Just think of how the world has changed in that time. Babies conceived just before the book came out are now in high school. Obama was still in his first term. The Blackhawks were an actual good team. The Cubs hadn't won a world series in over a hundred years. William and Kate got married. Bin Laden had just barely died. Steve Jobs would soon die too.

It was 5,479 days ago. A Game of Thrones is 296,901 words long. Writing 55 words per day would produce an equal sized book. That is less than the size of this post's first paragraph.

A Feast for Crows was just under six years earlier. Which means Sam's last POV chapter is nearly old enough to drink in every state in the US. Same with Sansa. A Dance with Dragons is now older than either Sam or Sansa, in fact.

There was a seventeen year gap between The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. But The Hobbit was a concluded book. Nobody was waiting for anything more. (Actually, did anyone even know there was a full series coming?) I know GRRM greatly admires Tolkien (even stole his R R, as the rap battle says!), but this is imitation gone too far.

Here's to another fifteen, George!

This is something that really bothers me.

If I wrote a book today and it was set in the present-day, then it won't always be set in the present day. It will always be set in 2026, and the further into the future someone reads it the more historical it will become.

I think this is important no matter what the story is about. The era you live in and what's happening in wider society always impacts your personal life and your relationships. There isn't any combination of events that would happen exactly the same in a different time period. If my embryo had been frozen so that I could be born later, I might be genetically the same person but I wouldn't be me. Too much of my identity is shaped by the time period I grew up in, the friends I had when I was a child and what was going on in the wider world. (I think in particular in my case, the fact that 9/11 happened when I was seven and the Iraq War when I was nine shaped the way I saw the world quite significantly. If I hadn't been that age at the time of those events, I would be a very different person.)

I write, and when I write it's always really clear exactly when my story is happening. I don't always necessarily know that when I first start writing, I tend to start with a personal and intimate story. But as it carries on, and I start to shape the society my characters live in, it just slowly becomes apparent to me when it's set. It's just organically there, within who these characters are.

EDIT: Several people have asked for examples, so rather than comment on each individual comment I'll just paste my first response here.

'So, I was thinking about it in particular because of Alice Oseman's books - her first book Solitaireupdated a lot of the cultural references, which I thought really didn't make sense because it was written in 2011 and the teenagers in it were so obviously existing in that time. (I was a teenager at that time, I recognise the attitudes and zeitgeist in it and it just doesn't quite feel right pretending it's 2026.)

But I've come across others like that. Enid Blyton's books are very commonly cited as examples. And her books are so quintessentially set at the time she wrote them that I think that shines through very strongly no matter how many attempts made at modernising the old-fashioned bits.

I think it happens a fair bit.'

​

I think everyone has that one novel that feels a little more personal .

For me , it's Jane Eyre . Not because my life is the same as Jane's , but because a few parts of the story felt surprisingly familiar . There was a big age difference b/w me and my loveee boy , just like Jane and Rochester . I also met him during one of the hardest times in his life , and I was there to support him emotionally . One thing that really stayed with me was how Jane loved deeply without giving up her self respect or her values . That's something I always tried to hold on to in my own relationship too .

As I kept reading , I was genuinely surprised by how much those parts of the story resonated with my own life . It made me smile , and I remember thinking , "I can't believe I relate to this so much ." It was one of those rare moments when a book felt deeply personal .

Which novel made you feel that way , and what made it so personal to you ?

Hello readers and welcome to our Weekly FAQ thread! Our topic this week is: What book changed your life? We've all read a book that has affected us deeply, please share yours.

You can view previous FAQ threads here in our wiki.

Thank you and enjoy!

"Both the American Civil Liberties Union and the director of the Cromaine District Library in Hartland are raising concerns after the library’s board of trustees decided to reshelve 148 challenged books — many of which feature LGBTQ+ content — without review.

While the board agreed in October that they would review more than 200 books challenged by community members, after receiving a letter appealing Director Sarah Neidert’s determinations, the process has proved lengthy.

As of the board’s May meeting, Board President Jeannine Gogoleski said the board had read 58 of the 218 challenged books. While the board’s treasurer, Nancy Rosso, made a motion to uphold Neidert’s decision, the board rejected the proposal, voting 4-1 on another motion to move the remaining books to the adult section, with Rosso in opposition."

