I loved The Secret History and got about halfway through The Little Friend before I gave up. For me, it was the snakes. I could see them writhing and smell their earthiness and after a while I felt like I was going to heave.

Yes! “Trauma fetish”—I like it. I mean, I like the phrase. And everyone just loved Jude so much, but it wasn’t clear why. As readers, we should love him, too, but all of it was just too much, and after a while I found him insufferable.

It’s funny how more than one of us jumped right from talking about A Little Life to The Goldfinch. Both are so bloated. At least The Goldfinch isn’t torture porn the way A Little Life is. And of course every one of the friends in ALL has a profoundly successful career and flats in London and Paris and summer homes…

A Little Life is torture/misery porn. Some of my friends loved it, but it was definitely not my favorite by any means. I’m a former book editor now English professor, and if I could have gotten my hands on that book before it was published—oh, the wonders I could have worked! See also: The Goldfinch.

In my world, 35 is so, so young. It’s all about perspective.

I wasn’t convinced that they are a cult until I read your post.

For ten years I put up with a husband who would leave the house for work around 7 am every day and come home drunk at around 10 pm every night. We had some good times when he wasn’t doing that, but it was basically his weekday routine, that and his crushing every idea and hope I had to do something different. I…

I don’t think so. I think they just sprinkled it in their underwear or put it on their nether regions, and the powder worked its way up into the vagina as the day went on.

None of those things works for me. I have to wear Spanx or Spanx-like undergarments. Body Glide is not good at all for thigh chub rub!

Yeah, I immediately understood from Cher’s tweet that she was referring to this ^^ guy’s murder of wild animals.

Yes. This “I’m not a feminist because I refuse to see myself as a victim” stuff has got to stop. I get it, in theory, but it ignores the misogyny that is still rampant.

I’ve done both, and I like both, although I do love having my own little house with a nice yard for my dogs. Along with home ownership comes property taxes, homeowner’s insurance, and lots of maintenance, so that can be a pain and extra expensive. The good thing is my mortgage is well below the average rent here for a…

Thanks for answering, late or not. I’m way past doing anything like that—I have 1.5 Master’s degrees already, have written 40+ books, and have been teaching at the university level for many years. The idea of just doing research is so appealing, though. I’ll be retiring officially in about eight years, and I’m trying…

He’s lying, by the way. He doesn’t believe a word he’s saying and is just telling people what they want to hear. It’s like he’s doing a social experiment.

Thank you for that link. That’s the perfect website to browse while working. Yay!

How does one get this job? I’m serious. I have a pretty solid background in publishing, writing, and academia, and I’d love to do something like that.

I’ve definitely done a lot of things alone in my life, and intend to keep doing that. Relying on someone else to go with me to a concert or play does not work, because my friends are single women, many of whom do not make much money or who think they are too old for a stadium concert/whatever or who are borderline…

I went into it thinking that of course it was satire, but satire should be biting and a teeny bit funny, and this just isn’t.

Exactly! There’s a fine line between being someone who is compassionate and empathetic and being someone who is so kind that other people use you as a doormat. I have been dealing with trying to find that line/boundary most of my life. What I hate is when I say something to the flaker about how they’ve inconvenienced…

I’m sorry you’re going through that. It’s not clear to me whether the kind of “depression” Novak is writing about above is clinical depression or the “I feel sad” kind of depression. For the record, I’ve had both. The first kind is debilitating. The second, not so much.