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

!bookworms

!bookworms

!nonchuds

Resident edgelord communists - @Transgender_spez @sandkwinn Stalin appreciation post

Source- Surprise, Kill, Vanish: The Secret History of CIA Paramilitary Armies, Operators, and Assassins

By Annie Jacobsen

whats their deal

i saw this thread yesterday and lol'd irl

Would all the famous philosophers and writers grow up to be the same as if they were born today (meaning born some 20-30 years ago)?

They would lurk on 4chan

This. As r-slurred as most channers are, this website still appeals to philosophical types because it lets you share your thoughts without much censorship or lame incentive structures.

after i posted an ebin react gif of norm mcdonald laughing, i got this response

Okay, now try to make an actual argument (and make sure it's not a strawman)

When Joyce Carol Oates was thirty-four, she started a journal. “Query,” she wrote on the first page. “Does the individual exist?” She felt that she knew little about herself—for instance, whether she was honest or a hypocrite. “I don't know the answer to the simplest of questions,” she wrote. “What is my personal nature?”

The journal, which she began in 1973, eventually swelled to more than four thousand typed, single-spaced pages. Throughout, she alludes to a secret. “It's there, it's always there,” she wrote in 1978. “I wish I could give a name to it, even in code.” She thought about the secret so often, she wrote, that the journal could be named “The Person Who Has Written This Journal Lives a Secret.” She couldn't “help but wonder (and here fiction won't help me, art won't help me) whether it is a secret embedded deep within everyone's life, but particularly within the life of the creative artist.” At times the secret felt as “awkward as a hammer stuck in my pocket, getting in my way . . . at other times small and contained and indeed unobtrusive as a tiny pebble.”

Oates, who has written sixty-three novels, forty-seven collections of short stories, and numerous plays, librettos, children's novels, and books of poetry, told me that she remembered little about the journal, which is stored in nine boxes in the archives of Syracuse University. “It's sort of like words written on water,” she said. Although thinking about the “tsunami of unrevised, written-swiftly-off-the-cuff material” filled her with dread, she allowed me to read the whole thing, which covers twenty-six years. She stopped keeping the journal when she began regularly using e-mail; she expected that she would print out her e-mails and they would serve as her new diary, but she never got into the habit. She also gave me permission to read thousands of pages of her letters, stored along with the journal. “I can't bear to even think of glancing back,” she wrote me, adding that it would be like glimpsing through “the slats of a venetian blind the life or lives I was living at the time, a much happier time, irrevocably lost now.”

The first time I met Oates, at a restaurant near Princeton University, where she has taught since 1978, she had just returned from a trip to Scandinavia. She is eighty-five and very slim and agile, with perfect posture. She shows almost no signs of physical frailty. On her trip, after spending the days touring and giving interviews, she worked on her next novel in her hotel room every night, from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. When I asked if she was jet-lagged, she said, “Oh, no—I'm totally over that.”

She seemed uniquely incurious when I read her lines from her journal. “Well, I don't know what to say about the journal because it represents work that I didn't revise,” she told me.

I had decided to write about Oates after learning that she had documented so much of her life. I thought that the journal might explain why she had never tired of her own mind. Perhaps no other writer in the past century has been so focussed on the products of her own imagination. Many authors grapple with a central preoccupation in the course of a career, until the mystery eventually loses its pull, but Oates, who has long been concerned with the question of personality and says she doubts whether she actually has one, has never exhausted her curiosity. There are only so many ways to dramatize the problem of being a self, one might think, but Oates keeps coming back to it, as if there is something she still needs to figure out.

@JoyceCarolOates you're so famous!

To discuss the first 6 chapters of Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. I'm on chapter 5 right now so I'll try that one and chapter 6 this afternoon and post my thoughts then.

!bookworms What do you think of the book so far?

A distant prequel to my post on why the goblins aren't racist. A lot of the criticisms made about Harry Potter post-transphobia are terrible because it's people:

• not reading the text at all (or reading it solely to hate)

• making extremely shallow if not provably false criticisms to frame JK as more of a bigot than she already is

• patting each other on the back.

