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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   4032 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for May 10, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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What are you reading? In an effort to improve my German, I'm reading Zweig's 'Die Welt von Gestern', The World of Yesterday: Memories of a European. I rarely read non-fiction, but this book, which is a kind of autobiography but is really a deeply melancholy memory of the collapse of the European civilization that preceded the first world war and its aftermath, is extraordinary. If you have any interest in what Europe was like at the end of the 'long 19th century', in the belle epoque that preceded 1914, you must read it.

Zweig began his life in 1882 as a bourgeois Austrian Jew whose father had made a fortune in textiles. He became one of the most widely-translated authors of the early 20th century. He submitted the draft of this book on the eve of his suicide, in exile in Brazil, some sixty years later, when the second world war seemed like the final end, the stamping out, of the German civilization he had cherished and to which he was devoted.

The book covers the rapid and interesting developments in wealthy Austrian society in the closing decade of the 19th century and the first decade of the 20th. Zweig was well-connected; he meets Herzl as his literary editor at a newspaper, encounters Rathenau in 1922 on the eve of his assassination, petitions (successfully!) Mussolini to spare the life of a close Italian friend. He travels to America and India, but he spends most of his time in the bourgois, cosmopolitan circles of pre- and inter-war Europe, describing extensively the customs, sexual morality, education, worldview and politics of many of the people(s) he meets.

His writing about the rise of Hitler is interesting, how he was largely written off by many people in cultured Viennese circles. And his thoughts on what caused the frantic, bizarre culture deterioriation and degeneracy of postwar urban Germany and Austria, particularly after 1922, have value too. But what sticks with me is something else; Zweig killed himself out of despair (he had money and was famous and safe in exile) for Europe. For the last thirty years of his life he had seen the world he knew get worse, again and again, consistently and almost without respite. He writes about how the quality of products declined, how the train schedules worsened, the quality of everything reduces. How the masses were whipped up into rage. And then you return to the exquisite summer of 1914, where it seemed as if all of that - the nightmare of the following decades - was impossible, because things had been improving for so long.

When I looked up modern Anglophone writing about Zweig I was saddened that there had been some pathetic articles published during the Trump presidency that took his writing about fascism out of context. Zweig was largely apolitical - about politics as diverse as zionism, socialism and fascism - and Hitler himself praised and attended the performance of one of his operas in 1935. The value in his narrative is not about politics, it is about how faint the possibility of the loss of peace and prosperity can seem before it happens, how fragile civilization is, how savage war makes men, how it empties culture, and how things can really get worse, much worse, for a very very long time before they get better.

Nothing particularly heavy or impressive: the Sabriel series (written by Garth Nix), which I first read in my early adolescence and for some reason felt a compulsion to re-read recently. Young adult fantasy is probably the best way to describe it; there are references to sexual themes and occasionally somewhat graphic moments of violence but it's all relatively tame. I really enjoy the world-building and the magic and death systems, the latter of which is really what the core of the franchise is based on. I'd also forgotten how nice it is for literary escapism to actually be relatively optimistic in tone and cheerful for once - I'm as much a fan of grimdark as the next fantasy reader but it can get depressing after a while.

I distinctly remember reading Lireal pretty much in one sitting, into the night. I had borrowed it, and had to go it back the next day, you see. The bells, with their names, tones, and powers, are still among my favorite fantasy weapons across all literature. Bells!

I don't think I've read anything after Abhorsen, but there were other books. Have you read them?

Lirael is definitely the best book in the original series. She's the most engaging protagonist and I really enjoy her relationship with the dog. I also liked reading about the society of the Clayr.

I've only read the original trilogy but I've bought the newer books - pretty excited to start them!

I also have fond memories of that series.

I really enjoy the world-building and the magic and death systems, the latter of which is really what the core of the franchise is based on.

I remember that it bugged me to no end when I first read the books that after giving a fairly unique character to each of the precincts in the first half of the afterlife, the narrative basically speedruns through the last third of the afterlife in Abhorsen without much detail.

