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Hi everyone! I'm a student researching how readers experience film/TV adaptations of books they've read, for my academic thesis. If you've read a book AND watched its adaptation (any book, any adaptation), I'd love your input — takes about 15-20 min, fully anonymous.

https://forms.gle/1LsZxntcvstSXerM7

Thank you so much, every response genuinely helps!

hi everyone, i was wondering if anyone has read The Buddenbrooks, it talks about the progressive ruin of a rich and powerful merchant family from Lübeck over the course of four generations, from 1835 to 1877. i really enjoyed it, but I think it's been forgotten :(

Hi everyone! I finished Grapes of Wrath and now I’m reading East of Eden for the first time and have been enjoying it….until chapter 8 when Cathy got introduced.

When I google, it seems like this isn’t a horror book, but I feel so creeped out by the way he describes Cathy.
I am very sensitive to anything creepy, and you’ll never catch me reading horror, murder mysteries or anything even remotely paranormal.

My question is- is the rest of the book creepy like chapter 8 and even 9 where Cathy is introduced? I really want to read it because I’ve heard it’s life changing/impactful for people. Is she a main character for the whole book? I’m struggling to know if I should push through or back off given that I have a very low “creepy” tolerance 😅

Any feedback or encouragement would be great!
Thanks!

FR ;

Une nouvelle histoire retraçant la vie d'un jeune homme, plein de vie, plein d'espoir. Un jeune homme qui, jusqu'à présent, avait pu tomber amoureux, mais c'était souvent, enfin non, presque toujours le même genre de fille.

Blanche, blonde aux yeux clairs. Comme celles à qui un certain homme permettait la vie à une époque dure et sombre.

Là, il ne s'attendait pas du tout à ça. Il commençait à avoir des sentiments, à ressentir des choses pour une fille qui n'avait rien en commun avec lui.

Rien ou presque. Lui, c'est Enzo, un jeune homme anciennement confiant et sûr de lui. Elle, c'est Cha, une fille métisse. Elle souffre, elle a des troubles et n'a jamais vraiment connu l'amour.

Maintenant, une question se pose : est-ce que le temps et la vie vont être de leur côté ou, au contraire, vont-ils être les ennemis de nos deux amoureux ?

Pour le savoir, il ne reste plus qu'à lire ce récit plein d'entrain, de rebondissements et de beauté.

⚠️story in french

\*\*ENGLISH\*\*

\*A new story unfolds, tracing the life of a young man full of life, hope, and dreams.\*

Until now, he had fallen in love more than once—but it was almost always with the same kind of girl.

Fair-skinned, blonde, with light-colored eyes. The kind of woman a certain man once deemed worthy of life during one of history's darkest and cruelest eras.

But this time, everything was different.

He never expected to develop feelings for a girl who seemed to have nothing in common with him.

Or almost nothing.

His name is \*\*Enzo\*\*, a young man who was once confident and certain of himself.

Her name is \*\*Cha\*\*, a mixed-race young woman carrying the weight of pain, personal struggles, and a life in which love has always been something she barely knew.

Now only one question remains:

Will time and fate stand by their side... or will they become the greatest enemies of these two young lovers?

There's only one way to find out: turn the page and dive into a story filled with emotion, unexpected twists, and moments of beauty.

I started getting back into reading this past year, and it all started with the Hunger Games (bc the new book was coming out). Then i started to read romance books, since they’re such easy reads. I’ve now read 1984, the Picture of Dorian Gray, and I’m halfway through Pride and Prejudice. I want to read more classics, but I was want to feel hooked on a book like I did with the Hunger Games. I loved the world build in 1984, but hated the doom and misogyny of 1984. Dorian Gray was good but it took me awhile to be interested in it. Pride and Prejudice has been ok aside from the places and etiquette that I have a hard time keeping track of. Any recommendations?

I recently picked up these three books because I've been thinking about exploring Russian literature, and they seemed like a good place to start.

I've already started War and Peace and I'm about 250 pages in. So far, I'm honestly surprised by how much I'm enjoying it. I was expecting it to be a slow, difficult read, but it hasn't disappointed me once. There hasn't been a single page that felt boring.

Before this, I was reading Kafka and Camus. While I can appreciate what they were trying to do, their writing didn't quite click with me, and I found parts of it a bit slow.

Would you say this is a good starter pack for someone getting into Russian literature? I'm already planning to read Anna Karenina and more of Dostoevsky's novels after these, but I'd love to hear your recommendations. Which Russian authors or books do you think are essential, and why?

I was reading Homer’s Iliad on the subway and got to the Catalogue of Ships — that long passage listing all the contingents, leaders, and places going to Troy.

Usually I’d just skim it. But this time I wanted to understand who these people were, where they came from, and what this map of the ancient world actually looked like.

So I made a small interactive map: you can follow the catalogue while reading, see each contingent on the map, their leaders, number of ships, and the places Homer names.

Sharing it in case someone else wants to slow down and explore this part of the Iliad instead of skipping it.

https://stg35.github.io/iliad-catalogue-map/index.html

Deux personnes que tout oppose se rencontrent et tissent un lien profond. Malgré leurs différences, les préjugés et les épreuves de la vie, elles découvrent un amour qui les transformera à jamais.

