Argobot

But isn't that actually grounded in historical fact? Sure I feel uncomfortable about the marriage mechanic in Crusader Kings, but a lot of that discomfort comes from the frankness with which it's presented. I appreciate that the game doesn't try to hide the very real truths of what a medieval patriarchal society would have entailed. I find that a lot less worrisome that what Civ is doing, personally. Not that I think there's anything necessarily wrong with Civ -- the game doesn't give off the pretense of being a realistic history simulator -- but I think that some of the criticisms brought up in this thread are worth considering.

I've really enjoyed all the Lovecraft stories that I've read; I find them to be genuinely horrifying, something that I think is hard to pull off in writing. He and Robert E. Howard are these two fascinating figures in American literature, because they both obviously have had a huge influence on how their respective genres evolved but they don't get near enough recognition that they deserve. I'm hard pressed to come up with their modern day equivalents (Stephen King? Cormac McCarthy?)

It makes me so happy that other people are enjoying this book. Easily the best book from 2013 that I've read so far.

Oh cool, sounds easy enough. Unrelated: can I have the password to the Idle Thumbs Twitch account? What makes me hopeful about the Cold War game is that I actually am familiar with the history, so I'm (naively) expecting the mechanics to make more intuitive sense to me. Plus, I just really want to sim an Eastern bloc country.

My experience with Eastern Europe begins and ends with Russia, so I don't have any concrete travel tips to provide but I will say that I am extremely jealous of you going to Warsaw. Drink the beer, eat the sausage, post pictures when you get back.

In theory, I should absolutely love a game like Crusader Kings, but the one time I tried to play, I was too overwhelmed to really enjoy/understand anything that was going on. But I'm really intrigued by a game that is able to make interesting comments on patriarchal political systems just through its game mechanics. Hopefully I'll have better luck with Paradox's Cold War sim.

I'd agree with this idea -- even though I remember the reactions to Telegraph Ave and By Blood being pretty mixed -- but would would argue that it has less to do with historical distance and more to do with the specific authors. Fitzgerald and Hemingway just have a lot more baggage associated with them and I think that greatly affects the way people relate to their novels. At least it does for me. Which admittedly is a terrible attitude to have when reading a novel, but it's something I constantly struggle with while reading The Sun Also Rises.

I'm really loving the Civ V expansion, but I do agree that the trade routes start to feel repetitive. There are a major part of my economic and cultural strategy (because the trade routes also help you spread religion, which is my favorite mechanic in Civ V), but constantly having to build and update your trade routes starts to lose its luster pretty fast.

For as much as I love Russia (and I love that damn country), its attitudes towards gay people have always disgusted me. The eagerness with which the post-Communist leaders (mostly Putin) embraced the Orthodox Church as a quick way to secure legitimacy has created some seriously disturbing social policies in that country (see also: Pussy Riot).

Speaking of bookstores we love, when I was in Portland a few weeks ago, the first place I went to was Powell's. It's probably silly, to fetishize a bookstore, but there was something so wonderful about being there and seeing literally four floors of books (color coded by category). Plus, Powell's has really great staff recommendations.

That and his essay on David Lynch are my two favorite pieces of DFW non fiction.

I can understand that. There's so much to talk about with these two books, and there's only so much you can say about TSWCIFTC without completely spoiling the ending. But having just finished both TSWCIFTC and TTSS, I thought the discussion was a great overview of le Carre. Even though I strongly disagree with the idea of reading Spy before Tinker Tailor. Also, wanted to add that I had the exact same experience with looking through a library of my grandfather's books (including the detail of half of the books being in Italian) but in my version, the particular book I focused on was The Name of the Rose. I eventually inherited that first edition copy from him. The book (and Eco in general) have this mythic place in my memories of my grandfather, and it was a surreal experience to actually sit down as an adult and read Eco's books.

Consider the Lobster may not be my favorite DFW non-fiction collection, but it's what that finally convinced me to tackle Infinite Jest. Most of the essays in Consider the Lobster were written around the same time DFW was finishing Jest, and you can really see how the fiction and the non-fiction writing bleed into each other. Especially in the Dostoevsky essay, which basically is a microcosm of Infinite Jest's larger themes (it also explains where DFW got the bonkers idea to basically rewrite The Brothers Karamazov with the Incandenza brothers). And the whole collection is worth buying for the Tense Present essay alone. Anyway, good cast! The le Carré discussion was especially interesting.

http://farcry2idlethumbs.tumblr.com/

Desperately wanted to make a parody twitter account, but sadly "Did the Idle Thumbs Talk About Far 2 This Week" is too long of a user name for twitter.

I immediately checked audible.com to see if they had a Slaughterhouse Five narrated by Ron Howard. They don't, sadly. But there is a narration by Ethan Hawke.

There's a lot of thorny theology involved in your questions, but I think that religion becomes naturally more inclusive over time -- just like at how the status of women has changed in the past hundred years or so. Obviously that change is not happening fast enough for many people, but I'm (naively) hopeful that over the next few generations the idea of gay people being denied religious ceremonies will become more socially repugnant.

Demonstrating that I lack any real knowledge of this history. To make up for my inexcusable ignorance, here's a sneak peak at Mantel's third novel in the Cromwell trilogy: spoilers.

Point taken. It'll be amazing to see how Mantel writes Henry in the third book as he slowly makes his way towards having Cromwell beheaded.

I feel that exact way about Anne Boleyn. Her relationship with Henry and her relationship with Cromwell were some of the most enjoyable parts of the book for me. Mantel is a genius at writing female characters.

Mantel is able to make Henry feel human without sacrificing any of the attributes that a person born to be king would naturally have. He's a wonderfully complex character, but really, so are all the other side characters in this book. In the hands of a lesser author, Cromwell (by virtue of the story being from his perspective) would be the only standout character, but Mantel manages to overcome that. I might even be tempted to say that I enjoy the side characters more than Cromwell.

Besides, separating marriage from religion denies the fact that many gay people themselves are religious, and deserve to marry in whatever venue they want.

I thought Henry came off as way more sympathetic than that, probably the most sympathetic portrayal that I've ever seen of him. The other nobles are generally just shown as schemers, but Mantel makes an effort to explain (possibly even justify) Henry's motivation and to show his genuine friendship with Cromwell. Wolf Hall made me care about Henry VIII more than any other piece of fiction or non-fiction.

Fullbright Company trying to go for that sweet Travelocity money, apparently.

I'm generally pretty averse to audible, just because I don't have the mental capacity to listen to a book vs. actually reading it, but I think The Flamethrowers is one of the few books I could imagine listening to. The prose is fairly basic, very clean and nothing too fancy, so it would be pretty easy to follow along with. Plus, it's just a great story and I want everyone to read it. So, yes. Edit: If enough people read this, maybe we can start a separate thread for it. It was one of the more interesting books that has come out in 2013 so far, and there's been a lot of insightful commentary around Kushner and women's writing in general.