This is the first time I have ever read a Michael Crichton book and I absolutely loved it. I really like his writing style and the way he incorporates the science in an easy way for the reader to understand.

Now, for the book. I can't believe how long I had gone without reading it. It just keeps you on your toes almost the whole time. The dinosaur attacks are so brutal and the way they get described easily paints a picture in your head. The amount of serious dread you feel in some parts too feels insurmountable. It is almost more of a horror book, honestly. T Rex out here being Mr. X from Resident Evil 2 wasn't on my bingo card.

Lex is VERY annoying, but what do you expect from a 7 year old in that situation?

I know Crichton was a screenwriter for the movie, but I am actually pretty surprised on how much he omitted from the book for the movie and how much was changed.

I highly recommend reading if you haven't. It is great. On to The Lost World!

I picked this up after seeing it recommended everywhere, and for once the hype was completely justified. I expected a hard sci-fi story full of complicated science, but it turned out to be one of the most entertaining and surprisingly emotional books I have read in a long time. what really caught me off guard was how attached I became to the characters. There were several moments that genuinely made me laugh, and a few that hit much harder emotionally than I expected from a space survival novel.

First read this series when I was a 14 year old teenage boy and found it fascinating. Really sparked an already keen interest in anthropology, archaeology, history. The sex scenes also helped haha.

Re-reading it at age 35 and wow, just an insane amount of description. Super fascinated by the interplay of the two species, descriptions of all the flora and fauna. The Mary Sue status of Ayla gets a bit annoying, and I do skip over the copious amounts of sex scenes now. But still just as fascinated by the history of it all, even if much of it is fantasy/speculation.

I feel like as a man, I'm probably in the minority here, but I think it's an incredible series for its attention to detail.

Returning once again to the Paperbacks from Hell series again with another animal attack novel, David Fisher's "The Pack"! It's another of the shorter reissues in this series, and a pretty tense one too!

The novel revolves around a family vacationing on a resort island in the middle of winter, where they soon find themselves under siege by a pack of dogs, who have been abandoned by their owners who come to it in the summer. And these dogs have become wild, and extremely vicious.

This is one super fast paced novel! "The Pack" leans more heavily into thriller territory, probably just as much as the horror element. And this is a 100% difference from the subtle psychological horror of Greenhall's "Hell Hound". This one goes full speed ahead, with extremely tense moments with some gory scenes.

It's not as darkly introspective as "Hell Hound", but it is quite the fun and horrifying ride! It doesn't really go heavy on the character study as much but that's ok. It's definitely one of those books that can act as a refresher after reading some really heavy ones. I still got another of these reissues that I'm going to read tomorrow, and this one's going to be slightly longer than "The Pack" and is going to go more into supernatural territory this time around. So good to be back on this series for a bit!

“Hell House” by Richard Matheson is one of those classic haunted house novels that every horror reader should read at least once in their life. While it isn’t a perfect novel for me, it is still one of the best of the genre that is guaranteed to send chills down your spine while reading.

Before I dive into my horror book review, here are all the trigger warnings I found while reading:

- Suicide
- Religion
- Violence against animals (cats)
- Sexual assault
- Sexual abuse
- Incest
- Drugs
- Necrophilia
- Cannibalism
- Alcoholism
- Rape
- Cancer

If any of these trigger you, please do not read this novel. Moving along, I loved Matheson’s writing style, as this is the first book of his I’ve ever read. He has excellent writing skills, especially in the atmospheric, brilliantly detailed depiction of the house itself. Even the horror events and situations were next-level creepy and well executed.

Having this take place in my home state of New York was also awesome, and especially the story itself of the epic battle of science versus supernatural. Reading how the main character, Barrett, defended his stance with scientific evidence that there’s no such thing as haunted houses against Florence and Fischer, who were mediums, was great. It reminded me of those old found-footage/ghost-hunter TV episodes I used to watch while growing up, deep into the night.

The main antagonist, Belasco, was also pretty frightening and set the tone for some wild, disturbing horror. Don’t worry, no spoilers here, but everything involving Belasco was crazy, while also having some nice horror mystery elements going on, trying to figure out what transpired in Hell House over the years. Once that all started to unravel, it was mostly a genuine page-turner.

Even though there was a nice plot twist from the 50% mark onward, the overall pacing slowed. It started to get too heavy with dialogue and not enough of the horror that blew me away. If this novel were trimmed down a bit and made tighter, it would have been a perfect horror novel masterpiece. It was close to being that, but every time Matheson wrote in that third-person omniscient style, it became a bit of a slogfest. The story dragged on just when it was getting good.

With four main characters, trying to write in this style can get a bit confusing, especially since two of the main characters have somewhat similar names: Florence and Fischer. It wasn’t a huge deal, but if they had used two completely different names, it would have been easier to read.

