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Island of the Blue Dolphins was my first real book, but right afterward I dove into an old copy of White Fang I found and I loved it. I was only eight, but Jack London is still my favorite novelist today, I guess. nature 
i say swears online fucked around with this message at 08:01 on Aug 19, 2014 |
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Aug 19, 2014 07:58
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I lived in Monterey for a couple years when I was in grad school, and it was rad, because I grew up reading lots of Jack London and John Steinbeck, and so much of their stories take place around there. So it was like, "Oh hey, that's actually a place. And it's right over there!"
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Aug 19, 2014 08:04
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Swan Oat posted:Any PKD fans in the house? I was utterly exhausted on a plane once and tried reading part of VALIS. I had some loving weird dreams as I drifted in and out of sleep. VALIS is the poo poo, PKD is the poo poo 
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Aug 19, 2014 08:31
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Mecca-Benghazi posted:The grapes of wrath by Steinbeck is one of my favorite books of all time, I don't care if this makes me a weirdo I really liked the intercalary chapters as a literary technique, but I found it to be a bit draining after a while. I guess that was the point. It wasn't as bad as Anthem though, where basically I just kept thinking "OK, yeah, good for you buddy  " every page.Probably the most interesting thing that happened in literature class for me was that we read Native Son in 9th grade, and I was one of the few kids to have the uncensored version. We found out there were two versions when I made a crack about how my favorite part of the first reading assignment was "what happened in the movie theater" and was met with a room full of blank stares, a few heads in hands, and one girl blurting out "oh my GOD" irately from the back of the room. Really though the stories I found most interesting at the time - 1984, Brave New World, Asimov's Foundation series, and Flowers for Algernon - were ones I found on my own.
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Aug 19, 2014 08:47
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It's been a while since I've read it but I remember several parts of Dr Bloodmoney were very striking both for the prose and the ideas put forth. Maybe I will reread it once I finish with Elmer Gantry (which goons should read because it's good t )
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Aug 19, 2014 08:47
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SedanChair posted:VALIS is the poo poo, PKD is the poo poo Is this Crumb?
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Aug 19, 2014 08:48
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Grapes of Wrath is worth it just for the Rosasharn jokes that I have been milking for decades. That man made it possible to reference grown people drinking from a woman's teat while still remaining in the acceptable world of literary reference. God bless you, zombie Steinbeck.
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Aug 19, 2014 11:41
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Capital in the 21st Century, much like any work created by mere mortal lumpenproletarians who actually dare get published and discussed by anyone outside certain circles, is deficient in that it is not the ultimate agitprop/revolution manual that Maosit Third Worldists imagined the Communist Manifesto and Mao's Little Red Book to be in the 1960s and 1970s. as it happens, i haven't read piketty's version of this (they're all the same, though), but if his thesis really is 'when the rate of return on capital (r) is greater than the rate of economic growth (g) over the long term, the result is concentration of wealth, and this unequal distribution of wealth causes social and economic instability.' then wow, people are easily impressed. when arguments like this are made: The book argues that there was a trend towards higher inequality which was reversed between 1930 and 1975 due to some rather unique circumstances: the two World Wars, the Great Depression and a debt-fueled recession destroyed much wealth, particularly that owned by the elite.[4] These events prompted governments to undertake steps towards redistributing income, especially in the post-World War II period. The fast economic growth of that time reduced the importance of inherited wealth.[4] they ignore the implication that their ideal form of capitalism could only happen 'due to some rather unique circumstances.' aside from the world wars, the depression and that recession, they also ignore some vital context when writing down these "glory days" to social democratic policies and the post-war consensus - namely the world outside of europe and the us, on whose back those glory days were built and whose growing influence after the decolonisation period ended those glory days for good. also those glory days were waaaaay worse than social democrats imagine them to be so let's not pretend like this form of conservative progressivism is any more pragmatic than dreaming about a global revolution. at least the people waiting on a global revolution know the true nature of capitalism and know something must be done.
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Aug 19, 2014 12:23
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my fav book is the satanic verses it's really good
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Aug 19, 2014 12:24
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Radicals seem to mostly dream of talking about how other radicals aren't as radical as them.
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Aug 19, 2014 13:00
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are you referring to a strawman of radicals or are you referring to me, specifically? because i'm not saying piketty and his ilk aren't radical enough, i'm saying they're wrong.
