Recent comments in /f/books

bachennoir t1_j68hqvt wrote

Reply to comment by wordyshipmate82 in Does anyone actually like the catcher in the rye? by Piazytiabet

Your first point is one of my biggest gripes when it comes to discussing books with other people. Everyone seems to think that all main characters should be good and likable with minor flaws. Boring. Morally ambiguous characters are my favorite, because when they are well-written, they bring realism and moral questions to the story. Characters can and should be unlikeable sometimes. They should challenge our perspectives or present us with realities that we don't usually see.

I don't have to like Humbert Humbert or anything he says or does to see that Lolita is an exceptionally well written book. The unreliable narrator makes you question the story they're telling you, making you engage with the context clues in the story more.

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scarletseasmoke t1_j68hcqy wrote

Reply to Does anyone actually like the catcher in the rye? by Piazytiabet

I like it. But I never saw the MC as an "annoying little shit" or anything like that, the guy's dream is to save kids from getting traumatized like he was, his coping mechanisms are just really very bad. He's a child himself going through a crisis.

But I fully agree some things aged like milk, and some things were not handled very well to begin with.

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julien_et_mathilde t1_j68errh wrote

Reply to Caste, Society and Politics in India, by Susan Bayly by tolkienfan2759

>Here in the US, so called white guys have been having sex with so called black women since slavery began, and the "races" still are separate. So: it's about marriage.

In the US, black/white intermarriage used to be almost non-existent and continues to be rare. Racism is certainly the biggest reason for this.

However, wouldn't you also acknowledge that it is the norm for people to heavily weight criteria other than race when selecting marriage partners, the most obvious criteria being those related to money?

Wouldn't you also acknowledge that money can vary wildly from generation to generation within a single family? That a great-grandfather might have been immensely rich, but by the time the great-grandkids are born the wealth can easily disappear? Because of the fluidity of wealth that often exists between generations and even within an individual's own lifetime, wouldn't you agree that wealth and the marriages resulting from considerations of wealth are not likely to result in something as static as a race?

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charysanthemum t1_j68ehxa wrote

Reply to [Book Club] "All's Well" by Mona Awad: Week 3, Chapter 24 to Chapter 31 (end) by satanspanties

  1. I agree, Miranda is so unreliable I can’t trust her biases when looking at the other characters through her eyes
  2. I think the pain transference was interesting, because it did seem to give those characters a new understanding and appreciation for chronic pain but I don’t think Miranda was in the right to do it.
  3. I think that if you liked this a lot the only thing really comparable is another Mona Awad book, Bunny was phenomenal.
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