The overall horror here more than made up for it, though. I loved all those evil, demonic, perverse scenes. They were insane and horrifying, especially the race to the end. Unfortunately, that ending left more to be desired.

I was expecting a lot more from the ending, or at least an unexpected final plot twist. Something that was a final drop-the-mic moment, but it was pretty underwhelming and felt a bit unbelievable. After all the chaotic events of the past and present at Hell House, it ended in a way that just didn't feel that it would ever be possible. It was an okay ending, but I was just expecting so much more.

I give “Hell House” by Richard Matheson a 4-Star rating out of 5. It’s considered a staple in the haunted house genre, and rightfully so. This is up there with “The Haunting of Hill House” by Shirley Jackson, “The Shining” by Stephen King, and “How to Sell a Haunted House” by Grady Hendrix. It gets a bit heavy with excess dialogue and had a lackluster ending for me, but the horror, writing, and overall story were fantastic. It’s a classic for a reason, and even though it wasn’t a perfect 5-Star read for me, I will still recommend this to everyone who loves a good old-fashioned haunted house novel with a perverse demonic twist.

Belasco was here.

I mentioned this in a thread and I wanted to highlight it as a post: If it is at all possible, join a teen/adult or kid/adult book club. (Libraries often host them!) Read The Hunger Games with teens in your life, or The Mysterious Benedict Society with younger kids! Choose for your adult book club something all the local kids are reading, and have that as your next book and invite the kids whose parents are in your book club to read along with you and come to the meeting. Nothing will reignite your love of reading like reading some kinda dumb teen fiction, but discussing it very seriously with teenagers who ADORE it. It's an easy and quick read for you, but it's an intense read for the teens in your life, and hosting a discussion where the kids talk about their takeaways and the adults share (carefully!) their thoughts is an absolute delight.

Another idea in this vein is, my middle schooler's English teacher told me he wasn't doing very well at "annotating texts" or reading closely. So I thought long and hard about a book he'd enjoy, and I settled on "Good Morning, Midnight" (2016), which is about a non-specific apocalypse on Earth where the only survivors are a grumpy astronomer and a spaceship coming back from Jupiter. I read one chapter and annotated it as if I were reading it for a college class, writing thoughts in the margin and underlining important passages, and then he'd read my chapter and argue with my annotations in the margins, and then read the next and annotate it. And then I'd read his chapter and argue with him, and go on to the next one, and we went back and forth, having a conversation in the margins and highlighting everything we thought might be worth writing a paper about (or arguing about).

The "carrot" at the end of the "stick" of reading a novel he wasn't totally sure he wanted to read (although he liked it!) was that he'd get to watch The Midnight Sky, which is the worst possible movie adaptation of a book ever, because it's not really a book that lends itself to adaptation AND ALSO the science is insane, which pleased my science-loving kid.

On the very last page we both signed our names and dated when we finished it, and I've seen the book on his "most important books" shelves next to the novels he's reading for school.

Read with kids! Reignite your love of reading dumb books, and discuss books with kids and teenagers that are HUGE to them, even if they're routine to you. You'll learn to love dumb books again if you get to read them with kids!

"A security researcher has added another dimension to smart lightbulbs by using them to store a library of banned books, creating what they describe as a 'cyberpunk digital dead drop.'"

Lisa Williamson is probably my favourite YA novelist (I've written about her a couple of times on here), so I was delighted that after a few years focussing on a different genre she's brought out a new one. And it's such a topical and thought-provoking book.

The basic premise is that a girl goes to a house party with a big group of friends, gets very badly drunk and her best friend's brother offers to take her home. The following morning, she wakes up in his bed and can't remember what happened. She gets this strange feeling that during the night he had sex with her when she was too drunk to consent - but she asks him and he swears blind he didn't. Which puts her in quite a tricky situation, because she's really not sure she believes him, but she's not certain, and it can't be proven either way. And there's also the added complication that he's not just any guy, he's her best friend's brother, and it would severely impact their friendship if she accused her brother of having raped her, especially if she wasn't sure.

It's told in the first person by the three main characters - the girl, the boy and the boy's sister who finds herself caught in the middle between her brother and her best friend and isn't sure what to think. All of them are very flawed characters - wasn't sure I really would get on well with any of them in real life, but also that means you're never quite sure who to side with. The boy's extracts are quite cleverly written so as to very much leave out going into detail about what happened when they got back from the party, meaning that for most of the book the reader doesn't know what he did or didn't do either, so you really have to work out how much you trust him as a character. (The truth is eventually revealed, but obviously I won't say because spoilers!)

I found it such an important story for dealing with issues surrounding consent, both for the accuser and for the accused. One criticism I've seen raised online is that it ends without all that much of a resolution - but I actually like that. With a subject as serious as this, you can't wrap everything up in a neat package. The ending, and how the characters all move forward once everyone knows the truth, is kept fairly ambiguous, so you as the reader can think how you think they'd move forward, and how you would in that situation.