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Aug 19, 2014 13:02
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piketty is writing straight out of the neoclassical socialist school of the mid 20th century seriously the core of his model is Solow growth your mistake is thinking that he is ignoring the contention that mid 20th century growth was built on colonial/neocolonial extraction, when his structural approach is built in the contention that it is not - instead there is a historically unprecedented explosion in human welfare, both in the West, the USSR, and the periphery (remember, Indonesia not starving was a huge achievement, and subsaharan Africa didn't go down the drain in the data until later). it's not ignoring the elephant in the room, its hypothesis implicitly says that there is no elephant
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Aug 19, 2014 13:10
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that just means he's wrong by choice instead of ignorance. doesn't really make things better. makes things worse, if anything also, i think i just pressed f5 and saw your av change to something mean. that's, like, the second time this happened in this thread.
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Aug 19, 2014 13:16
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I wouldn't know, CloudFlare blocks my ISP so avatars just don't load. I grant that "I disagree with your radical analysis" is substantially less exciting than "I am ignoring your radical analysis because I cannot handle HARD TRUTHS", though.
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Aug 19, 2014 13:31
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it's kind of sad that social democracy is seen as radical these days
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Aug 19, 2014 13:38
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Swan Oat posted:Any PKD fans in the house? I was utterly exhausted on a plane once and tried reading part of VALIS. I had some loving weird dreams as I drifted in and out of sleep. VALIS is depressing. It's not sci-fi as such but rather the story of a man picking a fight with his own mental illness, briefly winning, and then falling back down. The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, in addition to being really good, has the best title of anything ever. Ubik is really, really depressing. haveblue fucked around with this message at 13:46 on Aug 19, 2014 |
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Aug 19, 2014 13:41
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R. Mute posted:as it happens, i haven't read piketty's version of this (they're all the same, though), but if his thesis really is 'when the rate of return on capital (r) is greater than the rate of economic growth (g) over the long term, the result is concentration of wealth, and this unequal distribution of wealth causes social and economic instability.' then wow, people are easily impressed. There's also a large section talking about a historically unprecedented increase in income inequality, which gets emphasised less in reviews and commentary for some reason.
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Aug 19, 2014 13:44
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R. Mute posted:are you referring to a strawman of radicals or are you referring to me, specifically? because i'm not saying piketty and his ilk aren't radical enough, i'm saying they're wrong. By the way everyone, great flight and hotel deals to Thailand now thanks to the Malaysia Airlines incidents and the Thai coup. BOOK NOW AND SAVE!!###@
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Aug 19, 2014 13:47
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i just remembered i should specify that even though i don't think he's right and i don't think his policies are long term solutions, they're still better than what we have now.
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Aug 19, 2014 13:48
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advocating a return to staid tripartism is also incompatible with this thoughquote:they ignore the implication that their ideal form of capitalism could only happen 'due to some rather unique circumstances.' aside from the world wars, the depression and that recession, they also ignore some vital context when writing down these "glory days" to social democratic policies and the post-war consensus - namely the world outside of europe and the us, on whose back those glory days were built and whose growing influence after the decolonisation period ended those glory days for good. also those glory days were waaaaay worse than social democrats imagine them to be so either you're not really embracing the quoted analysis, or you're more radical than nostalgic social democrats generally are in any case I think the 1945 london dockworker's strike already spectacularly demonstrated the stresses that social democracy would prove unable to handle throughout its entire rise and recession
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Aug 19, 2014 13:52
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What's with all the BIG IDIOT BAD POST avatars I'm seeing today? Is it a mod thing or are people just getting visits from the avatar fairy?
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Aug 19, 2014 13:52
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No more babies, just idiots now.
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Aug 19, 2014 13:54
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R. Mute posted:my fav book is the satanic verses this is a v good book but i would nevertheless rate at least two fiction and one non-fiction rushdie book above it
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Aug 19, 2014 13:55
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paragon1 posted:What's with all the BIG IDIOT BAD POST avatars I'm seeing today? Pretty sure it's the new 'Dumb Newbie' or whatever the old default avatar was. Lord knows I'm too milquetoast for anyone to even notice my posts, let alone press a button to give me a new avatar.
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Aug 19, 2014 13:56
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ReindeerF posted:I am referring to the quote about radicals but stop being so Northern European (tm)! I don't know you well enough to know if I'm referring to you, but if you're really pissed at a lot of people with whom you agree upon like 95% of the things that go on in life because of the other 5% you don't agree on then maybe yes. IANAR. the main reason why people seem to think they're so similar is because the goals of both socialism and social democracy are pretty close. equality for all and stuff. of course, realistically, only socialism can reach that goal.  i'm generally not pissed off about social democrats, though. at least they mean well.
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Aug 19, 2014 13:56
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I managed to get the rare english curriculum where they didn't assign me Catcher in the Rye, so I never ended up reading it. I always felt like that made me weird though, like I should have a copy just to be normal.
