/lit/ - Literature

Catcher in the Rye was pointless and shit.

Kite Runner was shit and I really wish they'd stop making everyone read it.

Fellowship Of The Ring was boring from start to finish.

The Old Man and the Sea was trash.

sometimes, all I really want is a blowjob

I bought a PS3 just so I could play Heavy Rain. $550 and a few days later and I am not displeased with this decision.

>>1118203 I am not displeased

You really ought to be.

Harry Potter stole every ember of fire from LOTR. The epic, original Middle-Earth tale will forever be obscured by a Scenester English wizard. Shit sucks.

>>1118205

that'sjustlikeyouropinionman.jpg

WARHAMMER FOURTYTHOUSAND IS A REALISTIC AND REASONABLE REPRESENTATION OF THE FUTURE!
ahh. that felt good.

I got suckered in to reading The DaVinci Code. Dan Brown can suck it!

>>1118206
Better than all the vampire lore being completely erased by sparkling vampire boys and monotone protagonists.

>>1118246
Dan brown is a really over rated author, I found each of his stories average. I never understood why he got so much attention.

I have never found a humour book funny, ever. Everyone else seems to be able to enjoy Terry Prachett but me.

I enjoyed Dan brown's books before i realised he was serious.

>>1118267
OP of the Dan Brown comment. I agree whole-heartedly. I just don't get why people made a big deal about him. When I say this, people reply with the age-old "Oh, you just don't get it" retort (which pisses me off further).

I have read all the twilight books, they were readable. Only just.

While we're on the subject....These two blogposts were the smartest funniest takedowns of Dan Brown's shit-tier writing style I have ever read. Written by a linguistics professor who had nothing else to read on a plane, and could not believe how subliterate they were.

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001628.html

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000844.html

I'm a 23 year old nursing school student, and I've completed HP2-4 in a 3-4 week time span. I'm on #5, and I should be finished by mid-October (exams coming up).

>>1118246
I got suckered into reading the ILLUSTRATED VERSION. That's how fucking stupid his fanbase is: the publishers decided an illustrated version would be a good idea for the demographics.

Madame Bovary was fucking terrible and is better as a subtextual symbolist novel than this fucking unobtainable horse-shit called realism

i actually like Neal Stephenson's endings

Moby Dick is the worst book I have ever read.

A Tale of Two Cities is boring as fuck with characters that are unlikeable and shallow..

I really enjoyed The Great Gatsby

Umberto Eco makes me sleep.

I fucking hated The Sound and the Fury, reading it (especially Quentin's part) was fucking painful. All that for a story about some dysfunctional southern pricks and their magical negro servants.

Books on philosophy were that time's equivalent of blogs. Big, convoluted, useless blogs. There I said it. You may flay me now.

I DON'T LIKE READING BUT DO IT TO STOP MY BRAIN FROM ROTTING!

I'M ADDICTED TO WARHAMMER NOVELS.

I found the hitchhiker's guide dull and far from hilarious.

I like Alanis Morrisete

I fucking love Slavoj Zizek.

Sophie's World was written badly and left me disinterested in philosophy.

I actually liked the books based on "Doom" franchise

I dont read Nabokov or Wilde in public because I'm afraid people will think I'm a pedophile or a homosexual

>>1118495
NOT ME

>>1118570

Once I left my copy of "the end of alice" at my friend's house. she commented on the subject matter and i told her that while they are very different books, lolita is a monument in the american canon. she says it would be hard for her - apparently she was molested as a child. who knew?

I can't physically finish a Jane Austen book because they are so boring, did 3 exams on 2 books based almost entirely on the dramatisation.

I really dig Anne Rice's early work and I don't care who knows it. Blood and Gold, Queen of the Damned, Servant of the Bones, Memnoch the Devil... they were all masterpieces. Her last book (Blood Canticle) sucked ASS and I guess it's because she was distraught, what with her husband having just kicked the bucket and her having Found Jesus.

Pic related.

>>1118570

Assuming the general public is smart enough to pick up on a literary reference unless it involves vampires or wizards.

I don't get what Carl Sagan did to be so popular besides be on TV.

Nabakov is boring, and he couldn't create interesting characters.

Kierkegaard is superficial word-play combined with an intense need to get laid.

Karl Marx has nothing to do with pop culture communism.

>>1118432
Yes! Thank you, anon!

Tolkien's characters sucked ass.

>>1118315
I'm not sure whether you're condemning the book or what it's peddled as.

