Gravity's Rainbow, ridiculously well read.
A Confederacy of Dunces narrated by Barrett Whitener. It's the closest we'll ever get to a movie adaptation
I will buy every book in this thread
anything by camille paglia, her voice is funny and entertaining
>>25189046Catch 22 narrated by Jim Weiss
Where have all the serious, urbane, book-reading men gone and why have they been replaced with women?
>>25179923>They [women] are a significant buying segment/thread. That's all it is. There are still serious, urbane, book-reading men, in roughly the same proportion there were in previous generations. The difference is that there are fewer large publishing houses today (just 5, really), and their first-and-foremost goal is making money - they all are far more interested more in financial returns than they are in cultivating literary talent. In past generations there was a larger and more diverse set of major publishers, and many of them had a greater focus on various niches (including large niches like literary fiction) and on developing and working with actually good authors, while also serving as better gate-keepers to keep out truly bad work than today's self-publishing platforms (B&N, Amazon).A similar pattern has played out in most of the western world (particularly in America) over the last 30 years or so - increased consolidation of firms (you'll see this in film, television, radio, food/restaurants, retail) and a corresponding focus on appealing to the largest audience possible to ensure the *largest* possible financial returns on every single investment. Our prior system of smaller firms making decent returns has been replaced by giant merged firms out to make the most they possibly can so that they don't get devoured by another firm in (or even sometimes outside of) their market.Western culture allowed (and even promoted) this by laying the seeds of this being OK with the glorification of finance in the 80s, and then by cloaking that under a guise of technological progress in the 90s and 00s.
>>25180581every woman thread hits the bump limit
>>25189575Hmm, yeah. They’re just consumers lacking any self awareness whatsoever while trying to maintain an image of erudition from having a bookshelf full of slop equivalent to video games.
>>25189575One potentially noteworthy follow-up to this post, by the way, is that in the last 10 years (particularly in the last 5), we've also seen several of those large (non-publishing) firms realize that they can further maximize their returns by focusing on the 'luxury' market and targeting mainly or even exclusively big spenders and high-net-worth consumers. We've seen this largely in fashion, but also in travel, live events (sports, concerts, even theater to some extent), and a few other sectors, which suggests a potential way 'out' of the lowest-common-denominator/widest-possible-audience thinking that has become prevalent. But I am skeptical something similar could happen in the publishing world inasmuch as books are not inherently/intrinsically valuable in the way that luxury goods can be, and to the extent they can be it's not directly related to the quality of the writing.
>>25180581>boolstrue
Neither is founded in reality. Teleportation is just as fantastic as dragons. Is Sci-Fi just for manchildren who want to LARP as grown ups?
>>25187498one is sci fi and one is fantasydumb ass
>>25187498I would say (broadly speaking), sci-fi looks to the future, while fantasy looks to the past, at the very least in terms of aesthetic. Sci-fi also (generally) presents itself as being more grounded in reality or based on contemporary research. Obviously there can be a lot of overlap between the two.
>>25189217I prefer this definition that I found in one of the assigned readings in my undergrad.>The term novum is Latin for “new thing” and has been used by academic Darko Suvin to describe the rationally conceivable elements of a fiction narrative that differ from our present day reality. These novum are the space ships, the ray guns, and the cities under the ocean that inspire as much as they entertain audiences. Both sci-fi and fantasy are imaginative genres of fiction, but they are separated by what Suvin calls “cognitive estrangement”, where Sci-Fi’s novum have a scientifically explainable foundation to their nature; something which fantasy narratives lack. Thus, elements such as magic, fictional countries and worlds and differences where no rational explanation are offered help identify a text as belonging to the fantasy genre. This includes books and films such as Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and even Star Wars, with its “Force”, light sabres and unexplained faster than light travel placing it as fantasy despite its space setting. While novum such as the Artificial Intelligence in Ghost in the Shell (1995) might as well be magic with how far they are from our current means to create, they are nonetheless based on an existing understanding of technologies that one could rationally argue that our society would develop towards in the future. https://shellzine.net/novum-in-science-fiction-film/
>>25189161good post. Better than this >>25189217 muddy nonsense
>>25187498before you ask an asinine question, you should first be aware that sci-fi and science-fantasy are two different genres.
were standards just different back then? I can’t really see a guy like him pulling today, when most women's baseline prerequisite seems to be tall, athletic and outdoorsy .
