The Bible
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.
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 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 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 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)
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.
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
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
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?
Literally 1984
Read this 2 years ago. Not the ending I was expecting but good book. Not a hard read.
For Christians, there’s one called The Bible.
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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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.
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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.
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
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
Read it twice, absolutely love that book.
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.
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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.
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.
Sometimes I buy physical copies of books I’ve read digitally.
Sometimes I buy physical books, then listen to them digitally instead
I need to go back and finish Gödel, Escher, Bach
You’ll actually never finish reading it.
I have reread it several times, I know I’m far from done. So much I still need to return to.
I abandoned it at some point in the second half. It was getting even more interesting but summer was ending and I no longer had as much time.
You got me. I’m sitting next to my bookshelf, looking at it right now, but diddling my phone instead of reading a book. RIP, me 😑
