/lit/ - Literature

I wanna fap it to that cover.

Anna Karenina
The feast of the Goat
Kiss of the Spider Woman
A dog's heart

Not quite as intense a feeling as you paint, but still, I was moved.

>>11936330
>I wanna fap it to that cover.
Go for it bro

>dat list
I am ashamed to confess I haven't read any of these. Care to share more about them and what you liked?

>>11936313
the journey to the east

>>11936330
anna karenina hasn't moved me that much, however much of an enjoyable read wouldn't it be, care to share what part in particular resonated with you?

>>11936396
>Hesse
Loved Siddhartha so I might try some more Hesse soon. Thanks anon

Far Tortuga
Invisible Cities
The Crossing

>>11936423
>Invisible Cities
I read Winters Night... and loved it at the time but really couldn't get into this one. Should I perservere?

>The Crossing
Read Outer Dark and it left me feeling drained and hollow and prepared for death. It's the bad kind of gut punch I mentioned above.

A lot of talk of Blood Meridian being his best and one of the best ameican books of the 20th century, but I never read it. Thoughts?

>>11936313
No Longer Human
Siddhartha

Good Old Neon even though it's a short story. The timing of reading it was pretty spot on for me

>>11936429
Try Invisible Cities again. Read it as a meditation, not a story.

Blood Meridian is amazing but it's extremely bleak and violent. If that's your thing, go for it. Otherwise, his Border Trilogy is very very good. Give All The Pretty Horses a shot.

>>11936446

>bleak and violent
Guess what just shot to the top of my reading list

>Invisible Cities
Ok anon will do, it's only a short book afterall so if I don't fret over it and gaze at mys ehlf thinking about what else I could read I think i'll be alright

>Border Trilogy
Yeah I get the feeling they'll be great, the theme I get from them about man on the frontier is something I am really interested in. Read a lot of Jack London when I was young but maybe Border Trilogy is a more grown up version of this?

>>11936440
>No Longer Human
This is one I have wanted to read for a bit. Have you watched the animated seies they made of it called Blue Literature?

The series is an adaptation of some of the classics of Japanese classics. I think the first 4 episodes are NLH and there is also some other great ones like Hell Screen. Great if you don't mind anime and they are more grown up anime rather than the kiddy stuff.

>>11936442
I have always been hesitant to go and try any DFW.

After thumbing through a copy of infinite jest in a shop once I was pretty put off and there is so much circle jerk around him and so much backlash from people that hate him too. It sounds like a minefield. Maybe this is a good entry point.

>>11936456
The Border Trilogy is about growing up, going from texas farm life into mexico, realizing how fucked shit can get, and how things won't actually ever be good again. And stabbings. Lots of stabbings. Definitely not children's books.

>>11936470
Consider The Lobster is a good entry point.

>>11936475
Thanks anon. Is much of the hate for this man undeserved?

>>11936485
No, not really. But neither is the praise. You might fall somewhere in the middle.

>>11936473
hmmm sounds kind of what I imagined it would be. A journey for the soul and all that jazz. I'll definitely put it on my list.

>>11936313

Chekhov - The Kiss

Op here with more of my favourites for really taking it out of you.

>>11936490
more like how your soul gets fuckin crushed to a pulp because mexicans are fuckin barbarians and will kill you just for bein in their line of sight

This book left me in the night and took a piece of my soul and the fine china.

I don't know why, but I find myself thinking about the ending of this book quite often, years after I read it.

This was one of the first "serious" books I read as a teenager, and for some reason it affected me so profoundly that it inspired me to start reading more literature. I'm not sure what about it really hit me, but i still find myself thinking about the book and its ideas so many years later

>>11936501
Yeah, that's the ticket. Fucking bookmarked lad.

>>11936536
I think it's rare to get this high concept stuff and find it really effecting, so this is an interesting one. Thanks anon.

>>11936557
It's certainly not the most highbrow piece of literature i've ever read, and it can be pretty heavy-handed with its messaging, but i found the concept fascinating and the way it explored devolution and primal nature quite interesting. I hope you enjoy!

>>11936575
Thanks anon, sounds just my speed. Thanks for the recommendation :)

>>11936525
Great book. I must of read this a decade ago yet I'll never forget about the Muslim bride, Georgian mountains or fatalist Serb. This is a book that stays with you, gives you a tenuous and lingering sense of nostalgia when you remember it. Comfiest piece of romantacist lit I've ever read.

>>11936465
ohhh I have never heard of that I'm going to go check it out. You should get to reading it though

>>11936630
Definitely will do. The Japanese name for the anime is Aoi Bungaku. The other episodes include "In the Forest, Under Cherries in Full Bloom" and some other stories by Dazai. The whole series s good actaully, but I thought the first 4 episodes were patrician tier.

>>11936313
dingleton jerry and the place where you are not gay anymore. changed everything for me.

Plato
Confessions of a Mask
The Confusions of Young Torless
Emil Cioran

>>11936339
>>11936396
Anna Karenina: I liked the parts with Anna's husband and Levin the best. The husband because the parts woth him explored the theme of forgiveness in a beautful way, and the parts with Levin and his brother gave a good look at death and the feelings that come with it.