And it's really fricking annoying, so here we are.

The argument is this:

• House-Elves were enslaved

• They apparently like being enslaved

• Hermoine, the character campaigning to free them, is demonized for trying to free them.

Ergo the series supports slavery and JK Rowling is a racist. Hi-five!

And everything past the first point falls apart once you read the books at fricking all:

House-Elves liking being enslaved isn't a fricking fact. It's a justification put forth by Fred and George Weasley...who already think treating house elves like shit is okay. Fred and George are not, in any sense, presented as being particularly smart, nor are they meant to be experts: this is very clearly a half-assed explanation from a bunch of teenagers. But people talk about this like it was JK Rowling handwaving their exploitation with a fact. Which is a blatant lie.

Dobby, the most notable House-elf and our introduction to them, loves being free. Kreacher, the next most notable house-elf, hates being enslaved. Every other House-Elf merely claims to be loyal to their masters, but why wouldn't they be: the extreme punishments they face would obviously brew stockholm syndrome, like what happens with real slaves! House-Elves do not like being enslaved.

The next point is even dumber and has to be deconstructed on three fronts:

The characters that mock S.P.E.W. are, to my count, (a) fourteen-year-olds who don't know any better and are pretty dumb on average, (b) sixteen-year-olds who definitely don't know any better (Fred and George, their ages are placeholders) and (c) slaves suffering from stockholm syndrome. The characters that support S.P.E.W. are Hermoine--a student consistently portrayed as being extremely bright and wise in comparison to every student, much less ron, fred and george—and Dumbledore—a character who was basically infallible before the later books. People who screech about how "the characters make fun of Hermoine for it!!" ignore who the people making fun of her actually fricking are. Hermoine is clearly supposed to be in the right, and if you had any doubts, fricking infinite wisdom Dumbledore supports it.

Just because a large amount of the cast holds a belief doesn't mean the text is telling you that its' okay?? In the 2nd harry potter book, most of the characters believe Harry's connected to the snake! In the fourth Harry Potter book, nearly all of the characters, including Ron, think Harry cheated to get into the Tournament! Yet, somehow, we agree that those characters weren't correct. Why? Because you can't just say "most of the characters have this opinion gg". You have to apply context. And actually read the books.

If the underage and uneducated chorus yelling at Hermoine and Dumbledore is supposed to be right, why does Ron change his mind at the end of the books? Why is Ron lightening up to House-Elves a triumphant moment if not because Hermoine was fricking correct? Why does Harry act nicer to Kreacher after his exposure to S.P.E.W.?

We know for a fact that JK Rowling isn't racist, nor did she remotely intend for House-Elves to be racist (but don't get me wrong, the books aren't pro-slavery either). For one, the house-elves are based of fairies that would come in to assist heroes: they're no analogous to African people. More substantially, if JK Rowling's pro-slavery, it's a bit odd that she claims that Hermoine goes on to greatly improve life for House-Elves. While enthusiastically talking about the characters' futures. Even if I somehow granted you that the books were racist (they are not, see the rest of this post), JK Rowling indisputably isn't.

so yeah, the whole "house-elves are racist!" stuff is unironically lies bruh. You can't use "they only watched the movies" as an excuse, because not a single point that people bring up ever occurs in the movies—but they still go out of their way to show that Dobby loves being free, haha. please read harry potter with your eyes open bros

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

I started Never Let Me Go this week as part of the bookclub, couldn't finish the Vikings book yet.

!bookworms, don't forget about the bookclub discussion Sunday!

I know asoiaf is not high lit but still, I've always been optimistic about it being almost done

House of Leaves tells the story of a man who discovers an infinite spooky space within his home, which is depicted in a found footage movie that doesn't exist, which is described in a faux-academic book with incredibly bizarre formatting, which was edited, and compiled by a mentally ill s*x-haver who tells dubiously-connected stories in multi-page footnotes as his mental condition deteriorates.