Never had heard of it, but it's on my reading list now. Thanks.

In an effort to improve my German, I'm reading Zweig's 'Die Welt von Gestern', The World of Yesterday: Memories of a European.

Has there been some recent fascination with the book? I looked it up in the Toronto library system and all 8 copies are signed out, with multiple holds past that. Unusual popularity for a book from the 1940s.

It’s been an occasionally dredged up topic in literature circles since about 2009, in part thanks to a general sense of impending doom that a lot of mainstream libs have had since then and because there are plenty of ways for them (as noted) to twist Zweig’s words into applying to the present culture war, even if this is relatively poor practice. There are also many literary comparisons (often unfavorable ones) to Joseph Roth. I don’t think there’s any reason why this year in particular would make it a thing, though, I bought my copy in Vienna while looking for books about Austria I could read in German.

There are also many literary comparisons (often unfavorable ones) to Joseph Roth.

I'm surprised they're unfavourable. Roth's novels are wonderful, but they're novels, not the same thing, and while I enjoy Roth's personal nonfiction a lot, Zweig is obviously better at that.

I’m reading Hyperion right now. I find the first story — the priest who had to basically crucify himself to finally die — the kind of science fiction that makes me think a bit.

The cruciform story is so damn cool. But unsettling. But cool.

And the shrike…

I had picked up Zweig’s Beware of Pity a long time ago, actually seeing it on a hotel table in Germany, but it lost my attention. I liked his Chess Story though.

how savage war makes men

I felt this way reading about Napoleon recently. Half a million involved in the battle of Leipzig? And how much did Napoleon actually aid France at the end of the day? It’s a comical loss of life. And the amount of rape was surprising too. I actually wonder if his aggressive campaigning wasn’t halfways motivated by rape alone, with the other half mostly novelty-seeking. Like why the fuck did you invade Egypt?

The sentiment you describe reminds me of the Talleyrand quote:

He who has not lived in the eighteenth century before the Revolution does not know the sweetness of life and can not imagine that there can be happiness in life. This is the century that has shaped all the conquering arms against this elusive adversary called boredom. Love, Poetry, Music, Theatre, Painting, Architecture, Court, Salons, Parks and Gardens, Gastronomy, Letters, Arts, Science, all contributed to the satisfaction of physical appetites, intellectual and even moral refinement of all pleasures, all the elegance and all the pleasures. The existence was so well filled that if the seventeenth century was the Great Age of glories, the eighteenth was that of indigestion.

I may have to add that to my list.

I'm still slowly making my way through Crime & Punishment. I'm some way through Part II. I am enjoying it, but I just haven't felt a lot of motivation to read lately. Was on a huge gaming kick playing through Unicorn Overlord, which I highly recommend. But that's over, so I've been getting back to it a bit.

Sometimes my wife and I have conversations about the human condition, and I use that exact phrase a lot, the "human condition". I don't know when that specific phrase was coined, but it's a subject matter that's been at the core of nearly every enduring work. And Crime & Punishment is rich with it. Although the author has a funny habit of crafting each chapter as a pseudo monologue. Perhaps with a bit of brief narrative to move a character from point A to point B, and once there, we enjoy another 10 to 20 page monologue. Not that it bothers me. These monologues serve as interesting, if unsubtle, character studies. The one a few chapters in where Raskolnikov encounters an alcoholic that opines how he ruined his wife and daughter's lives for love of drink is fairly on the nose.

But it's supposed to be one of the greatest novels ever written, so if you are a Crime & Punishment stan, you can ignore my ignorant impressions of such a great and unimpeachable work.

That's the price for entry in reading Dostoyevsky. It requires a suspension of disbelief when characters go on impossibly long monologues while other characters listen with impossible patience.

It's a beautiful book. I recommend Joseph Roth, if you haven't read him, for similar treatment of that subject matter (from a slightly different class position, less elite than Zweig).

