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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that's my favorite cormac mccarthy, suttree is another good one
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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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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 upvoted 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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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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