Doctor Who reference in Pokemon B2W2? Headcanon accepted.
I was reminded recently the value of good literature when I was reading Jane Austen. The way that woman works with words -- not even minding her story -- is nothing short of incredible. In that way, you can take something from literature that no movie or show could ever provide
Harder yes, but it provides no outside insight. Sartre wrote an interesting essay on this very subject. To paraphrase him roughly, a piece of art is a two way street, you complete it by consuming it, bringing your own experience and combining it with the author's viewpoints and ideas. As such, it is impossible to truly appreciate art you make yourself, because you, being the author/artist, cannot being anything new to the table.
Harder yes, but it provides no outside insight. Sartre wrote an interesting essay on this very subject. To paraphrase him roughly, a piece of art is a two way street, you complete it by consuming it, bringing your own experience and combining it with the author's viewpoints and ideas. As such, it is impossible to truly appreciate art you make yourself, because you, being the author/artist, cannot being anything new to the table.
That doesn't really have much to do with why I brought that up, though.
I wasn't even saying I agreed with that, the opposite, in fact.
I was reminded recently the value of good literature when I was reading Jane Austen. The way that woman works with words -- not even minding her story -- is nothing short of incredible. In that way, you can take something from literature that no movie or show could ever provide
See I've never read Jane Austen, and frankly given the amount of time I have for books lately, I probably won't any time soon (I have a list of things I want to read, it's quite extensive. It'd help if I could actually find any of the books in question...). So I have no idea if this is, y'know, true or not.
I'm going to guess that it might be true for you, but that doesn't make it true for everyone.
I know who she is, but what I'm saying is that I have a pretty big "to-read" list already. I don't really want to add anything else to it (and I also find that I rarely enjoy literary classics as much as I "should", I kind of liked Catcher in the Rye, and I like most of Shakespeare's plays that I've read, but that's about it.)
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
This tidbit might help explain some things with MacBeth:
"Macbeth was first printed in the First Folio of 1623 and the Folio is the only source for the text. The text that survives had been plainly altered by later hands. Most notable is the inclusion of two songs from Thomas Middleton's play The Witch (1615); Middleton is conjectured to have inserted an extra scene involving the witches and Hecate, for these scenes had proven highly popular with audiences. These revisions, which since the Clarendon edition of 1869 have been assumed to include all of Act III, scene v, and a portion of Act IV, scene I, are often indicated in modern texts.[15] On this basis, many scholars reject all three of the interludes with the goddess Hecate as inauthentic. Even with the Hecate material, the play is conspicuously short, and so the Folio text may derive from a prompt book that had been substantially cut for performance, or an adapter cut the text himself."
As far as the statement that's being yes-quoted, I think I'm going to have to respectfully disagree.
A good story, whether represented via written word or through a more visual medium such as TV will stay with you and give you something to reflect on. One may not have time to really dwell on the topic, ideas, or philosophies during the showing of the show, but they'll have time afterwords, and like a good book, a good show should give one much to think about long after the initial exposure.
Commercials, I might give you. Then again. I don't usually consume TV shows in a form that bombards me with commercials anymore, so this is probably becoming less of an issue.
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
Finding something that's intelligently engaging is definitely a challenge with TV.
Using the internet to sort of figure out what's worth it and then download that thing helps...
In related news, I don't have extended cable and what little TV I have isn't even hooked up. I only still have it because it's, about $2 over just internet.
I kinda miss the History Channel...on the other hand:
The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon (i feel awful)
and
Under the Skin by Michel Faber (well i certainly wasnt expecting the book to go in this direction.......)
i recommend 'em both. first still has relevance today even after the cold war + 'decolonisation'. the second one... well if you want a book that starts out one way and then slowly but inexorably goes in a really fucking bizarre direction (in a good way!) then this one fits the bill
I picked up three books today and did some preliminary reading in the car. The first was Nietzsche's (well, his post-posthumously compiled and edited) collected journals called "The Will to Power," which I had some fun reading. Although his thoughts change a lot, you can really see his passion... second book was Camus's "Myth of Sisyphus" which I feel is much more coherent and well-written than Nietzsche's piece, but it still leaves me with a few nagging doubts. Third and last is Hobbes's great Leviathan... it looks scary! I'm going to finish those other two first.
I'll have to grab The Croning and maybe Under the Skin. Cool titles, at least!
I've been picking through the 2009 edition of The Best American Nonrequired Reading. It's fun stuff, except when it isn't—Rebekah Frumkin's "Monster" was pretty disquieting.
It's a yearly compilation of short fiction (plus other things) selected by two teams of high school students in Michigan and California and curated by David Eggers. Here's the Wikipedia article.
Nietzsche's Will to Power is supposedly not very indicative of his thought, as it was edited (some say mangled) by his sister, who wasn't really on his wavelength...just sayin'.
I think it is a brilliant book, but it's not for everyone. It's one of those meditative sort of novels where not a lot happens but many themes are touched upon.
You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
Kindles/Nooks/whatever are great. Even though I have a preference for print when possible, they're so easy to take around, and books are so much cheaper on them... stuff with e-paper's great to read on. Don't get an iPad or whatever if you're just buying it to read books on because the one I got to play with for a while had kinda crappy battery life and felt like it was more a computer screen than that neat e-paper stuff. Maybe it's gotten better since then though?
