If I were rich, I'd pick a book set in a real place, and vacation in that place to read it. What would you read and where would you go?

Wittgenstienwasright · 2022-04-03T02:07:40+00:00

A year in Provence. Peter Mayle.

monsterosaleviosa · 2022-04-02T10:07:01+00:00

I think it’s wild to say there’s no character exploration, and tbh if that’s what you got out of it, I’m not even sure where to start a conversation. The book was pure character exploration.

keep_trying_username · 2022-04-01T16:05:00+00:00

Another form of irony, is dramatic irony. It occurs when the reader has more information than the character. In this instance other Redditors (the readers) understand that situational irony was an appropriate description, but you (the character) claimed otherwise. Thus your comment was dramatically ironic. Just as it would be dramatically ironic to post a legal disclaimer in a book in earnestness, where the readers know the legal disclaimer is false.

We may not normally classify an incorrect opinion as ironic, but the fact that you are dramatically-ironically miss-classifying something as unironic in a conversation about irony, is also situationally ironic.

So we have a comment that some may consider dramatically ironic and also situationally ironic. For the purpose of the audience's amusement we must assume that you are incorrect, because it is vastly amusing to think so.

We began talking about definitions and found that it is better to be amused than to be correct; and that sentiment may have it's own irony.

kodemage · 2022-04-01T06:07:29+00:00

I mean, I would immediately stop reading that author because they sound like a piece of shit...

halfascientist · 2022-03-31T00:45:08+00:00

Is somebody talking about my favorite movie of all time? Paul fucking Verhoeven is such a fucking genius.

Starship Troopers, the movie, is truly a work of art that goes beyond its source material. Paul Verhoeven's goal isn't just to satirize fascism, it's to make you love and sympathize with fascism, to make you think it's cool, and the mash your face in it and show you what a moron you are. It's to show you how vulnerable you are to cheap, empty jingoism and the appearance of order. You're a dumb, scared animal and it makes you feel warm and safe when things look planned and structured and neat and tidy, and because of that, horrible people can manipulate you.

For god's sake, look at the first part of this fucking scene. The bravery and bravado. The crisp, wonderful order of it all--everything working like a well-oiled machine. Look at all of those troops charging into their transports: nobody's confused, there's no disorganization--everyone is in their place. The stirring, dick-hardening music: it's John Philip Sousa on meth. And look at the images here--this is a conscious evocation of the Normandy invasion. These elements are meant to speak directly to us as Americans. In the transports, this is the 101st Airborne lined up along the sides of their C-47s. Now, landed, these are the men of the Greatest Generation charging onto Omaha Beach, eternal glory awaiting them--even the way the ramp of this boxy craft swings down vertically is an imitation of an LCVP. Everything speaks to us, a perfected version of our own history: shining, focused, orderly; all is as it should be.

Except it's all a fucking disaster. War is fucking stupid and fascism is ten times as stupid as that. It's all a trick. Their whole military is a stupid, gilded turd. It's a mobile Potemkin Village--a fleet of parade ponies that get blown to smithereens by bugs. And Verhoeven isn't doing "Ewoks vs. stormtroopers" here--no, we know the Galactic Empire is the enemy from the first fifteen seconds of A New Hope. He's smacking us around. Just a minute ago, this force looked unstoppable! Now look at them. Thousands of massed infantry dumped into a trap. What the hell are we even doing here? This? This is the best plan anybody had for this? "Someone made a mistake--someone made a big goddamn mistake."

And why wouldn't they? Fascism (and the nationalist and jingoist threads that partially comprise it) doesn't fucking work. It always has the best parades, it always looks like it's making the trains run on time, and there are always clean, smiling faces on-scene to tell you all about it. Look at the embedded reporter, on-scene to send the viewing public back home the heart-pumping thrills and chills--for god's sake, this movie came out six years before Fox news embeds in the Iraq invasion replicated that entire vibe. But it's a lie, all of it, and eventually you crash into it, like the Russian military has been doing for the past month. Underneath is always rust and rot and stupidity and waste and bloated chains of command full of stupid yes-men whose medals are kept in gleaming polish. The imagery cannot help but stir our hearts, and that's the point--to show us what idiots we are that our hearts have such an easy time falling for it. Even now, I still want to hear the music again. Hans, are we the baddies?

Gunship_unelite · 2021-01-18T17:53:20+00:00

Welcome to the new america. Where everyone hates facism so much that they accidentally slipped into it.

StefanOrvarSigmundss · 2022-03-29T14:20:00+00:00

Cheating whom? Reading is not a competition.

Houki01 · 2022-03-28T15:19:03+00:00

The problem is that you are judging all of Card's works through the lens of what he became. Ender's Game was written when Card was a teenager. In his youth, Card was actually a strong supporter of LGBT rights and had several friends and contacts in the LGBT community.

And then, in the mid 90s, he researched and wrote Lost Boys.

(If you've never heard of it, it's an urban fantasy/horror. A family move into a new home and the eight year old son starts talking about the boys he is playing with who can't talk and his parents can't seem to see, and keep trying to keep him away from the friendly old man next door neighbour. And then the eight year old goes missing. Of course it comes out that the old man is a paedophile who, after his family told him that if he didn't stop molesting them they would go to the police, started luring in boys in the neighbourhood, raping them and murdering them when he was finished. The invisible voiceless boys were the ghosts of his previous victims and the eight year old had become his latest victim.)

The turnaround between before-LB Card and after-LB Card is extraordinary. It's like he just took in and swallowed all the "gays=paedophiles" propaganda he would have found while researching during that time period. He turned his back on people he had previously called friends (the contemporary accounts from his former friends were really sad to read) and became very conservative in his views. It's really very sad.

