── Ask 4-ch: Is X worth reading? ──
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       >> 1  Bookworm  2025-09-26 15:05 ID:GOr5di9H
         I don't find Goodreads particularly helpful for deciding on books, the opinions of other board users are much more useful usually.
         
         I found a cheap copy of 'The Age Of Surveillance Capitalism' by Shoshana Zuboff. I know the gist of the ideas already, does it go in depth or is it a surface level book?
         
         Please post if you have other books you're thinking of getting but are on the fence about.
       
       >> 2  Bookworm  2025-09-30 11:26 ID:wm3OJVra
         No, X (the site formerly known as Twitter) is not worth reading.
       
       >> 3  Bookworm  2025-10-26 20:19 ID:1hjYioTU
         >>1
         Given how popular it is, it can’t hurt not to be familiar with her arguments by reading the book.
       
       >> 4  Bookworm  2025-11-25 15:30 ID:GOr5di9H
         > >Given how popular it is, it can’t hurt not to be familiar with her arguments by reading the book.No, but I have so much I'd rather read and so little time, I don't want to waste it. If it's mostly stuff I already know about or if it's really repetitive, I don't even want to bother.
         I've not yet checked it by the way. It's sat on my bookshelf this whole time.
       
       >> 5  Bookworm  2025-11-28 02:14 ID:PSRtTAwi
         >>4
         I guess you could ask people for the most essential chapters and just read those.
       
       >> 6  Bookworm  2025-11-28 11:41 ID:HKtkNeud
         i'll read it for you and tell you anon
       
       >> 7  Bookworm  2025-12-18 02:20 ID:ymJl8YSO
         >>1
         I’d recommend Colin Koopman’s How We Became Our Data over Zuboff’s book. He looks at how the information society rose gradually over a century ago and so the stuff Zuboff calls surveillance capitalism is a lot older than she thinks and has been in the pipeline for a long time.
       
       >> 8  Bookworm  2026-04-24 17:31 ID:y46hmce2
         Has anyone read anything by Blake Butler? I became aware of his more recent work UXA.GOV, which seems to form a chain of obscurely-written dystopian horror "fiction" following his past works.
         They all seem pretty experimental and interesting, but not sure if there's a lot of substance there. I like experimental media even if I don't understand it, and enjoy most experimental film and music. But I'm a little afraid to brave this author without some reassurance that it's worth my time.
         
         I'm honestly kind of fascinated by all the works published by UXA.GOV's publisher, Inside The Castle, which seems like the ultimate final boss hipster garbage publishing house. I don't understand how they can make such boutique experimental novels that are consistently so weird and still turn a profit. Seeing the praise heaped on these novels feels like glimpsing into a cult, or some sort of circlejerk. Maybe the production is funded by the creators?
         Take Massive by John Trefry, A book that seems mostly meaningless but an experiment in writing in columns that can be parsed individually or together.
         Or Anamnesis by Caroline McManus: Seemingly a record of back and forth conversations between the "author" and a language model.
         
         It kind of makes me frustrated that these exist. Maybe that's the point? I came across these due to twitter posts from some sort of user proclaiming their satisfaction on obtaining a group of night unreadable texts. I'm not sure anyone "gets" or "relates" to this content on a level approaching the creators. I certainly don't think that art has to be enjoyable to be important, but I can't help but feel that dedicating time to read and comprehend these sort of works in a world where every second we have is precious time that we'll never get back is a waste and a tragedy. Again - perhaps that's the point.
         Surely there must be some merit to these books, since people continue to buy them?
       
       >> 9  Bookworm  2026-05-10 14:50 ID:t2hIzk8K
         McManus lmfao
       
       >> 10  Bookworm  2026-09-14 00:32 ID:MLVWO7mY
         How about something that people outside of a moron like >>8 might actually have any interest in reading (>>8 you should be the one telling us if those books are somehow actually not garbage if you're so interested); what about Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged"?
         
         Part of me feels like I missed out on something of a cultural touchstone for never having read it, but every time I hear fandom or hatedom for it suggests that it's not worth it because it's all either people who love it because it affirmed their political views or hate it because it disagreed with their political views.  Is the story actually reasonably interesting or at least making more thoughtworthy points than the summary version suggests, or is it really just the shallowly utopic libertarian wank it's made out to be?
       
       >> 11  Bookworm  2026-09-16 14:06 ID:GOr5di9H
         I've wondered about this specifically with Atlas Shrugged too. The spectacle around it has totally warped any ability to actually see what's going on. I found a copy for like $2 at a shop, but the problem is that it's just such a large book I wish I did know more about it before getting into it.
         Also when I opened it, I found in the middle one of those pre-made letters you could post to the Ayn Rand Society for more Ayn Rand stuff, which wasn't a very nice impression, but I want to withold my judgment still.
       
       
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