ITT: Books that people read just to feel smart

[(((I am NOT a jew)))]

Not I'm cynical and retarded.

That kind of fits.

 

[augment]

Also, Guns, Germs, and Steel. Diamond is a lying kike and most of his arguments fall flat as soon as you put them to any scrutiny. Papua New Guineans ain’t shit compared to western man.

That book has been criticized and attacked by pozzed out woke brainlets, as well as your bog standard rightwing megachud, not having read it now I'm immensely interested in it. It's a shame I find geographical essays so drab.

 

[Kalsarikännit]

That book has been criticized and attacked by pozzed out woke brainlets, as well as your bog standard rightwing megachud

Because it's a dumb book, lol.

 

[Obscura-Justin]

Never been a fan of Pynchon.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Roadside Picnic. ie. That book that inspired the game STALKER

Any time there's a game, TV show, or any other media deals with anomalies, exclusion zones, or any other kind of mystery were there's weird stuff happening, or the media is set in Russia that deals with nuclear fallout or a post apocalypse, there's always that one twat that says "It's just like Roadside Picnic!".

I've never read Roadside Picnic, and I doubt those internet people have either.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

That book has been criticized and attacked by pozzed out woke brainlets, as well as your bog standard rightwing megachud, not having read it now I'm immensely interested in it. It's a shame I find geographical essays so drab.

I dont' know what the dude's complaint against it is, but Jared Diamond's argument comes down to that all of the good crops and livestock were in the Old World and perhaps also Eurasia's horizontalness facilitated crop/livestock diffusion and Europe being all rivery and peninsula-ish made it better for tech too.

I used to believe it, but I'm not so sure now as I've come to realize the American Indian crops were extremely good. Why didn't they boom? Do you actually NEED livestock? Maybe they were just late because they started on settling down much later, being the last continents to fill in, and the gap would have been filled quickly.

One of the most convincing arguments I've heard for the West's takeoff is a combination of having a stable great power system (Escape from Rome) instead of a hegemonic power strangling the life out of everything or unstable empires, which is itself a consequence of distance from suitable nomad terrain, along with the proliferation of Protestantism having allowed commoners a much larger say at the negotiating table in Northern Europe helping to advance mercantile society there a lot more than in Southern Europe.

 

[Matt Damon]

We're seeing the equivalent of a CBT workbook for what was one of the most powerful men on the planet.

You're not exactly selling me on the value of the book by comparing it to therapy methodology for bona fide retards.

 

[seri0us]

In a similar vein, I don't think most people you are thinking about actually read On the Road; They just know the phrase "The only ones for me are the mad ones... etc". And don't understand the beat generation or it's origins or Jack Kerouac

Case in point. 1:56 of the video.

Why the heck would you even watch that video?

 

[glass_houses]

Truman Capote, In Cold Blood.

There is no such fucking thing as a nonfiction novel. It's a novel based on a real event but it's still a fucking novel. I've met and spoken to a number of people who insist on gushing over it at any opportunity and frankly, there is utterly no reason to. As far as an account of true crime goes, it is suboptimal and filled with imaginary conversations between characters. Truman's message, that humans are psychopathic arseholes- *gasp* really?- is not revolutionary, or new, and has been pontificated at length for millennia, probably starting around the time the first laws were made and then promptly broken. There are better accounts of scumbaggery in any number of fictional novels. There's a metric fuckton of true crime that details the intrinsic darkness of the human animal and the process of bringing that darkness to justice. There's philosophy. There's behavioural neuroscience and many decades of study on how history and environment shapes crime.

And then there's Truman Capote, who is supposed to have some kind of brilliant insight into the human soul, but in actual fact all he does is write characters being ordinary bastards and apparently that's revolutionary.

I have noticed a direct correlation between fans of Truman Capote and being an insufferable arrogant twat who refuses to read anything that isn't a well known book for 'smart' people.

 

[Xeno]

Beware of anyone who owns a copy of Sapiens or Thinking, Fast and Slow.

 

[MAPK phosphatase]

Roadside Picnic. ie. That book that inspired the game STALKER

Any time there's a game, TV show, or any other media deals with anomalies, exclusion zones, or any other kind of mystery were there's weird stuff happening, or the media is set in Russia that deals with nuclear fallout or a post apocalypse, there's always that one twat that says "It's just like Roadside Picnic!".

I've never read Roadside Picnic, and I doubt those internet people have either.

I've read Roadside Picnic, though I haven't played the game or watched the movie. I enjoyed it. It's a very intriguing book that captures the imagination. I imagine that's why it inspired so many later works. There are elements of westerns, where you have the badass loner exploring a new frontier. Though the badass loner is a tragic figure rather than a heroic one.
You should read it, though don't go in expecting high art. From what I hear that's more the domain of the movie.

 

[BBJ_4_Ever]

I'm truly surprised I've gotten this far and Umberto Eco has not been mentioned. Slogging through Foucault's Pendulum should be a prison punishment. On a positive note, the tome is heavy enough to use as a weapon.

 

[Judge Dredd]

It's a very intriguing book that captures the imagination. I imagine that's why it inspired so many later works.

Sounds like it might be okay. I've not really been inclined to read it due to the previously mentioned twats. I've been slowly working my way through the works of Lovecraft, and learning that most supposed Lovecraft fans are full of shit.

