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succ posted:I'm not sure if the translation is bad but the characters in the Three Body Problem series are loving AWFUL. Such bad writing. EVERYONE IS 'FAMOUS'! poo poo broke my brain in the 25% of the first book in the series I read
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# ? Mar 14, 2019 23:39 |
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# ? Jun 8, 2024 07:29 |
I'm going to try reading Cryptonomicon again. I made it bout halfway through when I was in high school and I feel like I want to try again.
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# ? Mar 18, 2019 03:28 |
im on the net me boys posted:I'm going to try reading Cryptonomicon again. I made it bout halfway through when I was in high school and I feel like I want to try again. First page: is a coolie a type of bird? Next couple of pages: no that doesn't seem right Dictionary: oh
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# ? Mar 18, 2019 07:34 |
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My Cryptonomicon memory is that it was kind of reactionary in presenting STEMboy programmers and engineers as the vanguard of the future and demonstrating the filthy humanities scholars of academe as weak and disrespectful of the Greatest Generation, plus so dumb that they thought poor people wouldn’t be able to afford internet access.
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# ? Mar 18, 2019 14:17 |
I finished The Farthest Shore today, completing the first Earthsea trilogy. I won't spoil much about it beyond it's a great twist on the Merlin-and-Arthur story, but I do want to quote this part of the foreword by Le Guin which I enjoyed and appreciated:Ursula K. Le Guin posted:IT WOULD BE LOVELY IF writing a story was like getting into a little boat that drifted off and took me to the promised land, or climbing on a dragon’s back and flying off to Selidor. But it’s only as a reader that I can do that. As a writer, to take full responsibility without claiming total control requires a lot of work, a lot of groping and testing, flexibility, caution, watchfulness. I have no chart to follow, so I have to be constantly alert. The boat needs steering. There have to be long conversations with the dragon I ride. But however watchful and aware I am, I know I can never be fully aware of the currents that carry the boat, of where the winds beneath the dragon’s wings are blowing.
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# ? Mar 22, 2019 04:01 |
Correction -- that's the afterword, not foreword. To add to this, I find it real interesting that in the 60s Le Guin was able to express so much of the same sentiment that drives us today in CSPAM:quote:the sour dream of profiteering and consumerism that has been the bane of my country. quote:evil not as some horde of foreign demons with bad teeth and superweapons but as an insidious and ever-present enemy in my own daily life in my own country: the ruinous irresponsibility of greed.
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# ? Mar 22, 2019 05:17 |
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anyone happen to read "Too Beautiful For Words"? its apparently a book based on the coup's Me and Jesus the Pimp in a '79 Granada Last Night
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# ? Mar 22, 2019 05:23 |
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SKULL.GIF posted:Correction -- that's the afterword, not foreword. To add to this, I find it real interesting that in the 60s Le Guin was able to express so much of the same sentiment that drives us today in CSPAM: Yeah, Le Guin is my favorite American writer in history for a reason. She really hated capitalism lol A lot of her asides and contributions to things are like this. You read her stories and think that she thought very deeply about everything going on here, then you read her non-fiction and realize that isn't even the half of it lol. I was very upset when she passed.
