The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Every Book I Read Last Year
I set a goal of reading 26 books last year, or approximately one every two weeks. I did not meet that goal. Probably primarily because I chose to read War and Peace while annotating it for a friend. I also read snatches of a lot of other things, but only included stuff I read more or less cover-to-cover (I’ll admit to skimming sections of Yellowface and Stranger in a Strange Land between about the 50% and 85% marks).
Honorable Mentions I did not finish: Seeing Like a State, which was brilliant and I’ll get around to finishing it later, but I only read it in boring meetings and I didn’t have quite quite enough of those where I wasn’t involved; The Good Soldier Svejk, which is good but I got bored of; Bob Dylan’s The Philosophy of Modern Songwriting I still have like a half dozen songs to go, but it’s not really that good and I got out of the rhythm of it; I worked my way through a pile of Platonic dialogues, but I try to stick to only counting it as finishing a “book” if I’ve gone cover to cover as bound at the printer otherwise I'd have to start thinking in pages and then wordcount; ditto, I suppose, the King James bible, in that I read passages but not the whole book; I started The Savage Detectives while walking my wife around the mall but haven’t got back around to finish it; I started Where Men Win Glory, Krakauer's biography of Pat Tillman, which is good but I forgot it at my parents house at some point and never got back to it. I also don’t “count” audiobooks towards the goal, though I quite enjoy them and listen to them pretty constantly.
Razzmatazz! I devoured Chris Moore’s novels when I was a kid, but this was painful to read. His schtick just doesn’t work anymore. I keep meaning to reread his novel of Christ’s lost years, Lamb, so I can review it for themotte, it really is a brilliant time capsule of mid-2000s Morally Therapeutic Deism. Would not recommend this one though, trying to be sensitive to historical traumas of prostitution while also playing it for laughs leaves you with neither.
The War Nerd Iliad Loved it, brilliant. A prose translation of the Iliad, what I admire about it is that it has a strong interpretative view of what the work means, and he sets out to give the reader that view; where so many academic translations get so caught up in accuracy and euphemism that they fail to give much energy. Highly, highly recommend, you owe it to yourself to read this one.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being Excellent book, deservers all the praise it ever got. It filled me with nostalgia for when great literature could also be fun. It’s a book that has a real political and philosophical message, while also being a perfectly fun adventure story. Back in the day a masterpiece could also be a bestseller.
From Hell Great book. Boy is Alan Moore weird. I keep meaning to look more into the theory behind it.
Sevastapol Sketches Around here I got off track to the goal, because I made the mistake of starting War and Peace. But I told a friend I would annotate it for her. I kind of stalled on it, so I went and read Sevastopol Sketches to kind of get a win in the books. It was a great pick me up, and reading it added a lot to reading War and Peace so I was glad I did it. It’s interesting seeing prototypes of a lot of the characters, Nikolai and Andrei and Berg showing up in miniature. Would highly recommend it if you’re a Tolstoy fan.
Cheated A book about the Astros trashcan scandal in Major League Baseball, it is a high-mediocre sports journalism book but a bunch of anecdotes stick with me today. If you liked that era of baseball, you’ll like the book.
Day of the Oprichnik I hated this book and didn’t get it, but I think it’s because I’m not Russian and I don’t find gross-out gore or porn interesting.
Trust the Plan A book pretending to report on the QAnon phenomenon, but it mostly got so many things wrong that I only got through it because it was mercifully short. I wasn’t, ultimately, any better informed about Q after than I was before.
Aeneid The Dryden translation. I prefer older translations of classics generally, both because they tend to aim for actual poetry, and because they believe in what they’re writing about. Maybe not the most accurate translation from the Latin, but the translator thought that the story had value and meaning beyond as a museum piece, which gives it more energy.
Yellowface This was the worst book I read this year. Turner Diaries for the anhedonic members of a college Women of Color Collective.
