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I very much like the stories my children wrote about how our country could be if I were truly el presidente de Venezuela. They wrote them on construction paper, pero I keep them in my desk to read whenever I am sad. I have folded and unfolded those papers many times and place them over la pistola that is also in that drawer so that I must read those papers whenever I am looking for it.
The stories my children wrote have drawings of us happy together in the presidential palace we would build. In these dibujos, there is a garden in front with many flowers and animals. The sun is shining in the image and Nicolas Maduro is nowhere to be found. Even though it is fantasy, we still find relief in imagining a better world.
Would you like to be el presidente of my condo for a month? Sure it might not be the real thing, but it's a start.
The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin is amazing, and becomes more and more relevant now it looks like climate change is effectively locked in - a communist society as a desperate fight for survival still dependent on the indifference/vanity of the remaining imperial and not FALC is much more likely imo.
le BIBLE XDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD
I don't want to directly reply to the people who liked Kingkiller Chronicles because A.) they called out the bad stuff and B.) everyone's allowed to have problematic favs and I don't want to attack them for liking a book I don't because that's the pettiest nerd shit ever, but I am going to post thing complaining about it because I am also a weird pedantic loser.
Ugh, I hate those books. Mostly because I was promised "the best Fantasy since X GREAT BOOK" and then it was an overwritten piece of cringe, bad fanfic level plot and characters and story. I'll admit Rothfuss's prose is better than most fanfic by dint of complexity, but that same complexity is all flash with no substance. It's not great prose in the way of either Hemingway or Faulkner, more like it's interesting prose because most people are too self-conscious when writing to purposely do something so bad and so long-winded.
Also, like, I hate to admit it but I was in love with Name of the Wind for like a week. I tore through four-hundred pages while thinking "oh, it's his first book, everyone says it's great, I'm sure it'll get good just around the corner." I could see Rothfuss was setting up a grand deconstruction of a bunch of the great Fantasy books that came before him and I was there for it.
Then there's an especially cringe scene where the Main Character has his instrument broken by a rival during a performance, but he plays on anyway and makes everyone in the room, from young women to old jaded performers, cry their eyes out, and it was the most overwritten, silly scene in the book yet, and I realized it was never going to get better, that I'd been given a false bill of sale. So that week of goodwill turned to bitterness and I've never been able to let it go.
Also also, I watched a bunch of interviews and panels with Patrick Rothfuss, and based on those I do not like the man. He'll go on long rants about feminism and combating misogyny and how I think he headed some sort of feminist discussion group at the college he teached at, meanwhile the man's books are dripping with Ready Player One levels of nerd misogyny and I refuse to believe that's intentional on his part. He really strikes me as a false ally, he oozes that "guy who thinks he's a feminist but lacks the self-awareness to examine his own views or behavior" energy. I know some of the examples of misogyny in the book are intentional on his part, but it's too pervasive to be all of them. He's not Nabokov.
And he talked over Robin Hobb on a panel at some con. Robin fucking Hobb.
Anyway my favorite book is the A Song of Ice and Fire series by George Martin. Whaddya mean I'm a hypocrite? No, every bad thing in ASOIAF is intentional on Martin's part, he has no unconscious biases and is actually a perfect writer. Especially all the child rape. Definitely. (Actually I think Martin gets a lot of unfair criticism from performatively woke Twitter people, but he gets a lot of fair criticism too. Like, I think the criticism of there being too much rape is a bit rich when 1/6 of women in modern America are raped, but I agree with critics who say that if you're going to have women raped in the name of grittiness you shouldn't shy away from the fact that dudes have been raping dudes for all history as well. The sexual violence is gendered in a way that probably doesn't reflect the reality of a period of post-failed-state chaos)
And I forgot to mention that Martin's construction of highly racially divided societies is painfully outdated. Maybe you could find pseudo-ethnostates in the pre-modern world, but any major trade route or port city would have a much more diverse range of people. I suppose it's kinda convenient that Westeros, the place with all the white people, is the most powerful nation in that world, while the continent with all the brown people is mostly made up of disparate city-states and warlike savages. Fans argue that since we're seeing those cultures from the eyes of white people we aren't getting the full story, giving Martin the benefit of doubt, but if that's the case it probably should be made a little more explicit in the text. And in the War of the Roses time period Martin is most directly inspired by, Europe was a balkanized backwater while the Islamic world was a cultural powerhouse and China was already a thousand year-old empire and I'm sure other peoples were also very impressive compared to Europe but I'm unfamiliar with their histories. But, it could be argued that Martin is commenting on the modern White Supremacist state of the American Empire moreso than any obtuse point about Europe in the Middle Ages so I'm not sure how to feel about that particular point.
Fuck I'm such a nerd. Read theory you dumb bitch. GRRM literally doesn't matter.
My real favorite book is Caliban and the Witch. Which I haven't read, but seems like the sort of thing I ought to like.
It is a good book, but it is better to not have read it, as you can project more onto it from yourself and less experience what it is about.
In terms of Rothfuss / King Killer,
Also, like, I hate to admit it but I was in love with Name of the Wind for like a week. I tore through four-hundred pages while thinking "oh, it's his first book, everyone says it's great, I'm sure it'll get good just around the corner." I could see Rothfuss was setting up a grand deconstruction of a bunch of the great Fantasy books that came before him and I was there for it.
Is something that I shared, too. But then I gave up after the not ideal writing of women and power fantasy trips that are happening and enjoyed it as Isekai light anime in which I don't take stuff serious. Did help the vibe quite a bit. Of course the exterior - the tavern and such - are a different vibe. There are also slight elements of a weird early 2000s progressive homophobia or trans phobia to be found at some edges.
