I'll start off by saying that the writing for this book is sometimes less-than-literary. But the fact that the author clearly didn't spend a lot of time in writing seminars is a good thing in all other respects

It's a memoir of an orphaned half-latinx/half-Korean kid with a junkie mom who ends up in the foster system at a real young age. His recollections of his childhood made me give my kids an extra hug, and he was one of the lucky ones since he didn't get r*ped (which is super common for foster kids).

He talks about growing up in the system, then finally getting adopted by a good family which eventually falls apart (twice). He joins the Chair Force (affectionate) and kicks butt but is still just a fricked up kid inside, and nearly drinks himself to death. He then goes to Yale on the GI bill and eventually Cambridge for his PHD on scholarship.

All his memoirs lead up to the final two chapters which deliver the crux of the book:

• First that elite virtue signalling is (luxury beliefs) the new Venblen Good and that the trickle-down effects of this really hurt normal people

• Second that a stable, loving, family is the most important thing you can provide a kid. More than money.

The most important thing for the chuds on this site is that it puts elite virtue signalling in terms that elites themselves cannot brush aside. He calls out that the things rich college kids support socially are not the way they actually live their lives. It's a great read, and definitely a very centrist take IMO. He reads the audiobook himself too, which is always a plus. !grillers !bookworms

https://annas-archive.org/md5/976ee4ddd60489055460700ab947d5d9 - pdf link

Today we'll be reading a statement from beloved children's author Neil Gaiman, who seems to have done some raping. If you'd like, you can read a long article about the r*pes.

Over the past many months, I have watched the stories circulating the internet about me with horror and dismay. I've stayed quiet until now, both out of respect for the people who were sharing their stories and out of a desire not to draw even more attention to a lot of misinformation. I've always tried to be a private person, and felt increasingly that social media was the wrong place to talk about important personal matters. I've now reached the point where I feel that I should say something.

So far, so respectful. He's stayed silent up until now to let women speak. Surely he will respect their experiences

As I read through this latest collection of accounts, there are moments I half-recognise and moments I don't, descriptions of things that happened sitting beside things that emphatically did not happen. I'm far from a perfect person, but I have never engaged in non-consensual sexual activity with anyone. Ever.

I went back to read the messages I exchanged with the women around and following the occasions that have subsequently been reported as being abusive. These messages read now as they did when I received them – of two people enjoying entirely consensual sexual relationships and wanting to see one another again. At the time I was in those relationships, they seemed positive and happy on both sides.

Let's compare this to the article: This past July, a British podcast produced by Tortoise Media broke the news that two women had accused Gaiman of sexual assault. Since then, more women have shared allegations of assault, coercion, and abuse. The podcast, Master, reported by Paul Caruana Galizia and Rachel Johnson, tells the stories of five of them.

At least five women have lied to the public! Why did they lie?

And I also realise, looking through them, years later, that I could have and should have done so much better. I was emotionally unavailable while being sexually available, self-focused and not as thoughtful as I could or should have been. I was obviously careless with people's hearts and feelings, and that's something that I really, deeply regret. It was selfish of me. I was caught up in my own story and I ignored other people's.

Because they wanted him to spend more quality time with them and were too immature to handle s*x of course!

I've spent some months now taking a long, hard look at who I have been and how I have made people feel.

Like most of us, I'm learning, and I'm trying to do the work needed, and I know that that's not an overnight process. I hope that with the help of good people, I'll continue to grow. I understand that not everyone will believe me or even care what I say but I'll be doing the work anyway, for myself, my family and the people I love. I will be doing my very best to deserve their trust, as well as the trust of my readers.

He'll do the work now, and everything will be ok

At the same time, as I reflect on my past – and as I re-review everything that actually happened as opposed to what is being alleged – I don't accept there was any abuse. To repeat, I have never engaged in non-consensual sexual activity with anyone.

Factcheck: This claim has not been approved by experts.

Some of the horrible stories now being told simply never happened, while others have been so distorted from what actually took place that they bear no relationship to reality. I am prepared to take responsibility for any missteps I made. I'm not willing to turn my back on the truth, and I can't accept being described as someone I am not, and cannot and will not admit to doing things I didn't do.

