It's like finally getting a good pair glasses after years of blurry vision and blindspots.
And holy shit, "sonic micro opera" of Finnegans Wake sounds bloody amazing.
As for the book, it's one of my favorites. It's both a mind trip and a literary feast. It's playful and odd and musical and wild and confusing all at once. There's also a couple recordings of Joyce reading excerpts of Finnegans Wake and Ulysses on ye olde youtubes, which are pretty interesting, because it's like getting to hear Beethoven play the piano in person, through time. Plus, his accent is hella fun.
I can totally relate to this. We had to read it in school (American system school) and there was no mention of the historical context. When I had to read it again in college, it broke my brain and made me want to revisit so many books I'd read in the past in search of whatever deeper context I might have missed or wasn't made aware of back in school. Same thing happened to me with Ulysses and Finnegans Wake after I reread them with added guides. Those rereads made me fall in love with James Joyce. Literature never ceases to amaze me with its ability to short-circuit our brains.
Johannes Cabal the Necromancer (the whole series, really) by Jonathan L. Howard. Hilarious, engaging, satirical dark comedy mixed with fantasy, pure excellence from the dude who wrote the Broken Sword games. One of my favorite series, hands down.
This sounds like a wonderful read. So many books on nature tend to get bogged down by the science of things or by the magic of them. This sounds like it found the perfect balance. Adding this one to the cart as well.
Ugh, SUCH a good book. I wish I could read it for the first time again, too. I fucking love Carl Sagan.
Definitely adding it to my vacation stack. The coffee one was "Coffee A Global History" by Jonathan Harris (or Morris? I can't recall which). But it was really interesting and not very long. Short and sweet.
I just looked this up and it sounds hella intriguing. I love me some sci-fi, but I often find it long-winded. Definitely giving this a gander.
That sounds absolutely fascinating! I love hyper-specific nonfiction like that. I once read a book about the history of coffee and I learned so much more than I expected.
What's the last book that unexpectedly blew your mind and why?
Hello, folks! This is my first post here (and in the great, wide, still-confusing world of Lemmy). So stoked to find a new book community!
To answer the question, mine is "The Future of Nostalgia" by Svetlana Boym. I stumbled upon this book when I read a quote from it in a different book and I immediately went to track down a copy. A truly happy accident.
The most fascinating thing about this book was how universal it felt. Here was someone writing about post-Soviet Russia in the nineties, yet it felt strangely familiar. The commercialization of nostalgia, the unchecked rewriting of history, and the rose-tinted delusion of "The Golden Age"; it felt like she was talking about my own country. I'm a Lebanese expat, so nostalgia is a big part of my life and my relationship with my country (which is very much a love/hate relationshit), and this book completely redefined my understanding of nostalgia, nationality and collective identity, heritage, and even food. It helped me understand the survivor's guilt, the PTSD, the resentment, and the stubborn fondness. It's been so long since a book scooped out my soul and shook off the dust like this.
So, yeah. What's the last book that made you go, "Holy shit, I think that just rewired my brain"?