The Books/Reading Thread

[no country for old wainds]

Why approach it as if you have to read the entire series? It peaks with books 2-6 imo, and all of those books are internally satisfying. I'm working my way through book 10 right now and I'm about ready to be done with the series, haven't had the greatest time with the last four books.

i totally agree with this for the record, 2-6 are the ones i completely adore. i do think toll the hounds is great as well but i get that it's hard going at times, being the most static and aggressively philosophical etc. there are things i love about the resolution and the more i've thought about some of the arcs in their completion the more i admire the ambition and resonance of them, but i do just feel like he's juggling too many threads and POVs by that point--pretty standard saga endgame issues really.

 

[TechnicalBarbarity]

I have the first book of The Black Company and DNF. I remember it boring me to death. But that was a while ago, might have to give it another go sometime soon

 

[Einherjar86]

Why approach it as if you have to read the entire series? It peaks with books 2-6 imo, and all of those books are internally satisfying. I'm working my way through book 10 right now and I'm about ready to be done with the series, haven't had the greatest time with the last four books.

Definitely read Black Company; the first three books form a very strong, self-contained trilogy. I remember the first book being rather atmospheric and slow but the following two are page turners. (Shadows Linger in particular reads like a dark fantasy Elmore Leonard story.)

Knowing that makes it more sensible to me; but not knowing it, I'd be under the assumption that stopping in the middle would effectively be like stopping in the middle of a standalone novel. I'd be missing a chunk of the story. I think wainds has told me all this before, my memory is just terrible.

The Black Company is more appealing to me at this point, if only because I own the first three books collected in a single edition. I think I'll start it once I finish the Jemisin trilogy (although I may have to read Paul Tremblay's new horror novel first...).

 

[Bloopy]

Alexandra David-Néel - My Journey to Lhasa

Rereading this all-time favourite. An eye-opening account of a whole other world and its people, much of which were wiped out later when Tibet was invaded. The good ol' days when the only way for the author to get to Lhasa was to disguise herself as a poor pilgrim and walk for thousands of kms over snowy mountain passes. Conveniently it wasn't uncommon for Tibetan women to darken their face to protect it etc. and her ability with some mannerisms and dialects meant anyone who thought she looked odd just assumed she was from a different region of Tibet. All just adds to how zany the story seems.

 

[Cronopio]

I'm going to give The Strange Death of Europe by Douglas Murray another try. I started it about a year ago, but never finished it, so I'll start from the beginning again. Now, more than ever, what he writes about is something that cannot be ignored.

 

[Einherjar86]

I wouldn't bother. Douglas Murray is a piece of shit.

 

[Cronopio]

Lots of authors who are. Doesn't mean their writing is bad.

I was halfway through it, but so far, so good. But then I lost steam. I'll give it another go.

 

[Einherjar86]

Murray's ideas are bad. That's the problem.

 

[Cronopio]

How so? What is wrong with not wanting to feel like an alien in your own country?

 

[Einherjar86]

If those feelings are rooted in misinformation and hearsay about migrants, then I'd say there's something very wrong with them.

Murray traffics in misinformation and perpetuates falsified claims of violent crimes committed by migrants, and uses those claims and misinformation to justify anti-immigration policies. Those are bad ideas.

 

[Cronopio]

I know too little about the situation in the UK to say anything about it, really, but when it comes to Sweden, believe me, we've felt the repercussions of not having a stable national identity and fucking enforcing it on people who come here. What do we have to show for it? Rampant crime, gang shootings, gang rapes, daily explosions/bombings, welfare fraud, organized crime eating its way into our governmental institutions. Not to mention not being able to go out to a random mall in a medium sized Swedish city during daytime without feeling like you're in Mogadishu, Aleppo or Fallujah. Not gonna sugarcoat it, I hate it.

 

[Einherjar86]

I don't put much stock in national identity; since college, I've never understood the appeal. Whatever it means to be American in a classically patriotic sense, I feel more estranged from that than I do from living among Armenian Americans around Boston. I'd like my country to operate in ways that are politically and socially ethical, and I'd like citizens to acknowledge a considerable degree of civic responsibility. I don't want my country to be an ethnonationalist state, and I don't think countries should be ethnonationalist states.

I don't want to downplay your concerns. I think there are very real challenges to immigration and treating migrants properly, and in ways that would cultivate more harmonious societies within countries. And Sweden has definitely taken in more refugees and displaced peoples recently from places like Syria. I think it's wild that Sweden has taken in more than 100,000 Syrian refugees while a country the size of the U.S. has taken fewer than 10,000. To me, the answer shouldn't be shutting down immigration entirely but establishing an equitable distribution of refugees and migrants between countries that can accept them. In the U.S., conservative politicians have done a LOT to foster anxieties about white replacement and migrant crime (both nonexistent/overblown), which means the burden falls on other countries, especially those closer to crisis zones. Douglas Murray is fostering the same anxieties but in a British context.

Anyway, I'll stop, but that's why I don't like Murray.

 

[Cronopio]

First of all, thank you for your eloquent response. I realize this is a sensitive topic, and I apologize for my harsh language. The feelings and sentiments that have grown within me over the last 20 years are real, however. Your solution to the massive influx of immigrants is good in theory, but in practice it is lacking. No one adheres to the Dublin Regulations anymore. People move here, seemingly without having proper reasons for residency. You are supposed to seek asylum in the first country in the EU, and that is never Sweden. Also, how come the people arriving here always come from the same countries? Eritrea, Somalia, Iraq, Syria. As far as I know, there are no wars in the first three of those countries. Not to mention the fact that many of those people return to their countries of origin on "vacation" once having received resident status. When shit went down in Israel/Palestine Swedish public service interviewed people with Swedish citizenship living there. One of them spoke no English, let alone Swedish. The interview was conducted in Arabic, with an interpreter. The reporter from SR (Swedish public service radio) never once thought to ask the question how come someone with a Swedish citizenship lives in the country they seemingly fled from, let alone why said person spoke no Swedish. While I realize the number of citizenships bestowed upon foreigners hardly are the responsibility of radio reporters, bear in mind that our public service radio and television channels receive yearly grants of nine billion SEK (roughly 854 838 100 US dollars). Do they not have a responsibility to question things?

That is the other problem. The toxic discussion climate and the problems of trying to have a civil discourse in public about these things. It's either being for something or being against it. There is no middle ground, no nuances. I am not kidding when I say that our dailies and evening papers, as well as politicians, celebrities and others have been putting equal signs between being critical of how migration policies work and how they relate to the increase in certain types of crimes and things like concentration camps, gas chambers and ethnic cleansing. Seriously.

I'm going to stop here. I've already derailed the thread. But thanks again for giving me the benefit of doubt. This is what we need - serious discussions. This is a global problem and it is only going to get worse. The upcoming US elections come to mind.