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The North Tower posted:That was me. You wouldn't believe what they thought about the Hamlet - Lion King connection! I am betting your friend is more familiar with Shakespeare based off this. TheAardvark posted:This I can agree with, but it hardly requires reading the Bible end to end to make that connection. I agree with you. I have a slightly different point from the others though -- I think people should at least read the major points of the Old Testament and the New Testament, and that this should be part of fundamental literacy and story telling. Superman is literally the story of how Moses came to be raised by the Egyptians, but no one would understand the significance of this or appreciate how the biggest American superhero was crafted by Jews if they don't read this story. I believe that people are missing out on fundamental building blocks of culture not to know this and that arguing over whether we should read the Bible cover to cover is hair splitting. Just read the Bible or the Torah or whatever. Just read it. If you find a part you don't get or don't like its okay to skip it but at least make an effort.
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Mar 17, 2020 21:05
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HIJK posted:
I agree with this - there is an inarguable value to reading and understanding the core "story" of the Bible. I just disagree with the extremely hostile takes that you're an illiterate buffoon for not having read the entire thing. This is a book discussion forum and I simply can't understand what is obviously pure animus towards anyone who doesn't read the right books, when we live in a world where the vast majority read roughly zero books a year. I know the response to this will be some poo poo about how reading genre trash counts as zero books - but if the people posting that way actually care at all about the subject they would be far better off espousing the virtues of true literature than finding creative ways to insult other posters
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Mar 17, 2020 21:14
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It's important to let others know you book better than them and god (who?) forbid nuance is mistaken for weakness That said, genre trash counts as zero books
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Mar 17, 2020 21:27
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TheAardvark posted:I agree with this - there is an inarguable value to reading and understanding the core "story" of the Bible. I just disagree with the extremely hostile takes that you're an illiterate buffoon for not having read the entire thing. This is a book discussion forum and I simply can't understand what is obviously pure animus towards anyone who doesn't read the right books, when we live in a world where the vast majority read roughly zero books a year. The hostility comes from the fact that the arguments against reading the Bible are pretty facile and are usually rooted in someone's personal gripes about religion. There's very little in the way of a literary argument against reading the Bible because the Bible is the foundation of almost 2000 years of Western literature and even nonfiction since the RCC is so deeply rooted in the sciences and artistic studies. So when people complain about "having" to read the Bible its kind of lulzy and often a fig leaf for their personal distaste. You don't have to read the Bible but its important to understand that you are deliberately cutting yourself off from the foundational texts of two of the most influential religions in the world that have shaped everything Westerners think, say, and do, even here on these dead gay forums. And so your understanding of literature is inherently much more shallow. And even genre entertainment is informed by Biblical studies. The Matrix is a Jesus story. It's not the only one. The Lord of the Rings is a Biblical story steeped in Roman Catholicism. Shakespeare is informed by Biblical storytelling. But reading the Bible is hard so its just okay to cut yourself off from it and to deliberately refuse any deeper understanding Western storytelling. Well, okay. But its not hard to see why some people scoff at that sentiment. It's just my personal opinion but I don't think genre books are inherently worthless. I do think they're toothless in many ways but that's just how pulp works. It's not a bad thing. It's just that genre is a lot more prone to blatant stupidity that totally undercuts any meaning it could have. See: anything by Ernest Cline. Talk about books I couldn't finish, Ready Player One blew donkey balls. I quit halfway through.
