in our Weekly Recommendation Thread. Thank you!