For me, [email protected] is basically the only active community that I really love on Lemmy and the main reason why I keep coming back here. Other places can be fun too, but Superbowl is just different. There are so many funny owl pictures in them as well as so many informative posts (mainly the Owl-natomy Posts). Also, it is a very positive place. I highly recommend checking it out!

It was probably Hans Niemann then

I should really start listening to audiobooks more often. I just looked and the book is freely available on Librivox, so I may switch back and forth between reading and listening from now on. Thanks for the tip!

Reading “A tale of two cities” by Charles Dickens. I am not too far into it, but so far it’s been really enjoyable! The English accents are really hard to follow for someone whose native language isn’t English, but I’m getting used to it.

I recently read this and was surprised at how good it was. I loved Orwells Animal Farm, but didn’t like 1984 that much, so I wasn’t expecting to enjoy it; I read it more to get some insights of the war. But the book is not just informative, it is also really funny at times, and the story is just wild.

I second this recommendation.

Love is a human emotion, so the Caro Kann will never love you. Hope you recover from this loss.

I mostly use “The French” in a dehumanising manner. Which is a good thing, because a chess opening should not be humanised.

Homage to Catalonia, George Orwells memoir about the Spanish civil war. I never read memoirs or autobiographies, but I am very glad I have read this one. It gives a good insight into various aspects of the civil war, as well as Orwells personal views (and his sigarette addiction). On top of that, it is at times hilarious. And it is almost unbelievable how many things happened in just 6 months.

Highly recommend it if you’re into history or politics or love Orwells other works.

One of Bob Dylans greatest achievement was understanding the importance of the Wiggle in music and he has incorporated it into many of his songs, most notably in his magnum opus, “Wiggle Wiggle” from 1990. Experts and scientists are still in disagreement as to whether or not the song “Wilbury Twist”, from a band Dylan was in, is the greatest song of all time, but they agree that, as James Joyce noted, “the Wiggle is strong in that one.”

Because of these songs Bob Dylan is the only songwriter in history to have been rewarded the Nobel prize for the literature. In his speech after receiving the prize Dylan could not stop talking about Moby Dick. Personally I think the genius that is Bob Dylan used Moby Dick as an inspiration for his music because the movement of the whale when swimming is a Wiggle: with this speech he once more showed the world that the Wiggle is what “keeps music moving forward”.

Ah, the whale! What a beautiful metaphor for music! Oh man! Admire and model thyself after the whale!

Did some re-reading of Anna Karenina and Pride and Prejudice. Now reading George Orwells “Homage to Catalonia”, his memoir of his time as a volunteer against the fascists in the Spanish civil war. I’m about a third of the way in and so far it has been quite enjoyable, but I am hoping for some more politics later on; right now it is mostly about the situation on the front.

I am a big fan of Leo Tolstoy. His biggest works are War and Peace and Anna Karenina, but those are both quite large, so if you want to know a bit about his style i would suggest some of his shorter works. Of the shorter works I have read I really loved “The Death Of Ivan Ilyich”, “Hadji Murad” and “Master And Man”.

I also really like Jane Austen, you can’t really go wrong with her. Her novels aren’t that difficult either; they were the first novels in English (my second language) that I really enjoyed reading and they significantly improved my English.

This could very well be the truth. In LOTR and the Hobbit these despicable creatures seem pretty nice, but keep in mind that it was Hobbits who wrote all of that and they are in this case biased towards Hobbits. Furthermore, it’s interesting that the Hobbits, who could barely read or write, had so much knowledge about their genealogical ancestry: this could merely be an oddity, but it could also mean that they made it up to erase any questions about their rights to the territory.

On top of that, when I was searching through my memory for proof of another theory I have, that Lobelia got screwed over by Bilbo, it seemed suspicious to me that despite their love for genealogy and the fact that they (at least before “the Hobbit”) kept their homes to their family, or heirs, there is no mention of any inheritance procedure in any of the books, despite this being more relevant for the Hobbits who wrote the books than for example some random elven language. When Bilbo comes back in the Shire, he was declared dead, but there seemed to be an “auction” instead of an “inheritance”. On the other hand, Bilbo bequeaths everyting to Frodo later on.

This use of words raises some suspicion. One possibility is that the “auction” was actually an “inheritance” and that Bilbo tried to invalidate Lobelia’s claims to his inheritance in his writings. Tolkien may have omitted the part of the book where inheritance in the Shire is explained to make Bilbo more likable: this part of the book is necessary to make my Lobelia theory, which I will not explain here because it’s too long, not just a theory, but a fact.

The other possible reason as to why there is no explanation of the inheritance procedure is because there was no such thing, because the Hobbits didn’t live here for that long yet, increasing the probability of the theory mentioned in the above comment.

Furthermore, Sauron wasn’t actually an eye, but he was seen by the Hobbits as such. The sun baby may have been angry at the Hobbits (see comment above this one); by showing himself as something resembling the sun baby, he (what even are the sun baby’s pronouns?) made them recall the crimes they commited against the Teletubbies.

I may just be wrong though.

I am reading a bit too much different things at once right now, so this is a fairly long comment:

I’ve been reading “For Whom The Bell Tolls” by Ernest Hemingway for a while, and I have read 5/6 now. It’s about partisans in the Spanish civil war. I am enjoying Hemingway’s prose and the story, but I think I will wait a bit after this before reading any of his other works.

I’ve been meaning to read the great Chinese classic novels for a while, but I never got to it. Last week, after seeing someone on here was reading it, I decided to start reading “Romance of the Three Kingdoms”. The story (about the fall of the Han dynasty and the war of, you guessed it, three kingdoms) is very fun so far, but there are like 50 names in the first 50 pages, so I have trouble remembering who is who. I’m hoping for a bit more dialogue too.

I’m also halfway through the “Aeneid”, the great Latin epic by Virgil. It’s a decent story, but I should have gone for a modern translation instead of the old one I have now. I think I’m going to stop with this one for a while, as this is the perfect point to stop.

Lastly, I’m reading Leo Tolstoy’s “The Kingdom of God Is Within You”, his most well-known non-fiction work. I am a massive Tolstoy fan (War and Peace is my all time favourite novel), so I wanted to know more about his philosophy. It is very interesting so far, with how he makes arguments for non-violence, as well as his arguments against the principle of the Church. I don’t always fully agree, but it is a very thought-provoking book.

Last week I also read Tolstoy’s short story “Master and Man”. I think it may be the best work to read as an introduction to Tolstoy. The setting is perfect for this time of the year, the prose is amazing as always, the psychological depth is unbelievable for so short a novel, and the moral part is typical for his later works, but not too prominent that it bothered me in any way. So if you’re interested in reading some Tolstoy, you should definitely read this one!