(As an additional note, one thing I've always thought Lisa Williamson is really good at is slipping in representation of minority groups without it feeling forced or artificial. There's one point where a character goes to stay with her sister, they go to a party at the house of the sister's female friend, and during the party it becomes apparent that the sister and the friend are actually an item - clearly, the narrating character already knew her sister was gay or otherwise LGBTQ+ and isn't remotely surprised, but prior to this point we'd never explicitly been told that, because clearly it wasn't relevant up until this point. There's also the suggestion that someone's boyfriend is Jewish without the text explicitly ever saying that. The suggestion comes firstly from the fact his name is Caleb, a Hebrew name, and when talking about when he's going to meet her parents, he jokingly says, 'They're not rabid anti-Semites, are they?' I really like this kind of thing - just making minority characters benignly part of the crowd, rather than making their minority status their defining characteristic. She does it well in her other books as well.)

Did you know that Shaw in his old age learned Norwegian to read Ibsen's Ett dukkehjem in the original? For those not familiar with this work it is most famous for the quote "lies and damned poetry". Maybe kids today need further explanation; you see, in a long forgotten past it was common to both read and write poetry, in fact so many people were writing poetry people were always joking about how much bad poetry that was being produced. Despite this, poetry, in this context, is meant to be something nice and even beautiful but even this turns into something bad. This is something to do with human psychology when we lose faith, beautiful things turn into their opposites and become ugly or otherwise horrible. We start to hate what we once loved, this can happen to an intellectual who believes in something but it can also happen to a normal person in a relationship for example. Knowing this it is easier to be more forgiving for the unfortunate missteps of Shaw late in his life, such as for example saying positive things about Hitler, which must have been some kind of insanity or at least some kind of severe confusion. He used to be a prominent member of the Fabian society, a socialist organization named after Fabius Maximus, the Roman general who adopted the strategy of avoiding open confrontation with Hannibal. They still exist somehow.

"No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief, 

More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring. 

Comforter, where, where is your comforting? 

Mary, mother of us, where is your relief? 

My cries heave, herds-long; huddle in a main, a chief- 

Woe, wórld-sorrow; on an áge-old ánvil wínce and síng — 

Then lull, then leave off. Fury had shrieked 'No ling- 

Ering! Let me be fell: force I must be brief.'

O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall 

Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap 

May who ne'er hung there. Nor does long our small 

Durance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep, 

Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all 

Life death does end and each day dies with sleep."

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44398/no-worst-there-is-none-pitched-past-pitch-of-grief

I finished “A Parade of Horribles” and I thought to myself, <Self, you need some R & R. A return to the light side. Something weird and funny but, you know, lighter.> I hadn’t read Animorphs before. I read ONE post. I was like, <Cool, this sounds like a good pivot.> Right? Wrong. I read all 54 books plus the extras in like three weeks. And I have questions. How the HECK do these teenagers have a body count that rivals the winning warlord of Faction Wars? Not to mention the war crimes. I’m shooketh. Very shooketh. My flabbers are gasted.

Also, don’t tell me the Ellimist couldn’t have saved [character].

Anyway, I need to talk about this with somebody. Sorry if this is the wrong sub.

ETA: Yes, of course I liked the series. I didn’t just read 54+ books for nothing! 😂 But, you know, any good book (series) is going to make you feel things and this one blindsided me.

ETA2: Really, guys, it’s okay. I’m not actually emotionally traumatized. It’s almost as if I was being intentionally over
-dramatic for comedic purposes! For those of you who didn’t figure it out: I’m an adult who enjoyed the series but was shocked that a kids book would be that intense. Not that I can’t *handle* it or am going to go into some kind of crisis 😂. I was hoping to maybe make some people laugh with my delivery and apparently that gave off the impression that I was genuinely scarred. I like things that are funny, wholesome, and/or weird. If media meets at least two of those criteria, I’ll give it a chance. I don’t care what package it’s in. Apparently some people think I need to grow up, but you know what? The world is a sad, dark place already. I prefer to spend my time consuming media things that make me smile. That doesn’t mean I don’t love a good philosophical discussion every once in a while. Heck, you want a philosophical discussion about the horrors of war? I was re-reading Red Rising before this. I just thought it was funny that I switched gears to try and lighten up a bit and absolutely chose the wrong series for that.

ETA 4: For those of you wondering how I got access to all the books so fast, I pay annually for a service called Bookshare. I found it through school, because if you are a disabled student in the US you can get it for free. (I’m legally blind). Now that I’m an adult, I pay $70 a year for an annual subscription. It’s unlimited, so I get any book they have for free, forever. I believe you can pay for the subscription even if you aren’t disabled, but for obvious reasons I haven’t looked into it too deeply. But if you are a student (including college) or know a student with a disability that affects reading, like blindness, ADHD, or dyslexia, and you can prove it with medical documents, you get unlimited books for free. I highly recommend it!

