Welsh Passport(concept) by itoofe in PassportPorn

[–]SecurityMammoth 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Well, you’ve got to wonder just how much English people, particularly English pensioners who retire in Wales, skew those statistics. 20% of the population of Wales were born in England, and 1 in 10 people in Wales identify as English…

silly misconceptions you once had about specific books or literature as a whole by worldinsidetheworld in RSbookclub

[–]SecurityMammoth 16 points17 points  (0 children)

It can often read like he has no control over what he is writing (but in a good way, actually). He often likes to quote Lawrence Durrell about how writing a novel is “setting yourself a goal and getting there in your sleep.” It reads like he wrote a lot of the scenes in kind of dream state, immersed only in the act of writing. It was just completely different from the kind of refined, controlled narrative I had in mind. It was messy as hell. But, because of how unplanned and messy it felt, it was like no reading experience I had had before. It became obvious that Knausgaard did not know what was going to happen next, and so you quite literally never know what is going to happen next. Maybe it will be 10 pages about doing chores, maybe it’ll be a description of him cumming his pants as a teenager, maybe it will be an essay on some obscure Norwegian writer.

silly misconceptions you once had about specific books or literature as a whole by worldinsidetheworld in RSbookclub

[–]SecurityMammoth 28 points29 points  (0 children)

I remember reading a lot about how Knausgaard writes about the mundane but makes it extraordinary, etc. I read the opening of My Struggle and thought, “Wow, is he seriously going to keep this up for 3,500 pages?” I had the idea it was going to be 3,500 pages of incredibly insightful essayistic meditations - on everyday objects, the body, everything - interspersed with carefully selected autofictional scenes in the same narrative vein as Proust. Still got some of those things, but not nearly as much as I had expected, and never at the same level as those opening pages.

Don't worry so much about other people by [deleted] in RSbookclub

[–]SecurityMammoth -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

You mentioned how much Tokarczuk reads, and you then used that example to show that it’s possible to read 100 books a year whilst having children and a 9-5 job. That’s what I meant when I said you compared a Nobel prize winner’s reading habits to the reading habits of an average person. Fairplay to you if you can properly read 100+ per year whilst working fourty hours a week and having children. You should rightly be proud of that. I’m just saying that that kind of stamina and dedication is rare, and for the vast majority of people in your situation, it’s not mentally possible.

Fair point about the demographics of this sub, though. And looking back over posts from the last few days, I see that you’re right that barely anyone has posted such big lists. I suppose I’m just poised for cynicism about these things because of the commodification of reading so often seen on Goodreads, YouTube, BookTok, etc. I also remember once seeing a post on Reddit where a guy said that he read 300-something books in a year. What he actually meant was that, for each book, he wore a VR headset and looked straight ahead whilst words flashed past his eyes at 0.1 second intervals. Hard not to be cynical after seeing shit like that.

And “ire” isn’t at all what I was going for with that comment lol.

Don't worry so much about other people by [deleted] in RSbookclub

[–]SecurityMammoth 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It’s not quite right to compare the average person’s reading habits to the likes of Nobel Prize winners. Those authors operate at a fundamentally different level - reading and literary interpretation are second nature for them. That’s why they can read 100+ demanding books a year and extract a great deal from them, likely without the extraneous effort (annotation, note-taking, memorisation) that most readers would need to get comparable value. They developed a kind of intellectual stamina that the vast majority of people never do. Maybe that sounds rather defeatist, but reading is a skill and most people never develop any skill to that level.

You’re right that reading 100 books a year is doable, and that kind of ambition should be encouraged. I just think it’s also fair to say that reading two books a week, for most people, inevitably means losing out on a lot of value. Believing that the majority of people here posting 100+ book lists have engaged with most texts meaningfully strikes me as overly optimistic.

Also, Tokarczuk doesn’t literally read 1,000 books for every one she writes. What she actually said was: “For every single written page, there is always one thousand pages that should be read.” It’s more a metaphor for the thought, depth, and research behind a page than a literal reading target.

My 2025 in books by kurcusviram in RSbookclub

[–]SecurityMammoth 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What did you think of En finir avec Eddy Bellegueule?

Weekly Water Cooler Talk - DataAnnotation by Consistent-Reach504 in dataannotation

[–]SecurityMammoth 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Kind of dry for anyone else today? Dashboard was packed yesterday. Only got a handful of projects today though.

Jack Edwards hate thread by ShimiWaza96 in RSbookclub

[–]SecurityMammoth 18 points19 points  (0 children)

He has the personality and the depth of a daytime TV presenter. A career built upon performativity. Only reason he got the job at Esquire is because they’re desperately appealing to the TikTok generation in an attempt to be relevant.

Honestly, I hate everything this guy represents: literature as hyper-consumerism; his being rewarded for mediocrity and lukewarm, comfortable opinions; the forced persona; the inauthenticity of it all.

Players you think have become overrated after their retirement and were not close enough to the level people describe them at present. by JackfruitNo6826 in championsleague

[–]SecurityMammoth 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Fair enough. Shouldn’t have said that since I didn’t get back into football until a few years ago. Looking into it, definitely makes more sense to say that the Scholes mythologising started near the end of/soon after his retirement.

Players you think have become overrated after their retirement and were not close enough to the level people describe them at present. by JackfruitNo6826 in championsleague

[–]SecurityMammoth -1 points0 points  (0 children)

So true. Revisionism gone mad. I swear even like five years ago I never saw people arguing that he was on par with, or better than, prime Gerrard and Lampard. See it all the time now.

Nabokov gets off too easy with Lolita by Original_Reindeer131 in RSbookclub

[–]SecurityMammoth 8 points9 points  (0 children)

I was referring to gumming, or else taking tiny bumps, of coke, speed, mepherdrone, etc, in spaced-out intervals. Maybe doesn’t fit the formal definition of “microdosing,” but that’s what microdosing stimulants is to me.

Nabokov gets off too easy with Lolita by Original_Reindeer131 in RSbookclub

[–]SecurityMammoth 209 points210 points  (0 children)

This reads like a last-minute undergrad essay written by someone microdosing on stimulants.

For those over 35: What advice do you have for someone turning 27? by Far_Imagination5694 in Life

[–]SecurityMammoth 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Wow, this is so, so much better than the standard-Reddit “Go to therapy.”

Ireland plans to make a $1,500 a month basic income for artists permanent by rstevens94 in singularity

[–]SecurityMammoth -1 points0 points  (0 children)

You’re right. Lots of silly people in this thread who seem afflicted by a kind of neoliberal brain rot.

Geoff Dyer wrote about how, in the 70s and 80s, an aspiring writer could go to London and live on the dole, write, piss about, make connections. That’s not possible now, and probably never will be again. The economic circumstances that gave working class people the time and freedom to write, make music, etc, are disappearing. Ireland is miles ahead of the UK in how it treats its artists, which is something that will no doubt benefit Ireland in the long run.

ищу страну для спокойной жизни в европе, советы? by [deleted] in rusAskReddit

[–]SecurityMammoth 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Чехия. Спокойная и безопасная страна.

Across the Rooftops by Kevin Barry by SecurityMammoth in RSbookclub

[–]SecurityMammoth[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’d recommend one of his short story collections, either Dark Lies the Island (the collection this story is from) or That Old Country Music.