"the old man and the sea" sucked and i don't care if i'm called a plebeian for that opinion. the book was a boring piece of shit that went no where.

80+ fucking pages of a man sitting in a boat doing NOTHING!

>>1119659
....besides beating a group of sharks,fish a huge swordfish, dream with lions in Africa and have a hardon for his bro the Sea.

Nothing at all.

>>1119671
1.ok, the shark fighting was cool, but that was maybe 15 pages in total out of the 80+ doing nothing

2.whoa,a dream with lions in africa! how exciting!

3.and your point?

>>1119631
>>1118432

You are both the worst sort of person.

>>1119685

the point is you are a stupid faggot

>>1119714

Sexuality is purely naturalistic and governed by hormones, it's not a choice. Anyone who says differently should consider the fact that people are routinely executed in Islamic countries for being gay.

1984 IS NOT ORWELL'S BEST BOOK AND I HATE THAT IT'S THE ONLY ONE OF HIS THAT PEOPLE HAVE READ. Nearly everything else he has written is so much better than 1984 ... and no one knows ...

>>1118432
im having a lil bit of butthurt now. Cuz i think Moby Dick is the best piece of literature of all times. ALL THAEMS!!!

>>1119735

"A Clergyman's Daughter" and "Keep the Aspidistra Flying" were worse imo.

Pic related, it's my favourite Orwell.

>>1119752
I agree hoc was his best
also animal farm sucked dick

Which ones are actually worth reading?

1.Robinson Crusoe
2.Oliver Twist
3.Alice in Wonderland
4.Wizard of Oz
5.Moby Dick
6.David Copperfield
7.Gullivers Travels
8.Huckleberry Finn

Windup-Bird Chronicle was a snooze

Gene Wolfe is the only good contemporary sci-fi writer.

There hasen't been really great sci-fi published since the 80's.

the more I read, the less good I think it's doing me

>>1119764
this, I hated Animal Farm.

Hard sci-fi and fun sci-fi are never the same thing.

1984 was shit

I really liked Catcher in the Rye, despite the fact that 75% of /lit/ hates it. I didn't like Notes From Underground (but I did like Crime and Punishment and Bros K). I'm a little bit of a hipster. Not spagettios in the vagoo hipster, but I am listen to obscure electro, read classics, dress like a /fa/g and play retro vidya hipster.

I read Existentialist themes in books that were written before the onset of the philosophical movement.

I occasionally read books I hate because I want to be able to impress my literary friends and brag that I've finished it; but still decline to just cliffnote / wiki them (the books).

I used to consider P.K. Dick a serious literary figure and not a batsoid armchair philosopher.

I've tried (and failed) on several occasions to get into modern French philosophers without first comprehending their precedents because they seem sexier and more hip than the established canon.

A Confederacy of Dunces. It's not precisely bad and it has some funny bits, I'll give you that. But holy fuck is it overrated as TEH CLEVERESTER THING

Same goes for "Guards! Guards?". Which is still better than Confederacy.

>>1121037
hehe you're like my twin :3 don't worry, about that last bit. I did that as well, but it eventually lead me to trace my philisophical steps back and now i'm pretty knowledgable about it.

>I have in any case no memory at all for novels, for their ideas, plots, or characters. I could not even reconstitute my own with any accuracy if I was obliged to. I suppose I read as I write. I live the direct and present experience very intensely; but when it is over, it sinks very rapidly out of sight. So all I can honestly offer is a couple dozen shelves of magpie nonsense, nine tenths forgotten by everyone else and even by myself in every but some very remote and rare-snagging sense.

I want to choke to death all people who think they have a valid argument by saying some book (or film, or band, ...) is "hipster", "pretentious" or "overrated".

I keep buying books but I don't read them.

I probably haven't finished half of the books I started in my life.

I didn't even know who Ayn Rand was before a few months ago (discovered her here) and because of this board I have this feeling of unjustified hatred toward her.

I look with disdain those who read sci-fi and fantasy, as well as people who think they like literature when 99% of the time they're reading stuff like Dan Brown or shitty best sellers like that.

I'm an incredibly slow reader and I have ADD.

>I look with disdain those who read sci-fi and fantasy, as well as people who think they like literature when 99% of the time they're reading stuff like Dan Brown or shitty best sellers like that.

Not deep enough for ya?

I hate people who think the symbolism in the Great Gatsby was particularly deep

>>1121066
I hate people who devalue the literary import of the imagery and prose in the Great Gatsby because the symbolism wasn't particularly deep.