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# ? Mar 22, 2019 16:00 |
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lol i was listening to a sci-fi podcast talking about octavia butler and one of the hosts said her work was so depressing that when he read it as a kid he asked his mom if they could mail her cookies to cheer her up
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# ? Mar 23, 2019 04:53 |
I started reading Tehanu, the fourth Earthsea book and apparently written several years after The Farthest Shore, and Le Guin seems to have discovered academic feminism between these two books because Tehanu is about Tenar-from-book-2's later life and how much the Earthsea society actually loving sucks for women and it's like explicitly spelled out and addressed instead of obliquely referenced
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# ? Mar 24, 2019 04:43 |
lol Tehanu is just a gigantic poo poo on men, this rules
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# ? Mar 25, 2019 03:57 |
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SKULL.GIF posted:lol Tehanu is just a gigantic poo poo on men, this rules Once you finish with that, read The Matter of Seggri if you haven't already. It's a bit of a gut punch in terms of role reversal and an examination of privilege versus freedom as well as flipping the current world theme you're in on its head. It's easily the #1 pick of mine for "short story that I've thought back on the most" Also it's short and available for free online! I love Le Guin but have never read any of the Earthsea books, maybe I should remedy that
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# ? Mar 25, 2019 04:28 |
Epic High Five posted:I love Le Guin but have never read any of the Earthsea books, maybe I should remedy that the first three books are a fairly standard (with the le guin twist on them) merlin and-then-arthur travels, then tehanu goes "what if all of these people were loving garbage and actually women had the answers all along" I'll try out matter of seggri and lathe of heaven once I finish books 4 and 5 of earthsea
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# ? Mar 25, 2019 05:00 |
tomorrow morning if I'm not too busy I'll post excerpts from Tehanu because they're like, good, but also depressing because this is how it is for people in our society even 30 years after she wrote this, but also good because it's a clear-eyed depiction of how it actually is to interact with men
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# ? Mar 25, 2019 05:02 |
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GalacticAcid posted:Started Debt, the IMF, and the World Bank: Sixty Questions, Sixty Answers by Éric Toussaint and Damien Millet this morning. I'll update when I finish. is this good?
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# ? Mar 26, 2019 02:07 |
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there's a lot of novel recommends itt, does anyone have some cspam non fiction i got a buncha poo poo saved from the old lf book thread but i need more recommends
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# ? Mar 29, 2019 04:08 |
IDONTPOST posted:there's a lot of novel recommends itt, does anyone have some cspam non fiction i got a buncha poo poo saved from the old lf book thread but i need more recommends Did you read The New Jim Crow yet? If so, have you read it again
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# ? Mar 29, 2019 06:02 |
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IDONTPOST posted:there's a lot of novel recommends itt, does anyone have some cspam non fiction i got a buncha poo poo saved from the old lf book thread but i need more recommends what kinds of topics are you interested in?
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# ? Mar 29, 2019 06:20 |
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Finicums Wake posted:what kinds of topics are you interested in? im looking for anything non marxism related as i got a poo poo of those qued up from the lf days, i just read year of meteors which i think was recommended here, so im just looking for anything non fiction that's not reactionary trash.
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# ? Mar 29, 2019 06:54 |
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i'm gonna interpret "non-marxism" to mean, more broadly, books not about politcal-economy. for criticisms of american foreign policy, william blum's killing hope is insanely good. rajiv chandrasekaran's book on iraq, imperial life in the emerald city, is worth checking out as well. if you're interested in 20th century history, rick perlstein wrote a trilogy of books covering the conservative movement that's often reccomended on these forums. the first, before the storm, centers around the barry goldwater campaign.
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# ? Mar 29, 2019 08:35 |
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this pic actually made me yell out loud in anger, see if you can spot why:
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# ? Mar 29, 2019 21:30 |
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Ah, The Grapes of Wrath, where in the end they’re able to get those grapes through hard work and live easy eating them for the rest of their days. Also if we’re talking movie Wonder Woman, she probably belongs closer to the right side given her attitude re: dropping white phosphorus onto Palestinian elementary schools.
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# ? Mar 29, 2019 21:49 |
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I'm reading A Scanner Darkly right now and its real good
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# ? Apr 1, 2019 21:00 |
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IDONTPOST posted:there's a lot of novel recommends itt, does anyone have some cspam non fiction i got a buncha poo poo saved from the old lf book thread but i need more recommends "white trash" by nancy isenberg is an interesting bit of American history and a helpful reminder that there is no war but class war and a bit of a study into poor white folks and how the monied class hosed up some real solidarity back in the day
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# ? Apr 1, 2019 21:33 |
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only 1/5 of the way through How We Get Free and I'm pretty sure I'm just gonna end up highlighting this entire book, extremely good, blunt, concise, and convincing
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# ? Apr 3, 2019 23:35 |
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Epic High Five posted:this pic actually made me yell out loud in anger, see if you can spot why: At first I was like "wow calling 1984 a David and Goliath story is dumb as hell," and then I kept reading and lol
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# ? Apr 4, 2019 02:08 |
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it’s non-fiction and massively long (1100 pages) but I’m on page 1040 and I can really really recommend The Executioner’s Song. it’s not really political, per se, but it’s politically adjacent and suuuuuper loving good. I highly recommend it to all cspammers who need a massive book to read. really loving great. easily the best nonfiction read in the last few years.
