Books you're reading (17 Viewers)
- Thread starter mikhail
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Lovely to have my ego stroked by you asking all these questions 
Yes, I did like it. I think it's an interesting thing to explore, how our inner life is always somehow the same no matter the circumstances we live in. If you have a life threatening disease it will feel like a big problem and if you only have a small problem it will "occupy the space" and seem like a big problem. It's as if our experience of the world is scaled to the emotional capacity (and appetite?) of our brains. If you live a life where a lot is going on it will feel like that at first, but in the long run it won't make an impression on your anymore. And if you live a life like Drogo's where nothing happens then you will start paying attention to the most minuscule details to fill your inner life with. Not to mention jump at the opportunity to dramatize your existence with things that you really know don't even exist (but refuse to admit). It's a bit like Tom Hanks in Cast Away with the volleyball, he just had to find a way to fill his life with something, even a fake person.
The other major theme to me is the dependence on someone else to give meaning to your life. This is problem is alive today as ever and maybe always will be around. Drogo wasn't able to find a purpose through life with the people around him. He left for the fort because he needed some purpose. And then he spent his life hoping in vain that the war would come and that his life had a goal. All too common malaise. If you can't figure out why to live noone's gonna do it for you anyway.
Boring? Yeah, a bit. It would be heavy to read 700 pages of this, but it's not a long book so.
Yes, I did like it. I think it's an interesting thing to explore, how our inner life is always somehow the same no matter the circumstances we live in. If you have a life threatening disease it will feel like a big problem and if you only have a small problem it will "occupy the space" and seem like a big problem. It's as if our experience of the world is scaled to the emotional capacity (and appetite?) of our brains. If you live a life where a lot is going on it will feel like that at first, but in the long run it won't make an impression on your anymore. And if you live a life like Drogo's where nothing happens then you will start paying attention to the most minuscule details to fill your inner life with. Not to mention jump at the opportunity to dramatize your existence with things that you really know don't even exist (but refuse to admit). It's a bit like Tom Hanks in Cast Away with the volleyball, he just had to find a way to fill his life with something, even a fake person.
The other major theme to me is the dependence on someone else to give meaning to your life. This is problem is alive today as ever and maybe always will be around. Drogo wasn't able to find a purpose through life with the people around him. He left for the fort because he needed some purpose. And then he spent his life hoping in vain that the war would come and that his life had a goal. All too common malaise. If you can't figure out why to live noone's gonna do it for you anyway.
Boring? Yeah, a bit. It would be heavy to read 700 pages of this, but it's not a long book so.
Lovely to have my ego stroked by you asking all these questions
Yes, I did like it. I think it's an interesting thing to explore, how our inner life is always somehow the same no matter the circumstances we live in. If you have a life threatening disease it will feel like a big problem and if you only have a small problem it will "occupy the space" and seem like a big problem. It's as if our experience of the world is scaled to the emotional capacity (and appetite?) of our brains. If you live a life where a lot is going on it will feel like that at first, but in the long run it won't make an impression on your anymore. And if you live a life like Drogo's where nothing happens then you will start paying attention to the most minuscule details to fill your inner life with. Not to mention jump at the opportunity to dramatize your existence with things that you really know don't even exist (but refuse to admit). It's a bit like Tom Hanks in Cast Away with the volleyball, he just had to find a way to fill his life with something, even a fake person.
The other major theme to me is the dependence on someone else to give meaning to your life. This is problem is alive today as ever and maybe always will be around. Drogo wasn't able to find a purpose through life with the people around him. He left for the fort because he needed some purpose. And then he spent his life hoping in vain that the war would come and that his life had a goal. All too common malaise. If you can't figure out why to live noone's gonna do it for you anyway.
Boring? Yeah, a bit. It would be heavy to read 700 pages of this, but it's not a long book so.
Yes, I did like it. I think it's an interesting thing to explore, how our inner life is always somehow the same no matter the circumstances we live in. If you have a life threatening disease it will feel like a big problem and if you only have a small problem it will "occupy the space" and seem like a big problem. It's as if our experience of the world is scaled to the emotional capacity (and appetite?) of our brains. If you live a life where a lot is going on it will feel like that at first, but in the long run it won't make an impression on your anymore. And if you live a life like Drogo's where nothing happens then you will start paying attention to the most minuscule details to fill your inner life with. Not to mention jump at the opportunity to dramatize your existence with things that you really know don't even exist (but refuse to admit). It's a bit like Tom Hanks in Cast Away with the volleyball, he just had to find a way to fill his life with something, even a fake person.
The other major theme to me is the dependence on someone else to give meaning to your life. This is problem is alive today as ever and maybe always will be around. Drogo wasn't able to find a purpose through life with the people around him. He left for the fort because he needed some purpose. And then he spent his life hoping in vain that the war would come and that his life had a goal. All too common malaise. If you can't figure out why to live noone's gonna do it for you anyway.
Boring? Yeah, a bit. It would be heavy to read 700 pages of this, but it's not a long book so.
Lovely to have my ego stroked by you asking all these questions
Yes, I did like it. I think it's an interesting thing to explore, how our inner life is always somehow the same no matter the circumstances we live in. If you have a life threatening disease it will feel like a big problem and if you only have a small problem it will "occupy the space" and seem like a big problem. It's as if our experience of the world is scaled to the emotional capacity (and appetite?) of our brains. If you live a life where a lot is going on it will feel like that at first, but in the long run it won't make an impression on your anymore. And if you live a life like Drogo's where nothing happens then you will start paying attention to the most minuscule details to fill your inner life with. Not to mention jump at the opportunity to dramatize your existence with things that you really know don't even exist (but refuse to admit). It's a bit like Tom Hanks in Cast Away with the volleyball, he just had to find a way to fill his life with something, even a fake person.
