/jp/ - Otaku Culture

[Anonymous No.]

Does /jp/ read? What are your favorite books?

Lately I've been getting of light novels and VNs, so I decided to try some "real" literature. Currently I'm reading Infinite Jest, which was a recommendation from /lit/, 200 pages in and it seems pretty boring. I still think that LNs and VNs are superior.

[Anonymous No.]

I like Chuunibyou.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10116065
>Infinite jest

Didn't ayn rand write that?

Lel

[Anonymous No.]

I enjoy reading, but have trouble finishing or starting books. I always end up spending most of my days in front of the computer instead.

What are some good LNs to read?

That said, you should try reading Catch 22 sometime OP, it's really good.

[Anonymous No.]

What are some good NEET/hikki books about anti-social people and/or outcasts?

Is Notes from Underground good?

[Anonymous No.]

I don't know how to read

[Anonymous No.]

>>10116123
>Is Notes from Underground good?

I liked it

[Anonymous No.]

>>10116123
>Is Notes from Underground good?

It's epic

[Anonymous No.]

>>10116123
>Is Notes from Underground good?

It's nice

[Anonymous No.]

I'll always recommend Haruki Murakami to my fellow ladies here.

>>10116123
There's always Welcome to the NHK. No Longer Human too, although I personally didn't like it.

[Y10NRDY !kxh.1oTAkU No.]

I wouldn't recommend 'Infinite Jest' to someone just getting their feet wet with complex contemporary literature. It's a very dense and difficult read.

Try some Irvine Welsh or Will Self. That stuff is just as thematically sophisticated without being bogged down with sometimes over-the-top hyperverbosity.

David Foster Wallace is great, though. If you want a taste of him, get a book of his short stories. I recommend 'Girl with Curious Hair.'

[Anonymous No.]

[Anonymous No.]

>>10116301
Am I the only one who thought it is a penis?

[Anonymous No.]

>>10116313
I thought it was a penis too.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10116313
guilty...

[Anonymous No.]

>>10116260
>Haruki Murakami
Anything is fine or is there anything in particular?

I'm looking to pick up something to help aid me in studying Japanese.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10116301
Weird looking dick

[Anonymous No.]

>>10116332
I'd start with Kafka on the Shore or the The Wind-up Bird Chronicle and work from there. Both are ideal starting pieces. A lot of people would say Norwegian Wood, but as nice as it is and all it lacks what makes the rest of Murakami's works so special.

[gigs !A7GLsxo4c. No.]

I am currently "reading" about autistic girls with eyepatches.

[Anonymous No.]

Infinite Jest is an amazing piece of literature, one of my favorites, but it's not something you jump into if you're just getting into literature.

In addition to Infinite Jest some of my favorite books are Gravity's Rainbow, For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Sun Also Rises, Dead Souls, Crime and Punishment, Middlemarch, Lolita, The Sound and the Fury, The Picture of Dorian Gray... really just far too many to list.

>>10116123
Notes from Underground is great. I also recommend The Stranger by Camus,

[Anonymous No.]

>>10116313
>>10116318
>>10116325
>>10116345
:/
Plan on picking up S&W after I finish Kino no Tabi. It's just that I'll probably get raped by the language, having to lookup new compounds constantly due to it having shit tons of economical terms etc.

[gigs !A7GLsxo4c. No.]

Christmas is coming soon.

[Anonymous No.]

for "real" literature, op, you can always try going classic. read some short stories by chekhov, or hemingway's the old man and the sea, or some of poe's stories, or to kill a mockingbird. yeah, most of those they made me read in school, but later i found that when i reread them for myself i enjoyed them a lot more. currently i'm reading through the complete collection of sherlock holmes stories, off and on. i enjoy it a lot even though i'm not a big mystery fan; the stories are just interesting.

pic unrelated. i just wanted to post a cute loli while talking about classic lit.

[Anonymous No.]

Ever since I got my first kindle, I've picked up reading as a habit.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10116428
Definetely getting the paperwhite when it gets released over here.

[Y10NRDY !kxh.1oTAkU No.]

>>10116375
WARNING: GRAVITY'S RAINBOW, NOT FOR THE UNINITIATED EITHER.

Good stuff, though. Pynchon's the man.

[Anonymous No.]

Last week I read Spartacus. I learned quite a few things from it.
The society must have been pretty fucked up to use crucifixion.
And I can't fathom how widespread slavery must have been. I would feel bad just by taking somebody's place in a queue. Making somebody carry me... I'd die of shame on the spot.

