u/OwlIndependent7270

So, Arturo Belano is Bolaño's alter-ego (or whatever it is called) in the books. I know that he isn't a complete autobiographical character, but I'm pretty sure that Arturo leaving Mexico City to go to Chile to fight against Pinochet actually happened.

My question is, do we know what he did there? Did he use his skill for writing to fight against the junta? Did he pick up arms and become one of the guerrillas? I'm sure it's hidden either in one of his books, poems, or 14,000 pages of notes.

**Spoilers maybe but not really**

So, I just finished Amulet like 2 minutes ago. I wasn't having any issues following along until she met Carlos Coffeen Serpas. He told his story about Orestes, and then Auxilio went off the deep end. I have no idea what she meant with the predictions or the mountains and valleys at the end. It kind of seemed like word salad after he told his story, and I wasn't able to understand much after that point.

Is that the point, though? She's aging, she's kind of a good (lots of stories) while at the same time a very unreliable narrator. Her stories rarely are concrete. There is a lot of, "or it could be this". Is it ramblings of someone who suffered through trauma, is aging, or had mental illness? Or all 3? It seems like the first 3/4 were written by a sundowning person during the day, and then evening hit for the last 30 pages.

Or do i need to go back and reread those last parts because I completely missed the point? That is always a possibility. Mornings aren't really peak reading time (when I can focus best) for me, I was just almost done, and I wanted to finish it. I am going to smoking Marijuana today, and I cannot read when I'm high😄

So, every time I've seen someone ask for similar authors, it's almost exclusively LatAm authors that are suggested. Borges, Cortazar, someone mentioned Mariana Enriquez, amongst many others.

Who are some other authors who kind of fall into the vein of Bolaño? I know that LatAm literature is very much its own style (similar to how Russian literature is very much its own) and can't necessarily be duplicated, but any ideas of any other authors who could scratch the itch that are easier to obtain? Someone mentioned Faulkner (I've only read As I Lay Dying, which i loved), but any other suggestions?

We all know that Arturo Belano is Bolaño's nom de guerre (is that the right term for it?) in his books. I'm reading Amulet right now, and i was wondering if there are any other books besides the aforementioned and The Savage Detectives that Arturo or any other characters from TSD appear in. Of his other works, I've only read 2666 and By Night In Chile so far. Arturo is so mysterious, and I feel by reading more about him, I'm learning more about Roberto.

I have a 40V Brushless (non self-propelled) mower. The 6V battery usually lasts for both my front and back yards, but if it rains or I let it go too long, I usually need my other battery. So, normally, if you let go of the handle, it stops in about 1 second with the brake. The other day, I mowed early, so there was dew on the grass, and the single battery didn't make it (I have a backup). Normally, if you let go of the handle, the blade stops in about 1 second with the brake. When the battery died, though, there was no blade brake. It took about 10 seconds for it to succumb to friction and stop. This was just an observation - and a safety hazard - that I think others should know about. It's kind of important for the brake to work, so it's a definite issue that the battery just goes dead without stopping the blade.

The mower is great. I am not railing against it, but this definitely needs to be solved before someone inadvertently sticks their foot under the mower deck before the blade has stopped. This was my PSA

Tl;dr I don't know much Spanish, but I'd like to read LatAmLit books as they were written. Any suggestions for learning?

I'm sure there are many (if not most) Spanish- speakers in this sub, but i am not. I took multiple years of Spanish in high-school (I don't know of anyone who learned a language in high school, though), and then a couple of years ago, i started Duo Lingo. I know you're not going to learn a language there, but my plan was to transition to Babble, which i never did. Most language courses have a heavy focus on speech rather than writing, but I'd like to be proficient in both.

With my various forays into español, I'm very good with pronunciation (though I still have a white Midwestern accent😄), and i have a fair grasp of grammar, like masculine and feminine words, the various tenses, etc, but i struggle with learning the language overall. Maybe I'm not trying hard enough. That's a possibility, as well.

