/lit/ - Literature

>Henry James - Wings of the Dove
Not my favorite James...I prefer his early novels, up to the Bostonians. I would say Wings is better than The Golden Bowl however, which is really too much for me. But it's still always enjoyable to read his ridiculous phrase construction. James seems to have gotten increasingly depressed throughout his life, the late novels have much less comedy and what comedy there is always feels kind of sad or even at times unpleasant. The early european novels are brimming with an almost mystical love for life despite all the bad stuff happening. Confidence, Roderick Hudson, and Portrait of a Lady are the standout early European novels imo. If you like more experimental modernist stuff then the Wings, Ambassadors, GB trio will be more enjoyable to you though as that's where he goes all out with the prose style and endless psychological analysis.

>Quentin Skinner - the Foundations of Modern Political Thought - Volume 1: The Renaissance
I dont really have the knowledge to assess history, but I liked the way he framed the relation between political ideas and the social structures in which they exist(and which they partly determine). Learned some new things about the renaissance and late medieval. It does seem that the renaissance is a bit of a meme and wasnt really that marked a departure. This guy seems to be saying the big change was that the cities of Italy had started asserting more independence from feudal lords and from the papacy, electing consulars to govern them, but this was something of a long gradual process. These cities were doing stuff like this back in the 12th century it seems and the renaissance marked a kind of preponderance of these conditions. Anyway I recommend this book, and will check out the later volumes.

>Selected poems by Vasko Popa (in english translation)
I prefer the rougher more amateur ones, eg the first one in pic related rather than his more distinctive style he developed later. He is not bad but he is not quite first rate either I dont think. Perhaps in Romanian he is better, but the strength of the images doesnt translate here the way it does for someone like Trakl. I am not judging the lyricism obviously as it's a translation.

I just noticed your OP post says novels, not books in general, but I've already written the entire post so I'm just going to submit it.