Yesterday I started "An Instance of the Fingerpost", a _long_ mystery novel. Just what I wanted.
I know it'll be no Umineko, but I'm sure it'll be fun. Maybe.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10116467
Yeah, it's much harder than even IJ, in my opinion. I just started listing my favorites and only after I posted did I remember that the OP probably wants them for recommendations. I also wouldn't recommend The Sound and the Fury, Middlemarch, and maybe even Crime and Punishment to a beginner.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10116428
Where do you get your Japanese pdfs for the Kindle? Is there a site where you can download LNs?

[Anonymous No.]

>>10116467
It's a surprise to see someone from the old generation of /jp/. Nice to see you.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10116583
For older kindles, pic is what you do.

For the paperwhite, you can do this.
http://ebookyaro..
blogspot.com
/2012/10/kindle-paperwhite-epub3.html

convert .txt files in 青空文庫形式 into .epub, then .mobi.
This preserves furigana/ruby, and it's a smaller file size than a PDF. It behaves exactly the same as an official kindle book, so you can change fonts and resize and search through the book and everything.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10116428
Oh, you have one of the new non-grey ones.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10116084
>lel
>>>/v/

[Anonymous No.]

The great thing about books is that while you are reading them you form a scenario in your mind.
The things you see in your mind while reading might be entirely different from what other people see.

That's also why watching movies about a book are so confusing sometimes.

I read Stephen Kings Dreamcatcher the other day and then watched the trailer for the movie.
Boy, I was surprised when the bad guy was played by a black guy when I had a white old military guy in my mind all that time

[Anonymous No.]

>>10116695
Have you used the paperwhite for raw manga? I've been thinking of getting a kindle for books and occasionally manga and light novels, and would like to get the paperwhite due to the higher resolution (for furigana and kanji). However I haven't really been able to find much information about getting manga onto it online, and mangle doesn't seem to support it.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10116829
You won't have much trouble with kanji, unless it's really small. But you may want to reconsider if you really rely on furigana. It's still very legible, but not necessarily pretty.

[Anonymous No.]

I want to read Ian Flemming novels, among various other things.

I've always wanted to be a learned and educated person by reading lots of books, but things always get in the way, and I never gave it a wholehearted effort. If I ever have a commute, or vast reserves of time at my disposal, I'll be sure to read.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10116372
It doesn't have "shit tons of economical terms". It's just every day vocabulary.

In fact I think you'll find that reading technical things like economical, scientific and mathematical documents can be easier than reading a lot of "everyday Japanese" because the writing is more logical and the vocabulary generally has a direct one to one equivalence with English equivalents.

[Anonymous No.]

where do you guys get your japanese ebooks?

i just got a n7 and was looking for some ebooks

[Anonymous No.]

>>10116260
Seconding that, I loves Murakami even though he writes a lot of rapists.

I can't recommend Banana Yoshimoto enough to people that like Murakami; her fiction has a similarly dreamy feel but is markedly more optimistic in tone. Try Asleep and see what you think.

[Y10NRDY !kxh.1oTAkU No.]

>>10116670
It's a surprise to have someone say something nice to me. Thanks, man.

>>10116543
Yeah, Infinite Jest is navigable. Gravity's Rainbow is immensely rewarding, but HOLY SHIT, it is probably the most sophisticated thing I've ever read, and I have written extensively on James Joyce and Beckett.

Dostoevsky has a bad rap. A lot of people cite him as being a tough author to wrap your head around, and while I do appreciate the layers upon layers he weaves into his work, I think on a sentence level he is actually pretty accessible.

[Anonymous No.]

Wow... /lit/ will usually cry in pain and rage with an OP like this....
You sometimes amaze me /jp/

[Anonymous No.]

>>10116332
I read Sputnik Sweetheart first and I stand by that as the best choice for first book by him. After Dark might be good as well.
Honestly anything except Dance Dance Dance or A Wild Sheep Chase would be fine though.

Incidentally I disagree about Norwegian Wood; it's different for sure but a great book in its own way. It doesn't have all the allegorical weirdness going, but there's still angst and people searching for their place and tortured romance. There's even a disappearing woman in it.

[Anonymous No.]

Anyone here like cyberpunk fiction? Jeff Noon is my favorite author that nobody ever talks about. I read this at like 14 after a librarian who knew I liked William Gibson recommended it to me. Blew my fucking mind.