>>25188387redditors often omit this one. Plenty of lefty heroes who were 'ladies men' were just fucking their students (or even kiddos).
>>25187488>The white/european woman would rather fuck a balding chain smoker with stained teeth than a east asian malebased
>>25187476I very much doubt that. Statistics say otherwise.
>>25188639Isn't their a correlation between sperm discharge and lowered intelligence or that some schizo shit that someone like Evola would come up with?
>>25189549Show the study.
Was he right about everything?>The art of not reading is a very important one. It consists in not taking an interest in whatever may be engaging the attention of the general public at any particular time. When some political or ecclesiastical pamphlet, or novel, or poem is making a great commotion, you should remember that he who writes for fools always finds a large public. A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones: for life is short.Holy… he basically BTFOs this board and all its pseuds in one fell swoop, I say.
he was right about most things. the places he was wrong (about women, history, aesthetics) are the agoge (yes) of friedrich nietzsche
>>25189484>the places he was wrong (about women, history, aesthetics)Elaborate, please.
>>25189484But Nietzsches view of History and Women is identical...His Eternal Return is literally from Schoop but without a system.
>>25189382Trvth nvke
>>25189484When he sat for a bust work he told the talented lady that if a woman manages to stop being sheep/herd animal that follows the pack, and manages to pull herself out of it that she can grow even more as a man.This is the thing, women are good but they fall for social conventions more easily.
Are there any good essats or books that push strong arguments and reasons as to why traditional gender roles are superior to the modern version of womens roles and womens liberation?Stay at home mom = strong children =strong community=happy and healthy peoplesMother raising kids> the state raising kidsPerhaps even some writings that breakdown the mind of people that seem to be so bothered by these ideas
>>25187840Who cares if Marx criticized it? He's an idiot. A schizophrenic idiot at that.
>>25185343>the state raising kidswould actually be better. What you have instead are overworked moms that can barely afford daycare and are often single, isolating their kids from society. State-run daycares and camps and whatnot would help kids engage in social activities.Stay-at-home mom means both mom and dad are affluent enough that one of them doesn’t work, which even in third-world countries isn’t true if one goes by western notions of “not contributing any significant taxable income to the household”: women who are nominally “housewives” will still spend a significant fraction of their time working for income in their free time. Go to villages in third-world countries where your supposed gender roles are upheld. Kids are raised by the community, women work in vegetable gardens, household animals and sewing to sell the produce/clothing, and often men and women will cook and/or clean together since if you’re working class, you cannot risk having one gender overworking themselves and getting sick/injured. These communities have joint families (several generations under one roof) in order to ensure that these things are upheld smoothly; your emphasis on gender roles in a western nuclear family setting within a suburban environment and individualistic culture where you don’t even know your neighbour’s name is entirely alien to them.
>>25188005>what we really need to do is give the pedophiles who run this country even MORE access to our children Brilliant.
>>25187078marital rape can only be controlled by putting a camera in every bedroom, otherwise the woman says he raped me and the man says no i didnt, and you have to let the man go because theres no evidence
>>25188005entirely made up myth by white educated upper class liberals interpreting communal values being imparted on the children of the community as "raised by the community". >Go to villages in third-world countries where your supposed gender roles are upheld. Kids are raised by the community, women work in vegetable gardens, household animals and sewing to sell the produce/clothing, and often men and women will cook and/or clean together since if you’re working class, you cannot risk having one gender overworking themselves and getting sick/injured. see, you use the noble brown people as an example even though this has been the norm since ancient times in Europe all the way through to modernity, when the industrial revolution allowed for work to be more specialized.>These communities have joint families (several generations under one roof) in order to ensure that these things are upheld smoothly; your emphasis on gender roles in a western nuclear family setting within a suburban environment and individualistic culture where you don’t even know your neighbour’s name is entirely alien to them.Which is a detriment. Those families exist under the patriarch's rule which lasts for decades until he dies. Old men stuck in their ways often suppress younger generations and their ideas. I believe the nuclear family is an essential part of the protestant work ethic and the scientific and economic success it caused. A man becoming the ruler of his demesne at 20 incentivizes personal responsibility and innovation that extends to the public professional/political sphere. I've seen it first hand. A married young man working for his father and living in his property, which was the norm for thousands of years, having his objectively scientifically correct ideas about the business ignored because the old fart insists the way he has been doing it for 50 years is the correct way.t. third world brownoid
I just started reading this, and it's fantastic. I only regret that I got the 2024 version, with a foreword by Patton Oswald seething about the evils of internet trolls. I'm on "Riders of the Purple Wage" right now, and it's excellent.