Here's one of the stories he's denying:

On February 19, 2022, Gaiman and his son spent the night at a hotel in Auckland, which they sometimes did for fun. Gaiman asked Pavlovich if she could come by and watch the child for an hour so he could get a massage. It was a small room — one double bed, a television, and a bathroom. When he returned, Gaiman and the boy ate dinner, takeout from a nearby delicatessen. Afterward, Gaiman wanted to watch a movie, but the child wanted to play with the iPad. The boy sat against the wall by the picture window overlooking the city, facing the bed. Pavlovich perched on the edge of the mattress; Gaiman got onto the bed and pulled her so she was on her back. He lifted the covers up over them. She tried to signal to him with her eyes that he should stop. She mouthed, "What the frick are you doing?" She didn't want the child to overhear what she was saying. Gaiman ignored her. He rolled her onto her side, took off his pants, pulled off her skirt, and began to have s*x with her from behind while continuing to speak with his son. "'You should really get off the iPad,'" she recalls him saying. Pavlovich, in a state of shock, buried her head in the pillow. After about five minutes, Gaiman got up and walked to the bathroom, half-naked. He urinated on his hand and then returned to Pavlovich, frozen on the bed, and told her to "lick it off." He went back to the bathroom, naked from the waist down. "Before you leave," he told Pavlovich, "you have to finish your job." She went to the bathroom, and he pushed her to her knees. The door was open. (Gaiman's representatives say these allegations are "false, not to mention, deplorable.")

Finally managed to buy everything I want (for now) and cram everything in. Frick Naipaul for writing a brick that was giving me fits trying to cram it in somewhere.

The one next to Pirandello is Pessoa

In b4 "spine check" "pristine penguin spines" Yeah yeah I know my buying speed outpaced my reading speed whatever neighbor I'll get to them

Feel free to recommend me books but be warned if the writers last name is between "kun" and "zzz" and its thicker than a starving chinamans prick, any response I type actually means "keep yourself safe"

From the ninth-century Irish poem

Pangur Bán and I at work,

Adepts, equals, cat and clerk:

His whole instinct is to hunt,

Mine to free the meaning pent.

More than loud acclaim, I love

Books, silence, thought, my alcove.

Happy for me, Pangur Bán

Child-plays round some mouse's den.

Truth to tell, just being here,

Housed alone, housed together,

Adds up to its own reward:

Concentration, stealthy art.

Next thing an unwary mouse

Bares his flank: Pangur pounces.

Next thing lines that held and held

Meaning back begin to yield.

All the while, his round bright eye

Fixes on the wall, while I

Focus my less piercing gaze

On the challenge of the page.

With his unsheathed, perfect nails

Pangur springs, exults and kills.

When the longed-for, difficult

Answers come, I too exult.

So it goes. To each his own.

No vying. No vexation.

Taking pleasure, taking pains,

Kindred spirits, veterans.

Day and night, soft purr, soft pad,

Pangur Bán has learned his trade.

Day and night, my own hard work

Solves the cruxes, makes a mark.

!bookworms

I finished my most recent book and went to download another one but Libgen seems down. Did it get killed off?

If yes what are some other book piracy sites? I'm not buying books, help a drama neighbor out.

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

!bookworms

@Astraea_Fairnose can you pls

40k Armageddon: The Last War: Ch 1: A day of remembrance:

In the future there was only war. War on an incomprehensible scale spread across innumerable infinities, split among the frozen present, the limited past and future, and the infinite timeless ebbs and flows of the Warp.

Within this war there was one timeline where in the year M41.354, a struggle ensued upon a tomb world, of little renown, between the Necron warriors, the Astartes, and the fledgling Tau race. For the Necrons it was an eradication of pests upon their pristine world. For the Astartes, it was a war against Xenos filth, a righteous war for Mankinds rightful place among the stars. For the Tau, it was a research expedition gone wrong. For the AI within the Tomb World it was much more than that. For within its mind were old secrets, older than the war in heaven. Older than the birth of the Necrontyr. Older than half the stars in the galaxy even. Old and grand enough that not a single Necron alive was privy to them. Not even the Silent King himself by his own command. Only ever to be reminded the day it became relevant. For some secrets were too important even to hold quietly within ones mind.

Today, with the destruction of this tomb world. That day of remembrance had come.

The Tomb AI waited till the last moment until it was sure it would not survive a millisecond longer. It sent the message encoded in code that not even the greatest Cryptid in the galaxy could decipher. On waves of energy that were as alien to the Necrons as the Necrons were to the Imperium. The message passed through without struggle, past the little sun's worth of energy burning through the core expanding outward, past the billions of human footsoldiers fighting within the hundreds of thousands of corridors and thousands of sub levels across the world, past the Necron Lord fighting on the surface, whose internal mechanisms were advanced enough to mistake the escaping message as a weapon projectile, distracting him in his moment of short lived victory long enough for a living saint of the Emperor possessing the Chapter Masters corpse to slice him in two, past the EMP and Warp fields that covered the entire planet, and in the seconds in which the planet died, the pulse had flitted through sub space using 10th dimension physics, right into the brain of the Silent King, bypassing and breaking through all the cyber security routines fitted within his body, as if it were rotten parchment.

The silent king froze in place, noticeable not even to his praetorian guard. The silent king gave a single command and became still, lost in his inner thoughts as his fleet burning through the quintillions of Tyranids moving in a neverending mass towards the wall of gauss fire stopped for the first time in 5,000 years, and turned its way back towards the galaxy it called home, in preparation for the final war.