And The Band Played On Brilliantly written, and I learned a lot about the AIDS crisis and gay culture. A really great example of writing, in that I would bother my wife by reading out passages that were alternately horrifying and hilarious, it captures the tragedy of plague without ever letting go of absurdism and fun. It was amazing how many personalities turned back up like bad nickels for COVID, and how the actions taken to combat COVID largely map onto the AIDS crisis as things that would have worked for AIDS, but didn’t for COVID. I expect we’ll see the same cycle again, always fighting the last war. Perhaps a consequence of Gerontocracy.
Path Lit by Lightning Really nicely written biography of Jim Thorpe, a well done piece of sports history, and I was thinking later while listening to Lonesome Dove on audiobook about how time periods intersect. Lonesome Dove is set in the West in the 1870s, Newt is around 20 by the end. Jim Thorpe was born in 1887. Jim Thorpe’s father could have been one of the sad Indians in the background of the cattle drive in Lonesome Dove, Newt (assuming a natural lifespan) would have lived to read headlines in the Montana newspapers about Thorpe’s exploits. Thorpe meanwhile, is just on the edge of modernity for us: one of the first modern Olympians, the first president of the NFL, an early Hollywood fixture. He’s just on the edge of having run into people that I could have watched on TV, and then he is just on the edge of having known rebel Indian chiefs in the old west.
Master and Commander What can I say about this that hasn’t been said before? He does such a good job of giving a feel of how crazy the world his characters inhabit is. A firehose of exposition without a single speech.
Stranger in a Strange Land When I read Dune I felt like I had suddenly discovered what Star Wars had ripped off, Star Wars was just Dune with less thinking. Then I read Stranger and realized that Dune was just Stranger if the author was terrified of human sexuality.
War and Peace My favorite work of literature. A masterpiece. It contains all of human life.
King Rat I read it after watching Shogun with my mother, and wanted to revisit Clavell. This was so much better than I thought it would be. Absolutely perfect book. Read it. The strongest indictment of capitalism I’ve ever read, and a love letter to it all at once. Clavell was a master of writing books that are deep and engaging adventure stories.
Stepford Wives Really fun Halloween book, and it’s funny how much of it holds up, but at the same time how much of it never makes any sense at all.
My Brilliant Friend Read it because it was ranked so high on various best of the millennium lists. I can see why it ranked so high: Ferrante pulls you into her world, head first. Beautifully written, and consistently engaging. I can’t wait to get to the sequels this year. There’s an amusing irony to the debates, which in America center on whether men are sexist for refusing to read this brilliant book by a female author, and in Europe mostly revolve around which man is the real Elena Ferrante.
On the Edge The further I get from this book, the less I think about it. Junk food in text form.
The Price of Peace A Singaporean educational propaganda book about Malaya during the Japanese Occupation in WWII. An angle of WWII we don’t normally get in America. Fascinating to look at, but not something I’d recommend. Mostly fascinating for examining the message the propaganda is trying to get across, and for considering different viewpoints of WWII.
Sad Cypress An old Agatha Christie, just something I got as a gift. A nice little treat.
Il Gigante A biography of Michaelangelo around the David. Picked it up at a church flea market, it was mediocre, but I finished it anyway.
The Message Ta Nehisi Coates new book. I’m buying copies of it for all the Nice Liberal Jews in my life. He makes a powerful case for why the core values of American liberalism are incompatible with support for Israel as a Jewish ethnostate.
I feel like I’m forgetting something, but I’m probably not. Right now, in addition to struggling through Plato, I’m loving Emily Wilson’s translation of the Odyssey. It’s not the most traditional translation, but it’s so wonderful, the language feels like sipping an icy sprite on a sunny day.
For 2025, I want to read some self-help books, strange as that may sound, to get some of the books that are always being recommended. I want to read more science fiction, I haven't been able to get into the genre in a while. I want to get around to some more of the recommendations people made here for graphic novels. Basically, I'm in the mood for lighter fare.
One of my favoritest books, but I wonder if it survives the English translation (if that's what you read). The original is written in Czech, but not just any Czech but Czech-German jargon with ample addition of obscene vocabulary from other Slavic languages, Hungarian, etc. I read it in Russian translation though one day I hope maybe to be able to read the original.
