Jeffrey Archer: Best-selling author and former politician dies aged 86
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckj0l401dvpgo

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Exit Party by Emily St. John Mandel- tidbits from the book launch

I got this book at Emily St. John Mandel's book launch party in Brooklyn, and had her sign it. It was amazing, and one of the main things she said in her Q&A afterwards was that she thought it would be interesting to see a character who realizes they devoted their life to the wrong thing (Ibari). She spoke of how she herself was a contemporary dancer in Canada and after she moved to America she tried out writing instead, and how she knows she had two very different lives and that there could be even more. She has premonitions, like the scissors premonition in the book, which happened to her. I think she's just remarkable.

At the launch party, people were taking our pictures on polaroid cameras and giving us the photos. When I asked why, a girl who worked with the publisher and had read the book said to keep in mind the idea of a polaroid, of seeing something that may not necessarily be true, or something like that. Still thinking about how that fits this book. Most importantly, I got a postcard of the painting "Swan Dive". I asked Emily if she had an image in her mind as she was writing and she said she did exactly, just as she did of the Station 11 comic. She said the publisher got a great artist to work with her on all the details of the painting and she kept sending it back with notes until it was just as she wanted it. I thought that was very cool. I asked why this and Station 11 both had a piece of fine art in it as the crux and she said she likes to have a physical thing tying different people and related stories together, that it's a good literary device.

For someone who writes so poetically, she really seems to put a lot of work and technicality into writing. For instance, when someone said it seems like magic how little things and clues all come together to make her story, she said she's glad it looks like that because actually it's just a lot of rewriting- getting later into a story and thinking "oh, it would be good if I dropped this in earlier as a clue/connection" etc.

As for my review of the book, first I'm left in awe of the beautiful ending. I had hoped for more resolution, a little more happiness, but I guess that wasn't ever going to happen. I think there's hope here, that maybe getting the painting back meant that Nico could come back through? I was waiting to get to that point and am so sad it didn't happen. I thought it was interesting how Nico and Kareem would've been amazing together, but Nico was with Fayed, who sucked, and Kareem was with Gloria, who didn't suck, but did become a terrible mother. So each of their kids were taken care of by the better parent from another dimension. It fits nicely, and that kind of neatness in putting things together is what made me think there would be more resolution at the end. I would absolutely read a sequel but I'm pretty sure we'll never get that because resolution is not the point. But I wish it was. What a sad state of affairs America was in. I was more depressed by the climate change fallout than the fall of our civilization, though, since I already see the climate happening, but the revolution seems more unrealistic (I hope).

Would love to talk more about it. If reddit lets me I'll post a picture of the official "Swan Dive" as a comment

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Simple Questions: October 06, 2026

Welcome readers,

Have you ever wanted to ask something but you didn't feel like it deserved its own post but it isn't covered by one of our other scheduled posts? Allow us to introduce you to our new Simple Questions thread! Twice a week, every Tuesday and Saturday, a new Simple Questions thread will be posted for you to ask anything you'd like. And please look for other questions in this thread that you could also answer! A reminder that this is not the thread to ask for book recommendations. All book recommendations should be asked in /r/suggestmeabook or our Weekly Recommendation Thread.

Thank you and enjoy!

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Yes, There Are Still New Things to Learn About Cormac McCarthy
https://www.texasmonthly.com/arts-entertainment/cormac-mccarthy-biography-tracy-daugherty/

https://redd.it/1wyzzp9
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Is American Psycho still the American Psycho?

Yes. Yes it is. More so than ever, probably.

I’ve just finished my annual reread, and American Psycho has definitely hit a little different each year. But this year more than most. It’s insane how relevant a story published in the early 90’s as a reaction against consumerist Wall-Street-reverent yuppie culture is somehow more relevant today than ever before. It’s so ridiculously relevant it's hard to believe.

If a story about a status-obsessed, Trump-obsessed, porn-addicted, emotionally-desensitized, attention-seeking embodiment of soulless consumerism who's desperate to feel anything, anything at all, against the backdrop of a grindset mindset alpha-male redpill hellscape doesn’t positively scream 2020s, I don’t know what does. 