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Mar 17, 2020 22:04
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https://twitter.com/dril/status/1240055544850743297?s=20
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Mar 18, 2020 00:30
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No you don't need to read it end to end. But you need to read it all. Even all those begats are important to root Jesus to loving David; its essential to link the OT prophecies to the NT I was trying to think of parts of the bible earlier that are easily missable and all I could com eup with were the Pauline Epistles, which were sort of the centerpoint of the evangelical sect I grew up with so WELP
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Mar 18, 2020 07:44
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i will not stand for discussion of the talmud to be censored here, in the books you have given up reading thread. it is the book of all books; and one that many, including myself, have given up reading, so you can't even argue that it's off-topic. you idiots. you absolute fools
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Mar 18, 2020 10:02
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i will stand right here and die in front of you, nude and hideous
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Mar 18, 2020 10:03
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so help me (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Mar 18, 2020 10:03
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I read the Bible but most of the famous Bible stories turned out to be about a paragraph long and not really a replacement for having been brought up in a family/environment that cared about religion Non-Bible thread content: I tried multiple times to even get through the Kindle sample for fantasy darling The Fifth Season. It has an unedited mistake in the second paragraph (“she’s old hat at this” should be “she’s an old hand at this”) and keeps telling you the huge infodump it opens with doesn’t matter, isn’t important etc. Telling your readers not to bother, especially on a huge fantasy tome, doesn’t seem like a very good idea. Maybe it would blow my mind if I continued but I probably never will
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Mar 18, 2020 13:20
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Lex Neville posted:That said, genre trash counts as zero books Naw. Reading is reading and I've managed to get friends reading genre trash to check out more thoughtful fantasy and scifi. I've also definitely put down plenty of thoughtful scifi that revealed itself to be "thoughtful" reactionary trash like Heinlein.
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Mar 18, 2020 15:22
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of all the loving threads to police “off topic” in, jesus christ
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Mar 18, 2020 19:10
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I was looking through my kindle library and noticed that 2011 was an awful year for having books come out, review really well and then suck. -Rule 34, by Charles Stross -Reamde, by Neal Stephenson -Ready Player One. Bought all three after they got an A- or better in the AV club and they were so bad. The latter two more than Rule 34, but even that had major pacing issues. I can’t think of any other year where I bought that many stinkers.
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Mar 18, 2020 19:27
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Ugly In The Morning posted:I was looking through my kindle library and noticed that 2011 was an awful year for having books come out, review really well and then suck. I bought a book titled 'Rule 34" by a science fiction writer and it turned out to be bad after getting a positive review from the AV club, something that no one could have predicted or forseen.
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Mar 18, 2020 23:43
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A human heart posted:I bought a book titled 'Rule 34" by a science fiction writer and it turned out to be bad after getting a positive review from the AV club, something that no one could have predicted or forseen. A sarcastic reply implying someone has bad taste, from one of the 5 posters who consistently exist to belittle other posters on this forum for their reading tastes? Who could have ever predicted it. Chernobyl Kinsman has a probation, bring the next one in.
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Mar 19, 2020 04:08
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seriously there are like 5 people on this forum whose entire existence seems predicated on ensuring that there is no safe thread to talk about books interests outside of English Literature, and they realized they can't post in the actual genre threads so they just try and relentlessly poo poo on people outside of those threads. Are they why people are coming here? Why the gently caress haven't they been told to eat poo poo yet? Someone posts something entirely on track for the thread, about books probably the majority of the regulars of this forum would be interested in, and instantly one of the same people comes in to shame them for enjoying reading genre poo poo. What the gently caress? That doesn't happen in CD or TVIV. People get banned for that poo poo. AARD VARKMAN fucked around with this message at 04:15 on Mar 19, 2020 |
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Mar 19, 2020 04:13
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Post about books, not posters. Use the report button if you have an issue with a post.Prism Mirror Lens posted:Non-Bible thread content: I tried multiple times to even get through the Kindle sample for fantasy darling The Fifth Season. It has an unedited mistake in the second paragraph (“she’s old hat at this” should be “she’s an old hand at this”) and keeps telling you the huge infodump it opens with doesn’t matter, isn’t important etc. Telling your readers not to bother, especially on a huge fantasy tome, doesn’t seem like a very good idea. Maybe it would blow my mind if I continued but I probably never will Judging by your username, I was expecting Dhalgren...
