Refusing to Read

[Bronn Stone]

For instance, I refuse to again read anything written by Ernest Hemingway, Neal Stephenson, or a Russian other than Nabokov.

Dostoevsky is brilliant. This is nuts.

[Ser_not_appearing_yet]

Dostoevsky is brilliant. This is nuts.

QFT.

One of my all-time favourite authors. Also for all those UF fans, he basically created your genre.

[Grack21]

With Card, its not just that I disagree with his views, it's that his views are disgusting. There's a difference between saying you don't believe/accept homosexuality and saying "We need to lock all the homosexuals up before they rape are children".

[Cantabile]

Can someone please locate Card's essay or whatever the hell it was that he said all those things about homosexuality in? I can't find it, and I'm really curious if he did in fact say we need to lock gays away, which is what I remember.

And yes, Nan, go bask in the beauty of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy before I tar and feather you.

[Migey]

I sometimes drop books after starting, but i don't think i've ever flat out refused to read a book.

I did refuse to read Twilight i guess. I ended up doing it anyway, because my mate snared me with a sneaky trick and got me to swear i'd read it as my side of a bet.

[David Selig]

Can someone please locate Card's essay or whatever the hell it was that he said all those things about homosexuality in? I can't find it, and I'm really curious if he did in fact say we need to lock gays away, which is what I remember.

Do you mean this one - http://www.nauvoo.com/library/card-hypocrites.html

It contains gems like this:

Laws against homosexual behavior should remain on the books, not to be indiscriminately enforced against anyone who happens to be caught violating them, but to be used when necessary to send a clear message that those who flagrantly violate society's regulation of sexual behavior cannot be permitted to remain as acceptable, equal citizens within that society.

The goal of the polity is not to put homosexuals in jail. The goal is to discourage people from engaging in homosexual practices in the first place, and, when they nevertheless proceed in their homosexual behavior, to encourage them to do so discreetly, so as not to shake the confidence of the community in the polity's ability to provide rules for safe, stable, dependable marriage and family relationships.

[Cantabile]

I hope Santa gives Card some man-love next Christmas.

[Ahimsa]

In regards to CS Lewis, I remembered the Christianity as a subtext. But I just reread Silver Chair, and he's kind of crazy. There's quite a bit of author intrusion as he mocks the kids who don't know about Adam and Eve, etc. I still love the books, but I can see why they might seem confrontational to someone of a different faith.

I did stop reading Orson Scott Card in 95, though, when I picked up a book of short stories after reading the Ender's Game Trilogy (and it was a trilogy back then) and they were about lone travelers getting converted to the faith. I try to avoid reading anything where the characters are acting in ways to prove a prove a pre-existing point rather than acting naturally.

I pretty much always finish a book if I start it. There are probably only 5 or 6 that were just too bad to read.

[Grack21]

There are few books I can ever think of that I've stopped reading after I started. The Gates of Rome by Iggulden I had to stop after like page 50. I'm all for historical fiction making some stuff up at times but, damn, corn fields in ancient Rome? Not to mention the writing felt like some sort of bad boyscout tie in novel.

Also, a certain book about Mormon vampires made me stop 10 pages in.

And I've finished some bad stuff. I made it al the way through the first Tom Lloyd

[Old Nan]

Which one book of Stephenson's did you read and then come to this conclusion over?

Snow Crash, The Diamond Age, and Cryptonomicon, the last being the last straw. It's been 12 years now, and I honestly don't remember the specifics of why I loathe him, but I think it had something to do with the overwhelming science-nerdism. As for the Russians, Dostoevsky is certainly the one I hate the most. Tolstoy I've given up on, but he isn't so revolting. And that's enough about me.

[Ser_not_appearing_yet]

Why does Old Nan's taste in reading material not surprise me?

[Old Nan]

It contains gems like this:

That seems fairly tolerant of him. I mean, what the liberals here are objecting to is his dislike of homosexuality and promotion of 'family values', not his thoughts on the law. Ender's Game was stupid, and that's enough of a reason to stop reading Card.

[lokisnow]

I refuse to read books without Quotation marks. The Road was worth it, but fuck anything else, it was enough of an assault on the reader to remove them, why go through it again?

That seems fairly tolerant of him. I mean, what the liberals here are objecting to is his dislike of homosexuality and promotion of 'family values', not his thoughts on the law. Ender's Game was stupid, and that's enough of a reason to stop reading Card.

