I have this whole system where I alternate between poetry/non-fiction/fiction and contemporary/classic, so I always have about fifty books on my shelf and there’s always an obvious next one to read. Like right now I’m reading some classic prose fiction so my next read is contemporary poetry.

The Marxists Internet Archive has a huge amount of left/communist non-fiction. It’s very broad in its scope, so there’s Stalin and Mao on there alongside William Morris and HG Wells. You could also check out Timothy Snyder and Rebecca Solnit, who both had interesting books about resisting fascism from a more contemporary viewpoint.

In fiction, there’s The Man in the High Castle, by Phillip K. Dick, which has a similar alt history concept as Roth’s The Plot Against America. And of course there’s George Orwell’s writing, both fiction and non-fiction, much of which explores the nature of fascism. I’d also recommend Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits, if you like magical realism.

Yeah, you’re right about the footnotes. I read someone the other day saying they felt like Kuang was writing with an imaginary social justice scold hovering over her, and I think that’s about right. I find it odd that someone feels they have to say ‘racism — which is bad, by the way — exists in this society’. We know it’s bad! Even racists don’t like being called racist!

I started reading it yesterday, so I’ll let you know.

Why did you dislike it?

Earthsea is very good. It’s kind of YA, but from before the term existed, so it should be good if you find your mind wandering when reading. Plus, it gets progressively darker and weirder as the series goes on.

It’s quite different from JS&MN, except in being about magic. If your library doesn’t have it, it’s worth buying a copy!

My top recommendation for ‘fantastical […] with amazing first person descriptive prose’ is Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. It’s beautiful and unlike anything you’ve ever read. I’ve bought it for three or four different people now and they’ve all loved it. Couldn’t recommend it more highly, a genuine five star read.

Other people have already said Ulysses and Mrs Dalloway, both modernist classics that take place in a single day. There are a couple of other examples of similar novels, but the only one that springs to mind right now is a deeply annoying experimental ‘novel’ called Fidget by Oliver Goldsmith, which I don’t recommend at all. He wore a tape recorder and spoke out loud describing everything he did that day, then transcribed it all and that’s the book. If you do decide to read it, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

I don’t know if this will count for you, but there’s a hypertext novel called 253 by Geoff Ryman which IIRC takes place over just a couple of minutes, with very short chapters describing the thoughts of each of the 253 passengers on board a train. He did later also publish a print version.

Yes, the exciting thing is that they used two different methods, they both worked and they each independently confirmed the other’s findings! That’s why they’re so confident in the words they found.

The big hope now is that they’ll be able to keep refining and developing the systems to get more out of the scrolls.

Yeah, it seems to refer to the colour but they’re not sure if it’s a noun or an adjective, because they can’t make out the rest of the context with confidence (yet!).

Frank Kermode has a book called Shakespeare’s Language, which I find very helpful for reading Shakespeare, and it includes a chapter on Macbeth.

In terms of versions, the one starring Ian McKellen and Judi Dench is very dark and weird, and also very good. You can also watch the whole thing online, which helps!

There’s also a version that I like a lot that unfortunately was directed by a certain disgraced director and sex offender, and which I’m therefore reluctant to recommend, but possibly you could pirate Roman Polanski’s version, which is genuinely nightmarish, as Macbeth should be.