Tess of the D'Ubervilles by Thomas Hardy is one I read this month. I loved the book, but it is definitely a tragedy.

It's one of my favorite books!

Try reading several books at once to avoid this.

I've read too many books to have an all-time favorite, but here is my favorite from this month:

"Physicists claimed that time moved slower the farther you traveled toward the edge of the universe and that time also bent back upon itself, suggesting all that has ever been will repeat, perhaps endlessly. If so, there must also be a place along the continuum, at the end of one cycle and the start of the next, where the mouth and tail of time meet, where all that has been exists in a perfect timeless condition, where a husband and wife embrace in an endless kiss, where a father holds his child forever in his loving arms, where death has no dominion." - Dean Koontz, The Night Window

We're going to be reading this on r/bookclub in a few weeks. Maybe join us and the group discussion will help you enjoy it more. Here's the announcement post: https://www.reddit.com/r/bookclub/comments/11vn6q9/announcement_evergreen_the_count_of_monte_cristo/

Some of my favorites! Such a well-imagined world.

One of my favorite books.

When you listen to nonfiction, try taking notes. We generally do that when we read nonfiction, at least by underlining. So do the same with audiobooks. Your brain doesn't automatically start remembering things better because you're listening to it. You have to use all the same techniques you do with print books.

Sleep Smarter by Shawn Stevenson will answer your first bullet.

It seems like bookends to me. In volume 1, she is in a terrifyingly controlling school which is hyper-religious. In volume 3, she is with a terrifyingly controlling hyper-religious wannabe missionary.

I'm not a literature major, nor have I ever read this book in a class with a professor who knew something. I just read it for fun several times. So this may or may not make any sense, but to me the goal was to show us something about self-acceptance and how it relates to our ability to forgive and accept the foibles of others.

In school, very early, we learn to read by sounding things out. But then, because reading out loud in a classroom of 30 kids would be unworkable, we are taught to sound things out silently which leads to silent reading. I think silent reading is preferred just because it's a must in the educational environment. But when you're home, why not read aloud if it makes more sense to you? If I'm puzzling out an emotional passage, I'll read it out loud, playing with different emotional emphasis to see what feels right or what else I might discover if I read it differently.

I tell my Echo to play music for meditation. They have a station just for that. It's perfect for reading.

If it's something that I have to read for an assignment, then I take notes on it. That makes me an active reader and more engaged with the material.

If it's not something that I have to read, then I give it a fair shake (15 to 25%). If it still doesn't interest me, I move on.

Get your house treated for termites. It's strange to me that you're more worried about your books than your house.

Any reading is good reading! You might want to join us on r/readathon. A user there is putting together a readathon where the goal is just 1 page a day (or whatever goal you want to set).

Audiobooks are wonderful.

Ah well, just one more week in the book club. I try to give things a chance, but I won't read any other McCarthy books in the future.

Yeah, I'm reading it. But I have PTSD myself, so I'm already well aware of the darker side of reality. This is just not something I'm going to enjoy.

Violence, cheapness of human life, racism (which I understand was part of the culture then, but I don't like it in my ears or my eyes). I haven't finished it yet. Perhaps it will redeem itself somehow, but honestly, I just don't like all the violence even if it does.

From a NYTimes review of the book: "Gravity's Rainbow is bonecrushingly dense, compulsively elaborate, silly, obscene, funny, tragic, pastoral, historical, philosophical, poetic, grindingly dull, inspired, horrific, cold, bloated, beached and blasted." In other words, it's not everyone's cup of tea. Do you really think that Pynchon was trying to write something that would be? I think this is part of being in a book club. You'll find that people have different tastes. I'm reading Blood Meridian with a book club. I hate it. I understand it, but I don't understand why it was written, why we are reading it, or why people think it's a classic. But other people love it. It's nothing to do with who is smarter than who. It's just our personal reaction to the book.

In person book clubs are a lot of fun. It's weird walking into a room of people you don't know to talk about something intensely personal (your thoughts on what you read), so your nervousness is understandable. But do go. It will be interesting, and I think you'll be glad you went.

We're going to be discussing it at https://www.reddit.com/r/ClassicBookClub/ starting March 6.

ADHD is so different in different people. For me, audiobooks make books so much more accessible due to my ADHD. But I will admit, it took me about a year to get my brain used to it.

There are rewind buttons in audiobooks that allow this. I often will relisten to an entire chapter if I want to make sure I got it. Super easy to do in audiobooks.

This is one of my all-time favorite books.