3,129 books
—
3,676 voters
David
https://www.goodreads.com/davidh219
“Try describing a few of the most wildly successful pop albums of the twentieth century without mentioning the artist and title. A concept rock album about a fictional Edwardian military band, featuring musical styles borrowed from Indian classical music, vaudeville, and musique concrete, its sleeve design including images of Karl Marx, Oscar Wilde, Marilyn Monroe, Carl Gustav Jung, Sir Robert Peel, Marlene Dietrich, and Aleister Crowley? That’s Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by The Beatles, one of the biggest selling records of all time. How about a record exploring the perception of time, mental illness, and alterity? Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon, which has to date sold around 45 million copies worldwide. Ask any of those 45 million who bought a copy of The Dark Side of the Moon if they thought themselves pretentious for listening to an album described by one of the band members as “an expression of political, philosophical, humanitarian empathy,” and the answer would almost certainly be no.”
― Pretentiousness: Why It Matters
― Pretentiousness: Why It Matters
“The fable of the Emperor’s New Clothes is brought up time and again, a conspiracy to dupe someone, a pretense designed to make the innocent or gullible look stupid. It’s a narcissistic paranoia; most artists don’t have the time or money to bother playing such a prank and are far more concerned with spending their days pursuing ideas in the studio, however absurd those ideas may appear to others.”
― Pretentiousness: Why It Matters
― Pretentiousness: Why It Matters
“Comfort with an art form that uses language comes because we all own it, to one degree or another. Words come from flesh and bone and only require a body to read, write, speak, or listen to them. But language also intimidates people into respect: it is the tool of untrustworthy politicians, of bureaucrats—of those trained in the arts of rhetoric. It can be used to control and crush others; fluency and confidence in language is a symbol of education and power. Perhaps it’s because of this deep-seated respect and fear of language that the media will vent spleen over large sums of money being awarded to visual artists for making images and objects, but never criticize a literary prize for giving thousands to a writer for sitting behind a desk and making up a story”
― Pretentiousness: Why It Matters
― Pretentiousness: Why It Matters
“Pop music does not throw the same cultural weight it once did; its ideas and challenges are no longer central to social movements. In the UK and US, ruinously expensive tuition fees and cuts to art education have narrowed the range of class backgrounds that art students are coming from. But the magpie cultural education that pop music provided has left a strong legacy ... Postmodernism, and all its liquid games of reference, was not just an idea incubated by the art gallery, the academy, or the architecture studio; it came from pop’s intellectual permissiveness. The pretensions of individuals from all walks of life—their ambition, their curiosity, their desires to make the world around them a more interesting place—is cultural literacy in action.”
―
―
“Pretension is a question of optics. The pessimist sees pretension as a sham. The optimist views it as innocent, tragicomic, an excess of effort. Like watching amateur actors in a local village play, a wooden or overambitious performance might not be deliberate, It could be deeply sincere; the am-dram troupe putting everything they’ve got into their production. Pretentiousness resides in someone’s lack of awareness that their ambition might exceed their capability, or inability to laugh about one’s own limitations.”
― Pretentiousness: Why It Matters
― Pretentiousness: Why It Matters
Overdue Podcast
— 1264 members
— last activity Nov 08, 2021 04:26PM
A group for reading along and discussing the books featured on the Overdue Podcast. Overdue is a podcast about the books you've been meaning to read. ...more
readers advisory for all
— 5684 members
— last activity Sep 13, 2025 11:35AM
life's too short to read crappy books. this is why readers' advisory exists. feel free to join if you are looking for "a book like____" or "a book tha ...more
The Cool Kids' Fantasy Club
— 1780 members
— last activity Jan 05, 2026 09:19AM
A group to chat about SFF books. Authors and readers welcome. I might post about my books and the Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off too. I plan on maki ...more
David’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at David’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
More friends…
Favorite Genres
Polls voted on by David
Lists liked by David














































