Sarern posted:I forgot all about Dark is Rising. I still liked the first one when I reread parts of it a few years ago but it didn't hold my attention that well and a lot of it felt somewhat generic compared to other modern fantasy. I'm not sure if I still liked it because it was holding up or if I still liked it due to nostalgia effect. The later books in the series I didnt' really like evne when I was younger.
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# ? Apr 2, 2021 16:32 |
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# ? Mar 28, 2024 08:56 |
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I've started writing (in pencil, of course) a warning before forewords in books I read, if they contain spoilers. I never read them before finishing the actual meat of the book but someone else might be tempted. I've half a mind to write a letter to one publisher asking them to put in afterwords instead.
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# ? Apr 2, 2021 22:04 |
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I firmly believe that one shouldn't care about spoilers in books, and if the book is actually so badly written that knowing an event is coming should in some way ruin the experience, then that's on the author
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# ? Apr 2, 2021 22:39 |
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Hard disagree. BTW as a warning, Larry McMurtry's introduction spoils major plot points not just for Lonesome Dove but also for Streets of Laredo and it really sucks. After I finished Lonesome Dove I thought it was safe to go back and read the intro, but learning something that happens in the next one completely killed my desire to read it and actually soured my feelings about Lonesome Dove a bit. If I had learned what happens while reading it rather than just as a flippant parenthetical, I'd have the emotional investment and full context to appreciate it.
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# ? Apr 3, 2021 00:02 |
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Enfys posted:If I had learned what happens while reading it rather than just as a flippant parenthetical, I'd have the emotional investment and full context to appreciate it. I've never read a foreword that talks about the plot that has any value whatsoever (or, rather, the sections that discuss the plot have no value - the rest might be interesting or might not). It's always completely pointless and reads like a 7th-grader's essay on the book.
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# ? Apr 3, 2021 00:10 |
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https://www.amazon.com/Ursula-K-Guin-Hainish-Stories/dp/1598535374/ I want this so bad. I promise you that's a clean Amazon link, no nonsense.
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# ? Apr 3, 2021 02:08 |
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Re: spoilers When I was a lot younger and I'd be wondering how a book turned out, I'd allow myself to skip ahead and read the last page. Only the last page, never anything before. I felt that if I could infer the whole plot from that final page, then the book was obviously stupid and my disrespectful actions were okay. Sometimes the last page was long, sometimes the last page was short. More often than not I would find out something I didn't understand at all, without any context, and then going back to where I was currently reading was even more interesting because I then had to find out how A connected to B. All I'm saying is that if you want to spice up your reading experience take a page from 13 year old TH's playbook and look at ONLY the last page of the book you're currently reading.
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# ? Apr 3, 2021 02:15 |
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:Re: spoilers Hmm apparently Arthur Rimbaud died. I kinda already knew that.
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# ? Apr 3, 2021 02:53 |
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Can someone persuade me to finish Catcher in the Rye? I'm about 2/3 in and I just hate this kid and how he talks. And there's nothing else to it.
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# ? Apr 3, 2021 12:44 |
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aga. posted:Can someone persuade me to finish Catcher in the Rye? I'm about 2/3 in and I just hate this kid and how he talks. And there's nothing else to it. I don't think so. I'm pretty sure my teacher was right when he told us that if we hadn't read Catcher by the age of 15, we shouldn't even start. (Really nice considering he was talking to a room full of university students, all over the age of 19.) Anyway, I'm greatly benefiting from reading Le Cousin Pons because of Google Image Search and the fact that Balzac really likes to drop names; I'm finding out about a lot of new (to me) painters and other artists as the protagonist is an art-collector. It's strengthening my opinion that a painter's strongest work is usually their self-portraits - the exact opposite of how I feel about literature. (That's Liotard) e: I like the book anyway but art is a bonus.
