What are you reading today/book club

[JewTurk]

I, like many others it would seem, got all fucked up by Normal People the TV show so I decided to get the book.

The TV show was astonishingly true to the book, and I think I enjoyed the book more than the show. I felt like I could enjoy the pacing more. (Sally Rooney is the author)

I decided to read Conversations with Friends, another book of hers, and am just finishing Part One. I'm having a harder time relating to/sympathizing with some of the character choices. Has anyone else read both and care to share their experience?

[Benson]

I, like many others it would seem, got all fucked up by Normal People the TV show so I decided to get the book.

The TV show was astonishingly true to the book, and I think I enjoyed the book more than the show. I felt like I could enjoy the pacing more. (Sally Rooney is the author)

I decided to read Conversations with Friends, another book of hers, and am just finishing Part One. I'm having a harder time relating to/sympathizing with some of the character choices. Has anyone else read both and care to share their experience?

I read Conversations with Friends (which I received through Care Share from @sknns - thank you!) and then read Normal People right after. I preferred Conversations with Friends at first but Normal People really grew on me. I get what you mean in terms of relating to the characters - I think that's why I prefer normal people. Whereas Frances and Nick are painfully passive and their relationship is ambiguous, the relationship between Marianne and Connell is more complex and tragic.

I'm mostly really drawn to her writing style and I'm stoked for whenever a third book comes out. I hope she continues to venture away from some of the tropes that seem to persist in her writing. I read this short story the other day and it's really good but you'll get what I mean.


On another note, did you notice that Marianne is also a minor character in Conversations with Friends? Do you think it's the same person?

I'm thinking of reading Murakami's Norwegian Wood next.

[JewTurk]

@Benson

Did you have any take aways from either book about how "capitalist" notions that are embedded in modern relationships were explored in the book? I recall some interviews where the author mentions how they were trying to explore how relationships tend to be looked at as an exchange of goods and that there's this implicit ownership etc that I thought was really interesting to have in the back of my mind while reading them both.

re: Marianne name-drop

I can't imagine it was accidental, I think if anything just a little head-nod of sorts. Thought interesting to think they all live in the same universe.

[Ques]

i much preferred conversations with friends, but i preferred the TV show to both books

this was really good: https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2020/07/1 ... al-people/

[costanza]

Recently finished Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind which gives you great perspective of the morality of people you disagree with. Reading it makes it harder to fall into the trap of thinking there is one true way of looking at the world. Right now reading Antonio Damasio's Descartes' Error which is about how emotions motivate us to take a specific action among the many different ones we could take. Damasio studied brain damaged patients who were incapable of feeling emotions and understood that if you cannot feel them you will ruin your life because your decisions will be affected fundamentally from your lack of projecting value onto different scenarios.

[Benson]

It's happening: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/books/sally-rooney-beautiful-world-where-are-you.html

[kickingthefly]

at the gates of heaven knocking no answer
slow dancer hopeless romancer
dopest flow stanzas