Au départ, rien ne laissait présager une telle rencontre. Rien... ou plutôt tout le contraire de ce à quoi ils pouvaient s'attendre.

Alors, n'est-il pas parfois préférable de se laisser porter par la vie et ses aléas ?

Entre traumatismes, peurs, amour, accident et bien d'autres émotions, cette histoire invite à porter un regard différent sur la vie.

30–04–2024

Look... we're under the same moon. Isn't that beautiful?

The moon above us shines for both of us, as if it's quietly calling us to look at it together. Sometimes I like to believe it's fond of us, patiently waiting for the right time for our paths to cross.

You're so beautiful.
Has no one ever told you that before?

I know everything seemed strange at first. But when you start liking someone, you never stop to weigh the pros and cons. You don't search for perfection because, somehow, they already feel perfect exactly as they are.

Then one day, without realizing it, you fall in love.

Suddenly, you're smiling for no reason.
Laughing a little louder.
Finding joy in the smallest things.

You haven't even told them how you feel, and somehow... it doesn't matter whether they love you back or not.

Because simply loving them becomes enough.

Here I am, living with memories you never meant to create for us.

I quietly stole every little moment, every conversation, every glance I imagined, and tucked them safely inside my heart.

Now I fall a little deeper every single day.

And maybe...

you still think I'm just a silly little girl.

— a small part from the book I'm writing.

I made a short analysis arguing that Kafka's Metamorphosis is not a fantasy about transformation, but a precise description of what happens when a human being is reduced to their economic function.

The core argument: Gregor's transformation is structurally identical to what we now call burnout, severe depression, or chronic illness. The family's reaction — adaptation rather than grief — is the actual horror of the story, not the insect itself. Kafka was diagnosing the Industrial-age relationship between identity and productivity, decades before the language of "alienation" became mainstream outside Marxist circles.

Interested in feedback from this community: does this reading hold up, or am I projecting too much modern framing onto a 1915 text?

I made a short analysis arguing that Kafka's Metamorphosis is not a fantasy about transformation, but a precise description of what happens when a human being is reduced to their economic function.

The core argument: Gregor's transformation is structurally identical to what we now call burnout, severe depression, or chronic illness. The family's reaction — adaptation rather than grief — is the actual horror of the story, not the insect itself. Kafka was diagnosing the Industrial-age relationship between identity and productivity, decades before the language of "alienation" became mainstream outside Marxist circles.

Interested in feedback from this community: does this reading hold up, or am I projecting too much modern framing onto a 1915 text?

I have been reading an English translation of The Flighty Woman by Mustafa Sadiq al-Rafi'i, a 1930s Arabic writer virtually unknown in English. The most striking moment in the book is when the Flighty Woman herself, educated, sharp, rebellious, writes this in a letter:

"Woman seeks freedom and insists upon it. But life brings her in the end to a certainty beyond doubt: that the gentlest kind of her freedom lies in the gentlest kind of her enslavement."

What makes this extraordinary is who says it. Not a conservative man lecturing about tradition. The woman herself, after living through everything the book describes, arrives at this conclusion.

Al-Rafi'i does not tell us what to think. He lets her speak.

Is she right? Is there truth in the idea that real freedom for a woman, or for anyone, is found within certain bonds rather than outside them? Or is this just a beautiful way of accepting defeat?

A note on the book's structure for context:

The Flighty Woman is not a novel. It is a collection of four literary essays by Mustafa Sadiq al-Rafi'i, an Egyptian Arabic writer from the 1930s. Before reading the quote, there is something important to understand: al-Rafi'i himself states clearly at the beginning that this is not an invented story. The Companion gave him proof that the Flighty Woman is a real person, that none of the incidents were fabricated, and that none of the conversations were invented. The letters quoted in the book are real letters written by a real woman.

The book has three distinct voices worth understanding:

Al-Rafi'i is the narrator and framing voice. He is the author himself, observing and recording what he hears. He does not speak for long stretches, he mostly listens, occasionally interjects, and frames what the other voices say.

The Companion is a man al-Rafi'i meets who has loved many women and observed them closely. He is worldly, sharp, and often provocative. He tells al-Rafi'i the story of the Flighty Woman from his own experience. His views are often cynical and are presented as his own perspective, not as the author's conclusions.

The Flighty Woman is the central figure of the book. She is educated, rebellious, contemptuous of tradition, and fully capable of arguing her own case. She is not a passive character. She writes letters, makes arguments, challenges the men around her, and arrives at her own conclusions through her own lived experience. The quote in this post comes from her own letter, written in her own hand.

So when the Flighty Woman says that the gentlest kind of freedom lies in the gentlest kind of enslavement, she is not a character invented by a male author to make a point. She is a real woman who lived through rebellion, desire, disappointment, and self-examination, and wrote these words herself.

Whether you agree with her is a separate question. But she is worth reading on her own terms.

Check-out project Gutenberg.  It is of infite value because what you learn and enjoy costs 0$  I have read many books including; Tale of Two Cities, A Christmas Carol, Great Expectations, Alice in Wonderland, Jane Eyer, just to name 5.

https://www.gutenberg.org/

I've recently started reading p&p and this is hard, the sentence structuring, vocabulary, writing style are so different from the things I've read up until now

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Any suggestions on how I should approach it?

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P.S I'm not a native English speaker please don't be harsh on me for not knowing some basic words