I think the point of those books (and many of Sorokin writings in general) is how well all that gross gore is mapping to what have actually happened and happening in Russia. But it's quite hard to understand without experiencing that life and culture for a long time. He's also a masterful stylist and often imitates some literary and cultural aspects of existing works, which is hard to appreciate I guess in translation and not being part of the culture.
Some of my boredom with Svejk is likely circumstances, my standard reading time is before bed and in the early morning. My peak hours of attention are typically otherwise occupied. The material may not fit with that context.
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If you liked Stranger, it arguably isn't Heinlein's best work. The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress is more widely highly regarded, and Time Enough For Love is more polarizing but more highly regarded by many.
If you're not averse to books for tweens and teens as being way too light, Heinlein's "juveniles" (my favorite was Citizen of the Galaxy) and juvenile-accessible novels (especially Starship Troopers, Double Star) were pretty good for what they are.
I was thinking of picking up Starship Troopers next. Stranger is the most leftist of fantasies, Troopers is often pointed out as borderline-fascist, so I want to see the flip.
Also they were written back-to-back, Troopers in 1959, Stranger in 1961. (Both won Hugos.) I think that's important to keep in mind when comparing, like both were the product of essentially the same Heinlein, not different phases or eras.
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The movie may be fascist, but the book is significantly different, more nuanced, and better.
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Highly recommend Ted Chiang. I assume you've read Ender's Game, but if you haven't I'd recommend it.
The Expanse series is great (even though I didn't like the ending too much, but getiing the good ending is the hardest part, the series itself is great). The movies are not bad either IMHO but the books are so much richer.
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Ender's Game and the following trilogy (Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, Children of the Mind) I highly recommend. Speaker for the Dead especially.
I enjoyed the Ender's Shadow series as well (though I just read the finally released last book, and it was baddddd), so maybe just stick to the original 3 (Shadow Puppers/of the Hegemon/of the Giant). Not sure those still hold up though, it's been a while.
Hyperion and the sequel are my favorite SF I've read recently - very very good.
Timothy Zahn has a lot of fun stuff if you are into star wars, and some even if you aren't (the conqueror's trilogy, angelmass, icarus hunt)
I have Speaker for the Dead, hoping to read it this year.
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My recommendations. Charles Burns who wrote Black Hole has a new book out last year called Final Cut which, while not quite as good as Black Hole, is still excellent and hits some of the same beats (seventies nostalgia, adolescence, heartache), minus the body horror.
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What a coincidence, I was looking to get my hands on a copy of this but I couldn't find it in any of the bookshops I went to.
Another bizarre coincidence, I finished reading it on Monday. Loved it.
Finished it in December and enjoyed it, although I'm not as eager to read the sequels as you are. My mum lent me the second one.
Did your copy include the annotations with Moore's research at the back? I found these extremely absorbing. My understanding is that Moore doesn't think the Stephen Knight theory really has any factual basis, but it was a cracking yarn.
If you want my copy of Svejk I'll mail it to you anywhere in the continental USA.
I did have the notes at the end of from hell, and read them, but as you said Moore didn't take it all that seriously. I'm sure people have.
I will pay for postage if you ship it to Ireland.
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I set myself exactly the same target for this year. Good to know that I have someone's example to follow and motivate mys-
Oh.
Lol
It wasn't a rigorous goal in metrics, I'm pretty happy with my reading for the year. Obviously reading Tolstoy derailed a title by title goal, as did picking up Plato. If I had gotten a two volume edition of War and Peace, and bound copies of sets of four dialogues, I would have exceeded the goal.
Though that balances out with something like Stepford Wives which is a novella at best, and Yellowface, which I barely read despite it being typeset to make it take twice as many pages as it needed to.
I actually remember reading your one-paragraph review of Yellowface, several times this year I've pointed it out to my girlfriend and said "there's a guy on the Motte who said that book was shite".
I have about five million more things to say about it. My wife got sick of how much I hated this book. Then last week she read it and hated it even more.