A dog's heart is a lesser-known novel by Bulgakov, who wrote The Master and Margarita. It's a parody of both communism and Frankenstein, and I was really moved by the first chapters that were from the POV of an injured dog that gets rescued by a wealthy doctor who then proceeds to perform medical experiments on the dog, trying to turn him into a human.

>>11936658
Only read Mishima from your list. Loved The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea, read Temple Of The Golden Pavillion and found it incredibly dense and esoteric. He is a powerful writer though, maybe I should with Pavillion another go?

>>11936653
Wut anon?

>>11936465
It’s a good book, but I read it while i was in a pretty dark place and it gave me suicidal thoughts so watch out for that, anon.

>>11936313
Whenever my mom sees me reading anything she just starts talking about this book. Is it that good? I've read Marquez's "Relato de un Náufrago" before and it wasn't that good.
I also now Spanish.

>>11936505
Just read that on Friday and it didn’t hit me too hard. Then again the inside cover of my edition spoiled it for me.

It’s overposted here, but
>stoner
I have never felt more rage for a fictional character then I felt for Edith. The parts where she tried to separate William from his daughter made me autistically mad. It must have trigger some parental part of my brain. I’m sure fathers who read the book proabably get madder than I did.

>>11936697
challenge accepted

>>11936702
That's unacceptable. I thought it was really touching. Maybe it was because I read it is one sitting but it was like a sweeping cross section of a love affair tinged with loss for me.

>>11936720
I encountered thjis book in a shop while browsing and didn't think much of it and never bothered as it sounded a bit mundane but if it's that powerful maybe I will give it a second go. Thanks anon.

>>11936700
I can't speak to the Spanish languange version, but I felt it really captured the flow of time, aging, family, the cyclical rise and fall of societies and more beautifully.

And it easily and expertly jumps into other timeframes and periods in the family history without breaking away like a Tarrentino film does, but more casually like a real conversation does.

I don't think you'll be disappointed.

>>11936731
Stoner is one of the most emotionally charged books I’ve ever read simply because of how mundane it feels. It makes the tragedy feel real

>>11936658
plato is a fucking ignorant, read nietzsche, existencialism and anything that isnt essentialist. Essentialism is fucking poison, get away from that shit

>>11936747
Not the anon you replied to, am the OP.

I have read Nietzsche and really like him so I get why you recommend him, but many of the other Existentialists seem like PoMo Moral Relativist Marxists. Am I giving them a hard time or what?

Also, what's wrong with Plato exactly?

>>11936742
Damn, I automatically get what you mean by that. Will rethink. Thanks anon.

I'm reading The Sound and the Fury right now, only just finished the first chapter during a plane journey. Yeah, I know it's pretty frequently mentioned here nowadays. There's something so hopeless and desolate about it even though it isn't explicitly stated (Caddy having a muddy ass, I already know what that means - the fact that she's the only one who cares to understand Benjy and treat him like a human just makes me feel worse about it). It really proves the potential power of writing.

Laughter in the Dark by Nabokov is a cruel story, a more malicious take on a similar premise to Lolita. It's more a general feeling of anguish regarding the human condition than a feeling towards a certain character.

L'Étranger is written in such a mundane, straightforward, plodding manner that the description of the sun splitting the sky and slashing Mersault's eyes when he shoots the Arab kind of sucker punched me.

Blood Meridian has been mentioned already. It's so visceral and startling at times. The descriptions of brutality and murder are just as heavy as the whales swimming through the stars and the drunken djinn's in the desert.

I haven't read One Hundred Years of Solitude but have been meaning to for a long time.

>>11936882

>Sound and Fury
It's something I gotta read one day. And from what I've heard I think you are spot it.

>muddy ass
w-what does it meean though?

>Nabokov
Another story about little girls? Tbh, I never read Lolita as I really didn't get why it was so praised and thought it was jsut glorifying pedophilia. Am I wrong?

>Blood Meridian
Probably what I'm looking for on here and a definite fixed point on my reading list.

>Solitude
Go ahead, it's a majestic piece of writing. Really grand and sweeping and gives you a sense of time and cyclical ages really beautifully.

Changed my outlook to life

>>11936950
Really? How so. I read a bit of it a while back and it read like a decent story of hubris and a somewhat Byronic hero but I didn't get the feel it would rock my world.

>>11936902
>w-what does it meean though?
Guess you'll have to find out :)
>Another story about little girls?
She's older than Lolita and not necessarily as much of a focus in a romantic sense. Basically, an art critic falls in love with a girl who fucks up his marriage, uses him to further her career, dates his friend and then, along with said friend, tortures the art critic after he goes blind. Things don't end well.
>Am I wrong?
It certainly doesn't glorify paedophilia. There's a real cognitive dissonance at work - Nabokov manages to make Humbert simultaneously sympathetic and scummy. Nabokov is my favourite author and I can't not recommend Lolita, though I personally prefer Pale Fire.

>>11936991
So by cognitive dissonance, you mean that you see it from the eyes of Humbert and he feels like his actions are okay, but we celarly see he is rationalising it? That was my more generous assumption about what it was about.

>>11937032
Essentially, yes. He's my favourite unreliable narrator. But at the same time, when he is describing the specific attributes of specific young girls, the ripple of their spines, their velvety limbs, their feline cheekbones, we know exactly what he's talking about. Lolita isn't even beautiful, she's described as being average. Humbert falls in love with the otherwordly notion of her that he constructs in his mind, the taboo, the mythology - this is not something restricted only to paedophiles. It isn't so cut and dried.
Even if you're not a huge fan of the themes, the prose alone is worth the price of admission.

