I'm not sure what to say about this one. I'm becoming kind of an NDiaye addict. She seems to have moved literature forward about a hundred years, and I think the possibility is fairly high that generations to come, if the human race makes it, will refer to our age, in literary contexts, as NDiayean. As we refer to Shakespeare's time as Elizabethan, or Dickens' as Victorian.

Now, I do get carried away sometimes. It happens. I was sure I was going to want to re-read the first story in this collection after I had finished the book, and I did not. But it's dear to me! It has moved off the printed page and into my skull and there it sits, grinning at me in a rather skull-and-crossbones sort of way, and seeming to want me to guess what it's going to come up with next. Seeming to promise that I won't like it, but it will be interesting, and it knows I like THAT.

I did have to re-read the first couple of stories, just to figure out what was really going on. I think the reason is: she seems to light up the dull insanities we all live with, from day to day, as though they were just as pointless and random as they actually are, but special. It's true; they are special. There's something very truthful about all this, in spite of the fact that the stories themselves cannot be true. (And why do authors of fiction so often say they seek truthfulness? I do not know. Maybe that's just one of the common insanities?)

But it's the fact that they are insanities that makes them hard to follow or make sense of. And you have to somehow make sense of something if you're going to pull a story or a character out of it. With an insanity, obviously, it's a challenge.

Oh I love her characters though. A great teacher, in thrall to his worst student. A servant of servants, begging desperately -- and very plausibly -- to be allowed to become a slave. A woman who can no longer live with her son, who is the only one who understands her and whose understanding she needs, just to go on. It's a remarkable collection. Ave, ave, ave!

EDIT PS if you haven't seen White Material, the Claire Denis film, do that. I watched it yesterday or the day before and it's awesome. NDiaye co-wrote the screenplay, and I seem to see that it shows.

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!

I’m Ashley, a PhD researcher from the University of New England (Australia), and I'm currently researching the modern resurgence of Regency Romance literature and screen adaptations (like Bridgerton).

As part of my thesis, I’m exploring how the genre is opening up to new audiences, how reading habits have shifted, and whether changing demographics, inclusivity, and character representation are altering how we consume and enjoy these stories.

If you are a reader, writer, or viewer of Regency Romance (or historical romance in general), I would love to hear your thoughts!

What it involves: A brief, completely anonymous online questionnaire about your experiences and perspectives on the genre.

Ethics Approval: This project has been approved by the UNE Human Research Ethics Committee (Approval No: HE-2026-3188-6413). Full participant information and consent details are available at the start of the survey.

👉 Take the Survey Here: https://unesurveys.au1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_bjfqHGgympO6n3M

I’d also love to chat in the comments: For those of you who read or watch Regency Romance, what do you think has driven the massive surge in popularity over the last few years?

Thank you so much for your time and help with my research! 

(This post has been approved by the official MODS) 

Monarchs of the Sea by Danna Staaf

I will maintain that a popular science book written by an enthusiastic and knowledgeable author is well worth the time. This is such a book.

Danna Staaf is a PhD in invertebrate biology and has been studying them for decades. And in that time, she hasn’t lost the enthusiasm. What’s more, she knows about their history. Strike that, their paleontology or pre-history. Before this book, I knew about ammonites, but not the details of them, nor did I think about how long they’d been around and the major extinction events they’ve survived (three, maybe 4 if you count the Anthropocene).

The early ancestors are coleoids and ammonoids, and they were so diverse and numerous that their presence is used to date fossil layers. They were varied enough in their shells and structures that you could tell one type from another.

But wait there’s more! They developed the first forms of buoyancy with their shells and that allowed them a huge range of territory and food. And the innovations kept on coming. Internalized shells. Shellless. Ink. Eyes. Intelligence. Camouflage.

They kept surviving extinction events - the Great Dying, The Triassic-Jurassic Extinction and the Cretaceous Paleogene extinction. Add into the above advantages a tendency towards r-selection (lots of babies, short life spans) and they’re even doing pretty well in the Anthropocene (with the notable exception of the nautilus). 

This is likely a book that malacologists, particularly paleontologists that specialize in the arena, know all about. But as a layman, this was a fascinating book. It taught me about the ones found in deep time, and about how they “innovated” along the way, what scientists have been able to learn from the fossils about their lives and behaviors. 

They are a deeply different phylum than us - one with a different umwelt in a lot of ways. But also very different brains and nervous systems. And they are fascinating for it.

Suggested for fans of popular science books, molluscs and their evolution.

1984 by George Orwell. Rightly, a major classic of political literature (and wrongly co-opted by the right, as Orwell was always a democratic socialist. That’s a conversation for another day).

Although Orwell’s dystopia was powerful and expertly written, timeless and unfortunately relevant in all eras when authoritarianism rises again and again, it is not perfect. No work of art is. And one of the ways 1984 has been criticized has been in its treatment of women. In the character of Julia specifically, Winston Smith’s somewhat younger lover who was treated as a plot point in the main protagonist’s journey isn’t quite a three-dimensional person in her own right, mostly just someone for him to love and later betray, without much motivation herself.

