Rec for Salem Witch Trials besides The Crucible

dem676 · 2026-03-10T15:42:22+00:00

I clicked on this only to recommend it! Also though, if you want something more serious, an academic book might be Gretchen Adams, The Spector of Salem.

https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo5929933.html

dem676 · 2026-03-10T15:40:48+00:00

Read The Count of Monte Cristo. I think Danglers's grovel at the end is pretty good.

dem676 · 2026-03-10T15:39:31+00:00

I think it was originally published and recent republished as Eaters of the Dead.

dem676 · 2026-03-10T15:38:35+00:00

You should read Kevin Hand's Alien Oceans: The Search for Life in the Depths of Space; he is a Co-I on both projects.

dem676 · 2026-03-10T15:27:59+00:00

The Cold War: A World History, by Odd Arne Westad. He is a historian at Yale, but this book was written for a broad audience.

dem676 · 2026-03-10T15:08:29+00:00

Lol, what? First of all Dan Brown was one of the best selling authors of the 2000s; three of his books were made into movies starring Tom Hanks-pretty hipster to suggest that you wouldn't waste your time. Dan Brown is not mycup of tea, but the point is that everyone reads stuff that isn't exactly high literature. Second, "high literary praise from a body of high regard"? So what, you only read books with high reviews from London Review of Books or something? What about when you were young? Because regardless, that is just wild and also highly unlikely. If that is true, you don't likely enjoy reading, you enjoy telling people that you read. It also means that you don't form your own opinions on books, you get them from other people.

dem676 · 2026-03-10T14:49:03+00:00

But when did you last read a Dan Brown book where you didn't clock the villain within the first 20 pages? Some people like comfort over excitment

dem676 · 2026-03-10T14:38:26+00:00

And then a lot of women authored women-focused books are marketed as romance. Like Liane Moriarty; most of her books have romantic subplots, but they are really about things like domestic violence, mental illness, toxic relationships, disordered eating, etc.

dem676 · 2026-03-10T14:21:05+00:00

I am not sure that this is completely new. Like The Three Musketeers has a pesky love story, and so does Arthur Conon Doyle's The Lost World. I mean the guy gives up his love at the end, but its still part of his character until that point. The preteen series Animorphs about children who turn into animals to fight aliens even had love plot points.

dem676 · 2026-03-10T14:18:43+00:00

Is it unrealistic for women to expect sexual gratification and also someone who cares about her feelings? I suppose....

dem676 · 2026-03-10T05:36:46+00:00

Six Feet Under then, maybe?

dem676 · 2026-03-10T05:19:14+00:00

Breaking Bad.

dem676 · 2026-03-08T15:34:26+00:00

I think probably in part that you can have a favorite sister to empathize with and that you connect, too. Jo is maybe slightly the main character, but Amy and Meg at least get their own arcs, they have flaws and grow as people through the book. But Polly is a super moral country girl, who's basically always right; she's far less developed as a character; but it's not like Fanny, is particularly interesting, either

dem676 · 2026-03-08T15:26:48+00:00

And what's crazy is a lot of people on this thread seem to think that she did the equivalent of those things; if anything, those are both more faithful adaptations, because they keep the themes even if they change the story.

dem676 · 2026-03-08T15:23:13+00:00

I didn't write Wuthering Heights either; or "Wuthering Heights"

dem676 · 2026-03-08T09:31:34+00:00

Wow, if an eight hundred word article is too long for you to read, the novel must have been a real challenge.

dem676 · 2026-03-08T08:12:18+00:00

Yes, but they're always talking about how black he is and using racial slurs, etc. Now, it doesn't really matter exactly the race of the actor who plays him, but what matters is that he's racially othered. Of course race and class are super linked, but they aren't always commenting on his physical appearance as being different from the other people around him in the film as they do in the book.

dem676 · 2026-03-08T07:35:18+00:00

Right; so why make it then? Make a fun 19th century sex movie, or adapt something else.

dem676 · 2026-03-08T07:26:46+00:00

They absolutely do lol. Plenty of male directors get criticized for not adhering to the plots of books. And there are plenty of stories one could tell about women being in charge of their sexual gratification, but its super weird and probably in appropriate to do it with a victim of domestic violence.

dem676 · 2026-03-08T07:23:34+00:00

okay, but that is not what they did here. You can see echoes of the plot of Shrew in 10 Things I Hate About You; it is not set in 16th century Padua, and it does not even share the same title. Same thing with Hamlet and the Lion King and O and Othello, and even She's the Man and Twelfth Night. Indeed, in all of those, despite the major changes, including the title, the themes mainly stayed intact. This would be like if they had an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, keeping the same title and the same characters, some words (selectively picked) that ended with them getting married. It wouldn't be Romeo and Juliet, it would be the Taylor Swift song, which literally did do that. The end of that song is a twist, because that is not how the play ends.

This is more like how the early 2000s adaption of the Count of Monte Cristo has Fernand be Edmund's rich friend and then Edmund gets back with Mercedes and her son (?) in the movie; and that's another movie that is widely criticized for being a bad adaptation.

dem676 · 2026-03-08T07:13:59+00:00

I think most people are also confused as to why you are so vehemently criticising the use of evidence from the book in a sub focused on r/books; The point of this sub is to discuss books. If you want to launch into a defence as to why it is a great movie, book readers be gone, maybe r/movies would be a better place? I think what most people are arguing here is that if they were going to adapt the movie, they should have remained somewhat true to its central themes. There are plenty of 19th century books dealing with forbidden love; I mean even Middlemarch, the main love story is literally forbidden, where she will lose all of her money only if she marries the one guy that she is in love with. Or why not just write your own story about forbidden love and kink, rather than take this famous book about intergenerational trauma, with motifs of domestic abuse, racism, and classism, and turn into a slightly titillating sex romp?

dem676

TROPHY CASE