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Aug 19, 2014 14:03
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ronya posted:advocating a return to staid tripartism is also incompatible with this though Tony Jowns posted:this is a v good book but i would nevertheless rate at least two fiction and one non-fiction rushdie book above it
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Aug 19, 2014 14:06
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supporters of tripartism and other social-democratic policies tend not to argue that those policies depended upon colonial extraction for their viability, oil shock or not
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Aug 19, 2014 14:09
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Aliquid posted:Island of the Blue Dolphins was my first real book, but right afterward I dove into an old copy of White Fang I found and I loved it. I was only eight, but Jack London is still my favorite novelist today, I guess. Jack London did indeed help make for a good childhood. I'm still partial to The Jungle, though, for obvious reasons.
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Aug 19, 2014 14:16
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Swan Oat posted:Any PKD fans in the house? I was utterly exhausted on a plane once and tried reading part of VALIS. I had some loving weird dreams as I drifted in and out of sleep. I enjoy PKD's work quite a bit, though I often find he's the sort of author that struggles to express the concepts he's come up with adequately. Maybe that's why there's so much drugs and madness throughout his canon.
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Aug 19, 2014 14:21
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ronya posted:supporters of tripartism and other social-democratic policies tend not to argue that those policies depended upon colonial extraction for their viability, oil shock or not but ideally, socialism.
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Aug 19, 2014 14:26
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R. Mute posted:it was a honest question, yo. i couldn't tell from your post. but if you're one of those people who think socialism and social democracy are 95% alike, then, well, you're wrong. they're obviously both on the left of the spectrum, but socialism is about as close to social democracy as social democracy is to randoidism.
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Aug 19, 2014 14:26
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Captain_Maclaine posted:I enjoy PKD's work quite a bit, though I often find he's the sort of author that struggles to express the concepts he's come up with adequately. Maybe that's why there's so much drugs and madness throughout his canon. Given his subject matter, confidence would be kind of alarming.
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Aug 19, 2014 14:28
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R. Mute posted:i only read the one, but i really should get round to reading the rest of his work. he's really good and his style is v. much my poo poo. which books are you thinking about? midnight's children is my favourite. haroun and the sea of stories (written for his eldest son and a great children's book but so chock-full of intertextual references it's probably even more fun to read as an adult) and imaginary homelands were the other two books to which i was referring
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Aug 19, 2014 14:28
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"The Days of Perky Pat" was a prophetic warning about goony manchildren smoking weed and playing The Sims all day. 
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Aug 19, 2014 14:32
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ReindeerF posted:God, I really don't care is mostly the answer. I mean in terms of discussing theory, sure, but I'm preoccupied with non-theory here. There's really no chance that the fine points between True Socialism and Social Democracy are going to touch the lives of anyone in either Thailand or Texas in my lifetime, so while I enjoy reading the various debates from time to time and learning things, it's just not really anything that impacts me or anyone around me outside of the academic or conceptual realm.
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Aug 19, 2014 14:33
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Tony Jowns posted:midnight's children is my favourite. haroun and the sea of stories (written for his eldest son and a great children's book but so chock-full of intertextual references it's probably even more fun to read as an adult) and imaginary homelands were the other two books to which i was referring
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Aug 19, 2014 14:35
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Tony Jowns posted:midnight's children is my favourite. haroun and the sea of stories (written for his eldest son and a great children's book but so chock-full of intertextual references it's probably even more fun to read as an adult) and imaginary homelands were the other two books to which i was referring I really enjoyed Haroun and the Sea of Stories growing up, but have never gone back to revisit it since. Maybe I should do that some day when I have enough time.
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Aug 19, 2014 14:38
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R. Mute posted:i don't think it's theoretical navel-gazing to point out that the fundamental elements of socialism and social democracy are worlds apart - social democracy is capitalist, socialism isn't, for instance. if you have to, just consider it correct vocabulary usage. or if you really don't care, just, y'know, lay off. let me sperg in freedom. don't infringe my first amendment rights. don't tread on me. ride the lightning.
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Aug 19, 2014 14:40
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R. Mute posted:i don't think it's theoretical navel-gazing to point out that the fundamental elements of socialism and social democracy are worlds apart - social democracy is capitalist, socialism isn't, for instance. if you have to, just consider it correct vocabulary usage. or if you really don't care, just, y'know, lay off. let me sperg in freedom. don't infringe my first amendment rights. don't tread on me. ride the lightning. Belgians have no rights  .
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Aug 19, 2014 15:13
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