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Mar 19, 2020 04:52
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ulvir posted:of all the loving threads to police “off topic” in, jesus christ
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Mar 19, 2020 04:54
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TheAardvark posted:A sarcastic reply implying someone has bad taste, from one of the 5 posters who consistently exist to belittle other posters on this forum for their reading tastes? Who could have ever predicted it. Chernobyl Kinsman has a probation, bring the next one in. I didn't imply anything in particular about his taste, I was asking in a joking manner what exactly he was expecting given the book's title and the author and the veracity of the onion av club as critics. It seems like a stretch to expect that such a book could be good in the first place.
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Mar 19, 2020 07:00
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Ugly In The Morning posted:I was looking through my kindle library and noticed that 2011 was an awful year for having books come out, review really well and then suck. The further away I get from reading Reamde, the shittier it is. One dimensional characters, weak enemies, a rudderless plot. This should have been slaughtered by reviewers but wasn't. What's Stross like in general? I've always had him marked as an author that fandom likes, and is probably not good.
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Mar 19, 2020 08:07
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Safety Biscuits posted:Judging by your username, I was expecting Dhalgren... Well, that reminds me, I have a complaint more suitable for my username: Ancillary Justice’s pronoun gimmick is completely unimaginative and boring in comparison to how it’s done in Stars in My Pocket, written 30 years prior. It irritates me how many essays there are about AJ which boil down to “whoah, I thought this character was female, but they turned out to be male! Amazing writing!!” What a low bar. Nobody should give up on Dhalgren 
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Mar 19, 2020 08:58
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A human heart posted:I didn't imply anything in particular about his taste, I was asking in a joking manner what exactly he was expecting given the book's title and the author and the veracity of the onion av club as critics. It seems like a stretch to expect that such a book could be good in the first place. The AV Club used to actually have really fantastic reviews, but ever since the onion got bought out they’ve been complete rear end. Their TV and film reviews were better than the book reviews. nonathlon posted:The further away I get from reading Reamde, the shittier it is. One dimensional characters, weak enemies, a rudderless plot. This should have been slaughtered by reviewers but wasn't. Honestly one of the few books I’ve finished out of spite. It was so long and so badly paced, and I straight up couldn’t believe the MMO part of the book was more interesting than the terrorist plot. As for Charles Stross, he has good ideas but the execution of Rule 34 was so bad I haven’t gone back to read any of his stuff. I liked the idea of detectives that were dealing with weird crimes that were only possible with the internet, but then it decides to focus on one that’s really kind of boring, until the end, when surprise, an AI arranged all of them!
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Mar 19, 2020 15:19
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I blame my repeated failures to read past Exodus on the fact I was reading the New International Version.
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Mar 20, 2020 19:47
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Does anyone know of any good resources online discussing the Bible more-or-less comprehensively from a semi-scholarly perspective? It feels like Googling anything remotely Bible-related tends to bring up mainly evangelical stuff. Even sites like BibleHub.com tend to focus on older commentaries, most of which appear to be written from a traditionally Protestant point of view. Obviously there's a lot of valuable recent academic scholarship on the Bible, but it seems to get drowned out online.
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Mar 20, 2020 21:39
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Not exactly an online resource, but Asimov's Guide To The Bible is pretty good from what I remember. Asimov was personally atheist, but still treated the material with respect. That produced a fairly neutral perspective.
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Mar 20, 2020 21:48
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Gnoman posted:Not exactly an online resource, but Asimov's Guide To The Bible is pretty good from what I remember. Asimov was personally atheist, but still treated the material with respect. That produced a fairly neutral perspective. I will probably read that some time, but it wasn't really what I had in mind (Asimov's academic background was in biochemistry, and he was writing in the late 1960s - I assume there's been, e.g., important relevant archaeological work since then).
