You keep saying unknown and unaccountable people, which leads me to believe that you don’t know have meaningful relationships with anyone that is affected by racist, ableist, homophobic, transphobic language.

Just because you don’t know how equitable language came/comes about, does not make it what you think it is. You’re making it sound like there is some cabal that want to use language that is more equitable and inclusive.

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Yes, an American father and Russian father writing back and forth. Incredible.

I love McTeague! But very few people other than literature majors seem to know it

I like Irving but I DNF'D this one.

Ok you clearly lost the plot

That was also a really bad day for Muslim-Americans. A whole new level of racism dropped.

Also I don’t particularly feel the need to be on the same side as people who foment coups. Fuck them.

Banning words is stupid you can’t change my mind

I loved Orwell’s Down and Out in London and Paris. Such a marvellous account of poverty in that era and class observations that still ring true now.

Ada or Ardor as well. One of my all time faves

Tender is the night is sublime! Better than Gatsby for sure.

Since you mentioned Orwell, I’d like to raise you ‘Homage to Catalonia’!

It’s hardly unknown, of course, but more people need to hear about it.

It’s a surprisingly droll, even humorous piece of writing, in spite of the work being a personal account of the Spanish Civil War in which Orwell participated as a volunteer soldier of the republican army.

Fahrenheit 451 eats up all of Bradbury's press because it's dystopian lit that's taught in schools, and it's a pretty good book. But The Martian Chronicles is a masterpiece.

Damn. I had forgotten that one. Epistolary, right? I think I need to go back to that book. I also think I have a copy of it here somewhere . . . thanks for the reminder and best of luck out there.

You are who you pretend to be, so be careful who you pretend to be.

No worries at all. Old brain here, too. Also . . . hm. I've been going back to Vonnegut a bit in my senescence. Just re-read Sirens of Titan and Galapagos a couple of months ago. Maybe it's time to give Welcome to the Monkey House another look. It's only been about 45 years. Cheers and good luck out there.

Tender is the Night by Fitzgerald. Personally I think it’s a lot better than Gatsby, but it’s been forgotten.

Frank Norris’ McTeague is still read, but I love his book Vandover and the Brute. It’s a sort of fantasy story about social Darwinism in action where a pampered, wealthy man begins devolving as he loses his housing and begins to spiral down through worse and worse living conditions, eventually >!becoming a werewolf!<

I love the book and the hugely underrated film, but I do have a problem compartmentalizing the anti-union sentiment

King Leopold’s Soliloquy is amazing, and no one reads it. Twain was objecting to the same Belgian policies in the Congo with the Soliloquy that Joseph Conrad was criticizing in Heart of Darkness, which also makes it interesting.

Also 11/22/63… so good!

Cannery Row, Steinbeck

Great writer I’d all but forgotten.

Desperation by Stephen King. I love most of his work and it's really not anything special comparatively but I just adore everything about it for some reason. The characters, the setting, the points of view, the antagonist, they just all hit some weird sweet spot for me lol.

I liked that one but my favorite under rated book by John Irving is "Last Night in Twisted River"

For nonfiction, Perennial Philosophy is one of my all time favorites.