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# ? Apr 3, 2021 13:26 |
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aga. posted:Can someone persuade me to finish Catcher in the Rye? I'm about 2/3 in and I just hate this kid and how he talks. And there's nothing else to it. if you dont finish you'll do poorly on the pop quiz
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# ? Apr 5, 2021 13:53 |
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aga. posted:Can someone persuade me to finish Catcher in the Rye? I'm about 2/3 in and I just hate this kid and how he talks. And there's nothing else to it. There's a somewhat more grown up version, Camus - l'Etranger but in general, if young adult ennui and general angst and misanthropy isn't in your wheelhouse then you're not going to miss anything by skipping either of them.
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# ? Apr 5, 2021 19:07 |
regulargonzalez posted:There's a somewhat more grown up version, Camus - l'Etranger but in general, if young adult ennui and general angst and misanthropy isn't in your wheelhouse then you're not going to miss anything by skipping either of them. What is Holden Caulfields “shoot an Arab” moment? The prostitute?
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# ? Apr 5, 2021 19:35 |
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buffalo all day posted:if you dont finish you'll do poorly on the pop quiz I'm British but thought I'd finally check out some American classics. I enjoyed To Kill a Mockingbird but the only thing that could make CitR worse was if I had to do an exam on it afterwards. I still haven't managed to finish it, but may as well at this point. Any other recommendations for American classics?
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# ? Apr 7, 2021 12:24 |
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aga. posted:I'm British but thought I'd finally check out some American classics. I enjoyed To Kill a Mockingbird but the only thing that could make CitR worse was if I had to do an exam on it afterwards. I still haven't managed to finish it, but may as well at this point. Beloved by Toni Morrison The Color Purple by Alice Walker The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey The Old Man and the Sea by Hemingway Of Mice & Men by Steinbeck And tons of others.
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# ? Apr 7, 2021 13:15 |
Franchescanado posted:Beloved by Toni Morrison These are all good of course. My picks for Great American Novel: Adventures of Tom Sawyer / Huckleberry Finn -- it would be negligence to not have Twain on such a list Moby Dick -- it's loving great, it's a great gay whale chase, fuckin love it Catch-22 : best American war novel, followed closely by Slaughterhouse Five Go Down, Moses short story collection: best starting place for Faulkner who is the best of the southern writers
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# ? Apr 7, 2021 13:51 |
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Moby Dick -- it's loving great, it's a great gay whale chase, fuckin love it it's this, it's funny as hell, interesting to read, great characters, wonderful writing, basically perfect. the great gatsby is a book most people read and probably dismiss after high school because of babby's first symbolism (eyes! green light!) but it's actually really good. old man and the sea is the easiest hemingway to get through because it's a novella but i like for whom the bell tolls better the red badge of courage is better than catch22 but it doesnt make you feel smart the way catch22 does so people don't like it as much anymore, but i think the best thing an american has written about america and war is this: -- Whereasthe Congressoftheunitedstates byaconcurrentresolutionadoptedon the4thdayofmarch last-authorizedthe Secretaryofwar to cause to be brought to theunitedstatesthe body of an American whowasamemberoftheAmericanexpeditionaryforceineuropewholosthis lifeduringtheworldwarandwhoseidentityhasnot beenestablished for burial inthememorialamphitheatreofthe nationalcemeteryatarlingtonvirginia In the tarpaper morgue at Chalons-sur-Marne in the reek of chloride of lime and the dead, they picked out the pine box that held all that was left of enie menie minie moe plenty of other pine boxes stacked up there containing what they’d scraped up of Richard Roe and other person or persons unknown. Only one can go. How did they pick John Doe? . . . how can you tell a guy’s a hundredpercent when all you’ve got’s a gunnysack full of bones, bronze buttons stamped with the screaming eagle and a pair of roll puttees? . . . and the gagging chloride and the puky dirtstench of the yearold dead . . . The day withal was too meaningful and tragic for applause. Silence, tears, songs and prayer, muffled drums and soft music were the instrumentalities today of national approbation. John Doe was born (thudding din of blood of love into the shuddering soar of a man and a woman alone indeed together lurching into and ninemonths sick drowse waking into scared agony and the pain and blood and