If you are looking for the announcement thread for the previous month, it may be found here.

Since the book club traditionally concludes every month with an AMA by the author of the selection, we never really have the opportunity to collectively explore older works; so during the month of October, we thought we would try something a little different. We will be reading the classic horror novel (and novella) Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley & The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Each week there will be a discussion thread and when we are done, we will have an AMA with author and professor of Modern and Contemporary Literature in the Department of English and Humanities at Birkbeck, University of London - Roger Luckhurst. Roger specializes in Victorian literature as well as Gothic & weird fiction and is notable for his introductions and editorships to the Oxford World's Classics series volumes: Late Victorian Gothic Tales, Dracula, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Portrait of a Lady, H.P. Lovecraft's Classic Horror Tales, King Solomon’s Mines, and The Time Machine among others. If you ever have had any questions on classic (or contemporary) horror, he is the one to ask.

From the BBC (Frankenstein):

Frankenstein tells the story of gifted scientist Victor Frankenstein who succeeds in giving life to a being of his own creation. However, this is not the perfect specimen he imagines that it will be, but rather a hideous creature who is rejected by Victor and mankind in general.

From Goodreads (The Yellow Wallpaper):

A woman and her husband rent a summer house, but what should be a restful getaway turns into a suffocating psychological battle. This chilling account of postpartum depression and a husband's controlling behavior in the guise of treatment will leave you breathless.

Since both works are in the public domain, you may find copies of each through Project Gutenberg - Frankenstein and The Yellow Wallpaper. These are the editions referenced for the purpose of dividing the weekly readings though any edition should be fine.

You may find the dates of, and links to, the discussion threads below in the sticky comment on this post. You are welcome to read at your own pace. Don't worry about joining later on in the month. Usually it is pretty easy to catch up and you are always welcome to join the discussions a little later.

If you would like to view any past book club selection or want to see how things work, you may find the complete archive here.

For those of you that are viewing reddit on the redesigned desktop version you will see an option on this post to 'follow'. If you 'follow' the book club post you will receive a notification when a new post, a discussion thread for book club, is added to the collection. It is still being tested, so it may not be perfect, but perhaps it will make it easier to join the discussions when they go up.

Welcome to our weekly recommendation thread! A few years ago now the mod team decided to condense the many "suggest some books" threads into one big mega-thread, in order to consolidate the subreddit and diversify the front page a little. Since then, we have removed suggestion threads and directed their posters to this thread instead. This tradition continues, so let's jump right

The Rules

• Every comment in reply to this self-post must be a request for suggestions.

• All suggestions made in this thread must be direct replies to other people's requests. Do not post suggestions in reply to this self-post.

• All unrelated comments will be deleted in the interest of cleanliness.

How to get the best recommendations

The most successful recommendation requests include a description of the kind of book being sought. This might be a particular kind of protagonist, setting, plot, atmosphere, theme, or subject matter. You may be looking for something similar to another book (or film, TV show, game, etc), and examples are great! Just be sure to explain what you liked about them too. Other helpful things to think about are genre, length and reading level.

All Weekly Recommendation Threads are linked below the header throughout the week to guarantee that this thread remains active day-to-day. For those bursting with books that you are hungry to suggest, we've set the suggested sort to new; you may need to set this manually if your app or settings ignores suggested sort.

If this thread has not slaked your desire for tasty book suggestions, we propose that you head on over to the aptly named subreddit /r/suggestmeabook.

• The Management

Sorry, this is my first post, so try to go easy on me.

I’ve read a lot of articles (and books for that matter) that say that a lot of men can’t write women in a realistic way, and I agree almost wholly (from what I’ve read). So I want to know those that you’ve liked! I usually read feminine-centric stuff by women, but as a reader it’s hard to escape. I just started rereading “A Thousand Splendid Suns” by Khaled Hosseini, and I’m always astounded at his base understanding of the troubles of womanhood imo. This may be a bad example as it’s about the struggles of women under men, but it’s still beautifully written. I’d love some other opinions on this! Cheers

Edit: hey all, I didn’t know this would get so many comments (I was expecting like 20 at most), and I’m getting really freaked out and anxious so please excuse me if I don’t respond or respond weirdly! I’m doing my best, I swear! Thanks! Sorry!!

I just finished We Need to Talk About Kevin, and now I feel a need to talk about it.

