Reading 3 books at once is awesome. If I’m not in the mood for one of them I have 2 others to choose from, which means rather than skipping reading that day, I’m always reading.

But my TBR is just a shelf, where I pick up anything on a whim. No quotas allowed.

Well, as an experiment, look at how you could have stated that paragraph in a more simple manner. You could have probably gotten the message across with “Why bother learning new words? Simple is better, no?” But there’s a lot of nuance that would be lost.

A lot of vocabulary building feels more academic than useful, that’s true. But there’s another aspect to reading, which involves exercising your brain. That requires challenge, in a similar manner as you’d exercise muscles. And you could see general life improvements from challenging your brain constantly.

Was it Iris by William Barton and Michael Capobianco? That’s what I was going to post here anyway.

The concept seemed so cool where a crew of settlers stumble on an ancient alien ship, but then started off with a BDSM/assault scene. Quit that book on page 1. Read a few reviews to see if I could just skip that part, but apparently the whole book is derailed by more like it.

It’s like a D&D campaign, but only the side quests, and some writer insertion.

I’ve come to the conclusion that the people who claim it’s a good series are inflating it with their own imagination. Unreliable narrator seems to be a common excuse from the fans of bad fiction, who can’t come to terms with having bad taste.

The prose is fine, and worth talking about. But considering it fails on every other front, I can’t call it a good book or series (if something that will never be finished qualifies as a series).

If you’re already not enjoying it, drop it. It’s extremely consistent at what it is.

You get plenty of people attaching human characteristics to objects. Just look at artwork of AI and see how many times it’s rendered as a pretty, young female (probably intentionally, but that’s a different topic). I think part of Deckard’s growth was losing his falsely attributed projections of humanity on things that looked human, though how they treated animals and insects mostly.

I think you’re totally right about Isidore. People like to put themselves into a box, and adopt that persona, because that’s easier than going against the grain (have any friends that didn’t go to college and others that did? They’ll act like they aren’t smart, while the only difference is what they learned were different things). I think he could have elevated himself, as he showed certain characteristics that were elevated, especially empathy, but he was comfortable being treated as an idiot, probably because that gave him friends.

My favorite part of the book (that wasn’t even in the movie) was the Mercerism portion. I think it perfectly expressed the difference between man and machine. Machines saw it as a clear taxation on efficiency, while humans saw it as an essential thing to gradually become something better than themselves. Machines want the static situation of being what they are in the most efficient way, while humans always want to change to something better, even if that process is long and requires sacrifice in the present. I think that’s what the electric sheep is referencing; these stupid things humans do to try to grasp as something better than us. And I think the answer is “no” androids do not.

Yeah, this is the sort of topic that every contrarian on this platform will jump on. You really can’t have any sort of important discussion on reddit, unfortunately.

Yeah, I love that. It’s a truly honest approach. I’m sure diversity quotas can lead to a wider range of experience, but I think it also clouds a person’s judgment of the quality of the works too, as anything foreign is usually held in greater esteem, especially if underrepresented in some way. A world where everything is judged on it’s merits seems appealing.

I’ve heard that the education system ruined reading for people constantly. This is why you really never see college students read fiction willingly. They then revisit the subject sometimes in their 30s, or go their entire life thinking that reading is boring. Yeah, it’s absolutely a real thing.

Also, I don’t see why teachers can’t have students pick their book, either entirely, or from a small pool. Dusty old lit novels that no one finds enjoyable definitely don’t serve any purpose other than reduce the teacher’s work load down to nothing.