I think it’s shameful because I can’t imagine not being ashamed of seeing my country’s educational institutions fail after spending centuries building up a proud tradition of excellence and cutting edge research.

What do you mean, it has no meaning in this situation? Without any explanation, all I could do was speculate. It’s not arguing in bad faith to ask a question in order to clear up your uncertainty about what the other person things.

I would say that “What does shame have to do with it?” is a bad faith response.

Deciding that that people you loved who died didn’t really matter isn’t an option for many people.

Guy at the top of rollercoaster hill: Why are you all screaming? Can’t you see that we’re higher than the start of the ride?

You think the OP spoke of superficiality and thought it a good thing?

In the commonplace sense that people inaccurately use nihilism, it mostly just means thinking things are really, really, bleak. OP, like myself at a you ger age, probably took the existentialist road and saw meaning in the contuity of humanity, nature, etc., which directly caused a despair that wouldn’t affect a nihilist who doesn’t care about those things.

You may be mixing up cause and effect - people tend to feel despair because they think the things they already find purpose, meaning, and value in are going to be destroyed or ruined.

The despair I see in people is not a belief in meaninglessness, but the belief that the meanings there are in the world are absolutely horrible.

Why should a human care about what is relevant to “the universe” and not human beings?

Does that make it less shameful?

Look up some information on the current state of literacy among young Americans in grade school and college. It’s not so easy to dismiss when it’s being measured and studied.

Bloodlines by Chris Wraight

I wanted to become a visual artist in high school. Developing a reading habit completely and totally destroyed my career prospects.

Toby Longworth narrates the Gaunt’s Ghosts books with many Welsh and Russian accents. Makes the book feel that more real.

The author of The Traitor Baru Cormorant was in exactly your position when he read one of David Weber's worse books. So he made a full rewrite of the novel.

I don’t disagree with him in disliking the anti-intellectualist streak of American culture, but he’s annoyingly hamfisted about it.

Yes, there are books that express thoughts of such complexity that it is impossible think that the author accidentally jumbled the concepts together.

I’m scared I won’t like it as much as Blue Highways. I also have a copy of “In America,” about following Steinbeck’s path in the 21st century.

I don’t care whether something is connected to the main plot or not. I care whether it’s entertaining or interesting.

Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler is one of the other major starting points for 1984.

A random college guy suggested I read Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake after he saw that I wanted to read Perdido Street Station by China Mieville. I also tried to read Viriconium by M John Harrison for the same reason - less enthused with that.

Remember that economics is a heavily disputed field and a book on the world economy should not be trusted in a way that one on long-established physics and chemistry knowledge can be.

Novels tend to have more than two hours of happenings in them.

Nevertheless, it sounds like he was much better off than the really poor inhabitants of the city, the ones who could never imagine having a bed to themselves.

When I read Gogol's Dead Souls I had two different translations on hand. The translation from the 1950s was simply much better written, but unfortunately had omissions.

It’s so funny that this is the dark mirror image of the comments on reddit that insist that chraacter and emotion are all that matter in books and everything else is irrelevant.