Plus I think the book being sold with movie/musical covers is really misleading considering how different it is

I only know the movie and musical via osmosis but from the vibes I got I doubt they start with non-consensual public sex... The book is very dense and literary social satire so I understand people being shocked by it.

I'm not reading it because of the movie ir the musical (I'veseen neither) , but because I've wanted to read it since it came out in the 90’s - and it was those horrified reactions that made me think I should finally read it

She also talked about how she liked the National Gallery of Scotland because it has "medieval looking" paintings. While showing paintings from the 1800's.

I was scrolling in a way that I somehow triggered this video to start while still reading the posts above it and spent far too long wondering why a horror movie gif was making a farting sound...

My local library had a tendency to shelve books based on their cover. If it was colourful, it went into the children's section - as I discovered years later when I worked there for one summer and discovered Clive Barker's Books of Blood next to Enid Blyton...

I've never read The Great Gastby but I did try to read it when I was ten or eleven because it was in the children's section of the library and I was on a quest to read every book that was not about horses or boys (I think I might have been bored by it because technically it was about boys)

I'm starting to think that my English lit degree had some serious holes because I'd never even heard of Cold Sassy Tree or A Separate Peace before... (extra shameful considering that I minored in North American Studies 😅)

Interesting. This actually makes me realise just how eurocentric my 20-year-old (Northern European) English lit degree was, because none of those were among our set books (though I've read most since). I think the only American novel we read was Kate Chopin's The Awakening.

To quote myself: "The one time that our university degrees could have actually been useful and we can't remember anything!"

I had a bookclub the other day, and we were sidetracked trying to think of pre-1900's classic American novels, and struggled to come up with authors other than Mark Twain - even though two of us have a Master's degree in English language literature.

It's like a literary equivalent of a well-meaning elderly relative who has their heart in the right place but uses terminology that's 50 years out of date.

Similarly, the "aboriginal" characters are described very stereotypically, but the narration is clearly sympathetic to them - the book is less a White Savior story than a White Accidentally Fix Issues Caused by Other Whites story. And most of the jokes are specifically white Australian culture.

Like, the main joke about Darleen & Letitia is that Rincewind doesn't realise they're drag queens, but they are still consistently referred to as women in the narration despite their very masculine appearance and behaviour.

But the thing is, even though it's definintely a on-star book, it's offensive in an oddly not hateful way? Unlike Eric, which is very firmly an unfunny, racist, one-star read. (both are Rincewind books, quelle surprise)

First laugh! At the thug who dropped his weapon when OJ just told him to.

Already the first scene dates both me and the movie because I doubt most modern watchers under the age of 30 would recognise who the people Drebin beat up were

Sue Lyon is brilliant, though, and James Mason appropriately creepy and sleezy.