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' "It's time for us to feast," he announced. He had cooked a roast for them earlier...carrots, potatoes...hot bread dripping with butter..." ' Oh, how absolutely revolting.

Almost half-way through. Very odd, surprising book.

I've been in the mood lately for spiritual works. I saw this at the library on the "new" shelves, covers facing outward and it captured my attention. I'm going to read at least to page 100 to reserve a judgement, but I'm already struggling. This reads like torture porn.

I am enjoying this but slowly. Problem is, this sorta feels like that Tony Basil song "Girl with a Thousand Lists" or maybe that was the Bangles. Anyway, at times, this feels very repetitive.

Almost a tenth of the way! Beautiful, but I only read it a page or so at a time.

I'm actually reading "Narcissus" (a challenge read, a dare, by an intellectual acquaintance: we play this dare game every so often. In return, I challenged him to "Finnegan's Wake", which I'm now reading and it will be nice to discuss with a fellow reader. . So there.

Parts of this book lead the reader to think in terms on one's own past. Not so remarkable in and of itself, but remarkable that this book was written in Japanese then translated into English and it works so beautifully.

In a chapter entitled "A Map at the end of the World", a man is asked, by his separated shadow, to make a detailed map. This is absolutely "All the Light We Cannot See"I area. if you're going to write a tribute to another author, Doer could hardly do better than Murakami.

Murakami opens with the "Oldboy" film opening: a man is trapped in a room with no apparent exit. Then we move on to a BFG set piece in which dreams are stored. Then we have a town in which no one can leave, as in "The Dome". But it's all a new experience via this terrific writer who can cast a spell on a reader like nobody else.

I am reading this to learn and to make sure a Holocaust never happens again. Hitler's logic is f***ing crazy. He proposes that a "certain portion of the increasing population could be settled" elsewhere because there won't be enough food to feed them. I'm so glad our President elect would never ever think of deporting a certain group of people for this, or any other reason.

I almost stopped after fifty pages, then read another 50, then another 50. Now I know I'm going to finish it: it is improving, but if I had not heard such good things about this book, I would have closed the book after those first 50 pages.

I'm grateful there is a list of the cast of characters at the front of this book: it's very challenging to figure out who is who. It's as if Mantel wants to confuse us. Or maybe she is challenging us to learn this history (that feels only slightly fictional) so I'm going to give it another 50 pages.

I hope something good happens in this world of theft: it seems like everything these characters have (their physical possessions, their ability to find happiness, to enjoy relationships) might disappear. I'm only a fourth of the way through and the answer to the title's question seems clear already.

HELP!!! Is this supposed to be absolutely ridiculous? This is the first book I've read by this author and has Penny written a send-up of the murder mystery genre? Granted, I've had a few laughs so far at how stupid everyone is, and a town not mapped on GPS? Maybe this is some kind of secret town like the one in Atlas Shrugged. And I can't stand another "Girl with Tattoo" type characters anymore. Silly book.

I just finished a short from this book: "The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountain" and loved it. It's an absolutely beauty of a story, it feels like a classic for the ages. I'm absolutely stunned.

I've read "Heart of Darkness" and am now reading "Youth" within this volume. I'm just three pages into "youth" and get this: a twenty year old man signs onto a ship and refers to other shipmates: "Both were thorough good seamen of course, and between those two old chaps I felt like a small boy between two old grandfathers." Thinking back to Heart and the boy's love of Kurtz, what is Conrad up to?

This is funnier than "The Warden" and reminds me so much of the social comedy of Austen's equally funny "Sense and Sensibility." But both of these books must be read slowly and savored or you'll probably miss great, hilarious lines.

Thus far, I've read four of these stories. To me, Lovecraft doesn't write horror stories in the traditional sense, but does write Imaginative, wildly weird stories. And, outside of a few Stephen King books, I've truly never been horrified except with Yanagihara's "A Little Life" which is the most horrific novel I've ever read, is stocked with truly vile villians, and chilled me to the bone, leaving me weeping.

"At any rate, I won't marry [a wife} without [money];wives with money a'nt so easy to get now-a-days; the parsons pick them al up." There are archdeacons and chaplains and a warden and bishops all having lots of wine parties and bickering over each other's salaries and the only person doing anything remotely churchlike for the community was fired for actually doing things churchlike (n the 1st volume of this series).

Mixed feelings. The best story is one in which a man and woman discuss the possibility of her having an abortion. But the title of the book feels in direct opposition to the woman's rights. Maybe there is no connection but I don't like the way Hemmingway seems to diminish women by the contradiction between the title and some of these stories.

Fascinating: Hitler put into act what Twain wrote about America and the world. Twain is one sick twisted f*** and his writing is horrible. But I'm going to finish this piece of S***, cause one SHOULD understand the level of hate Twain has toward anyone who isn't a white male "Christian."

I'm forcing myself now to read only a chapter a day. Yes, this is so good I don't want to finish it, even though it has taken a devastatingly dark turn. I've been listening to "Play" over and over while reading this and a few of the songs I've been listening to during the past 17 years match the darkness in Moby's life. Only now do I hear the remnants of dark and depressing Trip-Hop (Portishead, etc.).

When Wilde arrives in America, he is presented with a valet who is "beautiful' and has "wondrous eyes" and has a physical form that even "men and women alike" notice. Wilde's first words to him are "William Traquair, you are quite perfect!" And given that William also has "full, ponderous lips...never kissed" and that William is black, I think the author is telegraphing to us there will be fireworks along the way.

I read somewhere that Twain originally wrote/thought of this as a book for adults but was convinced to market it as a "boy's book." But I think both points of view are wrong. The language/words that Twain uses are too far advanced for young readers, yet the POV is of a young boy. I'm having a big problem with this book for this very reason.

I just finished Graham Masterton's "Mother of Invention." Could someone clear this story up for me? Was Aunt Rosemary just the doctor's experiment, but his real effort was marrying his own mother and keeping her young?

In "Barbarian Days", when Finnegan surfs a perfect wave he drops to his knees on a beach and weeps. In "Porcelain" when Moby records a song in which "God [moves] over the face of the water", he places his head on his garbage-savaged plywood table and cries. There is nothing more beautiful than an artist at work. I'd be hard pressed to say which of these books brought forth the most tears from this reader.

"His being a homophobe might have been loathsome, but it didn't make him unfit to drive me around England in the middle of the night." I like Moby, I like his music, but I didn't expect these one-line zingers throughout this book.

I saw this on a shelf at the library, pulled it off, and checked it out knowing nothing about the book. The title screamed "Sports Story" and I'm a sucker for this genre. So far, so good!

About Moby's Thanksgiving, with family, in 1990, Moby writes: "But Grandma, I'm in my vegan corner of shame" as he gnaws on a yam. Funny, and you just know that's 100% true.

Almost finished. Stupendous. Very challenging to read, but worth every minute.