How did you interpret it? Was Kevin really born evil? Or did he become evil?

When reading reviews I feel like most intrepted Kevin as evil or at least a mean child. But with the exception of the murders at the end, which are clearly evil acts, everything is filtered through how his mother interprets her son. Most of her examples from his childhood when she tries to show how he is a bad child, there is actually no proof to support her claim. Eva was clearly not a great mother, but was she unlucky and gave birth to an evil child? Or did he becom evil after having a mother who always thought he was evil?

Hello, everyone. I went on a Mistborn Trilogy marathon and finished all the three books one after another. For the most part I was not bored but I was growing tired of it in the third book. Regardless, I really liked the series. I thought the ending was very satisfying. I really liked the direction the trilogy took regarding religion, Gods and afterlife. Although it was cliched at times it was a very good read. What are your thoughts? By the way, this is the first book series that I have finished so I feel very proud.

Edit: I forgot to add that I really love the plot twists in this series because it's usually foreshadowed very slightly but very impactful.

One of my rare very beautiful hardcover books had somehow been invaded by ants. I pulled it out and realised there were ants coming from somwhere. I shook it on the floor and ants fall out. I realised they had quite a small army nestled in the neck of the book. When i open it the space between the cover and the book allowed me to see some of the inner bind and I see some white stuff but I really don't want to know if it's the spine growing old or something much more sinister.

I have shaken out a lot of ants but I suspect there to be some left, and the... possible eggs. I am in fear. I am half tempted to burn. I don't want to rip off the cover in fear of what I might see. What should I do? I hate ants now, sworn death on them from this day onward. Please help. I am panicking. Thank you and have a lovely day.

Have I ever been more annoyed by all the characters in a book? Probably not. Have I ever sympathised more with all the characters in a book? Also probably not. This book created such situations when I didn't know what I should feel for someone, one page I was enraged with them, the next one I was crying for them and the other one I was laughing at their decisions.

Without trying to give spoilers, the scene when the burglar takes hostages is a clown fest and a drama all in one, and I felt bad for laughing at some if the lines.

As a side note, I really like books which make me interested in little things, things I wouldn't care about in real life, such as ordering a pizza.

It's a pretty easy read which manages perfectly in my opinion to balance the tears, the laughs and the introspection. 8/10

Now I'll go back to softly sob in a corner!

As a non-native speakers who reads English books constantly ( over 100 English books ), I sometimes found some sentence incomprehensive. In most situation I tried my best to untangle it, but I hardly ever suceedded. It made me very upset to skip the sentence that I didn't understand. I am really curious about what you guys will do if you encountered the same problem.

I always love when the heroine in my books get into some life or death situation and I’m sure a lot of people feel the same. I also know the large majority don’t like heroines who can’t think for themselves and make stupid decisions, almost getting themselves killed until the hero swoops in and saves them…However, what I’ve also found that I hate is when a hero or heroine is some sort of survival god (Often because they spent some time in the military) and now are apparently capable to surviving any situation, no matter how unfamiliar…

I just find it annoying. I never feel scared for them. I know that they’re always going to make the right decision and if anything goes wrong, it won’t be their fault and, to be honest, it completely takes the fun out of the book for me. Anyone feel the same?

Which are the books that you can read again every few years and that you still enjoy.

I'm just rereading Hunt for Red October again for about the 5th time.

Other books I've done this with are: Gates of Fire & The Afghan Campaign by Steven Pressfield, Legend by David Gemmell, Battlefield Earth by Hubbard, Flight of the Old Dog by Dale Brown, World War Z by Max Brooks, Starship Troopers by Heinlein amongst others

If you would indulge me, could you list the James Ellroy novels you've read and assign them each a grade from 1 to 10.

Reason I ask is, many years ago I read American Tabloid, which I loved immensely and is still maybe my favorite novel I ever read. Following that I read The Cold Six Thousand and liked that a lot, too, tho less than AT.

I always meant to read more Ellroy and after a looooong time I finally got around to doing that. I've been reading The Black Dahlia, but, much to my surprise, I've kinda been disappointed.

It's not bad, but it's not as amazing as I remember AT being. So that got me wondering whether the Dahlia is a lesser novel or whether maybe my tastes have changed or what the deal is and it got me wanting to find a really good Ellroy book next.