>>11937074
I'll maybe give it a second chance in this case.

I was really repulsed by some of the Beat poets becaue of this. Ginsberg was an open pederast and I think Burroughs was too. His gay scenes in his books were often about young boys, and there was something about that that rubbed me the wrong way. Don't think Kerouac was though.

Unironically this.
The meaningless and nonsense of it all in the end. The personal experience that is shared by literally everyone.
I didn't like it THAT much when I read it, but it just changed my mind about things.

>>11936442
>>11936470

>The truth is you already know what it's like. You already know the difference between the size and speed of everything that flashes through you and the tiny inadequate bit of it all you can ever let anyone know. As though inside you is this enormous room full of what seems like everything in the whole universe at one time or another and yet the only parts that get out have to somehow squeeze out through one of those tiny keyholes you see under the knob in older doors. As if we are all trying to see each other through these tiny keyholes.
>But it does have a knob, the door can open. But not in the way you think...The truth is you've already heard this. That this is what it's like. That it's what makes room for the universes inside you, all the endless inbent fractals of connection and symphonies of different voices, the infinities you can never show another soul. And you think it makes you a fraud, the tiny fraction anyone else ever sees? Of course you're a fraud, of course what people see is never you. And of course you know this, and of course you try to manage what part they see if you know it's only a part. Who wouldn't? It's called free will, Sherlock. But at the same time it's why it feels so good to break down and cry in front of others, or to laugh, or speak in tongues, or chant in Bengali--it's not English anymore, it's not getting squeezed through any hole.

>>11936313

>>11937229
I see this posted so much and I read about 10 pages long ago before I put it down exhausted by it.

I really jsut don't see the appeal, sorry anon. I don't know what i am missing.

Help me

>>11937271

Thanks for the post anon, but see >>11937129

I know it's a meme, but GR

>>11936313
OP, what did you think of the ending? I haven't read that many books but this is my favorite ending ever.

Harry fucking Potter. Oh my God those books were my life.

>>11936313
Atomised moved me at times. You know those times when you read something from a book and the close it to see outside the window and think about what you just read? It's one of those books.

Agua Quemada by Carlos Fuentes.
Y'all gotta learn spanish, you're missing out.

>>11937424
Would you recommend getting his collected short stories? I always thought he was a better novelist than short story writer.

>>11937328
Same

Slothrop, poor bastard

>>11936666
I wouldn't say Anna Karenina changed my life but what Tolstoy did perfectly was to create an eclectic mix of believable characters that struggle, make mistakes, and grow throughout the book. You can see aspects of yourself in every character, and seeing them just live their lives really helps you understand those aspects of yourself.

Stoner
Death of Ivan Ilyich
Symposium
Infinite Jest
Julius Caesar by Philip Freeman

>>11936720
I find Alice from East of Eden to be the most annoying character in a book

>>11937366
It's up there with mine too. It felt a little quick of a weak up finding that magic scrolls and the tornado or whatever the fuck it was, but it had such an incredible cataclysmic Kali yuga supernova ending that is is ranked among the best.

>>11937378
Haha I remember them fondly from my youth. I didn't cry or anything like some of my classmates though.

>>11937389
I know dat feel bro

>>11937724
>infinite best
This book is so divisive here on /lit/ and I honestly am not at all enthusiastic to approach it. Change my mind?

>>11937795
>infinite best
>This book is so divisive here on /lit/ and I honestly am not at all enthusiastic to approach it. Change my mind?
Mostly I think this board is full of contrarians who hate it because it's popular.
I personally loved it. I would say it was the best actual reading experience I've had and still is the only book where I had a feeling of wishing it was longer. It was very much so a personal attachment type thing. I fell in love with the characters, they began to feel like friends. There are many scenes in which there multiple characters all talking and doing different things, DFW will set up each character with a different conversation, or a question, or an action they're doing, and throughout the scene they'll keep expanding and delving deeper into their assigned thing. In these I would get a loss of my own consciousness and would just be in it. Sound cliche and corny but I have no other way to describe it.
It's fractured and contains vignettes and yet is all connected. It's funny yet very sad, I laughed out loud and cried out loud a lot.
No guarantee you'll like it, but try it and try to have little expectations of what it'll be

The Wardine chapter is shit though

>>11937860
Wow thats quite the endorsement. I will consider it anon, thank you.

>>11937724
>Symposium
Which part?

>>11937881
Just the whole thing in general
I especially liked the eulogies (can't remember who specifically gave which one) about Common/Heavenly love and about how we're searching for our lost other half from when Zeus separated everyone
Phaedrus speech about asking if the lover or beloved being greater is good too

>The Master and Margarita
For its view of God and the devil

>The Stranger
Mersault's view of life is in my opinion one of the best

>The Magus
The way one bad break-up can influence others on a universal scale

>The Grapes of Wrath
S E E T H I N G

>For Whom The Bell Tolls
Purest form of love that I've ever read about

Brave New World

>>11936313
Death in Venice.
Amazing book, made me feel high.
Best book i've ever read

>>11937920
Wow thats a hell of staatement, I think I feel that way about OP. It's was like being in afever dream but I was yoshi in the mushroom kingdom having the fever dream so it was even better.

