I see those more as mythology and epic poetry, even if they inspired modern epic fantasy through Tolkien. And the people who originally created these myths probably did not see them as being fantasy or even fiction, but as reality, because they believed that gods and spirits and other supernatural creatures actually existed. That is quite different from the modern fantasy genre.

It's really not

I would try--Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson

I have music on the headphones. On a low volume - music that I know every beat of. The songs will eventually fade into background and block all outside noises.

This was me and I found a great solution after trying all kinds of things, including white noise.

Wear earbuds or headphones and put on an easy-to-listen-to instrumental song (Tycho’s Awake is a great example). Set it to repeat this single track. Play it on repeat the entire time you’re reading. It shouldn’t be quiet or loud, just enough volume so you don’t hear anything in your surrounding environment.

It will not feel like a solution at first because the song is new to you so your brain is going to want to pay attention to the music. But as it plays repeatedly over time, your brain will stop focusing on the music and treat it as background noise. You’re tricking your monkey mind.

I have been doing this for almost ten years and it has helped me read books, when that used to feel impossible. Tycho’s Awake album and Windsor Airlift’s album called The Moon’s House are my favorite things to listen to. I would start with one song only though until it feels easy. I now listen to a different song from my reading playlist each day.

I had the same experience with David Macauley! He even drew me a little castle 😁 I’m glad Peck wrote back to you, he’s a wonderful writer.

It's important to remember the time and conditions of the period when this was written. Your opinion of the characters is not wrong. Tom Sawyer represents civilization and society. When Huck and Jim are around him, they have to conform to expectations and fulfill the roles society expects of them. It's only as they're in the "wilderness" that they become free to be themselves. Clemens is speaking to that duality and reminding us that we sometimes see people not as they are but as society makes them out to be. Jim may be free, but society enslaves him in a different way.

Does your author not have any contact information on their author bio, Amazon page or webpage? Usually they have a way there they prefer to be contacted.

Solzhenitsyn was a Nazi propagandist in the 1940s and affirmed that the war against Nazism was avoidable and a compromise with Hitler possible. That was why he was sent to a labor camp, for being a traitor.

His hatred for Jews that became public knowledge in recent years may explain his Nazi sympathies. Predictably, he was also a great fan of the Spanish fascist dictator Franco, whom he went to support when his regime began to totter. He appeared on Spanish TV to plead with Spaniards to remember the "freedom" they enjoyed under Franco while Soviet citizens were "enslaved" by socialism.

Solzhenitsyn was never a dissident but enjoyed the full support of Nikita Khruschev when he wrote the Gulag Archipelago, which Khrushchev used as propaganda material during his purge of Stalinists.

Nazi lover, Jew hater, monarchist: No wonder he became the darling of the West.

Solzhenitsyn's Ex‐Wife Says ‘Gulag’ Is ‘Folklore’, 1974:

>PARIS, Feb. 5 (Reuters)—Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn's controversial new book on Soviet prison‐camps was described as “folklore” by his former wife in an interview published here today.

>Natelya Reshetovskaya told the conservative newspaper Le Figaro that the book, “The Gulag Archipelago, 1918–1956,” was based on unreliable information:

>She also told the newspaper's Moscow correspondent that she was still living with Mr. Soizhenitsyn when he wrote the book and that she had typed part of it. They parted in 1970 and were subsequently divorced.

>She said: “The subject of ‘Gulag Archipelago,’ as I felt at the moment when he was writing it, is not in fact the life of the country and not even the life of the camps but the folklore of the camps.”

her NYTimes obituary 2003:

>In her 1974 memoir, ''Sanya: My Life with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn'' (Bobbs-Merrill), she wrote that she was ''perplexed'' that the West had accepted ''The Gulag Archipelago'' as ''the solemn, ultimate truth,'' saying its significance had been ''overestimated and wrongly appraised.''

>Pointing out that the book's subtitle is ''An Experiment in Literary Investigation,'' she said that her husband did not regard the work as ''historical research, or scientific research.'' She contended that it was, rather, a collection of ''camp folklore,'' containing ''raw material'' which her husband was planning to use in his future productions.

I read it after someone bought me "How Proust can Change Your Life" as a gift (wouldnt recommend that one by the way lol)

I absolutely love it, I bought a 6 volume translation and was heartbroken when I reached the end of the final volume. My favourite volumes I have read so often they fell apart and had to be replaced. Its a beautiful journey through the French society of Prousts time, entered into via the memories both voluntary and involuntary of a man who wrote some wondrous prose.

