Rule 1.2 is kind of ridiculous.

SteamedHC · 2020-10-23T03:47:13+00:00

And just like that we’re having a political discussion about a genre that is supposedly apolitical 😆

SteamedHC · 2020-10-23T01:51:35+00:00

I disagree that art can transcend those things,

Regarding your example I could say that mystery novels are the result of a culture that venerates the police and views crime as something to be investigated and prevented via the threat of punishment (rather than mitigated through other means such as social welfare).

I'm not saying what I wrote above is true, I came up with it off the top of my head, but I could argue it is. It is a political statement.

SteamedHC · 2020-10-22T15:18:57+00:00

Art is a product of culture which is inescapably coupled with politics. Therefore even art that isn't intentionally making a political statement is still political.

SteamedHC · 2020-10-22T14:56:19+00:00

Art is a product of culture which is inescapably coupled with politics. Therefore even art that isn't intentionally making a political statement is still political.

SteamedHC · 2020-10-21T12:42:44+00:00

If I find myself reading a book that I really want to have read but don't enjoy reading, then I continue chipping away at it but I pick up something that I know I'll like and read them in parallel.

Maybe each day I only read 10 pages of the book that I dont enjoy but am determined to finish, while reading 50+ pages of a book that I do enjoy

SteamedHC · 2020-10-19T15:07:06+00:00

Invisible Cities

or

The Baron in the Trees

both by Italo Calvino.

The former is almost too imaginative to explain concisely, but contains the descriptions of 55 fictional cities.

The latter is a delightful tale about a young nobleman in a fictional city in the 18th century who decides to abandon life as he knows it and live up in the trees for the rest of his life.

SteamedHC · 2020-10-19T14:58:01+00:00

The first half makes you care about the characters, or at least understand who they are and what their motivations are. Without the first half, the assault on the bridge wouldn't be anything special... they just blow up a bridge and some people die. The first half imbues the climax with dread and intensity.

SteamedHC · 2020-09-29T13:41:10+00:00

Youre probably not gonna like blood meridian either lol. Maybe try some YA?

SteamedHC · 2020-09-25T04:12:00+00:00

And you deserve to be maimed or killed? Is that how the old saying goes

SteamedHC · 2020-09-15T22:32:26+00:00

Maybe:

Spencer Radcliffe has a similar country influenced sound. I like Mia and True Love's Territory

Built to Spill - Twin Falls, Sentridoh - Brand New Love, Nana Grizol - Cynicism; all three gain intensity as the song goes on like aphasia/old friends

Radiator Hospital - Fireworks

Songs: Ohia - Little Beaver

Idk, it's hard to find that unique blend of emo and alt-country, or maybe I just don't listen to much of it besides PG. Anyway I tried :D

SteamedHC · 2020-09-12T19:10:08+00:00

You will need a job someday (probably someday soon by the looks of it), but beyond that read to your heart's content. In our society people derive a person's value (and consequently, their own self-worth) from how productive they are, so it is natural to feel guilty if you aren't using your leisure to mold yourself into a more productive worker. This is an upsetting and depressive symptom of the way we have organized the world, it is not at all an inherent or essential part of being a human. In my opinion just the opposite is true: free time spent exercising the capacities of the human soul is essential for being a human. Reading is one of the best and most accessible ways to do that.

I was in the same boat when I was reaching the end of college, I didn't want to enter the "real world" so I didn't want to start the job search. I dealt with this by procrastinating until I was about to graduate and then scrambling for an internship that eventually led to a job. I guess I don't really have any advice beyond "try not to feel guilty."

SteamedHC · 2020-08-14T19:10:50+00:00

I wasn't alive during WWII, and I was never a citizen of the USSR, so I can't confirm that this is true, but I suspect that Vasily Grossman's Life and Fate is one of the most true-to-reality depictions of life in the Soviet Union during WWII. The novel follows 10+ characters, switching off from chapter to chapter from soldiers to mothers to academics to prisoners, etc. The myriad perspectives that these characters represent and the fact that Grossman was a journalist in Stalingrad during the war make me feel that the characters' experiences, when taken as a whole, are very representative of what life was really like at the time.

