ContraVerse's Reading List
3 stories
You Must Remember This by FranklinBarnes
FranklinBarnes
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A misguidedly idealistic high school student founds a club to teach his classmates philosophy; when it becomes a cult, he must change course before the whole school drinks the Kool-Aid. Frank can think of no better way to prove his classmates have no moral compass than to write a manifesto satirically arguing for the virtues of selfishness; when this attempt at shining a light on his classmates' behavior is taken at face value, he creates a club to spread his teachings, hoping his ironies will be more obvious on a grander scale. The authoritarian rule of law he establishes meets little resistance from his club members, even as he wonders privately when they'll have enough and choose a more virtuous path. While Frank earnestly seeks to help his classmates, his methodology proves misguided in practice, and Frank must find where to draw the line before he permanently ruins his beloved high school. But then again, being a cult leader is too much fun to pass up... You Must Remember This adapts the foundation of Catch-22 in a high school setting, applying the same notion of dystopian bureaucracy to lampoon Silicon Valley's competitive spirit and, in these politically charged times, comment on the fragility of our own democracy. CW: minor character death (non-graphic), dark psychological themes (e.g. gaslighting), authoritarian regimes (including references to communism and Nazism) "Amazing, terrible, bourgeois horror" "At first I thought the story was about silicone implants" "I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves the classic American English course reading list or just wants to read something that will make them think."
PARADISE LOST (Completed) by johnmilton
johnmilton
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Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton (1608-1674). The first version, published in 1667, consisted of ten books with over ten thousand lines of verse. A second edition followed in 1674, arranged into twelve books (in the manner of Virgil's Aeneid) with minor revisions throughout and a note on the verification. It is considered by critics to be Milton's major work, and it helped solidify his reputation as one of the greatest English poets of his time. The poem concerns the biblical story of the Fall of Man: the temptation of Adam and Eve by the fallen angel Satan and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Milton's purpose, stated in Book I, is to "justify the ways of God to men".
MAGISTER LUDI - THE GLASS BEAD GAME (Completed) by HermannHesse
HermannHesse
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The Glass Bead Game (German: Das Glasperlenspiel) is the last full-length novel of the German author Hermann Hesse. It was begun in 1931 and published in Switzerland in 1943 after being rejected for publication in Germany due to Hesse's anti-Fascist views. A few years later, in 1946, Hesse went on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. In honoring him in its Award Ceremony Speech, the Swedish Academy said that the novel "occupies a special position" in Hesse's work. The Glass Bead Game takes place at an unspecified date centuries into the future. Hesse suggested that he imagined the book's narrator writing around the start of the 25th century.[4] The setting is a fictional province of central Europe called Castalia, which was reserved by political decision for the life of the mind; technology and economic life are kept to a strict minimum. Castalia is home to an austere order of intellectuals with a twofold mission: to run boarding schools for boys, and to cultivate and play the Glass Bead Game, whose exact nature remains elusive and whose devotees occupy a special school within Castalia known as Waldzell. The rules of the game are only alluded to-they are so sophisticated that they are not easy to imagine. Playing the game well requires years of hard study of music, mathematics, and cultural history. The game is essentially an abstract synthesis of all arts and sciences. It proceeds by players making deep connections between seemingly unrelated topics. Cover by: @theygotgone