What Book Are You Reading at the Moment?

[Montegriffo]

The bible.

Never made it to the end of that one. Does everyone live happily ever after?

[Fife]

[TheReal_ND]

I torrented a fuck ton of wh40k books and am making my way through the Gaunt's Ghosts series atm. You can convert them and put them on your e-reader which is what I did. Lmk if you want them in a pm, I'll send you a mega link.

[Speaker to Animals]

The bible.

Never made it to the end of that one. Does everyone live happily ever after?

No.

You'll find out.

[Montegriffo]

The bible.

Never made it to the end of that one. Does everyone live happily ever after?

No.

You'll find out.

It's fine, I have made plans for my after life.
My ashes are to be divided into two halves.
The first half will be fired by trebuchet and scattered to the wind at my memorial ceremony.
The rest will be sealed inside a solid oak ball and used as a projectile every year during the Bungay Balls Up juggling convention.
My after life is going to be epic.

[Hastur]

Any Bret Easton Ellis fans here?

I'm curious about his new book. The Leftist MSM is piling on with bad reviews.



This is a rare positive review that piqued my interest:

https://quillette.com/2019/04/30/bret-e ... y-america/

With his new book, White, Bret Easton Ellis not only takes on Hollywood and contemporary culture, he establishes himself as the voice of an overlooked generation. The Gen Xer whose satirical works include “American Psycho” and “Less Than Zero” also grasps the true essence of Donald Trump and our times in a way that eludes commentators on the Left and Right.

Unlike his previous seven books, White isn’t fiction. As it turns out, to parody the absurd times in which we live, fiction isn’t necessary. In American Psycho, Ellis critiqued 1980s New York culture through his invention of Patrick Bateman, a rich, beautiful, insincere, emotionally isolated investment banker by day and serial killer by night. No such literary device is necessary to satirize American life today. Like the rest of us, Ellis lives in world where “Everyone has to be the same, and have the same reactions to any given work of art, or movement or idea, and if you refuse to join the chorus of approval you will be tagged a racist or misogynist.”

The usual suspects aren’t pleased. The Guardian judged the work to be “a nonsensical, vapid book, written by a man so furiously obsessed with his right to speak that he forgets to say anything at all.” Vox gave the book one star, called it “boring,” and concluded it was “both ideologically uninteresting and aesthetically weak.” (The Vox reviewer declared in an aside, without irony, that “there is no such thing as non-political art”—a fine example of the Leninist politicization of everything and its impact on art that Ellis laments throughout the book.)

Unspoken but evident in these condemnations is Ellis’s most serious crime: He was seen as a man of the left, but is now somehow a convert despite essentially being the same person. American Psycho was controversial when it was published in 1991, and remains so today, but was and is largely seen as a criticism of the Reagan-era capitalist resurgence, and thus, of use to the Left. Turning the same unforgiving pen against today’s obsession with identity and victimhood is rather less helpful to progressives.

................

Bought it and read it. Highly recommended.

[Fife]

It's in my queue. I've seen some pretty interesting interviews this year with Ellis.

[brewster]

Just read Artemis, the 2nd novel by Andy Weir, author of the excellent The Martian. Not in the same class, was a firm throwback to 60s Heinlein, a middle aged guy trying way to hard to write hip characters and dialog. "Ooh, look at me, my protagonist is a slutty young middle eastern woman!!!"

[Speaker to Animals]

The Martian was good because I doubt he was seriously trying to write a best seller.

[Speaker to Animals]

I am reading book two of the Three Body Problem.

Chinese SF definitely does not fuck around. This shit is very good.