I think this book was a bit too pleased with itself, and I didn't really find it scary. I did fall off reading a couple times, so I might have got a better experience reading it in one go. But every time I turned the page and saw a giant wall of text from one of Johnny's rambling schizo stories it felt like a natural place to take a break. Maybe I got filtered, but I took much more interest in the Navidson film and the imaginatively typeset criticism around it than in the bloated "aaaarrrrgggghhh I'm going insaaaaaaaaaaaaaane" bits (although the letters from Johnny's mother were interesting).

Despite my underwhelmed reaction, this is the only novel I've ever seen to treat its book as a physical object and work of art, instead of a neutral way to store a novel (which could also be done in a PDF, epub, audio file, oral tradition, etc). So much of this novel's character is in typesetting, rotating pages, the tactile experience of flipping back and forth, largely blank or wildly busy pages, etc etc. This would make reading it on an electronic device a decidedly deficient experience, and making it a linear audiobook actively impossible. We often think about what books are good at vs. what films are good at, etc. but this is the rare non-graphic novel to ask what the book as a physical object is good at. Not only do I like reading, I like books, and this is a fun (if exaggerated) exploration of what they can do.

So I really struggle with reading physical copies of books even straight forward books I know I will really struggle with the format of house of leaves, so I'm wondering if there's any audiobooks out there, I know there's not one on audible so what others options are there?

Hi all, I've been searching the internets high and low for an audio recording of House of Leaves- I've wanted to read it forever but as a law student it's hard to find time for reading for enjoyment, but have plenty of time to listen to books on my commute to and from school.

Hello, I discovered house of leaves a year or so ago so I went ahead a got the book. I read a couple of pages of it and couldn't really retain any information. I don't know if it's because I have adhd or something else, but it's like that with most everything I read. I went and told my mom to return the book after I read the same page over and over again without understanding what it meant. Recently, I saw night mind's video pop up in my feed again and decided to try to read the book again. This time, I read along with an audio book that I found on yt. The thing is, it stopped after the introduction. I went ahead and read the first 5 pages of the navidson record but didn't really understand what it was saying. Does anyone know if there's any audiobook of this online? I'd be willing to pay for it. Thank you.

!bookworms have you read this? What did you think?

WHO IS THIS? He is wonderful.

He never even heard of the character. It's so fricking over.

pdf

https://jesusstoriesblacknall.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/lets-go-to-golgotha.pdf

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

!bookworms

EDIT 11/2023: The issue by issue retrospective has been dropped so just take this draft of it on the first 3 issues.

Fun fact Dramanauts I have never read a Daredevil comic, so I have a rare opportunity to see the development of the character from issue 1 until the present day. The amount of issues I cover in each post will depend on how much I have to actually say about said issues.

Daredevil vol 1 1

Release date: April, 1964

Writer: Stan Lee | Artist: Bill Everett | Inkers: Bill Everett, Steve Ditko, Sol Brodsky

At 1964 Daredevil is a late addition to the classic Marvel lineup and his first cover shows a high level of confidence from Marvel. They don't tote a special power or gimmick from the start but instead remind you of their past successes as if to say "come on kid we made Spider-Man trust us this will be good". Our man's name is Daredevil which seems to be a bit of a pun. Of course the small horns on his costume mimic a devil but he also looks like a circus acrobat who is someone who is a Daredevil. The cover teases us that there is some secret to him but in the actual story this will be revealed quickly. Even the first page of the comic continues this meta trend. While comics typically have the opening splash big in media res shot this one opens with a simple pin up of Daredevil and a reminder of how valuable some classic marvel comics have gotten and how much value with one will gain.

I have seen comic fans refer to Daredevil #1 as Stan Lee's finest and most complete origin and while the latter may be true I do find its really missing a solid hook. The art is done by Bill Everett who was a golden age artist who worked at the proto marvel comics companies, Timely and Atlas, where he famously created Namor the Sub-Mariner in Marvel Comics #1.