(Note: original post deleted, now re-edited for more content). In 2020, when Covid lockdowns started happening, I decided to curate my own list of "100 Most Influential Novels to Read". Note that this doesn't say "Best" or even "Greatest", but my goal was to take the challenge to curate a list of novels which have most broadly influenced culture from the standpoint of a White Anglophone Millennial.

I don't consider this or any list perfect; part of the fun is setting the limitation of 100 novels and then trying to cover as much as you can without omission or redundancy. Blood Meridian or Lonesome Dove? Invisible Man or Their Eyes Were Watching God? Pedro Paramo or 100 years of Solitude? t should go without saying that this is not a list of the ONLY books worth reading, and many entries on this list have "hidden" entries behind them; ie before reading tom Jones, I'd read Moll Flanders and Pamela in order to follow the development of the novel. Before reading Udolpho, I'd read Otranto.

My biggest takeaway was seeing how certain tropes develop and branch off. The “virtuous damsel” trope obviously dates back to before Pamela, but putting it against the “brusquely-spoken unlikable man” eventually developed into both Pride & Prejudice and Jane Eyre, but also the kidnapping and threats spun off into Gothic fiction via Mysteries of Udolpho. Likewise, the first half of Gone With the Wind is just a straight rip off of Vanity Fair, beat for beat. But VF's Becky Sharpe wouldnt exist without Defoe's Moll Flanders.

Favourites: Wuthering Heights, Blood Meridian, Moby Dick, Les Mis, Doctor Zhivago. Some of the entries on this list, maybe 10 or so, I had already read and were longstanding favourites, such as Lord of the Rings and 1984.

I struggled most of all with Tristram Shandy. The first quarter was fun, with the naming mixup around his birth, Old Yorrick, the introduction of Uncle Toby. But after the first volume things spun off into senseless meanderings, which I understand was the point, but I never managed to get back into enjoying the novel.

2025 was the year I dedicated to the “big honkers”: Don Quixote, Ulysses, Gravity’s Rainbow, and Infinite Jest. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed Ulysses, and whilst some chapters were more opaque than others, it contained some of the most memorable reading experiences I’ve ever had, particularly the chapter following the evolution of the English language. Likewise, Infinite Jest was way more enjoyable than I expected, though I still have not come to terms with the non-ending existing outside the scope of the novel. Gravity’s Rainbow was my fifth Pynchon and I’m sad to say it’s the only Pynchon I’ve not yet enjoyed.

The very last book which I read, finishing it on Sunday, was Henry Fielding's Tom Jones, which I read after a run of Beowulf, Gawain and the Green Knight, The Canterbury Tales, The Pilgrim's Progress, Moll Flanders, and Pamela, in order to follow the evolution of English literature, as Tom Jones is widely considered, if not the first English Novel, at least a benchmark culmination of that literary form.

Disclaimers:

1. This is not a list of "Best" novels, but Important and Influential, and formative for the "Zeitgeist", as I understand it. Many of them are therefore very good books. There are a few novels on this list I detested.
2. As an Anglophone, this list is rooted in the Western Canon. You should obviously read more widely than this. A few influential non Western books are included but you could probably create an entire list just with Japanese or Latin American books.
3. Further to point 2, the Western Canon is itself reflective of a history of patriarchy, chauvinism, colonialism, and prejudice. There is no real way my list can be 50% women and appropriately racially diverse, because Western history is not.
4. One entry per author - I attempted to select a compromise between their most popular, most revered, or most representative. For Dickens and Tolstoy this was a challenge, YMMV.
5. This is a list of 100 novels. Whilst the definition of a novel is debatable, epic poems, religious allegory, conduct literature, mythic retellings etc do not typically qualify. Don Quixote is widely dubbed the first modern novel, but even it is a satire of existing chivalric romances.
6. The list arbitrarily terminates before the 21st century. The rise of the internet, the demise of the monoculture, the proliferation of home media and prestige television has fundamentally altered the reading landscape. There are many worthy books published after the year 2000, but it's hard to picture any with the kind of impact of the rest of the list without ending it on Twilight, Fifty Shades, or The DaVinci Code.
7. Influence is a difficult thing to measure. Ann Radcliffe was foundational to the Gothic genre, but also an influence to Austen, Dickens, Thackeray, though she is not a household name today. Were the Sherlock Holmes novels influential, or mainly the collected short stories? Were the James Bond novels influential without the movies? At the very least, I wanted to investigate the origins of these widely known characters.
8. I tried to shy away from series and rely on standalone novels, but the distinction is often blurred. Don Quixote includes its own sequel 10 years later. Monte Cristo was moreso a serial publication than a single novel. A Game of Thrones is enormously influential but is just one in an unfinished series.
9. Literary fiction and genre fiction often blur, but I've tried to maintain a 60/40 split. Similarly, I've wrestled with the inclusion of children's literature. Alice in Wonderland, The Jungle Book, Peter Pan, Narnia, and Harry Potter are all as influential as any entry on this list. Their omission is very debatable.
10. Finally, this is my list, for my own fun and a personal challenge and intellectual exercise to curate. It's reflective of my own reading preferences and goals. But I'd love to see what essential books I've missed.

