The Very Hungry Caterpillar is, on a the surface, merely a sweet story about a very hungry caterpillar and his journey of consumption and metamorphosis.

The author had an entirely different meaning in mind.

TVHC is a story about the author's struggle with their sexual and gender identity, preceded by years of substance abuse and high-risk sexual encounters.

The story begins with the caterpillar hatching from an egg. The Egg is both vaginal and penile, resulting from the combination of ovum and sperm. Within the author, they realized their own sense of vagina and peepee, causing a cognitive dissonance in their own identity.

TVHC's insatiable hunger for food can be seen as a metaphor for a deep longing to explore and understand one's own identity. It reflects the desire to consume knowledge about gender and self-discovery.

TVHC starts by eating through one red apple. This symbolizes the early stages of puberty, menstrual blood, and singular s*x (masturbation). The fact that future foods continue to grow in number and frequency shows the author's increasing libido, but also a shame cycle that is both calmed and exacerbated by continued high-risk exploration.

When TVHC eats through two pears, this symbolizes their first sexual encounter with two people. The green color of the pears symbolizes marijuana abuse, as well as the color of young, supple growth of a plant and the loss of the author's innocence. Since this is the second day of TVHC's life, it can be inferred that this sexual encounter occurred early in life, most likely in abuse as a minor, setting the stage for a life of sexual confusion and impulsiveness.

As the numbers of food increase, so too do the sexual partners. As visualized in the artwork, the penetration of TVHC through food symbolizes the penetration the author experienced as the sexually receiving partner, and the resulting holes in the food represent the continued diminishing of their psyche and worth.

After the numerical scaling of partners achieves maximum, TVHC binges in many different singular foods, much like the author's series of promiscuous encounters. The pace of the text is at a crescendo, the sexual encounters frequent and fleeting.

The Cocoon is not a transformative moment, but one of death and burial. Death of the Soul. Death of the Vagina. Death of the Peepee. Death of the Self.

The emergence of The Butterfly is the emergence of Denialism. Unable to face the damage to his body and soul from illicit drugs and STDs, the author adopted a new persona in order to dissociate from their true self. It is too late however, and so a short-lived life of denialism is all that is possible, until TVHC lays a new egg for the cycle of abuse to continue.

To discuss your weekly readings of books, textbooks and papers.

!bookworms

@Newvann can you pls

I'm finally about to finish Ben Wilson's Metropolis (yes, I stopped reading it halfway months ago an re took it this week and I forgot to post this rdrama thread because I was at the beach but today I arrived back at home ).

The book is prime !neolibs material covering the history of the cities since Ancient Mesopotamia while giving a decent emphasis to certain aspects of urban life such cosmopolitanism and as a place for exchange of ideas, but it also covers other interesting stuff like the importance of food trucks (food vendors have existed ancient times and Medieval Baghdad was famous for it, the book has an entire chapter dedicated to Baghdad during the peak of the Islamic Golden Age) or the evolution of recreational spaces such as public bathes and swimming areas (either pools or beaches) as areas for urban socialization regardless of class.

The chapter on 17th century Amsterdam is super interesting as is mentioned as the first global city which was "livable" and designed to improve the standards of it's inhabitants (a benefit of being a urbanized merchant republic in contrast to 1600s Paris and London which despite their status were massive slums with sanitation issues, but he later covers the rebirth of London after the 1666 fire and of course the Paris remodeling of the 19th century under Napoleon III and the Baron Heusmann), with proper cleaning (the people of Amsterdam kept their homes and lanes clean) and urban planning by local authorities.

Also 2 Brazilian cities, Curitiba and Porto Alegre, are mentioned positively by the author @BrasilIguana

To discuss your weekly readings of books, textbooks and papers.

@Newvann can you pls

https://boards.4chan.org/v/thread/698634203/what-game-has-too-much-content

!bookworms BrandoSando strikes kino again.

Second, for a quick comparison, here is Wilson's translations next to others.

Wilson's tends to be flat and banal (setting aside ideological concerns).

But let's look at some deeper critiques below ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/Tsn1GAlzQj

— Ascend: The Great Books Podcast (@TheGreatB00ks) December 28, 2024

you will think reading books like this is waste of time until you engage someone like this and have conversations with them about random things, then you wonder how they got so much knowledge from.. https://t.co/ekqHFtqOqJ

— Adémola (@flowzki) December 27, 2024

I got an amazon giftcard that I'm going to spend on some books, plus there are a few sales they have too.

Definitely going to get this because I like the other 2 books:

I saw something for !marseyartists :

Something for !ringbearers to get (or get their gf/bf to make them something):

Not sure what else to get... anyone have any suggestions? !bookworms

OP has a very foid post history. Some choice quotes:

I started reading it really late at night and everyone was asleep so I turned to chat GPT to help me process.

I saw a comment on it calling it comedy, satire… it's like comedic in that it's so deeply disturbing that the laughter is actually mournful tears, right? Tears that look like laughter because they are arriving so fast and so hard that you look like your laughing but you're not, you're just trying to breath but you can't because the air is leaving the room as the walls close in.

Oh thank you!! I'll do that, I didn't even consider the fact that there are academic resources I could look at to help me through this in addition to engaging here.

To discuss your weekly readings of books, textbooks and papers.

!bookworms

@Meilani can you pls

I always look forward to sharing my annual list of favorite books, movies, and music. Today I’ll start by sharing some of the books that have stuck with me long after I finished reading them.

Check them out this holiday season, preferably at an independent bookstore or library! pic.twitter.com/NNcAnaFzdU

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) December 20, 2024

To discuss your weekly readings of books, textbooks and papers.

@Merryvann can you pls.

To discuss your weekly readings of books, textbooks and papers.

!bookworms

@Merryvann can you pls.

Yesterday the New York Times instructed staff to avoid publishing photos of Luigi Mangione's face, internal company messages leaked to me reveal. https://t.co/TXXRIOfm7i

— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein) December 12, 2024

"THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General." – Harrison Bergeron – Kurt Vonnegut

Luigi Mangione’s last quote he liked on Goodreads, bro had enough pic.twitter.com/KilMIoMXwd

— ⏾ (@frxzenwave) December 9, 2024

When he was 42, Cormac McCarthy fell in love with a 16-year-old girl he met by a motel pool. Augusta Britt would go on to become one of the most significant—and secret—inspirations in literary history, giving life to many of McCarthy's most iconic characters across his celebrated novels and Hollywood films. For 47 years, Britt closely guarded her identity and her story. Until now.

>Bullet Journal Method

>Objective-C Programming

>The Lorax

>Steve-O's memoir

>Hawaii travel guides

>The Back Mechanic

>Harry Potter

>Gary Paulsen (baby's first Edward Abbey)

>The Ender's Game sequels about psychic alien seance shit

>Spelunky Bosses

>Lots of self-help slop

>Industrial Society and Its Future

To be clear, I welcome the end of male dominance in literature. Men ruled the roost for far too long, too often at the expense of great women writers who ought to have been read instead. I also don't think that men deserve to be better represented in literary fiction; they don't suffer from the same kind of prejudice that women have long endured. Furthermore, young men should be reading Sally Rooney and Elena Ferrante. Male readers don't need to be paired with male writers.

litchuds discuss

https://boards.4chan.org/lit/thread/24016716

To discuss your weekly readings of books, textbooks and papers.

I'm reading The Metamorphosis

!bookworms

@Merryvann pls

!bookworms let's read this one for the book club, literal bugman is very relevant to our times

would you !poll_voters