The issue was behind schedule so Steve Ditko and Sol Brodsky had to fill in backgrounds, details, and background characters in the inking process. While Bill Everett and Stan Lee are credited with creation of Daredevil Jack Kirby is known to have helped provide input such as creating his billy club. Some sources such as Kirby's assistant Mark Evanier claim Kirby also provided input on the costume and drew the first cover before any other art was complete, while Joe Quesada, Marvels Editor in Chief during the 00s, claimed the cover to Daredevil 1 was created in a rush by Ditko and Brodsky by cutting and pasting various Kirby Mock ups.

The actual issue itself feels out of place in the new, Marvel age of comics. The art has a very retro golden age feel with some smaller panels and stiffer action then usual with the backgrounds and goons having a caricature like feel common in the golden age. The actual costume itself is also pretty unimpressive. Characters like Spider-man, Thor, and Iron Man showed very complex but appealing designs which stood out on the market vs classic capes and tights. Daredevil just looks like a random golden age circus strong man/acrobat with the Yellow being very Garish and the single D logo being very unmemorable.

The story itself starts in-media-res with Daredevil being a cheeky little quiper and attacking some thugs who work for "The Fixer" the story then hardcuts to Matt Murdock's childhood where he learn his dad was a washed up boxer who pushed his Son to become a lawyer. Since he spent all his time studying Matt was mockingly called "Daredevil" by the other kids. A blind and deaf man is walking down the street and doesn't notice a "radioactive chemical truck" barreling down the street. So a young Matt shoves the man out of the way, is hit by the truck, and then chemicals spill on him somehow. This leaves Matt blind but with super powered senses and a "radar sense" which lets him see anyway. Oh yeah and his dad is only referred to as battling Murdock. Well the elder Murdock ends up going to "The Fixer" who agrees to hire him on and is shocked to find that he is winning matches rather then being only hired as an old heel. Well finally the fixer tells Murdock to take a fall but since Matt is in the audience he ends up beating the younger man legitimately. This leads to The Fixer killing him and later Matt opens Nelson and Murdock law and creates the Daredevil persona to catch and arrest the fixer.

As an origin it may be Stan Lee's most detailed at least in terms of how developed Murdock's relationship is with his son and how his death is resolved in one issue, but it also has many strange potholes. The costume and name were very clearly chosen before the actual plot was written (its assumed Stan Lee wanted to trademark the name daredevil quickly as it was the name of a popular golden age superhero who had fallen into public domain recently). First Matt designs his costume with the horns and only after he has made the costume does he choose the name Daredevil after the name his bullies called him (yeah at this point it has nothing to do with religion and Matt's religious beliefs are not mentioned once). Then you have the issue of the Fixer who is just a bland mob boss villain. Like you never hear his real name and everyone just knows him as the fixer which begs the question of why no one put two and two together before Matt shows up. The only really interesting fact is that Daredevil lies and bluffs right to the criminal's faces so they confess to the police which could provide some moral quandaries but none every come up.

The central appeals of the Marvel age of comics where that every character had two appeals that set them apart from other characters at the time: 1. a unique gimmick and 2. slightly more realistic melodrama. The fantastic four had the gimmick of body horror and Spider-man had the gimmick of being a little whiny dibshit and Daredevils gimmick is being blind which is the big secret teased on the cover. Except Daredevil's disability is a non issue as his super powers completely negate it (there is a single moment where he mentions loud sounds messing with radar sense but DD's radar sense will switch from echolocation to a 6th sense randomly depending on the issue). Really him acting blind as Matt is no different then Clark Kent acting like a mild mannered doofus. The lawyer angle is slightly more interesting but of no consequence in this story I think the idea of a superhero having to beat his villains physically and legally is interesting. The melodrama here is also just starting so we only get the fact that Karen Page loves Matt Murdock but can't date blind people for reasons.

