/lit/ - Literature

Start with any collection you want. They're stand-alone books, and Wodehouse is consistently good.

>Is he worth it?
EVERYONE loves him. Anthony Burgess, Christopher Hitchens, Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Hilaire Belloc, Evelyn Waugh, Rudyard Kipling, Douglas Adams, Salman Rushdie, Zadie Smith, Terry Pratchett, etc.

Vonnegut

>>1550208
My vote's definitely for Ballard as well.

I'm waiting for NYRBC to release The Ice Trilogy. It looks pretty cool.

I'm a terrible person.

I'd go for Rembrandt.

Sorry, miss.

From Richard Pevear's introduction to Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground (no spoilers):
>When the first part appeared in Epoch, Dostoevsky complained in a letter to his brother that the tenth chapter - "the most important one, where the essential thought is expressed" - had been drastically cur by the censors. "Where I mocked at everything and sometimes blasphemed for form's sake - that is let pass; but where from all this I deduced the need of faith and Christ - that is suppressed."
...
>But if we look at Dostoevsky's outlines of his ideas for novels in his notebooks and letters and then at the novels themselves, we will realize at least that the scheme barely hints at the surprises of its development. However it was that Dostoevsky "deduced the need for faith and Christ" in this chapter, we may be sure that he did not add it on as an external "ideological" precept, but drew it from the materials of the work itself.

ITT: Discuss how Dostoevsky may have deduced " the need of faith and Christ," preferably in terms of Notes from Underground.

>>1549224
Oh yeah: This too.

By the way, is there a particular reason why this book has been coming up so much recently? I love the book, but its constant presence on /lit/ seems rather spontaneous.

Hemingway knew how to chose his words brilliantly.

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
The Sorrows of Young Werther by Wolfgang von Goethe
Looking for Alaska by John Green
The Torrents of Spring by Ivan Turgenev

I like neither Brown nor Palahniuk (I especially dislike the latter).

However, I like Stephen King, Brett Easton Ellis, The Ultimate Hitchiker's Guide, John Green, and Good Omens by Prachett and Gaiman.

I think you can download the software for the Nook for free provided you create an account.

I've never done it, though. I read books.

Kurt Vonnegut
Cormac McCarthy
Bret Easton Ellis
Elif Shafak
Amy Tan
Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier
A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines
Mark Twain
Thomas Hardy
Jonathan Safran Foer
Hermann Hesse
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
W. Somerset Maugham

"Mumu" by Ivan Turgenev

>LAST 3 READ
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
The Plague by Albert Camus
The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams

>CURRENTLY READING
The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare

>WILL (3) READ
Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky (rereading)
A People's Tragedy by Orlando Figes
Gulag by Anne Applebaum

>mfw nobody mentioned Romeo and Juliet

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_osQvkeNRM

Stephen Fry gracefully answers all of OP's questions.

>>1530551
I'll totally look into that. Thanks.

>>1530540
Right on. I've never heard of Awareness. I haven't read The Art of Happiness. I'm behind all of the other books, though.

Sure, OP.

Mozart by Maynard Solomon

>One Hand Clapping

>>1530161
I liked Apocalypse Now. I actually thought the concept was quite interesting.

The first time I read it, I got really bored after the first paragraph and found the Part III extremely interesting.

Upon rereading: It's all really interesting.

It's your American impression. Both have their good and their bad. Britain has a longer literary history.