/lit/ - Literature

>>2450869
>Hunter S. Thompson shrine
>Glenfiddich
>not Wild Turkey
>wtfareyoudoing

>>2451782
>Whoever wrote the /lit/ guide obviously only posted the ones he had read. Woefully inadequate

I wish I had gotten round to reading all those books listed. I took many recommendations but if you think there's some key works missing then please enlighten us (so long as we stick to literary fiction).

I do intend to update it one day when I've got the time.

>>2451279

Aye, pretty much anything by Carver and Chekhov.

Then....

Nurse Cora by Cortazar
Hinterlands and The Winter Market both by Gibson
Asya by Turgenev
The Invisible Collection by Zweig
On Wanting To Have At Least Three Walls Up Before She Gets Home by Eggers
Hell Is The Absense of God by Chiang
The Teashop by Živković

Probably some others I can't think of off the top of my head.

>>2448315

The Heroes was very good except for the whole "Union war in the north" aspect that seemed a really odd retread of events in TFL books.

It was good but it did leave one thinking, "Haven't I seen this all before and what is the point of it this time around?"

Just read Herr's "Dispatches."

It's a fucking excellent book on Vietnam and captures the experience as well as any of the movies made about the conflict.

"Going out at night the medics gave you pills, Dexedrine breath like dead snakes kept too long in a jar. I never saw the need for them myself, a little contact or anything that even sounded like contact would give me more speed than I could bear. Whenever I heard something outside of our clenched little circle I'd practically flip, hoping to God I wasn't the only one who'd noticed it. A couple of rounds fired off in the dark a kilometer away and the Elephant would be there kneeling in my chest, sending me down into my boots for breath. Once I thought I saw a light moving in the jungle and caught myself just under a whisper saying, 'I'm not ready for this, I'm not ready for this.' That's when I decided to drop it and do something else with my nights. And I wasn't going out like the night ambushers did, or the Lurps, long-range recon patrollers who did it night after night for weeks and months, creeping up on VC base camps or around moving columns of North Vietnamese. I was living too close to my bones as it was, all I had to do was accept it. Anyway, I'd save the pills for later, for Saigon and the awful depressions I always had there."

>dat opening paragraph

>>2437344

I have actually gone through all this works, yes, and those are my rankings.

High Tier

DDD
AWS
HBW

Mid Tier

TWUBC
SS
ATQ
AD
TEV

Low Tier

NW
KOTS
SOTB
BWSW
Underground
WITAB

Quality of the book aside, I do think this is a neat cover.

"She was a dull person, but a sensational invitation to make babies." (Slaughterhouse 5)

DFW's covers are generally nice and a rare instance of US versions being better than the UK ones.

>>2434365

Oh, and the title and author on the front is actually a sticker which you can thankfully peel off. So the covers are even nicer devoid of that (plus the barcodes are the spine, which is another neat touch).

And there's the quite nice Penguin Magnum series too.

>>2434306

Remind me of the nice Penguin Deluxe editions.

As far as SF and fantasy go Subterranean Press do some really nice covers (though it's a mixed bag as they also have some terribly cheesy, genre generic covers too).

And Faber poetry books are lovely in their basic way.

Vintage do some very nice ones (at least here in the UK).

>>2406513
>The later books weren't as good because erikson moved away from the empire

Well that's shit because I don't give much of a fuck about the Tiste races and any of the other ancient shit that Erikson constantly dumps in the novels. GUH.

>>2406168
>This series is awesome. Especially Deadhouse Gates (2) and House of Chains (4).

Wow, we differ on tastes. I thought the Raraku books were MUCH weaker than the initial Genabackis ones.

But Malazan is overall, from the first half of the series that I've read, basically a really frustrating series. Some parts of it are awesome but then there's huge sections of Erikson being a prick in between (hurr durr, look how much I love and know about archaeology and anthropology), which brings it done a lot.

Just read his earlier stuff, it's all his best work (DDD, HBW, AWSC).

Not joking but - assuming you live in a decent sized city / town - just find a real fucking book club. They can be great.

And if you're a real "first wave" e/lit/e you'll know this board always goes through ups and downs of quality. It'll get better again (for a while).

All you need.

million hour in GIMP

>>2383862

Yeah, GotM pulls way too much stuff out its ass towards the end.

It's a shame the Malazan series is such a mix of the good and the bad. If all the books were half the length I probably wouldn't have qualms about finishing the series; but right now I don't know if I want another 5,000 pages of just occasional awesome.

>>2382034

Earthsea is very good but... it sort of goes out of its way to be "anti-fantasy." You'll see what I mean when you read it but go in with the right expectations (basically: there might be a load of amazing shit in this world but you won't actually see much of it).