Recent content by prabe

Not here: I don't know that I'd call it all fake; to the extent it's real--or at least reality-based--it's pretty clearly a worst-case scenario.

I dunno, from what I've seen people say about the book, it seems to be more about demonstrating the truth of the opening statement. In any rate, I'm clearly too stupid to get Austen and we don't need to talk about her anymore.

You do realize that doesn't change the smug and smarmy tone?

It was the only book I was assigned in high school or college that I flat didn't read. Even other books that I didn't enjoy, I was able to get through. Not that one, though. People keep telling me that, but the smug and the smarm of that opening sentence don't seem self-aware enough to me to be...

Chuck Wendig's Wanderers is well-written and well-thought out. Owes a lot (like, really, a lot) to The Stand, if that matters.

What I'm saying is I couldn't get into whatever the book was in high school, and these days I find her actively detestable. So, yeah, not to my taste.

I thinks she's "literature" because people are still trying to teach her 200 years later. I personally wasn't able to get more than a chapter into whichever of her novels they subjected us to in high school, and at this point I can't even get past the first sentence of Pride and Prejudice--it's...

Last night I read Russell Banks' The Magic Kingdom, which is A) historical fiction, B) probably literature, or something close, and C) an interesting counterpoint to Hiaasen (and Dorsey) in the sense that you can see the foundations of their Floridas in the one Banks writes about. (FWIW, I...

Not going to argue with anything else, but I will say there are some beautiful places in Texas. You just have to drive through some real ugly to get to them. Especially if you're coming from the East ...

Your choice of example makes me feel as though you don't understand your ideas, there. :LOL:

Not without pointing at some sort of how, at least.

My parents very much tended to the "if you can reach it, you can read it" thing. This got awkward: My mom worked as an OB nurse and had books on pregnancy and childbirth that I was reading when I was ... like four. My parents were fine with that, some of my friends' parents, though ... 😬:LOL:

Most of the books from the "literary canon" that I've enjoyed, I've read on my own. I agree that reading them for class/es rarely puts them in their best light.

I'll note that it's entirely possible for someone you disagree with about just about anything to be much more a hero than a villain (by this metric, at least). This does not strike me as entirely a bug.

Oh, that old garbage again. It's not even worth reading the whole post, let alone the thread; and it's absolutely not worth my time or energy arguing. Have fun in your old echo chamber!