The Bible
The trick is to jump around like a choose your own adventure.
Just popped in to find and upvote.
When I was in elementary school I actually tried to just read the bible. I didn’t get very far through Genesis before I gave up.
You didn’t even make it to the part where a man of god uses nature magic to summon bears to kill 42 children, or where a guy is mad that a father gives him the wrong daughter as property that he combines genocide with animal abuse!
For me, nothing tops the guy whose neighbors want to rape the angel that came to visit him, so he offers the crowd his daughters to rape instead.
That first bit is part of the Apocrypha. It’s not in the official bible.
It’s from Second Kings 2:23-25, which is part of the Torah and the official 66 books of the bible. Though some (most) translations say that the curse is in the name of the lord/god.
From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some boys came out of the town and jeered at him. “Get out of here, baldy!” they said. “Get out of here, baldy!” He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the boys. And he went on to Mount Carmel and from there returned to Samaria.
some boys
two bears
mauled forty-two of them
Just how many boys in totality are we talking about here? And did the bears have to stop and take a break?
And he went on to Mount Carmel and…
"And then he went about his day, completely disregarding the two exhausted bears and the 42 mauled boys that were part of a sizable mob that he casually called a curse down upon’
Thanks for the specifics.
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The bible
I don’t even need to buy them. They just pile up unread. One of them has nice art in it.
I don’t even need to buy them. They just pile up unread
How? I’ve read this many times, but I never understood it. Do people just hand them out on the street or is it customary to give bibles as a gift?
When I was in college, once or twice a year there were people from some religious group who would come and stand at the most busy intersections for foot traffic and literally hand them out on the street, yes. They were quite pushy about it
You missed the chance to push back in your refusal. You had plenty of justification to be nasty.
Look, the people who hand out Bibles are usually from a specific sect of Christianity.
I get it, they’re just as shitty as most Christians, in most ways, but…
The reason they give the Bibles away is because they figure that knowledge is power and they don’t want to force people to have to spend money they don’t have to be able to read the Bible.
I hate to say it, but I agree with their attitudes regarding freedom and access to information. They may not be distributing information I care for, but I can’t fault the attitude. Information and access to it shouldn’t be limited, because knowledge is power.
Right attitude, wrong values otherwise.
The reason they give the Bibles away is because they figure that knowledge is power and they don’t want to force people to have to spend money they don’t have to be able to read the Bible.
I want to choose when (and if) I read bullshit, thank you very much.
I mean they are giving them away freely and not forcing the book on people. They accept “no” as an answer if you don’t want a copy. You are really free to ignore them.
I have pretty bad social and general anxiety, it is extremely difficult for me to be pushy with anyone, at least in person. At the time I think I mostly avoided them or lied and told them I already had a copy at home, which seemed to placate them.
In any case, I think all they really achieved was wasting a lot of paper and ink, because the trash cans around campus and especially the outdoor ones near those intersections were absolutely filled with bibles by the end of the day whenever those people came around. Once or twice I saw some student accept one and then two steps later toss it in a bin that was right next to the guys handing them out.
Sadly, they thrive on the social mandate to be polite even to abusers.
Why refuse free toilet paper?
When you celebrate a life event in church you go home with a new Bible.
Really? I’ve been to weddings and funerals and baptisms in churches and never have I been offered a bible. Maybe it’s a local thing?
Count yourself lucky. If you want one, any church would be happy to provide.
I inherited a ton of books from my father, who was a minister & a Jungian psychologist. Lots of old interesting bibles, in a handful of languages. (Plus a Koran, and some Crowley, and of shelf full of Trotsky… ha ha. Lotta books.)
American? I haven’t seen a bookstore selling a bible in ages, if ever
I was going to contradict you, that bookstores always carry bibles…but then I realized the memory I was thinking of was from the 90s.
I’d say this is just a good excuse for me to go to the bookstore and check…but they’ve all become so small and sad that I kind of don’t want to. I just get depressed.
I know ebooks and audiobooks have massively taken off so people are reading/listening still…I just miss my childhood refuge being stuffed chock-full of treasures.