Because everything that was true then seems to be doubly, triple-y true now. All the obsessions of the American Psycho era are nothing short of cultural phenomena today. Fanatical fixation on body image? Hello GLP-1, Looksmaxxing, Instagram. Commodification of sex and sex appeal? OnlyFans, TikTok, Instagram. Raging bigotry against anyone who isn’t a straight cis white male making six figures? Andrew Tate, the Manosphere, Instagram. Fascination with serial killers and murderous psychopaths? Hundreds of true crime podcasts gotchu, baby. And yes, Instagram too. The casual, equivalizing banality of the Patty Winters show in which murders and cannibalism and Nazis are discussed with the same gravitas as beauty tips and salad bars is as present in everyday media as it ever has been - all you have to do is scroll the Reddit homefeed to see it. 

But it’s not even the surface-level, societal comparisons that are the most striking. It’s the POV that really gets me, this time around. Reading American Psycho puts you in direct dialogue with Bateman’s inner monologue, his actual headspace. You get to see who he really is, or who he thinks he really is, juxtaposed with how everybody around him treats him, the person he pretends to be in everyday life. You get a full blast of his hate, despair, anger, sadness, and above all else, isolation. A very extreme sense of aloneness despite having everything. That inner monologue is so fascinating because it’s such a deeply private, personal thing that is both horrifying and humanizing.

These days, it’s like you can’t stop hearing the inner monologue of everybody in the world. In today’s competition for attention, for eyeballs and eardrums, it’s like people can’t stop telling you what they’re really thinking, who they really are. From Reddit to X (formerly known as Twitter) to NextDoor, people can’t wait to tell you everything about their opinions and their lives and why immigrants are the real problem. If you ever wanted to know what your friends or family or neighbors or your neighbor's kid thinks about trans athletes in competitive sports, you sure as shit are going to hear about it. It’s like everyone is suffocating from lack of attention, and it’s resulted in this driving force that’s pushing everything to the extremes. Clickbait wouldn’t be clickbait it if nobody clicked it. Ragebait wouldn’t be ragebait if nobody was ever baited into it. It’s an unfortunate truth that sex, violence, hate, fear are what people can’t help but gravitate towards.

Guess what American Psycho is all about?

And yes, this post is part of the problem. Another morsel to feed to the attention economy. I engage in society, yet I critique society, curious, etc. This post was typed on my iPhone 17 Air, as I wear a shirt from Calvin Klein, jeans from Madewell, loafers from a Chinese brand that makes excellent designer reps, and matte lipstick from MAC. Probably the most terrifying thing about American Psycho is that there’s a little bit of American Psycho in all of us. It’s one of the most Can’t-Unread books ever written. You should read it. You can even skip over the >!rat and kitty!< bit. I won’t judge you.

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Finally getting around to Don Quixote

Took a long time to get around to this well known tome, and...I don't like it. He's an annoying kook that drags poor Sancho Panza into his delusions, leading to misfortune.

I am at chapter 16, and I can name on one hand the DNFs I've had in the last decade. I don't want to consign this to the DNF pile but I'm not enjoying it at all.

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Goodreads Finally Adds Half (and Quarter) Star Ratings
https://bookriot.com/goodreads-half-star-ratings/

https://redd.it/1wz454h
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Here Are the Finalists for the 2026 National Book Awards
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/06/books/national-book-award-finalists.html?unlocked_article_code=1.GlE.eCqi.XCBpqGpVB_9V&smid=re-share

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Has anyone here genuinely been helped by a self -help book?

For some reason self-help books/genre is quite popular in the United States. But, I do wonder how effective these books really are. Is there anyone here in r/books that genuinely feels they benefitted from reading a self-help book? That, if you actually followed the advice, your life was objectively and measurably improved?

Sure, it is likely someone out there has been helped, but I wonder how frequent that happens, or if these are the kind of books that people buy thinking they will improve their life but almost never read them or don't get past chapter 1, or that are rarely if ever applied.

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The Gormenghast Trilogy - Have you finished it?

I am thinking about jumping into the breach again with Mervyn Peake’s monstrous trilogy again. I’ve never made it past the first book in the trilogy during my Summer reading time. And, it’s heading into the dark months here in the Northern Hemisphere which means less light to combat Peake’s dreary and somber tone and visualizations. And while I don’t have S.A.D., I don’t want to encourage it. Have any of you taken on the trilogy whilst heading into the Fall and/or Winter?

