no. 457

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."

Groucho Marx

no. 413

This man, whom I once thought of as a romantic hero--a brave shining white knight, or the dark knight as he said. He’s not a hero, he’s a man with serious, deep emotional flaws, and he’s dragging me into the dark. Can I not guide him into the light?

"That pretty much sums up everything that's wrong here. This love conquers all bullshit that so much of modern pop culture seems to be built around. You can't change a man into a better person by just staying in an abusive relationship: staying in the relationship is just positive reinforcement of his abusive tendencies. The idea that we should glorify an abusive relationship into a romantic one is just fucked up and wrong."

Samurai Frog, from one of his in-depth, chapter-by-chapter dissections of "50 Shades Of Grey"

no. 405

no. 363

Susan Sontag on literature and freedom.

via

no. 331

via

no. 180

"I know some classes at the school had to read A Separate Peace, Catcher in the Rye AND The Great Gatsby.

There’s your problem, America. It’s not video games or the Internet that is making your white kids grow up into amoral, self-important whiners who expect to get away with everything. It’s making them read books about jaded assholes and then telling them it’s great literature.

And hell, some schools throw in Ayn Rand’s garbage on top of it! No wonder Youtube comments look like they do. It’s fucking evil.

At the same time, I was reading Frankenstein and The Island of Dr. Moreau and Gulliver’s Travels. And what did those books teach me? That white people who think they’re smarter and better than everyone else usually wind up trapped in a hell of their own making, and while they can eventually cut their way out of it, it will probably drive them insane, or at least otherwise ruin their lives. I think that’s a far better lesson."

The Virgin Prince

no. 139

"And I am pretty sure that’s the point of reading fiction — so someone else can say, in a way you never would have, something you recognize immediately."

Curtis Sittenfeld

no. 122

"It's plain that a deep river of nostalgia flows through most fantasy novels and films, especially those that dwell lovingly on feudal tropes and images. Chosen Ones. Prophecies. Kingly lineages that deserve to inherit rulership, by right of blood alone.

Ponder that, a moment. Millions of contemporary citizens of a free and scientific civilization - heirs of Enlightenment revolutionaries - now yearn for elvish mystics and secretive mages who never publish or share knowledge, nor open schools, nor turn palantirs into internets, nor offer the flea-ridden peasants flush toilets, nor even teach the germ theory of disease. Hierarchy and overall changelessness are somehow portrayed as romantically attractive. And always, there's that notion of better/wiser times, somewhere in the past."

David Brin

As should perhaps be obvious, Brin does not approve.

no.114