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Originally Posted by Severian

I respect your recommendation, but like so many other great books, this one was ruined for me by a traditional liberal arts education. There's something about reading a book in a sterile classroom, and listening to a bunch of dillweeds wax philosophical over it to impress a bored teacher, that executes interest and thought like with the efficiency of a lethal injection.

I recreationally read speculative fiction because academia never goes anywhere near it, and because reading the right SF novel can sometimes rekindle an interest in books like this.

Honestly, it's SF more than any other genre that makes me independently investigate scientific and philosophical theories on my own time. I applaud your persistence and taste, though.

ha ha, i hear what you're saying! grad school (in the humanities) got me off reading for a few years-- i couldn't look at a book without wanting to vomit. as a result i watched a lot of movies.

i was lucky to read nietzsche in an independent study so i wasn't encumbered by assholes-- "class" was usually talk and cigarettes in a bench. the thing is i got hooked since then and kept reading afterwards.

what i love about nietzsche is that he *truly* blows your mind. why? because even in the most far-fetched scifi story, in the end it all boils down to preserving the same ideology that everybody else repeats-- who is good, who is the villain, bla bla-- predictable. everybody evaluates the world the same way in our era.

but that little fucker goes to the core of things-- he makes you take a look at your values and proceeds to give them a thorough skewering. it doesn't matter if you agree with his morality or not, in the end-- the thing is that he makes you question the very core of your assumptions about the way you judge the word, and in that sense he is truly fucking mindblowing.

oh, the manchester united game started. anyway, your loss, i'm afraid, and i hope you can recover your health soon-- school can fuck you up in so many ways. don't let the bastards grind you down, etc.

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i assume you've already read dune so i won't bother recommending it.