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PaperclipPerfector  9d ago (text post)   2531 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 6, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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So, what are you reading?

Still on Future Shock, The Cheese and the Worms and Scaramouche. Also going through Committing Journalism: The Prison Writings of Red Hog.

I recently binge-read The Barbarian by Casey Hollingshead. Unprofessional and possibly not even all that good, but somehow I still found myself enjoying it.

Continuing this theme of novels based on niche video games, I tried reading Ring Runner Derelict Dreams, but bounced off.

The Passenger and The Road by Cormac McCarthy. The Passenger I find hard to read because frankly, it goes far over my head. Especially the conversations with hallucinations are just painful. I have a good deal of trust in the author and I'm fairly sure that he knew what he was doing even as he was headed for 90 and the grave, but so far I haven't adjusted to the book. The Road is a re-read for me, and it resonates a lot more now that I'm a parent.

I'm abandoning "Introduction to AC Machine Design", "Electric Machine Fundamentals" answers the same questions for me and isn't making me want to refresh on the entire dependency tree of vector calculus first. I did get "Principles and Applications of Electromagnetic Fields" for the Aspirational pile, though. "How to Keep House When You're Drowning" remains inspiring and comfortable. Factorio continues to eat me.

I'm reading Il Gigante, a book about Michaelangelo and the David. It's pretty mid, not bad but not really telling me anything I didn't know.

I just started Moby Dick on audiobook. We do all still think of going to sea, don't we?

Reading through Montaigne's essays again, mostly just because there are a lot of bite sized ones that make for good early morning reading.

Just finished Lord of Light by Zelanzy which was great. About to start The Forever War.

I would love to read The Forever War again, it's a fast one and really great. It gets compared with Starship Troopers a lot, and I think it wins out of the two for me.

I love Starship Troopers, and The Forever War was written partly as a rebuttal to how Troopers "glorifies war", so you'd think I should hate it, as an Ur-example of leftists hijacking something so they can update it with The Message, for Modern Audiences. But it's so much better as a rebuttal than most modern reboots of that type. It treats the theme as a necessary part of a good story but not a sufficient part, so it puts just as much effort into characterization and plot. It feels like (and AFAIK was) well-informed self-criticism by an insider of the culture being criticized, not ignorant cheap shots from an outsider. It treats its genre as a promise with conventions that it lives up to, not just an arbitrary color palette slapped onto a generic story. And even considered as a rebuttal to previous fiction or as a commentary on non-fiction events, it manages to avoid the typical minor failure of "so tenuous an allegory that it doesn't really contribute to the debate" and the typical major failure of "so heavy an allegory that it doesn't really stand on it's own", threading the needle perfectly. I personally prefer Troopers, but I'd still call Forever War the more proficient of the two.

I wish I could praise any more of Haldeman's work as much. I remember kind of liking Camoflague, and I think Forever Peace, but not enough to reread them, whereas Troopers wasn't even Heinlein's best Middle-Grade/Young-Adult book.

Well put. I also like that both books serve as fine novels even for those who don't typically read sci-fi (including myself). I'd feel comfortable recommending The Forever War to most readers since it's enjoyable on multiple levels that you described.

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