It’s a terrible story that takes place during WWII in England. A man named Maurice has an affair with a woman named Sarah who is the Wife of a civil servant named Henry.

Without giving too much away, the affair ends leaving Maurice with a sense of ambiguous loss which he struggles to reconcile.

I enjoyed it, but it was a very sad, very tragic read, that provides an interesting perspective on male grief.

I was on a scifi kick the last few years and read Dune, and a few others, it’s just not my jam, so I switched to cyberpunk. I read Vurt, Snowcrash, Neuromancer, and then a silk punk book, The Grace of Kings. They were all right, I didn’t like Vurt or Neuromancer at all. They were basically word salad.

Turns out I really enjoy the male perspective on grief. I read Love in the Time of Cholera once and I enjoyed it. Probably one of the best book’s of all time for me, next to 1984.

So my goal is to read as many books as I can in 2026. I’m now reading The Remains of the Day:

In the twilight of a life spent in perfect service, one butler must finally confront what he sacrificed for dignity.
Stevens has devoted himself to being the consummate English butler—restraining every emotion, suppressing every desire, serving Lord Darlington with unwavering loyalty. But when a 1956 road trip leads him to Miss Kenton, the housekeeper who once loved him, decades of buried feelings begin to surface. As memories flood back—missed chances, unspoken words, a master whose reputation crumbled into scandal—Stevens faces a devastating question: Can a man reclaim what remains when he’s spent his entire life denying his own heart ?[wikipedia +2]
In Kazuo Ishiguro’s haunting masterpiece, duty and desire collide on English country roads, where every mile traveled reveals another truth avoided, and dignity becomes both armor and prison.

I also plan to read Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami. I read *most* of his book 1Q84, which was pretty weird, so I’m looking for a more traditional read.

In Haruki Murakami’s haunting coming-of-age novel, three young people navigate the impossible geometry of desire, mental illness, and survival in a Japan convulsed by student protests and generational upheaval. As Toru moves between two women and two visions of life—one consumed by the past, one blazing toward the future—he discovers that some losses hollow you out forever, and some loves demand you choose between saving someone else and saving yourself.

We’ll see how far I get.