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I just happened to have these next to each other on my reading list a few years back, and I think you've right that the two feel very related, and I approve of your comparison.
We don't realize just how important stranger in a strange land was when it came out. Its influence has been laundered through others, but it was massive at the time, hence the Billy Joel shout-out. Charlie Manson was super into it, as were a lot of sixties rock and rollers, and a lot of fiction works that have held up better, like Dune, were written in direct conversation with Stranger.
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I found Unbearable Lightness of Being to be pseudo-philosophical trash. Posting my review from goodreads below. Don't think we have anything else in common on our read list from 2024.
I think I would have appreciated this book more if I had visited Prague/Czechia in general, but as it is, my feelings about the book were very mixed. The Unbearable Lightness of Being is a book primarily about four people: Tomas, his wife Tereza, his Mistress Sabina, and her lover Franz in the middle years of the communist regime in Czechoslovakia, after the attempt revolution in 1968. There isn't really a central plot per se, but most of the book revolves around the conflict between Tomas and Tereza about Tomas's repeated infidelity, and a contrast between the "lightness" with which he seems to live his life and the "heaviness" that she seems to be unable to escape in hers. There's also some classic Kafka-esque living-under-Communism subplots that revolve around an article Tomas publishes in 1968 right before the revolution, but these honestly felt like a distraction from the main aspect of the novel.
For the first 2/3 of the book, this was almost certainly a 1/5 star read. The supposed difference between the lightness of Parmenides and the heaviness in Nietzsche's eternal recurrence seemed like a bunch of pseudo-profound bullshit to me. The supposed lightness of being is just an adolescent refusal to take responsibility for one's own decisions and the life one inhabits. Each of the four title character's also seemed incredibly narcissistic, and the singular focus on sex and desire above all the other things that were going on in Czechia at the time seem to highlight this fact. The detached way in Kundera wrote this didn't help either, the characters really did feel like characters he made up rather than real people, and the plethora of sex scenes bordered on inhuman and frankly disturbing.
There's also the anti-communism. This seems to be something pretty common among Czech authors in particular (perhaps something to do with the Ayn Rand "I'm better than the proles") attitude that they seem to have as an entire country, but there was little acknowledgement about the kinds of things communism did right, and a demonization of Russia as the land of evil-totalitarianism equivalent to Nazi Germany. Kundera couldn't even recognize the happiness and beauty of the socialist May Day celebrations, rather using them as a jumping off point to discuss the concept of Kitsche. The whole thing just reeks of sore loserdom: like we have here in the Old Confederacy. I'm not denying that the Czech communist state (and the Soviets) did horrible things, but we also have to remember who is writing here.
However the last third of the book, after Tomas and Tereza move to the countryside redeemed the book for me quite a bit. We get some wonderful reflections on the role of their dog Karenin in bringing joy to both their lives, and some pro-vegan philosophical musings. We also get to see Tomas and Tereza actually happy. I'm still not quite sure what Kundera's message is: I would likely have to reread this book to figure it out more completely, and I'm pretty sure I don't care to do that, but the beauty of the last part of the book cannot be denied.
Weird given how Soviet Communists raped their country in 1968...
Ah, the good old "Hitler got trains running on time" thing (which he didn't btw)
Ah yes, and we do not appreciate the brilliant whiteness of KKK hoods and the beauty of Nazi torch marches. Maybe I should rewatch The Birth of a Nation and Triumph of Will to get inspired.
Like that, except when the Confederacy won and he's the slave. Sore loser indeed.
It kinda looks like you do. Or at least you are denying Kundera the right to be horrified and disgusted by those horrible things.
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How do you define the term pseudo-philosophical?
An argument/piece of media that tries to make a profound philosophical point, but the point ends up being a tautology, or an unreal distinction of some kind. For example, in this book, I think "lightness" of being is just an excuse to not engage with one's life, not an actual philosophical state.
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Ought there to have been?
Is that characterisation unfair?
Yes. Communism actually provided most people with decent lives and didn't rely on looting the treasuries of other countries to do so.
