That's a fine list and I'm particularly happy to add Bovary-ism to my lexicon

Yes, the shooting of the old dog foreshadows Lennie's fate at the end. Remember that Candy says that he shouldn't have a let a stranger shoot his dog. He makes everything seem inevitable--I enjoyed it even more the second time, as there are so many things that point toward the conclusion.

It's 1300 pages

It's fucking long !!

It was book no. 18. So it's at least "late-early." :)

those books are the exact opposite of what OP wants to read

For sure. I feel like re-reads of old favorites are my comfort "genre" right now.

I guess a lot flew over my head lol, I'll check some articles out. And thanks for the recommendation.

In the grand scheme of things, IT is one of King's earlier works.

The book is so full of symbolism, check out some articles if youre interested. Red Pony is also a good one from Steinbeck.

> If anything it just reduces potential profit on release for the new books.

Literally the opposite—publishers make more money off the readers who will pay more to have a book straight away, or prefer the quality of a hardback. It divides the audience for a book into tiered payments, and makes more money off those happy to pay more.

It's okay to have a comfort genre that doesn't challenge you, not everything needs to be "literature" to add value to your life. But have you considered that as you have grown up your comfort genre may have shifted?

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Unfortunately I don't have a solid answer for you as I almost exclusively use audible (aside from a few region locked audiobooks that require more questionable methods), but just a tidbit regarding sleep timers. Iphones (and probably android) have a timer app built in, with an option to "Stop Playing" when the timer runs out. This gives you the ability to add a sleep timer to any audio playing through your phone.

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>reign

**rein

Like you would do to a horse.

I can see AI helping writers with stuff like dialogue or being more eloquent, maybe imitating a specific style. However the issue is that AI doesn't understand what is being written. It is likely that it would write nonsensical sentences.

If AI can reach the level of general intelligence, so it understands context, than it can possibly "write" somekind of story - likely still very derivative, but coherent. The issue is it's still very far away, if it's possible at all.

The right to their own interpretation of the text.

Not necessarily thrillers, sometimes a book just doesn't grab me. But actually the first example that comes to mind is a thriller. It was a new take on the Philadelphia Experiment folk tale, with people in the present continuing the research and dealing with the side effects. But about halfway through, I just wasn't feeling it, and DNF'd.

Now that I think about it, the thriller depends pretty heavily on good pacing and gripping prose, to keep the reader's interest and excitement throughout the story. So I guess maybe thrillers are less forgiving of author missteps. Other genres can better afford to lose some momentum, or just shift gears here and there. But a thriller needs to keep on banging away at full speed, or it just falls apart.

Who could have expected that garbage, shovelware style books are in fact garbage.

A lot of thrillers lately are leaning being psychological thillers vs just entertaining.

Just a fad I think.

This is really interesting and makes a lot of sense, thank you!

The Stand has entered the chat.

There is no reason that a romance relationship needing to be healthy in a novel. If anything, there are narrative reasons for them not being healthy.

It’s not the author’s responsibility to showcase healthy relationships. And frankly they aren’t usually very interesting.

Romance books are basically a form of porn. It’s fantasy. A torrid romance, unrequited love, rebellion, a dashing hero, yadda yadda.

And just like porn, nobody watches it for healthy sex. They watch porn for the visually striking and the taboo. People read romance for the saucy affairs.

I haven’t read this book and I never will. But it failing to showcase healthy relationships is a critique beside the point.

You might want to read the discussion thread for that chapter over at r/ayearofmiddlemarch. You'll have to search. We aren't that far yet this year.

I work adjacent to the system.

At the majority of DV sentencings in my county, the victim shows up to speak (or has a left a statement with the DA’s Office) and is angry at the DA’s Office for prosecuting. And wanting forgiveness and leniency for the defendant. Or outright recanting.

It’s amazing and horrifying