What 📔book are you reading right now?

[Ent]

Ent is rereading The Hobbit in a bit of a deep dive. Preparing Part II of a 3-part article he's submitting to be considered for publication. (Sent Part I in on Saturday, finally.)

 

[Ashley]

I’ve recently started the Lightbringer series by Brent Weeks. So far, it’s been an absolute blast! I finished the first book within three days. It’s a fantasy series based on a really intriguing magic system, where certain people, drafters, can use light and turn it into physical substances they can manipulate. The books follow the Prisim, one of the leaders of the land, and the only person who can draft all colors of light, as well as certain people associated with him, as turmoil rises.

 

[Rivendell_librarian]

I recently read The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne which I gather may have been or still is a set school book in some US schools. Well it has a strong central character and a fascinating plot but ... oh I found it so slow and ponderous. Now one might say that's what you get with 19th century novels but I strongly disagree. I'm curious to know what others think about this novel.

 

[Squint-eyed Southerner]

I enjoyed his House of Seven Gables more. I'm thinking of a reread.

 

[Starbrow]

I recently read The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne which I gather may have been or still is a set school book in some US schools. Well it has a strong central character and a fascinating plot but ... oh I found it so slow and ponderous. Now one might say that's what you get with 19th century novels but I strongly disagree. I'm curious to know what others think about this novel.

I read it in high school, but that was many, many moons ago. I don't remember liking it, but it made such a strong enough impression to me, that I remember it much better than many other novels I had to read.

 

[Deimos]

I wrote this in another post ( I think it was part of this thread)

...I wish they [my high school English Lit class] had offered the "other" Hawthorne novels: House of the Seven Gables and The Blithedale Romance; I would have preferred either of those to The Scarlet Letter. I didn't read SL until last year (tho' I knew the entire plot). I still think it is inferior to his other two novels I mentioned (both of which I have read twice... and "House..." maybe even a third time.

I am still of the above opinion... Try the House of the Seven Gables.
I think the Blithedale Romance is the best of the three.
Even tho' it is fiction it deals with the real situation of "Utopian societies" that were popping up like mushrooms in the the 19th C.
Anyone who thinks group living in a society where everything is shared should read this,.
The real [experimental] societies like this fictional one (e.g. the one in Oneida NY) fell apart for the reason that all such societies fail...fallen human nature.
"A river can't rise higher than its source."