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Book review: Blockers, Rebels in the Deep State by Michael Lewis — Doge’s wrecking ball
https://www.ft.com/content/968d9928-fedc-4f33-9d3e-48d54d421c68?accessToken=zwAAAaGssq67kdOWjZko_txPM9OdPkjVTUIcaAE.MEUCIAz2zFJqkhml0RRBFoN0Wk76Sfyd5Pc-qEfMfzTPFfYnAiEA7uZVfKKnCm3I6mSF1vxYF-vGS8YBMhzRUrXmnyM7c0E&segmentId=968d9928-fedc-4f33-9d3e-48d54d421c68?segmentid=c50c86e4-586b-23ea-1ac1-7601c9c2476f

https://redd.it/1wz89ea
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Books that Translate "Well" into English

I'm reading Strange Pictures by Uketsu, which is the second Japanese novel I've read (the first being The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa). Cat Chronicles prepared me for how Japanese tends to be translated into English, in particular, how simple the prose tends to be. I'm still enjoying Strange Pictures, but it got me thinking if anyone is better read than I am: is it book by book or more often the language itself that determines how decent an English translation feels?

For example, I've also read Demian by Hermann Hesse and I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman (my current all time favorite) and I can "feel" a difference in how German and French are translated into English compared to Japanese.

But I also know from having a close friend who worked in the Korean publishing industry (on the international/translation side) that there are different ways of going about translation (I'm also a lifelong animanga fan so I'm not unfamiliar with the differences).

Anyway, those are pretty much the only translated books I've read so far (besides The Little Prince). I'm super curious to hear any reccs for translated books as well as perspectives from multilingual folks. And if there are any opinions on the ones I list below on my TBR.

Translated books on my TBR:
The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa
Discontent By Beatriz Serrano
If Cats Disappeared from the World by Genki Kawamura
Termush by Sven Holm
Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica
The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
On the Calculation of Volume by Solvej Balle
Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges
My Friends by Fredrik Backman
The Book Censor's Library by Bothayna Al-Essa
Schoolgirl by Osamu Dazai
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (I know this one's a bit different - if anyone has a specific English translation they recc, not sure if there's multiple like The Odyssey but I'd assume it's possible)

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Works by Canadian authors Margaret Atwood and Ryan North among books banned in U.S. schools
https://www.cbc.ca/books/works-by-canadian-authors-margaret-atwood-and-ryan-north-among-books-banned-in-u-s-schools-9.7371048

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Reading and Mouches Volantes

I don't think I remember a time where there weren't any floaters when looking at the sky for example, but very recently it's started to drive me crazy when reading.

These black/grey shapes move with your eyes and it's especially annoying when reading books as they become so apparent with lighter backgrounds - last week I noticed one that's almost in the middle of my vision and with every word I read it follows along (a tiny bit offset which somehow makes it worse).

Have you dealt with reading with floaters before? Does it get better?

Floaters itself aren't dangerous and they don't hurt or anything, they're just super annoying and I fear it could take my hobby away from me in the long term...

(I'm unsure if this is the right subreddit but it seemed the most fitting.)

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Are you someone who can reread the same book more than once the way you’d rewatch a movie multiple times?

I ask because I can’t seem to do it myself. I’d like to but my issue is this:

1. When you rewatch a movie it’s a quick 2 hour commitment. With a book you’re looking closer to a week.

2. I feel like I’m cheating myself in some way because there are so many book out there I’d like to read and if I’m spending a week to read a book it should be something new.

3. Finally I like to be taken by surprise and be swept up in a new story. The few times I tried to reread something I just couldn’t maintain the excitement to continue.

What’s your experience rereading a book?

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Author Steven Galloway ‘destroyed’ by sex assault allegations, lawyer says
https://www.ctvnews.ca/vancouver/article/main-defendant-in-galloway-defamation-case-wants-her-identity-kept-a-secret/

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Hiding in the Deeps: John Wyndham's "Out of the Deeps".

A shift in tone from the last book, and another writer that I've been wanting to check out for a while, and that is John Wyndham's "Out of the Deeps" (originally titled in the UK as The Kraken Wakes).

It begins with fireballs falling into the oceans of the world, and after a time ships mysteriously start to disappear. To find out what is really happening divers were sent down inside of a bathysphere where they report a strange object hovering close by, only for it to attack. When the cable is pulled right back up the end of it is completely fused.

Now creatures have been seen coming up to the beach, slimy, horrible and dangerous. The world is now gripped of chilling terror as these creatures wage war.

