4 ms·
see my nick, but in addition to stephenson, the books i come back to over and over again for comfort and wisdom include: - Lord of the Rings: The other bible.
by hprotagonist 7y ago
see my nick, but in addition to stephenson, the books i come back to over and over again for comfort and wisdom include:
- Lord of the Rings: The other bible. Not even the very wise can see all ends; be of good cheer.
- A Wrinkle In Time: 9 year old me, there is such a thing as a tesseract, and there is also Mrs. Beast.
- The Master and Margarita: apocalyptic reading from someone who knew, and a cat who always pays his way.
- the Discworld series: Sir Terry knew our hearts better than most, and sin, young feller, is treatin’ people as things.
- If On A Winter’s Night, A Traveler: a perfect joke that you can tell once, plus a love story.
- Good Omens: Gaiman and Pratchett team up, what’s not to love?
- Moby Dick: And so the universal thump is passed round, and all hands should rub each other’s shoulder-blades, and be content.
- Lucky Jim: grad school, a survival guide. Come in on the fa la la las, there’s a good chap.
This doesn’t include poetry, which is also in my head constantly.
- thaumasiotes 7y ago> Good Omens: Gaiman and Pratchett team up, what’s not to love? It's a good book, but aesthetically it suffers in my mind because it's a rewrite of Pratchett's earlier book Sourcery.
- hprotagonist 7y agowe do not speak of early discworld. i like the gaiman/pratchett teamup. They balance each other out very nicely.
- armenarmen 7y agoDamnit. I had somehow missed that for years, but you are right.
- tkamphefner 7y agoThis guy samurai sword fights. Your list includes Moby dick, which stands out to me as pretty different (much more intense read) than the rest. What'd you get out of it?
- hprotagonist 7y agoI think a lot of people overestimate Moby Dick. It's actually a pretty funny book in many places. There's a fart joke in the first 3 pages! Still, melville had a lot to say about human nature, abolitionism, philosophy, xenophobia... name a pressing concern of american life in the modern age and you'll find echoes of it here, too.
- henry_bone 7y agoNot to mentioned the prose ... "For the height of this sort of deliciousness is to have nothing but the blankets between you and your snugness and the cold of the outer air. Then there you lie like the one warm spark in the heart of an arctic crystal. "
- frabbit 7y agoLucky Jim is wonderful: "the strangely neglected topic"
- hprotagonist 7y ago"Consciousness was upon him before he could get out of the way."
- Dowwie 7y agoHBO better not disappoint us with their Snow Crash series. This was such a fun book.
- hprotagonist 7y agoI’m not keen to watch it. It’s probably unfilmable; all the exposition text is hard. If you’re going to try, I think the visual style that would work the best would be animated. The real world could be done in Heavy Metal style, and the ‘verse done like ReBoot — or maybe akira or something. I’m not at all excited about a live action version.
- Dowwie 7y agoI agree and considered this as well. An anime Snowcrash could be great.
- blaser-waffle 7y agoSeconded. Look at Altered Carbon -- they even released an anime season on Netflix. Ghost In The Shell also comes to mind as a good cyberpunk treatment in anime.