/lit/ - Literature

>>8671727
>callipygean slave child climbing a column of onyx

yeah his whole historical exegesis of the nymphette has some stellar, ultra vivid descripts of sexualized children

this one too was good, puppybodies is especially evocative I feel

>Here are two of King Akhnaten’s and Queen Nefertiti’s pre-nubile Nile daughters (that royal couple had a litter of six), wearing nothing but many necklaces of bright beads, relaxed on cushions, intact after three thousand years, with their soft brown puppybodies, cropped hair and long ebony eyes. Here are some brides of ten compelled to seat themselves on the fascinum, the virile ivory in the temples of classical scholarship.

>>8611723
I think he was an ephebophile, which is a pretty important distinction. I mean he coined the word nymphet specifically to denote girls in the period pubescence when there is a palpable retention of the features of childhood inmixed the acquisition of sexually definable characteristics and a growing sexual awareness/motivation. I think his fixation on lepidoptery was a bit of sublimation of this desire for this intermediate state, the chrysalis being a particularly potent and dramatic symbol of this transitional state.

>>8034245
there is a category of expression, or no, there is a more general class of second or even third order emotional awarenesses, which, due to the complexity of the methods of conduction by which it arises, the nature of the topics on which it wishes to speak, and its general distance from the bestial emotional appetites which govern the "self" [as it is considered in any "genuine" sense or intrinsically "real" state of being] from which it originates, that it necessitate expression as a form of irony, or, it might better be said: something which must be attributed to an abstraction of the self, or at times an abstraction of an abstraction of the self, if it wishes to express itself effectively

and it is though such expression that the finer, more substantive, commentaries on what it means "to be" arise

new sincerity, to the extent that it says anything at all, says, "free me from these distressing and confusing layers of implication and deference! validate my base sensory appetites as the end all be all of human awareness, for to do otherwise makes me feel artificial by comparison!"

Spoiler Intensive Critique of Reading Marathon.

Gene Wolfe: The Shadow of the Torturer.
Quite good worldbuilding and imagery.
GrrM tier sexual situations. (No more, please.)
All characters have same voice, but somehow the narrator is even more wooden.
The descriptions/pacing make up for the boring narrator. (ex. The old imprisoned woman being taken off to torture; I was pretty uneasy; quite good.)
The guy uses a lot of uncommonly used words, (ex. Sedge when reffering to a grassy bank of a pool of water), losing the sword and almost drowning was quite good.
The plot is rpg-like, openworld (if that makes sense).
OKAY BUT WILL NOT CONTINUE THE SERIES/10.

Douglas Adams: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency.
Silly descriptions.
Silly dialogue (reminds me of The Mighty Boosch.)
I am having difficulty finding a plot.
Richard Dawkins liked it, read it twice over.
Only got through a fourth of it.
WOULD NOT READ/10.

H.P Lovecraft: At the Mountains of Madness.
Past-tense.
Straightforward descriptions.
Goes deep into minutae in the beggining.Geology.The paleontology parts upon discovering the cave is really cool, though.
Narrator is intelligent and a very believable scientist.
Too slow pace, even after discovering a perserved cthulu-monster.
I was pretty uninterested in the Old Ones.It was good quality ancient space jockey stuff, though.(Most interesting part of the story, though.)
Like 'The Thing' and 'Prometheus' movies mixed, but The Thing is better.
PROBABLY WON'T REREAD, BUT WILL LOOK INTO OTHER LOVECRAFT/10.

George Orwell: 1984
Above average narration.(Although, sometimes annoying like finding an old woman beautiful.)
The plot is subservient to 'The Book' within the book.
I didn't find the affair, their love, or how the narrator asserted that he didn't sell her out (I just thought it all mediocre.)
The sadistic dominance of the inner party toward the outer party was really good.
MIGHT SKIP SOME PARTS ON A FUTURE READ/10.

H.G. Wells: The Time Machine
Great past tense narration, great description (both the world and the interaction between the narrator and the other creatures).
Weena.
Action packed tear jerker.
Cool evolution and future of the solar system stuff.
Good plot device of finding the Time Machine. Good reason to explore the world and be more bold.
GREAT/10.

H.G. Wells: War of the Worlds
Not as good as The Time Machine.
GOOD/10.

Max Brooks: World War Z
Multiple narrators, all annoying,
Descriptions of being a refugee and menial job descriptions that aren't even that apocalyptic.
I got about half way through. Should've quit sooner.
0/10.