Hey, if you like books.....

There were murderers galore as well as lashings of murders in that Christie. 

Ahhh Enid Blyton. Mallory Towers etc..

To be fair to Christie... a scaling down of the staff room made good sense!

i met my first husband whilst sat in a pub reading the Plague supping a pint of Guinness.. such feminine mystique.., lol

We did some of the Canterbury Tales at school. We were told beyond the prescribed ones The Miller's tale was somewhat ribald, so as hormonal school kids.......

Killing an Arab. Robert Smith was also 1959 vintage and so he must have done L'Etranger for his French A level too. Oh. Mum died yesterday. At least I think it was but can't really remember. Then he committed said killing because he'd had too much sun. The idea you could be executed for not responding in socially appropriate ways spooked me but I liked Meursault's brutal honesty in not capitulating to the prescribed forms of sentiment.  We did The Plague too but I'd already read that at 13, along with Christie's Cat Among the Pigeons, where schoolmistresses were being murdered at an alarming pace at an exclusive girl's boarding school. RIP Blyton. I read The Plague because I was morbidly curious about Plague, which by the way is still going strong in some parts of the world, including the States. I still rate Camus for his anti capital punishment stance. 

Lolita I read for myself recently. Wuthering Heights I read many moons ago, as well as Jane Eyre. And did I read 1984. And Kafka's Trial and metamorphosis. Later on someone told me about a tale in which the protagonist is turned not into a giant beetle but rather a giant *** and it is his analyst who breaks the news. Good for a giggle. 

• Many an SF spree and glutting of all things vampire have I embarked upon. We did The Time Machine at school.and I have the film on You Tube, as well as more recent O level favourite, The Woman on Black. The 1989 TV film was.an absolute treat, the Harry potter version a bit overdone though the author didn't like the 1989 version at all. 

I started David Copperfield at 11 but could not continue as all the abuse David kept experiencong made reading it too upsetting, but I finished it later. 

I see Dante, Catch 22 and Middlemarch, which have come up before, have shown up here. Ulysses we did at Uni, ditto The Iliad and The aOdyssey, epics were mandatory, Scarlet and Black and Anna Karenina. 

I doubt they had doughnuts in his time. They certainly had the plague. Other than that it was about Catholics being naughty and behaving badly, mainly by bringing lots of new little monks and nuns into this wicked world. 

Yes, the toad was real and an android killed the goat

It is also worth noting that not so long ago that Deepthought reminded me of Plato’s allegory of the cave... that meant a great deal and woke me up.... 

... a perceptive bugger that DeepThought... as are you..

now im sounding like Yoda! 

“You will only find what you will bring in”

Does that mean the NTs that secretly (or otherwise) wish to destroy me, see me as of value...

mmmmm.....

... like a hunting safari to kill the last Aspie...

cue David Attenborough’s dolcit tones from a nearby shrubbery...

”... here we have the trembling figure of an Aspie, alert, poised, dumbfounded and overwhelmed by its surroundings.., it must run and be free or freeze in shutdown, the hunter hypnotising its pray with small talk, illogical sentences and crazy bodily gesticulations...”

....

the last Aspie.....think of that..

”All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.”

on the other hand... empathy to other individuals and working for the good of the community.

...you mean... hope? Quiet, mute acceptance  that the current model is wrong? Or, not working, at least?

Henry Miller... Death of a Salesman! - yes!

Have you also seen the booker prize short list of booker winners - based on the 50 yrs of the literary award?

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/may/26/man-booker-prize-novel-golden-five-shortlist

this is also a list of top reads and you can also tick off the ones you’ve read..

http://thegreatestbooks.org

There are many super shiny brainy remarkable people here... they are all wonderful.

instead the shell at the moment is the self that feels like a vulnerable child... quite lost and overwhelmed!!!

The more I post the greater the compensation going on for my sense of isolation and desire to connect and cling on to like minded brains.

x

.

Ok, my lovely Eli, I understand now what is going on here. Or at least I think I do. 

First of all, thank you for the book list. I’ve been wanting to read a book for years, but can only read a book that’s been recommended to me and when you don’t speak to many people, it’s not so easy to get recommendations! And when I do get a recommendation, it has to ‘feel’ right to me before I will even consider it, and so far, I have had no good feelings, until now. So thank you for the recommendations, they’re truly amazing. I look forward to getting stuck into them. 

But getting back to the point. I’ve realised that your barrier to communication is your intelligence. Your intelligence is superior, sharp and super clear and reminds me of two things. 

One is, that in the AA 12 step program, the ones who struggle the most, to work the program, are the ones with the greatest intelligence. 

And the second thing I’m reminded of is a story by the Buddha. For years, he had been teaching his loyal, faithful, hard working students, all about the meaning of life, but they couldn’t, for the life of them, get it. One day an old poor illiterate lady from a local village came to hear the Buddha speak and like a miracle, her life was instantly transformed. The faithful monks couldn’t believe it. How was it possible? And the Buddha explained that because she had no knowledge, no understanding of the things the Buddha spoke of, she was able to hear the words of the Buddha as they were spoken and without any reference point to compare them too, she simply understood what he was saying. 

I don’t think I’ve explained that very well but what suddenly came to me, when I began to read your list, was that it was simply your level of intelligence that was the cause of your barrier to what you think is effective communication. This is good news. Because it means that if you are the cause, you are also your solution. 

