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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   1988 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 31, 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?

I'm going through Richter's Pictures of a Socialistic Future, and early novel on dystopian socialism. It's a slow burn, and it's interesting to see what was within the imagination of early observers.

I, Claudius.

I’m really enjoying it so far. It’s interesting to me how older books (I, Claudius was written in the 1930s) tend to have much longer paragraphs compared to todays ADD-riddled one and two sentence paragraphs. I’m thinking particularly about NYT articles where you hardly ever reach four sentences in a paragraph. But modern books are written that way as well.

Reading these older books takes some getting used to, but I find they can be just as compelling and page-turning as the modern stuff.

Anyway, the book itself is quite interesting and I’m looking forward to finishing it.

Most current fiction seems like it's written to be adapted as a movie/tv show - 80% dialogue and 20% spectacle. Some first-person stuff still has significant sections of internal monologue but even that is getting less common in my experience.

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