/lit/ - Literature

I thought Cat's Cradle was decent. Of the four Vonnegut novels I've read:

Mother Night >>> Slaughter House 5 > Cat's Cradle > Sirens of Titan

Everyone does rave about this. Have it on my bookshelf and just hope that when I get round to it it hasn't been overhyped.

>>2795101
>>2795126
>>2795130

People, both Carver and O'Connor were on the old list and will of course stay on the new one in the 1940-80 category.

Though "Where I'm Calling From" isn't going on there. Don't know about you, but my edition of that just features the odd ends of Carver's writings. It's not even at "Beginners" level in terms of his output.

If people want to discuss what's the best couple of Carver collections to go in the image I'm happy to listen. WWTA was on the last one and I reckon should definitely stay. I put Elephant alongside it as it probably is his most stylistically mature work (and as good as anything else he wrote) but I do have a soft spot for WYPBQP, even if I feel it's a little uneven and the earliest and least developed of his collections.

>>2795090

Um, I think... I would probably do it by genre. I know from my own experiences with SF that I tend to think, "Oh, I want some exciting space opera right now," or, "I'm in the mood for some hard SF now," rather than, "Think I'll pick something up from the New Wave."

I think it's better by subgenre. Plus, if you want to pay real attention to detail you can always order the sub-genre chronologically to sort get a good combination of the two approaches.

>>2795048

Not at all, go for it.

Does sci-fi need to be divided up that much?

You got Classic stuff (Wells, Verne, etc), New Wave (50s, 60s, 70s), then cyberpunk, then....

But is it being divided up chronologically, or is by sub-genre (like "space opera", "hard SF", "military SF)?

Giving this a bump back to the front.

Appreciate all the suggestions and will work them in.

Can also easily just chunk the recommendation into four different sections. Does everyone agree that might be for the best, as opposed to one very large chart?

>>2792852

Yeah, having read GWCH in the mean time I prefer it to BIWHM and so was thinking of doing a replacement switch (and why I forgot Oblivion in the first place I don't know).

>>2791767

Yes, and trying to make a single image for all the literature of an entire country or linguistic group is probably a bit simple, but it's nice that we try. It would also be nice if you came out with suggestions for collections that aren't included on the previous image. Be helpful, eh?

Okay, so I finally decided to stop wasting my Sunday and began updating my previous short story collection image.

Halfway done. Reckon I'll break the next sections down into 1940-80, and then 80-present day, rather than the big three categories I used previously.

Some authors are / will be coming off, some have / will be added (mostly in the second half), updated some covers, made the covers bigger (at the expense of overall size).

Whatever, I hope it's OK. This is also another chance for people to name authors who should be added or subtracted.

Authors probably to be added in the post 1940 categories:

Pynchon
Vonnegut
Pancake
Chang
Endo
DeLillo
Hannah
Pollock
Barthelme
Pelevin
Lutz
Lipsyte
Saunders
Tsutsui
Petrushevskaya

Thoughts, please.

I reckon the Earthsea quartet should be included in the main fantasy image section. Prince of Nothing / Second Apocalypse probably deserves to be there as well as very good current saga (would add the Gentlemen Bastards series too but Lynch has his problems and its being held up like ASOIAF was).

Oh, and divide the fantasy area up? Black Company certainly isn't epic. First Law isn't really either. So maybe make some more genre distinctions there?

>>2781130
>I actually found Littlefinger very well acted and one of the best characters in the show.

What? With his constantly changing accent? Mayor Carcetti was great but this Littlefinger is really wonky for some reason (and that's without getting into how the writers of the TV show make Littlefinger seem like a bumbling dufus).

>>2758432
>>2759092

Welp, no-one has provided suggestions but was thinking of adding the likes of:

Pynchon - Slow Learner (it's Pynchon, but given his opinion of them should they be here?)
One of Vonnegut's short collections
Zweig - Selected Stories
Should have included Oblivion by DFW
The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake
Sam Lipsyte - Venus Drive
George Saunders - CivilWarLand in Bad Decline (haven't read this guy though, so questionable)
Ishiguro - Nocturnes (debatable, sort of like Pynchon - great author, but these aren't the best example of his craft)
Prus - Sins of Childhood and Other Stories
Nescio and the other NYRB city stories (Berlin by Walser, Paris by Gallant)
Chang - Love in a Fallen City
Endo - Stained Glass Stories
Sartre - Intimacy
Bolano - The Return
Replace BB for Fitzgerald with Tales of the Jazz Age?

Anyone who should maybe come off the list (Zola, maybe?)?

Subterranean Press sometimes get it right and have nice covers.

>>2760604

Eh, I know it has that whole heavily-worked-typical-fantasy-artwork thing going for it but I do think it's one of the much better examples. Pic sorta related.

These covers for Bakker's novels are nice (the other ones, which seem to be the ones primarily sold, are rather horrid though).

Abercrombie's recent covers are pretty decent.

Old LOTR ones had nice cover art too.

I really like Kirby's old Discworld covers.

Sure, there are some.

>>2759092

Sure, I've got a few I want to add already but suggestions are always welcome. It was a collaborative effort before too.

>>2758432

I need to find some time to update this...

>>2743825

I'd be really surprised if Cook carried on with the series. I know Wikipedia says there are planned future books but I don't put much faith in that. There are a couple of recent shorts though, which aren't bad even if they're not spectacular.

The nearest thing to TBC is probably the Malazan saga. Erikson acknowledges Cook's influence (there's that blurb on the omnibus editions of TBC) and Malazan is very much a sort of military-fantasy saga.

There's a lot more to it than that and there are big differences between the two series as well but it's worth dipping your toe in to the Malazan universe and seeing what you think. Although it's a huge saga my advice is try the first book. If you like it, you'll like the others. If you don't like it, you won't like the others. Don't think the series massively changes or improves or gets worse over its course (though I'm only half way through all the many Erikson and Esslemont books).

>>2705293

TBH, it's a bit of a mess. One section IS alphabetic and that section is, bar one or two books, entirely read.

Then, uh, it gets complicated as this shelving is a constant work in progress.

Another section is made up almost entirely of books I got from when I was working book stores and they're organised vaguely by country of origin.

Then there are another few shelves entirely of books that I've read; other shelves of books that are unread and are newer purchases and alternatively organised again by country or clumped together by genre.

It's a mess but I do know where everything is.