• 4 Posts
  • 92 Comments
Joined 2 months ago
Cake day: June 7th, 2026
  • hyacinthus@beehaw.orgtoBooks@lemmy.ml•The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll - What am I missing?English
    1·
    1 day ago

    Wow, fascinating to hear. Again, haven’t read the book, but it seems to me that you’re pretty clear-eyed about the ways in which it doesn’t work for you. It all just has me curious (like you) about how so many people can be so enchanted by it—a quick Google reveals very positive reviews from some major heavy hitters in literary critique.

    I do think that the academy/literary establishment tends to privilege disenchantment and jadedness to a very high degree (so much so that it’s almost integral to literary realism), so maybe that’s the disconnect? I know personally that I also dislike totally jaded writing, and so am turned off by a decent chunk of well-regarded literature because it strikes me as almost disingenuously cool and detached and disbelieving. Like, some works attempt to be so clear-eyed about the human capacity for evil and self-interest that they actually become almost cartoonish, no longer reflecting the positive valences of real lived experience.

    Are there any other books with that kind of jaded, detached narrator that you do enjoy? It sounds like this could have been a perfectly bad combination for you of rambling Quixotic travelog and falsely worldly self-affectedly jaded protagonist.

  • hyacinthus@beehaw.orgtoBooks@lemmy.ml•The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll - What am I missing?English
    2·
    2 days ago

    I have not read the book, but I did enjoy the video clip! I can’t imagine anything wrong with a book in which a man claims to invent the question mark, for example…/j

    But seriously, most of the praise I see for the book is comparing it to Don Quixote, so I have to assume it’s one of those works that aims for intentionally overwrought satire, which I feel like either lands (if you find the material funny) or is totally unreadable (if it’s meant for other people’s senses of humor).

    Do you agree with what the positive reviews point out as being assets, or do they seem to be receiving the work really differently? Definitely this description doesn’t make me want to go searching for a copy.

  • hyacinthus@beehaw.orgtodailygames@lemmy.zip•Clues by Sam [2026-07-17]English
    1·
    7 days ago

    If you ever find a clue confusing, just click the magnifying glass icon (inspect) and click the clue for definitions. For example, if you ‘inspect’ the first clue, it tells you: “Neighbors include diagonals. One person can have up to 8 neighbors.” Not all of the terms the game uses are intuitive, for sure!

  • hyacinthus@beehaw.orgtodailygames@lemmy.zip•4x3 for 07/16English
    2·
    8 days ago
    July 16, 2026
183 points • No mistakes
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https://4x3.fun/
https://www.hankgreen.com/fourbythree/index.html#d=2026-07-16
    spoiler

    Upon a quick Google, “kick in the can” does ring a bell, but I’ve really only heard can used slangily in the toilet sense.