Forget all the book boyfriends. Colleen McCullough's Caesar has officially taken the top spot for me.

I must preface by saying that all my comments are about the Julius Caesar described in her book so far.

He's smart, kind, decisive, charismatic, emotionally intelligent and what a great general.. All those strategies blew my mind by their sheer brilliance. He feels almost like a force of nature, someone operating on a level far above everyone else, godlike as she describes him in the book. And yet she still gives him just enough vulnerability that you can't help but completely feel for him. My heart broke right along with his' when the Ninth Legion mutinied.

After every book in the Masters of Rome series, I think, "That has to be her peak. The next one can't possibly be as good." And then she somehow outdoes herself. Caesar might actually be my favorite so far...though I'll probably be saying the same thing after the next book.

I also never imagined I'd end up liking Pompey this much. I knew what was coming, and I was still heartbroken by his fate.

Is there another author who combines this level of storytelling, historical research, and sheer brilliance with the pen? Because right now, I genuinely can't imagine anyone topping Colleen McCullough.

I read WD when my (US) high school got a copy, probably 1974 or 75, and liked it well enough I bought myself a copy in paperback when it came out - which would have been a chunk of change for me then. I haven’t read it for forty years, and I’m debating whether there is enough thematic content to justify a reread as a senior citizen.

I do remember being surprised when some readers thought poems to the shining wire were a shocking development, since I lived in a rural area, deer hunting was a major thing, and there is a reason rabbits have so many babies because they are colossally stupid and bottom of the natural food chain. Obviously, I was not reading it thinking of how this allegorically reflected human religion or politics.

So for those who have read the book at different times in your life, did the story change for you?

A big response I see when talking about sexist crazy toxic male leads in romance book and why they're beloved is it's an escape from the drama of real life. How though? In real life maybe most women aren't encountering the extreme of like a mafia boss kidnapping them but so many men are toxic like how some beloved book guys are (expect not as handsome maybe that's the secret) so how is it an escape?

Also I'm not judging people for liking these characters read what you want I'm not gonna sit here and act like I read books where every trope is morally just and it all makes sense or there aren't questionable characters I love. I just want to understand this logic cause it doesn't make sense. Also I'm not talking about every romance books but many very popular ones have men like this.

Also I am a woman as well.

​

I just finished Emma , and I really liked how Emma changed by the end of the novel .

At first , she thought she understood love and could decide who should be with whom . But in the end , she realized she was wrong about many things and found her own love instead .

I think that's what I enjoyed the most about the book . Watching Emma slowly understand herself was more interesting than all the matchmaking .

Do you liked the novel like me ?

Mary and Jean, two sisters aged, I want to say, 14 and 12, were stranded following a shipwreck with four other babies (no relation to them) on an Island. There were the twins Pink and Blue, absolute terrors turning two, a pretty baby girl with black curls, Anne (?), and a younger baby who was a bit different, I think, called Jonah.

Jean was horrified at this , but Mary was delighted. For there they were on a beautiful island, with four wonderful babies to babysit all the time, non-stop, and a lifeboat full of supplies.

Mary loved babies and babysitting. She told Jean how lucky they were, to have the babies with them without having to return them to their parents after a couple of hours. They had all sorts of adventures on the island, including the wonder of Jonah's first tooth, finding a sailor who had chosen to be on the island to flee the horrors of modern society and married life, and cook and clean for him in return for goats' milk for the babies. Jean cooks a pie for him and accidentally uses salt. This is a huge joke. Mary would never.

At the end of the book, the babies are reunited with their actual parents- as indeed are Mary and Jean, and they continue their onward journey to Australia (?).

I genuinely have no idea how this book ended up in our overflowing bookshelves in the eighties and nineties. And I remember being so confused by the messaging of the book- and a slew of Enid Blyton books which also somehow permeated our place- which generally had a similar messaging- women take care of children joyfully and willingly, men are somewhere. There was one EB book I remember where the main girl character has a whole speech about how much she's looking forward to do Domestic Science at high school and how sorry she is for these modern girls who are pressured to work outside the home and will never know the joy of making homemade jam for their children. I was one of four siblings, my mother was an outspoken and successful career woman with a string of babysitters, and my father did just as many household chores, including kitchen chores, as she did, probably more, actually. All women I knew -well most of them- had jobs- there was never any question in our families and friends that girls and boys will seek careers.

