yeah, I usually think of books the same way as someone telling me a story

like, if my mom goes “and then I went to the bank and saw Judy there” I don’t picture the bank and Judy, I just kinda acknowledge the existence of both in my head, idk how to explain it

it depends, this may be survivorship bias, because when a brother is a villain, it is usually the eldest

however, when a brother isn’t the villain, the protagonist is usually the firstborn. especially in the Fairy Books, there’s a bunch of mentions of “so-and-so had other 19 younger brothers and sisters” and things like that

War and Peace really struck a chord with me, especially Pierre and Andrei. Something about how they go through what would be a full character arc in another book, and then… keep living, and growing, and changing. Pierre tries a bunch of stuff in finding happiness in life, some of it sticks, some doesn’t, but the way both of them keep persevering got me really hard.

But it’s not though. As I said in another comment, it’s like when movie directors keep releasing director’s cuts and ruining their own movie, or when comicbook artists retcon stories from way before with new coloring that looks like ass because “new audiences wouldn’t like the old stuff”.

For an author to try and grab the stuff they published, which is now out there and which people have read, and to try and rework that and change the whole of the prose, it’s a shitty cash grab that more often than not takes the old stuff from circulation.

It’s like when George Lucas did the whole special effects things in the original Star Wars trilogy and took the original versions from circulation, as if he was the sole arbiter of all things Star Wars and not like his work of art had entered pop culture - and, therefore, isn’t just his to keep tinkering.

Don’t sound too patronizing now.

Also, it’s a work of art, it’s not a car or personal property. It’s like when George Lucas thought it fitting to change everything up in the prequels, then remove the older versions from circulations. It’s presumptuous of the author to think they hold the sole truth about something just because they wrote it years ago, and modernizing the prose is just a cash grab.

Also I don’t think the author gets to do that. That story isn’t theirs to do as they please, it’s been put out there, it belongs to everyone who’s read it.

I’ve read the whole thing with notations. It’s really indefensable. Not just because it’s like if Von Mises snorted too much cocaine but also because of all the weirdly rapey stuff, the implications that the oil baron somehow dug all the oil fields himself, the stupid ass scenario of “the entire world fell and just the US is the bastion of liberty”…

It would be mid if it were a short story or a collection of them. As 3 huge tomes, it’s exactly as bad as War and Peace is good. It’s only persuasive if one has the reading comprehension of an 8th grader.

Arguably a villain protagonist, but Frank Chalmers from Red Mars always gets under my skin. He’s a coward, awful, asshole murderer who basically jeopardizes the colonization of Mars and the revolution for a couple bucks. Hate that guy.

I’m blanking on most villains though, going over the books I’ve read in the past couple of years, none has a villain that really stands out. War and Peace has no villain except maybe Napoleon and smaller, localized villains; Frankenstein has both Frankenstein and the Creature but I wouldn’t call either "the most evil villain ever; Piranesi has villains but they aren’t that evil…

I think the most evil one would probably be, idk, Hitler in Slaughterhouse 5 or Paul Atreides, or any of these mass murderers.

I’d put Sauron there though because of the building of a slave army hellbent in being evil.

To me it’s the exact opposite. If I stop to think about stuff, I lose where I am in the book and make myself more confused. Plus, if it’s words on a screen, it feels much more passive to me.

With audiobooks, it feels like it’s someone talking or explaining something to me, and I naturally pay more attention to that than to stuff I read, so even if I do have to pause to reflect a bit, it’s much easier for me to pick up where I left off with an audiobook.

Not only him, but Mercedes too. Sure she married Fernand due to resignation at first, but it was 18 years married. She has a son whom she loves, she lives a life that may not be super happy but it’s still her life.

There’s a couple little moments when Dantes meets Mercedes that feel to me like Mercedes is more worried about Dantes’ vengeance than wants to get back to him. Like, she literally has to beg him for her son’s life, I don’t think you do that to someone you see as your former lover now returned, you do that to a spirit of revenge.

Also, Dumas goes out of his way to show how Fernand really cares about Mercedes and Albert, Albert himself was raised quite well, and that’s gotta count for something. Fernand would rather kill himself rather than let his wife and son live in shame.