>>11937907
Hemingway is my jam. Read this book as my optional piece of literature in high school and wrote my dissertation on it. It was tugging at my heart strings from day one how every moment you knew you were on a death march.

>>11937917
The ending made me feel rage at how the world had broken that guys spirit that way.

>>11936313
It reminded me of Allende's House of Spirits

>>11938579
Other way around. Allende copied García Márquez.

>>11937917
hi r/books

>>11936525
Very comfy read, moves nicely between borderline adventure novel to Russian social politicking. Princess Mary was honestly the weakest section until the back half, but every other section was gold all the way through.

>>11936658
‘Confessions of a Mask’ is the book that led me to reading things beyond Goosebumps in primary school. Thanks /lit/.
Hemingway in general, but specifically his short stories and The Sun Also Rises. He made stories about dudes fishing in a stream more pleasant and captivating than silly melodrama and childish action.
‘Orthodoxy’ by G. K. Chesterton. He’s such an entertaining writer and thinker anyway.
Cormac McCarthy but to a lesser extent I think. I’m sure I’ll like Faulkner more.

>>11936670
If you want anon. I haven’t read that one myself. Some of his short stories are wonderful, others are a little less exciting - the ‘Thermos Flasks’ story in the Death in Midsummer collection is a bizarre example. There’s something murkily evocative about it, but at the same time it seems unfocused and not well executed. I appreciate it’s strange feverish quality though, even if it wasn’t wholly intentional. I’d like to read more of his plays, so far I’ve only read Primary Colours and Dōjōji, and both were quite enjoyable in very different ways.

>>11936747
I’m the anon you replied to and I’m not an essentialist idiot. I would have put Nietzsche because his writing on ethics in particular have had a large influence on me but I haven’t read enough of him. I don’t agree with many of the assumptions and doctrines Plato puts forth and that’s partly why he is a big influence on me - it is impossible not to engage with him. He is also a wonderful stylist, humanist and dramatist.

Also what the fcuk do you think I point Emil Cioran on the list if I’m some kind of Platonic metaphysicist and moralist. Damn freaks these days.

>>11937920
I read Death in Venice on a cold evening wrapped under the blankets with the lamp on. I saw the film when I was a teenager but I much prefer the experience of the novel, they are two very different things to me.

Demian by Hesse

Volcano by Shusaku Endo

Both were novels that I'd read before I'd read the authors' more famous works. Both were books I'd read precisely at the moment of my life where they were the reflection of things I was going through.

Atlas Shrugged, when I was 12 years old.

By the time I was 15 I realized it was horseshit.

Unironically Infinite Jest. I read it when I myself was in a halfway house. The themes of addiction and isolation and depression had a very strong personal resonance, especially at that time in my life. Plus, I feel like I have a kind of kinship with DFW. I feel like our lives are pretty similar.

my diary, desu

>>11937328
This, “clever but emotionless” my fucking ass

>>11936313
Blood Meridian.

>>11936991
>muddy ass
No seriously what does that mean?

>>11940022
Doubt you understood a word when you read it at 12. Or when you thought back on it at 15 again.

>>11936313
>being moved by toni morrison with a better imagination
wew

>>11936313
THIS and also:

Gerorges Bataille's Blue of Noon and Story of the Eye.
Mishima's Sea of Fertility tetralogy.
Unica Zurn's The Man of Jasmine and Dark Spring.
John Fowle's The Magus.
Also, if manga counts, Oshimi's The Flowers of Evil and a lot of Asano Inio's works.

>>11937328
The song about the rats in a maze got me.

>>11937907
>>The Magus
At first the protagonist looked like an uninteresting asshole and I was hoping something bas happened to him. By the middle of the book I felt so much empathy towards him I just wanted everything to stop.

>>11940848
Yeah, only the highest IQ individuals can understand the complex philosophy of Ayn Rand.

>>11941730
Flowers of evil as in Baudelaire adapted to a manga?
>is this reality?
If you like a manga or two you should try Naoki Urasawa's Monster. It's my favourite and quite an incredible story.

>>11940997
Wut lad?

>>11940813
I think it means a rompoty pompoty in the dirty ditches my dood

>>11941756
This but unironically

>>11937309
> exhausted by it
My exact feelings when I was reading it.
I read the biggest chunk of it it on a long bus drive to my gf's family's home and the few nights I stayed there.
I remember it didn't move me either. It was just mundane, and even boring at some level.
I finished it and returned the book to its owner.
Years passed by. I was never able forget that damn book ever since. The day my first daughter was born the birth in Ulysses came to mi mind. When I see a hooker the hooker house of Ulysses comes to my mind. When I fuck my wife the fuck part of Ulysses comes to my mind. When I take a shit the shitting part of Ulysses comes to my mind.
I can't explain it. It just entered into my brain and stayed there.

>I don't know what i am missing
I guess it has everything in it. Every simple human thing. From drinking to shitting. From eating to fucking. From birth to death. From greed to generosity.
And it all happens in a day, wich is saying it happens all the time everywhere to everyone eventually. It just has it all.