So that is Daredevil #1 and taken on its own its not a strong showing imo. Alot of marvel fans hold this origin in high esteem but I find it lacks a hook the same way Fantastic Four #1 and Amazing Fantasy #15 had, but this book was popular enough to spawn an ongoing has been continuously published since issue 1.

Daredevil vol 1 2

Release date: June, 1964

Writer: Stan Lee | Artist: Joe Orlando | Inkers: Vince Colletta

With issue 2 we have a new art team in the form of EC comics veteran Joe Orlando and infamous inker Vince Colletta[1]. When Vince Colletta rejoined Marvel having worked in the 50s at Atlas we quickly put to inking tons of Marvel books on account of his speed and ability to make deadlines. This speed came at the cost of quality and Colletta was despised by many artists for ruining their pencils. He was infamous for greatly simplifying detailed patterns and sections and also outright not inking background characters and details. At this early point his inking doesn't see too bad but without closely comparing the inks and original pencils its hard to say. Either way any damage done by Colletta in these early issues doesn't detract from the overall quality of the book.

Issue 2 of Daredevil features a little more pizzaz in the art department then issue 1 and also features DD's first supervillain fight (against a Spider-man Sloppy second) and his first crossover with other heroes (Matt is asked to check a lease for the Fantastic Four's Baxter Building).

There is a pretty fun segment where DD attacks an illegal auto striping shop which def has a bit of mad magazine with all the detail in the spread and lots pretty vistas in general.

Electro makes some fun faces too

The story does feel like Stan Lee and Co are trying to figure out exactly what Daredevil can do. So Matt Murdock goes to the Baxter Building to check it out for the lease case (everyone thinks he's blind so idk why Foggy and Karen let him go alone). While he's there Electro attacks because the Fantastic Four are out. Electro and daredevil fight but Daredevil senses a weight with his radar sense but doesn't realize its The things Giant weight and gets beat up while he tries to lift it (an odd limit of the Radar sense which hasnt been referenced much otherwise). Then Electro puts DD in a fricking rocket and DD uses his radar sense to fly the rocket back to earth and hears that central park has no one in it so he crashes the rocket there.

Daredevil then chases and catches Electro and returns back to being Matt Murdock only for the fantastic four to fire him because he seemingly had done 0 work on the lease as he was too busy being DD.

Then for a sub plot we have Karen Page wants Matt to get experimental eye surgery to regain his sight which he constantly refuses as it would strip him of his powers maybe. This will be a major bit of melodrama in these early issues as Karen thinks Matt will only marry her is he regains his site.

This issue is definitely a step up art wise from the last with lots of sprawling vistas, creative action, and expressive faces. Story wise it is nice to see a super villain even if he is sloppy seconds from spidey, but the story definitely jumps the shark with the rocket bit its just really absurd that Daredevil knows exactly how to pilot and experimental space shuttle. This is also the first instance of the motif of Daredevil's wins being Matt Murdock's losses where no matter what he does he will lose in some way.

Daredevil vol 1 3

Release date: August, 1964

Writer: Stan Lee | Artist: Joe Orlando | Inkers: Vince Colletta

This issue introduces Daredevil's first original super villain The Owl. He is a corrupt stock broker and the issue starts with his corruption being exposed to which he laughs at his accountants face and tells him he's the fall guy. He kills himself and the Owl resigns to simply being a regular old mobster now. In this and later comics he will continue to just be a super mobster but his origins imply a level of a realism that would remain unmatched in Daredevil's world until the reintroduction of Kingpin as his archrival, giving DD an enemy which represented the real world forces of injustice, organized crime, and later Reagan era capitalism.

The Owl is ultimately simple as a villain. He randomly chooses lawyers from a phone book and happens to land on Nelson and Murdock. This is before the firm would become known as a defense firm for supervillains. Beyond the initial, haunting reveal the Owl quickly settles into the supervillain mold- apparently having planned his turn for years as he already has a giant owl themes lair and a special cape which lets him glide (this would later be retconned to a serum he took which made his bones lighter or some shit). He hires two random goons and kidnaps Karen Page and DD saves the day.