This is a fair take, and in my view it doesn’t take away from the novel. It was ultimately about Winston’s point-of-view, how a man like that would be affected in a totalitarian world. It’s not necessarily about woman’s oppression, or the lower class proles, or racial minorities who are victims of imperialism. Not every book has to be about everything. Still, 1984 is remarkably universal.

Julia by Sandra Newman, is a new novel—approved by the Orwell estate—retelling the 1984 story from the perspective of Julia. It’s a longer and more emotionally-detailed story, getting deep into the weeds of her life and her thoughts (so many sexual thoughts), as she has more affairs and thinks ill of Winston. Her story even even after continues Winston’s end and expands upon the rest of the world. And that’s the good and bad of it.

I’m not sure that Big Brother’s Oceania really needs more lore. The power of 1984 rather needs its brevity, its mystery. The reader is never even sure if Big Brother and Goldstein truly exist, if the tales told about the outside world is real or not. The evil manipulator and torturer O’Brien insists that history has been frozen at a particular point in time, but can he be trusted? Is the superstate destined to always win, as he insists and seems to be proven right, or could the system crumble without anyone in the Outer Party even aware of it?

Julia delves much more into these subjects, and it is interesting subject matter for what it is, but probably does not improve on 1984 as a standalone work. Frankly, we do not need more lore. But on its own merits the novel is an intense read. It has been said that it is a feminist retelling, and indeed Julia’s and her comrades at the hostel are uniquely oppressed by the system for being women. Pregnancy and assault are common issues among the Anti-Sex League members. And it is graphic, from the miscarriage early in the novel to her many gruesome torturers in the latter parts. The purpose of this sort of story is horrific, and it succeeds at that. However, this horror is mostly a character study on Julia herself, the main focus, and thus feels less like a social critique.

The strongest parts of the novel are backward in time and concern Julia’s childhood and the degradation of the state and the citizens’ freedom which she grew up in. The story of her mother is particularly heartbreaking, and worth reading the entire novel for this backstory alone. Newman’s writing is well crafted, vivid, and engaging.

The ending of the book would be the most controversial, and it shouldn’t be spoiled, but much of the unsolved mysteries of the original novel are made explicit. Do we need to know Big Brother’s real name? Old war stories from his former colleagues now imprisoned? Descriptions of the crystal castle where he lives? I’m not sure.

Perhaps one of the boldest choices, is about the subject of hope. 1984, in the end, is hopeless. It is supposed to be. The underground, if it ever existed, was simply not to overthrow the dictatorship. Indeed, on the related subject of Orwell’s other seminal work Animal Farm, that even recently had a failure of an adaptation which added a “happy ending.” Among other strange choices in that animated rut, it totally ruined the classic fable. That may go for the book Julia as well. It can be satisfying for the reader, that there may be a chance for these poor people to finally escape and be free. Yet, however ironic the very last page is, if that’s the case that there is any hope at all then is it still even an Orwellian dystopian warning anymore…

I understood this book did not contain what I expected (I wanted for pop-ethology) but the evolutionary history of the horse was relayed intelligently and playfully. I enjoyed the prose and even where I saw the author coming to conclusions that I did not feel the presented evidence warranted, I still wanted to read her view.

Then came the final chapter about rewilding Przhevalsky's horses in Mongolia.

Among the possible explanations for extinction of original Mongolian Przhevalsky's horses was the fact that "Soviets insisted that the Mongolian people settle down and live permanently in collectives"

That's pretty weird but maybe they are talking about Mongolian People's Party bureaucrats, thought I?

But no

"in the midst of Mikhail Gorbachev’s openness policy, Soviet officials contacted the couple and suggested several possible locations in Siberia, Ukraine, East Kazakhstan, and Mongolia"

Soviet bureaucrats specifically under Gorbachev's leadership offering land in Mongolia?

And then a miracle happens

"Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Mongolia became an independent nation."

What?

And this is not a random aside. That is specifically linked to Soviets oppressing Mongolian horse culture and Mongolians regaining their ancestral ways following the dissolution of SU.

It is not an easy mistake to make. If that found its way into the published book how can I trust pretty much anything else that I read there.

I feel angry and cheated. I wish I could erase that book from my brain entirely so I would not have to second guess anything that I "learned" from it.

So I have been eyeing the Bel Jar for a while but on every review or even content mentioning the book or anything by Sylvia Plath there is a significant backlash the poster receives for promoting an author that was racist.

I can't really comment on how big of a racist she was cause I am not too familiar with her. But I disagree a bit with the idea of holding her on the same grounds as you would an author from this age. Also I think its okay to like or even recommend her books despite her views cause the art and the artist should be treated as separate entities especially since her books do seem to resonate with so many women across the globe.

I really do want to try her books out but I do feel a tad bit guilty cause a large (or loud) proportion of people seem to think it's unethical.