tigerfort: the Stripey Captain, with a bat friend perched on her head keeping her ears warm (Default)
Sorry, meant to do this yesterday and then there was lots of sunbeam and the tigers all went to sleep in it.

Which book would I erase from history, if one had to go? While it might, as [personal profile] ladyofastolat noted, be interesting to erase a major religion (or political movement, although those tend to have a wider base than one book) and see what happened, I'd be reluctant to do that without some mechanism for returning things to the status quo ante if the world turns out substantially worse.

The book I would expunge is Machiavelli's "The Prince". There's a good case to be made that it was intended, basically, as a satire, especially if you compare the assumptions and advice it contains with the rest of Machiavelli's political writings (which are largely about the superiority of republics over monarchies and the best ways to achieve justice and equality for all citizens). But because it's crafted to be easily readable, and his normal style is... rather dense and complex... "The Prince" is much more widely read than any of his other work - to the point that many (most?) people don't realise that it isn't the sort of thing he normally put forward. And of course, you have the people who regard it as a guidebook they should follow, which is... not good.

So I'd like to get rid of "The Prince" to: reclaim a serious political philosopher, remove a source of encouragement for deranged bampots (political and corporate) and, as a minor side-benefit, perhaps attach the adjective "Machiavellian" to the sort of political behaviour he would have approved of.
tigerfort: the Stripey Captain, with a bat friend perched on her head keeping her ears warm (Default)
So, I offer a prospective LJ-meme for people to consider.

In some strange parallel universe, you have just been selected to perform a rather unusual task: you must choose a book to be utterly expunged from history. (You don't have to do the expunging, just choose the book.) There is a condition: you aren't allowed to delete a totally unimportant book that's been forgotten anyway - the book must be something widely considered a 'classic'; that is, one that lots of people have read (or at least heard of and felt they should have read), and is felt to be in some way 'significant'.

What classic book (fiction or nonfiction) do you choose to retcon out of reality, and why?

(Answers welcome either here or as posts on your own journal in the hope of spreading!)

(I'll post my personal answer tomorrow; I do have one ready:)
tigerfort: the Stripey Captain, with a bat friend perched on her head keeping her ears warm (Default)
From [livejournal.com profile] wellinghall. The top fifty SF & fantasy books (where from? I don't know). Bold the ones you've read, strike the ones you hated, italicize the ones you couldn't get through. Asterisks for the ones you loved - more asterisks, more love. Plus signs for the ones you own.

I can't be bothered with stars; I've been meaning to put together a list of recommendations for [livejournal.com profile] cs2 in any case, so if anyone else is interested I might post it here. The list strikes me as the fifty best-known (although I guess Eddings and Jordan would make that) rather than fifty best, but maybe that's just me.

Long meme behind the cut )
tigerfort: the Stripey Captain, with a bat friend perched on her head keeping her ears warm (Default)
(From [livejournal.com profile] parrot_knight)

I got a three-way tie between Serenity, Enterprise D, and Nebuchadnezzar. As I had a pretty good idea which three series my tie-breaker question was asking me to choose between, I went for Serenity. Because, well, given the choice....

Details below the cut. )

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