Recent content by Dr_Zaius

While we await the writeups, I've held my response to the description of Tolkien's writing as "dry" earlier in the thread. To each their own, but to my mind there are amazingly stirring passages. The ending of the Siege of Gondor chapter where things are looking incredibly grim always gets me:

I've read it more than any other book as well and it may be my favorite, but I bumped it down to #2 because I think 1984 just has such an immense influence on modern thought that it deserves the top spot. I agree that people have a tendency to overlook some of the nuance of the characters...

I enjoy the movie too. Gregory Peck makes a good Atticus.

The world certainly has seemed to be heading towards a mashup of the two for at least a generation. 1984 by George Orwell A novel that manages to have an iconic opening line and an even more iconic closing line. I ripped through this for the first time in college as an escape from engineering...

It's of course amazingly impressive, but the one thing that struck me as strange is the race crowning the female winner based on chip time rather than gun time. It's odd when you can't know who won when they actually cross the finish line.

What an insane race with that much vertical. I don’t know how you ultra guys do 50 miles and beyond. So impressive, missed cutoffs or not.

I'll trust you on that as I've honestly stopped paying attention. I can't remember the exact timing anymore, but it was roughly around when he released the sample chapters where I recall several statements implying it'd be within a year. I've wondered about this myself. Given that the ending...

Personally I've lost all hope at this point. Maybe we get Winds, but no way A Dream of Spring is ever published in my opinion. As an aside, for me personally Benioff and Weiss come off way worse than Martin for the whole saga. The fact that they couldn't match Martin's level once they ran out...

What irritates me the most about it is that he was actively working on lots of other stuff, just not this series. If he had just taken the stance of "hey I'm getting older and I've made it and I want to enjoy what time I have left" I'd be disappointed but I'd at least understand. Working on...

Oh it was amazing. Bacon and cheese surrounded by fried chicken. Probably don't want to eat it right before you have bloodwork done, though.

I read it in high school and was lukewarm on it, then read it in my 30s in response to wife's friend gushing about it as her favorite book. I liked it a little more the second time (probably because I was spending less time judging Holden than 14 year old me did), but it's still not really my...

El Floppo makes a good point that the other teams have a say in this as well, but the thing I find baffling is that if there a few things more "American" than doing things in a way that other countries find strange or backwards. We're the land of more guns than people, 3000sf houses, and a...

I reread it during covid when my daughter had to read it for high school and I think it holds up very well. Even though I enjoyed it when I first read it I actually thought I got more out of it as an older adult.

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley Maybe one of the OG dystopias, this one stands out from the genre at large in that mankind is oppressed by pleasure rather than pain. The idea of bread and circuses for the masses goes back to at least Roman times. What if this was taken to its logical...

I was disappointed the first time I saw Reservoir Dogs as well. QT in general just doesn't do much for me for some reason. The "burger movie" that's presumably still to come is the only movie of his that I thought was great, although I've never seen Jackie Brown.