Wind-up Bird Chronicle.
A Personal Matter.
South of the Border, West of the Sun.
Shanahmeh.
Candide.
The Conference of the Birds.
Confessions of a Mask.
Midnight's Children.

>>11936313
Moby-Dick, made me yearn for the sea

>>11942888
>Flowers of evil as in Baudelaire adapted to a manga?
Nah, some dumb manga story about a pervert who thinks he's better than other people because he read this gay book. It's terrible.

Roger Malvin's Burial

>>11936485
>>11936470

Consider The Lobster and A Supposedly Fun Thing are both good. DFW was a good writer, and a much better essayist than fiction writer in my opinion. Personally I think that his popularity and the praise for Infinite Jest is mostly a result of American literary culture looking actively for a new turn of the millennium great American writer and magnum opus and that just ended up falling to him because he was a good writer with an iconic style and a long book. But I really don't think he's anything very special and his fiction is generally bogged down with ankle deep social commentary aboht irony and consumerism. It's irritating the way he talks about these things as if in a void, like he's genuinely unaware of the massive body of work done on the topics of work done on media saturation, irony, etc. He never mentions or seems to even be logically departing from people like Guy Debord or Walter Benjamin, the way he talks and writes sometimes it just genuinely feels like he thinks he's the first person to think these things.

>>11943351
Wow maybe thats what I was missing. Maybe it isn't like my choice of OP and isn't a majestic work of cataclysmic whatever. Maybe it's as you described, a living book.

>>11943579
Damn, too bad.

>>11944098
>first person to think there's things.
This is exactly what I'm afraid of. Super smart commentary from an oh so clever fella that isn't really that magnificent at all.

>>11944183
I don't think it's something to be afraid of, and you don't need to be an expert to have a good idea or unique perspective regarding something, but you should definitely do a minimum of research before presenting it as a new insight. You don't need to know the complete philosophical canon to give yourself permission to think, just at least find a few thinkers who had similar ideas and recognize where you're overlapping with and departing from them. My problem with DFW is that it seems like he either didn't do this or passed off the very basics he reviewed as his own insights and that was enough to impress the easy audience of theoretically illiterate MFA students and bookshop crowds.

And I'm not saying good theory is even necessary at all to be a good writer, but DFW's writing and mythos is so tied to his (in my opinion cheap) New Sincerity schtick without any real innovations in form or craft, that I have trouble finding much to really admire. Again, I acknowledge he's a good writer, and maybe Infinite Jest gets much better after 350 pages in but by that point I felt like I had enough of reading middle of the road American Realism set in a crypto-dystopia that was somehow simultaneously too mild and too hamfisted. His essays are very good though and I respect him much more than some of his contemporaries like Jonathan Franzen who is a massive hack.

>>11936465
the anime is ok but its not the same feeling you get when reading the book, when you read it you feel like you are reading a shortened diary of a man who was incredibly isolated and punished by society
the anime on the other hand makes your an observer of the protagonists actions
just not the same

>>11936446
>Blood Meridian
this

>>11936313
Some book of aforisms by Scopenhauer.

>>11936498

Yeah, that ending really gave me a sinking hollow feeling.

>>11937860
the funniest part of that book is hal's grandfather describing how he lost all the skin on his knees

The fall by Camus

Savage Detectives, for its depiction of youth and growing older, social scenes dying, and lost ideals, and general kaleidoscopic feel of its view.

State of Fear by Michael Crichton, in a bad way. It made me into a climate change denier when I read it in 5th grade and then for years after that. Ultimately it was good for me that I had that gullible experience with a book early on as I think it helped teach me to be more skeptical.

>>11936313
My God. The suicide of Pietro Crespi and Amaranta's suffering really marked me.
I dropped the book during 3 months because of this. I was suffering too.

"Snow Country" by Yasunari Kawabata.

Kokoro and Cannery Row.

>>11940068
there is too much gay shit in this book

>>11936501
Mexicans are actually very good humored. They'll take the piss out of you at first glance, but stabbing is pretty rare. Just don't get involved with the cartels.

>>11944269
Oh sure I wouldn't have recommended it for that. I just felt it was a very interesting mini series and quite an enjoyable retelling of the story. Good enough to be watchable by anime fans if not a true tribute to the original.

>>11945023
Op here. Fucking this, 1000 times.

Just read this, felt like a knife in the heart by the end.

>>11936470
I got a used copy of IJ cheap after being memed constantly about it on here, and dove in with no prior exposure to DFW.
At first I felt like I’d been tricked, but as I read more and more it became more enjoyable. It helps that as I really started getting into it, I was undergoing a bit of a personal tear-down and rebuilding of the way I perceived myself and the plans I had for the future.
I won’t say it’s for everyone, but the period at which I read Infinite Jest was very timely for it to have a much larger impact than it might have otherwise.

>>11947430
I read Our Man in Havana and lived it, but for different reasons. It was funny and really cleverly put together. Thanks for the suggestion anon

Guide by Dennis Cooper
Hopscotch by Julio Cortazar
Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson
Antigone by Sophocles
The Brothers Karamazov
A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick
The end of Alice by A.M. Homes
Suttree by Cormac McCarthy

>>11949272
So much McCarthy in this thread. Only ever read outer dark. Must get back to him.