>>25186524He was a good friend of Ellison. In fact, the latter even had a small role in a B5 episode.>>25186528It's basically leftovers. All the good stories were pulled off because HE wouldn't publish them.
>>25189134>He'll mostly be remembered for IHNMaIMS, A Boy and His Dog, and that one Star Trek episodeAnd he hated to be called a SF writer...
>>25189590He preferred to bill himself as a writer of "speculative fiction."
>>25189597>speculative fictionWhich is how they call SF in certain circles.
>>25189134>The Philip K Dick story is one of my absolute favorites ("Faith of Our Fathers").I'm in the middle of it now, and it's really excellent. Riders of the Purple Wage blew me away though. In the afterword, the author said he had it at 40,000 words, cut it down to 20,000, then got it back up to 30,000 again before submitting it as finished. I would have loved to see it as a full novel though. "Winnegan's Fake" made me laugh out loud, in real life.
But if you think the writing is extremely amateur then are you implying you could do better? That you can actually write something that entertains a lot of people? Can you really, amateur?
Right, my dad just rang me and he doesn’t read or anything but he wants to go and see the movie for something to pass the time and he’s inviting me, do I go?
>>25188008You only have so much time with your dad left...
>>25188012Even if the movie sucks (very likely) it will be fun to get out I guess. I’ll go. I’ll tell you fags what I thought of it.
>>25188018It did its job. Better than the shit I’ve read here; fortunately they eschewed a lot of the extra reddit dialogue from the movie. It was still fucking reddit though.
>>25181008Retarded Aqua poster
>mfw I touched her noumenon
>>25189603No you didn’t, if you touched it with your fingers, that’s sensory, and so a phenomenon.
I'm 30 and never spoken to a woman, they're practically alien to me. What books/lit should I read to understand that great unknown?>Inb4 they're just like you memeWe might look somewhat similar but I don't believe men and women think the same
>>25186710Women want to be told what to do, but only, the decisions they can't make themselves. Look at how popular AI is, it's the same information as a website, but just written forcefully as something that should be obeyed.
Nothing you read will truly be able to lay out the female psyche in a logical, clear manner because their very essence is inherently chaotic.Read Sexual Personae by Pagila instead.
>>25186710how to win friends and influence people
>>25186710Women are looking for the same thing you are. Touch grass as the saying goes.
>>25187176Are you a woman? You’re certainly acting childish.
>You say you've read The Communist Manifesto and nobody bats an eye, but you say you've read Mein Kampf and everyone loses their minds!
>>25189044Too many people derive their political ideology based on the opposite opinion of a group (sometimes even a single person) they don't like.The wrong type of people openly criticize capitalism and thus a huge swath of other people have to pretend to like it so as to appear on the 'other side' of the issue.
>>25188772USSR is indistinguishable from fascism.Nazbol is literally just Stalinism.Replace the flags and you can't tell the difference in BW footage, except for the occasional old Russian church.
>>25189044I didn't know Islam/north Africa created capitalism. Tell me more
>>25188833>"National socialism" is every inch western capitalismDidn't know government being 50/50 coowners of monopolistic companies that get to skip in line for access to resources was principally capitalism.Sounds like what Sweden does in inspiration of Fascism and what USSR started doing after Stalin.Late stage communism is indistinguishable from State Capitalism is indistinguishable from the economic dimension of Fascism.Add militarism onto state capitalism + safety net to the poorest and that's LITERALLY fascism. THAT'S ALL FASCISM ISYou'd find most people are actually fascists thru just don't like the word.
