4 Answers2026-03-08
I borrowed this book to my three friends and each of them texted me at 2AM asking for more. This book gets under your skin. The prose is very simple, but with great precision, just like the author chose every comma intentionally. The themes of redemption and forgiveness are embedded in the story without being heavy-handed.
It is melancholic. I wouldn’t call it depressing, though. It’s a very melancholic book. It will make you want to stay up all night and then stare at the ceiling thinking about your own “oceans” and “stars”. Worth reading? Yes.
4 Answers2026-03-25
I was a bit hit-or-miss with the new illustrations, some were wonderful (like the new version of the fig tree), but some felt like rehashes of better ideas. But, even when the pictures weren’t so great, Plath’s words were great enough to carry the new version. It’s a good choice for something to hold while reading about the poet, but it’s not going to be for everyone. The unillustrated version is still the best.
3 Answers2026-03-23
I was very close to putting down ‘To the Ends of the Earth’ by Victor Ostrovsky after 50 pages or so of the book. Ostrovsky’s protaganist is just so passive. Why doesn’t she do anything? Eventually though I got it. Waiting is the action of this book. There are lots of moments in between the large actions where the real change happens. His writing is so immersive that I found myself aware of small moments that occur in my life too: the way the light looks in the late afternoon; the wonderful friendship that develops with a stranger on a bus where you sit next to each other. It’s not a fast-paced book that you can read in one sitting. It’s a book that you enter into and when you finally finish it, you feel like you’ve just returned from a trip – a bit disoriented but richer for the experience.
9 Answers2026-07-27
Read an edition of Wuthering Heights that includes some of Emily Brontë’s poetry. Her poems – ‘Remembrance’, for instance, or ‘The Prisoner’ – are like little windows into the mind of the author of Wuthering Heights. Of a similar tenor to the novel, they treat of themes of loss, of nature, of yearning and of longings both earthly and metaphysical. Together in an edition the poems provide a complete and moving portrait of a great author. And you shall see that Wuthering Heights was not a chance event, that it was the ultimate expression in powerful prose of a deeply poetic and philosophical soul. Some editions – Broadview, for example, and Norton – include a fair selection of her poems. A lovely bonus to read.
3 Answers2026-04-04
'Boy Meets Girl' - no, I’m joking! Descendants of the Sun is a really tricky drama to classify because the core of it is a romance but the military setting makes it so much more. It’s like a cross between Grey’s and Call of Duty but with much better character development and so much more chemistry. The personal struggles of the main characters and the professional struggles are intertwined and all made so much better by the side characters. Also, there’s this really fun squad of misfits and the hospital staff who add lots of comic relief and pathos.
As a ‘gateway’ drama for new fans of the Korean drama scene, ‘Descendants of the Sun’ ticks all of the right boxes – plenty of action and a great love story. The soundtrack is still going strong and gets stuck in my head rent free!
12 Answers2026-04-08
It’s amazing and I don’t want to read it again. This is my way of summarizing the book because it’s an incredibly effective horror story that is now living rent-free in my head. The images are haunting – Kasuga running through empty streets at night, Nakamura’s expressionless face, the claustrophobic classrooms. It does what it sets out to do and that’s to make the reader feel all of Kasuga’s paranoia and shame.
It’s so emotionally draining, though, that I have no desire to go back to it. One read was enough to experience the novel and unpleasant journey that the protagonist experienced throughout the story. My reading of this novel has helped to change my view of the manga as a medium and what manga can do. While there are many stories that consist of heroic battles and so on, this is not a manga of that nature. It’s a very slow, intimate and individualistic story of collapse. It’s worth reading once for the experience. In the same way that some people watch famous disturbing films in order to feel the shock and emotion of them and then feel changed by them after, this is a manga that is worth reading.
3 Answers2026-03-14
I borrowed ‘Is Humanity Lost’ as I liked the look of the cover. Although it was described as a book about the collapse of society, it felt very personal and most of the book focused on the downfall of individual people. The side characters were particularly well drawn and one of the chapters was from the point of view of a side character in his final days on Earth. It was so raw that I had to put the book down for a while to collect myself. Not a happy book, but if you are in the mood for something more serious and thought-provoking then this is a great choice to read. Just make sure you have something more pleasant to read straight after it though.
5 Answers2025-07-11
If you’re looking for free English stories to read online, Project Gutenberg is a great starting point – there are thousands of free classics here to choose from. For more contemporary stories, Wattpad is great to look around, and fanfiction is catered for on AO3. If you’re after some short science fiction or fantasy stories, then you should check out ‘Tor.com’ for free reads online, as well as libraries offering free digital loans from Open Library, and stories from Medium’s creative section, each story briefly told to read online. There are lots of choices online here, so look around to find out what type of stories online that you enjoy most.
3 Answers2026-03-10
I just finished reading ‘The Falconer’ by Kiersten White (published as May under her real name). Oh, Aileana’s story is just fabulous. It’s kind of like Pride and Prejudice with lots of fighting against monsters in the streets. The first part of the book is set in some very elegant ballrooms, and the second part is covered in blood in some of the darker alleys. White does a great job of writing. Many times the very gritty world that she’s created can be very harsh, but White always manages to add in these very touching moments of Aileana’s, usually when she’s thinking about her mother or feeling grief. The faerie lore was very original as well. Many of the creatures were inspired by the Scottish myths, but they were twisted in very unique ways. My only problem with the book was that I felt that the world-building needed a bit more explanation at the beginning. But overall, I thought that it was a fantastic book. If you’re looking for a heroine who is going to more likely stab a faerie than lose her heart to one, then this book is for you.
6 Answers2025-07-05
In terms of comparing new, used, rental, and even e-textbooks, sites like Chegg, Textbooks.com, and CampusBooks offer the ability to search for the same book across multiple online retailers. Importantly, the sites aggregate new, used, rental, and e-textbook listings from various online bookstores, so you can compare prices from multiple sellers in a single search. The prices may not always be the cheapest available online, but it’s a good place to start. In some cases, renting the e-book directly from the publisher (Norton) may even be cheaper than renting through an online aggregator, so be sure to click on through to the publisher’s website to compare prices. In just a few minutes, you could save yourself $30 or so by avoiding the campus bookstore, which is generally not the cheapest option for textbooks.