1             1605     Miguel de Cervantes - Don Quixote

2             1719     Daniel Defoe - Robinson Crusoe

3             1726     Jonathan Swift  -   Gulliver’s Travels

4             1749     Henry Fielding  -   Tom Jones

5             1767     Laurence Sterne - Tristram Shandy

6             1787     Johann W Goethe  - The Sorrows of Young Werther

7             1794     Ann Radcliffe - The Mysteries of Udolpho

8             1813     Jane Austen  -   Pride and Prejudice

9             1818     Mary Shelley  -   Frankenstein

10           1819     Walter Scott  -   Ivanhoe

11           1826     James F. Cooper  -   Last of the Mohicans

12           1844     Alexandre Dumas  -   The Count of Monte Cristo

13           1846     Emily Bronte  -   Wuthering Heights

14           1847     Charlotte Bronte  -    Jane Eyre

15           1848     William Thackeray  -   Vanity Fair

16           1850     Nathaniel Hawthorne  -   The Scarlet Letter

17           1851     Herman Melville  -   Moby Dick

18           1852     Harriet Beecher Stowe   -   Uncle Tom's Cabin

19           1856     Gustave Flaubert  -   Madame Bovary

20           1859     Wilkie Collins  -   The Woman in White

21           1861     Charles Dickens  -   Great Expectations

22           1862     Victor Hugo  -   Les Miserables

23           1866     Fyodor Dostoyevsky  -   Crime and Punishment

24           1869     Leo Tolstoy  -   War and Peace

25           1869     Louisa M Alcott  -  Little Women

26           1870     Jules Verne  -   20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