It's about a bunch of social outcasts who spend most of their lives in a shared ideal virtual reality (which has a way of becoming actual reality) accessed by drugs, until the main character's imouto gets stuck there and they have to somehow find her. I'd think it would be relevant to /jp/'s interests.

Pollen, his next book, was also good and even more bizarre (and contained the first reference to necrophilia my tender young mind was ever exposed to), and he's written a ton of stuff since then too.

[Anonymous No.]

OP, why the fuck would read serious literature after reading VNs and LNs? They barely have any substance, their sole purpose is entertainment. They are all about the "feels" as crossboarders would say.

So go read more of the same, but of much higher quality. Read fantasy literature.

In no particular order - Black Company, Dresden Files (skip the first two books), Wheel of Time, Mistborn, Kingkiller Chronicle, The First Law, Night Angel trilogy. These books got everything - 2hus, 1000 year old lolis, fugging.

The /lit/ fags don't even NEET, don't spend their days living in imaginary worlds like we do. Fuck them and their opinions.

Oh, there is also Ready Player One, if you wish a mildly entertaining NEET/MMO story.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10118210
which one in particular has the 1000 year old lolis

[Anonymous No.]

Mostly the same stuff as >>10116375
I finished House of Leaves a few weeks ago, that was pretty neat. I read Snow Crash a while back, really enjoyed that. Now I'm finally getting around to reading the last Dark Tower book.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10118210
really? they all have cute silly hats?

[Anonymous No.]

Any good nip literature I can read?

[Anonymous No.]

>>10118277
Dresden Files, but she is a support character, appears through the books here and there.

>>10118312
Nope, they fly on carpets and bomb castles with magic and have weird quirks; for example one of them says every other sentence with a different voice.

---------

I also recommend audiobooks because then you can do other stuff while listening. Cook, clean your room, take long walks, play MMOs.

[Anonymous No.]

how is teito monogatari

[Anonymous No.]

>2012
>cannot into books without pictures

[Anonymous No.]

>>10118391
Who are you quoting?

[Anonymous No.]

>>10118396
You are Mom.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10118153
Who cares about /lit/, they're just a bunch of annoying pseudo-intellectuals.

Also, this thread just shows that /jp/ is an intelligent and educated board that can discuss all forms of art and media.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10118151
Yep, Gravity's Rainbow is mindblowing. I still can't get over how amazing it is.

>>10118210
I think eroge is much better entertainment for people like us than fantasy literature is, and it certainly has cuter girls. And it's precisely because I get my indulgent entertainment needs met by eroge that when I read books I read serious shit.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10118405
suck my nigger megadick

[Anonymous No.]

Has anyone ever read or tried reading The Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Mishima? I swear, that protagonist is often just like me, and probably a lot of /jp/sies could identify with him.

[Anonymous No.]

Mason & Dixon > Gravity's Rainbow > V > Inherent Vice

Mason & Dixon is the best post-modernist novel of all time. Pynchon worked longest on this novel and it's his best and most moving. If you didn't like Pynchon because his representation of characters seems cold and caricatured and not quite three-dimensional, this is the book for you.

Ending had me in tears.

[Anonymous No.]

Infinite Jest is pretty awful, really.

DFW is poor man's Pynchon.

Also, the events of the last chapter lead into the first.

[Anonymous No.]

>10118418
>indulgent entertainment needs met by eroge that when I read books I read serious shit.

Books can do both. I went from anime to VNs, then to fantasy literature and I find it very satisfying.

[Anonymous No.]

>10118462
>fantasy literature
Like ASoIaF?

I've always wondered why would anyone read that and not Berserk.

[Anonymous No.]

>10118462
>10118471
WHAT THE FUCK IS UP WITH THIS QUOTING

[Anonymous No.]

I DONT KNOW WHO IS QUOTING WHO ANYMORE

[Anonymous No.]

>10118474
who are you quoting?

[Anonymous No.]

>10118471
No, I listed the ones I enjoyed in the big post above.

I've read first 3 books of ASoIaF. These I would not recommend to a /jp/sie. While they have some amazing writing, especially the dialogues, the storylines are very fucked up and unfulfilling. I've gotten as much pleasure form these books as I would get form dissecting a cat.

[Anonymous No.]

>10118471
>10118474
>10118498
>10118500
WHO DA FUCK ARE U QUOTING

[Anonymous No.]