Some phrases of the books are quite nice though and the description of scenes does paint a picture and feels somewhat like an old TTRPG group you are sitting with on a table.
Westeros, the place with all the white people, is the most powerful nation in that world
Westeros is as much a "nation" as the Holy Roman Empire. The Seven Kingdoms, as implied by the name, aren't very unified, and even this low level of centralization has only been the case for 300 years. Before Aegon's Conquest, the various kingdoms were independent and waged constant wars with one another, and even after the Conquest there was still the occasional civil war and lots of instability. As for power - far more powerful empires have existed, like the Great Empire of the Dawn (although that one's possibly mythical), the Valyrian Freehold, the Old Empire of Ghis, and one still exists - the Golden Empire of Yi Ti. Seeing as Yi Ti is basically fantasy China, it would probably be the most powerful state, although it seems that at the time the books are taking place it's been pretty weakened. Westeros however definitely isn't the most powerful "nation", because it simply isn't a unified political entity - some of the individual kingdoms might be considered to be powerful, but not the whole continent.
while the continent with all the brown people is mostly made up of disparate city-states and warlike savages
While I definitely agree that the Dothraki are a pretty dumb portrayal of a steppe culture, those disparate city-states are quite wealthy, and powerful at least in an economic sense, if not a military one. They are also arguably more culturally developed, if we consider an oligarchy of merchants to be more developed that feudalism, and while they may be disparate now, most of them trace their origin back to the Valyrian Freehold, which controlled all of their territories and more as a unified state. Besides, there's more to the further east of the continent - Slaver's Bay is also incredibly wealthy, and similarly used to be part of a unified empire until it collapsed. There's various states around the Bone Mountains, and Yi Ti even further east.
Europe was a balkanized backwater while the Islamic world was a cultural powerhouse and China was already a thousand year-old empire
That's basically the case in ASOIAF. Westeros IS and has historically been a balkanized backwater, while the Free Cities are more politicaly and economicaly developed and used to be part of one of the world's greatest empires, and Yi Ti has been around since the Long Night, with the Great Empire of the Dawn that it (allegedly) succedeed being even older.
Wow the experience with loving the Name of the Wind in the throes of ripping through it maps so neatly onto mine. God the second book was the one that made me realise I gotta give it up.
Children of Men, also The Road
and yes, I usually wear all black, why do you ask?
honestly though, it's been Kobayashi's Crab Cannery Ship recently, which I will always rec, because it perfectly synthesizes all of the Marxist, Leninist, and anarchist (mainly anarcho-syndicalist) theory that I've read (in regards to labor and organizing) in one short visceral proletarian tale.
Seriously can't recommend it enough
Neon Genesis Evangelion, Snow Crash, The Necromancer, Future Wars, Spin, Speaker for the Dead (death of the author etc), Dune, Feed
Yeah, I spend most of my time staring at screens.
Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis. Really absolutely nothing like the Narnia books, and not like his space trilogy either, much better than any of them. It's a retelling of the Eros and Psyche myth, from the perspective of Psyche's ugly stepsister. And somehow he totally nails the female narrator voice??? There are a few rough spots but having lived as a woman for 35 years I can say that he really understood how utterly rejected and worthless you're made to feel if you're not pretty. It's an emotionally and psychologically intense novel in a way I would never have known that Lewis was capable of. The worldbuilding is minimal (it's set in a fictional kingdom in the hinterlands of the Hellenic world, probably meant to be Thrace or somewhere) but all the details feel organic. The religious stuff comes towards the end but it's fairly obscure and mystical, and more like what people associate with Tolkien than with Lewis. I've read the original Golden Ass by Apuleius (the source for the Eros and Psyche myth) and it ends with a mystical revelation too, so it works for the material.
I just felt like rambling about a book sorry
Didn't expect to see a C.S. Lewis suggestion on here, interesting choice!
I totally agree with you, I enjoyed the books mainly because the prose was just so good, but yeah nerd misogyny in there. And some weird shit, like a 150 page long fairy god sex scene wtf
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. Can't help but get emotional when reading it.
Yea that is an amazing book, almost said that but another eeked out over it.
Just standalone great but some interesting parallels that im not sure if intentional.
The (middle east inspired) fremen overthrowing the imperialists exploiting their natural resources was the most obvious.
I also loved the idea of the fremen spending generations laying the groundwork for terra forming, they knew they would never see it their lifetimes but worked towards it regardless, also only needed like 3% critical mass to trigger the irreversible process, seems like similar process to building a revolution.
Plus cool knife fights and shit.
I absolutely adore 'The Little Prince'; Additionally, the works of Kurt Vonnegut are great and they make me feel (weirdly?) at ease with myself.
Have you seen the film Breakfast of Champions starring Bruce Willis and Nick Nolte? It got bad reviews, it was a commercial flop, it was disjointed and barely has any plot to speak of, and I still loved every second of it. If you're a Vonnegut fan you're either going to want to spit it out of your mouth at once or you're going to adore it as much as I do. (P.S. I'm a Philistine who doesn't know what makes a good film so I just enjoy it for being the absolute mess that it is.)
Here's a clip that ought to give you an idea of what sort of film it is so you can decide for yourself. The subtext here is that Nolte's character is certain that he's been caught by his boss doing BDSM and Epps's character just got out of prison and wants a job at the Exit 11 Motor Village to work for his hero Dwayne Hoover. Here's a follow-up scene, since it's really hard to find this movie online any more.
Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller, in as much as it's fiction
Around the Day in Eighty Worlds by Julio Cortazar
Nice. I read some of his most well known short stories some time ago and I love them, especially la noche boca arriba, continuidad de los parques and axolotl (dont know how to translate them lol). Do you have any Cortazar recommendations?
hopscotch and around the day in eighty worlds would be my big two recommendations!
