Staying at home is the norm... What are you reading?

Thaluikhain

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Hey is this a good time to post in here?

Maybe not.

Anyhoo, read all Edgar Rice Burroughs Amtor series. Which is like the Barsoon series, but set on Venus, not Mars.

The series is a bit all over the place. The space communists that have conquered more or less everywhere are quickly forgotten and he moves to somewhere outside everywhere. The hero becomes a pirate, and then stops being a pirate before doing much piracy. I was expecting him to reconcile with the father of the underage princess he's pursuing (she's like 19, but that's underage in her culture), and really it got a bit dodgy when she's making it clear she's not interested, even if he "knows" she really is.

Straw feminists aren't interesting (and the author knows this so dropped them and moved onto something else right away). Havatoo is very Nazi-like, can you please not say you wish that someone had killed the lesser humans to make a perfect race? Even if you run away from them in the end.

OTOH, in the next book he has really obvious Nazi stand ins (the Zani party) who are unambiguously the bad guys, and while it looks like they are just going to be comical, he mentions (though not in great detail) how they are torturing and murdering innocent people. For a book published in 1938 (and translated and published in Italy!) tjhat's not bad.

Though, given that he's a powerful psychic, his not ever ever ever using psychic powers except to tell his story to people back home until the very last story (where it seems Burroughs has stopped caring) is...yeah.
 

gorfias

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It's a good quick read. Nothing that hasn't been very apparent, and disconcerting since the 2016 election.
 

SupahEwok

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View attachment 98

It's a good quick read. Nothing that hasn't been very apparent, and disconcerting since the 2016 election.
Wouldn't trust that author. Good quick googling shows him to be a conspiracy theorist who rants that the Illuminati was behind 9/11.
 

gorfias

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Wouldn't trust that author. Good quick googling shows him to be a conspiracy theorist who rants that the Illuminati was behind 9/11.
That is part of the problem. Alt media is analyzing things in a manner not approved of by the powers that be. They get labeled and you are to pay them no mind, when they bring to light things that should be commonplace in our legacy media. As I wrote, breezy read but just isn't ground breaking.
 

lil devils x

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That is part of the problem. Alt media is analyzing things in a manner not approved of by the powers that be. They get labeled and you are to pay them no mind, when they bring to light things that should be commonplace in our legacy media. As I wrote, breezy read but just isn't ground breaking.
" Manner not approved by the powers that be" = making up nonsense and spreading it around is not approved by most people, not just " the powers that be" tbh. US mainstream media, however, is overwhelmingly conservative.
 

Dalisclock

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T-cells, virology...

...do you work for Umbrella by any chance?
Not possible. Umbrella doesn't hire anyone who is remotely competent that I've seen. Based on what I've seen about the games, I'm surprised they make any money at all, considering their business strategy seems to consist completely of "Make zombies/mutants"
 

gorfias

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" Manner not approved by the powers that be" = making up nonsense and spreading it around is not approved by most people, not just " the powers that be" tbh. US mainstream media, however, is overwhelmingly conservative.
I think there is a difference between Conservative and Status quo. The legacy media is very status. They aren't about preserving classical liberties like free speech, gun rights, due process. But, they are about taking such rights if that helps maintain things. I think it is this alt media, for instance, that is forcing the Biden camp to address rape allegations. Without the alt? This would have flown right by us when we should at least be taking a look at it.
 

Hawki

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Not possible. Umbrella doesn't hire anyone who is remotely competent that I've seen. Based on what I've seen about the games, I'm surprised they make any money at all, considering their business strategy seems to consist completely of "Make zombies/mutants"
Well, we have a demon-eyed cat who's asking for lego goats, so maybe Lil Devils is the right kind of crazy?

But that aside, actually getting into the nitty gritty, Umbrella isn't as incompetent as you claim. The majority of their outbreaks occur due to outside sabotage. Also, this is a world where you can actually sell B.O.W.'s and make a profit, and Umbrella does make a profit from its legitimate pharmacuticals.

Like, Umbrella is evil-corp bad, but not Weyland-Yutani (let's keep trying to tame the xenomorph and fail miserably) bad.
 