No, we're not. we're objecting to Card's belief, very clearly written above, that Homosexuals should be afraid to have sex. He says that they should be legally targeted for having sex and such laws should be vigorously enforced to promote, expand and encourage their fear. He is quite plainly stating that discrimination is good and that consenting adults in their own bedroom should be imprisoned for what they do there. His rationale for this discrimination is that it is good for society, because if homosexuals are afraid, they will promote strong traditional families by settling into a marraige with an opposite gendered spouse and raising children in a strong traditional family. If you don't promote the fear enough, some of those homosexuals might not form a traditional family, thus leading to decline in traditional families. The horror.

I hope Santa gives Card some man-love next Christmas.

I don't know about Santa, but Janus gave him a mild ischemic stroke for New Years. :(

I still read Card because I do find it challenging to my beliefs and interesting to remind myself how much I used to blindly agree with his writings. Funnily enough, it took meeting the man for me to stop defending him and start actually letting myself challenge what he wrote. And recently, I was pleasantly surprised by Pathfinder, he rose up to the current YA standard. To do so he recycled virtually every unique sci-fi or world building idea he has ever had or written and combined them into a single novel and he uses the exact same stock OSC hero he always employs, the Bean/Ender/Alvin etc model. It was saved, I think, by being a YA novel, so it was probably subjected to more editing than most of his regular tracts (I don't think novel is the right word for his most recent books pre pathfinder). He kept it breezy and fun; very light on the monologuing.

In terms of theology mixing with literature, he happily owns to having written a science fiction allegory of the book of Mormon with the Homecoming series and a fantasy alternate history allegory of the Life of Joseph Smith with the Alvin Maker series. That is legitimately interesting stuff to me. They might be shallow because it's allegory, but it is sort of fun at the same time. And his alternate history/fantasy America is an absurdly fun little thought project.

He's always had controversial opinions about homosexuality, and always made a point to include homosexual characters in his novels, and since the 1990s all his homosexual characters follow the same pattern. Usually, they show how they can integrate into normal society and marry a woman and have children (like all homosexuals secretly want to do because they instinctively know wife and kids is the most satisfying thing life can ever bring a person) if they really TRY hard). Odd how Speaker for the Dead is all about the concept that people live lies their whole life, hiding intimate dark secrets from their spouses, children and community and it is only in death that their true story can be told and catharsis can be achieved. ;)

I’d say his best work is some of his earliest. A planet called Treason and Hart’s Hope are among his more thematically rich fare. The Worthing saga has its moments, but you can see the later seeds of his allegorical reworkings in that particular book. Wyrms is a hell of an odd abnormality, ending more like a Hentai film or Bakker novel than like a Card book. Ender’s Game is more along the lines of these works, than his later works. It was after the runaway success of Ender’s Game and Speaker for the dead that he branched off into works that otherwise wouldn’t have been published if it weren’t for his name, the two allegory series, and the shift in tone from the first two Ender books. Lost Boys is a career highlight here, and maybe his last great book (basically writes himself into the book and it's a ghost story). What he did with his career was daring in his own way, it redirected to become more inclusive than expansive. Rather than try new ideas, he began to recycle old ones. Pastwatch is a brightspot in the remainder of his works, harkening back to his earlier days, but most become increasingly insular and shrill as he ages.

9/11 caused him to lose his shit. He’d already written some articles that year about how Clinton was the biggest traitor to the US Presidency ever due to his ‘non-response’ to the USS Cole bombing but 9/11 was a tipping point into crazyland that has no end in sight. On 9/11, about six hours after the attack, he wrote three articles, Can we Win this War, Why we were Attacked and What About Turning the Other Cheek?. The first was that our only chance to win the war was to permanently occupy Iraq, Iran, and the other adjacent Middle East countries (I don’t think he mentioned Afghanistan) in order to keep Muslims from ever hurting us again. The second was explaining that we were attacked because our country is so offensive to Muslims that they think we’re waging war on them with shows like Baywatch and we didn’t even know there was a war on. The last was the biblical basis (as interpreted by Card) for going in and kicking ass on behalf of USA and Christendom, basically it’s okay to kill as many Muslims as we want because we’re just protecting our families, and that’s not bad in the bible. He’s been writing Hawkish columns calling for more war ever since, he kept up a weekly “War Watch” Column at Ornery.org (one of his sites) for several years, and now only periodically chimes in to talk about how we’re losing the war by not having a more expansive and permanent occupation, and that if those middle easterners don’t fear us enough, they won’t quell properly. Sounds very Ender to me (actually it was his stance on the Iraq War that made me dislike Ender’s Game more and more as I get older, he really believes in the philosophy of kill first, ask forgiveness later as rational and valid).

