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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   4474 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 18, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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So, what are you reading?

Still on This Star of England.

Kropotkin’s The Conquest of Bread starts off as a surprisingly typical communist screed, but it starts distinguishing itself after it denies the labour theory of value, saying that new forms of production must yield new forms of consumption. An interesting discussion of liberty soon follows. He has a keen eye to underappreciated people, which ameliorates his otherwise combative style.

I got House of Leaves from the library a couple of weeks ago, which at my current rate I might be done with by Christmas. I can't think of any book that has killed my initial enthusiasm so thoroughly. The premise is quite compelling: our protagonist discovers among the belongings of a recently deceased eccentric man a strange manuscript, about a series of events at a spooky house. The house isn't spooky because there's a ghost in the attic, but because it has non-euclidean properties. The manuscript is the meat novel, with a B-side story running through the extremely lengthy footnotes. The footnotes frequently disrupt the flow whilst being insubstantial. The novel itself digresses with lengthy tangents that at one point the footnotes meta-suggest aren't actually even worth reading. I'm hoping this is just a brief slump, because I am not going to make it otherwise.

I also started reading Etidorhpa. I am a sucker for strange journeys, so despite generally bouncing off this era of proto-scifi I am giving it a shot.

House of Leaves is a decent enough idea that overindulges itself in itself. If you reach a point where you've had enough then you've probably had all the meat off the bones and won't miss much by carrying on.

That is unfortunate, I'll keep your comment in mind.

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