Read it long time ago, and every year since, know almost every page by heart, talking about Boethius and his Wheel of Fortune!
Based of a quote of Jonathan Swift:
Whenever a true genius appears in the world
You may know him by this sign
That the dunces are all in a confederacy against him…
Only started but so far the book is amazing. It does however paint a rather grim picture of the future.
A few places in Pensees are difficult, but mostly not, because it is very epigrammatic in style. It is really a collection of his notes for a book that never got written. It was very popular among some high school friends 50 years ago, and it took me this long to get to it. A modern philosopher who is a delight to read, with a clear pungent style, is Eric Hoffer, whose landmark book, The True Believer, is crucial to understanding mass movements and modern terrorism.
@littlesparrow: I love Ender’s Game. It is now a standard in the high school curriculum because of its powerful treatment of bullying and bildungsroman content.
Yes, my elective spending is almost all on books, and browsing hole-in-the-wall bookstores is a part of all my travels. However, it is coming to an end. I have about 8,000 books and have to dispose of my dying father’s library of about 8,000 (reduced from 12,000 by those he donated to a Latvian English language library founded by a friend of his). So I am cutting down, though there are still things I wold like to find, such as John Wyndham’s last, unfinished novel, Web, or Gogol’s letters. I have not read Marquez’s famous book because I understand it is Marxist oriented, but based on your recommendation, backed by Musash1, I will give it a try. I think I have Dhammapada from my father’s library, but haven’t read it.
This is an interesting perspective. Can you define some characteristics of Chinese writing. I have read a number of Japanese novels, but The Three-Body Problem is the only Chinese novel I’ve read.
@Misjamig: I’ve long thought about reading A Confederacy of Dunces, which created a great sensation when it was published, due to the heartbreaking story behind it. Prophetic, one might say.
@Pohjois-karjala: I don’t know the Faye book, but I’ll look into it. It may be something that would interest our SF book club.
Describe chinese writing style in English is a hard topic.I will try it by an example.
There is a phrase '风花雪月’pronounced ‘feng hua xie yue’ in chinese. The meaning is like ‘romantic’ but its direct meaning is ‘wind flower snow moon’.this situation is a little like “ran cats and dogs” means “rain hard”.For some historic and culture reason some nouns(not only noun maybe all parts of speech)are combined together have specific meaning and this situation is especially common in Chinese. So when you want to understand chinese literature, you may need to have the same feeling with Chinese for some combined nouns. The another difference between chinese and English is there is only one syllable ending with an vowel in a chinese word. Maybe this is also why chinese speaker listen more noisy 
In fact a good chinese literature would choose the easy word with close or opponent vowel in a sentence to make itself read like a rap song but its content is much better than rap because the most rubbish have been throwed away by history.
Jane Eyre is with Chinese style because its words are easy and it usually combine describing thinking with describing scenery, those combinations are common in chinese poems and literature.
Finally a Chinese song named"风花雪月"(‘wind flower snow moon’））whose content is explaining the meaning of “风花雪月”. Its theme is " 风花雪月” means romantic between me and the world".It contains a lot other chinese combinations maybe hard to understand for foreigners. However you can find the difference between chinese pronunciation and English.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lv1eLKW11OI
Thank you That is very interesting. I liked the song a lot, though the melody and phrasing sound Western to me.
Please elaborate; what would happen if you read a Marxist-oriented book?
I’m sorry about your father and I wish you both strength.
So, I’ve never had more than a few hundred books at any given time, just enough to completely clutter the boardrooms that I rent. But I’m young, my library will grow with me.
I do intend to read everything that Wyndham wrote, but the only one I did so far was Trouble With Lichen. Gogol’s, Dead Souls—which is truly amazing!—and a short story: The Overcoat.
As for Márquez, I didn’t know anything about his political beliefs before opening One Hundred Years of Solitude, and now, having read it, I’m none the wiser, so it’s not something that transpire (or that I caught) in the text—in fact, hadn’t you mentioned Marxism, I would guess he leaned the other way. In any event, it’s good literature and it never devolves into propaganda.
The Dhammapada is really good. I really liked Wallis’ translation. By the way, I don’t know if you have read the Bhagavad Gita, but the more I learn about Go, the more I think every player would benefit from that incredible book.
About your SF club, I would like to recommend Eschbach’s The Carpet Makers to you as well. I have I keen appreciation for that book.
I never understood why so many people love enders game.
I have to admit that I had a bias while I read it, since I first learned about Orson Scott Cards political opinions and then read the book. But even when I try to force myself to look at the novel as objectively as I can, I simply see a mediocre (at best) scifi novel.
Despite numerous little, somewhat silly nitpicks, I have a few big problems:
The novel talks about bullying. And the quintessence seems to be: If you are bullied, hit first. And hit at hard as you possibly can, then you willl never get bullied again. If find this kind of solution… problematic at best.
The same goes for the characterization of Bozo Madrid. (Let’s not talk about his name). Spanish pride! He’s a walking stereotype. Problematic at best, racist at worst.
I used to be a intellectually gifted child. I hated it when grown ups would treat me like a child. Identifying with Ender should be really easy for me - but I can’t. Not in the slightest.
I really don’t get why this book as such a cult following
Regarding that scene, Ender was in a situation in which no help to the victim or punishment to the aggressors would possibly come from any external authority. Should those kids decide to beat him to a pulp, no one would stop them and nothing would happen to them. I would say that’s a relevant detail to leave out when pondering over the merits of the solution he chose.