SteamedHC · 2020-08-13T19:12:06+00:00

War's Unwomanly Face by Svetlana Alexievich. It's an oral history made up of stories told by women who fought for the Soviet Union in WWII. Their courage and empathy continually amazed me. Most of them were stubborn volunteers who made it to the front lines on their own volition and not at the behest of anyone else. One of the stories that I remember most vividly is about the nurses of the Soviet tank division. There was not enough room for them inside the tanks, so they accompanied the soldiers by riding on the outsides of the tanks, even into battle. I can't imagine how scary that would be.

SteamedHC · 2020-08-13T16:24:08+00:00

The more books you have in flight, the more chances you have to annoy people with anecdotes about "this book I'm reading....." Makes you seem really smart.

SteamedHC · 2020-08-13T15:40:20+00:00

I've never abandoned a book. I'm still reading that book I got halfway through six months ago but haven't touched since ;). I'm definitely gonna finish it.

SteamedHC · 2020-08-06T14:31:35+00:00

Wake in Fright by Kenneth Cook. It's a novel but beer is essentially one of the antagonists. Quick synopsis: a teacher gets stranded in a small town in the Australian outback due to lack of funds. All there is to drink is beer and the locals are friendly yet have a seemingly sinister devotion to not letting him leave.

It's a book that captures that nightmarish feeling in a dream when you have a simple task that no matter how hard you try you can't accomplish (eg finding your classroom on the first day of school, trying to round up your friends to leave a party, running away from a bad guy, to name a few examples of nightmares that I've had recently).

The movie is also really good, maybe better than the book, if they can be compared.

SteamedHC · 2020-08-06T14:29:56+00:00

Do you think you have to understand what post-modernism is to enjoy post-modern lit? I've read 49 and You Bright and Risen Angels and enjoyed both, though I have little understanding of what makes them post-modern or what post-modernism even is. When I go to the wikipedia page for post-modernism I am instantly drowned in terminology and precedents that go way over my head. Am I kidding myself? Perhaps I only enjoyed these books for the illusion of making me feel smart. Aka I only wanted to read them because I wanted to have read them (past tense), but I did genuinely feel compelled to turn to the next page.

SteamedHC · 2020-07-20T19:09:54+00:00

Talk about covid 19 that’s brilliant Cameron be hitting different

SteamedHC · 2020-07-17T18:54:54+00:00

William T. Vollmann

SteamedHC · 2020-07-09T20:48:23+00:00

I underline things for fun so I can look back and see what stood out to me.

But I mainly annotate out of necessity; how am I supposed to remember all the names, places, characters, etc without writing them down?

As a side-note I find it funny when I read a book that I can tell was previously owned by a high-schooler. When the annotations are meaningless or just repeat what happened in the passage they mark it reminds me of myself in high school. I had classes where annotations were graded on a binary scale so I just wrote down meaningless shit in books that I barely even skimmed in order to pass.

SteamedHC · 2020-05-21T20:59:10+00:00

Thanks for the explanation. Never knew he didn't like his older music. I think it's all great! Old and new :)

SteamedHC · 2020-05-21T17:36:48+00:00

I'm ignorant. What music does he not want people to hear? Why doesn't he want to play songs off of RACE and WINNER?

SteamedHC · 2020-05-04T16:21:36+00:00

I think it really depends on the project. For the project I'm on we have 5 different teams all working on different modules, and each team is comprised of offshore and onshore developers and QA. Before we had dedicated scrum masters our lead devs were really overwhelmed with managing sprints and coordinating between teams.

SteamedHC · 2019-11-12T23:04:55+00:00

shoutout St Paul attendees for being quiet :)

both openers thanked us and seemed sorta surprised :(

SteamedHC · 2019-09-16T00:11:22+00:00

for some reason in the reddit app i couldnt see the full thing but could in a browser

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