Listen Fat, President Trump makes me want to be a better man.
Naysayers may laugh, but it's how I feel in my heart.
He makes me want to work harder. Learn more. Become stronger. Expand my talents. Think Big. Fight. Not waste my time. Never give up. Become great and leave a legacy.
I got to thinking, during this time of quarantine when many of us have extra time, rather than fritter it away, like doing Meth with male hookers in hotel rooms, reach out to my caterpillars here on .win to tap into this infinite well of knowledge for things we can be doing to MAGA by Making Ourselves Great Again, because after all, what is America? It's not the magic dirt. It's us.
Suggestions for personal, spiritual, family, health, career, education, leisure, and any others are welcome. We may never become as great as Donald Trump, few ever have or will, but let us die trying.
oooh only three...
ill have to go by best of genre for more than three
Most Beloved in Lit
disgrace by coetzee / idiot by dostoyevsky / master and commander by obrien / daisy miller by henry james / dead souls by Gogol / THE BRONTES EVERYTHING / All Vonnegut / Catch-22 by Heller
(note but I do enjoy lighter lit like McCall-Smith, Flannery O'Connor, Maugham, Trollope, Flaubert, Mark Twain, not so much Austen)
most reviled (lit category)
Heartbreaking work of staggering genius (Eggers) / Atlas Shrugged (full of herself and pretentious and she wasted my time) / david copperfield (too much style and immersion, not enough substance to the plot) / Anything by John Updike / Margaret Atwood
Most Beloved SciFi
Count Zero by W Gibson, and about 2/3rds of Gibson was good. Some were meh... / SNOW CRASH YEAHHHH / Hard Wired by Walter Jon Williams / Foundation Series / Dune
SciFi Reviled
Most of Phillip K Dick / Ray Bradbury / Phillip K Farmer
Action / Cop / Mystery / etc loved:
Agatha Christie / Some Clancy / Georges Simeon / Lillian Jackson Braun (shut up idgaf) / Godfather books / Some Grisham
Not so much: Earl Emerson / Books that read like i'm 5 / PD James / Nelson DeMille
Notable Mentions: I loved the Twilight series (tyes i can explain myself on that), I love Dave Barry, I love Douglas Adams. I hate Terry Pratchett. I thought LOTR was ok. I thought Once and Future King was pretty decent, but not my writing style. I adore Diana Wynne Jones.
Reading right now: My son has been badgering me to read his Eragon series, so I'm reading that.
Next up unless I change my mind: Anna Karenina.
Was that too much? I can't help it I am a huge book nerd. What I hate most: Nasty endings with an emotional toll, like The Old man and The Sea, White Oleander, East of Eden, etc. But if its a black nasty ending dripping with irony its OK.
edit: also hate multi-generational books. I do NOT want to drop characters partway through and pick up new ones, like the Narnia series or whatever.
This Tender Land, William Kent Krueger. Best book I've read this year.
Bernard Cornwell, The Archer's Tale. I've read all of his, but this was probably my favorite series. It was called Harlequin in the UK, I think.
Dan Simmons, Hyperion. Like Snow Crash, it's a sci fi classic. It didn't start a genre, but similar to Gibson and Ian m. Banks, I think it's prescient. Also, did you know that Elon Musk likes to name his space craft and recovery vehicles in the manner of Bank's Culture ships.
Much of Martin Cruz Smith's stuff is beautifully written. I wrote about ten thousand words on something one day, then read a bit of Polar Star that night and wanted to cry because his writing seemed so effortless.
An off the wall suggestion for you is Lawrence Block. When The Sacred Ginmill Closes, A Walk Among the Tombstones, all of the early Scudder books are gritty and real, and his Bernie Rodenbarr books are fun and light cozy mysteries in the style of Christie but more fun and less murder.
Enjoy, I'm going to check out Gogol and Diana Wynne Jones from you list, as I haven't read them.
i love these reccs, all of these are getting hunted down and read, hyperion first. yuuuuge TY!!
My pleasure. Hyperion is one of my top three favorite Sci Fi books. Along with Speaker For the Dead and Peter F. Hamilton's Reality Dysfunction. I'm kind of into sentient ships.
i don't mind them... for me, I am looking for good style and command of the written word. I appreciate simplicity and pared down, because it takes a lot more skill than bloviating like Ayn Rand. I like when the humor comes through the way the author intended it to. Which is why Snow Crash is possibly the greatest book ever. There is NO humor in the actual narrative text, but the scenes are hilarious. Nice juxtaposition. I also go for long absorbing sophisticated text, but not for its own sake which is why Rand, Anne Rice, and Charles Dickens annoy me. I think Bronte and Ralph Waldo Emmerson are good examples of wordy stuff that's still fun to read. There has to be some meat on the bones, you know.
This is what's so great about Russian authors, its a long, meandering, immersive tale, but just like a movie, no scene or interaction is without essential meaning somehow. Its pared down, but not so much that it rushes you along. Theyre so good at that, its amazing. When you read them, you are not rushing through, or slogging through.
That tends to be why I lean toward sci fi, its nearly all meat, and its just a matter of pacing. thats why I thought LOTR was just good but not great... the pacing was not to my liking. Also, I know he did his darndest to be descriptive, but it wasn't his forte. If Anne Rice had written his descriptive passages, it would have been a masterpiece on a whole other level.
I particularly enjoy good vampire novels, and good cyberpunk.
Dune is awesome, and Diana Wynne Jones is awesome. I don't usually see too many mentioning her.
Any Lovecraft love on this group, by the way?
Lovecraft love here. I have a jillion Lovecraft audiobooks if you're interested.
That's neat! Where did you get them from? I'm interested in Lovecraft audios.
I've gotten them all over the place. Buy them, find them online, some are podcasts, etc. A friend and I collect them obsessively. I'll share mine with you but I have to think of a sensible way. I used to sit in my car in the dead of night and listen to them to scare myself.
The Eragon books were fun. You sound like a homeschooler.
i am now! I think its good for kids to go to school for the social aspects, but we have always done supplemental lessons at home because the teaching is inadequate.
It's not easy when your kids grow up to stay bonded over common interests, so I read the books they like and I got them all into Magic the Gathering early on, so we all have something to do together as they grow older.
I homeschooled my kids and have long believed that all responsible parents home school their kids whether they send them to school or not. I would have friends who taught their kids every bit as much as I taught mine claim they could never homeschool full time like me. The social aspects were never an issue for us because my kids were is no many activities. That can be difficult depending on where you live, lifestyle, personalities etc...