[Old Nan]

No, we're not. we're objecting to Card's belief, very clearly written above, that Homosexuals should be afraid to have sex. He says that they should be legally targeted for having sex and such laws should be vigorously enforced to promote, expand and encourage their fear. He is quite plainly stating that discrimination is good and that consenting adults in their own bedroom should be imprisoned for what they do there.

Exactly. It isn't raids being used in a statistically targeted or at-need manner against violations of the law that most of us find objectionable, but rather intrusion of the state into choice of sex partners etc. I say that it's a good thing he's willing to state his beliefs instead of pissing himself in fear of the PC police's opprobrium and only finding the nerve to squeak out a "...but I find it very sad and disgusting personally." A bark without a bite is the most pathetic thing in the universe.

[palimpsest.]

I’m surprised so many people openly admit that they wouldn’t read a book that expresses opinions they not already agree with.

Don’t we normally tell each other that we want to be challenged? I thought that was part of the reader’s conceit: to deliberately expose ourselves to different personalities, mindsets, cultures, opinions, times, …

At least for me, it's not about expressing opinions I don't agree with, it's about writing a book for the sole purpose of promoting your views (as discussed in 'Shoved down our throats' thread). Even if I agree with the views expressed in the book, they almost always ruin a part of the reading experience if they're not subtle enough.

In regards to CS Lewis, I remembered the Christianity as a subtext. But I just reread Silver Chair, and he's kind of crazy. There's quite a bit of author intrusion as he mocks the kids who don't know about Adam and Eve, etc. I still love the books, but I can see why they might seem confrontational to someone of a different faith.

I really should re-read Narnia books. I remember reading them as a kid, and I also remember being very surprised when, 10 years later, I first heard of the connection between them and Christianity. Thinking back, I only remember being a bit irritated by the constant use of 'son of Adam' phrase when I first read the series (our family was mostly atheist), but, being 7, I just figured that Aslan probably doesn't know much about Earth and so he must think that the whole Adam and Eve thing is actual history. :D

[broken one]

I really should re-read Narnia books. I remember reading them as a kid, and I also remember being very surprised when, 10 years later, I first heard of the connection between them and Christianity.

I realised the connection at the end of the last book. It was like "damn, the lion is Jesus Christ!" :wideeyed: I think Muslims may find it offensive... I remember there were evil dudes resembling Turks or Arabs, they worshipped some sort of monster (satan?)

[MinDonner]

Yeah, there was a race of thinly-disguised eeevil Arabs (turbans and olive skin and everything!) who worshipped Tash (for bonus anti-multiculturalism points, Tash also had several arms in the manner of a Hindu god) - though with a weaselly get-out clause that if you worshipped Tash in the right way, you were actually worshipping Aslan, so could get into heaven anyway. :rolleyes:

For all that The Last Battle is my favourite of the Narnia books (cos, let's face it, if you're gonna adapt a book of the Bible for kids then fuck yeah Revelations!), the atheist dwarves have the biggest and most annoying facepalm moment. Remember that bit where they've just gone through the barn door that leads to heaven (ie. they all just got killed), and the dwarves think they're still in the barn and refuse to believe that they're sitting at a banquet table? And that this is bad because they explicitly reject belief and only see what's really there instead of opening their minds to Jeezus? Talk about mixed messages! All we can really get from that is that heaven is a beautiful illusion, and that donkey slop tastes like fine wine if you just close your eyes and imagine...

[IheartTesla]

I happen to think Card has messed up views on all forms of sexuality, not just the homo-variety. Which is why it is best to stop at Ender's Game, involving prepubescent boys and girls and not a hint of any adult relations. I couldn't get past the creepy incestuous undertones between Ender and his sister in Speaker for the Dead. Of course, the manbearpig proxies for the Aztecs only made it worse.

[Shryke]

No, he became a bit unhinged after 9/11 and wrote some pretty unflattering or outright inflammatory things about Muslims. One short story read like an appeal for why we should just eradicate all Muslims in a genocide. This thesis was expanded upon in the execrable books Ilium and Olympos. Whether he stands by those things now, or regrets going down the "kill the ragheads" path, I honestly don't know. Anyway, that's one of the reasons why Simmons gets lumped in with Card in these discussions.

Reading through his Hyperion books, I wouldn't blame 9/11 for his views, just for making him make those views more public.

[Grack21]

Sounds very Ender to me (actually it was his stance on the Iraq War that made me dislike Ender’s Game more and more as I get older, he really believes in the philosophy of kill first, ask forgiveness later as rational and valid).

Yeah. This. I used to like Ender's game til I heard Card talk about it. Then realized that he ACTUALLY thinks we should do all that stuff.

Also, this is based on random things I've heard said so may not have nay truth to it, but isn't he one of those people that thinks Global Warming is a scam?