when i was a fourteen year-old nothing, i emailed dallas denery for reading advice. i had just finished reading a bunch of camus, felt i was in an existential crisis (as any fourteen year-old would), and figured dallas would know what would i should read next. (did i mention i was fourteen, young, and somewhat silly?) he was nice enough to recommend the war with newts by karel capek. i immediately ordered it from the carmichael public library through interlibrary loan and while i waited for that i checked out capek’s r.u.r. (where the word “robot” comes from). those two books quickly became some of my favourites and have remained there ever since.

it’s always been a little goofy to me that more people haven’t read either of these works. maybe they know r.u.r. from a crossword clue, but mentioning them in class always brought up a lot of blank looks. somebody posted on metafilter the links to ebooks for both texts. go read them!

[tags]karel capek, war with newts, r.u.r., robots, ebooks[/tags]