Comment by 🐦 wasolili
Re: "class about why and how to read books"
The first time I read Candide, it was an annotated version that had plenty of footnotes explaining things like "the earthquake was a real event that killed tens of thousands of people a few years before Candide was published" and "character x is a parody of real world person y" and other such things that an 18th century Frenchman would have been aware of.
It made it much more enjoyable and since then I try to find annotated copies of any older books I read
2025-12-06 · 5 months ago
2 Later Comments ↓
🛞 MaAkThRsYoOySrHtKaAm · Dec 06 at 06:46:
Now that I've read the OP, I don't really feel the need to read the book though.
🐙 norayr [OP] · Dec 07 at 23:55:
i think it is a children book today. i don't think i would enjoy reading it now.
but the book was chosen as an example that shows how little our perception of the well known book can have in common with the intended perceptiot an the time of its creation.
Original Post
class about why and how to read books — so there was this recording of a class at armenian academy of art, and the teacher was discussing books, why to read them. he said let's take this book, about robinson crusoe. what do you think it is about? and students were saying: it is a book about will to live, about how a single human can overcome terrible difficulties. then the teacher suggested to ask ai. someone asked and have read loudly, about the same but with some inaccuracies about the...