The dictionary
lol
The
dictionarydikshunaryDo they have those at the lie-berry?
The Silmarillon - the yellow pages of middle earth
Not in my experience. 100% of people I know that have it, also have read it. We buy that because we’re Tolkien nerds. People who don’t want to read it don’t buy it. Also it’s not at all like yellow pages for looking stuff up, it’s more like the Bible I guess, a collection of mythological tales of old.
I guess there are some people that have inherited it, or just bought it for collecting, but I don’t think this is the main case.
It might be different for The History of Middle Earth, it’s huge and requires a lot of time, and it’s more yellow pagey as far as I understand. I have them but have not read much of it yet. (Maybe you meant these?)
I rarely check people’s bookshelves but my experience has also been that people either don’t even know what it’s really about or they absolutely love it.
But I guess it’s possible that some people buy it after reading LotR expecting more of the same and then give up after reading the first few pages of the Ainulindalë.
I sought that shit out and read every word. I gobbled that shit up. “The Middle Earth Bible” is 100% an accurate description of it.
There is not much statistical evidence for my statement. Mostly from the people I know (though one actually read it, she is a true nerd) and myself (tried it but am probably not as much a middle earth fan as I thought)
As someone who has read the Silmarillion several times, any attempt at reading The History of Middle Earth peters out quite quickly.
That’s exactly my experience. It doesn’t help that I have the 12-in-3 book boxed edition that has almost see through thin pages… 😅
The Silmarillion I have also read multiple times though, both in English and German.
This is the best description of it =]
It is literally easier to read the KJV of the Bible than the Silmarillon.
Easy != Fun
Strong disagree. I’ve read The Silmarillion. Sure I don’t remember much of it now, but at the time it was interesting and entertaining to me. It’s also not that huge a book, on the same order as one or two of the main LoTR books. If the KJV were in the same (normal) font size+width and paper thickness it would be Gigantic.
Hey, I read half of it
Alright, name 6 characters with a name starting with fin
!/s!<
Atlas Shrugged.
It’s a massive paperback and looks impressive on a bookshelf but it’s a dull narrative. I got about 200 pages in and was like fuck all these people and these stupid trains.
That was legit one of the few books I read halfway through then put down in disgust at how banal, ridiculous, and repetitive it was. The first part was okish because there’s something of a mystery, but the “revelation” that all the industrialists moved to a sort of entrepreneur’s shangri-la and that life without government created this perfect utopian society, it was just such a stupid thing and I was so tired of all the dead horse beating. Anybody who says they like this book is either lying or has mental problems.
When the completed manuscript exceeded 600,000 words, Cerf asked Rand to make cuts, but backed off when she compared the idea to cutting the Bible.
Wow, I didn’t know this author, and it seems I wasn’t missing much.
Her writing is simplistic, but conservatives and libertarians have pushed her as an “intellectual” because it gives them a well-known writer that supports their trash values. She was strongly against the welfare state and altruism, yet she herself received social security, so she was a bit of a hypocrite as well.
She was also an unabashed atheist, which is why she was able to promote the idea of selfishness being good.
What’s funny is it’s the mostly Christian right-wing which has embraced her.
I guess they’re okay with atheism as long as its playing for the right “team.”
I mean, they’ve elevated Trump as their God-Emperor and he’s very likely an atheist, had multiple affairs, and paid women to get abortions, but whatever, none of that matters when you’ve been conditioned all your life to believe impossible things. Next to Jesus walking on water and two of every animal fitting on a boat, the rest of it is child’s play.
She was also an unabashed atheist, which is why she was able to promote the idea of selfishness being good.
What the hell is this non-sequitur?
Nearly every religion preaches to be giving and kind to those in need. It’s absolutely not a non-sequitor to admit that a large number of atheists don’t believe there is any guiding morality to the universe and that we have to come to our own conclusions about morals and ethics. Moral relativism is a generally accepted thing among many atheists. This does not mean all atheists are selfish, I would classify most as Humanists. Rand was mostly an outlier.
