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1984, A Canticle for Leibowitz

arnuld

arnuld

Member
okay, I tried to read them but on 1984, I gave up after first 36 pages, strictly did not not like it all.

I gave up A Canticle for Leibowitz after first 10 pages. It felt like Thomas Pynchon to me :confused: .

A Real Thing, Eh... much more general Romance novel whereas A Canticle for Leibowitz was much more hard-core. A Real Thing was okay but I gave up after reading some 20 pages or more. Not my kind of things.

So that is what I did this Saturday and Sunday, I even picked all these 3 books many times after that and read some pages of them very randomly to see whether they interest me but I think I will no longer buy SF (or even Fiction) anymore. Only 2 tests have remained now to finalize my decision: DUNE and Starmaker. I will buy them see what I feel about them. 1 year ago, I had much interest in SF and now not much. I think the primary reason for loosing interest is the change of life ( as I already said in some post). Also, I do not like, actually, I strictly hate the escapism. May be that's why.
 
Dear Arnuld

While i can perfectly understand your dislike for 1984 witch i found very...very...very depressing and (shame on me)a bit caricatural and dated;i find A canticle for liebowitz a pure delight.It's one of those that you feel like pushing on people all around,and make you very enoying the ones suronding you.
The big fan of the genre and other very...very...very respectable peoples on this furom loved it unanimously.I should advise you to change redicaly your choice of book,or just keep on reading whatever happen.(10 Pages is not enough,though i was cought up with liebowitz after ten lines!)
I wish you to meet the right book for a change,and to be happy ever after

the best

Thomas
 
I read 1984 when I was a kid, and to tell the truth I hardly remember it except for the vague outlines, I think it did help form my frame of mind though, and seed distrust in all things human.

I only read A Canticle for Liebowitz a few weeks ago, and enjoyed it tremendously. You have to give it more than ten pages though. Say at least 30-50 pages, then if you hate it, throw it against the wall. :) It changes, not in style, but in content all throughout the book.
Very satisfying ending.
 
Arnuld, I think you just need to stay away from SciFi. I can't recall you enjoying anything you've read SciFi.
 
saliotthomas said:
Dear Arnuld

While i can perfectly understand your dislike for 1984 witch i found very...very...very depressing and (shame on me)a bit caricatural and dated;i find A canticle for liebowitz a pure delight.It's one of those that you feel like pushing on people all around,and make you very enoying the ones suronding you.
The big fan of the genre and other very...very...very respectable peoples on this furom loved it unanimously.I should advise you to change redicaly your choice of book,or just keep on reading whatever happen.(10 Pages is not enough,though i was cought up with liebowitz after ten lines!)
I wish you to meet the right book for a change,and to be happy ever after

the best

Thomas
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My reactions to the books were just the opposite. I thought 1984 was bleak, prescient and applicable to various societies but I never got into Canticle.. for whatever reason.
 
I think it was applicable but the madia powers became far more subtile in it's influance,and somehow if the general idea of media totalitarism is actual,the book itself is a bit dated.
Big brother is reality TV,it's pink and glittery.
 
saliotthomas said:
I think it was applicable but the madia powers became far more subtile in it's influance,and somehow if the general idea of media totalitarism is actual,the book itself is a bit dated.
Big brother is reality TV,it's pink and glittery.
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Subtle might be worse. It means less people are aware of it. I think Big Brother is more of a general warning that could take several shapes. Reality TV is more like the is the magician's beautiful assistant, meant simply to distract.
 
joderu95 said:
Subtle might be worse. It means less people are aware of it. I think Big Brother is more of a general warning that could take several shapes. Reality TV is more like the is the magician's beautiful assistant, meant simply to distract.
Click to expand...

1984: "Big Brother is watching you."
2008: "You are watching Big Brother."
 
joderu95 said:
Subtle might be worse. It means less people are aware of it. I think Big Brother is more of a general warning that could take several shapes. Reality TV is more like the is the magician's beautiful assistant, meant simply to distract.
Click to expand...