Nietzsche's Will to Power is supposedly not very indicative of his thought, as it was edited (some say mangled) by his sister, who wasn't really on his wavelength...just sayin'.
This copy I got says it was re-edited by some other guy so it's probably been mangled even more :( I really like his Beyond Good and Evil, Twilight of the Idols, Genealogy of Morals... His thought's a bit less erratic in those books, I feel, compared to his "notebooks" and Zarathustra and Ecce Homme. He's really a very beautiful writer though with a lot of passion, and that's what I read him for. Any of his works you really adore?
That said, Nietzsche was a very passionate man. But it's problematic saying what he believed, beyond that he most certainly believed it.
Yeah, he really changes his mind too much.. he'll even change his mind within works, it feels like. But maybe he's trying to make a message -- if you just blindly believe EVERYTHING he says, you'll end up in a useless place, because you're not exercising your own power. By picking out parts of his thought you like and tossing out the garbage, you've taken a step towards becoming the powerful man he envisions. I'm reading too much into him, aren't I?
"It is a matter of grave importance that Fairy tales should be respected.... Whosoever alters them to suit his own opinions, whatever they are, is guilty, to our thinking, of an act of presumption, and appropriates to himself what does not belong to him." -- Charles Dickens
I'm currently reading Edgar Allan Poe's poems, in the Edmund Dulac illustrated edition. I wonder how many readers today notice how much Neoplatonism he put into some of these poems.
"The Bells" seems overrated, but I like how you could use ghouls in a serious poem back then, rather than being cast into the box labeled "Fantasy."
Okay, the article isn't saying that the book is racist per se, but that it depicts a situation that would have been impossible in the actual South (specifically that a white person defending a black person in the way shown wouldn't be trusted by either side, and would likely be run out of town).
Okay, I just took a quick look at the background of the book...and this blogger is so full of piss and vinegar that they can't see the forest for the trees. TKAM was written at a time when the Civil Rights Movement was just starting (Brown v. Board of Education was only 6 years prior), and recalling a time when Ms. Lee was growing up. Trying to apply 2012 racial mores to a book that depicts a time when segregation was just starting to be challenged is nothing short of idiotic.
Comments
That doesn't really have much to do with why I brought that up, though.
I wasn't even saying I agreed with that, the opposite, in fact.
See I've never read Jane Austen, and frankly given the amount of time I have for books lately, I probably won't any time soon (I have a list of things I want to read, it's quite extensive. It'd help if I could actually find any of the books in question...). So I have no idea if this is, y'know, true or not.
I'm going to guess that it might be true for you, but that doesn't make it true for everyone.
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
That would be a lot funnier if my dad didn't believe it.
At least, he believes it when he's manic.
Hey.
If anyone likes Weird Fiction or Cosmic Horror stories, Laird Barron's The Croning is really good.
Just finished it.
i am reading:
The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon (i feel awful)
and
Under the Skin by Michel Faber (well i certainly wasnt expecting the book to go in this direction.......)
i recommend 'em both. first still has relevance today even after the cold war + 'decolonisation'. the second one... well if you want a book that starts out one way and then slowly but inexorably goes in a really fucking bizarre direction (in a good way!) then this one fits the bill
I'll have to grab The Croning and maybe Under the Skin. Cool titles, at least!
What is that?
I sometimes see copies of it at Barnes & Noble.
Amazon. Hmm hmm, I forget that I can order things online now.
Thank you, Imigee.
also, is it worth reading? I've been trying to track it down for well over a year now, and I'll be disappointed as hell if it sucks.
I knew that already, I just wanted to make sure it was a good one of those.
Yeah the plot is best described, apparently as "an old British man slowly dies in a Mexican town". :p
Hooray!
I actually had the novel on .pdf for awhile, but that was when I discovered that I cannot read on a computer screen.
been mangled even more :( I really like his Beyond Good and Evil,
Twilight of the Idols, Genealogy of Morals... His thought's a bit less
erratic in those books, I feel, compared to his "notebooks" and
Zarathustra and Ecce Homme. He's really a very beautiful writer though
with a lot of passion, and that's what I read him for. Any of his works
you really adore? Yeah, he really changes his mind too much.. he'll even change his mind within works, it feels like. But maybe he's trying to make a message -- if you just blindly believe EVERYTHING he says, you'll end up in a useless place, because you're not exercising your own power. By picking out parts of his thought you like and tossing out the garbage, you've taken a step towards becoming the powerful man he envisions. I'm reading too much into him, aren't I?
You people and your "having read philosophy books". Bah, you all make me feel stoopid.
Closest I've come to reading an honest-to-god philosophical work is Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's Garden, and even that's been years.
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
"The Bells" seems overrated, but I like how you could use ghouls in a serious poem back then, rather than being cast into the box labeled "Fantasy."
Considering the article specifically calls the novel racist multiple times, I'd say it's pretty clear-cut.
And the situation isn't necessarily unrealistic. Most lawyers at the time were white, and there were many cases that involved black people.