mess of birth). John Doe was born and raised in Brooklyn, in Memphis, near the lakefront in Cleveland, Ohio, in the stench of the stockyards in Chi, on Beacon Hill, in an old brick house in Alexandria Virginia, on Telegraph Hill, in a halftimbered Tudor cottage in Portland the city of roses, in the Lying-In Hospital old Morgan endowed on Stuyvesant Square, across the railroad tracks, out near the country club, in a shack cabin tenement apartmenthouse exclusive residential suburb; scion of one of the best families in the social register, won first prize in the baby parade at Coronado Beach, was marbles champion of the Little Rock grammarschools, crack basketballplayer at the Booneville High, quarterback at the State Reformatory, having saved the sheriff’s kid from drowning in the Little Missouri River was invited to Washington to be photographed shaking hands with the President on the White House steps; — * * * * * though this was a time of mourning, such an assemblage necessarily has about it a touch of color. In the boxes are seen the court uniforms of foreign diplomats, the gold braid of our own and foreign fleets and armies, the black of the conventional morning dress of American statesmen, the varicolored furs and outdoor wrapping garments of mothers and sisters come to mourn, the drab and blue of soldiers and sailors, the glitter of musical instruments and the white and black of a vested choir — busboy harveststiff hogcaller boyscout champeen cornshucker of Western Kansas bellhop at the United States Hotel at Saratoga Springs office boy callboy fruiter telephone lineman longshoreman lumberjack plumber’s helper, worked for an exterminating company in Union City, filled pipes in an opium joint in Trenton, N.J. Y.M.C.A. secretary, express agent, truckdriver, fordmechanic, sold books in Denver Colorado: Madam would you be willing to help a young man work his way through college? President Harding, with a reverence seemingly more significant because of his high temporal station, concluded his speech: We are met today to pay the impersonal tribute; the name of him whose body lies before us took flight with his imperishable soul . . . as a typical soldier of this representative democracy he fought and died believing in the indisputable justice of his country’s cause . . . by raising his right hand and asking the thousands with the sound of his voice to join in the prayer: Our Father which art in heaven hallowed by thy name . . . * * * * * John Doe’s heart pumped blood: alive thudding silence of blood in your ears down in the clearing in the Oregon forest where the punkins were punkincolor pouring into the blood through the eyes and the fallcolored trees and the bronze hoopers were hopping through the dry grass, where tiny striped snails hung on the underside of the blades and the flies hummed, wasps droned, bumble-bees buzzed, and the woods smelt of wine and mushrooms and apples, homey smell of fall pouring into the blood, and I dropped the tin hat and the sweaty pack and lay flat with the dogday sun licking my throat and adamsapple and the tight skin over the breastbone. The shell had his number on it. * * * * * The blood ran into the ground. The service record dropped out of the filing cabinet when the quartermaster sergeant got blotto that time they had to pack up and leave the billets in a hurry. The identification tag was in the bottom of the Marne. The blood ran into the ground, the brains oozed out of the cracked skull and were licked up by the trenchrats, the belly swelled and raised a generation of blue-bottle flies. and the incorruptible skeleton, and the scraps of dried viscera and skin bundled in khaki they took to Chalons-sur-Marne and laid it out neat in a pine coffin and took it home to God’s Country on a battleship and buried in a sarcophagus in the Memorial Amphitheatre in the Arlington National Cemetery and draped the Old Glory over it and the bugler played taps and Mr. Harding prayed to God and the diplomats and the generals and the admirals and the brasshats and the politicians and the handsomely dressed ladies out of the society column of the Washington Post stood up solemn and thought how beautiful sad Old Glory God’s Country it was go have the bugler play taps and the three volleys made their ears ring. Where his chest ought to have been they pinned the Congressional Medal, the D.S.C., the Medaille Militaire, the Belgian Croix de Guerre, the Italian gold medal, the Vitutea Militara sent by Queen Marie of Rumania, the Czechoslovak war cross, the Virtuti Militari of the Poles, a wreath sent by Hamilton Fish, Jr., of New York, . . . . All the Washingtonians brought flowers. Woodrow Wilson brought a bouquet of poppies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S.A._(trilogy)
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# ? Apr 7, 2021 14:51 |
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The great American novel is The Corrections, because it contains the most accurate depiction of depression in any work of literature this far. So accurate that I will never read it again because it made me feel so bad.
