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This is actually a companion book to a novel I read earlier this year called Isaac's Song. In that one, a young man named Isaac pens a series of personal diaries about growing up gay under his abusive father Jacob. DCFM is the reverse, with Jacob writing a series of letters to Isaac on his deathbed telling his life story from losing his brother as a child in rural Arkansas to married life in Kansas City and living alone after seperating from his wife. As you'd expect it's really sad to read. Jacob is well aware of how badly he's driven away everyone who loved him and as much as he wants to reconnect with his son, is too afraid of what might happen to actually reach out. Jacob is not a good person, he flat out admits it but he also tried really hard in his later years to be better and explain why he treated Isaac the way he did and whether or not he deserves forgiveness or even peace of mind is something left up to the reader in both novels. It's a book I definitely recommend, its just 300 pages so you can finish it in just a couple sittings, but these two books work best as a back to back set so if you read one, I'd say read both. My rating 4/5 💙📚

Just extremely baffled by the ending. Was Dick advocating for disabled people’s rights with John Isidore? I do agree that the book does bring up some amazing questions such as what makes us human and sequences that just made me blow my mind (the toad and the fake police station).

Or was it just a simple story of a man who was able to rekindle his failing relationship with his wife through emotionally traumatic events? I tried to see what he was saying about religion through Mercerism but I was just dumbstruck, especially that Oregon sequence. What was he advocating for and why did he write this book?

(There aren't really any plot spoilers in here, but I marked it as such because it's a general overview and I myself would want to avoid that if I hadn't cracked open the book yet) I wanted to love this book SO bad! When I saw the cover in my YA Lit class syllabus (I'm 27 and NOT one to hate a book just because it's required reading; for example, I hate poetry but the first novel we read in this class was in verse and I adored it) and read the prologue, I thought it was going to be AWESOME...

And then I continued reading. Oh my gosh, what a concept wasted on poor, boring execution. It could have been INCREDIBLE, but even I, a person who tends to enjoy being told rather than shown because the brain doesn't have to piece things together (I'm a tired college student okay?xD), quickly got tired of the info dumps. The author also seems to love using fragment sentences, and on more than one occasion I had to reread something to realize what they actually meant to say because it just didn't read right. The characters feel like stock characters-- the love interest, the nerdy science geek, the jock brother, etc. And the MC will feel one way one minute and then just COMPLETELY change within a page or two without anything triggering that change (like how she'll decide one thing about another character and then it's as if she never came to that conclusion based on what she does with them or says a page or two later). And... it's *boring*. Oh my word, is it such a slog to get through. Just when it gets exciting, it's back to running or back to basic hockey stuff or back to driving a vehicle with nothing else going on. It feels like it could have been at least one hundred pages shorter because so much of what I've read feels unnecessary to the actual point.

According to GoodReads, I'm 61% of the way through, but I'd honestly DNF it if I didn't have to read it for university. I'm trying to wrap my head around why so many people think it's such a great book. Like, of course it's great to see representation in books (another reason I was excited to read it), but aside from that... I just don't get it. Though I DO want a Grandma June spinoff, haha. Grandma June superiority!

I was thinking about when I was in 7th grade my teacher assigned us to read The Fault in Our Stars and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. He told us these were a few of his favorite books. I remember a lot of students hated The Fault in Our Stars and criticized the book during lectures. After all, he did decide to assign a teen romance novel to a bunch of middle schoolers so I assumed he was prepared or wasn't too bothered by the criticism. If I were a teacher, I don't think I would have my students read my favorite books unless it was a classic novel like Of Mice and Men or Animal Farm.

If you were a teacher, would you assign your favorite books to students? For those who are teachers, have you assigned your favorite book to your students and how did it go?

I don’t even know where to start with this book. Jacqueline Harpman’s I Who Have Never Known Men is one of the most quietly devastating things I’ve ever read. It’s not just bleak—it’s merciless. It takes everything you expect from a dystopian novel, strips it down to its rawest form, and then leaves you to sit in the silence of what’s left.

