Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
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Notes -
I finished
Freedomthis past week. In short, I think it's one of the best books I've read in a long time.So few writers can pull off truly distinct characters without dressing them up in a variety of cultures or ethnicities. They had their own beliefs, decision-making process, and appearance to everyone else. In short, they all felt real.
Some of them were actually better than others, which seems like something other novelists are allergic to admitting when writing a book that's about just people. Other books devolve into sloppy morally-ambiguous mess, which was cool when I was 13 and is now totally insufferable.
Franzen apparently wrote it primarily before the culture war amped up, with it being published in 2010. I shudder to think what would have happened if he'd done it any later.
So many little things just stuck out and made me stop to think and savor. The way he writes about 9/11 felt like it captured what both it and Covid meant to me. Midwestern culture that so many people overlook and don't appreciate. The ways that love and lust and beauty influence us.
Any more and I'll spoil it, but I've already recommended it to 3 people and I don't do that as a rule.
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