I read this book a while back after hearing the universal praise for it, and ended up not enjoying it. The prose was often confusing, with some parts that I’m still not sure what exactly was happening. Characters felt one-dimensional with rarely any development and the female characters were so useless that it’s borderline misogynistic. The themes of the story had no nuance, being either shoved in your face constantly or literally explained to you in a long-winded monologue by characters made only to spout these facts. Not only that, but the whole message of “book good tv bad” is just incredibly overdone, with the fact that various television shows, along with video games and music, can tell powerful stories that change the lives of those who experience them on the same level, if not better, than books do. Now books are important and are an amazing medium, but disregarding everything but books is extremely elitist, leading to the entire book sounding like the rambling of an old man who complains about every bit of technology while being told that vaccines cause babies to turn into reptoids by Facebook. Outside of the book itself, I see many people defending it vehemently, calling everyone who didn’t like the book “part of the problem”, basically belittling them for not being a snob who reads nothing but dry, lifeless literature from 400 years ago. What did you think about the book? Why did you like/not like it?
Masterpiece. It’s not just about books. It’s about single-minded society we have today. He predicted cancel-culture long time ago. Disagree with everything you wrote.
He did no such thing. The so called “cancel-culture” has always been a part of humanity.
It just wasn’t that big of a deal until conservatives started getting their panties in a twist because people are done with their bullshit.
Yeah, he calls out examples that were contemporary to his time. The book says something about racists not liking civil rights and “coloured” people not liking being compared to monkeys (go figure). He wasn’t predicting anything, just complaining about activism at the time.