[MikeBVaughn]

This conception of 'Great Books' is grim. It is literature denuded of all aesthetics, reading reduced to strip-mining for raw semantic content. For reading philosophical texts, sure it seems pretty fantastic, but the tacit value judgement on the all other forms of literature? Unspeakably depressing.

Though, that context does explain why the article contains the current front-runner for my least favorite sentence in the English language:

> They deserve to be greeted with a tailed-tux and clean palette, chewed with the utmost mindfulness, spat out onto the table to rest for five minutes, licked off the table to savor the flavor of oxidization, digested over a four-hand stomach massage to increase circulation, vomited out Roman-style, spread over the genitalia so that the most sensitive part of the body can gain a tactile appreciation, ingested for a second and penultimate time, passed out quickly with laxatives to preserve the fibrous quality, and cooked in a slow-roast paste to capstone the feast.

[microtherion]

Maybe OP will eventually find the leisure to tear himself from his diet of great books long enough to avail himself of a lesser tome that may teach him the distinction between “palette” and “palate”.

[hinkley]

There are very few books I’ve bought two copies of. When I was a poor student it would be because a friend borrowed it and lost or damaged it (and damaged our friendship in the process. That was MY book, fucker.)

Once in a while the stars don’t align and I end up with different editions of one of the sequels. If I’m keeping them it’s nicer if I have a matched set. So I think there’s a copy of one of the Murderbot books and one of The Expanse in my giveaway bag. And I bought Three Body Problem because I had borrowed someone else’s and had only 2 and 3.

And then there was Braiding Sweetgrass. This book was almost ahead of its time. Released in 2014, it hit The NY Times Bestseller list in the middle of Quarantine, which is when I found it. By then it was on audiobook, I bought and was blown away by. The whole time I’m listening to it I just wished I could take a highlighter to the audio.

Some books, especially Great ones, have layers, or too much to absorb in one reading. So I bought a paper copy, and I can just open a random page and read it. Still haven’t bought a highlighter though.

[morelisp]

It seems incredibly on-brand for a guy who puts Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World on par with some of those other works.

[shrubble]

It's horrendous... if you made it the first lines of a novel it would win a prize... https://www.bulwer-lytton.com/