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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   2973 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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Infinite Jest

One I need to reread. It's been over a decade since I read it.

Fat City Gardner — ... a vignette of the low end of life in mid century California.

Always recommended as a boxing book, but the parts about the bleakness of life in Stockton on skid row for the working classes is what I took away from it.

On The Marble Cliffs Junger — I’m not sure I really got it,

How I felt after reading Eumeswil, but I still need to get around to Marble Cliffs. Glass Bees, by comparison, was direct and easy to follow for a tard like myself.

Portnoy’s Complaint Roth

A fun read, but well over the line of how much Jewish neuroticism I find acceptable. It wasn't a surprise, I knew what I was getting into, but man. It's never-ending. I thought American Pastoral and Human Stain were better, especially the latter. Roth has amazing sentences on almost every page of his writing.

I was thinking I didn't break a dozen books this year, but apparently I broke 2 dozen, not even counting the re-reads. I don't think I'll finish Karamazov by the end of the year since I'm 2/3 done right now.

Serious and Less Serious Stuff
Barth – Sot Weed Factor
Franzen – the Corrections, Freedom
Kesey – Sometimes a Great Notion
Chabon – Wonder Boys, Yiddish Policeman's Union
Chuck Kinder – The Honeymooners
Buzzati – The Stronghold
Ellroy – LA Quartet, Underworld USA trilogy
Ellis – The Informers, Lunar Park, The Shards (got halfway, then quit--ridiculously padded and a good editor would cut half)
Malaparte – The Skin
Wodehouse – The Jeeves Omnibus 1-4
Tartt – The Secret History
Clavell – Shogun

Horror
Sarban – The Sound of his Horn, The Sacrifice and Other Stories
Nevill – The Ritual
Hurley - Starve Acre
Thomas Tryon – Harvest Home
Stoker – Dracula

Rereads
Vandermeer – 3 Ambergris books
Mieville – Kraken, The Scar
Laird Barron – first 3 short story collections
Bishop – The Etched City
Pynchon – Vineland

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