My wife can do this, I cannot. If I don't understand everything, it makes me want to jump out a window. It takes me months to crawl through hard books, taking notes, underlining, looking up every word.

For me, the only way to really enjoy it is to read with pencil in hand. Underline every word you don't understand and look them all up (get your own copy first, haha). I also make notes about names, and jot down questions in the margins. When I don't understand something, I put a question mark next to it, and return to it later to see if I have any ideas. It's like solving a puzzle of sorts.

At the very least, you MUST look up all the words. It's the only way to understand the story. Kindle is great, you can just click for a definition. Kindle is a great way to read public domain books.

I prefer physical books, so I do it the hard way. Look up images of David Foster Wallace's copy of Blood Meridian. That's what my favorite books look like. It's a little like work, but it's worth it.

Ha, yeah. I would never try to convince anyone anything about Stephen King. He's written some of my favorite stories. And he's written the grossest stuff I've ever accidentally read, and you can't unread that shit. It's a mixed bag, as it is with most writers, lol.

I've never read Andy Weir. I really liked the movie the Martian. Sounds like it's worth checking out.

This is fascinating. I firmly believe that dreams are something more than just "weird stuff our brain does while we're sleeping." I think dreams could well be connected with some form of reality. I also believe that just because we experience time linearly, does not mean that time is linear. Just because human consciousness seems to orient itself at a fixed point in time, does not mean that the moment we are living right now is the only moment that exists.

Thank you for sharing.

I liked Cell, I feel like it was direct inspiration for some of the story beats in The Last of Us (which was a good show).

Me neither. I started it right after I read Desperation, but picked something else up instead. I'm a slow reader, and I pick my fiction pretty carefully these days.

That is very creepy, lol

You're the second person today to recommend I read Dan Simmons. I'll have to check it out.

I was reading Desperation in my room at night when I was a teenager and it actually jump scared me. Like, I almost screamed. King is the King for a reason.

Ted Chiang changed my conception of what Science Fiction could be. He's not a full time writer, and he's only written a handful of short stories.

Basically, he writes a short story every couple of years that wins every award a short sci-fi story can win. He has two collections, and you can find a lot of his stories on the internet for free. Absolutely worth your time.

Richmond is a big city, so of course not all of it is college towny.

But if you live in the fan, yes, this is a college town.