Some other details of note include that Daredevil adds a pouch to his suit so he can carry his civvie clothes. This is stupid and dropped next issue. There is also some gadget fetishism with his Billy club. In future issues it would gain more and more high tech gadgets until fans told Stan to knock it off. It has since mostly just remains as a blind mans stick which separates into a grappling hook and a weighted throw stick. This grapple hook function would also progressively be lost throughout the 80s and 90s. For now DD just adds in a hinge which conceals a lock pick but it is a sign of things to come.

The melodrama would further continue in the form of Karen pressuring Matt to get vision restoration surgery. This would end in issue 9 but makes up the initial melodrama between Karen and Matt. Interestingly enough Karen actually suspects Matt to be Daredevil when in issue 57 Matt would reveal his double identity to Karen, a mistake which would bite him in the butt in the famous Born Again storyline.

Despite the Owl being the first original DD villain he's never really gotten his due so far (I've read the first 300 issues of Daredevil). I think his introduction is genuinely haunting and threatening for a silver age villain and his status as a stock broker adds just a smidge of real world social commentary. Its odd to me that in the comics I've read this stock broker origin is mostly ignored as I think it would make the Owl a good ally/rival of Kingpin. It just seems odd to me that as Kingpin was allowed to become more and more of a real tactical genius the Owl was mostly relegated to filler stories which forgot his original role as a criminal mastermind. I've made it quite clear in this write up that I find the yellow costume era of Daredevil quite bland and I would extend that description to the first 158 issues. There is a reason Daredevil starts with Miller, but having read 300 issues of the guy I've grown fonder of the guilty lil tortured Catholic scrunklo and certainly these silver age issues feel in the context of what happens later. Its almost impossible to comprehend how a story like Born Again or A Touch of Typhoid can exist in one where a corrupt stock broker with an owl like face just has a spare owl themed supervillain lair lying around, but hey that's just the magic of comics.

[1]

!bookworms !cuteandvalid I put up some minor finishing touches on a 3 month old draft about the origin of Daredevil.

It was pretty good actually! What bad (or good ) fanfiction have you ever read? Share your embarrassing stories to Internet strangers on a niche gay cat site!

!bookworms

!anime

i've been getting into audiobooks again and i dont want to shill out money to audible so i've decided to try librivox

each file i downloaded was seperated by chapters, and before EVERY chapter there is a 20 second intro about how librivox is free, where the narrator is from, what book im listening to, and who wrote it

if that wasn't bad enough, theres a low hum in the background of EVERY SINGLE RECORDING

The humming problem is only present in this book, but they have that stupid butt intro in every single recording for every book i've tried to listen to

Whence there was Antony and Cleopatra, now there is Idubbbz and Anisa

From a Jstor article

I don't know if it's just modern day internet brainrot, but I always get a good chuckle from seeing stuff like this cuz my mind goes immediately to Andrew Tate and Sneako-like characters. To imagine them back then with all the romanticized dignity associated with the great writers of this period, or centuries from now a person exploring the archives of the internet and treating their rhetoric with the same clinical-academic observance, diagnosing trends of this time then long past. Makes you wonder if this John Taylor was memed on as much in his day as Tate is in ours

Also, this isn't any kind of effortpost don't know if I'm blueballing anyone by that

Day 1 of my seven-night Disney Cruise, and my trusty Kindle Keyboard died :( I had to pay for a day of wifi just so i could download the app and use my phone instead.

Sad, I've had it for a decade now. I fully charged it two days ago but now it's stuck on the screensaver.. Tried every reset procedure i could find. I didn't bring the microusb cable to try jumpstarting it either.

I've also decided I'm going to skip the rest of Dark Tower book 4(Wizards and Glass). It's a very tedious read and I'm not on vacation to punish myself. King is a frustrating author anyway with his made up terms and fantasy language.