>10118471
Is Berserk any good? I remember I wanted to start reading it in like 2009, but was told to wait until get off some boat or something, because it was a rather slow going arc (it was going on for like 2 years).

How's it compared to A Song of Ice and Fire?

[Anonymous No.]

>>10118514
Who are you quoting you autist?

[Nocturama !VEKeH6tchQ No.]

>>10118555
your trips

[Anonymous No.]

>>10118563
>>>10118563
TEST

[Anonymous No.]

>>10118567
>>10118563
>>10118555
>>10118514
>>10118502
>>10118498
>>10118474
Delete your posts, please.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10118575
>>10118575
delete yours first sperglord

[Anonymous No.]

>>10118134
anyone?

[Anonymous No.]

Right now I'm reading a book called "Lords of The Bow". It's actually pretty and I like it. It's about Genghis Khan and his battles. The book's also about Genghis' family and his brothers and sons. It's a good book, definitely worth a read.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10116065
I'm getting 12 books for christmas. The Stoner, Infinite Jest, The Metamorphosis and Interviews with Hideous Men are some of them.

I read a fucking lot.

[Anonymous No.]

/jp/, do you write a lot? I made a prime-shitting bear with CL last week. It has ASCII graphics, gravity and shit.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10118816
hi

[Anonymous No.]

I don't like reading about wars, fighting and bullying. If there is fantasy literature without that, please throw in some names.

[Anonymous No.]

I can't read, sorry.

[Wintermoot !!kWM0hb9oFSL No.]

I read the finished the first Megami Tensei novel a few days ago. (fan translated) already started the second novel.
>>10118186
sounds awesome. I already read Neuromancer twice and plan to read the rest of the sprawl trilogy in the near future.

[Wintermoot !!kWM0hb9oFSL No.]

>>10118848
Spice And Wolf?

[Anonymous No.]

>>10118797
>The Metamorphosis
Read The Castle before that one.

[Anonymous No.]

Personally I can never get into books that have a lot of focus on fighting or deep thinking, which means that to me a lot of the classics listed in this thread are "too deep," and most sci-fi/fantasy novels are too focused on "defeating the big bad guy." I've taken to reading romance novels, because the conflict of most stories ends up riding in the back seat while the romance plot takes up the front.

Yes, I have shit taste.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10118936
>romance novels

Name some of your favorites please. I have no idea how to look for the type a /jp/sie would like. It's a fucking minefield of shit writing out there with werewolves and vampires scattered all over the place.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10118936
Please. Books are meant to be entertaining, there's nothing to feel bad about if you can't enjoy pretentious philosophical tripe. Just read what you like and be happy about it.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10118871
>Megami Tensei
What is this? Is this related to Persona in any way?

[Anonymous No.]

>>10118936
Is that popular 50 Shades of Grey book a romance novel?

[Wintermoot !!kWM0hb9oFSL No.]

>>10118991
Persona was a spinn-off.
The story has nothing to do with Persona itself.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10118946
I dunno about favorites, but here are some authors that I've read:

Glenn Bullion
Debora Geary
Stuart Meczes
B. Justin Shier

Most of those are new sci-fi/fantasy writers that have enough romance to satisfy me. I tend to just buy books I find on Amazon for less than $4, and most of them are enjoyable reads. I end up getting a lot of the werewolf/vampire crap, but I like the connection to the fantasy novels I used to love reading. I first began reading romance because there was one hidden in the sci-fi section of the store and I bought it and devoured it unknowingly.

Basically, just find a romance novel that has elements of the shit you already like reading (or that you used to like) and go from there.

>>10118996
Yes, it is, but it's basically Twilight without vampires (from what I've heard). It's one of those books that exists solely to satisfy the sexual fantasies of women.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10118816
Please post?

[Anonymous No.]

William S. Burroughs is probably my favorite author.
I don't read light novels or VNs, and the few times that I tried, I had to quit after a few hours because it was exactly like reading bad young adult fiction. It's amazing what you idiots will read once they put a 2D girl on the cover.
Infinite Jest picks up in the 300s. There's hope for you yet.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10119023
One thing I forgot to mention that makes this relevant to /jp/ is that I still have not found a good romance novel in Japanese. They all drag out any romance plot over several novels and then ultimately leave it unresolved. So if anyone knows of some Japanese romance novels, those would be great to hear about.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10119036
You sure showed them, bro. Those fucking idiots were totally enjoying themselves without really hurting anyone. Good thing you put them in their place.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10119044
Don't you know that enjoying wrong things is wrong? It needs to be corrected, no matter the time or place. The chinks are almost at our doorsteps, bro.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10119044
He has a point though. All VNs and LNs are horrible young adult fiction.

