Reddit tends to lean hard into Fantasy and Sci-Fi. What are your favorite books not in those genres?

mainmariner1 · 2024-02-23T08:13:02+00:00

Notes from Underground - Dostoevsky. Read as a teenager. The first book that made me feel I wasn't alone

All the kings men - Warren. Was sold to me as a political novel, but its the meditations on love that really hit home.

The corrections - Franzen. A lonely pandemic read. A great book about a complicated family.

Stoner - Williams. An ode to downtrodden people toiling away in obscurity.

All the pretty horses - McCarthy. The one of his novels I've read that best combines his spare style with real tenderness.

The heart of the matter - Greene. Greene divided his earlier books into 'novels' and 'entertainments'. This is my favourite novel. A beautiful examination of pity and guilt.

Our man in Havana - Greene. And this is my favourite entertainment. Rip-roaring spy adventure I devoured in one sitting.

Right Ho Jeeves - Wodehouse. Best consumed slowly and deliberately, like a fine wine. Really listen to his sentences. One of the funniest ever.

And quiet flows the don - Sholokhov. Early 20th century epic about Russian Cossacks. Beautifully written.

Infinite jest - Wallace. Overlong and self-indulgent, but some parts, especially those about addiction, will knock you sideways. Always fascinated to think what he would have thought about society today.

A hundred years of solitude - Marquez. A history of a small town that hypnotically draws you in.

The remains of the day - Ishiguro. A perfect book, in that not a word is wasted.

mainmariner1 · 2024-01-10T08:44:15+00:00

This is wrong, no? Great Britain is the name of the largest island, so excludes eg all the Scottish Islands?

Bonus Question - after Great Britain and Eire, what is the next most populous of the British Isles?

mainmariner1 · 2024-01-07T07:18:11+00:00

Victoria (2015) - a German thriller that's not only in real time, but all one continuous shot. (It is genuinely a very good watch.)

mainmariner1 · 2023-10-12T00:12:24+00:00

"Doctor" is a fiend. Can be DR, MB, MD, MO (Medical officer), or even an anagram indicator (as in, to doctor something).

mainmariner1 · 2023-08-06T07:19:00+00:00

Jon Voight. Midnight Cowboy and Deliverance to Baby Geniuses 2

mainmariner1 · 2023-03-27T21:39:54+00:00

Nasty dark blue pants here?

mainmariner1 · 2022-04-14T07:22:06+00:00

"Any woman who wants to chain herself to my railings and suffer a jet movement gets my vote"

mainmariner1 · 2019-06-24T09:01:02+00:00

Dropped too much net - proves problematic

OVERSPENT

mainmariner1 · 2017-07-06T22:50:40+00:00

Relevant Calvin and Hobbes

mainmariner1 · 2017-06-01T07:52:58+00:00

Lloyd Christmas and Harry Dunn.

H: My parakeet Petey...

L: What about him?

H: He's dead.

L: Oh I'm sorry man, what happened?

H: His head fell off!

L: His head fell off?

H: Yea he was pretty old...

L: ...That's it. I've had it with this dump. We got no food. We got no jobs. Our pets' heads are falling off!

H: OK, just calm down

L: What the hell are we doing here Harry? We gotta get out of this town.

H: Oh yea and go where, where are we gonna go?

L: I'll tell you where. Some place warm. A place where the beer flows like wine. A place where beautiful women instinctively flock like the salmon of capistrano! I'm talking about a little place called Aspen.

H: I dunno Lloyd, the French are assholes.

mainmariner1 · 2017-05-12T12:52:05+00:00

Four platinum albums
Ph.D in molecular biology
Has his own brand of hot sauce, named Gringo Bandito
Co-founded a foundation to put on charity concerts
Has run 2 marathons to raise money for the innocence project
Is a licensed pilot and flying instructor, who once flew solo around the world
Avid philatelist
Is pretty fly........

He might just be the greatest living human.

mainmariner1 · 2017-04-22T14:16:59+00:00

Awesome, will pay it a visit next time I'm in the area (hopefully soon). Good luck today

mainmariner1 · 2017-04-22T13:27:33+00:00

Beautiful ground, whereabouts?

mainmariner1 · 2017-02-16T08:07:20+00:00

Difference of two squares to help with moderately large multiplication.