No. A lot of people managed to live decent lives under communism, but not because of it but despite it. A lot of people - millions of them - did not survive it though, and that was definitely without doubt because of it.
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So does capitalism. One difference is that communism in Czechoslovakia came about due to a Soviet supported coup followed by a military invasion 20 years later to crush a popular uprising.
Right, I'm not saying the Czech regime was good or just. I'm just saying the comparisons of the Soviet Union (or even the Czech puppet government) to the Nazis is not a fair comparison. And that's what it felt like Kundera was doing in this book.
Why not? Both murdered millions of people in service of their ideology which was supposed to make the world better but actually led to absolutely unprecedented horrible suffering and mass deaths. Both dehumanized large groups of people and invented mechanistic means of mass murder. Both started aggressive wars and conquered and subjugated neighboring countries. Both adopted totalitarian ideology that had no place for freedom of thought or discussion. I think there's a lot of fair comparison there. And yes, both had joyous parades on special occasion (try not to go there or not be joyous, and you'll find out what happens to you). Strangely, most people do not appreciate that joy too much.
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The death toll in the Holodomor was in the same ballpark (i.e. seven figures) to the death toll in the Holocaust. Compare how many political prisoners were imprisoned in concentration camps vs. gulags (over a million people died in the latter). As expected in dictatorships of all kinds there was the usual suppression of the free press, assassination of political opponents, military expansionism and so on.
Comparisons between X and Nazi Germany are a dime a dozen, but I think that the comparison is much more warranted in the case of the Soviet Union than in most cases it's trotted out.
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I feel like a few citations are needed.
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I have paused all reading since I want to get through my Tantra Illuminated courses on the Near Enemies of Truth. This is based on a book of the same name released last year by the guy behind Tantra Illuminated, Christopher Hareesh Wallis where he points out common mistakes many make on their spiritual journey. This book is also a supplementary text in the course. His other book many read and liked was titled Tantra Illuminated. My other course is the history of yoga which has Tantra Illuminated as supplementary reading.
Here are some I recommend
Ramayana but in a more litrary form as opposed to a poem form, Goldman is a very capable sanskrit scholar and Lord Rams story is one that defines the high civilization my place once was with Lord Ram being a physical embodiment of everything holy and Aryan. The story like any epic is simple, you learn about the mortal struggles of literally god where he is unaware of his own divine self and foregoes everything good in life to do whats right.
Classi graphic novel every hispter recommends for good reason. DC also released an animated movie on it besides a live action movie by zack snyder nearly 15 years ago, a very skeptical take on the age old superhero trope, it is a very highly rated work.
A very broad but light collection of essays from ancient to modern times on a variety of different topics. Very well Curated, my copy of it was "borrowed" by my cousin sister so I need to order it again to read all of the essays but the ones I did read were fantastic.
The good parts are really funny, insightful and personal. Owen Cook, a super smart philosophy student from canada was mysterys student who was short, ugly, ginger and balding, the book presents a collection of his classic internet posts detailing his journey from a guy who did not get laid in 2 years of tryng to a guy who then later lives up to his moniker of Tyler Durden inspired by fight club. Tyler was the most important PUA of all time where in he breaks down in fine detail what made cold approach tick and his own struggles around it. It is more about his journey and the world around him than pickup tactics, a raw unfiltered look at Owen Cook in his finest hour before RSD blew up.
The Tyler Digest is also why I detail out my life here. The book is simply a loose collection of various posts Owen made in chronological order compiled by another guy. He starts off as this spergy loser who by the en is a different man, calm, relaxed, competent yet still deeply aware of what plagues guys like me and him. I want something like this too so that by the end of 4-5 years, I can look back at what I was and how I saw life, things I did and the insights I earned from them. 4 years ago for instance, same date, I posted about my oneitis on one of these wellness wednesday threads and how over the moon I was because she threw me a bone vs now as someone who is somewhat ok at cold approaching girls and does not attach his self-worth to what some girl online thinks of himself. Funnily enough, I got introduced to all this on themotte so it all ties up in the end.
