Just in case anyone’s a fan of this book and wasn’t aware, there’s also a short story kind of prequel to this book called The Day Before The Revolution that’s free to read here.

Yeah I do that too! I’m here for cozy literature talk, not whatever is going on in the rest of Lemmy lol.

I can appreciate that they’re in a somewhat difficult position, with the law on one side and what’s morally right on the other side, but also this is exactly the sort of scenario where everyone needs to band together to demonstrate that an unjust law won’t fly, and IMO trying to weasel out of it with a half-measure is just appeasing the wrong side.

In an ideal world all the libraries, schools and publishing companies would just ignore this and carry whatever books they see fit, and give the legislators a choice to either back off or go after them all at the same time.

The North Korea section of the book was so creepy, I still think about that from time to time.

It really is a “give an inch, take a mile” kind of thing. Like as a society we’re already ridiculously generous to religious people - every city has multiple, un-taxed, absurdly opulent buildings for them to use as much as they want to do whatever they like in, plus there are huge networks of religious schools that get tax-payer funding as well, and they’re still out in the streets preaching and interfering with almost every other aspect of existence - shutting down libraries, getting films banned or altered, messing with politics etc. It’s ludicrous IMO.

I own it but haven’t read it yet, but apparently Edith Grossman’s translation of Don Quixote is supposed to be great. Also I just learned she died a couple of weeks ago, RIP.

For the show, the beginning of the 2005 revival is probably a good place to start! The first couple of seasons are probably a bit dated now but still good, and they treat it as kind of a soft reboot because it had had been off the air for ~15 years at that point so it’s designed for new viewers to drop in without having to know all the backstory and stuff.

As for the books I have no idea lol. There are quite a lot of those IIRC.

I am convinced that there’s not a book written that can’t be improved by the addition of a Sassy Robot Sidekick.

Doctor Who is good for the second one too, that’s basically the Doctor’s whole deal that they never carry a weapon and just try to talk their way through everything. Although they will fuck someone up if they get pushed too far lol.

Yeah this seems like a good call TBH

I really like Homage To Catalonia, it might actually be my favourite Orwell book.

Also most Bill Bryson books. I read One Summer, America, 1927 recently and really enjoyed it, but A Short History Of Nearly Everything and At Home were also highlights.

Good for them. They’ve been there for over 450 years, it should be on the Olympics to work around them IMO.

I might have a similar situation coming up, but I think what I’m going to do is essentially just get rid of most of my books and then try to re-acquire them at the other end of the move. Apart from a few specific ones where the physical book itself is important, like a couple of signed copies I have and some well-worn ones that I’ve had forever.

I’m also working on cataloging everything in BookWyrm so I can keep track of what needs replacing. Bit of a pain but I just don’t think I can physically transport that many books.

I actually had no idea because I always bring things back on time because I’m a square lol, but I looked it up and apparently they got rid of them during the pandemic.

I remember really liking a book called The Alchymists Cat, which I had no idea was part of a series lol. Also I have no idea if it holds up today or not, but as a kid I was all over that.