/lit/ - Literature

Just finished Book of the New Sun and it was truly amazing. I must've sat in silence for a solid half an hour after closing the final page sitting back and contemplating the entirety of what I just read.

Which is best to read next: Long Sun/Short Sun or Urth of the New Sun?

Also, I simply have to post one of the most sublime pieces of text in the entire series:

>What struck me on the beach–and it struck me indeed, so that I staggered as at a blow–was that if the Eternal Principle had rested in that curved thorn I had carried about my neck across so many leagues, and if it now rested in the new thorn (perhaps the same thorn) I had only now put there, then it might rest in everything, in every thorn in every bush, in every drop of water in the sea. The thorn was a sacred Claw because all thorns were sacred Claws; the sand in my boots was sacred sand because it came from a beach of sacred sand. The cenobites treasured up the relics of the sannyasins because the sannyasins had approached the Pancreator. But everything had approached and even touched the Pancreator, because everything had dropped from his hand. Everything was a relic. All the world was a relic. I drew off my boots, that had traveled with me so far, and threw them into the waves that I might not walk shod on holy ground.

Gene Wolfe was too good for us; may he enjoy the most peaceful rest in the presence of his Lord.