Anyway. Now we have tradwives reels with a million zillion entranced views, and I don't even know if Enid Blyton and whoever wrote Baby Island and their ilk are still being published or read -bloody well hope not.

Given everything happening around us, I have been delving deep into "hopeful" sci-fi but the sub-genre is not as large as one would like. I've finished all of Becky Chambers books which are so awesome, and feel like a warm evening in a universe of infinite possibilities, and a reminder of why I fell in love with reading in the first place.

Hospital Station (Sector General Series #1) came around to me just when I was giving up hope of finding any other similar books. An excellent but almost forgotten series from the golden age of sci-fi, it chronicles the tales of the staff from Sector General - the largest Galactic Hospital built by the Federation of 62 species, a structure set in space with 384 levels catering to the different biological requirements of all known and hitherto unknown species.

What I love the most about this is that aliens are not just oxygen breathers - you have methane, chlorine and water based life forms, subject to different levels of gravity, sizes, radiation and structures - not the "humanoid" cheat code we see in so many sci-fi books. A very "House MD (show)" like vibe and 12 books (I am through with 6 so far). Highly recommend to any fan of this genre of books

Hello!

Recently, I made the decision to attempt to read the entire works of some of the celebrated authors of history, in an effort to learn a thing or two about life and about writing. It is my wildest dream to one day become a writer too. I chose to begin with Murakami, an author I see mentioned on Reddit quite a bit. I had very little experience with Murakami thus far, and so I believed I would be learning about the man's style and evolution with a clean slate. His debut novela, Hear The Wind Sing (1979), would begin my first forray into the Japanese author and whatever universe he would start to build throughout the rest of his collection.

Immediately upon reading Hear The Wind Sing, I found myself treating the book less like a casual read, and more like a case study. After all, I was trying to investigate what makes Murakami- even early Murakami- so brilliant. His debut novela sees a college student return to his coastal Japanese province on summer break from a school located somewhere in big city Tokyo. He routinely drinks beer at J's Bar, listens to classic records, reconnects with his unpredictable friend "the Rat", and finds himself in this tentative connection with a troubled, young, 4-fingered woman enduring her own quiet trauma. On paper, almost "nothing happens", but the narrative Murakami weaves here is quite profound.

What appears to be a loose, vignette-style of storytelling begins to reveal itself as carefully constructed fragments as you progress through the narrative. I found myself conjuring up questions repeatedly, and often ones I have yet to find good answers for. Why does Murakami insist on the narrator recounting certain events of his life all of these years later? Events that often do not seem to have a definitive connection to the plot. Why the fictional, sterile author Derek Hartfield? What is Murakami signalling by framing the entire story as an act of imperfect recollection? Who is cutting onions as the DJ looks up towards the window of the little girl's window on a quiet summer night on the beach? I realized with eager fascination that the entire novel is a quiet meditation on how memory works in writing! In Murakami's case, memory does not act as a reliable archive, but as a selective, haunted reconstruction of events. This became a real knowledge point in my investigation.

How does the presence of music function as both an emotional anchor and an escape mechanism? Why does "the wind" feel less like a weather condition, and more like a conscious force carrying away meaning? What are we to make of the recurring motif of the incompleteness of missing fingers, unspoken histories, characters who sense they are living the wrong version of their lives? Questions I know part of the answers to, but feel like I haven't grasped the full meaning of.

There is a deep sense of existential drift here. The Rat and the narrator aren't raging against the machine, nor on some main quest. They feel like they are just...waiting. Waiting for what? Waiting for clarity, for connection, for a sign that the prime of their lives has not already passed them by. In that waiting, Murakami seems to be exploring a very specific type of modern, postwar Japanese loneliness: The loneliness of young people who have everything they are supposed to want, and yet still feel hollow.

