The book that made me a bookworm (the Italian term would be “libridinoso”, portmanteau of book and libidinous) was “Elena, Elena, amore mio” by Luciano De Crescenzo.

I never re-read it, and I don’t even remember the plot (I think it’s a retelling of the Odyssey), but it introduced me to Greek Mythology (it had an appendix with all the gods names and relationships), and there was no going back.

Science is only a few centuries old, and no one expects a physicist to understand biology, or even a particle physicist to be well versed in, I don’t know, materials science.

Now what you are saying is that you cannot, without guidance, interpret and find hidden meanings in some of the texts that most of any other drew on a history of literature that spans millennia and continents?

I’d be surprised if you, or anyone without formal training, could.

We dilettants can glimpse something, and we are both lucky and cursed that the surface level of a novel is much easier to enjoy than that of quantum mechanics.

Be we are also lucky that we get to enjoy literature in the age of internet, where experts are just a click away and can explain us stuff.

I only remember listening to The Way of Kings (I think. That or the following one), which is narrated by two voice artists, husband and wife, and hearing her pronounce an unfamiliar name - only to later understand she was referring to a character that was far more prominent in her husband’s parts, and that he pronounced differently.

It was very jarring, especially since I had never seen the actual spelling.

Funny thing is, I now remember her pronunciation, not his :p

You made me think of the fancy illustrated edition of the collected Le Guin I bought a few years ago (saga press?), that turns out to be completely unreadable: huge, heavy, smallish font and one column only, so way above the recommended line measure.

I’ll never buy a fancy expensive edition online again.

You made me think of the fancy illustrated edition of the collected Le Guin I bought a few years ago (saga press?), that turns out to be completely unreadable: huge, heavy, smallish font and one column only, so way above the recommended line measure.

I’ll never buy a fancy expensive edition online again.

First time I read “The Hobbit” I hated it, while first time I read LotR I loved it.

Second time around, a few years later, I loved “The Hobbit” and I couldn’t finish LotR - not because I didn’t like it, but because it doesn’t suck me in anymore - although I periodically re-read parts of it I love. Go figure.

The Silmarillion is the only one that has remained consistently great for me.

All this to say: not only it’s subjective, but it’s also time-varying. Try again in a few years :)

“serious” high-ish fantasy set in contemporary time in a real city, and adapted to the times.

Something like Dimitri’s Pan, where the shaman of the city of Rome talks, it’s true, to the River Tiber, but also to Subway.

To remain in the same context, besides Gilgamesh I often return to the story of Inanna in the Underworld.

But it is also a meditation on mortality, thus covering the rest of the Iliad, and a story of adventure and return, thus covering the Odyssey (yes yes, I’m talking very loosely). And a reflection on civilization vs wild nature, and a precursor to the flooding myth. And and and.

Do read it

I’m a bit at a loss.

Are you equating “thoughtless and selfish people” with unintelligent people?

Are you saying there are no “thoughtless and selfish people” in Dostoyevsky etc?

Are you looking to disagree with the author or their characters?

Are you claiming you are so selfless you don’t understand selfish people?

I wrote this for a comment you deleted.

I’m a bit surprised by this.

You sure know he was an atheist/humanist, so certainly he wasn’t going to say religions are true or praise religious people’s intelligence just for the fact they believe.

But besides that, granted I may have always misunderstood the meaning of the book, but it seems to say the next best thing: religions can be useful. False but useful. Like many other things, like Newtonian physics.

Some are more useful than others. Bokononism is a good religion, I think, because it doesn’t take itself too seriously, and has an epicurean take to it, right at the frontispiece:

Live by the foma that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy

Choose your own lies, and choose them such that everybody comes out better for it. What else do you want from someone who doesn’t believe in an absolute truth?

Perhaps my favorite quote is this:

“Everything must have a purpose?” asked God.

“Certainly,” said man.

“Then I leave it to you to think of one for all this,” said God.

That doesn’t seem shallow at all to me. That’s acknowledgement that humans developed in a peculiar way, that seems to require certain answers. God itself doesn’t have them (= the Author thinks that the mere need for them is not proof of their existence), but gives permission to come up with some. That are, by necessity, lies. Best if they bring about happiness.

When he says

All of the true things that I am about to tell you are shameless lies.

Maybe you see just a witty turn of phrase. I see human life.

Oh, I forgot!

In The Once and Future King the idea of Merlin going backwards in time is probably underexplored, but it at least gives rise to one of the most moving two paragraphs I have ever read

I have good memories of The Psychology of Time Travel by Kate Mascarenhas

It’s not time travel per se, but also The first fifteen lives of Harry August come to mind.