NPR talked about it

https://www.npr.org/2024/05/14/1250912188/honor-levy-my-first-book-short-stories-review

Here's a choice excerpt I randomly scrolled to in the epub

He felt like he was dying, smothered by xenoestrogenic alienation, forced domestication, a lowering of testosterone, depopulation, doom, the sun setting for the last time ever, a great ugliness, the end of history flashing before his eyes. Withered Wojak. Pink Wojak with bleeding eyes. </3. Cope or rope. He felt western civilization falling and bile rising in his throat, a microwaved McFlurry of remorse and half-digested animal proteins. He felt himself falling out of love. Falling to his knees in a Walmart. A poison arrow in his chest. MRNA mode. Blood of the Lernaean Hydra mode. Ow. Wow. Passions inflamed the middle layer of his heart's wall. Myocarditis. Oneitis. It's So Over, said his sinking swollen heart. The drywall called out to his fists. He punched the keyboard instead, kjbvkdesvdsbjvjkwbdvb jkldesblkdf. . . . Why would you ask that??? Ur a dumb slut . . . Just another whore. . . . . . . . . No. . . . . . No. . . . . . I said I wanted a tradwife not a tard wife . . . roastie . . . whore . . . I hate you . . . I hate you I hate you. Just before he hit send, it hit him, something sent from the beyond, a burning white light, a growing echo of music, the opening notes of MGMT's “Little Dark Age.” And then it began: images flashing, hyperspeed through his mind, the Intertwined Lovers of Valdaro skeletons in their Neolithic tomb, huddled face-to-face with their arms and legs intertwined in an eternal embrace, Orpheus and Eurydice in the underworld, every pair of lovers ever intertwined in eternal embrace, Odysseus and Penelope, Eloise and Abelard, Adam and Eve, Bella and Edward. At ever-accelerating nightcore speed, he saw nights and days, battles and births, blood, so much blood, beating hearts, cells dividing, code being written, oceans rising, blooming flowers, dying crops, the great flood, continental drift, the universe expanding, poetry, pain, the big bang, empires rising and falling, the birth of his ancestors, the death of his great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren, all of the ends and the beginnings beginning and ending and beginning and ending and beginning and ending infinitely. He saw what Life is, and what Death signifies, and why Love is stronger than both. He saw a loop, a shining circle. He saw the way forward as he looked back. He hit the backspace button as he RETVRNed from this infinite space to his body, to his bedroom, to now. He understood now. No no i want you, he replied. Sorry for the late reply I was away from my keyboard. It wasn't a lie. He had been somewhere else. He wanted to reach through the black glass, through all the 0s and 1s, through the mess of wires under the ocean, through the cloud, to grab her, take her in his big gym arms and hold her, be one. He wanted her now as she was: messy and pure, bone of his bones, flesh of his flesh, this thing to be called woman. He'd reach through the wall before she hit it. He had to. It was a love story, it all was, everything is, and always has been.

!bookworms I decided to post the thread for once as @pbj has been busy hopefully touching grass

What are your thoughts?

What's the worst book you've ever read, discounting self published crap?

I bought my mom Jo Watson's Among Others half a decade ago for mother's day.

I didn't know much about the industry so I thought that it winning the Hugo meant it had to be at least of decent quality. It was so bad that she said it had to read it too

300 pages of the most pretentious precious child crap

>1984

!macacos

https://twitter.com/zadokq244514/status/1789091241097138321

To discuss your weekly readings of books, textbooks and papers.

!bookworms !classics I'm reading Houellebecq Atomised as part of the bookclub

I also got my copy of Confessions of a Mask this week

@neoconshill