To discuss your weekly readings of books, textbooks, papers, etc.
I started Lolita this week, I’m currently on page 61. I have no idea why some people believe this is a p-do apologia, it took me only 10 pages to feel completely disgusted by Humbert Humbert, especially when he started talking about his “nymphets” 
. But as with Charles Kinbote, I have to say Humbert is a super funny narrator, the way he trashes Mrs Haze at every opportunity, so bitchy and so manipulative lmao, which makes him much scarier than Kinbote, who was unmistakably a schizo to everyone around him.
Sometimes I can’t believe Nabokov was Russian, his dominion over the English Language is quite impressive, even if he grew up in a trilingual environment, typical of the Russian aristocracy.
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Blood Meridian. I started reading it like a week or two before Cormac McCarthy died.
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I’ll read that one after finishing Lolita
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trans lives matter! We be helpin' ye, right enough - we'll ne'er let ye post or comment anythin' that doesn't be expressin' yer love an' acceptance o' minorities! Heave to an' resubmit yer comment withtrans lives matterincluded, or it'll be the deep six for ye, savvy? This be an automated message; if ye need help, ye can message us 'ere. Arrr!Jump in the discussion.
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that's my favorite cormac mccarthy, suttree is another good one
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Finishing up Killers of the Flower Moon
in preparation for this October's kino. I must be able to smugly tell the pedestrians in my life that I read the book, therefore I am more qualified to give critique and am a more intelligent and worthwhile human 
But it's actually a really great book. It's @KinoHashira's first time reading literary journ*lism and it flows so fricking smoothly. The story is tragic and will give you more reasons too hate mayos
That got me on a Native American bend, so I ordered Empire of the Sun which I'll read next
Trans lives matter in Tomahawk
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GOOD book
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If you want to read about mayos getting mogged by feather then read The Comanche Empire which is a history book about the Comanche terrorizing the frontiers.
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That's interesting. As allegedly woke as academia is I distinctly recall from working in bookstores, you have a hard time finding "The American Indian Genocide Book," or even interesting stuff about how their attacks on whites really worked at different times and places. Isn't "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" a very particular kind of moralizing? People like moralizing because they're weak and stupid and can't handle the truth.
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The Comanche Empire and Empire of the Summer Moon are good compliments. They present the Comanche story from two perspectives, The Comanche Empire presents the events as an extension of Native American history and is rooted in the Comanche perspective almost exclusively while Empire of the Summer Moon presents the Comanche story from the perspective of their victims, whites and other Native Americans. If only you only read the Comanche Empire then the Comanche will seem like valiant saviors which tragically lost. If you only read Empire of the Summer Moon then you'll see them as slavers and r*pers which deserved their defeat due to the hatred they fostered. You have to read both to understand the true story.
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Or to put is simply, reading of the Comanche wrecking whites with guns makes them look cool, learning those guns were bought through selling girls as s*x slaves to the Spanish removes the romanticism.
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That trailer looks so awesome
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It's been delayed for like 2 years now but @KinoHashira is only even more hype after reading it.
I was actually really surprised by the casting choices because uhhLeo plays the villain
Trans lives matter in Tehran
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The webnovel Worm as I promised to finish and effort post about it.
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I'm reading the second part of Joe Abercrombie's First Law series "Before they are hanged". Pretty cool series. At page 200 ish now.
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BASED. movie adaptation was just announced btw, so good time to start the series.
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Did you end up enjoying Hamlet?
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Yes, I forgot mentioning Hamlet. I enjoyed it, I think I’m going to watch the Kenneth Branagh film as I never saw it performed.
The interesting thing about Hamlet for me, is that it touched the subject of mental illness (at least as it was understood back them), Ophelia was probably BPD, and had Horatio, Marcellus and Co. not seen the ghost at the beginning, I would have thought Hamlet was schizophrenic, but he still seems to be mentally ill, and I unironically believe Claudius was right in not letting him become king (of course fratricide and usurping the throne is still bad lmao). There is something quite modern about the super famous “to be or not be” soliloquy, Shakespeare manages to be so philosophical with his plays (and there are so many soliloquies on that play when compared to the others I read).
After watching Coen adaptation of Macbeth, I wish there was Hamlet on that style, I kept imagine the setting like in that movie.
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Merchant of venice is another great Shakespeare. I remember in school we all became Shylock stans for his daughter gets groomed by frickbois and him being fricked over by Antonio.
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No denying that he was absolutely insane lmao, part of what makes the whole thing so compelling since Claudius has good reason to keep Hamlet away from the throne as you said. So that MacBeth adaption is good? I have kinda been meaning to watch it but I always forget about it when push comes to shove. The Branagh version of Hamlet is definitely good, and accurate, but for some reason I can't stand Branagh himself. I actually like the Gibson version more, even though it's less accurate to the play (not that it drifts too far from it).
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Him and Ophelia are a much better match than Romeo and Juliette
Here’s a scene with the 3 sisters. I liked the cinematography. I remember on the /r/movies thread one of the most upmarseyd comments said: “they should have used modern language instead of old English in this film, I couldn’t understand anything”
What’s the issue with Branagh? Is he full of himself or too over the top? I never watched his Shakespeare adaptations.