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# ? Apr 4, 2019 22:05 |
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Pathos posted:it’s non-fiction and massively long (1100 pages) but I’m on page 1040 and I can really really recommend The Executioner’s Song. it’s not really political, per se, but it’s politically adjacent and suuuuuper loving good. I highly recommend it to all cspammers who need a massive book to read. really loving great. easily the best nonfiction read in the last few years. I commute around 3 hours a day. Massive nonfiction audiobooks are extremely my poo poo. I just used an audible credit on it. Thanks!
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# ? Apr 4, 2019 22:12 |
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Yeah it's good imo
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# ? Apr 4, 2019 22:12 |
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Eat This Glob posted:I commute around 3 hours a day. Massive nonfiction audiobooks are extremely my poo poo. I just used an audible credit on it. Thanks! awesome! let me know what you think of it when you finish it in 6 months
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# ? Apr 4, 2019 22:15 |
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about 1/4 of the way through and Dune Messiah so far is good but lacks the spark that the original had, probably just the fact that the world is now established in a serious way
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# ? Apr 25, 2019 01:48 |
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lmao just wait until you get to God Emperor
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# ? Apr 27, 2019 09:42 |
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I'm finally reading Invisible Bridge (Perlstein's third book on American conservatism) and it's great. Really makes it seem like Trump is largely Reagan 2.0: This Time He Grew Up with gently caress You Money Perlstein submitted the manuscript for his final book recently so we'll have another huge depressing tome in 6-12 months I guess
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# ? May 1, 2019 16:21 |
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StashAugustine posted:I'm reading A Scanner Darkly right now and its real good I just started this having never seen the movie and now I think I gotta see the movie also what is the deal with PK Dick and the wiry brunette femme fatale character in all 3 of his books I've read so far, you'd think he has a type
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# ? May 1, 2019 16:45 |
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Reading multiple books by the same sci fi author will invariably give you way more details about their hosed up brain than you probably ever cared to know.
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# ? May 1, 2019 16:53 |
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Helsing posted:Reading multiple books by the same sci fi author will invariably give you way more details about their hosed up brain than you probably ever cared to know. scanner darkly is pretty much pkd telling you exactly how much his brain is hosed up
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# ? May 1, 2019 16:56 |
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StashAugustine posted:scanner darkly is pretty much pkd telling you exactly how much his brain is hosed up yeah it owns
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# ? May 1, 2019 16:58 |
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Helsing posted:Reading multiple books by the same sci fi author will invariably give you way more details about their hosed up brain than you probably ever cared to know. this is especially true with PKD
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# ? May 1, 2019 17:02 |
OR Books is having a half off sale until May 5 to celebrate May Day. It applies to everything and you don't need a code.
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# ? May 2, 2019 17:38 |
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# ? Jun 8, 2024 07:29 |
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I picked up Everything was Forever, Until it was no No More: The Last Soviet Generation and wow, this book is an incredible eye opener for someone venturing into a lot of Postwar history recently and trying to come to terms with how badly I was brain washed, as an American, with my views on the USSR. I had always been able to decouple the idea of US Government, the Republic, and American People, but not so for the USSR's government, Communism, and the Soviet people until very very recently, and finding this book as I'm starting to rebuild the concept in my mind feels like incredible good luck.
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# ? May 14, 2019 21:38 |