And since the author didn’t give any indication that he believed Bonzo’s shortcomings represented the character’s nation, I don’t see why deciding to make him Spanish should be considered racism—I would say the same were he Brazilian, Turkish, American or what have you.
Blood of Spain by Ronald Fraser. It’s an oral history of the Spanish Civil War 1936-39, full of fascinating details. He interviewed 300 participants in the 1970s and distilled it down to this book, with bits and clippings from newspapers and radio speeches too. The conflict was about social inequality, conservative religious ideas, traditional ideas of what it meant to belong to the “nation,” the uselessness of politicians . . . very relevant to 2019.
Short answer: my presumption is that it would be a waste of time. However, as seen above, I am willing to modify that in the right circumstances Indeed, I’ve read a substantial amount of Marxist-influenced literature. Two of my favorite authors, London and Orwell, were socialists to the end, and I have read all their works, fiction and nonfiction. There is Gorky, whose short stories are magnificent and whose first autobiographical volume, My Childhood, is the finest autobiography I’ve ever read. Recently I’ve been hunting for B. Traven’s books, having been impressed by his last great collection of short stories, The Night Visitors , though I found his novel, General from the Jungle more propagandistic.
Wyndham used to be highly regarded, but seems to be half-forgotten today. Trouble with Lichen is one of the best books on its subject ever written, I think. But Triffids is his best overall. His early work in the pulps is also very fine, especially a novelette, “Exiles on Asperus.” The best of these early works were collected in a couple British paperbacks. Everything Gogol wrote is wonderful, and Dead Souls is on my short list of favorite novels. You encourage me on Márquez; I will give him a try.
The Bhagavad Gita, which I have not read, is part of the Mahabarata, said to be 10 times the length of the Bible. I am a huge fan of the Peter Brook staging of that for television back in the 1980s, which I have on tape off the PBS presentation. The DVD version of it is, I think, truncated.
It has complex character development, starting with the moral conflict that haunts Ender. We see how his killer instinct was largely engendered by his sadistic brother, and we see his attempts to use various strategies to deflect conflict, part of his growth in character. Schools use it as launching pad to discuss bullying, not as a template of a solution. Most people find the training sections inventive and exhilarating. It is also artistically impressive to see the moral conflict carried through from a small, personal scale into the larger world of conflict with the aliens. The book also has quite a lot of good material about leadership, which is also highlighted and discussed in schools.
If you haven’t read it already, I recommend Orwell’s personal account, Homage to Catalonia.
Well, the dictum, that when pushed into a corner, one should use extreme force to fight back, even more than necessary in the current situation, is a recurring theme, isn’t it? As far as I remember it even serves as a legitimation for the destruction of the alien homeworld. And I really miss a critical reflection of this dictum. As far as I remember Ender doesn’t even know that he has killed Bonzo (Btw. Sorry for the misspelling, I’m typing on my phone). Ender always comes off as innocent, he had to use lethal force. It reads more like a revenge fantasy than a story one could learn from.
I think it is mentioned at several points, that bonzo is the way he is because of his spanish upbringing. However, it’s possible that I misremember in this regard.
And while there certainly are people that behave like a stereotype in real life, having one of your main antagonists in your book be a walking stereotype just comes off as lazy writing. a
At least to me.
Now, I realize that it’s just too long ago that I read the book to have a truly substantial debate. However, I’ve found this article that reflects many of my problems with the book in a more concise and to the point way than I am able to write down.
The original rendition of my previous post included a description of my experiences with the exact kind of situation, but I figured this is a thread about literature in a forum about Go, thus it being unnecessary to delve into such matters—it will take a while before it gets removed by the system, though, in case you’re interested in perusing it.
Regarding to the proposed destruction of the alien homeworld, I believe that, again, the context should be presented before moving on to the value judgement: Earth had been invaded, not once but twice,1 by extraterrestrial forces, seemingly incapable of any known form of communication, each invasion having costed millions of lives, and everything indicated that the third wave was about to come and that, when it came, it would be impossible to defend the planet. That’s the context. Now it’s possible do debate the solution Earth’s defense forces chose in the book.
Then again, literature thread, forum about Go. I recommended a science fiction book, you don’t like it, others might read it and they may or may not like it, and that’s that. I only remarked at all about your post because I disagreed with what I perceived as an innacurate representation of an idea, not with your judgement of said idea—for I think this isn’t the for such discussions.
But anyway, I love books, and I really enjoy talking about them, so I thank you very much for giving me expedient to reflect about something that I had read a long time ago. It brought back some interesting memories.
1. By the way, that’s something I took umbrage with when it came to the movie: in the adaptation, Earth had been attacked once before that solution was proposed.
I am about to start the 8th book in the Expanse series. It is great science fiction and there are a few references to go. You can get more details at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Expanse_(novel_series)
Darth Bane Trilogy. Quite possibly best prose from Star Wars universe and merciful distractions from reality of contemporary Mickey Mouse Star Wars movies 
If I had to pick a single favorite book, it would be Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut.
I also like these short stories, which can be read online:
My favorite book is a toss-up between To Kill a Mockingbird and Of Mice and Men.
I am currently not reading anything, as I don’t have time, right now. Work, family, being sued, etc… One day, I hope to read again. I have a few books I need to catch up on.
![A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole [Ignatius J. Reilly strides through New Orleans]](https://static.microcosmpublishing.com/previews/dunces_lg.jpg)