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# ? Apr 7, 2021 16:36 |
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:The great American novel is The Corrections, because it contains the most accurate depiction of depression in any work of literature this far. So accurate that I will never read it again because it made me feel so bad. That's a very myopic definition of "the great American novel".
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# ? Apr 7, 2021 16:44 |
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It's very sweeping, actually, because I'm saying that "being depressed" is the most American mode, past or present.
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# ? Apr 7, 2021 16:53 |
Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:It's very sweeping, actually, because I'm saying that "being depressed" is the most American mode, past or present. In that case, Mark Twain's nonfiction Autobiography is the great american Book. Starts out with dreams of riches and glory and fame out West, achieves and fails many times, ends in bitter cynicism
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# ? Apr 7, 2021 16:55 |
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I'm wondering exactly how books being "available" or "in print" on bookshop websites works. Specifically, I'm trying to get a complete set of the Amelia Peabody Emerson mysteries from Waterstones, because the British version is larger and nicer than the American one and has consistent trade dress. But only some of them were available. I asked it to notify me when the others became available, and it just notified me that #3 is back in stock (I already have #1 and #2 as well as a few others.) Is there a way to determine that probably all of them will eventually be back in stock before I start resorting to eBay? (I also kind of want to minimize the number of times I pay to ship books across the Atlantic; the failure rate is reasonably high so far.*) * although Waterstones has been really helpful about sending out replacement shipments so far, gotta say ** ** also they're actually willing to send books to America, whereas Amazon.co.uk seems to believe that a random 50% of its books can't be shipped out of the country for reasons it won't explain even if the first two books in a series are cool for some reason!!!!!!!!!
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# ? Apr 8, 2021 03:58 |
Rand Brittain posted:I'm wondering exactly how books being "available" or "in print" on bookshop websites works. Unless it's a new edition with matching art that's being released over time, they're probably all in print but don't sell enough to keep constantly in stock. Also, check out https://www.bookdepository.com/ as an alternative to Waterstones; a bunch of those books appear to be available.
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# ? Apr 8, 2021 04:07 |
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The Great American Novel is actually Lolita
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# ? Apr 8, 2021 22:26 |
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Ornamented Death posted:Unless it's a new edition with matching art that's being released over time, they're probably all in print but don't sell enough to keep constantly in stock. Will do... oh, that one actually has some copies of Sarah Caudwell's first three in stock, although it looks like Constable never got around to publishing the last one.
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# ? Apr 9, 2021 04:41 |
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I'm reading Diderot's Jacques le Fataliste et son Mâitre and it's reminding me that I never finished Calvino's Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore. I have no idea, why, I just stopped reading it some point like ten years ago. e: Both books are loving with you, is why I was reminded.
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# ? Apr 9, 2021 04:51 |
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regulargonzalez posted:The Great American Novel is actually Lolita
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# ? Apr 9, 2021 04:55 |
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what is it with yanks and their obsession with “the Great American [thing]”
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# ? Apr 9, 2021 16:50 |
have you not heard about how exceptional the place is?
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# ? Apr 9, 2021 18:31 |
As I was listing great American novels above I was struck by how many of them take place in not-America Moby Dick, or Anything is Better Than being Stuck in Nantucket
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# ? Apr 9, 2021 18:45 |
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I guess it was probably originally a form of inferiority complex that now sticks on as a joke? It's not like there's a universally-agreed-on great British novel, either.
