Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid - welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.
Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.
If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.
The post Xitter web has spawned so many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
Am seeking suggestions on audiobooks to listen to! I think I’d like to start with the works of Ursula K. Le Guin, tho I don’t know what order to go with, or if that matters.
If I may add to these excellent suggestions:
The Night Circus and The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern
Go in cold, do not spoil! Enjoy with a a warm beverage. The readers are phenomenal.
The Laundry Files series by local hero Charles Stross, in which it turns out that P=NP, the Great Old Ones can be summoned in polynomial time, Cthulhu ate America via regulatory capture, and the world is suffering from the magical equivalent of global warming. Our protagonists have to mitgate all of this on a British civil servant's salary.
The Quantum Thief trilogy by Hannu Rajaniemi, in which Our Regular Subjects have become a problem.
the night circus is one of my favourite books of all time ever, very much recommend. If you like that the magicians by Lev Grossman feels very similar in a way I cannot put my finger on, though it does not really fit into this list.
Ursula is great! I love The Dispossessed. You can kinda read them in any order based on what catches your attention, except stuff like Earthsea that is best consumed in order.
if you like this kind of stuff I would recommend also:
If you don't mind reading comics online you could check Fairmeadow.
First impressions on this because I don't have anyone else to talk about it and you pointed me to it,
spoilers for uh the first 20 or so pages of Fairmeadow ig, click to open:
If the queer experience on the 90s island of Harris intrigues you, we're halfway through Douglas Stuart's John of John and really enjoy it. Narrator has a Scots accent though, if you find that hard to deal with.
I guess I will learn what my tolerances for Scots is!
For the Hainish Cycle books the order doesn't matter too much, they're not direct sequels.
I started with (and would recommend starting with) The Left Hand of Darkness. The first 3 Hainish novels are also her first novels and she was still developing her style, in my opinion. I think The Dispossessed is her finest work, although I still haven't read all of her novels.
thanks, noted!
The Earthsea novels are not to be missed either. Maybe pass on the fifth.
Also noted!
Tales from Earthsea is also good.
I didn’t mind The Other Wind… it isn’t as good as the others, but that’s a tough act to follow. It does draw together a bunch of plot threads from the previous books and provides a kind of closure, which I appreciated. There was more to say of Earthsea, but le Guin wasn’t going to have the time or energy for that.
Le Guin deserves credit for responding to her earlier work without denigrating it.
Barbara Rosenblat's recordings of the Amelia Peabody novels are fun.
thanks!