that's why books are so powerful... ive read the alchemist like three times, i understand the criticism, yet id still recommend it, especially to people i know who struggle to read difficult, 500 pages tomes. all that the book needs is to speak to me, thats enough.

what is claudine at school about? thats an amazing experience... you were almost educated on adulthood by this books. is that a fair comment?

yeah..... the important thing is having a message that resonates.

i loved the alchemist, i guess it found me at a point in life where I needed what it told me... that there's other things I could be doing other than what I was doing at the moment... and one step forward per day is all it takes.

however, I tried valkyries and veronica must die and found them almost unreadable. lol...

but the alchemist was huge for me when I read it, close to seven years ago. it legit changed my perspective on life.

Ive only read the trial and the metamorphosis. Adding the castle to my 2023 list immediately!

He's such a thought provoking writer.

I'm going to post my visualization here too. Did you put all the charts on one page and then screen grab it?

A huge Kafka fan ? Awesome visualization... I'll save it and try to do something similar at the end of the year...

The beautiful ones is a superb read.

I'd also recommend peter Abraham's "a wreath for udomo" and ngugi wa thiong'os petals of blood ... Also Achebe's anthills of the savanna is a classic. Chinua is the greatest African go ever pick up a pen, no one comes close in my view 😂 Also, Somehow African lit during the colonial and early post colonial era was simply incredible. I dunno what happened.

Morocco is really good, they always underperform compared to the talent they have... Boufal, El neyri, ziyech should beat Belgian boomers most of the time.

The golden generation is done 👍

Belgium won't make the quarters and I'd bet on Croatia beating them while Morocco get a dull draw against Canada to qualify for the last sixteen.