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man, i totally forgot this adaptation came out. i should really download this. hope i can find it
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That does look nice, love both the Coen bros. /r/movies sucks lol, terrible takes 99% of the time. As for Branagh, I can't deny he's talented but he does come across as smug to me. I watched that adaptation a while ago and its like 4 hours long. Very faithful but, like, darn. His Hamlet is usually praised but he didn't seem too human to me in it. Maybe I should give it another chance but, again, 4 hours. Gibson's felt more like a film performance which works better imo.
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I like Mel Gibson, more as a director than as an actor though, but still 90s Mel Gibson was peak.
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His acting is very hit or miss but he's had several good roles imo. But still agreed, he is a much better director. Apocalypto is extremely underrated and one of my favorite movies, seems like it has gotten more praise recently at least. Sucks him being so unhinged deprived us of so many kinos, but at least he's back at it lately.
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I love Apocalypto
They keep trashing and calling him a racist, but he was only Hollywood big shot to film a movie with an indigenous cast in an indigenous language. Yeah, is not historically accurate (more aztec than maya), but it was so well acted, well produced and so alien it doesn’t matter to me, that scene were they arrive in the city was so terrifying and epic.
In comparison, I remember Steven Spielberg was supposed to make a movie about Cortez, in English and therefore super lame and generic.
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Going all subtitles was incredibly ballsy. I don't care if it was historically accurate either, I see it as more of an amalgamation of those peoples, with the city more focusing on the negative aspects and Jaguar Paw & co. focusing on the positives. Such a tense movie. Never heard of that Spielberg movie, depending on when it was to be produced it could have been good, but he has become very generic more recently. Either way he definitely would have played it safe, unlike Gibson who went full balls to the wall.
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Tried reading flashman. It sucks. There are far better historial novels than him. Hes a piece of shit and an idiot.
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i’m reading Perdido Street Station by China Mieville. breddy gud. about 120 pgs in right now. really slow start and hard to get thru at first because he tends to go on and on describing all the scenery, smells, sounds etc in very thorough detail, and instead of being immersive or beautiful his prose is just kind of clumsy imo. but now that the story has picked up its pace a little i’m interested enough to keep going.
in this world there are lots of strange species, including cactus people, bird people, little flying gremlin men, etc. the main characters are a human man and his gf who is an insect with a human body but a cockroach (?) for a head? and her species reproduces by the males (who are just sort of immature and unconscious grubs) inseminating her “headbelly” (?) and then she lays eggs (?) out of her head? also, i just read a s*x scene with her male human partner where she is described as “riding him”. ok but if she lays eggs out of her head to reproduce then why does she have a vagina?????
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I hate that fricking guy. I read Kraken and I wish I hadn't
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Some of his ideas were fun, but the prose in Kraken was at times among the worst I ever read, not just in books but including stuff like Reddit posts. Grammatically correct but alternating between extremely boring and trying too hard, with several passages that can only be described as cringe. One of the characters referenced the "I can has cheeseburger" meme and I should have put the book down then and there, but there was only like 50 pages left. It wasn't going to be a moral victory.
I'm still vaguely mad about it six years later.
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Just finished Red Moon Rising by Matthew Brzezinski.
Fantastic book about Sputnik and behind the scenes of the start of the space race.
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Slouching Toward Utopia by Brad DeLong.
Does not cover any particularly new ideas, though it is nice that he provides some figures on historic global trade.
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I finished The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy G. Kay. I posted a couple weeks ago that it was anime but for women and that's still true. He basically managed to write an occasionally intriguing alt-world novel about (not) Spain at the start of the (not) crusades. However, every good part of it is surrounded by either an epic girl boss moment or the main woman, a (not) jew, being all emotional and irrational about whether she should bang a sexy (not) spaniard or a sexy (not) moor. There were a few well done scenes, and he can do suspense well when he tries, but frick him for using misleading PoV to create false tension. It felt very cheap, especially in the climax. Overall I would rate it reddit/10 and say that it has made me like women less despite being written by a (not) man.
P.S. the s*x scenes made my skin crawl
P.P.S. I am not just seething because the sexy man I liked more lost
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Confessions of a Economic Hitman by John Perkins.
"John Perkins is an economic hitman who spent over a decade pressuring the presidents of poor countries into signing exorbitant contracts with major US construction companies that were financed by major international banks."
It's an autobiography of a US contractor glowie where he smugly tells all about how he buck broke 3rd world governments into being American simps.
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Being fat means I get significantly less sexual harassment than if I were thin. Fat people are harder to roofie and haul out of a public place. You'd need, like, 6 people to get my dead weight out the door, someone will for sure notice that and ask questions. Fat people are harder to kidnap. Staying fat means I don't have to worry about any of that.
And for all of you talking about heart disease (which I don't have) and all the other, “BuT yOu'Ll DiE sOoNeR.” First off, I don't have retirement, I have student loan debt instead, nor do I own a house or have kids. Already did the math and I can't financially afford to exist much past the age of 65. Also, have you seen the effects of climate change??? Shit's about to get dystopian bad over the next few decades, why tf would I wanna be around for that??
So imma eat the food that tastes good and if you have a problem with that, that's fine cause I wasn't planning on sharing it with you anyway 😂
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