1984
this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2025
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Sometimes I’ll read it as a hopeful story and stop the chapter before they get arrested.
If you read it that way it starts as grumpy guy in totalitarian hellscape who hates himself and ends with him having found someone, being enlightened by resistance, and having a will to live.
(Of course the point isn’t to stop there. But sometimes I feel like reading the book again without being too gloomy.)
I think it also helps to understand the context of him writing the book. Specifically his experience as a libertarian socialist in revolutionary Catalonia and the oppression (incl executions and imprisonment) he and his comrades faced from Stalinist factions who treated the anarchists as threats to their power.
Why 1984 always hit more. Dude was writing from actual lived experience.
you should read his journals, he thought Hitler was too big of a bafoon to ever become a real threat. 1984 was pretty close to just a Stalin documentary though.
True but it was also his view on something that could happen to england. His view on how an established totalitarian system modelled after Stalinism could take hold and look like in the UK.
Basically written as a sort of warning.
yeah the more i learn about ww2 the crazier the things become that i didn't know about
It's a great book to bring perspective to the foggy real-world of politics.
Also, the book doesn't theoritically stop at the end when he dies, because all governments rise and fall throughout history.
I non-ironically consider it a hopefull book in those ways.
At the time, Gollum. Sure he died having retaken the ring but he would have also known that the ring was doomed and above all other things, even his own life, he would have wanted to keep the ring safe. I think it was my first real taste of a character who was completely irredeemable, despite Frodo and eventually Sam offering him kindness and friendship. Was pretty hard ending for a young me to think about that some people cannot be saved.
Smeagol was redeemable, but it couldn't be done in the middle of a warzone by two desperate men who are carrying the source of his addiction.
Smeagol needed years of therapy by trained experts far away from the ring.
Bro had centuries of essentially the opposite of a therapist. Not sure anyone would be able to fix that.
Ha, I can imagine Elrond actually trying that.
But my serious response is that Bilbo, Frodo, and Sam all chose to go to the Undying Lands rather than live without the ring, even though that would mean certain death as they approached it in the ship and likely oblivion as they not of the Eldar. All three had lives worthy of envy in a virtual paradise before and after their time with the ring, Sam even held on till Rosey died, but all three chose death.
The fact that the Shire is a paradise is exactly why Frodo couldn't stay. The people there could never understand what he had been through. The horrors of war, the hardship he endured.
Odysseus just wanted to go home, man...
The Stormlight Archive is all about mental illness so this could literally be any character from that series.
Fitz. But I think that was the point. Zero win for the guy.
The Realm of the Elderlings series. All books. Most characters.
I'm still addicted to the books though.
I think that's what I must have looked like coming to the kitchen after that scene when I read Winnetou III as a 12 year old.
Main character in the Twisted Ones. She left that story as ignorant as she started. I know little about the twisted ones. Why can you get pregnant with a rock? What is the other half, since the children still seem cobbled together? Is it a ritual? What's the source of this power, and what's the purpose of it? Just seems like a bunch of bones and a lady, why go through this? How come Conrad alludes to being extremely old and no one cares or investigates who or what he is? Conrad said he crossed the sea to get to the current location, so how are all these paths connected? Are there portals everywhere? What triggers the shift, or is it one central location? Why was the grandma able to keep them back? What happened to the green book, and if it was so important that Conrad was trying to write it from memory, what was supposed to be in that book? Why did Conrad become one of those things and how does that even work? How do you keep memories when you change forms? WHY DIDN'T SHE BRING ANYTHING TO THE FINAL FIGHT EXPECT THE DAMN DOG!?
It jsut feels like she went to clean up the house, crazy stuff happened, and she just left. Didn't really seemed like she changed or was affected.
Robin Swift. I felt equally hopeful and hopeless. Babel sat in my stomach like a painful knot. I haven’t thought about it in awhile but the feeling is still there.
Perhaps controversial opinion, but I recently re-read The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, and I found the core message to be something of a mixed message. Being responsible for what you domesticate isn't a bad takeaway, but I felt like domestication also extended to friendship and relationships in a problematic way. No spoilers, but it has an ending that can be read as a bittersweet faerie-tale or a deeply troubling message about failure and regret. It meant a lot to me when I read it as a teenager, and now I'm not sure what I think about it, at least not yet.
Harry Dresden. His journey has soured me n what for years was my favorite book series.
I requested elaboration
Is this because every time he gets a girlfriend it's only so he can suffer because she immediately dies or suffers a fate worse than death?
Were any of his girlfriends fridged?
I wasnt bothered by it but i was definitely confused about what i read. There was this book I read called The Jade Unicorn. It's about a coke dealing man whore who is the chosen one and has to stop a raping demon with his good guy powers.
Ya the grape scenes were graphic.
I'll tie you to a radiator and grape you in the mouth!
Yeah, I don't see anything wrong with this, he's a fun mascot!
Charlie Gordon
[off topic?]
It's a general rule in mysteries/thrillers that if a woman is sexy, beautiful, and independent she'll die, usually before the main character arrives.
Three notable exceptions. "Sea Of Love" movie with Al Pacino. The sexy lady is a suspected serial killer.
"Thin Air" novel by Richard K. Morgan. In this book, it's a man slut who gets killed. It's amusing to look on as the narrator gets more and more jealous of the dead man's sex life.
I can't mention the last one without giving away the plot.