>>11949286
I haven't read that one but I want to, I'm currently starting No Country for Old Men. Suttree is such a beautiful, funny and terribly sad book though, a great read, like some kinda nihilistic Huckleberry finn.

>>11949272
>The End of Alice
Is that actually good? It seems like edgy shit trying to be Lolita but missing the point of Lolita

>>11949350
Its one of my favorites, and its also one of the few books that both made me incredibly sad yet had me retching in shock at the same time.

its supremely well written, dreadfully dark. It is similar to Lolita in the basic idea but its a completely different book. I'd describe the main protagonist as Humbert without the deceitful veneer of friendliness. This guy gives you the reality of his crimes straight up. There are parts of it that had me break out into sweats, and others that were just stunningly beautiful.

Couldn't recommend it enough.

>>11936313
Kind of awkward admitting this, but I Capture the Castle. Which I read in my mid 30s, and I'm a man.

The end of The Trial was truly haunting to me.

>>11949298
If suttree is funny as well as sad, buckle in for outer dark. Not a single damn line that offers comic relief, hopefulness or a tender moment.

I haven't read any McCarthy besides it and everyone says blood meridian is the best of his, but I can't see it getting bleaker the an outer dark. Bloodier maybe but not bleaker.

>>11936313
the scene in all quite on the western front where he describes the horses screaming sent chills down my spine in 10th grade.

>>11944098
>>11944183
Well I'll throw in my opinion: I thought Consider the Lobster was forgettable shit. He has a unique style, which, like that of Rorschach from Watchmen is quite infectious after you read a lot of him for the first time, but his insights were sorely lacking. The only good bits were his obsessive anality about prescriptive grammar pedagogy and some one line quip about tourists. The rest was intellectual without being incisive. Based on this, I doubt I will ever bother with his fiction.

>>11936313
i think someone said it early but kokoro for sure

>>11936505
Mmmm, love that book. Definitely the best book I ever read until at least the age of 20. Still way, way up there. Strangely, it really didn't hit terribly hard since I was like 16 and really angsty and insecure. It was more like "Yep, life does indeed suck that much".

>>11936700
I read it in high school and didn't get much out of it other than that the ending has a nice impact. Maybe I would get more out of it now, but I have no desire to reread it, if that's worth anything.

>>11936902
>Another story about little girls? Tbh, I never read Lolita as I really didn't get why it was so praised and thought it was jsut glorifying pedophilia. Am I wrong?
Utterly. A lot of people end up feeling a lot of sympathy for the main guy, but Nabokov has repeatedly disavowed this interpretation. Some people just get won over by the charm of the narrator's writing, but there is zero actual glorification of pedophilia in the book. Quite the opposite, in fact.

>>11941730
>and a lot of Asano Inio's works
Such as? Oyasumi PunPun is great, but Solanin was pretty fucking shit. The only part of that one I enjoyed was the shenanigans of the friends. Now I'm wary of delving further because I don't know if it will be really moving or mass appeal horseshit.

1984 got me into reading and different modes of thinking.

When writing the forward for this years later, Nabokov himself said he only really likes a few parts of it and would gladly transplant them into something else if he could. I think that's bullshit. The whole thing is so vivid and memorable that I can basically walk through every last scene of it from beginning to end, and it's not like it's that short. Since I was going through something similar to the narrator when I first red it, I would read just a few sentences, sometimes just a few words, and then collapse into blissful recollection. This little book is like weaponized nostalgia, and it hits hard in the best sort of way.

One tip I will suggest: do not research it in the slightest. Maybe because it's short or maybe because it's the first novella of one of the most iconic modern writers, but everyone seems to feel justified in flippantly spoiling the ending. Just grab a copy and go.

>>11936313
Wuthering Heights - I don't want to be in a relationship anymore. tfw no gf :^)
Les Miserables - made me feel that I should be more like Jean Valjean and try to become a better me.
Don Quixote - made me feel like I should never give up on my goals, no matter how absurd they are to others. Also to appreciate the few friendships I have for the quality of companionship they give.
Stoner - made me realise that I'll be insignificant to others and that's fine.

>>11936742
Stoner is a rapist

>>11936753
>PoMo Moral Relativist Marxists
your mind has been poisoned my boy.

>>11937881
Aristophanes

>>11936753
>PoMo Moral Relativist Marxists
Yeah, I'd like to see you give coherent descriptions of
a) post modernism
b) moral relativism
c) marxism
and then explain how they can even be reconciled into a single world view. Stop parroting terminology from alt light hucksters who haven't read a single piece of leftist literature in their lives.

>>11936313
100 years of solitude made me cry towards the end, if I recall correctly.

The only other story that made me cry like a lil bitch was Crescent Moon by Lao She. Started crying halfway through and couldn't stop until 10 minutes after I finished.

>>11952462
found the english version

>>11936313
Goethe - Italian Journey
Melville - The Confidence-Man
McCarthy - Suttree
Poetry of Pessoa, Rilke, Vallejo, Hart Crane, Stanford, O'Hara

>>11950051
Oh damn nigga I just read the synopsis and that shit is g r i m. I'm excited.

Blood Meridian was pretty great to me. I'm not sure I'd call it his best, but it definitely has some of the most memorable and well-written moments in recent literature. The judge is possibly one of the scariest and most distinct character I've read.