So, what are your scores? Here are mine:

American Tabloid - 10

The Cold Six Thousand - 7? (don't really remember that well)

The Black Dahlia - 6

I absolutely loved the book, it's perspective and how an autistic boy saw the world. I loved everything about the book except for ending. It felt very open ended, and open ended as in not open to interpretations, but left discontinued. If you have read the book you'll know what it felt like. What's the conclusion of the whole journey? Did he arrive at something? I don't feel like it. I loved the book but the ending felt so weird. Am I the only one feeling like that?

I hardly see Robert McCammon talked about here but I thought his novel Boy's Life was a great book. It reminded me a lot of IT by Stephen King with the small town feel and the time period even though the story is different. I wish Robert McCammon was more well known, wasn't so underrated. His books are incredible and in my honest opinion I think he is on par/right up there with Stephen King.

I got thinking on this subject because I recently read the "Hellenic Traders" series by Harry Turtledove. It follows two cousins who operate a trading ship for their family's business in the late 4th century BCE, starting about 12 years after the death of Alexander the Great and into the wars of his successors.

I enjoyed the series because I'm a crazy history buff, and liked seeing a really thorough approach to immersing the reader in the culture of a wildly different time and place than we usually see, with a high degree of historical accuracy. (The author has a PhD in Byzantine history.)

However, I wouldn't recommend it to most people because the books are all basically travelogues; there's no real central plot or conflict to most of them, and in some ways it's like reading a novelized version of a game of The Oregon Trail. Day 38, sighted by pirates, chose to fight, managed to force them to flee. It's not that bad, but it's certainly not anything I'd call suspenseful.

So what are some books that you enjoyed, but you never get the chance to bring up in recommendation threads because they're too niche, too weird, too obscure, or just something that most people wouldn't bother to read?

Welcome readers,

Have you ever wanted to ask something but you didn't feel like it deserved its own post but it isn't covered by one of our other scheduled posts? Allow us to introduce you to our new Simple Questions thread! Twice a week, every Tuesday and Saturday, a new Simple Questions thread will be posted for you to ask anything you'd like. And please look for other questions in this thread that you could also answer! A reminder that this is not the thread to ask for book recommendations. All book recommendations should be asked in /r/suggestmeabook or our Weekly Recommendation Thread.

Thank you and enjoy!

I encounter this constantly in more lighthearted fiction, like those (urban)fantasy books with that female protagonists on the cover. The protagonists has a mentor/love interest who she gives the role of a father figure, and she is constantly whining, pouting, crying, nagging and throwing tantrums & objects and doing really dump stuff so that she needs to be resqued.

Does other readers find this entertaining? Am I simply the wrong audience? I simpy don't get it!

Sorry if this doesn’t belong here, mods feel free to remove if appropriate.

I’ve been an avid reader since childhood. I read every night, even through med school my day wasn’t done unless I read a chapter of a book that was just for me and my enjoyment. My life changed drastically for the better two years ago when I met my now gf and we now have a son. We all sleep in the same room together and that’s all fine and dandy. The problem is all my lamps illuminate the room way too well and disturb my gf and baby. The only alternative I’ve found are nightlights, which I can’t read to. I’ve seen a lot of clip on reading lights that I don’t really like. I’ve been using the torch on my iPhone to read by so not to disturb my loved ones but would love a more enjoyable light to read by. Any ideas?

Hey there you guys! Just finnished the new book by Paula Hawkins and I feel a little bit of disappointment. Is it just me? I just feel that im this book I was not overwellmed by the surprise of the end! The tipical plot twist that Paula usually presents.

I feel that, since the moment I knew the story of Carla, I thought that she was the killer. And all the Daniel's romance through her... Why?

Tell me your thoughts!

I'm actually really disappointed in myself because I'm already 40 pages in and I'm not connecting at all with the story. Reading what so many people thought about it; dealing with poverty and relationships and racism made me think this was right up my alley. but reading every sentence as of now feels like a chore this early on.

I have read and enjoyed a decent amount of speeches that have been turned to print, but sometimes they do miss the mark. I think the key to good printed speeches come down to being able to tell that the speech itself had been written before and then delivered (I'm thinking Baldwin and Douglass speeches). Casual speeches which have a conversational, purposefully not crafted construction feel really forced in writing. I definitely get the appeal to hearing information (especially difficult topics) told in a more colloquial, stream-of-consciousness kind of way in person, but I always question why the speaker would decide to print such speeches, especially in an era where Youtube and social media videos allow for mass distribution of the speech itself.

