It's an interesting article, worth a read.

Blackadder Goes Forth, final episode.

The text is peppered with footnotes which, although almost by defintiion are not vital to the story, do neverthelesss add interest. IDK how audiobooks deal with them, but they may be easier with an eBook.

They're quite entitled to ask here. No-one is forcing you to participate.

number 6 - I'm guessing that means the right to get so immersed in a book that you are, in effect, temporarily "living it". That's OK - but is different from actually mistaking fiction for reality, which isn't really such a good idea.

I get far more ads than that - are you a paid subscriber? (I'm not.) And, yeah, not speaking Chinese, it does make them rather pointless!

I really enjoyed the books.

I'm great at it - there are too many books to read, and life is too short, to waste it on those I'm not enjoying.

If that's their grossest obsession, things could be a lot worse. I mean, I get it, of course: incest is taboo for good reason, but "gross"? IDK... how many programmes do they have where murder is a key plot point? Now that's what I call gross.

Well, Kerouac was writing about the "beat" section of his generation, which was, despite it's fame, always a minority even in its time. It's not for nothing that it never became dominant. Most people - then or now - did/do not want to live like that, even if they get caught up in the idea of absolute freedom to do as you want when you want for the duration of the trip... it's a seductive idea, but when push comes to shove it's no way to live, and most people do recognise that. So I don't think it is a "snapshot of postwar youthful Boomer mentality", just that of a small section within it, even if their dream did make a lot of (other) people smile for a while at the dream of absolute freedom.

As you say, this was a post-war generation, and they were revelling in a new-found freedom, not just from war, but from the strict social conventions that had dominated pretty much all societies since forever. So, yeah, a section of them took it to extremes and had a whale of a time. For a time. And others looked in with a variety of reactions. But I would caution against over-generalisations.

You say that you're "not saying all boomers are like [that]" but make a pretty sweeping generlaisation all the same. That generation also saw the birth of the environmental movement and oversaw some of the most socially aware political movements in history. Meanwhile, selfishness has been a constant throughout the ages, and is in no way restricted to any particular generation, nor is the current one devoid of it.

Yeah, it's a fab book - I've rec'd it on this sub a few times :)

[edit] oops, I mean on r/suggestmeabook

Well, there's a good lesson to be learnt there: don't go in to any book with expectations - espiecially ones based on genre. It's unfair to the author.

Well, I have to disagree. The sci-fi aspect was just a conceit to carry the ideas which are, as you pointed out, an examination of faith. I'd normally find such subject matter outside of my interest, but this book (or these book - there is a sequel) kept my attention focussed. The implausibility of various aspects of the story are not important to it - they are, as I say, just a background on which to lay her thoughts. Other characters though do matter insomuch as our relationship with others is an important part of who we are, and faith and character are intertwined.

I'd suggest you read the sequel to complete the picture.