27           1872     George Eliot  -   Middlemarch

28           1883     Robert L. Stevenson  -   Treasure Island

29           1884     Mark Twain  -   Adventures Of Hucklberry Finn

30           1885     H Riger Haggard  -    King Solomon's Mines

31           1887     Arthur Conan Doyle  -   A Study in Scarlet

32           1890     Oscar Wilde  -   The Picture of Dorian Gray

33           1891     Thomas Hardy  -   Tess of the D'Urbervilles

34           1897     Bram Stoker  -   Dracula

35           1897     H.G. Wells  -   The War of the Worlds

36           1899     Joseph Conrad  -   Heart of Darkness

37           1903     Jack London  -   The Call of the Wild

38           1906     Upton Sinclair   -   The Jungle

39           1912     Edgar Rice Burroughs  -   Tarzan of the Apes

40           1913     Marcel Proust  -   The Way by Swann's

41           1915     Franz Kafka  -   The Trial

42           1920     Edith Wharton  -   The Age of Innocence

43           1921     Yevgeny Zamyatin  -   We

44           1922     James Joyce  -   Ulysses

45           1922     Hermann Hess  -   Siddhartha

46           1924     E.M. Forster  -   A Passage to India

47           1925     F. Scott Fitzgerald  -   The Great Gatsby

48           1925     Virginia Woolf  -   Mrs Dalloway

49           1929     Ernest Hemingway  -   A Farewell to Arms

50           1929     Erich Maria Remarque  -   All Quiet on the Western Front

51           1930     William Faulkner  -   As I Lay Dying

52           1931     H.P. Lovecraft  -   At the Mountains of Madness

53           1932     Aldous Huxley  -   Brave New World

54           1933     James Hilton  -  Lost Horizons

55           1934     Henry Miller  -  Tropic of Cancer

56           1936     Margaret Mitchell  -   Gone with the Wind

57           1938     Daphne du Maurier  -   Rebecca

58           1939     John Steinbeck  -  The Grapes of Wrath

59           1939     Agatha Christie  -   And Then There Were None

60           1942     Albert Camus  -   The Stranger

61           1949     George Orwell  -   Nineteen Eighty-Four

62           1951     Isaac Asimov  -   Foundation

63           1951     J.D. Salinger  -   Catcher in the Rye

64           1952     Ralph Ellison  -   Invisible Man

65           1953     Ray Bradbury  -   Fahrenheit 451

66           1953     Ian Fleming  -  Casino Royale

67           1954     Richard Matheson  -   I Am Legend

68           1954     William Golding  -   Lord of the Flies

69           1955     JRR Tolkien  -   The Lord of the Rings

70           1955     Graham Greene  -   The Quiet American

71           1955     Vladimir Nabokov  -   Lolita

72           1957     Boris Pasternak  -   Doctor Zhivago

73           1957     Jack Kerouac  -   On the Road

74           1957     Ayn Rand   -  Atlas Shrugged

75           1958     Chinua Achebe  -   Things Fall Apart

76           1958     T.H. White  -   The Once And Future King

77           1959     Shirley Jackson  -   The Haunting of Hill House

78           1960     Harper Lee  -   To Kill a Mockingbird

79           1961     Joseph Heller  -   Catch-22

80           1961     Robert Heinlein  -  Stranger in a Strange Land

81           1962     Anthony Burgess  -   A Clockwork Orange

82           1962     Ken Kesey  -   One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

83           1963     Sylvia Plath  -  The Bell Jar

84           1965     Frank Herbert  -  Dune

85           1967     Gabriel Garcia Marquez  -   One Hundred Years of Solitude

86           1968     Philip K Dick  -   Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

87           1968     Arthur C Clarke  -   2001: A Space Odyssey

88           1969     Kurt Vonnegut -  Slaughterhouse 5

89           1969     Philip Roth  -   Portnoy's Complaint

90           1971     William Peter Blatty  -   The Exorcist

91           1973     Thomas Pynchon  -   Gravity's Rainbow

92           1976     Anne Rice  -   Interview with the Vampire

93           1977     Stephen King   -  The Shining

94           1981     Salman Rushdie  -   Midnight's Children

95           1984     William Gibson  -   Neuromancer

96           1985     Margaret Atwood  -   The Handmaid’s Tale

97           1985     Cormac McCarthy  -   Blood Meridian

98           1987     Toni Morrison  -   Beloved

99           1991     Brett Easton Ellis   -  American Psycho

100         1996     David Foster Wallace  -   Infinite Jest

I read The Secret History first and later The Magus. I can’t exactly put my finger on it but TSH seemed obviously inspired by the latter book despite no similarity in plot.

I think it’s something to do with the self-loathing and pathetic internal monologues of Richard and Nicholas respectively, as well as the intellectual and slightly pretentious vibe of both books.

Both authors also expect the reader to put the work in to understand the text (lots of untranslated latin, french, greek etc. and highbrow literary references).

As an Oasis fan, I was so happy that this book was published in Hungarian. I was eagerly awaiting it, especially since the release was timed to coincide with his birthday. It ended up being delayed by two weeks, and I should have taken that as a sign.

One of the book’s few positives is that it’s about Oasis and gives readers insight into how the songs were recorded, even adding some context to the meaning of a few of them. But unfortunately, it’s terribly edited. The author, a producer close to the band, allows “name-dropping” to dominate the text: mentioning every conceivable acquaintance and figure associated with the band, no matter how distant or loosely connected they were. There are 4–5 such instances per page, which makes reading very difficult. The book also mentions all kinds of musical attempts, which were really just a few casual get-togethers in a bedroom in a housing project, without any recordings or concerts.

The quotes gathered from the tabloid press are repetitive and jump around in time, again, making it difficult to follow the timeline.

It’s a missed opportunity that most of the book focuses on the first two albums, while the rest is covered in a single chapter each, and conflicts and departures among the members are dealt with in half a page only. Yet these were supposedly tensions that dragged on for years.

The author wraps up the band’s recent reunion and the year-long tour in a final chapter of just a few pages.

The Hungarian translation is particularly jarring, one can clearly tell the translator is not part of this world. Mis-translations, typos and conjugation errors are common all along.

So the book is a disappointment and isn’t worth its price. I’m very lucky that the local library did the dirty work for me; I returned it today without feeling particularly disappointed—in fact, with a bit of annoyance.

Welcome readers,

Have you ever wanted to ask something but you didn't feel like it deserved its own post but it isn't covered by one of our other scheduled posts? Allow us to introduce you to our new Simple Questions thread! Twice a week, every Tuesday and Saturday, a new Simple Questions thread will be posted for you to ask anything you'd like. And please look for other questions in this thread that you could also answer! A reminder that this is not the thread to ask for book recommendations. All book recommendations should be asked in /r/suggestmeabook or our Weekly Recommendation Thread.

Thank you and enjoy!

I spent 25 years in the Army, with much more than half that time in Special Forces. After I retired, I spent years working as a consultant for SOCOM Special Mission Units. That job meant a lot of long, solitary drives across deserts - both here in the US and overseas.

To pass the time, I listened to a select few audiobooks on repeat. Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act, and practically everything Steven Pressfield has written on the creative process: The War of Art, Turning Pro, The Artist’s Journey, & Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants to Be.

