Nov 252002
As catalogued by John Cartan. I know only a few of the books on the list, but anyone who lists Frederick Crews’ The Pooh Perplex, the one book about literary criticism to read if you’re reading only one, ought to be attended to. (Swiped from Ishbadiddle.)
Aaron, a lot of those books are fantasies and science fiction. Borges. No wonder you’re not familiar with them. I think Titus Groan is the least fantastical of the fantasies. You might enjoy that.
I’m happy to see he found room for A Voyage To Arcturus in there somewhere. There are few stranger books in the English language that I know of.
My 8th grade math teacher required my class to read Flatland… 8th grade required reading is hardly subject to being listed as a strange book. This book is strangely boring that is all.
Mr. Keith
Your dismissal of the book absolutely disgusts me and I am assuming (just for the fun of it) that you will accomplish much less in your life time. If you’re a writer yourself then I’ll assume that Flatland is a) much more imaginative and b) much more fun to read than anything you could ever even conceive of, you stupid, drab, awful, dull little sliver of a pathetic excuse for a pathetic excuse for a working intellect. Of course I know nothing about you and it’s entirely possible that we’d get on famously within the physical world outside the internet. It’s just that I have detected within you, from your contribution to this forum, a cloying idiocy that I can only rage at in the hope that you are at the very least midly irritated. Or considering the rather odd nature of this rambling assault on what is after all you only stating your opinion (even if it is a sickening, vile, stupid opinion), perhaps the very least I should hope for is uncomfortable confusion. In any case I wish for you to feel unpleasant while you read this, whichever form that unpleasantness manifests itself in.
As a conclusion I will state that I consider myself immune to every response you could conceivably think of and I excuse myself of any personality flaws I make obvious about myself within this tirade. This all stems from the fact that this is the internet and I can type whatever I like. I hope you sincerely regret sharing your unfortunate, withered little opinion on this forum though I’d never consider for a moment censorship of your views. I believe stronly in defeating Bad ideas with Good ideas rather than pretending the Bad ideas aren’t there and it just so happens that your idea is a Bad idea and I have selflessly taken upon myself the responsibility of fighting your Bad idea with a very good one which is this: I may seem unpleasant for rending you to bloody slivers like this but then I didn’t reduce the work of a human being to ‘strangely boring’ even though I’m certain that the work and indeed the human being are much, much more important than someone who calls things ‘strangely boring’ on Internet forums.
Ps. I have not read Flatland (yet).