The setup is simple: thirty-nine women and one young girl are locked in an underground bunker. The women have fragments of memories from a world before; the girl only knows captivity. Their only contact with the outside world comes in the form of silent, indifferent guards. Then, one day, something happens that completely upends their reality—not into freedom, but into something even worse.

And that’s the thing about this book: it never gives you what you think it will. There’s no grand revelation, no satisfying resolution. Just an eerie, relentless meditation on loneliness, survival, and the sheer indifference of the universe. It’s not about rebellion. It’s not about hope. It’s about existence in its purest, most brutal form.

If you’re looking for a dystopian novel with answers, this isn’t it. Harpman doesn’t care about neat endings or catharsis. What she does, though, is burrow into your brain with questions that won’t leave. What makes us human? Is it love? Is it memory? Can you even be human if you’ve never been touched, never been loved, never even been acknowledged as a person?

This book is the literary equivalent of staring into the void. Some will find it profound. Others will find it unbearable. Either way, I don’t think I’ll ever shake it off.

If you’ve read it, I need to know—how the hell do you even process this?

The past year of reading has been my favorite year of reading since I’ve been alive and this book has confirmed that. Samuel Hamilton may be my favorite character in fiction ever. Steinbeck’s writing is beyond remarkable, so good you can feel in the writing even he knows it. I’ve laughed, cried, trembled in fear and felt hope and disgust within almost every couple chapters that would pass. This book’s theme and parallel to the Cain and Abel story is so devastating that the final pages of the book had me by the neck. I went to bible school in my twenties, and wrestled with the idea of free will so violently that I genuinely feel this book has healed some of the religious trauma of my past. Thank you John Steinbeck.

Timshel

Currently having one of the most special and profound experiences a reader can be blessed with: I’m about halfway thru East of Eden and I truly believe this will be one of if not one number one favorites of all time. There is no feeling that can match the insatiable desire to just go home and continue reading; I look forward to picking the book up every night after work. I’ve never really understood what people mean when they describe a book as “rich”, until now. Every detail, every morsel of this book is chok full of the most interesting little insights, character work, timeless wisdoms, and humorous quips. Ugh. I fucking love this book. I just know I’m going to wish I could go back and read it for the first time again so I’m savoring every bit of it before I can no longer experience it for the first time again.

What books have y’all had a similar experience with where you realize you’re reading an alll time favorite before even finishing?

Alright fellow bibliophiles, it’s confession time. I currently own 35 books, and… gulp... 18 of them are unread. I swear my books are starting to judge me from the shelves. I catch them side-eyeing me while I’m doomscrolling on my phone or rewatching Friends for the 27th time.

The guilt is real, folks. It’s like my bookshelf is haunted by the ghosts of plots unexplored and characters unmet. I’ve officially put myself on a book-buying ban (yes, even during the World Book Fair 2025 in Delhi—cue dramatic sob).

So, I need to know—how many unread books are too many? At what point do we go from “charming home library” to “dragon hoarding literary treasure”? Asking for a friend (okay, it’s me, I’m the friend).

Also, any tips on resisting the siren call of shiny new books while our TBR piles stare into our souls? Let’s support each other in this struggle!

Just wanted to share this story by Samantha Mills, which won the 2022 Nebula and Hugo awards. https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/rabbit-test/ It's very chilling to read in a time when abortion rights are being stripped away. I think that fiction can be a very powerful force for political movements, as it can help us understand people's personal experiences beyond slogans and statistics.

Hello readers and welcome to our Weekly FAQ thread! Our topic this week is: What music do you listen to while reading? Please use this thread to discuss what music is best to read to or why you prefer no music at all.

You can view previous FAQ threads here in our wiki.

Thank you and enjoy!