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Mar 20, 2020 22:04
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Silver2195 posted:Does anyone know of any good resources online discussing the Bible more-or-less comprehensively from a semi-scholarly perspective? It feels like Googling anything remotely Bible-related tends to bring up mainly evangelical stuff. Even sites like BibleHub.com tend to focus on older commentaries, most of which appear to be written from a traditionally Protestant point of view. Obviously there's a lot of valuable recent academic scholarship on the Bible, but it seems to get drowned out online. Sunday School Dropouts was a podcast that I really enjoyed. They're not scholars, but they do talk to some scholars, so maybe that's a start?
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Mar 20, 2020 22:29
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The North Tower posted:Sunday School Dropouts was a podcast that I really enjoyed. They're not scholars, but they do talk to some scholars, so maybe that's a start? It's a bit too twee and snarky for me sometimes, but yeah they aren't bad. I personally think the bible is best understood through discussion formats with an expert leading. I had a great experience attending sessions with a local rabbi. Perhaps there is an online study group? I find the difference in tenor and intellectual rigor between religious Jews and evangelicals to be significant but ymmv. I personally find the same problem with a lot of bible scholars. Either tinged with evangelical bias, or obnoxious atheist smugness.
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Mar 20, 2020 23:45
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Famethrowa posted:It's a bit too twee and snarky for me sometimes, but yeah they aren't bad. Agreed. I used to New Oxford Annotated Bible when I read it, which has excellent historical/cultural notes and context, but I'd love to be part of a secular Bible study group led by some experts.
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Mar 21, 2020 12:44
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There are many good, broad introductions to study of the bible that are not ragingly evangelical or atheistic in their bent. Asimov's guide is a pretty good one, but there are many others. A few popular places to start:
This is just a very small sampling of some basic introductions written for a broad audience. I'm sure other people will have other suggestions. These are not meant to brainwash you one way or the other; the books in this list written by devout Jews or Christians make it clear that their goal is a scholarly approach, not faith-based.
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Mar 21, 2020 19:09
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Silver2195 posted:Does anyone know of any good resources online discussing the Bible more-or-less comprehensively from a semi-scholarly perspective? It feels like Googling anything remotely Bible-related tends to bring up mainly evangelical stuff. Even sites like BibleHub.com tend to focus on older commentaries, most of which appear to be written from a traditionally Protestant point of view. Obviously there's a lot of valuable recent academic scholarship on the Bible, but it seems to get drowned out online. Also not an online resource, but there are several good books on the subject. See anything by Bart Ehrman for example. Also Harold Bloom's Book of J is a very interesting read.
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Mar 21, 2020 19:56
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nonathlon posted:The further away I get from reading Reamde, the shittier it is. One dimensional characters, weak enemies, a rudderless plot. This should have been slaughtered by reviewers but wasn't. He wrote a sequel too.
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Mar 22, 2020 04:04
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Christoph posted:
Oh good it's not just me then. This was my commuting book and I was really forcing myself through it until we went into our current lockdown. Last night was the first time in over two weeks that I picked it up, and part of me wants to just power through it since I only have a hundred pages or so to go, but it feels like it's weird for the sake of being weird. Like an overly-serious version of the concept of "twee". C-Euro fucked around with this message at 16:18 on Mar 28, 2020 |
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Mar 28, 2020 15:45
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ianmacdo posted:He wrote a sequel too. Wasn't aware. And - looking at the reviews - it might be okay because it's more of a conventional SF novel. On the other hand, why reuse the characters from REAMDE, who are mostly one-dimensional or stereotypes?
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Mar 28, 2020 16:12
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nonathlon posted:Wasn't aware. And - looking at the reviews - it might be okay because it's more of a conventional SF novel. On the other hand, why reuse the characters from REAMDE, who are mostly one-dimensional or stereotypes? I wouldn’t trust the reviews for anything Stephenson writes. Remember, REAMDE reviewed really well, even though it was utter dogshit.