I always see these reading threads and think y'all read such heavy stuff. I read for fun. Not a serious book in sight.

I just caught up in Markets and Multiverses. A young lady dies. Her soul gets pulled along in a big soul ocean to a galaxy sized ship floating in the soul ocean. The ship is called "the market". Its a place for re-incarnators to stop by and buy powers between reincarnations. But the ship has been taken over and all the reincarnators seem to have been killed, and the enemies are still lurking around. She meets some new people from different worlds who also just got reincarnated. Together they Reincarnate and try to build up their powers.

I'm currently subscribed to patreons for some stories I enjoy. Like Millennial Mage (A Slice of Life, Progression Fantasy) and The Path of Ascension. I recently got to read the end of Ar'Kendrithyst which is one of the longest completed stories ever at 4.39 million words. I'm also caught up on The Stubborn Skill-Grinder In A Time Loop which is the perfect level of trashy dumb progression fantasy for me. I'm waiting for Chaotic Craftsman Worships The Cube and Unintended Cultivator - A Xianxia-inspired Cultivation Novel to build up more of a chapter backlog for me to start reading them again.

I like action, powerful main characters that kick ass, and fantasy worlds that mostly don't resemble our world at all. I prefer stories with low levels of moral ambiguity. Made up fantasy systems and rules are fun. Betrayal is not fun. Horrors of war are not fun. Politics is boring.

I always see these reading threads and think y'all read such heavy stuff. I read for fun. Not a serious book in sight.

Not to be too cynical, and I'm sure people here do routinely read some dense texts, but there's definitely an incentive here to selectively post about things that make you look smart. I'm sure the majority of people read their pulpy scifi and trashy fantasy alongside The Rise and Fall but just don't discuss it.

The Stubborn Skill-Grinder In A Time Loop

Based and—dare I say it?—Perfect Lionheart–pilled.

the perfect level of trashy dumb progression fantasy

I'll recommend Dungeon Diver: Stealing A Monster’s Power. It thoroughly earns its 3.5 star rating with its characterization, plot, and prose, but man was it fun.

A few underappreciated positives of stories I'm reading (that wouldn't generally make it into other reviews):

The Calamitous Bob: The world and everything in it is as serious as reality, which makes it an excellent straight man. For example, the first group the main character runs into doesn't have a "V" phoneme in their language, so she becomes known as "Bob". Also, you know the the trope where you can tame a cute animal by acting nonthreatening and giving it food? And animal-like people (eg. cat-people, lizard-people, bird-people)? Well, some platypus-people tried to tame the main character with dumplings.

Markets and Multiverses: Death isn't final, so the stakes are higher. If the protagonists got into an unwinnable fight in any other story, I'd know they would survive (because otherwise the story ends). However, the worst-case scenario of having to reincarnate doesn't end the story, so it's a possibility: they lost plot-armor in exact proportion to their immortality.

Player Manager: It's set very much in present day London. In-story, it's mid-April 2024, and the earlier chapters included the Queen's death and its effects on English sports. It lends a certain amount of grounding to the story.

Dungeon Diver: Stealing A Monster’s Power sounds like my cup of tea.

Calamitous Bob has been sitting in my follow list for a while. I read it a long time ago up to about chapter 100. It has an amazing army fight scene.

Thank you, I agree. Lately I've been listening to books while I work in the yard. Black berries and blue bells won't pull themselves out.

My favorites are animal-based children's stories. Hank the Cowdog is a classic, as those books on tape are about 2-3 hours, just long enough to get some good progress going. Right now I'm working through Mattimeo, which is holds some interest now that I have children, rather than being the child when I first read it.

I like action, powerful main characters that kick ass, and fantasy worlds that mostly don't resemble our world at all.

I would suggest Undying Mercenaries by BV Larson. Not really fantasy, more like sci-fi, but James McGill does little else but kick ass and die violently (see, undying).

I remember reading steel world a few years ago. It was a fun book. I ended up not reading any more of the series, can't remember why.

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