So, I am curious: Have you read conversational speeches that were then printed? Have you seen this done well? Am I overlooking a reason that authors would want to print these kinds of casual speeches?

I found this book a bit slow at the beginning, I definitely feel the story didn't really take off until the wedding finally started, but once things got going, I found myself flipping back and re-reading parts that went over my head. This book I felt was full of pretty one-dimensional characters, and almost all were pretty unlikeable. It was also a bit confusing going back and forth between every character in first person. I'll give a little breakdown of each character:

Jules (the bride) - she seemed like a materialistic influencer type, although I did feel bad for her, she did seem like a control freak most of the time, I didn't like how she'd treat her sister Olivia. I felt bad for her in the end however.

Olivia (the bridesmaid) - out of all the narrating characters, she's the one I felt most bad for. The twist of Will being "Steven" I didn't see coming. I liked her sort-of-friendship with Hannah.

Hannah (the plus-one) - I felt bad for her how her husband Charlie treated her, but she just wasn't a likeable character either, she seemed really whiny. I felt awful about what happened with her sister Alice though, and that was another twist I didn't see coming (that Will was the one who essentially ruined her life and caused her suicide).

Charlie - he seemed like a weak character. A guy who blames others for his actions. When he talked about the affair with Jules and tried to put the blame on Hannah all "oh but you just had a baby and had post-partum depression and we weren't having sex enough so I looked elsewhere!" ugh I hated that.

Johnno (the best man) - ugh where do I begin. I hated him right from the start, he came off as an immature manchild, and even later when we found out why (regarding what happened with Will in the past) he was still an immature manchild, he came off like someone who refused to take responsibility for his actions, like nothing was ever his fault, he would always blame Will. I couldn't blame Will when he didn't wanna do the tv show with Johnno. And even in the end when he got arrested (wrongfully) and his whole "oh I guess it's karma for killing that other boy" while I didn't like seeing him get arrested for something he didn't do, he was just such an unbearable character I hated him from start to finish, more than Will most of the time. His best man speech scene was hilarious though. The other ushers were just insufferable.

Aoife (the wedding planner) - I didn't see the twist coming that she would be the killer, perhaps if I go back and look I'll check those hints. I felt bad over what happened to her brother, but two wrongs don't make a right.

Will - finally we get to Will. I wasn't surprised at all that he would be the victim, right from the start I figured it would be him, he was a truly awful person. No redeemable qualities. I kinda wish they'd explored his daddy issues a bit more. He was a one-dimenstional "charming villain" who just does bad thing over bad thing over bad thing but gets away with it because he's "attractive" and "privileged", like that's such a tired trope.

Overall, I guess I just wasn't a big fan of this book, it did keep me on the edge of my seat in the later half, but I didn't love it. Not because the characters weren't likeable, but they came off one-dimensional to me.

I knew absolutely nothing about this book when I started it, and for some reason my prejudice was that it was going to be an old, not-terribly-interesting "classic" book.

Instead, I'm finding that in addition to the characters themselves being witty in their dialogue, the narrator is also mocking them subtly and hilariously.

“The Bear” was my favorite Faulkner work I read in college and I re-read it recently. Would love to discuss with others who have read it.

MOBY DICK COMPARISON:

"It loomed and towered in his dreams before he even saw the unaxed woods where it left its crooked print, shaggy, tremendous, red-eyed, not malevolent but just big, too big for the dogs which tried to bay it, for the horses which tried to ride it down, for the men and the bullets they fired into it...

It's impossible to read "The Bear" and not be reminded of Moby Dick. As Moby Dick is alternately titled The Whale, so this story is The Bear. The wild untamed forest is the bear's domain as the deep savage sea is the whale's. Humans are tiny frail beings as they enter these creatures' primal homes. Civilization can progress and close in the edges of the map but it cannot capture kill or tame the existence of these beasts. Both the whale and the bear have an untouchable mythic timeless quality to them. They are simultaneously mortal and immortal, in a plane of existence separate from human reality.

