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/lit/ - Literature

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10942790 No.10942790 [Reply] [Original]

Holy shit /lit/, I thought you were just your usual contrarian and jaded selves, but this truly is Reddit: The Novel. I also thought that referencing something isn't the same as naming it and explaining all about it immediately afterwards but what do I know. So many rad 80s references, amigos!

>> No.10942824

>>10942790
I'm considering reading it just so I can criticize it in peace. Should I? Every time I talk shit about it somebody asks me if I've read it, and when I say that I've only read fragments on the chan they immediately drop my opinion. But on the other hand I don't want to waste time reading shit.

>> No.10942843

>>10942824
i read it and enjoyed it when i was in middle school. it's short and easy and compellingly adventurous if you can look past the oft mentioned shortcomings. also if you have any desire to escape into a fantasy world and still be idealized be considered virtuous by everybody you'll probably get a boner from this book.

>> No.10942881

>>10942824
OP here. It won't take you too long to read it and you might get a laugh out of all the cringy dialogues. Then again, you might just see the movie (which I haven't yet).

>> No.10942932

>>10942881
I've been told that the movie is inspired on the book but the story is changed, so...

>> No.10942950

Cline inverts metaphysics to transmute soy into a social reality predicated on prenatal reddit ethic then made manifest through post skyrim narcissism (as concept et ego) sodomised then assimilated into latent soy affect as post rape insurgency - the aesthetic murdered in sega fetish manga and dishonest panning shots. Yet the sad truth is Cline gets all the love from the neophytes that sanctify his very name.


Did anyone else feel lied to watching/reading Ready Player One? How much longer will simulation physics rendered as proto bioshock aesthetic be praised as affecting art? (Especially when the only audience responding to RPO are the neurotic vilenueve sycophants high on neo imdb idoltry?)
cline vandalises art to peddle pseudo avant garde video game hysteria, it appeals to the emasculated neuroticism of Cline sycophants, whilst 'pulling a fast one' on its aesthetic authenticity, result in a garish makeup of style over video game subterfuge.

>> No.10942990

I cannot describe how I feel being surrounded by people who praise this book.

>> No.10943002
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10943002

It seems like peak hyperconsumerism to me

>> No.10943020

>>10943002
>>10943002
>peak

wishful thinking my friend

we're still on the rise, and have so much more to see

>> No.10943614

>>10943002
That's funny. Consumerism has barely started. Just you wait, frendo.

>> No.10943762

>>10942790
Is this book actually a critique of consumerism, escapism, rise of multimedia, etc? Or is it full on glorification and embrace?

>> No.10943772

>>10943002
Come back to me when we're in the VR/AR 80% of our lives

>> No.10943793

>>10943762
It sells, so go figure

>> No.10943823

>>10943002
I thought this a couple of years ago and I saw the trailer for wreck it ralph at the movies. It had a bunch of 80's video game characters sitting around in what was a mock AA meeting making pop culture references. When I saw that trailer I thought wow they must have gone through a lot of work acquiring the right to have all those different trademarked characters in one scene, it is not even a reference they are there this is peak consumerism. I have been continually proved wrong since then.

>> No.10943901

>>10942824
I don’t see why you would, there are too many good books out there to be wasting any amount of time reading this trash. Unless you’re gonna be discussing it with the brain let’s that think it’s good. You might as well go to reddit r/writingprompts and criticize that because it’s basically the same quality. It’s almost literally just shit copied and pasted from other books with names changed to random pop culture stuff. I doubt even Ernest Cline thinks it’s worth reading.

>> No.10943909

>>10943762
At the very end he plays with the idea that escapism might be bad and then it ends.

>> No.10943915

>>10943762
It completely revels in the nostalgia. It's the kind of book where say the writer's favourite band is The Cure so he has his characters talk about how amazing The Cure is and discuss their favourite albums at lenght.

>> No.10944906

>>10943909
Yeah, the sage advice of "don't give up on reality, it's the only thing that can make u really happy lol" is unironically dispensed at the very end of that inane quest, making sure that only the most autistic and antisocial neckbeard could ever reach it in the first place.

