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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   1488 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 14, 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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I'm currently at 20 books and I doubt I'll finish Le Morte d'Arthur in the next three weeks.

There’s almost no one I talk about it with who doesn’t reply with some variation of: A) Insecure Excuses along the lines of I WISH I had TIME to read so much, and I wasn’t so BUSY all the time [with things presumably far more important than FHM’s leisurely reading]; B) Books are Dumb along the lines of I only read blog posts summarizing non-fiction self help books; C) Braggadocio, Actually I read THREE HUNDRED SIXTY FIVE BOOKS this year, how did you ONLY read 26.

Aren't those the three most obvious responses?

  1. It's cool you did this and I wish I did

  2. It's dumb you did this and I'm glad I didn't

  3. It's cool you did this and I did it too

My top books this year:

  1. Two Years Before the Mast: an absolutely incredible story of seamanship, camaraderie, and the old west. Reading this book in the California summer was an unforgettable experience. It is on the very knife's edge of exponential growth taking root in California that has lasted through today. Be sure to read the author's postscript on his return visit 24 years after and his son's postscript 72 years after. An unspeakable sense of nostalgia and yet also a sense of what stays the same.

  2. A Confederacy of Dunces: Absolutely the funniest thing I've ever read, period (and yes I've read all the Britbong funnymen). Even better if you've met a couple guys who reflect facets of the substantial and well-formed soul of Ignatius J. Reilly.

  3. Anna Karenina: A book like this is hard to even review, but it's certainly worth your while. One small aspect: it's deeply amusing that Tolstoy seems to think that subsistence farming is basically the right and proper mode of agricultural activity for the Russian landowning class. Disregard mechanization. Leave behind optimization. RETVRN to mowing hay from dawn to dusk with a sickle, shoulder to shoulder with the illiterate peasants. If you're making any money, you're doing it wrong.

A Confederacy of Dunces: Absolutely the funniest thing I've ever read

I'm going to have to beg to differ on this one, I really did not understand the hype. Most of the book I just felt sorry for this fucking loser's poor mother.

I hated Dunces so very much. I didn't even make it halfway before I started hoping for Ignatius' death.

It's probably because you're almost a Britbong.

Did you like The Ginger Man? I hated that one, by the end I was hoping he and his buddies would get the lethal injection but apparently Irish people love it.

Huh, I've never even heard of The Ginger Man. Might have to check it out.

Anna Karenina: A book like this is hard to even review, but it's certainly worth your while.

I read it for the first time in high school, and barely understood it. I read it again a couple years back, and enjoyed it greatly and got a lot out of it, but felt like I got bored of it near the end. Then that same week I was reading some interview in the NYT Sunday Book Review, and the author said he didn't really get Anna Karenina until he turned 40, and I sat there like fuuuuuck I gotta wait another seven years?

Two Years Before the Mast: an absolutely incredible story of seamanship, camaraderie, and the old west. Reading this book in the California summer was an unforgettable experience. It is on the very knife's edge of exponential growth taking root in California that has lasted through today. Be sure to read the author's postscript on his return visit 24 years after and his son's postscript 72 years after. An unspeakable sense of nostalgia and yet also a sense of what stays the same.

Somehow I'm both not sure what this book is about, and sure I want to read it, from this little review.

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