gog
2yr ago
-Pensées, by Blaise Pascal gets poo-pooed because the stock objection to the Wager is easy to understand, but it's a good trip through the mind of someone honestly grappling with religious questions.
-Notes From the Underground should be required reading for every teenaged boy who suspects he is smarter than other people (this means you, probably, if you're here)
-Alexandria, by Paul Kingsnorth is the best post-apocalyptic story I've ever read, and I've read all the canonical ones.
-Religion and the Decline of Magic is an excellent history of ideas about magic. Academic enough to be serious, but popular enough to be readable.
I haven't seen it, but my objection to it even existing is that, if you're going to make up a bunch of stuff -which they had to do, because of licensing issues, why call it LOTR? I know it's for marketing, but it surprises (or maybe just depresses) me that people are going for it. It's like starting a taco restaurant, and calling it McDonaldo's because people like McDonald's. Savvy business, I guess, but also a sign that you don't care one bit about McDonalds, or tacos, or making sense. For this reason I see this as one of the worst signs of our cultural decline. The naked commercialism is one thing, but the corruption of beauty (in the grand sense) is another. The LOTR showed modernity the harmony between the pagan and Christian virtues that made the West great. Rings of Power has no such claim even to ambition, let alone greatness.
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