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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   2561 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 24, 2024

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So, what are you reading?

Still on Future Shock, 12 Commandments, Crystallizing Public Opinion and Galactic Patrol.

I started Dance Dance Dance on my Thanksgiving trip flight and it has all the hallmarks of the Murakami novels I prefer.

Have you already read A Wild Sheep Chase? The two books are mildly connected.

Yes! I really enjoyed it! That's why I got Dance Dance Dance.

I've read several of his, and yet my favourite is still the first one I read, which is also his normie basic bitch black sheep hit: Norwegian Wood, also a leading candidate for my favourite novel ever.

Nice! My favorite so far is 1Q84. I loved it's surrealness. I read A Windup Bird Chronicle first on a blind recommendation and thought it was very strange. But I've gotten a lot more appreciation for his style since then. I think Infinite Jest is my favorite novel but 1Q84 is close!

I'm reading Breakfast With Seneca by David Fideler. Basically the author takes several themes touched on by Seneca, and writes a chapter on each one with his own thoughts (and corroborating quotes from other Stoic writers). It's enjoyable, although not earth shattering since I have previously read Seneca's letters. But still, it's nice to spend more time reflecting on Stoic ideas, and think of new ways I can try to apply them better in my own life.

Have also just started The Confessions of Lady Nijō. It is pretty much what it says on the tin - Lady Nijō was one of the concubines of one of the emperors of Japan in the thirteenth century, and this is her writing about her life. Not sure I'll enjoy this one very much to be honest, but meh - it's a library book so I haven't lost anything if I don't wind up liking it.

About sixty pages into My Brilliant Friend. It makes Italy sound like Beirut.

Reading JD Vance's Hillbilly Elegy. It's a much shorter book, I'm halfway through already.

I'm not sure if there was much in the way of ghostwriting or assistance on this, but if it's not much, then it's remarkably good writing for a sitting politician.

It reminds me a little of Sowell's Black Rednecks, White Liberals, which put forth the idea that quite a few of the dysfunctions affecting black culture were actually copied from the white hillbilly culture.

Vance is a writer who later became a politician. Hillbilly Elegy is what made him famous and jump started a potential political career. It’s not a political memoir written for a sitting politician like Dreams From My Father

Interesting, I didn't know that! I'll have to take a closer look at how his career progressed.

At the point I'm at, I've been thinking, this is a pretty good autobiography, but I haven't yet seen anything that I would expect makes anyone think, wow I really want this guy to represent me in DC. Though I see it starting to go in that direction already with my last day's reading.

I just blew through 1,000 page Exodus by Peter F Hamilton. I’m pretty mixed on PFH. I loved Commonweath but I’ve tried and fail to get into his others. I’m taking a stab at Nights Dawn but that’s besides the point

I thought Exodus was great. His best work in quite some time. The universe, pacing, major plot lines - all great. Good characters. The dude is really really imaginative.

The book is actually contract work where it’s and in-universe tie in novel with a new sci fi RPG that’s in development but some legit ex-BioWare guys. I’m very skeptical that the game won’t be woke slop since it’s being published by WOTC.

All this is to say that I hope more people read this book and it has some success. PFH is legit and doesn’t seem to have gone performatively woke even if he has been bullied into no longer including sex scenes in his stories.

I'm honestly surprised he's still around considering everything, still more that he's getting that kind of work. Read the first two nights dawn books in elementary school, and the Commonwealth trilogy when it first came out.

Probably should get around to rereading and finishing the former, but it's harder to justify burning through a pile of doorstops in a weekend the way you could as a kid.

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