Rate the last book you read

Halfway through the Nakano Thrift Shop by Hiromi Kawakami. Enjoying it, a simple slice of life with a bit of romance. Edited weirdly though. Sometimes the dialogue is in speech marks, sometimes not. Odd.

 

The Long Walk by Richard Bachman: 3/5

 

Finished the book. A good read. Next up, The Best of Richard Matheson, a short story collection from the writer of such works as I Am Legend and Nightmare At 20,000 Feet, which was adapted into the Twilight Zone episode of the same name.

 

Sounds interesting, what is it about?

 

Having only watched the movies, I did always find it extremely odd that the wizarding world is structured the way it is, with non-humans segregated and sometimes enslaved. Kinda made it difficult for me to root for the heroes winning when they supported a system that supported slavery.

Reminds me of that Dr Who episode with the Ood, where it turns out the only reason they "love to serve" is because they were essentially lobotomised.

 

The rest of wizards isn't much better. When Potter asks Hagrid why are the wizards in hiding from the muggle population he explains that it's because muggles would want magic to improve their lives too and that would be just too much work for the wizards. He says that almost as an aside when Ministry of Magic is introduced to the reader in the first book which is sort of bizarre since this segregation is certainly one of the foundational qualities of the Potterverse. I think Rowling just did not think it through very well lol. Btw Americans seem to be indoctrinated into viewing racism as the most horrible sin which is laughable. It's not such a big of a deal, stop seeing it everywhere and spare us the moral panic.

 

May be the last book I read was around 1 year ago. I read the thread and my books kinda seems very off topic from the thread. Dont exactly remember the last book so i thought why not list 2 books. My last 2 books were:
1) Elon Musk---How the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is shaping our future. (5/5)
2) The monk who sold his Ferrari (by Robin Sharma) (5/5)
Both books were really worth reading. If anyone is thinking to read them, just go for it!

 

I know it's all just opinion but I thought it was by far and away the best book he ever wrote. I know it it was his first major novel but none of his other works kept me as engrossed as that one.

 

Just read the the great Gatsby and it was incredible. It is only 180 pages but absolutely puts you through the emotional wringer. 4/5

 

I used to like Doctor Who, but it was a long, slow decline for me that culminated with the final Capaldi episode being the last straw.

 

cuz of all the genocide/ethnic cleansing of 20-21th century? or their own history of slavery, oppression and genocide? Or just maybe taking nazi germany as an example of what can happen when it get too far(and their role in stoping it)? take your pick.
I personally wouldn't take Hagrid opinion on something such as this he is not exactly bright or at least very naive, a more likely reason is that the wizards are afraid of muggle, wether it is Voldemort or Grindelwald they both wanted to subjugate them but not in an all out war, rather by influencing head of state and use of selective assassination. It is implied that muggles in the dark ages persecuted wizards and magical creatures, driving the wizards into hiding as well and many magical creatures(the ones who survived them), and then just forgot about them. The wizards let themselves fade into myth. This was back when their most powerful weapons were trebuchet and crossbow and their total population was below 1B. Now wizards are shown to be able to have telekinetic powers and their wand can one shot humans easily enough tough it can be blocked physically; but it is slow, can only target one person at a time and wizards themselves have not been shown to have supersonic reaction speed that the slowest human weapon can easily exceed as well as various WMD that are just as fast. It is not by accident that homo sapiens are the only humans around or that no animals take them as their prey of choice, hiding is the smart move here.

 

Ethnic cleansing is older than the 20th century and certainly less than pleasant however that's not racism - races, as in how most people understand them, are the 3 basic ones. The overwhelming amount of ethnic violence was and is among groups of the same race and thus not racist according to this definition. Slavery has nothing to do racism, the American kind is the only case I can think of where the slaves were of specific race and even then the reason for that was that in Western sub-Saharan Africa where the colonists of America and their progeny got their slaves, you simply couldn't buy a non-black one. Race happens to be inherited and so did the slave status so there you go. The German genocide was so non-racist that in order to figure out whether you ought to be interned in a camp and gassed the Gestapo had to dig into your documents since by looks alone it couldn't be decided.

This really doesn't sound like he's stating his opinion here, more like repeating a commonly-known fact:

Even if it was just Hagrid's confused view, it's still weird that this here is AFAIK the *only* occurrence in the books where the topic is discussed.

 

For one your definition of racism is either outdated or just plain inaccurate, the etymology of words is not their definition; There has been ethnic cleansing before but for the most part it was localized in a single city or geographical area, 20-21th century is different in that it was a consistent government backed effort at total extermination of an ethnic group, you can believe whatever you want but the definition of genocide was made in reaction of the Armenian genocide, if you don't believe that is caused by racism that's on you and i don't want to discuss that point further, let's agree to disagree.

Wether it's in the book or the tv there is plenty of occurrence where the wizards show that they are scared of humans either becoming aware of them or going to war with them, Grindelwald's whole deal was that humans technology was becoming steadily stronger while magic was staying static or going weaker.