I said this before and got downvoted to hell, but I’ll say it again. Like any other artist, authors tend to pull from things they’ve experienced in life when making their art. So maybe these authors have experienced some terrible things and include it in their writing

The future of literature is the future of every other entertainment medium: homogenized and controlled entirely by giant corporations that will flood the market with machine-generated content because paying a human to make it would cut into their profits. I give it twenty years at most before every industry is infected beyond a cure, and if you want human-generated content you'll have to look to the past and use physical media from the past.

East of Eden:

> Monsters are variations from the accepted normal to a greater or a less degree. As a child may be born without an arm, so one may be born without kindness or the potential of conscience. A man who loses his arms in an accident has a great struggle to adjust himself to the lack, but one born without arms suffers only from people who find him strange. Having never had arms, he cannot miss them. Sometimes when we are little we imagine how it would be to have wings, but there is no reason to suppose it is the same feeling birds have. No, to a monster the norm must seem monstrous, since everyone is normal to himself. To the inner monster it must be even more obscure, since he has no visible thing to compare with others. To a man born without conscience, a soul-stricken man must seem ridiculous. To a criminal, honesty is foolish.

> You must not forget that a monster is only a variation, and that to a monster the norm is monstrous.

The God of Small Things: > It didn’t matter that the story had begun, because Kathakali discovered long ago that the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don’t surprise you with the unforeseen. They are as familiar as the house you live in. Or the smell of your lover’s skin. You know how they end, yet you listen as though you don’t. In the way that although you know that one day you will die, you live as though you won’t. In the Great Stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn’t. And yet you want to know again.

> That is their mystery and their magic.

“There was no more meaningless phrase in all of language than ‘Cheer up!’ The only way to get someone to cheer up was to help them forget, and saying ‘cheer up’ had quite the opposite effect, only reminding the person why he or she was depressed in the first place.” - from Spiral by Koji Suzuki.

The first sentence of Elmer Gantry: Elmer Gantry was drunk. Hard to beat it.

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It took me four tries to get through it because I found it very hard too. I think the plot is complex enough, and the characters have complex feelings and motivations. It might be richer than what you’re used to (it was for me).

The show writers wrote an entirely different story, almost. It’s good people are starting to realize that.

My brothers hated reading because of all the assigned reading in elementary school where you had no control over what you had to read. They were interested in captain underpants back then and now barely read any books. Where I would do the reading to get it out of the way and then go read what I wanted. I currently read a lot having multiple books of different reading levels going at a time.

I see. Only saw the TV show which was better imo.

Poor Eponine. She has the Thernadiers for parents. She doesn’t even have a transformative supporter figure. And yet she is still able to become a good person. Her action to stop her dad from robbing the house shows true selfless love. It wouldn’t have hurt her personally. In fact if it scared Cosette away it could have benefitted her. But it would have hurt Marius. And she takes her father’s wrath to do it.

I love that you specified the broadway version over say the most recent movie. They certainly sacrifice song quality for emotion.

It’s kind of veiled. It is creepy.

I haven't gotten to this one yet but I read crime and punishment for similar reasons and found I wasn't going to get much out of it without a literary assist to decode the symbols. It's like The Godfather or the beetles. Eventually you've got to read it just to say you did or move onto metalworking or raising goats

You can only do this with books that have been reviewed/analyzed a lot, though. Otherwise the AI will not have enough training data to talk about it in a useful manner.

I haven't had any interactions with ChatGPT but this does sound cool! I don't have any IRL friends that like the same types of books that I do and I have some of the same thoughts / issues as you when finishing a book. Thanks for the recommendation.

Please use our Weekly Recommendations thread if you're looking for books

Bad take. You should still read books and authors with flaws. If you look for the perfect book, you’ll be limited to like 5 books.

You don’t have to agree with or like Murakami’s depiction of women, but he still has merit in other areas that his books are worth reading.

Okay! :)

Yes it's pretty objectified 😅

Can't recommend Murakami due to his depiction of women in his books.

Most (all?) books by Kazuo Ishiguro

This really sounds like the kind I was looking for. This is gonna be my first read!

Okay I'll check it out! :)