Most of James Clavell, especially like Noble House, Tai-Pan, Shogun

Several by Michener: Centennial, Chesapeake

Armegeddon by Leon Uris

Word of Honor by Nelson DeMille

Anything by Michael Connolly

For Westerns: It starts and ends with Louis L'Amour (although I just released a western, so stay tuned)

and about 50 others

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I don't know exactly what kind of books I like to read because it depends on the plot but I do have a genre or two that I definitely am not very interested in.

I love Matilda by Roald Dahl. I loved it as a kid and I still love it to this day. It's probably one of my comfort books to read. I even love the 1996 film and the musical.

Booktok, booktube, bookstagram, booktwt....just browse through those hashtags. Although I find bookstagram mostly for aesthetics.

Many book bloggers and websites, like Goodreads regularly feature new and upcoming releases! By following these sites, u can stay updated on the latest books that are generating buzz.

Thank you! Is the best way to follow a bunch of authors, or are there any TikTok'ers you recommend following?

Definitely TikTok!! So many authors use the platform to promote their books and I find that a lot of the time they gain a lot of attention!

"Now consider the tortoise and the eagle."

Small Gods, Discworld

"I am an invisible man".

Ralp lh Ellison

I usually place my book mark at a natural story break, like the beginning of a convo, a chapter, a paragraph break, etc.

Short stories.

Love the Bone Clocks. Re-read loads of books - LotR most regularly. Terry Pratchett, Julian May, AS Byatt... Getting into seasonal re-readings - re-read The Dark is Rising last Christmas, and this Christmas had the BBC World Service podcast. Re-read my Terry Pratchett collection after my sister died - needed something comforting and wise with no unpleasant shocks.

I usually just name a couple of genres when people casually ask me. If someone actually wants to know specifically what I like in a book, it's a much longer answer, because it changes over time and is mood dependent.

It might just be me, but I find most people are asking at a surface level and are therefore satisfied with "science fiction and private eye novels"

Aesthetics are fine, as long as the book and text is readable.

Don't do pictures, do line art. Pictures and shadeing don't really work with the printing most books use.

If you are going to have maps/diagrams/charts. Make sure they are legible. Too many times I have seen fine details get lost because it was too fine for the printing process.

A good example of good maps is the Wheel of Time Series. The hard covers have on their endsheets a beautifully done, full colour, shaded map of the world. But a few pages into the bookblock is (ususally) another map of the world. Showing the same area, but done in lineart. So same details, but perfectly legible. Where as a scan of the full colour version attempted in grey scale would have been a mess.

"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."

1984 ~George Orwell

“Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.”

It is hard. I usually say "I like stuff published after at least 1920" and hope that does it. if I say lit fic it sounds pretentious and people get pissy with me, but it's probably a fair description.

Thank you for your review and the opportunity to think about this novel again.

It's my favorite Hesse.

The book reminded me of a colorful lake of ideas I dived into, dissolved in it for a while and surfaced as a little more enlightened person (at least I hope so :Р).

"Child-people" firmly entered my lexicon. :-)

The Glass Bead Game is different in many aspects, so I was pleasantly surprised to encounter Siddhartha's motifs at the end of this novel. Have you read it?

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Thanks for the review !

I agree with you about it feeling western, but it has a pretty nice mix of Western and Russian sentimentality. If you remember the part where the Count retells the story about what happened to his sister, it felt like a western Dostoevsky novel. From the carriages to the action, that scene was amazing to visualize.

Great book and well done review.

Not the next day but if it's weeks yeah i try to reread a bit lol Memories wont go that far.

This book is like a comfort book for me. I love it. I don't think I'd put it up on a pedestal or try and say it's some deeply profound thing, I just enjoyed reading it. And there are some great characters and snippets.

"If a man cannot master his circumstances, he is bound to be mastered by them."