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Snowy posted:I have recommended the His Dark Materials series to adults who want something better than Harry Potter but there’s probably something terrible about them that I’m overlooking I remember loving the awkward teenage romance between Lyra and Will in the Subtle Knife when I was an awkward lonely teen. The scenes of them wandering through the haunted dead city were so perfectly poignant at the time. I should really reread. The TV series is pretty by the numbers YA poo poo, so it's been making me want to read a book that is accessible to kids but came before the YA marketing push lowered the bar.
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Sep 6, 2020 01:53
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regulargonzalez posted:I mean in the series's defense, Rowling does do a pretty great job in making each book a little older and a little darker than the one before. Book 6 iirc opens with a pretty harrowing scene, all the Umbridge stuff in book 5 (especially her implied fate), lots of deaths in book 7, it's all a long way from the fairy tale atmosphere in books 1 and 2. Well, as I remember them, fairy tales average about ½ a murder per page so book 7 must be a loving gorefest. e: Finished Watership Down and thought I should start on something slightly more substantial so I picked up the first part of the copy of Dombey and Son I bought in loving 1999 and still haven't read. I got as far as the list of characters, saw that it was two pages long, and decided to just go to bed. 3D Megadoodoo fucked around with this message at 19:07 on Sep 6, 2020 |
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Sep 6, 2020 02:45
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Why is “1984” such a cultural touchstone when, to me, it seems like such a direct copy “The Iron Heel” and why is this never discussed?
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Sep 8, 2020 04:05
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Ferrets Everywhere posted:Why is “1984” such a cultural touchstone when, to me, it seems like such a direct copy “The Iron Heel” and why is this never discussed? One has been high school required reading for decades, one has not.
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Sep 8, 2020 14:25
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Franchescanado posted:One has been high school required reading for decades, one has not. to add to it, 1984 can very easily be read with a generic political ideology in mind, since the totalitarian state is more or less a combination of Stalinism and Nazi Fascism. meaning, it suited post WWII red scare America just fine. the Iron Heel is explicitly socialist.
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Sep 8, 2020 16:48
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I get massively upset at people talking about the world of 1984 and overusing "Orwellian" when the guy in the book is describing a life lived only by the incredibly overpoliced upper class. 85% of the people of Airstrip One are Proles who live lives even less policed and monitored and surveilled than 21st century Americans. No telescreens, no morning exercises, no newspeak, no three minutes hate, none of that bullshit. They work hard, they get to drink all the time, they get sports and pornography, and all the normal life stuff.
Teriyaki Hairpiece fucked around with this message at 07:23 on Sep 9, 2020 |
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Sep 9, 2020 07:20
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I assume that the threat here is that you're either overpoliced upper class or gasp! a poor and uneducated lower class. I remember being really bothered by the way the system in 1984 completely overlooked Proles. They were trated almost like animals, in terms of their agency and capabilities anyway. It was the same thing in Brand New World iirc.
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Sep 9, 2020 12:41
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macabresca posted:I assume that the threat here is that you're either overpoliced upper class or gasp! a poor and uneducated lower class. I remember being really bothered by the way the system in 1984 completely overlooked Proles. They were trated almost like animals, in terms of their agency and capabilities anyway. It was the same thing in Brand New World iirc. The book wasn't about the proles, HTH.
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Sep 9, 2020 12:51
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The book is pretty obviously about Stalinism and the party purges from the thirties. You didn’t get purged if you weren’t a Party member or their relative. I am assuming that someone who’s experienced the Spanish Civil War would care deeply about internal violence on the left.
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Sep 9, 2020 14:49
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https://twitter.com/dbellingradt/status/1302257826686029825?s=20
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Sep 9, 2020 16:53
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Take the plunge! Okay! posted:The book is pretty obviously about Stalinism and the party purges from the thirties. You didn’t get purged if you weren’t a Party member or their relative. I am assuming that someone who’s experienced the Spanish Civil War would care deeply about internal violence on the left. I think Animal Farm is more about that, 1984's always seem to be just about life under stalinism in late forties and fifties. After all there is no purge in this book, only individual people disappearing if they get too cocky
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Sep 9, 2020 21:48
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macabresca posted:I think Animal Farm is more about that, 1984's always seem to be just about life under stalinism in late forties and fifties. After all there is no purge in this book, only individual people disappearing if they get too cocky Well, not the fifties.