The other major theme to me is the dependence on someone else to give meaning to your life. This is problem is alive today as ever and maybe always will be around. Drogo wasn't able to find a purpose through life with the people around him. He left for the fort because he needed some purpose. And then he spent his life hoping in vain that the war would come and that his life had a goal. All too common malaise. If you can't figure out why to live noone's gonna do it for you anyway.
Boring? Yeah, a bit. It would be heavy to read 700 pages of this, but it's not a long book so.
Yes, I did like it. I think it's an interesting thing to explore, how our inner life is always somehow the same no matter the circumstances we live in. If you have a life threatening disease it will feel like a big problem and if you only have a small problem it will "occupy the space" and seem like a big problem. It's as if our experience of the world is scaled to the emotional capacity (and appetite?) of our brains. If you live a life where a lot is going on it will feel like that at first, but in the long run it won't make an impression on your anymore. And if you live a life like Drogo's where nothing happens then you will start paying attention to the most minuscule details to fill your inner life with. Not to mention jump at the opportunity to dramatize your existence with things that you really know don't even exist (but refuse to admit). It's a bit like Tom Hanks in Cast Away with the volleyball, he just had to find a way to fill his life with something, even a fake person.
The other major theme to me is the dependence on someone else to give meaning to your life. This is problem is alive today as ever and maybe always will be around. Drogo wasn't able to find a purpose through life with the people around him. He left for the fort because he needed some purpose. And then he spent his life hoping in vain that the war would come and that his life had a goal. All too common malaise. If you can't figure out why to live noone's gonna do it for you anyway.
Boring? Yeah, a bit. It would be heavy to read 700 pages of this, but it's not a long book so.
One thing I liked about it was how we are all seem defensive against experiencing the things that scare us but we somehow manage to become adapted to the new conditions. Then we see ourselves completely engaged with this new life and then in the end, we even start liking it. This is in our nature. After a relatively short while, this new life turns to something as if we have lived it all our lives and now this is difficult to return to our previous state, what that we once wanted to maintain forever. I don't know if it's a good thing or bad. It's certainly good to be flexible to the new conditions and to try to live it in the way we like even if it doesn't sound promising but it's also kind of scary to see us getting used to everything so easy like that. In Shawshank, when they set Brooks free after several years, he can't put up with the life outside. He wants his cell back. You see, a man wishing to have his prison cell back because that's his real home, his only home.
When I left home to live in this dormitory at the begining of this semester, I thought I'd never survive. Everything looked awful. I even thought of quitting university and coming back home but I'm still here and now, whenever I go back home, I feel like a stranger in my own room. Nothing looks awful now in the dormitory but you know, it sucks because I'm sure nothing has changed except my life standards and expectations
You have no idea how sad it is for me when Giovanni comes back to the city and finds nothing interesting there.
Yep yep. I don't relate to this as much, because I've always been quite stubborn and unable to adapt (I think I'm getting better though). But there is a certain "careful what you wish for" dilemma here. On the one hand you don't want to be stuck in a mediocre life if you realize that you could live better. But on the other hand you don't want to be the "grass is always greener" guy who's never happy anywhere (ahem, I've cast in that role many times). And when it comes right down to it, that big word that scares us a little, happiness, is really the skill to adapt and to accept your life as it is.
I lived in a student house (not exactly a dormitory, a private house but rented out to students) and I put up with it. That it was dirty, that people annoyed me, that random people would move in and out that I had to live with and couldn't do anything about. I thought of it as exercise in tolerance, I almost never complained about anyone or tried people to change. There was a certain tension there, but it was... livable. But when I finally got out of it it felt so good.
I was expecting it considering how the story was going. Also because he felt so empty before even going to the fort. I didn't think he had any chance to beat it.
When I left home to live in this dormitory at the begining of this semester, I thought I'd never survive. Everything looked awful. I even thought of quitting university and coming back home but I'm still here and now, whenever I go back home, I feel like a stranger in my own room. Nothing looks awful now in the dormitory but you know, it sucks because I'm sure nothing has changed except my life standards and expectations
I was expecting it considering how the story was going. Also because he felt so empty before even going to the fort. I didn't think he had any chance to beat it.
I guess we, in a very strange yet natural way, get used to the new conditions even those we have always been scared of. I mean, the adaptation happens first even without us trying for it. Then we get wholly attached to the new state which makes us believe that we are happy with it. It's fake many times.
What felt so good? Thinking about the experience or finally getting out of the place?
Have you read any of Calvino's books?
What felt so good? Thinking about the experience or finally getting out of the place?
Have you read any of Calvino's books?
I hate to be so blasphemous, but is there any form of happiness that is objective and not "fake"? I would argue that if Drogo were able to find happiness in his life at the fort (and despite what Buzzati wrote, I think it's perfectly possible that someone might do that), would that be any form of invalid happiness? Isn't that precisely the problem with the search for happiness, that all there is is subjective experience and thus search as high as you might, you will never find anything "out there" that will fill the void in yourself?
lol thinking. Getting out, obviously. I have my own apartment now, and it's sooooo good
Not yet. But I'm more or less on track to read myself through the 20th century in italian literature, so sooner or later I will
Btw if you want a recommendation I suggest "Fontamara" by Ignazio Silone. It's multi faceted, humorous and intelligent imo.
What felt so good? Thinking about the experience or finally getting out of the place?
Not yet. But I'm more or less on track to read myself through the 20th century in italian literature, so sooner or later I will
Btw if you want a recommendation I suggest "Fontamara" by Ignazio Silone. It's multi faceted, humorous and intelligent imo.