>>1121068
I'm not saying it wasn't a good story, but it wasn't exactly byzantine like some people seem to think

>>1121070
Sure, I'd give you that. But if you want to talk about diminishing returns I don't think many writers are trying for that kind of ambition-- And he was writing in a more commerce-driven mode than most contemporaries.

>>1121065
exactly

>>1121066

can you suggest for me a novel in which the symbolism was particularly deep?

>>1121065
Do androids dream of, Electric sheep, etc.

rudy rucker is a drug-fucked imbecile who looks at the world and sees nothing but fractals. and then tries to write about it.

>>1121057
>I look with disdain those who read sci-fi and fantasy, as well as people who think they like literature when 99% of the time they're reading stuff like Dan Brown or shitty best sellers like that.

I feel the same way.

I want someone to talk about literature with, and feel simultaneously fortunate and sad that the only person I can really do this with is my own mom.

I don't consider cultural level to be a reason to respect someone.

>>1121032

A person who claims to be a hipster is, by definition, NOT a hipster.

>>1120998

And now I kill you.

Pic related.

>>1121057
god what in the fuck? get out of here

>>1118315

Hah, what? You're serious?

I immediatly loose respect for anyone who reads Freudian themes into a novel.

Most of the themes in "real literature" are handled better in science fiction and fantasy.

Either all books are literature, or none are.

>>1121507
butthurt fantasy reader?

There are no good contemporary philosophers, outside of political theorists.

Post-Modernism is a dead end.

I disdain people who disdain people because they read a certain literary genre.
To ignore a whole genre is quite...ignorant.

I actively seek out translated Japanese light novels.

Most (all?) Cyberpunk is crap.
Great concept, always shittily done.

My long lasting familial problems have robbed me of any concantrativeness I ever had. Reading even short stories is a horrible ordeal, as I can't read more than two pages at once and even when i finish, I forget more than half of what I just read.

I am a student of literature.

>>1122389
Oh, and I'm not a aspie kid with self-diagnosed ADD either, I'm a regular guy medicine-wise.

>>1122389
>concantrativeness
wat

Don Quixote bores me to death and Sancho is a faggot.

>>1122378
Unfortunately yes. I'm in love with the idea, but the writers are complete jokes usually

The Great Gatsby isn't a particularly deep or meaningful commentary on the american dream, you dipshits just keep projecting on a pretty average drama.

>>1122402
typo, sorry
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Concentrativeness

scary big words and scary and big, and also words

120 Days of Sodom really gets boring and pointless after the Duc's big speech in the beginning.

Lovecraft was writing his own fanfiction.

>>1122416
Yeah, but it was GOOD fanfiction.

>>1122425
Eeeeeeeh...

Sometimes it's okay to read just for fun...

>>1122416
Lovecraft was writing geological and biological descriptions for geologists and niggers

As much as I recommend and acclaim Walden, I've never read it all.

But I plan to!
Really I do!

I have a deep-seated fear that Stephen King will one day be inducted into literary canon.

never finished Return of the King

>>1122527

I feel that way about Twilight. It freaks me out that one day my kids wont want to read it because it's being taught at schools =/

Žižek is 2deep4me

>>1122527
Holy fuck, me too. Stephen King is shit, people, complete shit, I don't care what you say. Being prolific and popular does not mean you're a brilliant author by any standards worth maintaining.

>>1122740
He's not shit. He's good. Not great. But good.

Continental philosophy is bullshit.

Oh wait, I say that in every thread.

>>1122755
I fail to see what makes him "good." I've tried reading his books. I've really tried. And I'm not the kind of person that hates authors just because they've got a strange style; I'm generally accepting. Enlighten me, please.

>>1118267
Terry Prachett was probably my favorite author through high school, but now I have no interest in his new stuff. I wish he'd experimented more with adult literature, rather than children's.

Douglas Adams was never funny.

Stephen King is a better writer than Michael Chabon, not trolling.

i enjoy using OP's jpeg
WHEN VENTING

doubles get.

Gore Vidal is a worthless old queen.

I know more about imaginary worlds than I do this one.

I don't like Of Mice and Men. It seemed like it was building to something then Oops, Lenny is dead. Book over, guys.

>>1123670
he killed de cat
:(

Nothing of value would be lost if moot deemed /lit/ unsuccessful and deleted it.

I struggle with Poe stories and the most books by a single author I own is Larry Niven...

