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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 15th, 2023

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  • Godel, Escher, Bach
    Infinite Jest
    The Lord of the Rings
    The Demon-Haunted World
    The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
    Slaughterhouse-Five
    Small Gods
    Master and Commander

    and everything else written by those authors.

    The first two or three on that list might take several fits and starts to get through, YMMV, but they are WELL worth the effort, and you will come out the other side changed by the experience. The others are all pretty easily digestible, but no less transformative.




  • Technically it was a train, and they were experiencing a transcendent connection across time with their older selves, in a deliberately unsettling and transgressive scene meant to evoke the rawness of adolescence being laid bare before the worst cosmic horror – an eldritch carrion-eater who feeds on destroying the souls of children – as a way of reclaiming strength from vulnerability. At any rate, depiction is not endorsement.

    But yes, considering how many actual adults misinterpret and mischaracterize that scene, I don’t recommend that particular book to children – not because they’ll be damaged by it, but because they won’t have the wisdom of age to understand it.