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Christopher
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progress:
(21%)
"The last few chapters are finally getting more interesting. I should probably read more on Daoism. I've increased my understanding of this novel after opening it once a week for six months more from reading a few chapters on Daoism this week than anything else I've done. Very heavy on Daoism and Buddhism. The language can be quite arcane, but now that there's zombies it's become a really quick read suddenly." — Dec 19, 2025 12:14AM
"The last few chapters are finally getting more interesting. I should probably read more on Daoism. I've increased my understanding of this novel after opening it once a week for six months more from reading a few chapters on Daoism this week than anything else I've done. Very heavy on Daoism and Buddhism. The language can be quite arcane, but now that there's zombies it's become a really quick read suddenly." — Dec 19, 2025 12:14AM
“Irony and cynicism were just what the U.S. hypocrisy of the fifties and sixties called for. That’s what made the early postmodernists great artists. The great thing about irony is that it splits things apart, gets up above them so we can see the flaws and hypocrisies and duplicates. The virtuous always triumph? Ward Cleaver is the prototypical fifties father? "Sure." Sarcasm, parody, absurdism and irony are great ways to strip off stuff’s mask and show the unpleasant reality behind it. The problem is that once the rules of art are debunked, and once the unpleasant realities the irony diagnoses are revealed and diagnosed, "then" what do we do? Irony’s useful for debunking illusions, but most of the illusion-debunking in the U.S. has now been done and redone. Once everybody knows that equality of opportunity is bunk and Mike Brady’s bunk and Just Say No is bunk, now what do we do? All we seem to want to do is keep ridiculing the stuff. Postmodern irony and cynicism’s become an end in itself, a measure of hip sophistication and literary savvy. Few artists dare to try to talk about ways of working toward redeeming what’s wrong, because they’ll look sentimental and naive to all the weary ironists. Irony’s gone from liberating to enslaving. There’s some great essay somewhere that has a line about irony being the song of the prisoner who’s come to love his cage.”
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“We're all human, aren't we? Every human life is worth the same, and worth saving.”
― Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
― Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
“Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”
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Around the World in 80 Books
— 30719 members
— last activity Dec 26, 2025 11:26AM
Reading takes you places. Where in the world will your next book take you? If you love world literature, translated works, travel writing, or explorin ...more
Christopher’s 2025 Year in Books
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