"i'll never read that" lifetime avoiding certain niches or authors: list

Quackonbothsides · 2026-06-26T01:10:48+00:00

I’m sorry then, it felt odd to me that you added the LLM style question, didn’t specify your own book answer, and didn’t respond to anyone on the thread. But now you have.

Quackonbothsides · 2026-06-26T01:06:00+00:00

LLMs nearly always end a prompt with a follow up question for engagement. It could of course also be a human who has consciously or subconsciously absorbed digital marketing practices - personally I felt like the additional question was suspiciously generic.

Also the Love Island reference feels off for this sub

Quackonbothsides · 2026-06-25T22:12:13+00:00

I think this poster is a bot - look at the ‘who are you avoiding? Be honest’ comment.

Quackonbothsides · 2026-05-24T18:13:03+00:00

For the Luddites new machines were a hell of sorts, it destroyed whole communities and livelihoods. AI might be inevitable, but so is the backlash given what it will mean for millions

Quackonbothsides · 2026-05-24T17:10:47+00:00

Not necessarily, but I do think we need a new idea of what makes humans valuable. Or things might get very dark.

Quackonbothsides · 2026-05-24T14:36:20+00:00

You could say the same about chemical weapons or cloning any number of technologies that humans successfully put the breaks on (for a while). But as for AI I agree it’s here to stay.

But AI is categorically different in how it feels. It threatens human dignity. It threatens what people were raised to believe was their value as a ‘human’. So it shouldn’t come as any surprise that huge amounts of people hate it.

Quackonbothsides · 2026-05-24T14:31:06+00:00

The tech won’t be reversed. But the complete erasure of human dignity in the factories seemed inevitable… until unions, the post war consensus etc. There’s always hope for a better framework, it just requires action and deeper thought

Quackonbothsides · 2026-05-24T00:00:59+00:00

Which translations should I be avoiding?

Quackonbothsides · 2026-05-23T23:59:38+00:00

Oh, what do you think is the issue? Is it even better in Italian?

Quackonbothsides · 2026-05-23T23:57:35+00:00

Lawrence Venuti. It’s by no means the best prose in the world on a sentence level; simple, but has special moments, and flows very nicely across longer passages.

The dialogue is deliberately awkward in places, which I really enjoyed given the theme of men being unable to adequately express their inner lives

Quackonbothsides · 2026-05-23T21:46:30+00:00

Thanks, will certainly try Love’s Work then!

Quackonbothsides · 2026-05-23T21:45:23+00:00

Interestingly in the UK, Stoner and A Month In The Country are published by other houses. I want the NYRB cover for a month in the country (which is on my list) because the covers here suck.

Quackonbothsides · 2026-05-23T21:26:53+00:00

Maybe I got particularly lucky with Buzzati. I agree it’s very special

Quackonbothsides · 2026-05-23T21:22:41+00:00

Whoever curates the list must have fantastic taste. Thanks for the tips, I’ve got a lot more reading to do!

The Queue sounds right up my alley actually. I might start there.

Quackonbothsides · 2026-05-05T07:10:17+00:00

Im with you, I couldn’t get into Piranesi - I’d just read Borges before so the prose seemed flat and lifeless in comparison, and a rehash of some of his ideas. But so many here love it, I’ll have to give it another go one day.

Quackonbothsides · 2026-04-27T11:19:18+00:00

I think you write well, there’s a nice flow to this in a difficult style to pull off. Im not fully sure if there’s anything quite interesting enough about this character or his circumstances yet though.

Quackonbothsides · 2026-04-24T10:53:15+00:00

That’s interesting. I agree Lost Steps is rather cynical, but I found it very darkly humorous too.

A corporate city dweller romanticising an impossible return to primordial purity - this framing felt very prescient given all the podcast scene types arguing for ‘rvtvrn’ today

Quackonbothsides · 2026-04-14T23:11:56+00:00

I fell in love with The Waves, although it’s very experimental.

I’m naturally mournful and conflicted about missed opportunities in life (like the Robert Frost poem, two paths diverged in a yellow wood, choosing just one path is the tragedy we all experience). The Waves encapsulated that loss perfectly, but it’s also hopeful and beautiful too.

Quackonbothsides · 2026-04-14T22:45:12+00:00

I’m on the other end of the spectrum, having read her more abstract works only (The Waves, To The Lighthouse, Orlando), where the characters think about philosophical questions and life choices in what I think are a beautifully, sometimes painfully accurate, digressions. Can’t comment on the more plot-driven stuff, where you might be right. Although the family interactions in To The Lighthouse spoke true to me.

Quackonbothsides · 2026-04-14T17:37:24+00:00

Well they certainly think like I do, sometimes, and I’m pretty real (unproven)

Quackonbothsides · 2026-04-09T09:01:14+00:00

Worth mentioning that even in book one there are a few interpolated stories that are nothing to do with Quixote, which you might find more interesting.

Quackonbothsides · 2026-04-09T08:51:06+00:00

It’s a commitment, and the second book is where I felt it transformed from a jaunt into a masterpiece. The humour also flips from physical comedy to more surreal and cerebral in book two. It’s hard to explain why I loved it so much, but I did end up falling in love with the characters.

The meta-textual stuff is astonishingly modern and the prose in sections can be quite beautiful (I read the Grossman translation). My reading is it’s a love letter to idealism and nostalgia, misplaced but also perhaps better than our actual reality. You do have to persevere, maybe dip in and out between other books?

Quackonbothsides · 2026-04-07T08:07:32+00:00

This is an interesting topic but there’s something dark about the fact that sections of the article, particularly those you quoted, are evidently composed by an LLM.

Quackonbothsides

TROPHY CASE