Perhaps the darkest, saddest volume so far. Phos has become numb to losing parts of herself, and when

the Lunarians do it

, she barely even flinches. Phos has to change utterly in a quest whose exigency has long since been forgotten, and the lament over who she once was, and can never be again, is tragic—made doubly so as the Lustrous she loves view her with suspicion,

and those who do perhaps shouldn’t

. You can’t even say the ends justify the means—this is all a vague promise with no guarantees.

A stunningly deep story, with marvelous, unforgettable characters that will stay with me for the rest of my life. Some battle scenes can be difficult to follow, which is a pity when the series is so rooted in realism that it should not be the main issue. Although, speaking of: the

Nosferatu Zodd

plotline was the main irritant of this otherwise spectacular story. Of course, the previous volume was filled with magic. But for me, the absolute limit feels like it should have been with the Behelit’s eye opening. This series is at its best when its plot is centered in realism, although its fantasy elements are not bad. This is barely not a 5. I would give it a 4.9 if I could.

Intense, and keeps ramping up.

The darkest the series has gotten.

Things’re certainly getting more dark.

It’s especially interesting to see the parallels between Ghost wanting to become more powerful and Phos, on the other side of gaining that power, lamenting that she had done so.

Many happy returns, and I think the art style has improved. My issue with a lot of the earlier volumes was that the simple looks were a bit overused, although now I guess we can make the argument that as the tone gets more serious, then the jokes have diminishing returns.

I have also always admired that the translator will add notes to the end of the book. This should be an industry standard.

Thought it was getting good around my third attempt to sit through this, but I can’t deal with it. Unironic Starship Troopers fanfiction and a military soap opera lacking the charm of something like Metal Gear Solid.

This book is like an explosion in your hands. Honestly, it's like finding a water stain in the shape of Jesus's face; it's art, but not one that was carefully crafted or that even has an artist commanding it. Through Thompson, an eye-searing account of the failing American Dream and the darkness present in every human soul is given flesh through words, and this deserves as close a reading as any classic--if this book is not considered already by enough people to be a classic.

If you came here from the movie, I will say that this is a much less sympathetic view on thompson, who's been mythologized by the Depp portrayal and countless parodies and becoming a pop-culture icon. However, it just makes the book more unflinchingly honest.

The foreword has no influence on the score, but I need to acknowledge it because of that: It was written by a troglodyte with no understanding of the content they were prefacing. Just some desperate caterwauling for relevance that wasted the world's collective time.

Rating this as a "book" is strange, because it's instructional. It's like rating the guide to an IKEA assembly guide. If the end result was a shelf, then the instructions were successful. And if you don't, or they involved a struggle to understand, then they probably weren't.

So do I know how to read a book? Yes, ignoring the obvious, of course, but this is a book that means to truly "absorb" a book. They use an analogy regarding baseball, whether a ball is "caught" or not. If a reader does not "catch" the book, then the work they do to bridge the gap of knowledge is the "enlightenment" that the reader will experience. Really, this book is commendable for trying to address that people do not indeed know "how" to read a book, that they are pre-fed an understanding and interpretation to pass a course or expected to be well-read by a societal peer pressure at the cost of never truly understanding a book past a surface level.

Some flaws: Although I wouldn't call this a self-help book, strictly speaking, I think that it has its hallmarks in the way it occasionally negs the reader and makes them doubt themselves. It takes on some self-deprecation, in saying that few people ever perfectly understand a book, and those that do are very few and far between. That the learning, and the effort, is in trying. However, their methodology to get to that is flawed as a result. They write a tautology at some point that suggests that reading something by an author means the reader must agree or disagree, or defer judgement if they feel they have not understood the material in full. Disagreement, of course, means that the reader must have a learned reason why that is not the case (one not driven by emotion). They then turn this tautology on their own work, saying that if the reader accepts all the words said as being true, then it is their imperative to read in the style that Adler and van Doren dictate.

No.

This book does almost nothing to talk about reading with different critical lenses, like Marxism, or semiotics, or other modes of thinking that, while not guaranteed to be the solution, is better than the blind charge that this book tries to encourage. They begrudgingly give advice on how to use reference books and specify that the history of words. They're right to at least feel suspicious that a reference book will taint a reader's perception of how to understand a word or concept. But outright dismissing Shakespeare editions that have that reference sheet baked into it puts a lot of faith in the reader that if they are not intelligent, that they will not grow frustrated with the struggle. This is simply my opinion, to be sure, but what I find contradictory is the idea that the reader must accept this style of reading as the best option while in the same book admitting that "few have truly understood a book." Really? Does that include the authors themselves, who have placed hundreds of works in their recommended reading list? And if they have failed to understand the reading, does that not mean that their own methodology is flawed? Are they not obligated to propose a better alternative to what they have done? I certainly do not have one--as flawed as their tautology is, I follow it in some degree. But I think it's a bit much to write a book literally declaring it is the way "to read a book" and then shrug and say "Well, but who has ever read a book, really?"

I picked this during my Ph.D because the classes weren't as demanding as I wanted them to be (or to involve something a little more dynamic and a little less like busywork.) I was feeling a little intellectually flabby and even the book itself was a difficult read. I'm saying this because if you are an English Major, you likely already know most of what this book proposes and more. But if you don't study English and want to crack the code a little, this is gonna get you where you need to go.