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# ? Apr 9, 2021 18:52 |
Hieronymous Alloy posted:Moby Dick, or Anything is Better Than being Stuck in Nantucket That's now how the limerick goes Rand Brittain posted:It's not like there's a universally-agreed-on great British novel, either. Dickens is a boring hack CHANGE MY MIND
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# ? Apr 9, 2021 18:54 |
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Bilirubin posted:That's now how the limerick goes if you think a tale of two cities is boring then man i dunno
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# ? Apr 9, 2021 18:57 |
Bilirubin posted:That's now how the limerick goes Seriously, read Nabokov's lecture on Bleak House. quote:Some readers may suppose that such things as these evocations are trifles not worth stopping at; but literature consists of such trifles. Literature consists, in fact, not of general ideas but of particular revelations, not of schools of thought but of individuals of genius. Literature is not about something: it is the thing itself, the quiddity. Without the masterpiece, literature does not exist. Dickens at his best is one of my favorite authors but at his worst yes he's quite tedious, and often chunks of the same book will be both, and then aargh. But when Dickens is on he's on, beautiful and heartbreaking and brilliant, an eye that saw characters and places and people and then a voice that communicates them such that they stand clear in your own mind too, you the reader seeing them as clearly as he did, a light jumping from his mind to yours even down the centuries. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 19:02 on Apr 9, 2021 |
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# ? Apr 9, 2021 18:58 |
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Seriously, read Nabokov's lecture on Bleak House. ive never read the lecture but i finished bleak house on a plane and i had to put on sunglasses to conceal how much i was blubbering at the end
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# ? Apr 9, 2021 19:02 |
buffalo all day posted:ive never read the lecture but i finished bleak house on a plane and i had to put on sunglasses to conceal how much i was blubbering at the end And Bleak House isn't even his strongest work. The first third of David Copperfield, good lord. Just this passage, after chapters and chapters of suffering -- David's mother has died, his stepfather has abused and beaten him, then abandoned him to work in a child labor factory; finally David makes up his mind, and escapes, trying to make contact with an Aunt who he knows never liked him at all but who is at this point his only hope: quote:The morning had worn away in these inquiries, and I was sitting on the step of an empty shop at a street corner, near the market-place, deliberating upon wandering towards those other places which had been mentioned, when a fly-driver, coming by with his carriage, dropped a horsecloth. Something good-natured in the man’s face, as I handed it up, encouraged me to ask him if he could tell me where Miss Trotwood lived; though I had asked the question so often, that it almost died upon my lips.
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# ? Apr 9, 2021 19:11 |
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Rand Brittain posted:I guess it was probably originally a form of inferiority complex that now sticks on as a joke? tbh I can't remember hearing the expression used for any other nation than America. We did have a whole thing about creating a "cultural canon" here in Denmark like a decade ago, but only old or conservative people really cared. https://kulturkanon.kum.dk/english/ They mostly seem like super safe choices, but I will say that Herman Bang is extremely good.
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# ? Apr 9, 2021 22:15 |
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Carthag Tuek posted:tbh I can't remember hearing the expression used for any other nation than America. Yeah, it's the kind of thing that came up when Americans had legitimate feelings of inferiority towards Europe, culturally-speaking, instead of the whole ludicrous ego thing we do today. Other countries don't have this because they didn't suddenly come into existence and have to compete as literary snobs with cultures that had been around for a thousand years.
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# ? Apr 9, 2021 22:31 |
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Yeah that's a problem. Can't create a new nation by destroying the history of all the people who live there and still claim a continuous cultural heritage. Either you start from zero or you don't. Anyway, I was reminded of a passage from Bang's Stuk (the context is simply that our protagonists Lange and Berg are at the theatre, a very good show indeed; also my translation, probably doesnt hold up to the official): quote:— Satan, satan, said Lange every minute with increasingly emotional emphasis; he had pinched Berg's arm both yellow and blue.
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# ? Apr 9, 2021 23:18 |
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# ? Mar 28, 2024 08:56 |
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I was looking at the current and upcoming books of several Finnish publishers, and it seems like some smaller ones are really just hanging on thanks to one series that's doing good. Like one is basically just publishing translations of Jeffrey Archer, and another is basically now "the publisher of that series about warrior cats". I don't mind it, if publishing poo poo and/or kids' books is enough to keep you publishing the occasional good book, that's fine with me. (I have no idea if the warrior cats are poo poo, but unless Archer has hired some nice ghost writers, I'll wager he's still poo poo.) One publisher started out with yoga books and has continued with that and other "rip off the dumbs" books but also publishes nice translations of solid classics. I'd bet the former bring in the money.
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# ? Apr 12, 2021 12:03 |