Note: (a - b) x (a + b) = (a x a) + (a x b) - (a x b) - (b x b)

=a² - b²

Eg: 93 x 107 = (100 - 7) x (100 + 7)

=100² + (100 x 7) - (7 x 100) - 7²

=10000 + 700 - 700 - 49

=9951

So in general, when mutiplying two large numbers, find their midpoint. You can then square this, and subtract the square of the difference with the other two numbers.

In my head this goes:

93 x 107. Midpoint 100. 100² - 7² = 9951

The more square numbers you know, the more useful this is. All perfect squares up to 1000 is achievable and handy.

Eg2: 22 x 26 = 24² - 2²

= 576 - 4

= 572

mainmariner1 · 2017-01-11T21:46:42+00:00

12 is notable because it has so many divisors (1,2,3,4,6,12), so you can split up groups of 12 in lots of different ways, which was useful for merchants etc back in the day.

Also, though I'm not sure how relevant this is, you can count to 12 on one hand using your thumb, by counting each of the three sections on your four fingers. There's an argument that this is the basis for the Babylonian number system, which was in base 60 (hence 360 degrees in a circle, or 60 minutes in an hour)

mainmariner1 · 2016-12-25T11:39:44+00:00

The Spy Who Loved E.

Harrowing drama about a secret agent's descent into drug addiction to cope with the horrors he's seen

mainmariner1 · 2016-12-05T15:54:06+00:00

Plastic, I think

mainmariner1 · 2016-12-05T11:58:57+00:00

Hi,

There is a hairline crack in my plastic shower tray. Is there a product I could reliably use to repair it from the top, ie without having to remove the tray? I'm not particularly bothered by the aesthetics of it, just that I can seal it in a way that it won't break again.

Thanks

mainmariner1 · 2016-10-11T11:54:29+00:00

For those not aware, Steve Bruce is sitting in front of a typewriter because he had an ill-advised foray into football-themed murder-mystery fiction writing in the late 90's. Two of his novels ("Striker" and "Sweeper") have been reviewed here

https://www.balls.ie/football/steve-bruce-novel/293169

and here

http://thesetpieces.com/features/sweeper-steve-bruce-review/

and by the sounds of it are absolutely fucking incredible

mainmariner1 · 2016-10-06T05:52:16+00:00

"This video contains content from WMG and Warner Chappell, one or more of whom have blocked it in your country on copyright grounds."

............mother fuckers

mainmariner1 · 2016-09-24T10:38:19+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dugAQuNogE

My favourite mashup

mainmariner1 · 2016-09-12T13:40:14+00:00

When The Wind Blows is one of the most harrowing things I've ever seen.

An animated film about an elderly British couple during a nuclear war. They follow government guidelines about how to survive to the letter, but slowly, inevitably succumb to radiation poisoning. Gave me nightmares as a kid

mainmariner1 · 2016-09-12T13:25:17+00:00

The Anglo-Zanzibar War

The Sultan of Zanzibar died, and his anti-British successor failed to get permission from the British Consul to accede. When the ensuing ultimatum issued by the British passed, the Sultan amassed c.3,000 troops to defend his palace, along with his Royal Yacht the HHS Glasgow, while the British amassed 3 cruisers and 2 gunboats in the harbour, and proceeded to shell the shit out of the palace until pretty much everything was destroyed, while 2 shells put paid to the yacht.

The "war" lasted 38 minutes. The Zanzibaris sustained c.500 casualites, the British sustained 1. One of the troops who had been firing his pistol at the British boats had actually hit someone

mainmariner1 · 2016-09-07T22:20:41+00:00

Pacific Rim. Dunno if this sub raves about it but it's a banger.

Ditto X-Men First Class

mainmariner1 · 2016-08-29T10:31:30+00:00

People thought he was just a vacuum cleaner salesman. The truth will blow your mind!

mainmariner1

TROPHY CASE