This book was so captivating. The genre of book is more of a suspense thriller for me. I mean there is enough drama in this but any time >!Anton Chigurh comes, I am up on my feet wondering what kind of hell is is this psycho going to do.!< The suspense and eeriness of >!Chigurh!< is appreciable. This book is more of a cat and mouse game with many cats and mice in a sprawl. >!Some cats made it some didn’t, but in the end no mice ever made it.!<

I wish the dialogues had more punctuation. At some points the dialogues were just boring but mostly it was good for me. This is such a must read book for me. The way the story is set makes this book more enjoyable.

I’m really enjoying the book so far. I’m about half-way through. But one thing that is bugging me is the MC Toru Watanabe. Why do female characters fawn over him so much? Am I missing something? He’s not particularly interesting, or likeable, yet almost every girl in the novel keeps fawning over him like he’s James Bond. It’s getting to the point where it’s taking me out of the book whenever Midori is on her hands and knees for this man after one date. Even Reiko lowkey wants to fuck him and even says she wants the deets about his cock right in front of Naoko.

I know this is a silly criticism, but am I missing something here?

(Please no spoilers).

Do you read it cover to cover in a couple hours? One poem a day? Out loud in front of friends and strangers who then clap and snap their fingers? Idk how to go about this.

I'm trying to read Sylvia Plath's Ariel and Hannah Sullivan's Three Poems. Feels wrong to just gobble it up in one go? Feels like I ought to meditate over it?

So at my local library in the thriller section when you get to the books whose authors name are filed under the letter P, there are two particular people who have books filling almost whole shelves alone.

One is James Patterson whose works I have read in the past and find hit and miss. The other is Anne Perry whose name I knew just by seeing her presence in the library. I assumed anyone with that volume of books must have been really popular but I'd never gravitated to it browsing shelves because they were Victorian era novels and while I don't mind historical fiction, I don't really know enough about that time period in real history terms to follow it in fictional terms.

Now more recently she had a few books starting around the period leading up to WW2 which is a theme I have interest in. I had completed a series of historical fiction by an author named Rory Clements in the same time period by then and enjoyed it. His protaganist was a male. Anne Perry's was a female. I thought I'd give it a go.

And I really liked it. She clearly did amazing research in details of historical fact and here I do know quite a lot going in to understand context. Her characters and the plot was also really woven into a rivetting thriller with powerful descriptions. The next book was on the shelf so I just had to pop in next time and pick it up. Same with book 3. I just had to look at the inside cover to follow the order at the time of publication.

I didn't know if there was a book 4 however which was not on the shelf so googled Anne Perry. Her wikipedia entry took me off guard.

"Anne Perry was a British writer and murderer"

I read the page and was horrified. As a teenager she and her best friend murdered the friend's mother in a park by bludgeoning her face with a brick in a stocking. Reading further revealed this was a planned act by the two of them. Reading even more revealed unbelievable levels of delusions and lack of remorse. She reinvented herself under the new name Anne Perry and had already been a best-seller when she was outed as a killer 40 years later when a film was being made about it. In later interviews she comes across more in pity of herself than the victim.

And now I find it hard to want to continue her series. She clearly was a brilliant writer and yet the fact of all genres she found fame writing fiction that includes murder now leaves a really bad taste as a reader.

Finished this yesterday and it was lowkey exhausting. Felt super tedious to soldier through pages and pages of descriptions of mischief. The antics started feeling grating after a while and maybe that part of the book is over the top intentionally, but it just wasn't something I enjoyed. I really liked the Yeshua/Pilate chapters though and how that part of the story concluded but it took unnecessarily long to get there. I've seen a lot of people saying that this might be a translation issue though so maybe I'll reread a different translation sometime in the future. What did you think of the ending?

The Three-Body Problem is a fascinating take on first contact—one that feels more ominous than hopeful. The story is gripping, though the pacing slows down at times, especially in the middle. The book explores big ideas, from the impact of the Chinese Cultural Revolution to deep moral questions: Are humans naturally destructive? Would we wipe out another civilisation to protect our own? While these themes are thought-provoking, the book doesn’t always dive into them as much as it could. The scientific concepts are mostly great, though they can feel a bit heavy at times. Despite some slow sections, the core plot is excellent, and the ending sets up an exciting sequel, The Dark Forest.

