did you...did you apostrophe-s a dude's name? not even a plural whiff, the dude's actual name

It's twee and droll, not exactly intelligent.

Yeah that's exactly why i like it. IMO too many people/things take themselves too seriously. Everything is a joke and the book does indeed not have a purpose, because not everything has to be serious and have a purpose. That's why IMO the book is funnier than some comic relief in an otherwise serious book.

I found there to be little or no subtlety in the humor. It was like a slapstick book. Have to be in a mood I guess.

If the Hitchhiker is not for you, that's understandable. But you really, really should give "Last chance to see" a, uhm, chance, as it were. It really is a wonderful book.

It’s not even hypothetical, Ivan said it was a “real life” example that happened in Russia, not a thought experiment he made up to challenge Alyosha.

Anyhow, yes The Dispossessed is sort of a continuation of that question, and it’s honestly one of the best sci-fi there is too.

While TBK did explore whether the sacrifice of Jesus can justify salvation for all, the torture of that kid in Omelas would more closely mirror the torture of innocent children in Ivan’s examples in TBK.

Ivan Karamazov quite clearly thought that paradise and the entirety of knowledge are not worth the tears of a single innocent child, and that’s exactly what Le Guin was discussing - not a single willing participant to be sacrificed, but a child who doesn’t even understand why he’s suffering.

I have a book for you - Like Water for Chocolate - it has an unusual writing style but it is worth the read if you like tender romance like this.

So you didn't enjoy that The Guide was the main character in the later books? typical response repeated ad nauseum in here 🤣

the point being that everybody keeps forgetting that the characters that are followed in the story are not what the books are about

It's meant to be a guide giving you all sorts of information on all the peculiarities of the galaxy and how one might traverse said peculiarities while spending very little for transportation services

The main character in every iteration is The Guide.

It asks that the readers have a modicum of intelligence, something modern "writing" doesn't require anymore

It doesn't make too much sense the first time until you read all 6 books of the trilogy

I LOVED this book. I thought I would just start it before going to bed, but I ended up reading the whole thing and not sleeping until the early morning hours.

I worked in a bookstore at the time, so I recommended it to all my coworkers. And one of them had a really interesting observation. Sometimes when mothers are overwhelmed/stressed, they might express, >!"I wish there was two of me." And this book takes that literally. !<I don't know if that was the author's intention, but it's a neat parallel.

Beautiful comment.

I also have a quick thought about the breastfeeding thing. I think we're so accustomed to thinking of breasts as sexual that it does come across as a weird sexual fetish. But, I think her point is the opposite of that. We're so uncomfortable as a society with breasts being used for breastfeeding that breastfeeding gets confused as something sexual. That's why women wear coverups as they try to nurse their babies. God forbid they expose their boob to the public because we see that as indecent. Philips is making the point that the breast is for breastfeeding. It's debatable about how successful she was in making this point. Personally, I read it as intending to shock her audience sometimes in order to communicate that the reality of breastfeeding isn't always easy, clean, and certainly not sexy. I think women are also conflicted about their breasts as they experience the early years of motherhood. A mom still wants to be sexy and attractive but her body also has other roles to fulfill.

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I totally get the breastfeeding as a symbol of a mothers connection and I’d be fine with that, but literally it’s on every other page. A few times through the book? Sure. By the end I felt like her breast milk was a character itself.

Maybe the book fell flat for me being a guy with no kids? I’m pretty open to whatever concept an author wants to throw my way but this just wasn’t handle well at all in my opinion. Maybe i just need to mull it over some more?

Also i honestly don’t quite understand the ending. Like at all.

I actually loved this book. It's a 4/5 star read for me and I've recommended it to many people. In my opinion, the mention of lactating communicated the physical reality of motherhood if a person breastfeeds. It symbolized the main character's connection to her kids and the fact that motherhood was a bodily experience for her. It's not just a role she performs. It's mental, emotional, and physical. The reality of breastfeeding is that it's messy and the body does things on instinct and without conscious decision making. I think that Phillips' main character experiences motherhood similary--messy, instinctual, and not always a conscious choice but rather a primal reaction. This is also true of her double.

I also have a different interpretation of her double's motivations and what happened in that relationship. However, I'm not sure how to hide spoilers so I'm not going to go into that.

I can understand how the book could seem too surrealist for some readers. I think the book Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder plays with some similar themes of motherhood in an even more surrealist and less sci-fi way. I like Helen Phillips take on a doppelganger story and the way she uses that framework to explore modern motherhood.

I always preferred the radio shows myself.

How old are you?

Like the other commenter who liked it in middle school (me too), I can see you not liking it if you are past a magic age, which is early teens through perhaps college. I have this same theory about The Great Gatsby. The magical relatable age for the book to be good is not 17. It's much older.

I also think it's one of those things that works well when you heard the jokes the first time. And that was the movie. So it ruined the books for you. A lot of fans don't like the movie. Perhaps it's because they've heard the jokes before.

Frankly, the best part of THGTTG is the beginning of the first book. I think I've read four of them. The energy is hard to keep up.

Blake Crouch did an AMA here in /r/books you might want to take a look :) . Here's a full list of our upcoming AMAs

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That's what kills it for me though. It feels like he doesn't even take his own book seriously. Like everything is a joke and the book has no purpose.

I thought it was a fun read with some funny one liners, but I never understood all the hype

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I think you are right that in the classic modern version of the story Pandora is told not to open the box although she is not told why, IIRC she's made to think its a present she has to wait to open.

I'm not sure quite how to square your concept of agency (coming from what sounds like a literary background) with my concept of freedom (coming from someone in political science grad school). Having to pay bills and feed yourself is arguably an infringement on your freedom from need. You are subordinated to others because you have to eat and have shelter and those needs create opportunities for exploitation that you aren't protected from. Not being able to go to Europe is arguably an infringement on your freedom from obstacles, but its sort of a gray area, since your ability to get to Europe is presumably contingent on exploitative relationships with others (pilots, airline employees, taxi drivers, etc).

I would also say that beyond freedom from need stuff, most of the greater agency a billionaire has is not per se personal freedom but the ability to compel the subordination of others to his or her will. That is, the additional freedom/agency/whatever you want to call it of a billionaire compared to you is mostly built on other people being less free then they otherwise would be.

And this is where I have a hard time with how your concept of agency relates to Omelas, for one person to have the agency to remove the child without causing social collapse would imply a level of agency that is only possible by subordinating others. You can't generalize that kind of agency since any increase in it for one person is inherently a reduction for someone else, so a society where someone can free the child cannot possibly be more free than Omelas.

I loved this book when I read it in my 20s and it's haunted me ever since.

OP, if you can afford to visit Colombia, you'll have new eyes for both books. Cartagena is amazing.