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Sep 9, 2020 22:19
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Stalin died in 1953 so there's a bit of fifties but yeah, I phrased it wrong
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Sep 10, 2020 12:50
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macabresca posted:Stalin died in 1953 so there's a bit of fifties but yeah, I phrased it wrong Orwell died in January, 1950, so, no.
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Sep 10, 2020 13:12
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quote:Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel, often published as 1984, is a dystopian novel by English novelist George Orwell. It was published on 8 June 1949
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Sep 10, 2020 13:12
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I live for stuff like this.
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Sep 10, 2020 13:57
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xcheopis posted:Orwell died in January, 1950, so, no. So there's a little bit of the January 1950s in it is what you're saying?
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Sep 10, 2020 13:58
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cda posted:So there's a little bit of the January 1950s in it is what you're saying? "Wow, antibiotics are amazing! Wait, no"
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Sep 10, 2020 14:05
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The book was published in June of 1949, so there are negative six months of the 1950s.
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Sep 10, 2020 15:50
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I didn't think it needed spelling out. Gotta say I'm a little confused by the fact that Orwell's death even came into it too, tbh.
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Sep 10, 2020 16:23
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All right all right, "early fifties", or "at the turn of forties and fifties" if you'd rather. Outside of USSR at least
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Sep 10, 2020 21:29
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it works the same way as how the 18th century is actually 1701-1800. the fifties runs from 1941-1950.
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Sep 10, 2020 21:32
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TheAardvark posted:it works the same way as how the 18th century is actually 1701-1800. the fifties runs from 1941-1950. Once again amazed that Shaggar has an alternate account with mod powers.
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Sep 10, 2020 21:41
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TheAardvark posted:it works the same way as how the 18th century is actually 1701-1800. the fifties runs from 1941-1950. If you've never come across the phrase "the long 18th century" and its bastard children "the long 17th century" and "the long 19th century" consider yourself very lucky. in case you wanna know, long 18th = basically ~1789-1914
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Sep 10, 2020 22:17
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cda posted:If you've never come across the phrase "the long 18th century" and its bastard children "the long 17th century" and "the long 19th century" consider yourself very lucky. What's wrong with those concepts
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Sep 10, 2020 22:23
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That's the long 19th century.
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Sep 10, 2020 22:55
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Can't wait to see how long the long 2020 is going to be.
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Sep 10, 2020 22:59
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3D Megadoodoo posted:Can't wait to see how long the long 2020 is going to be. Welcome to long March.
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Sep 10, 2020 23:02
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Ras Het posted:What's wrong with those concepts Nothing, but if you're in a space where you're hearing them a lot you're in an English department and that's a lot dicier.
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Sep 10, 2020 23:47
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I firmly believe in Long 90's Theory, which holds that the decade of the 1990's ended 619 days after December 31, 1999.
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Sep 11, 2020 04:53
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TheAardvark posted:it works the same way as how the 18th century is actually 1701-1800. the fifties runs from 1941-1950. Ok, now you're just making GBS threads me 
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Sep 11, 2020 09:55
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The 90s ended when nu-metal became a thing. Based on Kid Rock, Limp Bizkit, and Freak on a Leash I'm going to ballpark it at June 2000ish.
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Sep 11, 2020 16:06
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regulargonzalez posted:The 90s ended when nu-metal became a thing. Based on Kid Rock, Limp Bizkit, and Freak on a Leash I'm going to ballpark it at June 2000ish. Isn’t that all mid 90s?
