The Books/Reading Thread

[Blurry_Dreams]

@TageRyche
the book enders game is considered "classic" among people that only read sci-fi
thought you might have read it

 

[CiG]

@TageRyche
you've never read "Ender's Game"
Ender's Game - Wikipedia
you know, that book that got made into a movie that people boycotted the movie cuz the author is homophobic
ender's game boycott - Google Search

Lol a gaggle of retarded activists boycotting something means nothing. I liked the movie tbh.

 

[Einherjar86]

A nice haul.

I have no idea when I'll get to all these goodies, but I'm psyched.

 

[EternalMetal]

^^ I scrolled through those books thinking it was a troll before I saw who posted them. Looks like leftist paradise you have there

the book enders game is considered "classic" among people that only read sci-fi
thought you might have read it

As a sci-fi aficionado, Ender's Game is a kid's book. I read the entire series and the only one even remotely worth reading is Speaker for the Dead.

 

[Blurry_Dreams]

@TageRyche

As a sci-fi aficionado, Ender's Game is a kid's book. I read the entire series and the only one even remotely worth reading is Speaker for the Dead.

it's really only a "kids book" if you're accustomed to reading "inappropriate-for-children books"
there's a lot of fans of the book that didn't even read the book until they were adults
the series builds-up as it goes, like harry potter or Eragon
each book being more inappropriate-for-children and more "adult" than the previous one
but, the quality of writing in the first book isn't that bad
and when it first came out there were adults bitching that Ender's Game was "horribly inappropriate-for-children" and also the book ender's game was never even actually marketed as a children's book

 

[Einherjar86]

^^ I scrolled through those books thinking it was a troll before I saw who posted them. Looks like leftist paradise you have there

You thought these titles were from a troll? What about them makes you think that? The only politically motivated text on that list is the Orwell. I'm sure people who read Lethem, Hurston, Yu, Yamashita, and Vollmann tend to have similar political views; but that doesn't make these books works of a particular brand of politics. Good literary fictions aren't manifestos for any party or platform, aside from maybe aesthetic ones. If a novel amounts to an argument for a political position, then it's not a good novel (see Atlas Shrugged).

 

[Dak]

If a novel amounts to an argument for a political position, then it's not a good novel (see Atlas Shrugged).

I've never read AS and have resolved at this point not to, but I don't see this position as having any intellectual basis. Novels often if not always reveal, if not argue for, a political position (sympathized with by the author) based on how you (or if not you, your contemporaries) would consider things political. Is there some other criticism of AS other than Mary Sue-ishness?

 

[Einherjar86]

I've never read AS and have resolved at this point not to, but I don't see this position as having any intellectual basis. Novels often if not always reveal, if not argue for, a political position (sympathized with by the author) based on how you (or if not you, your contemporaries) would consider things political.

I mean no offense, but I don't believe you've read enough literary criticism or novels to make this claim.

Most of my colleagues would agree with me; novels aren't political manifestos. And it's only on an intellectual basis that I'm making this claim. Novels are narratives, not arguments. They contain contradictions, the positions of which can't be traced back to--or dialectically synthesized into--the author's political sympathies. When we're able to do this--as in certain Updike novels, for example--critics tend to agree that the work fails aesthetically. It's no longer a novel, but a treatise.

The closest mainstream literary criticism comes to intuiting the politics of a text is Jameson's political unconscious methodology. But this approach doesn't claim that texts evince certain political positions; it claims that texts betray the underlying structural contradictions of their sociopolitical context.

 

[TageRyche]

Here's my review of David Baldacci's One Good Deed.

 

[Bloopy]

I've never read Atlas Shrugged, but I have read The Fountainhead. The whole thing is propped up on the character holding the viewpoint opposed to the author nonsensically revealing themselves to have a conceited motive towards the end. Basically amounts to saying "look, my political position must be correct because I put one narcissist over there!"

 

[Einherjar86]

Her novels are organized as moralistic reflections of her political philosophy, nothing more.

By contrast, it's impossible to find a consistent, cohesive expression of political motivations in a text like Blood Meridian. I'd be disappointed but entirely unsurprised to learn that Cormac McCarthy is an apolitical critic of PC culture and identity politics. I'd be equally unsurprised to learn that he's a Bernie bro, or that he voted for Clinton. I can ascertain none of those positions based on that novel.

Similarly, I can gather no moral or ethical repudiation of child molestation from the text of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita. Nabokov doesn't include an indictment of Humbert Humbert in the novel; he leaves it up to readers to be able to say to themselves, "This guy's a bad dude." The novel itself doesn't take that position (which led some initial readers to attribute less-than-savory qualities to Nabokov himself).

 

[Blurry_Dreams]

Her novels are organized as moralistic reflections of her political philosophy, nothing more.

this is why i hate her novels
the story is just a vehicle for advertising her points of view on stuff
instead of the story being entertaining

 

[Einherjar86]

A. Thanks for repeating what I said.

B. You’ve never actually read her novels.

 

[The Ozzman]

Just the first book? I still need to continue past the first book in the series.

Also: Started this based on Jocko Podcast recommendations:

Finished this yesterday. Gave me a new insight into the bureaucracy of the military. More men like Hackworth are needed these days.

Reading this now...something lighter for a change:

 

[Blurry_Dreams]

@TageRyche
if you had to choose between reading Orson Scott Card and Ayn Rand
i'd tell you to read Card

 

[TageRyche]

I'd rather stick to my mysteries.

 

[Einherjar86]

Been wanting to read this for a while now, finally picked up a copy. This book was a major player in the early formation of environmental humanities as a discipline. Still reading the intro, but already impressed with the clarity and emphasis.

 

[Blurry_Dreams]

I'd rather stick to my mysteries.

i love sci-fi and fantasy

 

[Einherjar86]

Been thinking about think tanks lately...

 

[Blurry_Dreams]

@TageRyche

i love sci-fi and fantasy

i actually like "police procedurals" when it's an open-ended thing where you have 30 books that all have the same cop in them
i like Harry Bosh and Lincoln Rhyme and the first 5-or-6 Anita Blake books are like this (before she ends her self-imposed-celibacy with weird magic-shit making her acquire a male-harem)