Theres a part where the Judge is sketching animal and plant-life that back then in the 1800's was undocumented, and then one of the scalphunters asks him why he's doing that and he says something like:

“Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent.”

gives me chills every fucking time.

>>11941730
I sustain the belief that Oyasumi Punpun is the modern successor to The Brother's Karamazov, at least in terms of scope and depth of narrative.

>>11936753
Where have you seen ANYONE arguing for moral relativism? It just doesn't happen.
>>11936747
>Ancient philosopher is ignorant of the developments in philosophy that would take place around 2000 years later

>>11953106
are you a nigger?

>>11953150
in the right circumstances everyone is a nigger

>>11953157
No, only people of Negroid complexion can be niggers.

>>11953160
i'm probably darker skinned than you but as far as my knowledge goes i do not have niggerish traits

>>11953169
Okay, you're good to go.

>>11953178
thanks for your approval, white man

>>11952227
You can't rape your wife.

>>11936330
I fapped to excerpts from OHYoS may times

To answer OPs question, the only particular book I can think of is All Quiet on the Western Front, I've read it in highschool and it was a big step for a shift of my worldview from right to left. Otherwise I can't think of any particular book, they all had some impact on me (the good ones at least) but it's not like I can point out which one definitely changed me as a person, except AQotWF

>>11953195
if the bitch don't want your dick, its rape

>>11953754
doesn't*

you fucking nigger

>>11951869
>nabokov
Okay you've convinced me anon. I did have a suspicion it must be this considering it is so highly regarded but glad to hear it put so cowardly.

>>11936525
had to study this book at school never read it though. Bullshit my entire essay managed to ge like 15/20. I just remember being utterly confused discussing it in class, to this day i havd no idea what even transpires in that novel let alone the order.

Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

>>11952291
Wow anon, think you are the only one who can grasp bullshit world views like above. PoMo is nothing but a cynical and nihilistic undermining of the structures of western civilisation and Derrida and Foucault are hacks that contribute nothing.
Moral Relativists are essentially another flavour of this, "I can't stand up for my own values because I then could be a poser and stand up for kiddie fucker or something".
Marxists, well if you can't see what's wrong with this picture then youre the worst denizen of /lit/, someone who lives in books and doesn't have the backbone to have an opinion.
And I don't need the alt right to figure that out, I was arguing with marxists since before the "alt right" were in big boy pants.

>>11952236
See arguing with marxists comment above, I came to my conclusions myself, anon. Don't know if you assume as much because you bought your beliefs ready wrapped but I didn't.

>>11953106
Nigga, you don't know what grim means to you read the last page of outer dark, senpai.

Yeah blood meridian sounds great it's next on my list.

>>11953805
>I did have a suspicion it must be this considering it is so highly regarded but glad to hear it put so cowardly.
Huh?

>>11936720

i always felt sorry for edith, clearly she was a product of her parents own flaws

>>11953911
Fucking autocorrect.
Sorry anon, meant to say that I had my suspicions it was this (a narrative that does not praise paedophilia) considering it is so highly regarded. So I am glad to have it confirmed by yourself so firmly and forthrightly that my knee jerk reaction was indeed wrong.

>>11953149
I think many of the existentialist can be taken to be too relativist. They often don't intent to but their conclusions are easily suited to it. I am of two minds about Camus for example. If you aren't careful the conclusion that existence is absurd and that you impart your own meaning at your own whim can easily be taken to mean that all of your values are up to you and there's no objective value.
Again anon, I know that that isn't necessarily whilst the people themselves would have wanted, but that philosophy is open to that interpretation.
And I don't know about you but I hear plenty of people who wander through life saying relativist stuff like "we shouldn't judge, who is to say it's any different from what we do". People give in to easy relativism all the time.

>>11953195
Speak for yourself

>>11953195
This is why you'll remain an incel forever

>>11953893
I don't identify as any of those three yet I understand what they are and how they're fundamentally opposed to one another. You're jut a brainlet who think you'll get points with the losers on image boards for denigrating entire schools of thought that none of you have read before.

>>11953893
>Derrida and Foucault are hacks that contribute nothing.
Yes!!! Good boy! Nice to see that you can quote JBP.

Have you ever read anything by either one of them?

>>11936720
Edith was coerced into a marriage that she didn't want and then raped repeatedly during the first few months of her relationship by a man who never even recognized that the rape was bad in any way. And you feel no empathy for her????

>>11953893
absolute brainlet. educate yourself.

>>11954087
They aren't opposed to one another any more than the two party systems of most democracy are opposed to one another. I knew anyone who fit into these categories were bad news long before the loser boards you mentioned had any idea about these people. And the alt right or alt light for that matter. I got to know Derrida very well for example, more than 10 years ago, before the alt right were even a group. I hate the fact his tradition has so little respect for the foundations of our world, and I could see my marxist friends fawn over him as if he were the greatest mind to ever emerge on earth. He and the other groups I mentioned are tied together because they all treat the cultures we have built callously and I am quite sure they would all prefer they were in decline just so they could see them undermined. Self pitying nihilist, that's my "coherent connection between them all" you wanted.
I didn't like Derrida at al then and I don't like him now, and if I and the alt right happen to agree on that, it's as much a coincidence as us agreeing on our favourite beverage.
I don't know where you grew up anon, but where I grew up, assuming a persons beliefs are shallow isn't only rude, it shows you up to be the shallow and petty one. On all the boards on this site I would have thought people here would have more nuance than "oh he is a pol/ak, he dimmcouldnt possibly understand this as well as I do".