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Mar 28, 2020 17:19
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nonathlon posted:Wasn't aware. And - looking at the reviews - it might be okay because it's more of a conventional SF novel. On the other hand, why reuse the characters from REAMDE, who are mostly one-dimensional or stereotypes? If I may offer an opinion on the subject: "Dodge" is a novel that, at least in its early parts, features some interesting ideas, but Stephenson chooses to follow the least interesting plot throughout. Now, there are some sequences in there that are somewhat cool, but.... he's positing some thoroughly unpleasant things in there, like humans being sort of predestined to reinvent abrahamic religions, that wealth accumulated in life will translate into agency in the afterlife.... It left a bad taste in my mouth after I finished it, and kinda makes me wonder where the Stephenson that wrote Anathem went. Also, this book tries to do an arc welding job that brings the REAMDE stuff into the Cryptonomicon/Baroque Cycle universe and tries to offer a distant epilogue to the latter, which is a complication that does the book no favours IMHO
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Mar 28, 2020 18:59
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You're right: reviews of Stephenson are likely to written by those who love the info-dumping and competence fic. And I can't shake the idea that Stephenson books are deeply sexist, just in a clever way. I actually really enjoyed the early Stephenson work, the technothrillers that he wrote with his uncle. They're cheesy but different, fast-paced, reasonably short and better written than most airport lounge books. The thing that offends me about REAMDE etc. is that it's sold as some amazing, major work but it's basically an overlong b-grade potboiler. The_E posted:If I may offer an opinion on the subject: "Dodge" is a novel that, at least in its early parts, features some interesting ideas, but Stephenson chooses to follow the least interesting plot throughout. Which is a frequent problem in the Stephenson genre. nonathlon fucked around with this message at 22:18 on Mar 28, 2020 |
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Mar 28, 2020 18:59
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At Home by Bill Bryson. Reads like a 2-hour BBC documentary that I feel asleep to while bedridden. Half Share by Nathan Lowell. This attempt at a sailor's story inexplicably avoids all the exciting parts of crewing a starship. Doesn't help when the MC's given name is Ishmael Horatio. Endymion by Dan Simmons. Gave up about 60 pages in, but it looks to be eschewing everything fun about Hyperion for some sort of a hero quest adventure. We Are Legion, We Are Bob by Dennis Taylor, a book recommended by redditors who cream themselves because it reminds them of The Martian and HHGttG. Realized too late that it would be 10% 'ambitious' science fiction and 90% epic referential cleverness.
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Mar 28, 2020 20:37
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C-Euro posted:Oh good it's not just me then. This was my commuting book and I was really forcing myself through it until we went into our current lockdown. Last night was the first time in over two weeks that I picked it up, and part of me wants to just power through it since I only have a hundred pages or so to go, but it feels like it's weird for the sake of being weird. Like an overly-serious version of the concept of "twee". Murakami really likes his seductive mysterious 16 y/o schoolgirl tropes for his older narrator to feel uneasy and horned up about. I gave up on IQ84 for similar reasons. Nothing has lived up to Hardboiled Wonderland for me FPyat posted:Endymion by Dan Simmons. Gave up about 60 pages in, but it looks to be eschewing everything fun about Hyperion for some sort of a hero quest adventure. With an added side of intense Islamophobia to boot. Shame too, because I really liked his depiction of a grimdark Catholic Inquisition who likes to liquify and reconstitute it's priests for space travel. Some good body horror in there. Famethrowa fucked around with this message at 21:41 on Mar 28, 2020 |
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Mar 28, 2020 21:38
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The_E posted:If I may offer an opinion on the subject: "Dodge" is a novel that, at least in its early parts, features some interesting ideas, but Stephenson chooses to follow the least interesting plot throughout. That’s Stephenson’s entire style. He dropped the MMO plot of Reamde super early even though it was the most interesting part of the book, and the only thing that stopped it from being entirely generic terrorist hunting.
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Mar 28, 2020 21:43
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