Amazing author! Black swan green is criminally underrated, one of the best closing lines of any book I've read. One of the few authors I have to consistently look up the words he uses, my favorites are hemidemisemiquaver and catamite. And I love that there is a coherent universe between all his works

From a marketing point of view that would be enough to slot it into the fantasy genre in my opinion. You mentioned there are religious people in your world, is the religion 'true' in your world? For example, if you think about ancient Greek myth, the gods and goddesses are involved in the story. So are the gods/goddesses of the religion in your story actually there, or are the people just following false religions and their prayers/rituals don't actually do anything?

This. If he can fight off the Ravenous Blugbatter of Traal, he deserves that eulogy.

I didn't like Tehanu when it came out, but I realized it was because at 16 I just didn't have enough context. I read the Earthsea books to my daughter recently, and now finally in my late '40s it all had context and resonance I couldn't see at 16.

I did the same with The Hunt For Red October, i also tried Harry Potter but couldn't wistand the fantasy words ( jumping straight to the 7th was a mistake, but reading the early ones as an adult is not a good experience ).

I was going to add this to my reply as well, but then I got to thinking and I couldn’t remember whether NA was even more abrupt than the rest or not. But I think this is definitely likely to be the largest part of it! Especially because her stories are as much or more about the social absurdities and quirks and journeys of the people in them than they are strictly about the romance.

Based on what I’ve read, most novels weren’t back then. Serialization of novels probably was a thing, but as far as I can tell it became the really popular thing to do in England in the mid 1800s, after Dickens published his Pickwick Paper stories that way. Austen’s contemporaries weren’t serializing their works either, they were publishing them as full novels.

Just read. If you don’t understand something, keep going. As long as you can kinda sorta make sense of things, you’re good. Don’t stop every time you see a word you don’t understand.

I did this when I was learning English. At first I couldn’t understand a lot of what I was reading. The more I read, the easier it got and the more I understood.

When I started I didn't have Kindle yet, so I would just skip the words I didn't understand and try to guess it from the context. Then with every re-read of the same book I did (only the books I loved), I would learn something new. Sometimes I would realize I misunderstood it, but the characters in the book didn't care so I just re-learned and that was it 😅

Now when I have Kindle there are still sometimes words I hear for the first time and I just tap on the word and read in dictionary what it means. It makes it really easy. However, some phrases there are still unknown and I do the same as I did before - assume and then learn along the way when I see it in different contexts.

That was always an option from the start, but the loss is still yours by making the cover more important than the content.

Good question. I just popped in to say that I like that series more than his 44 Scotland Street one...

All that stuff definitely interest me and has me leaning toward using these to get me back into reading. As far as the size of them, it’s not issue. I do prefer longer books as long as they keep me sucked in.

I've Bone Clocks and my only gripe is I wish there were more books out there like it!

Admittedly it has been over a decade ago now, but I remember being surprised by how much I enjoyed this, too. It was recommended to me from a colleague at my job, and I am the kind of person that just HAS to read things other people love as a way of getting to know them better. I really thought it would not resonate at all, but it did, and I felt it was one of the more realistic survival novels that focused heavily on the day to day life in a world like that.

I am with you on giving old books leeway for having blindspots. I can afford to give outdated books grace and find the parts of them that resonate. Like you, I also want more build up and characters lives BEFORE the bad day. That is sooo fascinating. Those deep breaths before the action are some of my favourite parts of any books.

I read this book in high school and loved it. It’s the only “school book” that I still reread to this day.

Too much meandering and drawn-out, dry explanations/descriptions is one of the things is one of the possible setback I was thinking about. At least over such a long series.

This makes my heart ache in a happy and sad way. My father is still around but my mother passed away almost 10 years ago. My dad is a HUGE Douglas Adams Fan, and in the 80’s even took a towel to a convention to get it signed. He has that signed towel somewhere, stored in a box to prevent light damage.

Condolences for your loss, but thank you for this lovely thread and comments I get to read. ❤️

I just noticed it’s going to be an HBO series!

I don't wait. I read what I want to when I want to.

This is really important! To read for 'gist' and fluency. I think I read that this helps with syntax in the read language.

It can be hard but also having a pencil and notepad can be handy for words that repeatedly come up. I jot them down and at the end of a chapter or at a good break i look up those words. It takes discipline though to not start writing down every word!

I'm going to be 58 in a few months. My waiting period is over. My goal over the next few years is to read all this "save for later" books.

So long, and thanks for all the fish

I would give him a little more credit than that. I'm not going as far as to say he's an expert on the culture, but he grew up around it and interacted with it. I would assume it's mostly accurate unless told otherwise. He probably knows more about the local culture than a lot of anthropologists do on the subject.

> the visibility of homosexuality had a direct negative effect on same-sex affection

No, the negativity came from the fear of being stigmatized. Maybe you didn’t mean to but I don’t like your placing blame on gay people for being themselves.

Thats probably it. I just love my mother tongue and the growing dominance of english makes me a bit sad, tbh.