But yeah, pre-1990s Card and post-1990s Card are two very different people.

(Edit for accidentally hitting the submit button early.)

SyanticRaven · 2022-03-28T22:15:22+00:00

His big enemy, nicknamed "bugger(s)" is a heavily ironic or planned choice of words, as in the UK its a vulgar term for someone who performs anal sex on someone.

NFL_MVP_Kevin_White · 2022-03-28T05:04:08+00:00

Someone’s got to tell me how a house being larger on the inside is the apex of horror. I felt so dumb for listening to the zeitgeist and reading through this book.

Dopdee · 2022-03-27T19:37:41+00:00

God I hated this book so much. I see it on these lists all the time and picked it up cause I wanted something scary. It’s just such a difficult read - not because of the material but the way it’s constructed. With footnotes, passages written upside down, passages written in the margins, multiple stories going on at once. I may have liked one of the the stories going on but it’s just too difficult to get into a rhythm when reading it.

theartolater · 2022-03-25T21:03:31+00:00

Hi! I'm Jeff, the guy who started the book drive. I have good news: books were returned yesterday, it appears that getting regional news coverage spooked our would-be censors.

I have about 250 books I'll be distributing to local libraries in the coming weeks, but if you want to help, the best thing you can do if your community hasn't been hit with this is to donate to your local friends group. I promise they can use the cash.

If you're dealing with a similar situation in your community, I highly recommend doing a book drive, or partnering with an organization that has the infrastructure to support it. I'm somewhat of a known entity in my town, and it gave me a lot of credibility in pushing this that other people might not have had.

Either way, censorship is stupid. Thanks.

Abaral · 2022-03-24T11:00:12+00:00

Eh, I think it’s very preachy. And targeted more at the parents than the kids.

Which is to say, I don’t think it’s an essential part of a child’s book collection. And if the goal is to build an anti-racist foundation for the kid, broad representation in books does more for the pre-school set.

Edit: Definitely belongs in the library and maybe the classroom. Just saying your mileage may vary on the “really good book” point.

Khale77 · 2022-03-23T15:07:18+00:00

Most of Kazuo Ishiguro's books you don't expect a story about two domestics in an English manor to fuck you up but it does.

gxbcab · 2022-03-23T13:43:35+00:00

Not sure if they count as disturbing but Of Mice and Men and The Pearl both had the twist endings that were absolutely heart wrenching. They’re both stories that leave a lasting sense of dread that hangs over you for a while.

lucky_ducker · 2022-03-23T12:08:44+00:00

Another extremely insightful book by Saint-Exupéry is the nonfiction work Wind, Sand, and Stars, about his time as a pilot for the French Postal Service in north Africa. A very unexpectedly enlightening read.

RedDirtPreacher · 2022-03-22T02:04:14+00:00

sleepinxonxbed · 2017-04-18T15:32:05+00:00

I think it's for people who dont know what to do or where to go. I'd assume its for people like me in my 20's who worry where we'll be in our futures. The future is unknown and frightening, especially for college kids now because we're all got pushed into college because all our parents, teachers, and counselors told us to without knowing anything about college or helping us figure out what we wanted to do. For my high school graduating class we spent a period during English class our senior year to go to the library and just submit as many college apps as we can and they told the kids to just click a random major on the drop down list if we didn't know what we wanted to do and yell at us for not knowing or doing our research on our own time. And now it's about time for my hs class to be graduating college, and I can tell you most of them still don't know what to do, they're in a major they didn't want, and a lot of them finished their first year in their post grad job and quit because they realized it's not for them.

There's a comfort in a story where as long as you work hard in something, you'll not find just yourself, you'll eventually find your place in life where you belong even in places you least expect. Our first plans might not work out, we'll most likely not end up where we wanted to be from the start, but there are plenty of other places in the world where we'll be happy.

It's a simple book with a simple message, but one that's very reassuring and gives hope to a lot of people to just keep pushing through. If it has helped anybody in their lives, then I consider it a good book.

Zikoris · 2022-03-20T19:08:59+00:00

Weird, I read like 200+ fantasy novels a year and pretty much none of it matches your categorization. Maybe you're just bad at picking books?

I do read some magical realism here and there, which is literally "some fantastical elements but not a heavy leaning on magic".

Day	Frequency	Feature
Monday	Weekly	What Books did You Start or Finish Reading this Week?: March 28, 2022
Tuesday	1st of the month	New Releases: March 2022
Wednesday	Weekly	Literature of the World: Literature of Madagascar: March 2022
Thursday	Weekly	Genre Discussion: Favorite Books about the Labor Movement/Workers' Rights: March 2022
Friday	Weekly	Weekly Recommendation Thread: April 01, 2022
Sunday	Weekly	Weekly FAQ Thread April 03, 2022: How do I better understand the book I'm reading?
Tues/Sat	Bi-Weekly	Simple Questions: April 02, 2022


Apr 07 - 1pm	Mary Roach	Author of Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void
Apr 30 - 2pm	Olivie Blake	Author of The Atlas Six
Jun 08 - 2pm	Alex Gino	Author of George

books

- Subreddit Rules -- Message the mods -Related Subs AMA Info The FAQ The Wiki

Quick Rules:

Weekly Thread Calendar

Upcoming AMAs

Related Subreddits:

Discussion

Genres

Images

Writing

eBooks

Authors

Books/Series

Other Links:

Follow our official Twitter for updates on AMAs and the day's most popular posts!

Spoiler Policy:

Explanation of our link flairs

Join our /r/bookclub

Don't forget /new!

Filter by Flair

AMA

Weekly Thread

Mod Post

ama

Check out this week's Thread Calendar

MODERATORS