/lit/ - Literature

No, I read American & British books, for obvious reasons.

I might learn German or brush up on my French for The Stranger though.

-American literature (68)
-British literature (52)
-Japanese literature (34)
-Russian literature (12)
-Latin American literature (9)
-French literature (6)
-Italian literature (3)

And then a couple each from several other countries too. I went through/am still going through a huge Japanese lit phase.

>>1219247
>Japanese literature (34)
>Russian literature (12)

>>1219251
Eh, it's a work in progress. A lot of Russian novels seem to be longer too, so they take a bit more time for me.

A lot of my collection is European/Russian.

>>1219251
>IMPLYING ONE RACE IS SUPERIOR TO ANOTHER

i gravitate towards books older than 300 years. less disappointments.

British or german.... occasionally ancient greek.

>>1219264
>implying implications (that havent been made)
capsguy do you want to be a politician irl?

>>1219264
>>1219304
I'm not saying any race is superior, but generally the west has better novels, in part because they take it more seriously and have more time to write novels. There are great works of poetry (particularly persian) and mythology/spirituality (india, china), from non western countries and personally i find these better than any western takes on it. none is superior, but there is a difference there, and it is justifiable to hold the works of one country in higher esteem to the warks of another. I'm also not a european.

>>1219344
They have more time to write novels, wat? What do you mean by that?

I have a lot of Russian literature, especially the 19th century classics. Currently i read more French literature. I don`t really read anything non-western.

>>1219386
compare the life of the average person in china to an american. also for business direction.

Lately I've been gravitating towards Australian literature to counteract my new-found boredom with Anglo-American literary dominance and because I think it's unacceptable as an Ausfag that I had not taken the time to read any Patrick White and the like.

This list has been helpful, though even though it's surprisingly large - it lacks some essential stuff.

Still it's better than Harold Bloom's half-arsed list in the Western Canon. Who the hell lists more Yiddish work than the entire literature of Australia and New Zealand combined?

I'm also really interested in contemporary Chinese literature after I heard a bit about it on Radio National from a translator. Wang Xiaofang's Notes of a Civil Servant sounds really interesting and so does Mo Yan's work.

>>1219704

Well, Yiddish has been around a lot longer than either country

>>1219712

You have a point. Though this was categorised in "the Chaotic Age" aka the 20th Century.

Oh well, it's not like it really matters.

Absolutely. I read a ton of British literature, lots and lots and lots of it, really. On the other hand, I'm woefully under-read in Russian and French literature, in particular. Not sure why. I think it has more to do with the fact that I have read a lot of British literature means that I'm more conversant with the literary culture and history of Britain, know more authors, better able to evaluate things and place them in context etc. I think.

I kind of notice that people on /lit/ generally seem to gravitate towards certain nationalities - I think most commonly Russian, but also frequently Latin American stuff.

And of course, I read a lot of American stuff, but I don't think reading things from your own nation really counts.

>>1219782

I'd say it counts. But I'm saying this from a country that has to a certain extent has been subjugated by the great foreign publishing houses of London and New York and has a certain degree of cultural cringe that makes the pursuit of our own culture in spite of this seem like some kind of an achievement.

Also I don't think /lit/ has a wholesale obsession with Latin America - I mean the most that are mentioned are Borges, Marquez, Bolano and now maybe Llosa and that's about it. And the Russians you'd be lucky to get beyond Tolstoy/Dostoyevsky. There was a period when the Master and the Margarita was on everybody's lips but that time has long since passed.