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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2884 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for December 19, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Great haul from a nearby half-price books today.

  • Absolution, Jeff Vandermeer. I adored the original trilogy for reasons touched on here, and while I was colder on the third book, I still absolutely endorse it. When I saw a new book with sweet cover art, I had to try it.
  • Triplanetary, Edward E. Smith, Ph.D. That's how he's billed on the cover. I've never read a Lensman book, but it's well-known enough to have gotten a reprint listing all sorts of awards. Said reprint is still endearingly retro.
  • Red Mars, K.S. Robinson. I was sure this came up on the Motte recently; all I can find is discussion of Years of Rice and Salt. Ah well.
  • The Road, Cormac McCarthy. I have it on good authority that this is an unpleasant read. That doesn't actually tell me what to expect. Perhaps it will be improving literature in some way. Regardless, it's influential apocalyptica, so I feel the need to try.
  • Co. Aytch, Sam Watkins. A Confederate memoir. Picked up on the recommendation of a random Reddit thread.
  • The Killer Angels, Michael Shaera. Also Civil War, but historical fiction.
  • A sweet cutaway book about armored vehicles. What more can I say?

I was very meh on Absolution. Don't know why, but it just didn't do much for me.

I loved the Lensmen books as a kid. May have to give them a reread one of these days.

I did not much like Red Mars. I find KSR dry as dust.

Cormac McCarthy is very hit-or-miss for me. No Country For Old Men is fantastic, and Blood Meridian is one of my favorite books ever. But I have not much liked any of his other books, and I really disliked The Road. It was written like "Literary author thinks he's invented the post-apocalyptic novel."

Literary author thinks he's invented the post-apocalyptic novel.

Kek, that’s how I felt about Phillip Roth’s The Plot Against America but for alt-history. I did like it a lot though.

Maybe I'm easily impressed, but I genuinely thought that The Road was actually a very good book. Is it pretentious? Yeah, sure! But he does a good job of it! I keep coming back to it. There are lines from it that stick.

He lay listening to the water drip in the woods. Bedrock, this. The cold and the silence. The ashes of the late world carried on the bleak and temporal winds to and fro in the void. Carried forth and scattered and carried forth again. Everything uncoupled from its shoring. Unsupported in the ashen air. Sustained by a breath, trembling and brief. If only my heart were stone.

He turned and looked at the boy. Maybe he understood for the first time that to the boy he was himself an alien. A being from a planet that no longer existed. The tales of which were suspect. He could not construct for the child's pleasure the world he'd lost without constructing the loss as well and he thought perhaps the child had known this better than he. He tried to remember the dream but he could not. All that was left was the feeling of it. He thought perhaps they'd come to warn him. Of what? That he could not enkindle in the heart of the child what was ashes in his own.

When your dreams are of some world that never was or of some world that never will be and you are happy again then you will have given up.

This is a great haul, congrats!!! Man I want to go back to the used bookstore.

The Road, Cormac McCarthy. I have it on good authority that this is an unpleasant read.

It's the most optimistic book that could possibly be written about an ailing father and thoroughly traumatized son in a world that no longer supports life. Seriously, it's heartwarming stuff. It will make you a better dad. The unpleasantness is only skin-and-flesh-and-bones-and-organs-deep; the whole point of the book is that there is a core of goodness that, if actively maintained, is invincible even in the face of certain annihilation.

Let me know what you think of The Killer Angels, I was just talking about it with someone.

Joss Whedon based a lot of the dialog in Firefly off it.

I read The Road a few weekends ago and while I did not end up sobbing, I did end up thinking for a good long while about how soft and easy my life is in historical terms.

I read The Road and was sobbing literally for hours when I got to the end. That's what you ought to expect.

Red Mars is a pretty decent book, even the weird and clunky sex shit is very mild for sci-fi. I do think the author's commitment to a materialist view of history comes at the expense of satisfaction for the reader in some parts.

The Road is a great, great read and deserves your time. Also very readable, not some ponderous tome that may Improve you. Read No Country For Old Men if you "enjoy" it.

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