>>25188833>North Korea is economically sanctioned and isolated by most of the worldAlso:>we're communists. we're supposed to be self-sufficientMake your mind up, boy.
>I have always said, and say again, that my system is the same as Kant’s.
>>25189520But it's all negative dare I say.
>>25189527Cheap Schellingian shot. Fichte’s absolute is neither an intellective identity nor the identity of identity and non-identity, in the spirit of the Platonists it’s an unfathomable ‘unity’ beyond unity. Negativity and positivity find their place in the third Grunsatz.
I shouldn’t have to strain to understand what an author is saying to get little to no pleasure from it. Reading should be fun, which isn’t to say I read only mollycoddling garbage like Lord of the Rings. But my life is too short for Mrs Dalloway or As I Lay Dying.
>>25188947
>>25188949
that may be the second worst "criticism" of tolkien i have read
>>25188947>>25188949>>25188954https://worldwithoutmoneyarg.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/moorcock-1978-epic-pooh-in-arena-2-anarchists-in-fiction-2011.pdf>Writers like Tolkien take you to the edge of the Abyss and point out the excellent tea-garden at the bottom, showing you the steps carved into the cliff and reminding you to be a bit careful because the hand-rails are a trifle shaky as you go down; they haven’t got the approval yet to put a new one in.
>>25188697>Reading Should Be Fun>posts the most boring space opera ever
Is this true?
>>25189293this
>>25189494>liberation from illusion is prove in itself. Another example>Truth: a correct representation of reality1. Stop relying on cheap, quick and dirty heuristics, that have historically helped to survive, coz they are a lie!2. Oh no, why do the predators get and maul me, while I'm spending my time to measure everything correctly(tm)?
>>25189517>>25189494Here’s some absolute, inarguable truth (my definition of the word cannot be refuted as something illusory btw because everything is completely concrete in my world) for you two: kiss, and you’ll definitely make up.
>>25189517>base of logic is a liebruh>predators maul mealmost all big cats are nearly extinct due to humans smashing their heads with big rocks and taking their territory
>>25187318you're just uneducated and not a writer
Thoughts on this book?>“A]fter having spoken to many hundreds of NDErs, if not more than a thousand (for I have lost track by now), I have long become aware that from the standpoint of NDErs themselves, there is generally no doubt that the end of physical life is not a dead end. They confidently assert that there is something more. It has been my role and privilege often to speak for the many NDErs who do not write books or give public talks, and in doing so, I have often tried, as accurately as possible, to reflect the views of those NDErs whom I have chosen to represent. In doing so, I have tried to speak in their voice so that they would be heard, not me. In this respect, the evidence from NDEs is, I believe, highly suggestive that some form of consciousness continues after death; the abundant NDE testimony I have heard and read convinces me, as it does most others, of that.3 (emphasis in original) ”
>>25189453what does it tell?
>>25189492>why would He make the mistake of "showing" you Heaven too earlyWhy are you assuming that's a mistake?
>>25189524If it's not your time why would you have been taken to the afterlife in the first place?
>>25188932>Thoughts on this book?Literally everything in this book can be explained away with neuroscience. I am of the opinion that consciousness is fundamental and I still agree with nothing in here. Having awareness with minimal brain activity is not interesting or revolutionary.
>>25189532Who says it needs to be your time to view the afterlife?>>25189545>Literally everything in this book can be explained away with neuroscienceIt can't, and even if it could, it's not addressing the core claims of NDErs. It's completely irrelevant whether or not NDEs are caused by neurophysical factors(I've read all such claims, and none of them prove that NDEs are caused by physical factors), but even IF we were to suppose that they are caused by neurophysical factors, such an explanation still boils down to an appeal to the phenomenologically coherency, rationality, structure, detail, epistemic quality, and consistency of the experience of everyday life, this current reality that we're experiencing. But NDErs have reported that the higher reality/afterlife/other world they've experienced while having an NDE is even more phenomenologically coherenct, rational, structured, detailed, and consistent than the experience of everyday life.I recommend you read pic related to understand more.