She was able to promote the idea that selfishness could be good because she didn’t ascribe to any religion that defined that as a sin.
She was able to promote the idea that selfishness could be good because she didn’t ascribe to any religion that defined that as a sin.
So basically she profited from existing bullshit to promote her own brand of bullshit. That’s even worse.
I’m not an atheist and even to me, that’s a really transparent dig at people who believe something you disagree with. You don’t need religion to be altruistic as you are implying.
She wrote anotehr novel, ‘The Fountainhead,’ with all the same ideas but much easier read. I finished ‘The Fountainhead,’ but it was mostly WTF comes next kind of book. There’s an old B+W movie that sums up her ideas pretty well.
As a teenager I had a crush on Dominique Françon and her sexual assertiveness until I understood how deeply perturbed she was.
She and Howard are supposed to be the sane ones.
[sigh]
It worth reading, because you get perspective on how anarcho capatalist view the world.
Read the whole thing. It’s OK.
The worst part of the book is that stupid chapter in the last third. Which summarizes the previous 2/3.
I can’t name very many people that have finished the whole dictionary
The book gave me a roller coaster of emotions, I never knew what was coming next!
I think kids might. I remember reading it front to back when I was first really getting into literacy, hoping to get adults’ seemingly godlike intuition for spelling words. Still like to open it up from time to time to peruse a letter
hoping to get adults’ seemingly godlike intuition for spelling words.
Dit you manege to sucseed dough?
Haha kind of, but I still need to have little games for some words, like how the word “parallel” has two parallel “ll” next to eachother.
I’m almost certain my spelling has got worse since autocorrect/suggest became a fixture of my daily life.
Spoiler: the killer, it’s Zytugur!
When it defined Zyzzyva, I cried butterfly tears.
Anything by Ayn Rand. She’s a terrible author and most people are more interested in showing that they could have read The Fountainhead than actually reading that unfun, meandering garbage.
I read The Fountainhead in a high school English class and then got super into Ayn Rand and read Atlas Shrugged and some of her other stuff on my own. What actually happened was that I was a child in the Florida Public School System and so 1) didn’t understand what capitalism was, 2) couldn’t recognize terrible writing, and 3) was enjoying how proud my dad was for once.
Now I’m in my 30s and I can’t bring myself to throw away books at all, but also refuse to give them away and put them back out into the world for other dumbasses and/or impressionable children to find. They live on a bookshelf in my back room strategically positioned so that even if someone did go into that room they’d have to dig through a bunch of French textbooks and ancient American Girl books to find them.
If anyone would like some garbage propaganda advocating for a society of psychopaths written in the style of your drunk uncle’s auto-transcribed voice memos, hit me up.
You should burn them for warmth so they finally serve a purpose
Jesus
People can just enjoy them for stories and not actually believe in what the writer wants them to believe.
I can personally attest to that as I have to do it with most fiction, including Ayn Rand stuff.
I tried to read the Fountainhead twice when I was a teenager and I never got more than a third of the way. It felt like watching an old person try to remember their shopping list
Literally 1984
Read this 2 years ago. Not the ending I was expecting but good book. Not a hard read.
They just look at it for their daily two minutes of hate haha
You can really tell that people who reference that thing have never read it. Honestly if you have a legitimate criticism of Western society to draw from a dystopian novel there’s probably better choices. The totalitarianism in 1984 is in no way subtle or hidden from anyone, that’s a big part of the point of it.
Of course, to reference something relevant you have to have read things other than rage clickbait.
I think it didn’t need to be subtle for it to be realistic. You can see in certain communities just how unsubtle their hatred and stupidity is.
Yeah, exactly. Orwell was trying to paint a picture of how willingly people would accept gross oppression. You can see him talk about it in some of his letters IIRC.
In the West way more than just your TV watches you, but it’s done in a very invisible way and for now you won’t even hear back unless you join ISIS or something. Cynical forces manipulate the political process, but it’s out in the open except for being just boring and complicated enough to avoid too much publicity. None of this is very overtly oppressive.