This one is complete apocalyptic SF with a lot of horror elements. The story just screams Wells's "War of the Worlds", but still kind of its own thing. Wyndham takes more of a slow burn approach with this story. It certainly enhances the dread that he's going for. He's very much one of the writer's writers of SF with others like Sturgeon and Bradbury. Really like it!

He's got several more novels, most written during his his lifetime (a few he did under pseudonyms), and especially with two of them "Day of the Triffids" and "The Midwich Cuckoos" being ones I'm likely to go for next, and there's even a couple that were published posthumously. Can't forget about the short story collections too, have to check those out also, might be some good stories in those too!

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Amy Hempel, Queen of Cryptic Short Stories.

Today we talk about one of the most astonishing authors I've ever encountered: Amy Hempel.

Amy Hempel’s stories blindfold you and spin you around until you're dizzy. Then they hit you and move into your house.

Her style is cryptic, astonishingly precise, and impossible to mistake for anyone else’s. The stories can seem directionless, a dialogue here, an observation there, then a digression, then a change of subject. But Hempel controls every turn.

She often begins as if the story started before you arrived, or skips the explanation you’re waiting for. She does not make it easy for you. You will wonder how something this nonsensical could even get published... then one image or phrase hits you. The story rearranges itself in your mind, and what first seemed pointless or incidental becomes devastatingly exact.

Her restraint is different from mere minimalism. Hempel doesn’t pare a story down just to make it short. She withholds the obvious emotional explanation, but keeps the details vivid and the voice alive: funny, guarded, alert to the absurd, capable of startling tenderness. Humor doesn’t soften the pain, it lets the characters approach it without naming it directly.

Don’t expect every story to resolve neatly on the page. Let it ferment inside you. Bewilderment will give way to epiphany. Hempel’s stories are brief, but the aftershock is long lasting.

Have a small taste, an entire short story in a single sentence: Housewife.

"She would always sleep with her husband and with another man in the course of the same day, and then the rest of the day, for whatever was left to her of that day, she would exploit by incanting, «French film, French film»."

(Have fun parsing this one. Although my personal favorite is The Orphan Lamb.)

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The trope of the MMC having loved the FMC from the beginning can't be used for Funny story by Emily Henry but it felt as if that suited their characters..

Rereading Funny story and noticed some details to suggest Miles was in to her early on. He wanted to get a cat but when Daphne said she was allergic , he was like 'cat is out'. He early on wanted her not to leave and was trying to show her how great his town was and there are other small details I can't remember of the top of my head.

This trope of the MMC loving the FMC from the beginning being used as a plot twist has been done in quite a few books, i can think of you again by Laura Layne and the love hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood. It does give that warm fuzzy feeling so I can see why authors use it.

In Funny story however, Miles was in a relationship when he met Daphne so he can't have loved her since he met her even though he is the loverboy type - prone to falling hard for someone and quickly. But it makes me wonder if Miles noticed Daphne at all back in the day when him and Daphne were both in other relationships. So not that he liked Daphne but just that he slightly noticed her. We don't get that info in the books. Of course, Daphne wouldn't have noticed Miles at all since she was all about Peter. Petra and Peter were best friends so they would have crossed paths with each other pre break ups.

It would kind of be cute if he had noticed her a little but also it wouldn't be cute because what kind of guy is Miles that he notices other women ( even if that woman happens to be the FMC of the book ) when he is in a long term relationship ? That would suggest Miles has wondring eyes and not the trait you d want for an MMC in a romance book. We already have Peter who has wondering eyes.

It reminds if my own situation when I worked as an admin assistant in a school and I was somewhat curious/interested in one of the parents and part of me was disappointed he never noticed me like that but another part knew it was a good thing he didn't because I later found out he wasn't single and if he had noticed me maybe it would have given me the ick because it would mean the dude I have a crush on wasn't so special as has wondering eyes which is not romantic ...

Its just a really weird feeling when you notice a dude who is taken, because the ego side of you wants to be noticed but the rational side of you knows it speaks well to his character that he does not notice you but that kind of makes you a bit more curious about him so it kind of sucks.

On the hand, its also possible that he doesn't notice you but he might notice other women so it doesn't necessarily reveal that he has good character. Not sure if anyone else had this sort of conundrum..

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A mother who wrote a book to help her toddler cope with losing her hair during cancer treatment is hoping that copies can be distributed to paediatric hospitals in London adding that it could "have that same positive impact for children in and around her age going through exactly the same thing"
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm8e303zj7r3o

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