Agema

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I've just finished "Children of Ruin" by Adrian Tchaikovsky, currently on "Knight of Stars" by Tom Lloyd, next up is "The Plague" by Albert Camus.
 
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EscapeGoat

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I am reading The Dwarves by Markus Heitz extreeeeeeemely slowly. In fact, I started reading it like, maybe a year ago on my commute? It's been gathering dust a lot over that year since while life happened, like moving and getting married and whatnot, but now we're in lockdown I've started to pick it back up. For a doorstopper, it's a remarkably easy read - it's like a pulp fantasy in some ways, with its relatively simple characters and straightforward plodding through the plot. There's been more or less what you'd want from a fine fantasy about dwarves - evil wizards, constant fight scenes against hordes of orcs, lots of swearing by the names of various gods and families, and incomprehensible politics. Not bad so far.
 

Saint of M

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About 2 thirds through Salem's Lot. Holy crap, the loads and loads of charecters slow things down
 

Thaluikhain

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Just read 5 weeks in a balloon and Robur the Conqueror, both by Jules Verne. The former half of the former being rather dull, and the later novel seemingly being the result of Verne realising he could do a really boring and bad rewrite of 20,000 Leagues under the Sea and it'd sell.

Struggling to get through Savage Pellucidar, the last of Edgar Rice Burroughs Pellucidar stories, written in his final "meh, don't care anymore" period.
 

Hawki

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Trigger Warnings: Political Correctness and the Rise of the Right (3/5)

TW kind of reminds me of a high school essay I might have written, albeit more eloquent. The type where I was struggling to meet the word limit.

What I mean by this is that, well, suppose I'm asked to write 10,000 words on X. I start writing about X, but am well short of having enough material to reach 10,000 words. Ergo, I start also writing about Y, and try and tie Y in with X. In theory, there's linkage between X and Y. Practically, it meets the 10,000 word requirement. But as a result, the essay feels unfocussed.

That's my feeling on the book. Those three parts of the title could have formed a book by themselves. However, it spreads itself out, trying to tie in these things with neoliberalism, the 60s, and while it remains focused on the United States, it keeps trying to tie the US 'culture war' with what's going on in Australia, and frankly, they're links that feel extremely tenuous. I feel the author should have picked a country and stuck with it, and tried focusing on a more narrow paradigm, because while the book can be interesting at times, it remains unfocused. Because while it has salient points, these emerge almost by happenstance.
 

Agema

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I am reading The Dwarves by Markus Heitz extreeeeeeemely slowly. In fact, I started reading it like, maybe a year ago on my commute? It's been gathering dust a lot over that year since while life happened, like moving and getting married and whatnot, but now we're in lockdown I've started to pick it back up. For a doorstopper, it's a remarkably easy read - it's like a pulp fantasy in some ways, with its relatively simple characters and straightforward plodding through the plot. There's been more or less what you'd want from a fine fantasy about dwarves - evil wizards, constant fight scenes against hordes of orcs, lots of swearing by the names of various gods and families, and incomprehensible politics. Not bad so far.
Terrifyingly retro.

DId he write it in the 80s, or did he just not notice the 20-30 years of fantasy novels going new and interesting places since then?
 
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EscapeGoat

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Terrifyingly retro.

DId he write it in the 80s, or did he just not notice the 20-30 years of fantasy novels going new and interesting places since then?
Amazingly it was published in 2003, so I can only assume the latter XD

It's fine, to be honest. It's obviously not that creative a read, but it's kind of... familiar, I guess? It makes it very easy to read, at least.
 

CM156

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I'm currently trying to work my way through an audiobook of Moby Dick.

This is perhaps the most tedious book I've ever subjected myself to.
 

EscapeGoat

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I'm currently trying to work my way through an audiobook of Moby Dick.

This is perhaps the most tedious book I've ever subjected myself to.
I remember doing Moby Dick for an American Literature module at university. Easily the most miserable book I had the misfortune to read during my degree, so I really do empathise with you.
 
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Thaluikhain

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I'm currently trying to work my way through an audiobook of Moby Dick.

This is perhaps the most tedious book I've ever subjected myself to.
You read Robinson Crusoe? But yeah, got most of the way through Moby Dick once, and every other chapter is the author waffling about some church which has a painting of a whale in it that he liked or something.