Distract from what?
From lives that people find boring or uneventfull by showing them even more boring and stupid lives?
By leveling the culture on TV to minimum so not to much question would emerge.
My TV is only plugued to a DVD reader but each time i watch it,i'm amazed at blandness,vulgarity,consensuality of it all."Let's just all say the same thing being agreement or critic".
The new BIG brothers does not order thing,it just level it down.Most people in real life have more humanity than anyone on TV.
The only exemple it show is be beautifull,be rich,be famous.There is a few interesting things documentary,sport,......TV has gather all the bassed instinc of humain being for trash and gore.It's the part of us that slow to watch a traffic accident that want to know the last misshap of Paris Hilton.
There is also a big resistance to this emerging through different media and people find infomation and culture elsewhere.

To come back to 1984,it feel a bit dated as i said,if just and clever at a time.It's a bit like a Sci fi book with out of date moderniste stuff.
 
saliotthomas said:
Dear Arnuld

While i can perfectly understand your dislike for 1984 witch i found very...very...very depressing and (shame on me)a bit caricatural and dated;i find A canticle for liebowitz a pure delight.It's one of those that you feel like pushing on people all around,and make you very enoying the ones suronding you.
Click to expand...

Enjoyment ?

I don't like enjoyment. I don't read books for fun or happiness. Words like delight and amusement make me uncomfortable. It was once a part of my life, it is my past, I no longer seek joy, I see Truth which is very much painful: What a School is ? The Lost Love


saliotthomas said:
The big fan of the genre and other very...very...very respectable peoples on this furom loved it unanimously.I should advise you to change redicaly your choice of book,or just keep on reading whatever happen.(10 Pages is not enough,though i was cought up with liebowitz after ten lines!)
I wish you to meet the right book for a change,and to be happy ever after
Click to expand...


I really appreciate your wish and thankful for it. Somehow, I don't seek happiness. I don't need it, may be I want it. I seek competency and skills, I want spend my life mastering Martial-Arts.
 
pontalba said:
I only read A Canticle for Liebowitz a few weeks ago, and enjoyed it tremendously. You have to give it more than ten pages though. Say at least 30-50 pages, then if you hate it, throw it against the wall. :) It changes, not in style, but in content all throughout the book.
Click to expand...

okay, I will try, since you say :)
 
arnuld said:
okay, I will try, since you say :)
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That's good arnuld, I'd be very interested in your opinion after your next try. :)

I'm sorry to say I didn't notice your link to 1984 in your initial post, that's why when Stewart asked what it was I linked it [again].

Thomas, it's called Lowest Common Denominator.:rolleyes: And you are absolutely right, it's taken over television and a large number of films.
 
arnuld said:
Enjoyment ?

I don't like enjoyment. I don't read books for fun or happiness. Words like delight and amusement make me uncomfortable. It was once a part of my life, it is my past, I no longer seek joy, I see Truth which is very much painful: http://uttre.wordpress.com/2008/06/02/school-the-comedy-on-human-rights/[/B]]What a School is ? The Lost Love

I really appreciate your wish and thankful for it. Somehow, I don't seek happiness. I don't need it, may be I want it. I seek competency and skills, I want spend my life mastering Martial-Arts.
Click to expand...

Arnuld, Many thanks for including that link. I found your post somewhat baffling but this comment from your link very helpful regarding your reading preferences
. . . about Politics, Governments, Corporate espionage, Social Problems and other facts that an average man completely ignores.
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Perhaps then you might be interested in The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, who focused on the tawdry side of corporations and was among a group called "the muckrakers."
Or perhaps also Jacob Riis, who was a noted reformer who wrote about squalid living conditions among the immigrants in NYC in How The Other Half Lives and The Battle with the Slum.
These make pretty grim reading about the truth that was life then, and may perhaps still be.
 
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