I loved The Long Walk by Slavomir Racwiz and Endurance: the Shackleton expedition.

Looking for more true stories about survival and heroism against great odds?

Yeah, I believe it was India. I had never heard of this before now so I was confused when the seller told me this was just how the books are. Thank you for more insight.

The way young children learn to read is by reading with others. There are plenty of easy reader books, but the book alone won't do much. They need people to sit with them and help them thru each word, sentence and paragraph. We started with Bob books, then graduated to beginner childrens books of various levels. Most children's books will have levels that indicate their complexity. Once they're comfortable with those you can move to series like Magic Tree House, etc.

I finished a book about the Renaissance recently and it gave me a taste of just how little I know about the era and its most prominent figures. I'm curious if there's a contemporary book, maybe a bit in the vein of Sebag-Montefiore's Titans of History, that gives a short rundown/biography of some of the major figures of the time period, particularly in Rome?

Interesting. I actually came to the exact opposite impression after finishing all 7 volumes. I felt it was a poorly written book with mostly cartoonishly shallow characters, but with occasional sparks of brilliance and a few interesting and novel ideas and observations. However, on balance it was a disappointment.

Even reading Harold Bloom's essays didn't convince me that it's a great work. He was also mostly focusing on the few great ideas in the book, while glossing over the ridiculous plot twists and simply bad writing and editing.

Your role model:

https://www.openculture.com/2020/03/the-cork-lined-bedroom-and-writing-room-of-marcel-proust.html

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Deltora Quest , Or maybe Frog and Toad would be better and deltora quest in a year if he's having some trouble

Deltora quest is a fantasy kingdom adventure story with some simple riddles and puzzles, not super popular in America but every kid that reads deltora quest gets hooked on them

Do I start The Expanse next or First Law next? I figured /r/Fantasy would say read First Law and /r/scifi would say Expanse so I'm gonna ask you wonderful bunch

I've most often seen that with Harry Potter books from India. India can do very good book production, world class stuff at very fair prices. Rowling didn't need the money but the fakers are robbing the legitimate Indian book trade too. Same probably goes for whatever country you're dealing with.

One of my all-time favorites. I also liked Thousand Lives of Jacob de Zoet by Mitchell if you’re hungry for more. Bone clocks I could’ve left alone, but they all follow a similar theme.

Found the tankie

Restart the counter - as people say in other subs :)

Always happy to see it mentioned though, it is of my favorite books of recent years.

(and read it after seeing it mentioned often here in r/books)

R/books hates reading.

A tale of two cities.

I thought I'd love it. And even tho it's not really bad, Dickens' style wasn't for me. I dont wanna try other books by him.

On the other hand, I didnt have much expectations for Jane Eyre, and I loved it.

When your only complaint is "I wish there was more", generally speaking, that is a good problem to have.

I recently re-watched The Lord of the Rings trilogy extended in their 4K HDR remaster on a proper HDR TV and that was the perfect length to tell those stories. Also have a way better appreciation for them in my 30's than when I was younger 😄

That’s a tough one… I think if you like conclusions you should read it. From a theoretical point of view the way the knowledge is put to use (I hope I’m bout spoiling anything) is brilliant and one thing that happens is nice for a certain group of people but like you said, Pippa has strong morals and a big chunk of the book goes against that.

To rephrase your question, would you like to allow this person to keep defrauding customers and stealing an author's hard work?

Yes, report them, and feel good you're helping protect other buyers and the authors.

It’s funny- dark, absurd kind of humor and lovely, lilting prose of Twain. AND I really love the ending.

I think that's what makes it so affecting. In some ways he's a man who'll pursue his own happiness at any cost, defying social expectations to pursue his passions both in academia and in his brief love affair. But he's also a kind man, in a way that's equal radical; he's surrounded by all kinds of devious, dissolute jerk-offs who take advantage of him, but there's a sense that he feels like a failure in so many ways. He's neither a dutiful child or a prestigious scholar, doesn't die heroically in war. He's as good of a husband as he can be, but never truly understands his wife and allows his child to become estranged from him - because whenever he pursues his own happiness the world throws it back in his face, and inertia begins to set in. By many measures he lives a full and happy life, but as readers we see all the missed opportunities for joy - and by association think about all the lives lived that never achieve their fill potential.

Thank you!

> Keep this same energy when your groceries go up by 60%

This is more likely to happen from inflation (i.e Government printing too much money) than from every grocery store in the region jacking up their prices simultaneously.

And if they do, I can decide to grow my own veggies and hunt my own meat. Or if I don't want to do that, I can call up a farmer nearby and trade with them directly. No one is forcing me to do business with any grocer.

> Amazon having total market dominance, and taking 80% of royalties (despite contributing nothing to the production process) is obscene.

Yeah, that is ridiculous. That's a pretty big cut. Seems like they've got a pretty solid platform if they can manage to command such a sizeable cut.

> Amazon famously use books as 'loss leaders' to support their other products/advertising.

Then it should be easy to sell your book on your own site for half the price of what Audible would charge. You'd eat their lunch by having dramatically lower prices, and you'd still be making more money than working with them, presuming the same or similar volume of sales.

> They are the only option, and they are a terrible option.