I could be totally barking up the wrong tree here, and forgive me if I am but the way I see it is, there are no real answers to autism. It is simply one of the great wonders of this world. If every autistic person stood their ground and stepped into their true power, which is in being simply who they are, they would light up the world to such a degree that you would see us from space. And like the Great Wall of China, people would say, oh look, there’s the autistics! We are the light of this world. This isn’t an understanding that can come from intellectual working out, it’s beyond the intellect. In this case, the intellect is a barrier, not a help. 

I doubt you have any idea of the significance of your intellect. You have it to be of help to you and the world, not for it to be a barrier. Nt’s will ‘never’ get us just like we will ‘never’ get them, no matter how much we think we do. And that’s ok. It doesn’t have to cause a separation but it does demand that people know themselves, love themselves and in accepting themselves, accept all others and that level of acceptance starts with us. Our only job in life is to know ourselves, love ourselves, accept ourselves then simply be ourselves. I don’t know why you have the level of intellect that you have but it’s a delicious and intoxicating gift and I hope one day soon you’ll set it free and you won’t care one ounce if an nt doesn’t get you. There will still be no barriers to communication because I’ve learned from my support worker and my work coach, that nt’s are amazing at knowing and understanding people and when we be ourselves, they somehow just get us, while not totally getting us, because how could they, an aspies brain is way too complex for even us to work out! - so I’ve decided to stop trying to work it out and to simply enjoy it instead. How is it that a 51 year old woman can write out an entire schedule for a five day retreat, in half an hour, but can’t get herself a drink of water, even though she’s clearly dehydrated! It doesn’t make sense but I’m happy to live with that. And instead of learning to ‘cope’ with situations I find difficult, I have simply erased them from my life so on the occasions I do need to do something I might not ordinarily choose to do, like go to the job centre, it’s much easier to do as I know the benefit it has for me and I can take some time to prepare and process it etc. I’m simplifying my life more and more each day, to suit me, and although it is a process of sorts, it doesn’t feel like that because the only things I ever wanted in life were to know who I was, why I was here, why I was so different from other people and to get some help and now I’ve got the answers to those questions and I’ve got the help, I feel like my life is complete. All I need to do now is live it and enjoy it. The barrier for me was I was forever trying to work it all out when all I really needed to do was to simply accept myself for who I was. But of course, before I could do that, I had to find out who I was and I found that out with the diagnosis and it’s been game on since then. The diagnosis was a game changer but it wasn’t the be all and end all, it was only the start. Aspie world is way more exciting and interesting than nt world. I simply adore our varied and intense interests and I just love how we are. Our world will never look like that of an nt’s but we can learn and benefit from their input and visa versa. As Temple Grandin has said, the world needs all kinds of minds. No one is better than another but I have to say, I find our minds so utterly interesting and intoxicating that I don’t need to go to the pub for a pint. I enjoy my Friday mornings at the local community centre with my autism group and my time spent here. That makes me happy. Sorry if I got that totally wrong. 

Reading that link it's strange they never touched on Mercerism. Ironically they end up worshipping the things they have destroyed.

I was trying to tell them that the goat and the toad were a plot device for empathy. Empathy doesn't necessarily have to be positive. When she kills the goat she shows a clear understanding for empathy, Deckard barely manages the same level when he discovers the "mystical" toad is synthetic. Meanwhile he couldn't manage the same level of empathy for the Nexus-6 models. That theme for me was sort of thought provoking too. Was man's creation more in tune with the balance than gods in the context of the story. I'm going to read that link, should be interesting.

Phillip K Todger has a dim view of man imo! It served as great fuel for his imagination though!

How about the follow-up, "Lila"?

Have been meaning to go back to ZMM for a while. 

Henry Miller? I find the anti-establishment vibe in the two Tropics to be the likely reason for the 20th century bans. 

A recurring theme of the author is our relationship with the natural world and conversely ourselves and our own humanity.

”humans don’t just want to have contact with animals; they want to own them, thereby proving that they have time and the money to spend on the natural world. In the end, *** steers us toward the cynical conclusion that it’s human nature not only to love the environment but also to control it and thus ultimately destroy it. One of the few times in the novel when the android Rachel Rosen demonstrates a recognizably human emotion (spitefulness and cruelty) is when she pushes Rick Deckard’s goat off the roof, killing it. There’s something disturbingly human about Rachel’s act of vengeance: humans feel a tragic instinct to assert their power by conquering and destroying the natural world. In the book, the deserts surrounding San Francisco are concrete proof of mankind’s need to control the environment. Moreover, the fact that characters want to colonize other planets—asserting their control over new, unfamiliar environments—suggests that humans haven’t learned from their mistakes.“

https://www.litcharts.com/lit/do-androids-dream-of-electric-sheep/themes/animals-and-the-environment

There is a short story in Second Variety of a similar vein.. in which humans create a micro-cosmic world in which they can nurture their own mini species evolution. The winner in accepting the award smashes his own creation to the ground...

so man wants to kill its creator and kill what it controls

Funny you mention Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. I was talking to someone how important the toad and the goat were the other day. They didn't get it.

I have no idea if it was attributed to Boccaccio but it is a common Italian saying, such as:

Non tutte le ciambelle riescono col buco.

Literally meaning “Not all doughnuts come out with a hole.”... or mistakes happen

I’m glad you enjoyed it DC. :-)

This is getting silly!! Lol.

however I particularly enjoyed the short stories in Second Variety and consequently my first philosophy lecture was on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? As an opener on what it means to be human and the concept of killing your maker

 Phillip K Shlong had a problem with hardbacks. He was an amphetamine addict so they were few and far between.