3 ms·

> Read old books, preferably books published before the 1900s, it really alters your psyche to realise how different things were just 100 or so years ago. You

> Read old books, preferably books published before the 1900s, it really alters your psyche to realise how different things were just 100 or so years ago. You don't need to go that far. Something from 30 years ago will pretty much seem like an alternative reality.

eterm 1y ago
Something from 30 years ago falls in an uncomfortable spot between feeling current and yet not so at the same time. Many of the themes and concerns and even way of living will be similar, yet also just unfamiliar enough. Contemporary fiction from 60 years ago however feels just as much like a "period piece" as the victorian classics now do. Reading "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold" I was most struck by passages containing things that were so normal back then they needed no explanation or elaboration, yet are so alien to us now I had to read up a lot more about what they were talking about.
- PantaloonFlames 1y ago
  Can you give me some examples of “normal then, inscrutable now” ?
  - komali2 1y ago
    Very young people occasionally end up in my reading clubs and they of course intellectually understand that we didn't used to all carry cell phones, but I remember one specific time someone had a very hard time wrapping their head around the era when landline phones existed, but not everyone had one at home, and so you had to try to get someone at work or call a neighbor to ask about them. I guess there's going to be more inscrutable things from my childhood the older I get.
    - Nopoint2 1y ago
      I think that the incomprehensible part might be the levels of cooperation and trust to make it possible.
OtherShrezzing 1y ago
I don’t think a book from 1995 is going be especially alternative. High Fidelity was written then, and it’s mostly concerned with issues we’d consider contemporary today - and it’s not as if it’s written to be a timeless classic. The weirdest thing in it would be landline telephones. Gatsby on the other hand is a considerable departure from modernity.
HK-NC 1y ago
I feel when I read older stuff I'm more likely to be treated as an adult. I dont need 3 seperate forewords to Mein Kampf telling me the book is evil and cursed. I was surprised to read a 120+ yr old book on the conquest of peru that shit on the Christian Spanish where appropriate, without going full "noble savage", and shitting on the Incas where appropriate too.

eterm 1y ago

Something from 30 years ago falls in an uncomfortable spot between feeling current and yet not so at the same time. Many of the themes and concerns and even way of living will be similar, yet also just unfamiliar enough. Contemporary fiction from 60 years ago however feels just as much like a "period piece" as the victorian classics now do. Reading "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold" I was most struck by passages containing things that were so normal back then they needed no explanation or elaboration, yet are so alien to us now I had to read up a lot more about what they were talking about.

PantaloonFlames 1y ago
Can you give me some examples of “normal then, inscrutable now” ?
- komali2 1y ago
  Very young people occasionally end up in my reading clubs and they of course intellectually understand that we didn't used to all carry cell phones, but I remember one specific time someone had a very hard time wrapping their head around the era when landline phones existed, but not everyone had one at home, and so you had to try to get someone at work or call a neighbor to ask about them. I guess there's going to be more inscrutable things from my childhood the older I get.
  - Nopoint2 1y ago
    I think that the incomprehensible part might be the levels of cooperation and trust to make it possible.

OtherShrezzing 1y ago

I don’t think a book from 1995 is going be especially alternative. High Fidelity was written then, and it’s mostly concerned with issues we’d consider contemporary today - and it’s not as if it’s written to be a timeless classic. The weirdest thing in it would be landline telephones. Gatsby on the other hand is a considerable departure from modernity.

HK-NC 1y ago

I feel when I read older stuff I'm more likely to be treated as an adult. I dont need 3 seperate forewords to Mein Kampf telling me the book is evil and cursed. I was surprised to read a 120+ yr old book on the conquest of peru that shit on the Christian Spanish where appropriate, without going full "noble savage", and shitting on the Incas where appropriate too.