Ch 2: The void of destiny:

On the other side of the galaxy, at the same time as the Silent King has received his message, Ulthwe had been struck by the Daemons of Slaanesh. Eldrad Ulthran himself had come to the battlefield, having seen visions that suggested either the death or the rise of the Eldar based upon this outcome of this conflict. He could be seen charging his way into the daemons of slaanesh and their servants the Emperor's children. Among them even Fabius Bile was to be found, shooting out torture needles that he had reverse engineered from Dark Eldar tech.

Eldrad zigged and zagged across the battlefield, as if he could see the moves of the daemons coming even before they had decided to make them. For Eldrad, it was like dancing through the skein of destiny. Pulling on strings here and three as he passed by, trying to keep the choir of the songs of destiny in coherence with his desired path.

Khaine let out a terrible roar that shook the craftworld itself. Khain took a fall and was jumped by a dozen keeper of secrets in that instant. Eldrads heart heaved with sorrow, in his psychic mind a large chunk of the threads of Aeldari fate turning black and painful to the touch. He dodged botler rounds shot at him from meters away and chopped off the hands of the giant Monkeigh that had tried to kill him. With a single stroke too swift to see he took its head off and moved forwards towards the heart of the craftworld, where the spirits of his ancestors were becoming defenceless as his Eldar brethren were being massacred in a frenzy now that Khaine was dead.

In his mind he could see the strings of fate start to grow ever further from him, making his way from one to the other taking more time as he ran longer distances to connect destiny in the right places. Kill after kill he kept growing further from the timeline upon which the Eldar would prosper. Yet before him the Eldar were finally routing the Daemons and their vile servants of Chaos. They were winning and yet there was something wrong with it. Even his millennia old mind, honed to reach fast enough to stop a plasma bolt in its tracks, couldn't quite determine what was wrong. Another dozen space marines had been killed by his hand as it finally clicked.

The daemons were willingly leaving even when they could win right now. The blackening skein of destiny wasn't coming from this conflict. Like him other Eldar farseers in the midst of battle were beginning to slow down, coming to a similar realization as Eldrad Ulthran, the greatest among them.

They had saved their people. Fabius Bile. One of the darker strands of destiny forever haunting the path of the Eldar and weakening them lay among the dead. The daemons were gone. The Eldar has won, and yet, the fate of the Eldar within the skein had never appeared as dark as it did right now.

Ch 3: The death of Guilliman.

To be continued

Please leave a like and review score by chapter.

Please remember to donate dramacoin and your name will be mentioned as a sponsor of this series.

I would like to thank the current sponsor @jackie for helping make this series possible.

!bookworms

!bookworms as promised on the previous thread

https://rdrama.net/h/lit/post/330047/first-bookclub-of-2025-announcement-the

Here's the discussion thread of Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis (Die Verwandlung).

This will be a single discussion thread for the entire novella as it is too short for multiple threads.

!chuds !bookworms What was your favourite adventure? Mine was either being a monster in Creature of Havoc, leading an war in Armies of Death or being a rip-off Flash Thompson in Starship Traveller!

@nuclearshill !bookworms

I read like 70% of the Hardy Boys and some of Nancy drew, cuz that was what was available from my extended family's library. I enjoyed the Hardy boys less and less as they were so goofily structured in terms of childlike mystery solving. The protagonists just tripped over clues, to the point of absurdity. I realize these books were likely designed/written for a younger audience, but it felt banal even compared to Scooby Doo cartoons.

The older i got, the less satisfying Nancy Drew became for me also. ADDITIONALLY, why the frick both Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew have the loser fat sidekick?? Like is it to indicate just how kewl the main characters are in comparison, so lame

!bookworms new Arthurian translations are here.

In view of Nippon steels acquisition bid failing

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

!bookworms

@Aevann can you pls

As you know the book club is back. I already read the Metamorphosis a few months ago so I'll just check my notes for the single discussion thread.

I started reading "Afgantsy: The Russians in Afghanistan 1979-89" by Rodric Braithwaite (former Bong ambassador to Russia) which is about the Soviet-Afghan war

Hello. My body has rebelled against me and has decided to expel all fluids from its borders. I'm sore, miserable, and growing dumber by the second.

Since I'm dying, I'm obviously going to spend my last few days reading about what it would be like to be a space ninja who gets all the chicks. I really don't want to read anything that challenges me in any way. Even TV is too hard right now.

Please give me your recommendations for your guilty pleasures, anything fun and dumb. It can be fluffy slice of life. It can be self-insert fanfiction. It can be unapologetic power fantasy. I just want to be distracted and not think.

Thank you.

!bookworms our first bookclub choice of the year is Franz Kafka's novella, The Metamorphosis.

Because it's like 70 pages long depending on the edition, we'll cover it on a single thread. Discussion thread on January 9th.

On an unrelated note do any ya'll neighbors have any book recommendations, I got an ereader for Christmas.

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