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What are you currently reading?
Is it cold in here?:
Susan Jacoby, "The Age of American Unreason". Title is a bit misleading since she traces anti-intellectualism and contempt for rationality through the country's entire history.
Zingoleb:
--- Quote from: ackblom12 on 20 Sep 2012, 07:48 ---I'd say calling it bad writing isn't fair in the least, but it's definitely not easy reading.
--- End quote ---
Okay, you're right. He's a technically good writer but his writing style makes me want to strangle babies because it's so bloody dense. I find it irritating; the only person who's ever written in that sort of style (not horror, but that sort of...verbose 1800s feeling) whom I have enjoyed was Poe, and even then I can only stomach him in small doses before I start to claw my eyes out.
VonKleist:
Maybe have a look at Lord Dunsany. Lovecraft took his Dreamland-stuff straight from him, but the guy also wrote a lot of interesting short-stories about ghosts and haunting and stuff which are pretty neat and not as brooding as old Howard Philips.
The longer stories bored me a bit but the shorter stuff was nice and weird and english folk tale-ish.
Haven't read any of the poems yet.
Is it cold in here?:
"The Republican Brain".
pwhodges:
I have just read John Brunner's The Shockwave Rider yet again; in fact, I have probably read this more times than any other single book.
It's a cyber-punk novel written ten years before the genre was recognised. It was rather poorly received, both because it was seen as too fantastical (in many respects it wasn't), and because its style is rather disjointed (it works for me); the rather moralistic ending is weakly done, even though it fits the theme of the book just fine. In many respects the book has also dated somewhat, which was inevitable - however, it was also the book that gave us the term "computer worm". The inspiration for the book was Alvin Toffler's Future Shock, hence the title.
The idea in it that resonates so strongly with me that I keep coming back to it is the importance of individuality, and of recognising and nurturing it. The depiction of what happens when this recognition is lost may be extreme, and strained at times; but it never seems to me to go beyond the bounds of possibility, in the sense that I can picture people who would be pleased to build such a future. I would wish to forestall such people before they reached this point.
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