>> No.10944920

>he thinks we are contrarian and jaded
>he doesn't believe that we literally just call bad books bad books
wut r u even doin here m8

>> No.10944926

For anyone considering reading it just to understand, just listen through this podcast instead. It's funny and good at pointing out all the ways the books fails.
http://372pages.com/

>> No.10944944

>>10943762
This book doesn't critique or glorify shit because that implies it has any message at all. It was created to be made into a nostalgia film, and lo and behold it was made into a nostalgia film.

>> No.10944959

>>10944944
having read 90% of it then put it down because it sucked, it has at its most basic level a vague analysis of escapism and alienation, but does not explore these themes much at all. It's very much surface-level plot lined with 80's nostalgia (which for some reason is the most specifically irritating type of nostalgia to me).

And the dialogue is hoooly shit bad. And the main character is very inconsistent. He's a total fucking NEET autist but then is super fucking smooth as soon as he meets this hot girl who he admits makes him extremely nervous. That shit right there immediately made the book drop a dozen points for me right off the bat.

Don't read it unless you're curious how basic a book can be while still being a massive sell (mostly by cashing in on 'geek culture')

>> No.10944974

>>10943915
I'd maybe like that desu... the Cure is great.

>> No.10944982 [DELETED] 

The parts i read reminded me of myself between the ages of 14 and 20. I think hipsters just elongate that awkward and cringy phase of life.

>> No.10945097

>>10942790
The dumbest thing to me is that they expect us to believe that any gamer would play a game where if you die, you lose ALL of your progress and gear, and have to start from scratch from level 1. Especially in a game that is built entirely around microtransactions, if you die you just lose thousands of dollars.
And I thought SAO had bad game design.

>> No.10945115

>>10945097
Yeah... can you imagine living that kinda life... lol!!!

>> No.10945463

>>10945097
Yeah, I get that for the purpose of the story, there have to be some kind of stakes and death has to mean something, but there were better ways to do it.

>> No.10945547

>>10944920
the problem is that we call bad books bad books, and also good books bad books

>> No.10945615

>>10944926
16 podcast episodes? really??

>> No.10945622

>>10942824
Sounds like you better read it then you lazy fuck

>> No.10945831

>>10945547
I usually hear plebs say this. What are some examples of good books we call bad? (DFW memeing doesn't count)

>> No.10945836

>>10942824
>have you even read it
>nah brah just excerpts when I was surfing the chans dude

>> No.10945850

>>10943002
We haven't even left the troposphere of soulless mindless consumerism

>> No.10945864

>>10944959
for betas by betas

>> No.10946355

>>10945097
>he never played Diablo II hardcore
casual

>> No.10946450

guys

I'm in a book club with some friends. They want us to read this book for next week... Should I just skim the PDF and read the plot online? I'd be kind of embarrassed to have this on my bookshelf.

>> No.10946741

>>10945097
The book is shit but your reasoning is flawed. The ONLY games I play are dwarf fortress and roguelikes, where you indeed lose everything when you lose. A run in some roguelikes can take days, plenty of times I was 3-5 hours in and lost everything from a simple mistake or bad luck. A fortress can go on for months, real life months, before losing. Although micro transactions I'll agree yeah, that's a different situation.

>> No.10946755

>>10942843
At first I thought you were trolling but then Ready Player One was released in 2011.

>> No.10946772

>>10942824
Honestly the excerpts posted on here are so putrid and offensive that I'd say they're enough to ignore the book. Even if the rest of it was completely fine the very presence of those parts would ruin it.

>> No.10947403

>>10945615
Only 8 of them dedicated to RPO. The other 8 is about Cline's second book Armada which somehow is even more shitty.

>> No.10947680

>>10947403
Still, 8+ hours of my attention is way too generous to give to a book of 80's pop culture masturbation.

>> No.10947682

>>10942790
They hate it on reddit too.

>> No.10947925

>>10946772
This. You can't judge a book by its cover but I think it's reasonable you can judge it by a handful of its contents.

>you have to read the entire thing to judge it you can't just pick apart the bad things by themselves!
This same logic would justify not criticizing a book full of spelling and grammatical errors because you could just ignore them.

>> No.10947945

>>10942824
If you really want to go through with it, I recommend this podcast to go along with your experience:

http://372pages.com/page/2