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Sep 12, 2020 01:47
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i'm actually re-reading his dark materials right now. it was a big deal to me when i was a kid, but i haven't read it since. the first two books are great; i'm halfway through the third book and it has its merits, but there's definitely a slackening of the tension and thrust that was built up so well over the first two. the plot gets taken out of the hands of the protagonists, all the actual stuff is being done by off-screen characters, and there's just this sense of aimless moving from place to place while the story happens around them but they don't really contribute or participate. there's just too many characters. though the first book has a huge cast by itself, they're all well-drawn and intriguing - but then they all either get sent off on interminable missions of their own, or killed. so for every story role that needs to be filled in the later books, a new character gets introduced. instead of existing characters getting consolidated and fleshed out, there's just an endless stream of new names and groups, and eventually there's just so many of them that they lose their individuality. this is definitely not a problem limited to these books though, the whole fantasy genre has this issue. the way the story is framed is super-white and super-european. there are non-white people occasionally featured, the rest of the world is occasionally mentioned, but the overwhelming impression is that europe is literally the centre of the universe. the writing is great, very vivid and multisensory and good at establishing a sense of place, but the author doesn't really have all that much imagination when it comes to alien worlds - there's the world with the wheeled elephant things, which is cool, but all the others are just exactly like earth, so that element of the narrative kind of gets wasted. i like the world of the dead, but again, it just comes out of nowhere as a concept and a destination after never being mentioned at all in the first two books, though that plot point ends up tying together a lot of stuff quite well. the child abuse and sexual allegories are way closer to the surface than i expected. they totally went over my head as a kid. that's not a bad thing though.
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Sep 12, 2020 03:43
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Snowy posted:Isn’t that all mid 90s?
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Sep 12, 2020 13:39
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No idea where else to post this but I'll try here: I subscribed to Audible for some time and built up a library. I unsubscribed a while ago but have had access to my library. The past cou;le of days, I can access the library as usual etc and it recognises how far I am into a recording but when I try to play a book, everything looks normal: the window pops up and says "picking up from where you left off" but, despite the window looking normal, play/pause just changes the icon and it never progresses. Nothing plays and there is no error or anything but the time does not progress. I've tried many google searches and none seem to apply and amazon's own help is atrocious and requires using a drop down which only lists andriod/ios which is just weird. when I try to download any title I just get thrown to a "how to listen" page which doesn't loving help but I'd never previously needed to download anything because the web player just worked. If anyone can help I'd be very grateful. I've tried 2 browsers and also turning ad block off but nothing seems to work. Kill Jeff Bezos please
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Sep 13, 2020 01:21
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I think I had a similar problem a couple of years ago and it was solved by either switching browsers or turning off ad block or no script or something like that. So try disabling extensions on the audible page and / or a different browser.
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Sep 13, 2020 03:38
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Rapacity posted:Kill Jeff Bezos please Yeah it's his fault not yours for "buying" "books" lmao.
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Sep 13, 2020 17:14
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macabresca posted:I assume that the threat here is that you're either overpoliced upper class or gasp! a poor and uneducated lower class. I remember being really bothered by the way the system in 1984 completely overlooked Proles. They were trated almost like animals, in terms of their agency and capabilities anyway. It was the same thing in Brand New World iirc. This is what has bothered me, that 1984 seemed to be such lazy copy with the interesting details rubbed off. The Iron Heel made the effort to build cause and effect and how people reacted to it. I’m curious how it became a cultural touchstone when people reading it at its publishing would likely have been aware of London’s work.
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Sep 13, 2020 19:34
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Ferrets Everywhere posted:This is what has bothered me, that 1984 seemed to be such lazy copy with the interesting details rubbed off. The Iron Heel made the effort to build cause and effect and how people reacted to it. I’m curious how it became a cultural touchstone when people reading it at its publishing would likely have been aware of London’s work. I haven't read The Iron Heel (haven't even heard about it before reading your post, Jack London isn't very popular in my country) but because 1984 references USSR, it could be used later as an element in anti-soviet (and by extension anti-communist) propaganda during the Cold War? Meanwhile London's socialist views were probably heavily criticised when the book was first published and it just got kind of forgotten? That's just my speculation, ofc
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Sep 13, 2020 21:19
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