How are you with other classic stories? Do you like Three Musketeers? Treasure Island? Count of Monte Cristo? The Once and Future King? War of the worlds?

Movies and then television influenced the pace of novels.

But I love Lord of the rings. It is a subtle sophisticated book. And if your characters are going to hike across the world, there should be scenes of walking.

Buying books and reading books are separate hobbies.

Re wasting money, you should budget for some fun expenditures if you can afford it.

TLDR, two secret agents, working for opposing sides, are time traveling and attempting to shape history to their specific, contrasting purposes. I liked it, but I plan to read it again because I missed a lot that I would understand better after having read the story. The perspective is based on these two individuals and they themselves don’t know much about the broader context.

This author expects you to pick up from context clues within the letters, where you are in history, and what the agent is trying to do to either promote or interfere with technological development in a timeline. It honestly would help a lot if the editor had added footnotes with wikipedia links related to the history of technology.

The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen is a new one. It only has a few parts that are directly war, but I believe it is a great book. It starts with the fall of Saigon.

Gene Wolfe. I love the Wizard Knight. It’s mysterious and moody but not difficult to read.

Historical fiction is often evaluated as more or less historically accurate, but sometimes the most accurate is a worse story.

I don’t know for sure, but I thought the Johnny Fontane chapters were referring to Frank Sinatra. I’m sure someone has written about the releationship of the Godfather novel to the real life mob in Vegas and elsewhere.

I first read the book at the age of 12 and yeah, Sonny and Lucy at the wedding was a bit much for young me.

You can use spoiler tags to cover up that spoiler unless someone clicks it.

Some of the many books that made me feel a lot include Animal Farm (Boxer), Where the Red Fern Grows (Old Dan and Little Ann), The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen and Back Home by Michelle Magorian (both of which describe culture shock and being an outsider)

History, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and We Regret to Inform you that Tomorrow We Will be Killed with our Families.

In fantasy, Watership Down, Terry Pratchett’s Night Watch and the Shepherd’s Crown and Guy Gavriel Kay’s Lions of Al Rassan brought tears.

Terry Pratchett’s biography A Life With Footnotes and the memoir When Breath Becomes Air were very sad.

It definitely helps to have some familiarity with the history of technology and with history in general to have a sense of what these agents are trying to do.

The style is extremely poetic. They make the reader work.

I love a lot of fantasy and A Court of Thorns and Roses was not for me. I finished and regretted it.

According to the father, no one has ever illegally caught more pheasants at one time.

If you look at the Guinness book of World records, you can be world champion of all kinds of random achievements.

But he is a proud dad. Who knows if someone else caught more some other time. The nature of poaching is that achievements will not be widely shared or publicized.

r/classicbookclub might interest you.

There is a book How to Read Literature Like a Professor

Keep watching lectures and reading

The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen

I love Shogun, and the rest of the Asian saga.

A more modern book that is also about cultural displacement and being a foreigner is the Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen

This book has tragic elements but also some amazing comic writing and eccentric unique characters. The fist fight at the dinner party. The author mother’s motivations for writing. More.

The book also incorporates the history of how gay men were treated in the 20th century. It reminds me of Alex Haley’s Roots and of Forest Gump.

I thought it was very well done and a satisfying book to read.

I googled bigolas dickolas, and yes it was. Interesting how social media can increase word of mouth exposure exponentially or logarithmically in unpredictable ways.

I googled bigolas dickolas, and yes it was. Interesting how social media can increase word of mouth exposure exponentially or logarithmically in unpredictable ways.

I’m currently reading the Wizard Knight. It’s interesting portal fantasy.

I’m currently reading the Wizard Knight. It’s interesting portal fantasy.

The only reason to read the later books at all is because you are a super fan of the series.

I still recommend the Menolly books, Dragon Singer and Dragon Song as middle grade to young adult reading. The series generally has not aged gracefully