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Pit Book/Discussion Thread

Good article. I adored this quote. “I think that the rapture with which this novel has been received is further proof of the infantilization of our literary culture: a world in which adults go around reading Harry Potter.”

Along the same lines only more direct (from last month): "Read whatever you want. But you should feel embarrassed when what you're reading was written for children."

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/...arrassed_to_read_children_s_books.single.html
 
Along the same lines only more direct (from last month): "Read whatever you want. But you should feel embarrassed when what you're reading was written for children."

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/...arrassed_to_read_children_s_books.single.html



When I think about what I learned about love, relationships, sex, trauma, happiness, and all the rest—you know, life—from the extracurricular reading I did in high school, I think of John Updike and Alice Munro and other authors whose work has only become richer to me as I have grown older, and which never makes me roll my eyes.

Ugh. She did high school wrong.
 
Along the same lines only more direct (from last month): "Read whatever you want. But you should feel embarrassed when what you're reading was written for children."

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/...arrassed_to_read_children_s_books.single.html

I'm not sure I wholly embrace such literary snobbery, but I do get a good chuckle over it.

In unrelated news, I finished Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen not that long ago. Very well-written, but the plot and characters didn't do a whole lot for me.
 
I'm not sure I wholly embrace such literary snobbery, but I do get a good chuckle over it.

Same here, I just meant to provide it as a less subtle complement to the quote from your other post.

eta- There were a lot of good responses in the comments.
 
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Picked this one up; it's a good catalog of Leftist thought for those who can't/won't read the 600+ tomes of Frederic Jameson, et al. Written by one of the cofounders of n+1, a journal I highly recommend.
 

lol

....Chomsky: And here comes Bilbo Baggins. Now, this is, to my mind, where the story begins to reveal its deeper truths. In the books we learn that Saruman was spying on Gandalf for years. And he wondered why Gandalf was traveling so incessantly to the Shire. As Tolkien later establishes, the Shire’s surfeit of pipe-weed is one of the major reasons for Gandalf’s continued visits.

Zinn: You view the conflict as being primarily about pipe-weed, do you not?

Chomsky: Well, what we see here, in Hobbiton, farmers tilling crops. The thing to remember is that the crop they are tilling is, in fact, pipe-weed, an addictive drug transported and sold throughout Middle Earth for great profit.

Zinn: This is absolutely established in the books. Pipe-weed is something all the Hobbits abuse. Gandalf is smoking it constantly. You are correct when you point out that Middle Earth depends on pipe-weed in some crucial sense, but I think you may be overstating its importance. Clearly the war is not based only on the Shire’s pipe-weed. Rohan and Gondor’s unceasing hunger for war is a larger culprit, I would say.
Chomsky: But without the pipe-weed, Middle Earth would fall apart. Saruman is trying to break up Gandalf’s pipe-weed ring. He’s trying to divert it.

Zinn: Well, you know, it would be manifestly difficult to believe in magic rings unless everyone was high on pipe-weed. So it is in Gandalf’s interest to keep Middle Earth hooked.

Chomsky: How do you think these wizards build gigantic towers and mighty fortresses? Where do they get the money? Keep in mind that I do not especially regard anyone, Saruman included, as an agent for progressivism. But obviously the pipe-weed operation that exists is the dominant influence in Middle Earth. It’s not some ludicrous magical ring.
 
I just started reading Michael Crichton, dunno how it took me so long to get into his stuff.
 
I've been on a non-fiction tear recently, would recommend all of the following:

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and
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both by the same guy and pretty damned interesting given the subject matter. Salt is better than Cod.

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About the quest to determine longitude while at sea and the guy who invented the marine chronometer.

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About the history and establishment of the Metric system.


These two if you're interested in learning more about WWI. I'd definitely start with Guns of August; it's an easier read. The stevenson book is detailed and comprehensive, but kind of assumes you're already familiar with many details of the time/war.

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Does anyone have a recommendation for a book on the French Revolution?
 
While not specifically about the French Revolution, Steven Englund's biography of Napoleon is an incredible read. While very lengthy, it focuses on his political history and uses a vast number of primary sources to paint a very vivid picture of him from early on through his military campaigns. If anyone is interested in Napoleon I would consider it a must read.
 
30 Authors on Movie Adaptations of their Work

Some interesting comments...

[h=2]A CLOCKWORK ORANGE[/h]"The film made it easy for readers of the book to misunderstand what it was about, and the misunderstanding will pursue me till I die."
- Anthony Burgess


[h=2]THE SHINING[/h]"Parts of the film are chilling, charged with a relentlessly claustrophobic terror, but others fall flat. Not that religion has to be involved in horror, but a visceral skeptic such as Kubrick just couldn't grasp the sheer inhuman evil of The Overlook Hotel. So he looked, instead, for evil in the characters and made the film into a domestic tragedy with only vaguely supernatural overtones. That was the basic flaw: because he couldn't believe, he couldn't make the film believable to others. What's basically wrong with Kubrick's version of The Shining is that it's a film by a man who thinks too much and feels too little; and that's why, for all its virtuoso effects, it never gets you by the throat and hangs on the way real horror should."
- Stephen King


[h=2]AMERICAN PSYCHO[/h]"American Psycho was a book I didn’t think needed to be turned into a movie. I think the problem withAmerican Psycho was that it was conceived as a novel, as a literary work with a very unreliable narrator at the centre of it and the medium of film demands answers."
- Bret Easton Ellis
 
Just read Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe and found it a great read. Very satirical, very well-written, and a timely story even in 2014
 
David Mitchell's latest, The Bone Clocks, dropped yesterday. My cousin, a big Mitchell fan, read an advance copy from Random House and thinks it's better than Cloud Atlas.
 
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