I have the same approach to classics! No one had warned me Madame Bovary was incredibly funny as well as a social satire. I went in expecting to have to work at it and loved every second.

You're probably gonna have to take a break for now. Choose very limited and manageable goals. Read fiction that's easy. Something like ten pages when you're going to sleep after you've finished other work.

> How is this not extortion?

Because it's voluntary. No one is stopping anyone from producing their own audiobook and publishing/selling it on their own terms.

If you want to benefit from Audible's hosting, distribution, and advertising (because yes, Audible puts a significant effort into advertising books to readers with things like "recommended for you" and "related to this title" type programs, among other things), among other benefits of being part of their library, then they're gonna take a cut. Since they own the platform, they get to dictate what the cut is. If you don't like it, you're free to take your product elsewhere. No one is forcing anyone to do business with anyone.

Since you are focusing on dictionaries, Webster defines a sub-genre as one that belongs to a larger genre.

The OP asked about new genres on the level of romance, thriller, and mystery. These are higher level splits.

I heard so much about Lonesome Dove and slogged through it. It was as sour, hateful, and misogynistic as any book I’ve ever read. I got to that miserable ending and actually threw the book across the room and left a dent in the wall, I was so angry I had read it. I can’t imagine what your opinion would have to be of women to enjoy that book, but I keep hearing guys telling me it’s the best thing ever written. Ugh.

I hd despised Dickens in high school but was stuck on a long bus trip and had nothing but a Tale of Two Cities. Wow, that is not like his other books! Loved every minute of it, cried at the end.

I felt that way too. For some reason it was a bit hard to sympathize with

That's it. Rally the troops. Cancel that fucker right now.

My first two years of graduate school I really didn’t read much fiction, I was simply burned out on reading after I finished my 500 pages a week of academic reading. Instead, I decided to set myself a goal of “learning” about old movies, so it gave me an excuse to watch a lot of old movies. I would suggest not beating yourself up about it. Your mind is telling you that it needs a break from books, and that’s pretty common in uni!

Alternate suggestion is – especially if you like genre fiction like science fiction or fantasy – there are some amazing novellas being published as books right now and those are very bite-sized. Martha Wells’ Murderbot series, Mohamed’s The Annual Migration of Clouds, Barnhill’s The Crane Husband are all great books ~120 pp.

Short stories are also an amazing literary form 😏

Thanks , ill definitely check it out

So, is this not a story about a guy likes to smoke a lot of weed...?

In addition to the white noise suggestions, I also listen to playlists in the Focus genre on spotify. They're mostly instrumental, a lot of lofi, some classical, some video game/movie soundtracks.

I also sometimes enjoy ambience videos on youtube in the background while I read. You can get fires crackling or water trickling.

Great suggestions here – for something a little different I’d recommend Passing Strange by Martha Sandweiss. It’s about Clarence White, who was an elite guy, friend of Roosevelt, head of the US geological survey, blonde and blue eyed, who was living a double life in which he had a Black family who believed that he was a Pullman pullman and that’s why he was gone for long periods of time, and he kept it going for decades. It’s a fascinating biography!

I came here to plug those Edmund Morris books, also destany of the Republic, about the death of James Garfield and other things.

Grueling series everyone needs to read at least once.

It's easier to eat the cancellation and Stalinist show trial now before all the neighbors are taken. Your neighbors pick you back up as soon as the fickle energy gets bored and moves on to the next goring. It's harder after your neighbors have all been taken and it's just you now. You can be a Trotsky and the new world never arrives for you with callous disregard for all your dreaming. As soon as transfer of power hands off to Stalin, you, the person who knows how to organize the street protest, are the first short straw drawn to discard with. You're no longer useful. That radicalism is now a threat to the new princelings, the same princelings who had backed you a moment ago.

Better to build success skills. Use an operating system based on reciprocation and being useful to friends, neighbors, and community. It's slow and boring. Less emotionally pleasing work grinding out useful skills. You have nice things in your surroundings to show for it. Can actually enjoy the small things and leave more than you had behind for your children.

You may be in the education system right now and feel something doesn't feel right. Feel the compelled speech and games played to lie about the current thing of the moment to avoid harassment by peers. Gulag Archipelago is the book for you that lays out and explains your future. How that system always unfolds. Yes. I'm writing to persuade. With empathy. You deserve better systems, not assigned a mental prison as your operating system.

I have tinnitus. Absolute quiet drives me nuts as the ringing in my ears gets intolerable. I can tune out background noise when I read. This includes conversations or my wife watching a movie. Wife watching TV and the grandsons each on a phone (all different noise) disturbs me. Hearing aids make it worse.