On: Gödel, Escher, Bach is the most influential book i...

[greggsy]

I gave it a good hard go, but came to the same conclusion. It might (should?) have been razored to half the size by a more judicious publisher.

[dmazzoni → greggsy]

For those of us who enjoyed the book, that'd be removing the best part.

For me this was one of those books that was more about the journey than the destination.

2001: A Space Odyssey could easily be trimmed to 25 minutes or less if all you care about is the plot. But should it?

[greggsy → dmazzoni]

Well, part of the plot is about humanity’s slow and inexorable evolution through the passage of space and time, so the meditative slowness sets the pace quite appropriately.

GED (in my humble opinion etc), doesn’t really need some of the fluff. It’s a large book that’s easy to spot on the shelf, and it’s hard to avoid thinking that the publisher (and some readers) like it that way.

[HKH2 → dmazzoni]

> 2001: A Space Odyssey could easily be trimmed to 25 minutes or less if all you care about is the plot. But should it?

Yes. Tell me that you just sat there watching it without being distracted by your thoughts at all. Being able to handle torture doesn't make torture good.

[jamilton → HKH2]

Is being distracted by your thoughts so terrible that the rest of the movie should be expunged?

I'm more of the opinion that 5 minutes of graphics that were probably impressive at the time could be cut.

[HKH2 → jamilton]

> Is being distracted by your thoughts so terrible[?]...

No, but it probably means you're forcing yourself to watch/like it.

I never suggested expunging the movie. Regardless, excessively long movies/books expunge themselves unless they're famous enough to namedrop.

[histories → HKH2]

> I don't like/understand X, so of course no one actually likes/understands X

[HKH2 → histories]

Where did I say that I don't understand it? It's a little telling that you said that.

Now, tell me you sat there watching it without being distracted by your thoughts.

[histories → HKH2]

I sat there watching it without being distracted by my thoughts.

The thoughts were about the movie and its themes: evolution, violence, and yes even "how the f did they do this in the 60s"

[HKH2 → histories]

Well I guess you've got a point in that there is plenty of time to meditate on its themes given its slow pace.

"how the f did they do this in the 60s" - I consider that a distraction.

[ATMLOTTOBEER → greggsy]

Did you make it to the part about the tortoise and hare problem where he suggests that the book may actually be finished at that point? With the rest of the book as noise that looks suspiciously coherent despite adding nothing new conceptually? At that point I had to read the second half to check LOL