That said, the book has a few weak points. The start of the book itself is a bit weird the character development feels off and there are some weird situations where the protagonist is obsessed with someone he saw once.(This happened only in the first half of the book so it is not that big of a deal because the book is more plot focused and the character development is sub-par in general).This is also used as a plot device in ways that don’t feel natural. Additionally, while the book introduces some fascinating philosophical ideas, it doesn’t explore them as deeply as it could. Some parts also spend too much time on setup, making the pacing uneven. There is also an awful lot of plot convenience associated with one specific character.

Overall, The Three-Body Problem is an engaging and thought-provoking read. Despite some flaws, it still delivers a unique and intelligent sci-fi story, and I’m excited to continue the series.

My Rating 4/5

I used to give people books as gifts quite often but as time has gone by, feel less inclined. There are different reasons for this, including the fact that there are many books out there, many are available digitally, and also the whole thing about books as gifts is not as fashionable as it once was. There was a time when there were not enough books to read and now it's more like not enough time to read. Personally I still like to receive books as gifts though. Nothing like getting a rare book you had always wanted, having it in your hands, that new book smell. Oh, and handling it so carefully as if some type of treasure.

Hello readers and welcome! Every month this thread will be posted for you to discuss new and upcoming releases! Our only rules are:

1. The books being discussed must have been published within the last three months OR are being published this month.

2. No direct sales links.

3. And you are allowed to promote your own writing as long as you follow the first two rules.

That's it! Please discuss and have fun!

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!

So I'm going to be coming at this from an unusual angle. Prior to reading this book I watched/read the following visual novels/books which have a similar premise

ひぐらしのなく頃に - Higurashi: When they cry

Re:ゼロから始める異世界生活 - Re:Zero

Both of these books also have the "return by death" concept for time travel with Higurashi being a more direct comparison to Harry August than Re:zero.

Harry August

Overall going into this story I knew it would be a 20th century take on the concept and not having any of the 'anime' tropes in this type of story. What I was hoping to get out of it was a story about nihilism and finding meaning in a world that is essentially temporally meaningless.

The story did go there with Harry August's adventure seeking and other characters who can loop like him but it kind of felt more like a thriller. The resolution was okay I guess but it felt like it was lacking something by comparison.

Re:zero

Re:zero is a novel series/anime about learning to love yourself and the loss of identity through memory and experiences you cant share with anyone. The horrific experiences of this super power is on full display and the situations trapping the protagonist are a lot more dire and immediate.

It has almost the opposite theme of Harry August, that in a world that resets your connections with your friends who don't reset with you is the biggest part of your meaning

Higurashi

This one is a mystery and horror anime/visual novel about a girl like Harry August gets reborn when she dies but unlike him she will never make it to adulthood. There is a hopeless beyond hopeless situation for her to overcome.

I think compared to Harry August what makes this one hit different is that Rika Furude (who has his super power) isn't the point of view character for a long time and you see the world continue after she dies. You see the consequences of her and everyone else's choices in a way that makes it a bit more poignant.

That when she gives up on a loop as a failed loop you see characters who cry for her and don't understand why she did what she did. Then with the reveal you see from her PoV essentially the same struggles that Harry August would have especially in childhoods he had prior to joining the kalachakra.

Overall the message of this one is about unity and working together with your friends to save everyone to overcome the impossible challenge.

Conclusion

I think where Harry August fell off for me was that we see him grapple with identity and what it means to be a semi immortal dude but it feels all 2nd hand?

I know it's a long shot but if anyone else has followed these other stories you could see what I mean. But yeah this is too niche a comparison to have a community for in any offline book club.