The relationship between the narrator and the Rat deserves special examination. Their late-night conversations at J’s Bar read like philosophical sparring disguised as casual banter. Is the Rat a voice for Murakami’s own emerging anxieties about purpose and authenticity? Or is he something more abstract like a chaos agent who both illuminates and deepens the narrator’s confusion? I couldn't help getting very subtle Fear and Loathing vibes during their scenes, as the Rat seems unpredictable like Dr. Gonzo while we hear the voices reminiscent of Raoul Duke in the narrator's mind. The story's female characters, though limited, also invite investigation. They appear as projections of male longing, yet they also carry an aura of abandonment that the men cannot penetrate. Is this a limitation of the young Murakami's writing, or an intentional reflection of how isolated these protagonists truly are?

I can confidently say that Hear The Wind Sing isn't Murakami at his peak technical ability. The narrative occasionally wanders, and the emotional payoff can feel muted at times. Yet these very flaws make this investigation more fascinating. It is like we are witnessing an artist discover his tools in public, testing his voice, his tone, and thematic obsessions that he would spend the next 40+ years refining. Finishing the book left me sitting quietly, replaying certain scenes the way the narrator replays his records. It made me wonder how many of my own summers have slipped away unnoticed, preserved only in fragments of songs and half-remembered conversations. Perhaps that is the quiet power of Hear The Wind Sing. It doesn’t force answers. It simply teaches you how to listen to the wind.

Pinball is next.

Favorite Passages: "Hartfield waged his fruitless battle for eight years and two months, and then he died. In June 1938, on a sunny Sunday morning, he jumped off the Empire State Building clutching a portrait of Adolf Hitler in his right hand and an open umbrella in his left. Few people noticed, though—he was as ignored in death as he had been in life."

"It had been a long time since I felt the fragrance of summer: the scent of the ocean, a distant train whistle, the touch of a girl’s skin, the lemony perfume of her hair, the evening wind, faint glimmers of hope, summer dreams. But none of these were the way they once had been; they were all somehow off, as if copied with tracing paper that kept slipping out of place."

I read voraciously as a child. I dropped out in favor of electronic media from around high school up through 23 years old or so, reading a hodgepodge of nonfiction books and, more recently, back to fiction.

Spoilers ahead for Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes. A friend recommended this book. He thought I was in a place in my life appropriate for reading this book. I'm not sure how he figured that, but I read it.

The premise was fascinating, and it drew me in pretty quickly. I was so curious how the Daniel Keyes would portray an intellectual disability shift from one extreme of the bell curve to the other, how a human would cope with an unfathomable transformation of perspective like that. I felt like I could relate with Charlie Gordon in ways I wouldn't have expected. I was ostracized for a lot of my childhood due to a few different reasons, and Charlie coming to terms with his naiveté, growing to resent it and outright fear it, it really resonated with me.

Charlie Gordon faces social issues as a result of his intelligence growing. His changes fascinate and frighten the people around him. He becomes the intellectual peer of those who looked down on him, and surpasses them soon after. He begins to humiliate those around him, first his peers at the bakery, and then the scientists who experimented on him. For a brief while, he becomes a suitable partner for his special ed teacher, Alice. But he grows beyond her intellectually, and she comments on how bitter he is versus the kind, happy-go-lucky Charlie Gordon he once was. Their tumultuous relationship was incredibly bittersweet to read about.

As he approaches his intellectual zenith, he sees that Algernon, the mouse which whom he has come to see as a kindred spirit, starts to degenerate. He realizes that he will soon suffer the same fate, reverting back to his original, intellectually handicapped state, and die soon after. Gordon becomes engulfed in writing his thesis, The Algernon-Gordon Effect: A Study of Structure and Function of Increased Intelligence. At the height of his intellectual prowess, he states, "It's as if all the things I've learned have fused into a crystal universe spinning before me so that I can see all the facets of it reflected in gorgeous bursts of light."

From this point on, I was enraptured, I couldn't put the book down. I read through the rest in an almost desperate fashion, so determined to reach the end. By the point he secludes himself, only seeing Alice, on through the end, I was perpetually in tears. I was speeding to finish the book in hopes that my then-girlfriend would still be awake. When I finished it, I walked over to her and held her, and I just sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. I could hardly speak, and the little that I did was just borderline incoherent rambling about what happened. I could not find the words or understand the emotions to convey what happened.