That's just not true. Anyone can start up a squarespace website and sell their books/audiobooks online for dirt cheap. There's like a million other "run your own website with no technical knowledge" businesses out there, too. No one is making anyone do business with Audible, and authors are free to do business on their own terms if they so choose.

As it stands, I'm guessing authors see it as more valuable to pay Audible for their services than to do their own sales because the incredible ability of Audible to drive sales, even if they only keep 20-40%. This is evidenced by the fact that Audible has a massive library of audiobooks from authors making exactly that decision.

Just a few thoughts from one who has read and reread this book many times (although not recently). Not saying my ideas are right or better than anyone else’s.

Jim and Huck both belong to groups perceived as “less than” in the society of their day (and Twain’s day): Jim an enslaved person and Huck a poor white who was homeless and (believed to be) an orphan in Twain’s previous book, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. In spite of Huck’s poverty and low status, he was envied by Tom, a slightly younger boy who had a big imagination fired by popular adventure literature of the day. All of the other boys followed the lead of Tom, although we have no real reason to think he was actually smarter—but he had some charisma, whether or not it appeals to readers today.

Tom was also an orphan, but he lived with his aunt and 2 cousins, and had a much more secure life, which in his mind was boring.

Tom and Huck were rewarded with a large sum of money for what they did in “Tom Sawyer.” This motivated the Widow Douglas to adopt Huck and take him into her home to try to “civilize” him. Huck at this time was probably about 14. Huck found it a strain to have to conform to the activities and expectations of civilization such as wearing shoes, staying clean, learning to read, etc. the Widow’s sister, Miss Watson, is a constant thorn in his side. Huck is well-acquainted with Jim, who is Miss Watson’s slave.

Huck’s alcoholic, abusive father, believed to be dead, shows up and claims his son because he has found out Huck has money. Huck sees that the only way to escape his father is to fake his death and take off. When he encounters Jim, who has decided to make a move to a free state, the two decide to team up.

They have somehow ended up going south instead of north when they finally end up in Arkansas at the home of Tom Sawyer’s aunt and uncle, who are expecting Tom for a visit (wonder why Aunt Polly must have thrown up her hands and sent him away!). Huck pretends to be Tom.

Naturally, when Tom arrives, his romantic imagination instantly fixes on the adventure of the imprisoned man wasting away like the Count of Monte Cristo and his other literary idols. All of the dramatic play-acting he convinces Huck and Jim to go along with doesn’t really make sense, except in Tom’s mind. Huck actually thinks it’s all crazy—but he goes along and follows Tom, the ringleader of adventure. He’s not the first person to leave common sense behind and follow a charismatic leader. Poor Jim endures because he has no choice.

Finally the truth comes out when Tom >!breaks his leg!< and it’s learned that Miss Watson had already granted Jim his freedom. So all of Jim’s suffering while locked up was needless—and at any time, Tom could have revealed the truth. Tom isn’t painted very positively in this, although it doesn’t seem that Huck is as critical as he might have been!

Huck ruminates on the whole episode in the final chapter. He has grown a lot in understanding and maturity but he hasn’t fully grasped the meaning and consequences of what he has learned. And while he has escaped the Wisow Douglas and her civilizing efforts, it looks like Aunt Sally may be taking the Widow’s place…

I think in some ways this is the story of society: the tendency to follow a charismatic leader, even when some of their ideas are questionable at best; our ability to classify others into stereotypes when we don’t know them; the divisions that exist in society even when people interact on a daily basis; the rights of parents/ employers/ owners (in that time, but remember slavery has existed on various forms as long as “civilization” has existed) vs the rights of children or slaves; looking at every situation from a legalistic perspective—and in Huck’s case, the fact that life and learning isn’t a clear and straight progression but has many barriers, detours, and even regressions on the way. One can’t only move forward according to one’s own code, but is influenced by others for better or worse.

Twain doesn’t really convey a super clear message in the book, I will agree. But I do think he has released some ideas that a reader can meditate on. That’s better, in my mind, than directly telling the reader what to think.

I have found that each time I read it, I have new questions in my mind and new thoughts to process. IMO, that’s a sign of a good book.

can i post a book discussion thread on this subreddit?

like we talk about a book in my post.?

I’m about halfway through “Cloud Atlas” and it might end up being my favorite novel of all-time (!), though I’m not quite certain yet. Depends on how well David Mitchell sticks the landing at the end with all these interwoven plots; they’re all obviously connected somehow, even if only loosely.

Each story has been better than the last so far, I must say. The first one (the first 40 or so pages) is a little difficult to get through; much of the language is outright bizarre. Once you get to the second one though, Robert Frobisher’s (the POV character) prose paints such beautiful mental pictures, reminding me of one of those “The Age of Innocence”-esque romantic drama movies they used to make a lot of in the 80s and 90s (before the “mid-budget” film collapsed within Hollywood).

I just finished the third part, the Luisa Rey one, and it plays out as this extraordinarily riveting espionage thriller. I was rushed this morning because I had to just go ahead and finish that section all in one sitting (I read w/ breakfast before the gym). I couldn’t put it down once it was nearing its end.

Brilliant, brilliant work, I highly recommend it.