It's funny that you people would probably laugh at and make fun of it if they weren't LNs or VNs but regular books.

You're into it just because of cute 2D girls, despite the content being godawful.

Sorry for any grammar mistakes, I'm p tired now.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10119070
>You're into it just because of cute 2D girls, despite the content being godawful.
Thank you for delivering these news.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10119070
A similar case could be made for a lot of "proper" literature. Shit stories that get away with being shit because they have an allusion to some deeper meaning or because reading them allows you to claim to be more "intelligent".
I mean, how the fuck do you claim that reading a book that doesn't pick up for 300 pages is a good thing?

[Anonymous No.]

I love reading.

Haruki Murakami is the greatest contemporary writer.

[Anonymous No.]

Why would I read a book, let alone a book without pictures? If I mustered up the patience and effort to read something, it would be a textbook, not a novel. Even reading contemporary novels is pointless because you may as well read "classics" for the bragging rights (and genuine insights into history/literacy/philosophy, I hear there's that too).

No, I'll read my SICP and play my bright and colourful porn games.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10119070
Stop projecting. And if you're comparing translated sources to the original raw material, please kill yourself instantly.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10119661
Take it easy, Mr. M-san.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10119661
How is he projecting?

[Anonymous No.]

My grandma died and left a ton of Mills & Boon books. For those who don't know, they publish escapist short romance novels for lonely women. They've published so many that just about every situation and setting has been done at least a dozen times, with varying degrees of raunchiness.
They are basically like formulaic eroge/otomege in book format, and they are fantastic. Even as a heterosexual male, I am thoroughly enjoying ploughing through them.

[Anonymous No.]

I don't have enough patience to read books without pictures. Even then I rarely ever finish them. I think the only reason I can digest manga/LNs/VNs is because they're exotic. If FSN had been written by someone from the US and originally uploaded to something like DA or whatever site people use to upload original stories I wouldn't have made it past the prologue.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10121722
T-thanks grandma.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10119646
>>10121753
>Why would I read a book, let alone a book without pictures?
>I don't have enough patience to read books without pictures.

Epic ADHD, /b/rothers! :D

[Anonymous No.]

>>10122097
I gave my ADHD nephew a picture book with NO WORDS and he just threw that shit across the room then dive bombed onto the couch.

Some of the pictures were really cool too. It was about bears.

[Anonymous No.]

[Anonymous No.]

I've read regular books with "deep" meanings by supposed amazing writers. Sure the English is beautiful, but the story isn't very interesting. The "messages" and "intent" by the author just make me think, "ok, so what if this guy is warning people against an authoritarian privacy invading society and government. I just want to enjoy a shitting story" I could read a shitting encyclopedia or textbook to learn that shit more efficiently.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10122097
My attention deficit disorder is genetic. You shouldn't judge people based on their birth defects.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10119090
I don't really know what that other guy is talking about, since Infinite Jest is great from cover to cover.

>>10119070
Light novels are indeed the Japanese equivalent of YA, and I don't enjoy or read much of either so I can't make quality comparisons. Eroge are very different, they aren't even novels despite Westerners usually referring to them as visual novels, and so you can't drawn fair comparisons between them and books. Since you already did it though, I'll say that decent eroge are much better than YA, and better than genre fiction too.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10122149

Holy shit, I have to read that for my Independent Reading Project for this quarter.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10122240
Nice, hope you enjoy it.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10116065
>Currently I'm reading Infinite Jest, which was a recommendation from /lit/

You got trolled, OP.

[Anonymous No.]

Best "novel" I ever "read"

[Anonymous No.]

Did you enjoy this series of novels? I thought it was really good and pretty interesting, compared to other LNs out there. Too bad the author seems to have lost interest and the next volume is looking like being the last one.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10116065
Discworld is pretty fucking good.
Pyramids is a good place to get you into the whole thing.

[gigs !A7GLsxo4c. No.]

Bump.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10116123
The Metamorphosis might be good. The subtext is basically Kafka felt like he was a verminous burden on his family.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10127972
I'd like to have someone explain the appeal of Discworld to me. I tried reading Guards! Guards! and I thought it was just weird.

Some guy trying to convince a bunch of mentally challenged people to summon dragons? What the fuck?