Having never read Roadside Picnic, my understanding is that the anomalies are left overs from aliens landing on Earth, hence the roadside picnic analogy?

Stalker (the game) was set in the Chernobyl exclusion zone and it's radiation that caused the anomalies. Stalker inspired Chernobylite and Into The Radius. Then there's the Metro games which take place in Russian underground train tunnels. I can see the similarity to Stalker aesthetically but I think we're moving so far away from the source material. I think I have the lineage right so far, but correct me if I'm wrong.

But when you get to games like Pacific Drive or GTFO, it feels stretched. Maybe I'm wrong and Roadside Picnic casts a wide net and it's influences can be seen in many games today. It's just as someone who enjoys a very specific subset of weird sci-fi but doesn't get along with Stalkers brown and Russia aesthetic, having everything compared to "the Stalker book" is frustrating. It would be like if any sci-fi story with space ships was compared to Star Trek. Or you're watching Blade Runner and the guy next to you rolls his eyes and says "I liked this better when it was called Neuromancer."

 

[MAPK phosphatase]

Having never read Roadside Picnic, my understanding is that the anomalies are left overs from aliens landing on Earth, hence the roadside picnic analogy?

Yes. It's never explicitly stated why the aliens left all this stuff on earth. Lots of people in-universe have lots of theories. Of course the authors favor the Roadside Picnic theory because the book is named after it and because of how it's framed in the story when we learn about it, but at the end of the day it's just one man's idea explaining the existence of the zones. We don't know if the authors favor it out of a sense of humor, or if they're suggesting that's the real reason the aliens left all this stuff on earth.

Stalker (the game) was set in the Chernobyl exclusion zone and it's radiation that caused the anomalies.

I'm just going off of what I've heard about these, but Stalker (the game) and Stalker (the movie) are explicitly inspired by Roadside picnic in many ways, but notable among them is that all three have Stalkers, they all have bizzare and unexplained anomalies/artifacts, they all throw bolts to detect them, and they all have a wish-granting thing at the center of the zone. This may be spoilers, but Roadside Picnic makes it explicit that the scientists are full of shit in thinking that just because they gave an anomaly a fancy sounding name they understand it better than the Stalkers with their slang terms for the same thing, so there's the theme that truly understanding the zone is a futile effort, but people are going to try it anyway and you can't really blame them for it. From what I understand, the game explains a bit more and the movie explains even less. There's also the fact that entering the zone is breaking the law, but it's so dangerous once you're on the inside that the government won't come after you.

Another thing is the nature of the Stalkers. Stalkers are independent, not affiliated with any government, scientists, or corporation. But that being said, they have a natural comradery with other Stalkers, like what soldiers develop with other soldiers because they all went through the same hell. On the face of it, Stalkers are drawn into the zone because of the money. It's lucrative and when you're young, desperate, and don't care that much for your own personal safety, the zone looks like a good option. Especially if you have been spurned by the rest of society and don't have much else. But it's HEAVILY implied that more than just money draws the experienced stalkers into the zone, though I'll spare you my interpretation. The point is, Roadside Picnic is as much about the character of the Stalkers as it is about the Zone. It's not just a long list of funky shit that happens.

Just being set in Russia doesn't make something inspired by the book. The book doesn't even take place in Russia. It's stated that Stalkers don't exist in the USSR because the Russians have their zone locked down so securely it's impossible for anyone to get in that the government doesn't want to get in.

Then there's the Metro games which take place in Russian underground train tunnels.

The Metro games are inspired by the Metro books, not Stalker or Roadside Picnic.

But when you get to games like Pacific Drive or GTFO, it feels stretched. Maybe I'm wrong and Roadside Picnic casts a wide net and it's influences can be seen in many games today.

Yeah, it's like the term Rogelike, which initially meant games closer to what is now the "immersive sim" genre, where so little focus was placed on graphics that the creator could focus on the breadth and depth of mechanics. But now it means procedural levels and restarting from the beginning when you die.
With the newfound popularity of STALKER, anything that contains an exclusion zone with anomalies is inspired by Roadside Picnic. Anything that gets popular will have people latching onto it trying to suck some of the popularity into their own projects.

 

[augment]

Isn't Focault's Pendulum a parody? I thought you weren't supposed to be engrossed by it. I wish I spoke italian because it's possibly more palatable in that language.

 

[roblox gay nazi sex club]

mein kampf
its like minecraft but shit

 

[Ged!]

Lincoln in the Bardo

Usually I say The Catcher in the Rye is the worst book I ever read, but that's only because I usually don't remember the fact that Lincoln in the Bardo exists, much less that I read it. Written by somebody named "George Saunders" (no, not that one), I'm almost certain this 350 pages of hardbound gibberish is little more than an elaborate practical joke, but in 2017 it won something called the "Man Booker Prize". Now, nobody had ever heard of the "Man Booker Prize" before or since it was awarded to Lincoln in the Bardo, but for some reason the whole affair became a big news story that year. I was given Lincoln in the Bardo as a Christmas gift by some sad fool who was presumably too shy to just give me a 20 dollar bill, and I imagine a lot of people have the same story as me. I have this weird hangup about not getting rid of a book I've been given as a gift before reading it, and that's how Lincoln in the Bardo became the worst book I ever read (when I can bother to remember that I read it).