Safkhet

Safkhet t1_j1v7uru wrote

It's a flexible one too. I've picked a bunch of historical facts, ranging from famous births/deaths, book publications, political and scientific events that give me a good range to accommodate my fluctuating interests. So far, I've got months until July more or less covered.

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Safkhet t1_j1uuqs9 wrote

I have an ongoing reading challenge with a friend. To add to this, I'm also planning on reading at least one book a month on a topic of a historical event that happened during that month. For example, in January I plan to read about the Palomares incident that occurred on 17 January 1966. As with 2022, I've picked two books as an absolute must, these are Halldór Laxness' Independent People and Joyce's Finnegans Wake.

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Safkhet t1_j1ikjdo wrote

I take your Cixin Liu and give you Robert Silverberg:

>"No," Rawlins persisted. He shifted about uneasily on the chair. "Now I'm going to say something that will really hurt you, Dick. I'm sorry, but I have to. What you're telling me is the kind of stuff I heard in college. Sophomore cynicism. The world is despicable, you say. Evil, evil, evil. You've seen the true nature of mankind, and you don't want to have anything to do with mankind ever again. Everybody talks that way at eighteen. But it's a phase that passes. We get over the confusions of being eighteen, and we see that the world is a pretty decent place, that people try to do their best, that we're imperfect but not loathsome—"

>"An eighteen-year-old has no right to those opinions. I do. I come by my hatreds the hard way."

>"But why cling to them? You seem to be glorying in your own misery. Break loose! Shake it off! Come back to Earth with us and forget the past. Or at least forgive."

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