Troll

Shocked to learn C's taste in books is as bad as his taste in video games.

Ordered a ton of 19th century stuff because I've read so little from that era: Shelley - Frankenstein Hugo - Les Miserables Dumas - The Three Musketeers Stoker - Dracula Joyce - Ulysses Bronte - Wuthering Heights Conan-Doyle - A Study in Scarlet Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Grey Hardy - Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Far From the Madding Crowd Dickens - Great Expectations Eliot - Middlemarch Dostoyevsky - Crime and Punishment

Revising this down to a 4/5 because Come and See was so much more powerful.

Nothing like Strange and Norrell really, apart from the setting (alternate history in Victorian times). Closest thing I've read to it is The Secret History. It's critical of our Imperial past and colonialism in a way that only a foreigner could manage, but she understands our culture and our country like a local.

Babel by RF Kuang. Absolutely furious that a 25 year old Chinese lass has written a book set in Victorian England that's this good.

Come and See - Jesus fuck. 5/5

All Quiet on the Western Front - like a feature length version of the final scene in Blackadder. Harrowing. 5/5

I'm avoiding Redemption of Time, it's just fanfiction that the publisher tried to cash in on.

I don't think it's even the most batshit film nominated this year.

Get the fuck in Get the fuck out.

In. Hopefully for longer this time.

What's the most highbrow/clever book you've ever read? I've never dreamed of going near Ulysses or Tolstoy/Dostoyevsky, and probably wouldn't touch Proust with a bargepole. I think it'd probably be Lolita or something by Kafka. Maybe Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Too much is lost in translation, to read it properly you really need to learn French first then read the original.

Is that the one about spider aliens?