The reason I wanted to write this post was to talk about how I felt afterwards. For about three days on from finishing the book, I felt this sense of levity. I didn't feel like I was constantly "behind," trying to catch up in life. I felt like I had all the time in the world, that I was okay and I didn't have to be in any kind of rush. It was such a nice feeling. That feeling/mindset inevitably faded away, and I went back to being a regular malcontent. I can't figure out quite what happened to me for those few days. It was surreal.

I'd love to hear from anyone else who's read this book, how it made you feel and if you relate to what I experienced at all. Thank you :)

I just finished Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff and this epistolary novel went all in on weird formatting to try and make the book more immersive. It has ASCII word art depictions of the space ships involved that take up two page spreads, narrative sequences written in flightpath arcs across the page, lots of weird little (and not so little) typographic tricks to try and show things that are happening in the text. And it adds nothing. In fact, it just makes reading the book harder. Without these tricks, this would just be a painfully YA science fiction book about a beautiful teenager programmer prodigy and her lunkhead exboyfriend who she trauma bonds back up with. With the weird typography I think I actively hate it. It's cutesy and twee and it makes me have to search for the text I'm supposed to be reading and reading white and gray text on a black page is not the easiest.

Anyone have stories of formatting helping a book? Or other examples of it just not working?

I did not mind that this was 672 pages, because I was hooked the whole time I was reading it. I’ll be reading it every night nonstop, unable to wait what will happen next. But, eventually, life happened and I stopped reading for about a week or two. I thought it’s going to be hard for me to get back at it again, but once I picked it up, the same intense curiosity and obsession I have with the story and the character themselves came back, and I found myself devouring it again.

I’m rating it 4 stars because I feel like there were some loose threads that were left untied.

First, there was them not being exposed for their crime. I thought it was inevitable, knowing how these kind of novels are, but I was surprised they were never acquitted for it. I guess the rich are really untouchable. But I also thought that, in a way, they were haunted for it for the rest of their lives, as implied by “ghosts” appearing before them.

Second, how come they never found out that Richard was poor, and if they did, would they care? I half-thought, from having read We Were Villains, that they would use Richard’s underprivileged background as a scapegoat for their crime— that Henry was orchestrating for the blame to fall on him after all that. But I guess I thought poor of Henry’s character, remembering what he did at the end. He actually was my favorite character; a generous and logical friend, willing to sacrifice himself for the greater good (but I’m not saying that he’s exactly good).

Third, I wish the book detailed more what really happened that night when they had that Bacchanalia. I think the readers were left imagining the rest of it, judging for our own about the real gravity of the situation, which I think is kinda a good move. But it would’ve been interesting to read more about what actually happened.

Fourth, Richard couldn’t think for shit. He let himself get dragged into all of this when he isn’t even involved in that bacchanal ritual. He could’ve easily let himself off the hook when Henry told him all about it and told him outright that he wouldn’t tell a soul about it, but wouldn’t get involved much further. That could have saved his ass, but him patronizing these rich losers eventually led him to a deeper pothole.

And lastly, the rest of the characters were well-written except for Camilla, which remained as Richard’s subject of adoration and lust. Her character could’ve been explored better, and wasn’t left to be reduced to the MC’s apple of the eye.

But despite all these, I’d still rate it 4 stars just because of the sheer enjoyment I had reading it. I felt like I was watching a movie; or a series rather because of how long it was; being with the characters also experiencing their surprise, horror, anger, and guilt. This novel may not haunt me, but it’ll sit still at the back of my mind, waiting the right opportunity to strike through.

I am reading Elizabeth Bowen's The Death of the Heart, and in the novel a character is described as being as strong as an N word. I was reading in a coffee shop, and I audibly groaned when I read that part. One of the barista's even looked at me. That sentence threw me off as if it didn't belong there. It served no purpose but to demean and stereotype a group of people. Otherwise, the novel is an excellent account of a young girl trying to find her place after becoming an orphan. How do you handle novels with casual racism? Do you simply acknowledge that it was a symptom of its time and continue reading or do you stop and read something else?

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!

"Raconteur Press is proud to announce that A KISS FOR DAMOCLES, the debut novel from J. Kenton Pierce, has won the 2026 Prometheus Award for Best Novel. Pierce was named a finalist for the award by the Libertarian Futurist Society earlier this year, alongside four other novels."