Tehanu is one of my favorite books of all time. I love that Tenar finally becomes the rescuer of Ged, in a way he never knew he would need, and how she brings light and joy to Therru, no magic necessary. In such a magic rich world, having the character who brings the most change be one without magic, but kindness and willpower? Incredible.

Also, Therru's journey is heart wrenching, and beautifully written.

OP, I'm glad you're enjoying this series! It's wonderful.

Simon Winchester is a good next stop.

Yes, it was very different.

A lot of male behavior became codified around not being gay at some point after this. I would pick the 1940s, but some people would pick an earlier point.

Before that, there was even the concept of a "romantic friendship" in which men would write each other love notes and sometimes kiss that was not considered to be the same as a romance with a woman. The categories and boundaries have shifted wildly.

Unless you really don't understand what's going on, simply ignore the unknown words and phrases and enjoy the general gist of the story. It trains your tolerance for ambiguity, which studies have shown to be a highly predicitive marker for success in language acquisition, i.e. the more you can tolerate to not understand every tiny little detail, the better you are in learning the language. So it's not only much more enjoyable to not consult a dictionary every few minutes, you're also training an important skill. If you're reall struggling, maybe pick an easier text for starters and work your way up.

The more you read in that language, the easier it will be. There are so many levels of understanding, even in a simple text. Start with some easy reading that you already read in translation.

Love David Mitchell! Cloud Atlas is among my favorite books and his attempt at building a shared universe with Bone Clocks is really cool - if not little strange how dedicated he is to it these days. Reading Utopia Avenue, an otherwise reality grounded novel, and having a major character/plot point harken back to Bone clocks and Jacob de Zoet in such a big way was a pretty bold move!

Unfortunately, I am not good enough to attempt this, but I've always thought that it would be interesting to do audiobook and written book at the same time when reading in another language.

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If the 'sticker' seems to be helping sales at all, and/or if it would cost anything to revert to the pre-sticker cover, you're probably out of luck.

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Alas, Babylon is one of my favorite dystopian novels. I think it’s what gave me the longing to one day fuck off to a farm in the middle of nowhere.

Next read Earth Abides by George R Stewart, written in 1949, and On The Beach by Nevil Shute, published 1957. Fantastic classic apocalypse fiction.

thank you for the suggestion!

I’m from the US (okay not really, but I use the US store), so I’ll consider this

okay so to confirm: they don’t pop up randomly when browsing your kindle? they mainly just sit on the lockscreen?

Will do. My favorite history podcaster Dan Carlin falls into that journalist not historian category. Often they portray history the best

pretty sure you can send epubs and pds to your kindle that were not, uh, purchased via amazon.

This is the one I was going to suggest :)

You know what? I'll be zen about this comment and continue to not buy books that have those "stickers" on them.

Hi there! This sub is for discussion around published literature and industry news. Your post would be more suitable to an r/writing related community which are dedicated to these sorts of topics. Thank you!

While you paint a somewhat convincing narrative I’m not sure it holds up. For one thing it wasn’t just Ancient Greece that had this different view on sexuality, it was present throughout Rome as well and seems to have been the dominant perspective for hundreds of years (until after the spread of Christianity).

The idea really seems to have been rooted in concepts of masculinity. We see in Roman culture that a free man is expected to dominate his wife and his slaves (and that would involve sex) and not to be dominated himself. No one in Roman society seems to have considered it odd for a man to have sex with his male slaves, and we even see cases where Roman emperors are notably distraught when a favoured male slave dies and build memorials for them. We would certainly understand these relationships as being in love, and the Romans don’t seem to have considered them odd.

What we do see constantly though is Roman men being shamed for being the “bottom” in a relationship. Julius Caesar for example was rumoured to have had such a relationship with Nicomedes of Bithynia, and though he denied it, the rumours dogged him all his life, with his political enemies calling him “Queen of Bithynia”.

I think the real takeaway from the Roman situation is that human sexuality is very complex, and while defining people by the gender they prefer is one way to define sexuality, it is not the only way. While there were undoubtedly plenty of people in the Roman world who we would identify as straight or gay, equally there were many people who wouldn’t fit neatly into our modern categories for sexuality, and who instead adhered to the ideas of dominance/passivity that were prevalent in their own culture. If you took a Roman from the Imperial period forward to the modern world, they would probably understand a lot of the questions we are dealing with around immigration and economic inequality. However they would probably find our modern ideas of sexual identity quite puzzling.

if you like sci fi try something by Asimov.
If it doesn't work then try the expanse. they are lighter and more current. then there is a lot of action.
Every person is different and thinks differently, you will find your habits ;)

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Trust a redditor to paraphrase an author for someone’s funeral and make it worse, and then be upvoted loads for it.

I mean, Pynchon is totally readable for a lot of people. And I’d argue several of his novels are easily approachable for anyone reading above a high school level.