If this is successful I might do another post comparing The Night Circus to Madoka Magica and how the latter did everything I was hoping The Night Circus was going to do

Spoilers for books - Beautiful Ugly by Alice Feeney and The Perfect Marriage by Jeneva Rose

I usually like Alice Feeney's books. But in this book I felt cheated after the final twist. That it was the husband who was actually lying down in the middle of the road and tried to kill her wife. I've recently read a The perfect marriage. In that book too towards the climax we get to know that the wife herself has killed the mistress. So during all the POV chapters of wife, there would never be a line like - "I'll have to find who killed her. I'll have to get to the bottom of this secret". It would always be - "I'll somehow have to get out of this legal mess". We would be thinking she's hoping to get her husband out of the mess. But it's more of her getting out of the mess.

But in this book during the POV chapters of husband, he talks about "I don't know what happened to her". And that's true he doesn't actually know if he successfully killed her. He knows that she disappeared. But there of lot of other places where it'll be written - "He doesn't know what happened that night on the road. He feels broken because of her disappearance". Those parts shouldn't have been if he was the one who actually did the deed.

I get the whole unreliable narrator thing. But the cleverest aspect of such books is the writing. How cleverly author states or misses out some facts but we're blind to the reality. In The Perfect Marriage (I didn't like this book too for other reasons) author hides the true nature of wife by simply not bringing up that aspect of her thoughts. But here the POV chapters are essentially narrator lying to the reader, and not narrator lying to the audience in the book.

I felt the whole thought of women living on the island thinking - "An extreme example of positive discrimination but with best of motives" as foolish. There's no such thing as "positive" discrimination.

All that being said I still like Alice Feeney's writing. And for me - "Rock Paper Scissors" will be my most favourite novel among hers.

I also liked the idea of a couple saying - "I hope you die in your sleep" to each other. Because that's the best possible death you can expect for you partner.

I recently reread Ready Player One for the first time as an adult, and had expected that even though I'd enjoyed it as a kid, I would find it at the very least cringeworthy now, but it ended up being somehow even better then I remembered. I had a similar experience with The Secret History a couple years ago, where I went in expecting not to like it because many book reviewers who's tastes I align with had expressed distaste toward the book, and it ended up being a top 10 favorite read of mine.

You know, I expected King to have at least one book that I didn't like. Like, how many books did he write, 63? I can't possibly like them all. And here is the first one.

Desperation tells the story of how a maniac policeman kidnapped several fellow travelers in order to kill them, or maybe do something even worse. Here's the beginning, namely the first chapter, is good. It's intense, scary, and its ending is unexpected. And then... There were a couple intense scenes, but otherwise the book was very boring. The plot is moving so slowly, even for King. There are also many questions in the book, some of which will be answered, which are so stupid. And the topic of religion is too intrusive. I even laughed in the scene, where, >!in front of the entrance to the villain's lair, the heroes began to pray.!<

There are some cheesy moments in the book. Like, how do you like the phrase "Mom has a beautiful butt" from a little girl? Or the scene where the villain tells one of the characters to suck his bleeding ding?

There's a less to say about the characters. They're boring and cardboard**.** The worst of them, David. This is the most Marty Sue character King has ever written. He is so kind, so pious, >!God himself guides him!<, everyone is following him.

The villain of the book is one of the dumbest villains King has ever written. >!Realizing that he needs a body to do... terrible things, and they decompose quickly, what is he doing? That's right, he kills everyone in the city, leaving an old alcoholic, and then kidnaps fellow travelers, mutilates some, kills the only good-looking man, and decides to make a middle-aged woman his new vessel!<. He scares only at the beginning, and then nothing but bewilderment causes.

I didn't like the author's writing style here. And here the problem is not in the writing style itself, King's peculiarity is that he gives a lot of information about the characters. The problem here is that the author himself doesn't seem to know what to say about them, so King just repeats the same facts about the characters, rarely adding anything new. For example, did you know that Johnny is a great writer? Or that Ellen Carver was talking to her neighbors at a restaurant and behaving like an ordinary middle-aged woman?

As a result, I found the book boring, trashy, with cardboard characters and an overly obsessive theme of religion. This book had a good start, but as events unfolded, things got dumber and more boring.