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I love Cloud Cuckoo Land by Doerr, in par with his All the Light We Cannot See if not better! As much as I love and admire Doerr's books, the only criticisms I have for him (if I dare hahaha) are: 1) his prose is too beautiful, too polished --> a little bit overwritten imo. 2) I agree with George (was it George who wrote the critique or someone else?) about the little caricature nature of the bad guy in All the Light We Cannot See --> though villains are villains, they don't see themselves as bad guys doing bad things but ones that are simply doing the necessary things for themselves

The Scecret Scripture sounds interesting! I will put it on my list, thank you for the recommendation. And I love the secret manuscript idea! In fact, there are two books I've read this year that I could recall that were framed as someone writing letters and confession to recount the bulk of the (flashback) stories.

Letters: The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

Confession: The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen

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I’ve read two of Sebastian Barry books and am looking forward to the others — all about members of the same family but there’s no need to know the backstories to be fully present on the current page. Though I might, in the end, re-read them all with, I suppose, greater knowledge. It’s like how you get to know more and more about everything (people, world) as time goes by. The unfolding of a map, just that. The routes are held by it, but you don’t have to trace them exactly.

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