I wrote this long post because I want to ask if there is a certain way that you would suggest learning the language. I work in a hospital, that was my original intention for trying to learn it since it's a great tool, but I would also like to read books by these authors in the original language they were written. I just reread By Night In Chile, and there is some beautiful prose, but how much of that is actually Roberto's words vs the translators? I don't know, but i would like to.

Should I just use Babble? Should I jump in and buy one of these books in Spanish and learn while reading? Telemundo? Any help would be appreciated. There will always be things lost in translation, and I'd like to read them in their original form.

If you are at all interested in the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians, this is a great book to get you up to speed on the origins of the current war crimes and the complicity of multiple nations (particularly Great Britain) in stripping rights away, and demeaning the Palestinians... or refusing to acknowledge they even exist.

This only goes to 2017, but if you're interested in the current "conflict," "One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This". It's a scathing rebuke of our current society and how we have and continue to sit idly by while a genocide is streamed in 4k. People's eyes have definitely opened since the publishing of both books, but until this is over, it will never be enough.

Last year, i read 68 books, I believe. This year, I've struggled. Around April, I essentially stopped reading after about 15 books. I read Angel Down a couple of months ago and City of Thieves a couple of weeks ago. I really enjoyed them both, but after finishing CoT, I couldn't find another book that I wanted to read. I realized that part of my problem is that my reading mood has shifted from fiction to nonfiction.

After looking through my books, I settled upon this, and holy crap it's interesting. He excels at making a bland (ha! pun intended) topic interesting. I haven't been bored in the 100 pages I've read thus far. I knew salt was an important commodity, but it played a far larger role than i could believe.

So, I'm almost 40 years old (39M), and I would say that I have a larger vocabulary than the average person. I'm not a pompous ass about it, and I generally don't use large words in my everyday life that most people don't know... but sometimes, one of those words conveys your position, thought, or idea perfectly. If that's the case, then I'll use it. I've actually spent a lot of time improving my vocabulary simply by reading and using a dictionary if I don't know what a word is. Some I incorporated into my normal vocabulary, and many I've forgotten. There is this guy at work - he's my age - and he more than once has said to me, "great word usage!" The words were specifically "penance" and "obfuscate. " Penance I've used plenty of times (not generally speaking of catholic confession. He made some simple mistake, and I jokingly told him, "your penance is such and such", because I'm a giant smartass). He and another coworker were lauding the word usage because they'd never heard it used that way before. The other (and more recent) time I used the word "obfuscate" - in the correct context - in our conversation, and he said, "great word usage!"

Has anyone else experienced something similar? It might just be him because he's kind of weird, but I just felt that a grown adult complimenting someone on their use of a, let's say, "obscure" word was very odd. It pretty much tanks the conversion because it is just plain weird to compliment an adult the way you'd compliment a child on their vocabulary.

I'm sure I'm overthinking this (it's my specialty), but i just wanted to ask others. I'm not sure exactly where this goes, but this seemed like the best sub from the ones I've found.

Thank you!

I've been playing Helldivers 2 a lot lately. I don't have a headset (don't want one), but communication is still important. There is a chat feature, but it's a pain trying to type anything in a mission. There are chatpads that you can connect directly to your controller, but i have a Scuf Valor Pro, and they aren't compatible. I've found a few inexpensive options on Amazon (link below for the one I'm looking at), I just can't figure out if they are compatible with Xbox or not. I don't need anything fancy. I don't chat all the time, I just need a faster way to send a message if I need to.

Thanks!

https://a.co/d/0ecj5ptp

Or also, what is your favorite Disney character/villain? Why are these questions still so common when talking about kids' movies or shows? I have 4 kids under 10, so I have a ton of experience, but Illumination has out-produced and outclassed Disney (and DreamWorks, Sony [sans K-Pop], etc) in every sense for the last decade. We got tickets for the new Minions movie tomorrow, which is what got me thinking.

Has anyone else noticed that there are suddenly quite a few seeds in seedless grapes? I am being serious, AI.