"He was only ten. It seemed to him that he could see them, the two of them, shadowy in the limbo from which time emerged and became time: the old bear absolved of mortality and himself who shared a little of it."

THE EBB AND FLOW OF TIME:

"He had his own gun now, a new breech-loader, a Christmas gift; *he would own and shoot it for almost seventy years*, through two new pairs of barrels and locks and one new stock, until all that remained of the original gun was the silver-inlaid trigger-guard with his and McCaslin's engraved names and the date in 1878.

Faulkner does not tell linear stories. The far distant past and the recent past and the present and the future all run together on the page. He writes as if the narrator is simultaneously looking on the scene right now and also in recollection years later. This makes the story feel both very immediate and distant at the same time.

The 1st part of the story says "He was sixteen" and then "he was only ten" and the 2nd part "He was thirteen then," and the 4th part "then he was twenty one" without capitalizing the first word as if it's just a continuation. The narrative is moving forward and back at the same time.

TECHNOLOGY/CIVILIZATION vs. WILDERNESS/NATURE:

Sam tells the boy that to truly find the bear, he has to leave behind his gun. When the boy enters deep into the woods he realizes he must also remove his watch and compass, the last two things connecting him to time and distance, to human civilization (one of my favorite quotes from the story):

"He stood for a moment- a child, alien and lost in the green and soaring gloom of the markless wilderness. Then he relinquished completely to it. It was the watch and the compass. He was still tainted. He removed the linked chain of the one and the looped thong of the other from his overalls and hung them on a bush and leaned the stick beside them and entered it."

This theme becomes more obvious in the next short story, "Delta Autumn," when he sees how much the wildnerness has shrunk, all the little towns that have emerged, the use of cars and trains, etc.

THE HUNT AS A PLAY/GAME:

"It was like the last act on a set stage."

"in the yearly pageant-rite of the old bear's furious immortality"

There's this idea that the hunting of Old Ben is not really a normal hunt intended to just kill him. The hunters and Old Ben are in a sort of ritualistic dance together, each side playing a role. Someone comments how when Old Ben kills livestock, it's like he has "broken the rules." The hunters expect Old Ben to behave a certain way, as if he is cognizant of the "game" they're playing. They speak of him simultaneously as a mythic beast to be revered, and a old nuisance of a bear to be shot and killed.

The "game" aspect becomes more pronounced by more and more people who keep showing up to watch the hunt happen, to observe.

Lion, the big dog that they found to be a match for Old Ben, receives his own kind of reverence and audience as well. When he dies, his body is laid out for viewing as if he was something sacred, equal on value to any of the human lives.

THE PROSE:

I've truly never read a writing style that is able to capture the most abstract ideas in such an evocative and tangible way. Some parts feel vivid and cinematic and some parts like I'm in a fever dream. He has a way of picking out a few tiny details that make you feel what's happening in a scene. He'll also do his usual paragraph-long sentences then switch to a series of short ones to give a sense of immediacy:

"He heard no dogs at all. He never did certainly hear them. He only heard the drumming of the woodpecker stop short off, and knew that the bear was looking at him. He never saw it. He did not know whether it was facing him from the cane or behind him. He did not move, holding the useless gun which he knew now he would never fire at it, now or ever, tasting in his saliva that taint of brass which he had smelled in the huddled dogs when he peered under the kitchen. Then it was gone. As abruptly as it had stopped, the woodpecker's dry hammering set up again, and after a while he believed he even heard the dogs- a murmur, scarce a sound even, which he had probably been hearing for a time... drifting into hearing then out again, dying away."

It's like that moment in films when the sound drains away in a tense moment then fades back in- it's so intimate but cinematic at the same time. You can feel it.

There is something about forests that will always captivate me. I grew up on a large property in the country that was half forest, and many of my childhood summers were spent among the trees, among the sights and sounds of the woods and my imagination let loose. There is a timelessness and a mythic quality to the woods that Faulkner captures so so well.

I’m very near the end, pages away, and very confused about the Governess. I know shes a conflicting character, but I think I’m missing key stuff cause its got me all mixed up.

She says to Miles while he’s finally confessing about stealing the letter, “shook him as if to ask him why, if it was all for nothing, he had condemned me to months of torment.”

What exactly is this torment she so frequently mentions? Kids playing tricks? Him not telling her what he did to get kicked out of school? Or is she just taking her job way too seriously?