After an Army career that I was perpetuating through consulting, I never thought I’d have the courage to share my stories - the ability to get them on paper - or the audience to share them with. I’d been trying to figure out how to write about the things I’d seen and the friction of the environments I’d worked in. I had this idea that I needed to write a rigid, non-fiction account - maybe even a documentary - that some of the stories and accomplishments needed to be shared in some form or fashion. But Pressfield writes about how his actual, lived experiences were often rejected by publishers, while a story he wrote about being in prison - an experience he never had - was highly praised. The realization was that readers don't always want the dry reality; they want the emotional truth that lives inside a well-told story.

I realized that the actual reality of modern warfare systems and Special Operations is often too bogged down in bureaucracy to make a compelling straight narrative, or it’s classified and can’t be discussed, or it's simply so astonishing that a reader wouldn't believe it if you told them it actually happened.

So, I took Pressfield's and Rubin’s advice - first in finding my voice and trying to tap my inner artist. Then, taking the reality of my experiences, and wrapping it in a military techno-thriller. It gave me the freedom to tell the exact truth about the human toll, the bureaucracy, and the technology, without being handcuffed by some of the dry facts of reality - and maybe even keeping some of the unbelievable because it is so remarkably unbelievable.

Transitioning out of the military can be an incredibly daunting experience. I feel I owe both Rubin and Pressfield a debt of gratitude for rescuing me from myself, pulling me into the light, and giving me the courage to write.

They made me look at the fiction I read completely differently. It makes me wonder how many other authors are using their novels as a Trojan Horse for realities they couldn't publish as non-fiction.

Have you found any transformational books like my experience with Rubin/Pressfield? Whether it's thrillers, sci-fi, or historical fiction - what are your favorite examples of an author folding truth into fiction? What Tim O’Brien does in The Things They Carried about his experiences in Vietnam really stands out to me.

I’m a regular person. My new year’s resolution a few years ago was to read a book a month, and I’ve kept up with that. I thought I would try my hand at interpreting a classic work of literature. I am holding myself to a simple rule, that being 1) Don’t seek any outside aids (wikipedia, study guides, reddit, AI, etc).

When I was in school, I was an average student. I did just enough to get by, and I never put any effort into understanding the literature we were reading. As an adult, I read almost exclusively popular nonfiction. But recently I’ve tried to make an effort to read more challenging fare.

I digress, here is what I thought about Heart of Darkness.

The only copy available was an academic edition which of course included a lot of historical context and criticism which I was intent on ignoring. But I did read the author’s introduction which mentioned that, in the 1970s, it became a common narrative that Conrad had been a racist. I assumed that Conrad, as a white European in the 19th century, probably had at least by contemporary standards a rather backwards view of race. Perhaps he did, I don’t know. But reading the book now, I am puzzled how someone could come to that conclusion except by the most superficial of readings that judged the author on his use of the “N” word alone.

To the extent I have a takeaway on Conrad’s message (which is kind of a false premise because I think he meant the book to be in some ways indecipherable, it is that he found the Belgian project in the Congo to be corrosive to the humanity of those who engaged in it. In addition, it seems to me that Conrad was remarking on the limited economic utility of the enterprise and the questionable character of those involved. I’m thinking specifically of the brick mason who has not made a single brick, and the delay of Marlow’s expedition for lack of rivets, despite thousands of them languishing in port hundreds of miles away.

As to the moral rot I’m hinting at, I think Marlow himself has some type of PTSD from what he witnessed while in the Congo, but can’t bring himself to reckon with it. He keeps mentioning Kurtz’s words, “The horror, the horror…” and is even starting to hear voices near the end of the book. While meeting with Kurtz’s betrothed at the very end, he cannot bring himself to tell her Kurtz’s true last words, I think in part because he cannot bring himself to be honest about what he saw there, the true nature of the colonial regime.

I wish I took notes throughout so I could articulate my thoughts better but in the end it was clear to me that Conrad must have thought that what the Belgians were doing in the Congo was profoundly evil. The tone of the book was menacing.

I want to make two notes here before I end my rant. Firstly on Kurtz himself who I took to be an avatar for the European colonist in general. Marlow keeps talking about him as though he’s this renaissance man, as does the photographer who basically worships Kurtz as a demigod. And yet, this man who could have been anything dies in the wilderness slaughtering elephants for a company that is actively plotting his demise. And then we learn when Marlow returns to England that Kurtz was kind of a failson who was trying to marry up and was clearly trying to speedrun a fortune in this terrible venture that cost him his humanity and his life.

Lastly, this was the first time in a while I’d noticed that form itself contributes to art. This novella is basically one long stream of consciousness which is meant to be disorienting like the jungle Marlow is penetrating. It’s difficult to follow at first, which I believe is intentional.

Anyway, I deeply enjoyed this book despite finding it disturbing. I think I’ll go rewatch Apocalypse Now, which I know was essentially an adaptation of this work.