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It's one of these pomo books that expect you to be familiar with the source material, like Fowles, Eco, contemporary art or jazz. The source material in question being primarily Russia's homegrown brand of Dark Enlightenment wankery from the aughties.
I disagree, the only thing that it requires from you is that you are Russian and lived in Russia. It’s actually funny how every review for it that I’ve heard from non-Russians is negative, but Russians love it. In general, I’m a bit baffled that foreigners try to read Sorokin because it’s akin to trying to understand an inside joke without any context.
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Cool post, thanks for writing it. Should I read Shogun? It's been recommended to me a thousand times for obvious reasons, but I'm a jerk about historical accuracy and I'm worried it's going to be full of anachronistic nonsense or magical oriental Mr. Miyagi characters. Maybe I'm approaching the book too seriously and should suspend disbelief?
FWIW, I'm reading King Warrior Magician Lover by Moore & Gillette, and it gets recommended fairly often in some manosphere corners. I'm only about halfway through and I'm not sure I'm totally sold on (what appears to me to be) all the Jungian psychobabble, but it's kind of interesting and different, and I could see how the framework might be useful for men. That might be one to check out.
Tim Ferriss gets recommended a lot. I read the Four Hour Work Week back in college, but it didn't leave a huge impression on me. All I remember is that he became a "kickboxing world champion" in some weight class by somehow exploiting a loophole in the rules and... that proved some point about hustling, or something. But a lot of people seem to like his stuff.
Yes. I re-read sections of it along with a friend while re-watching the show. It holds up better than I remember, I might re-read it in full. There are parts that might not hold up perfectly, and you can do nit-picky historical accuracy stuff (technically Geishas didn't exist at that exact time, stuff like that), but if you view it primarily from the perspective of Blackthorne (largely as a stand-in for Clavell himself, who was a prisoner of the Japanese in Singapore during WWII) I think it holds up really well. It's very GRRM when it comes to throneroom politics, very Ian Fleming when it comes to swashbuckling omni-competent British hero everyone wants to fuck.
Reading it again in parts, I realized how much the book is a metaphor for the aftermath of WWII. It starts with the Japanese doing unforgivable things to Blackthorne and his men, and asks how can he forgive them? This mirrors the journey of Japan in the second half of the twentieth century: how can Clavell forgive the Japanese for what they did to him, how can the Japanese forgive the Americans for the bombings? Clavell suggests it is possible for people so totally opposed to find human connection, understanding, and love; even if the book is far from utopian in its vision.
Okay, that sounds pretty cool. I like the idea of taking as the narrative of a British man rather than that of an omniscient narrator. I'll pull it off my shelf and give it a read.
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My problem with the praise of the (remade) miniseries is how the ostensible protagonist of Shogun (Blackthorne) is relegated to an ineffectual buffoon, without any real redeeming qualities apart from the fact that Toranaga and Mariko seemingly take to him. I enjoyed the book immensely both times I read it. I am somewhat surprised by your praise of Ta Nehini Coates, who I think is a muddled-thinking fraud.. That said, I haven't read this book you're recommending.
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Read his Jardine Matheson books instead, they have much less weebery.
Do they get better after TaiPan? I read it a while back and just felt like it went nowhere, where Shogun was perfectly well contained as a story.
What I disliked about Shogun was the whole fake protagonist thing, like in Unsong. Both HK novels suffer a lot from "things resolve themselves", but at least the hero of the story is the hero of the story.
Did you have the impression Blackthorne wasn't the hero of Shogun? (I mean the book.) He definitely was in the Chamberlain series, definitely wasn't in the new series, but I remember in the book, despite the omniscient perspective getting into every character's head, Blackthorne did seem to be the main character we are meant to empathize with.
By the end of the book it's clear that Toranaga is the real protagonist. As soon as he appears in the story he immediately steals at least half the limelight, and ultimately Clavell spells it out that Blackthorne's story is the story of a tame bird of prey: he's not locked in a cage but he doesn't realize he's wearing a hood and sees only what his master wants him to see and his agency is an illusion.
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