The Bible
When was the last time you heard of someone buying a bible?
My partner bought a study Bible for academic use a few months ago, and our roommate bought herself one (for actual worship use) a couple weeks ago?
For Christians, there’s one called The Bible.
Heya fellow raccoon, raccoon Bible is much better than the one compiled by Roman bishops in 325AD in Nicea e.g. “let there be trash for all” and “give to racoons what belongs to the raccoons” :D
Not as relevant as it used to be regarding this question, but…
War and Peace
My Godfather tried to read that to me in it’s entirety when I was 4 lol.
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I think I learned the naming stuff while reading Metro 2033, or maybe it inspired me to look it up. Much easier read than Tolstoy.
It’s actually not bad at all, especially if you’re into military history like I am. It’s basically just standard soap opera stuff interspersed with treatises on what war is really like. The worst part is that interminably long section about the fucking freemasons, thrown in for no apparent reason.
Read Anna Karenina you won’t regret it. I would argue it’s the best love story ever written.
Challenge accepted, added to the list.
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Got me picturing Jackie and Chris now
I wouldn’t say most people buy them, but Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. For me, they’re unreadable. Or, I should say I actually read them during a time when I was reading classics that everyone seemed to claim were great, but I didn’t know anyone who had actually read them. At the time I was doing it just to be able to say I did. A dumb reason.
I got nothing thoughtful out of either of them. There were some individual sentences and paragraphs that were fun to read just because of the alliteration and poetic flow, but they made no sense. A book written for others to read shouldn’t need external commentaries or a knowledge of the author’s life and mental state to understand.
Now if someone says they’ve read Joyce and not for a literature degree, I lose a bit of respect for them, as I did for myself, and as other people should for me. 0/10, not worth, would not buy again, would not read again
Oh phew. I studied English Lit at university and had to wade through bits of both. I used to feel like I was some sort of uncultured swine for not “getting” them. But honestly, I just don’t think they work as novels. As a piece of art, I guess, sure. Fine and modern art can look like nonsense without context, but often make sense when seen as part of a conversation with other artists and movements. If taken like that, fine, you do you, Joycey-boy, and write incomprehensibly. I’ll be over here with my Iain Banks and Ned Beauman, enjoying them.
A Brief History of Time - a fair number of people do read it but there’s a pretty big chunk of people that just want bookshelf clout.
I prefer the album “A Brief History of Rhyme” by MC Hawking.
I was looking for this. 15 years ago this would have been top of the list.
People don’t read popular science books? 🤨🤨
Okay, I admit, I am deeply perplexed by everything everyone is saying in this thread. Do people seriously keep books on bookshelves not for reading, but for decoration or to pretend they’re well-read? Why wouldn’t they just read the books?
Yes they do just buy them for decoration. If you are intellectually curious you’re in an extreme minority of people.
Which I find strange. Usually anti-intellectualism is open, up-front, and honest about what it is. People buying books and not reading them just to pretend they’re smart doesn’t seem like a thing that actually happens in real life, just a straw intellectual the willfully ignorant like to beat up.
Infinite Jest
Fuck me it is dense.
I’m an avid reader and I find I have to take breaks every 20-30min with IJ and just let stuff settle. Otherwise I find myself reading the same passage several times while my mind wanders.
My mom is reading it! She said that it is confusing and messy, but wants to finish it anyway.
It honestly feels like something he wrote as a joke
As a jest, perhaps?
And at over one thousand pages long, one can also say it’s infinite
Read it twice, absolutely love that book.
Definitely the bible for most christians.
Non christians, probably To Kill a Mockingbird.
I read it in school, but honestly did not find it to be all that special. Its a good book, but its message was pretty simple and i think modern audiences would agree with the premise immediately.
I found “The Catcher in the Rye” to be the most thought-provoking of high schools books. However, i dont think it really would improve society if more people read it.
If i could think of a book everyone should read to improve humanity, it would have to be something akin to either statistics for dummies, moral philosophy for dummies, or wealth management for dummies.