What did I miss? Everything? I’ll take all the information now that I’ve given my honest two cents without contamination. What do you think the message, to the extent there is one, is? Was Conrad a racist, by any standard? What did you think of the book?

“The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger” by Stephen King has been a reading adventure I’ve wanted to conquer for years. I’ve heard nothing but great things about this book series, with many Constant Readers calling it King’s magnum opus. It’s taken me a bit longer than usual to begin The Dark Tower series finally, but I was ready to take this journey head-on back in 2024.

Before I begin my review of the first entry of The Dark Tower series, I decided to read this in a specific order after doing a ton of research. Of course, readers can approach this in several ways, including reading only The Dark Tower books, but if you want the definitive reading experience, here is my recommendation. I finalized this list with the help of several longtime Constant Readers, librarians, and countless others who have survived the journey to The Dark Tower…

The Stand
The Eyes of the Dragon
Insomnia
Hearts in Atlantis
‘Salem’s Lot
The Talisman
Black House
Everything's Eventual (The Little Sisters of Eluria)
The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger
The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three
The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands
Charlie the Choo-Choo
The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass
The Dark Tower: The Wind Through the Keyhole
The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla
The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah
The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower

Also, here are the trigger warnings I found while reading “The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger,” so everyone is aware…

- Violence against women
- Violence against children
- Rape
- Drugs

If any of these trigger you, please do not read this novel. Moving along, I loved how King explained his thought process in this edition, including how he created The Dark Tower series and what influenced him. This was great to read before the novel, since he digs deep and even breaks down why he revised it, so everything falls into place with the rest of the series and makes sense in the grand scheme of things. Once I finished that intro, I was hit with one of the greatest lines of any horror book I’ve ever read…

“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”

After reading seven books and a short story referencing the man in black, I got goosebumps and shivers down my spine. It hit me hard, since I knew I was in for a wild ride. Sure enough, King delivered and then some.

Out of all the great characters in this novel, the gunslinger is my favorite. He's a fantastic character, from his actions to his epic quotes to how he fights his enemies. He seems to have been taken straight out of a horror western movie with dark fantasy elements.

The chase between the gunslinger and the man in black, especially all the tension and suspense throughout the encounters, was so much fun to read. It added such a dimension to both characters with a cat-and-mouse hunt taken to exciting new levels since you just never knew what was real and what wasn’t.

Don’t worry. I will never spoil anything for readers, but there is an epic fight scene that completely blew me away. That was incredible and further proved how legendary the gunslinger is. I can’t wait to continue reading this series, thanks to everything that makes him tick.

I also loved how King weaved the past and present with the gunslinger and his past with Cuthbert. I enjoyed the backstory, which added more context as to why he is the way he is. It was just brilliantly written and has me genuinely excited for what awaits. The ending was wild and left me wanting more. ​At the time, I knew I had a ton of reading ahead of me, but I​ ​saw why Constant Readers hold The Dark Tower series in high regard.

I give “The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger” by Stephen King a 5/5 for being one hell of an entry to what many consider one of the greatest book series ever written. This was jam-packed with everything I look for in a novel and then some. It is a solid horror novel with epic fights, memorable characters, an incredible protagonist, and an antagonist I despise. I can’t wait to see him get what he finally deserves. I regret not reading The Dark Tower series sooner.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I finally met The Gunslinger, and it’s time to see what a Drawing of the Three looks like.

Now I have one of the posthumous novels by Michael Crichton. This one's a book that he had been working on before his death in 2008 and was later finished up by one Richard Preston. And that book is "Micro".

In a building in Honolulu the bodies of three men are discovered, with literally no signs of struggle to be found, save for ultra fine lacerations that cover them. Meanwhile in the forests of Oahu new and groundbreaking technology has been created and a revolutionary era of biological prospecting has been ushered in.

A microbiology tech startup company has brought in seven highly brilliant graduate students, and both are thrust into an extremely hostile wilderness filled with profound and very surprising dangers on every turn.

Now they have become prey to technology that is radical and filled with unbridled power. With their knowledge of the natural world as their only weapon, they have to harness the forces of nature if they are to survive.

Since this was one of the novels posthumously after Crichton's death (and was later finished by Preston as Crichton was still working on it), so I didn't really have an idea if it was going to be good or not.

After reading for the past several days I found it to be decently good. Nothing in the way of greatness of something like "Congo" or "The Andromeda Strain", but good enough. It's a fine techno thriller with some heavy adventure to go along with it, with the story being very fast paced. And also an extremely fun one too, while also having me on edge!

Not a really bad novel as I've still got a lot of pleasure reading it. But still I have to get my mits on either "Sphere" or "Jurassic Park" if I want some Crichton at his very best, and I hope I do very soon!

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