I don't read as much as I imply that I do and half my opinions on the classics are just thrown together from pop culture.

>>1123434

>Stephen King is a better writer than Michael Chabon, not trolling.

Seconded.

Stephen King writes an entertaining story. For all we know he will end up being seen as our generation's Dickens by 2100. Dickens only wrote a bunch of dry shit that was lapped up by proles after all.

Outside Stephen King and Douglas Adams, I find other writers to be boring.

>>1123742
>Outside Stephen King and Douglas Adams, I find other writers to be boring
ugh. buy a games console or something.

http://www.klick-game.gauss.livando.com/joke-21.html
ghu

>>1123743


Okay.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8Bgtp0oLYI

I'm an english major simply because writing is my only marketable skill. I fear not being able to get a job and wasting four years of college on what everyone tells me is a worthless degree.

John Steinbeck is a terrible author and not a single one of his novels is worth taking the time to read.

I dislike Hemingway. He is boring author.
I listen to German neo-nazi music when no one is around.

fantasy & sci-fi are for man-children

>>1123822
What kind of job do you want to get?

>>1123850

Or people older than 13, who don't feel the need to feel validated by their hobbies.

But, you know. It's anyone's guess, really.

aesthetics (& ethics) are transcendental and yet I'm still bothering to post here

I started reading War of the Worlds

Got bored once the invasion started.

Total meh. I couldn't believe it.

>>1123860
I have no clue. I don't come from an educated family, so I don't even know what I could do with an English BA. I just want to be able to support my family in the future.

I have literally no one that I can relate to here. Shit sucks. Whew...

>>1123919
you wouldn't be missed

The Perks of Being a Wallflower is absolute GARBAGE and every time I meet someone who loves it or says it ~cHaNgEd ThEiR LiFe~ I think less of them immediately.

>>1123434
>Douglas Adams was never funny.
2clever4u

I love fantasy and sci-fi. If you don't I feel as though my dick should be in your mouth.
Just kidding, you don't have to like it.

Angela Carter's a brilliant writer, I just can't admit to this because I generally think that feminists are obnoxious as hell.

I don't read books. I just come on here to feel pretentious.

Mark Twain was just his generation's version of Dave Barry or any other humour columnist. He wasn't particularly insightful. If he was around today, he'd just be another asshole on Huffington Post.

Catch-22 is the worst book I have ever read.

Atlas Shrugged is pretty engaging to me and decently written.

I loved the militarism in Starship Troopers, and I think the government he created in the book would be much better than ours.

Mark Twain is awesome.

The ancillary chapters in Moby Dick about whaling and anatomy are the best parts of the book.

>>1124957
...no...no...no. Explain

WHY AM I SO GOD DAMN SHY

>>1124971

Sure, a lot of modern readers get to those chapters and start asking, "But where's the story??"

But it's those chapters that make the story both more appealing, and more detailed. They provide you with the time to ask yourself, "What's going to happen to Ishmael?" instead of just giving it to you on the next page. They also allow the reader to experience some of the tedium that a whaling boat would engender, spending weeks and months just sailing to the whaling grounds.

>>1125011
>WHY AM I SO GOD DAMN SHY
<3

>>1125028
continued...

Given all that, I can't help but think, that as a writers tool well utilised, those are the parts that make the rest of the book better, which makes them the best parts.

The Beats were as self-absorbed as any livejournal poet.

Ayn Rand is an excellent political theorist.

>>1125935
>theorist

Key word.

I think Wheel of Time is an overhyped piece of shit generic fantasy story.

Also, self-important "artiste" college dropouts who write the most inane poetry that have to mention sex, drugs, and/or insanity every other line to seem deep and "real" grind my gears. It's one particular guy, really.

His fans have nothing of substance to actually comment on his work, since it has none itself, so every comment on it is just another random pseudo intellectual soundbite. Usually something like: "The dreams of insanity and drunkenness at 5am tell all. This must have been so hard to write. Right to the bone."

>mfw

I wish I could start reading again.

On the Road was meandering, uninteresting and pretentious.

Also, I'm sick of this "gritty realism" bullshit that has just infected literature and movies as of late. If a book is a best seller, it's either some New-Age crap or it's some super-realistic story about rape, murder, violence, child abuse, or some other equally-miserable topic. A book is ultimately praised for being an "unflinching, grueling and vivid portrait of how we live now".