>>11936313
Gilead
made me want to find a connection with god

>>11954098
See >>11954151

And why would I listen to JBP? That guy argues you should stand up to a mob and then tells others like Kavanaugh they should give in and resign because of a mob. You could see from a mile off that guy was in it for the firebrand image, the fame, and the money. He's a hack who can only regurgitate Jung in a lecture rather than add his own analysis.

>>11954159
Not familiar with Gilead, care to give me a run down on it kind anon?

pic related, God Jr. by Dennis Cooper

Fucking devastating book about a crippled man in the aftermath of his son's death, slowly coming to the realization that he never knew and will never know his son.

Also a very different book from Cooper's usual MO of murderous, drug-addled gay youths, much less harsh but equally as gut-wrenching.

>>11952757
Based. What country are you from?

>>11954218
Wow that sounds fuckin cheery anon. I love it already lol.
Jokes aside is sounds interesting, I don't normally go in for family drama (ironic as my OP is about an extended family tree but you get the idea) so this would be outside my comfort zone But if you think o can get something out of it I might have a gander.
Cheers anon

>>11954173
dying priest writes letters to his son. he's much older and the son is from a second marriage, set in the past in the middle of USA in some dust bowl and i just enjoyed his arguments for and against god. there is a smaller side plot about assumptions

>>11954347
Cheers. Sounds really interesting. I've been getting more into religious texts and looking onto Christianity recently so this might challenge me some. Thanks

>>11936313

I read Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury last month and twice it brought me almost to the brink of tears which I've never had happen with a book before.

>>11943579
are you telling me you didn't understand it? lol

>>11951869
>Such as?
He has some shorts and compilations, most of them are very good.

>>11954395
Love Bradbury but not read this one. Interesting anon? Thanks for the shout

>>11954151
Nice story. Marxists aren't moral relativists, and they aren't post modernists. The only overlap is that all three are pretty firmly non liberal. Try not to get too upset about being called out for not knowing what you're talking about.

>>11954260
The writing is very sparse and uncomplicated, Cooper never flexes his lit muscles, it's all to service the story. So reading it is a breeze, but the austerity of the prose really highlights the misery of the characters, to the point where it's often funny in a "rather laugh than cry" kind of way. It's def clear of melodrama, more about one broken man's psyche that's plagued by regret. Real short too.

>>11955911
Did I say they were all part of the same tradition? No I don't think I did anon. I said they all share the common theme of pessimism, nihilism and cynical self loathing. And they fucking do. I do believe I even mentioned how they don't overlap on their statements.

I just don't think any of them should be taken seriously, because they are all nihilist. Just like you and the other anons in this thread who think that, because I don't agree with them I must be a brainlet, are all forms of retards. You might have downs, and they might have aspergers, but you're all retards.

>>11936313
Which edition of this is the best?

>>11956890
No idea I have pic related and I found the translation very good

>>11953149
>Where have you seen ANYONE arguing for moral relativism? It just doesn't happen.
moral relativism is for pussies. moral skepticism, on the other hand...

>>11956902
Hardcore

>>11956878
>PoMo Moral Relativist Marxists
>I do believe I even mentioned how they don't overlap on their statements

nice try pal

>>11956878
>I just don't think any of them should be taken seriously, because they are all nihilist.
Marxists are nihilists? Ok brainlet.

>>11957473
But I did. No need to try. I said they are all driven by the same distrust for their culture and nihilism. And they are. The salty commies in this thread.

>>11957485
Camus agrees. They are life denying nihilists. Especially the modern ones, considering Marxism is the fasted way to kill millions of people, you'd only support it of you hate being on planet earth.

>>11957745
you either don't know what marxism is or you don't know what nihilism is lol
you can disagree with the values and moral claims of marxism but to deny their existence just outs you as having little to no understanding of what you condemn.

>>11953893
>Marxists, well if you can't see what's wrong with this picture then youre the worst denizen of /lit/, someone who lives in books and doesn't have the backbone to have an opinion.
this isn't a description of marxism

>>11957817
Kek I'm denying no one's existence. If you bothered to read my above comments I have said time and again, I'm talking about what drives them. And they are driven by the same shit. They are life denying fools and destroyers.

>>11957826
You're right, it's not a description. See literally any of the rest of my posts in this thread for one.

>>11936330
In which ways The feast of the Goat was special to you?

>>11944098
I second this, all of his Essays books are great.

pic related

The Pale King

I’m an accountant though

>>11960086
I'll take that into account.

>>11936313

Brothers Karamazov bitch

The Wasteland

Nadja

>>11936313

the first book that I really really read in a literary or aesthetic way was Ethan Frome. I reread it now and just wonder how it had that effect on me, but when I was in 9th grade it really changed how I thought about books
>>11956890
the english translation of this is so good that Marquez has said that he almost prefers it to the Spanish

Hume's Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

Parfit's Reasons and Persons

>>11954395
Reading it now, Bradbury’s prose is out of this world

>>11959988
Based

>>11960423
Fucj you bitch, thanks for the suggestion.