Drusas

I don’t think the broader populace has any link between the two of them in their minds.

You should be a TV writer.

Not until he’s gotten through all of the peasants who live in the countryside.

I think I tasted a bit of bile in the back of my throat when I read your comment.

Well, it’s only a very, very recent problem in Japan. They had stagnation for decades. Little to no change in wages, little to no change in prices. In 2011, I was making something like 33,000 USD per year there and living very comfortably with ample savings and what the Japanese considered to be a large apartment. It’s a pretty affordable country, aside from travel. Or if you want to live in a fancy place in a desirable big city neighborhood.

(And yes, I have been to Japan since then and know that things have changed somewhat. It’s still cheap compared to the US. Food is so cheap, it’s amazing what you can get.)

I wonder if they even have what we think of as HR in Russia.

Shortly after I returned to the States from Fukushima (a little bit after the disaster), I was taking an emergency response course on radioactivity. Everybody there got to use a Geiger counter on themselves and their belongings and various things in the room. The only thing that set it off was the purse I had brought back with me.

Anecdotal, obviously, and it wasn’t highly radioactive, but I did get rid of the purse.

I taught a bunch of Gen Zers back when they were in high school. None of them knew how to type well, and it was a rarity that any of them knew how to type at all. I was supposed to teach them things like Microsoft Office, but we had to start with typing and basic PC usage before we could move on to something as complicated as MS Word.

This is what happens when people don’t use computers and instead just use cell phones.

Oh, I know. That’s why it would be great if we had at least the small step of landmines being considered a war crime. We’re obviously not going to get any country to totally give up on munitions.

Landmines should be against the Geneva Convention.

I’ve heard that about The Dispossessed. I tried to listen to it on audiobook and the narration was terrible, so I just couldn’t get far into it. I need to pick up a physical or digital copy.

Oh, and Malazan is great. That one took me two tries to really get into as well, mostly because I initially had trouble keeping track of so many characters.

Enjoying a classic book is not pretentious. Conversely, gatekeeping what people think is a must-read is pretty pretentious.

Reading books which make you think is also not pretentious, and I get the idea that you sure think it is. There’s nothing wrong with light reading for fun, but some people enjoy more variety than that.

The sequels are worth it.

No. The Count of Monte Cristo is a much better and deeper novel, but The Three Musketeers is much lighter and more fun. They’re both good reads for different reasons.

I’ve been thinking the same myself. I remember it having such an impact on me as a kid.

I don’t mean to be replying to every post on this thread–I guess I love a lot of books–, but I’m going to have to recommend these in particular for people who don’t usually read.

I had this friend in college who had never read a book of his own volition. He wasn’t the sort of person who was proud of the fact, he just thought books were boring and had trouble getting through them. This horrified me, as somebody who had a collection of some 500 books or so at that point (almost all of them read). Anyway, he read Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and then Catch-22, and he was hooked. He’s been a reader ever since.

I agree with more than one of these, but I would call out The Metamorphosis as one that everybody should read. You can appreciate it at any age (well, within reason–maybe not for the 8-year-olds), it’s dramatic and captivating, and it’s short.

I always try to recommend books of short stories to my friends who like to read but don’t have much time for it.

I really loved The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo. I was surprised at how well they held up over time.

The dystopic books that warn us of what we could be.

1984, Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World, Animal Farm, The Giver (and yes, you should still read The Giver even if you’re an adult if you’ve never read it before).

But the first book that flashed through my mind when I read the question was Slaughterhouse Five.

Wholeheartedly agree with The Stranger, but I think most people would not quite get it/appreciate its theme.