I ask who gives a shit. What's the merit of a piece of entertainment that does nothing but twist your innards and show you the worst of humanity? Oh, okay. To be fair, the Raped and Abused Orphan Ethnic Girl usually makes out alright in the end because of her Indomitable Spirit, but that doesn't change the fact that we essentially read a book or go to the movies so we can see her get raped and abused and orphaned first.

Why is the skill of a writer or director measured almost solely by his ability to show us every last gritty, blood-stained deal of reality? Fuck, I can turn on the news any day of the week and see Precious or The Hurt Locker ten times over.

>>1125675
i...i love you

>>1125965
Fucking SIGNED.

Misery is only interesting to the miserable, and usually boring people. I'm so tired of crime dramas and sob stories. It's like Lifetime was bought out by Charles Manson and took control of the printing industry.

>>1125965
and i love you too

Lord Of The Rings puts me to sleep at times and Dracula's structure didn't work at all for me.

Any self-styled "cynic" who quotes Ambrose Bierce or Mark Twain to look like a profound smartass is about as edgy as NPR.

I like the intergration of God in dean Koontz novels. I'M SORRY!

I hate humanities students because of their incredible arrogance. They are under the impression that they can leech greatness by basking in the light of great men and their ideas. None of them create anything of their own or when they do, it's drivel.

Don't like Shakespeare. He's annoying, long winded and dated, from a time when there was virtually no worthwhile entertainment, it's not surprising he was held so highly at the time. But it's time to move on, there are much better writers out there.

The Fountainhead was actually pretty good

The Sorrows of Young Werther stopped me committing suicide.

I feel like I somehow missed the point...

I think more people should read.

>>1126830

Orly?

I found proust's story uninteresting, but his style made it worth reading for a bit

Bas Lag > A Song of Ice and Fire

Suck my dick

>>1127124
Mieville is a worthless hack who needs to get a decent editor at the very least. His popularity only proves how fucking pathetic speculative fiction has become.

Horus Rising, False Gods and Galaxy in Flames are perhaps the best sci fi books I've ever read.

Flight of the Einstein was good, yet felt odd after reading the first three. Fulgrims characters were simply copy pastas (Solomon or whatever his name was = Loken), and Descent of Angels can suck my big fat dick.

Joyce had the literary equivalent of Tourrette's Syndrome.

Nothing he wrote was interesting or good.

Reading through a Feast of Crows (or whatever it was called) was PAINFUL AS FUCK. Inner monologues every second sentence was not what I liked about the first few books.

And I thoroughly enjoyed the first books, too. What a shame.

>>1127156
I agree.

Infinite Jest lacked any sort of depth, and this was made obvious by Wallace throwing in a bunch of pop culture bullshit.

>>1127762
>>1127156
I'm assuming that you two are trolling.

There was a reason that IJ was riddled with pop culture man... A huge chunk of the novel was devoted to veiled (or less than veiled) study of the modern media and its effect on older media as well as our society...

And Joyce...well, I'm not even going to go there...obviously you're trolling if you can't find beauty in "Dubliners" or parts of Portrait, I'm not going to go into Ulysses or the Wake but...


here's mine: Literature written before 1900, by virtue of being constrained by arbitrary regulations, is unable to attain as high a literary plain as 20th century writers (starting with Joyce)

>>1127771
And yet DFW still stubbornly avoided making anything close to a point.

>>1127781
Have you ever considered that the lack of a definitive point may be part of his message?

In today's world, we are constantly bombarded by stimulus, and it can all be quite confusing. It would be a drastic oversimplification to say that this stimulus is "bad," yet DFW is pointing out that we live in a fantasy world, that is an abstraction created by the media we consume. It's very disorienting and not altogether natural.

>>1127799
It took him 1000 pages to say that?

I could never finish Ismael...

I tried reading it twice, always stopped because of how fucking boring it is

>>1127815
No...
He did a lot of other things as well.
I was just explaining that the pop culture references have significance.

Infinite Jest was very hit-and-miss for me. It wasn't a very enjoyable read. There were a few brilliant sections and some very funny jokes, but nothing I read in that book was all that strikingly profound. On the whole, I found it pretentious and not worth the time.

And that's all I'm gonna say about that.

>>1127826
That's not necessarily an invalid opinion...

I just don't agree with it.

I found it very rewarding, insightful and moving.

/lit/ is full of idiots.

That is all.

>>1127863
Most other boards are far stupider...

>>1127866

>far stupider

I really hope this is a tongue-in-cheek joke. Please god let it be.

>>1127869

>he thinks stupider isn't a word

>>1125965

Fucking bravo