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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   2758 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 26, 2025

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?

I'm retrying Carnegie's The Gospel of Wealth Essays and Other Writings.

Too like the lightning. It's bad. It almost seems like a good premise, but has no execution. Maybe it'll get better?

Tried giving The Last Angel a read. Supposedly it's a perfectly reputable sci-fi story published in forum posts over multiple years. See https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/the-last-angel.244209/.

I already tried it a few years ago, but gave up because it seemed to simply be a vehicle for the author's lesbian fetish and mary sue protagonist. On my second try, it looked exactly the same, so I dropped it again.

I got I think two and a half books in. I enjoyed it greatly; I dunno, the (relatively low-key) yuri didn't bother me that much, and it seems to me that the term "mary sue" doesn't really apply to a doomsday-weapon superintelligent AI warship.

Relatively low-key? Practically every character is a woman! The handful of men you find throughout the text are few, one-dimensional and mostly negatively portrayed. Especially the humans. Frankly, from what I read, it seemed not just plausible but obvious that pre-story humanity was organized along strictly matriarchical lines, with every officer, politician and frankly every named character being a woman.

Hell, event he machines use feminine pronouns and display feminine personalities.

If I had the whole text in one file, I'd just search for "he" VS "she" and compare the numbers.

It's not the sex scenes that bother me but what this reverse-Bechdel-test-situation says about the author.

Finished Careless People. It has a lot of "hot" stuff, though I am not sure how true it all is. I can see why Facebook weren't happy about it being published, though I don't think they could do anything about it. Nobody (including the author) ends up looking any good at the end. I am thinking about writing a more detailed review for it.

been reading the Mr. Putter and Tabby books at bedtime. Just a wonderful set of kids books. Interestingly enough the author published 25 of them from 1994-2016, but I would say the first 5 are a class above most of the rest, and none of the ones after 13 are really anything special. i'll happily reread those first 5 and even 6-13 a pretty decent amount, but 14-25 get old.

You wouldn't think the author of a short kids series could rest on their laurels but they seem to be doing so.

Maybe next week I'll create my full ranked list for all the other young dads out there haha.

Resting on their laurels, or just using their best ideas first and having to fall back on their second-best later? Being a popular author has never been a safe career plan, so for those who try anyway it just makes sense to front-load hard and give their work the best chance of being seen at all. There's usually a countervailing effect, where any art improves with practice and later better implementations can make up for weaker concepts, but maybe kids' books have a higher ratio than most of inspiration to perspiration.

The art definitely improves, but something goes down - perhaps the winsomeness? The first ones have a bit of melancholy to them, these are stories about a elderly man and his old cat, no wife or grandkids in the picture, and his friendship with his elderly neighbor and her dog. So there is some inherent melancholy to that which I think the early ones convey in the midst of these stories that have their funny and positive elements as well.

Finishing What Not.

I can see why it's less known than Brave New World. I don't want to sound sexist but it comes across as a noticeably feminine book. Lots of discussion of people, little discussion of ideas. For example the main character begins by spending the opening of the book judging people's outfits. Also it's written in a strange tone, very characteristic of its era, which is not so much wry as it is arch. It's neither outright snooty or genuinely humorous, just persistently self-satisfied.

There is a story that pivots on a government eugenics policy but the book seems more concerned with how that affects people's intimate relationships than with the broad effects on society. As it stands the major threads are whether the main character will follow her heart or her head, and whether a village's uppity yokels and their staid vicar will acquiesce to their liberal-minded and better dressed metropolitan visitors.

About a hundred pages into The Story of a New Name, the second book in Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Quartet.

Like the first book, it's extremely well-written and the characters are well-drawn and believable. But my God, it is bleak. It's so dour, humorless and devoid of hope or optimism, I dread picking it back up again.

I’ve read a couple books like that and. Ugh.

Not going to judge if you don’t finish it. Time is the most precious commodity.

I told the girlfriend I'd read it, so I'm stuck.

Oh God. It’s My Brilliant Friend? My girlfriend found it very compelling, explained the premise to me, and I had a very similar reaction to yours. I’m sure it’s deeply compelling and literary, but I do not want to inhabit those situations.

Yes, it's the second book in that series, and picks up the story exactly where My Brilliant Friend left off.

I've been trying to read through DC comics released since 2023 with their soft Dawn of DC re-organization of titles. There's a hell of a lot of messy history and lore to the universe even with editors trying to shed baggage and start fresh storylines.

Book of the Dead 4: Vengeance by RinoZ.

Is it better than the insect series?

Dunno, I haven't read the insect series so I can't really compare the two. All I can say is that it's serviceable enough, and it's kept my interest through the first three books now, and on a premise that I wasn't so sure would do it at all to start, but then again, it's not a hard thing to get my interest and keep it.

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