/lit/ - Literature

lose a bit of steam there on 8-10, anon? must really love those books to have literally nothing to say about them

>>14137049
I thought there was a word count, so I thought I'd post them in the comments.

I - faust, tezuka
II - fq, spenser

these are the only decent books out there that I have read I may give the Italian language and dante a gander though

>>14137049
8. Memoirs of Hadrian- What's not to love. This novel is very unique. And the scenes with Marcus Aurelius were fantastic.
9. The Big Sleep- I love noir and Marlowe is such a great character. I am going to read all the Marlowe books, The Last Goodbye I haven't touched yet, but I've heard that is the best one.
10. On the Road- On the surface this is an extremely forgettable novel and appears to be far too late, as Catcher in the Rye, Hemingway, Fitzgerald etc. all came first, but I thought this was the last stage in the lost era and was the perfect post ww2 novel. The way Neal is not vilified, as that would be too easy, but given a chance, and the slow but-subtle coming of age and realization that every journey gets dimmer and dimmer was profound. His meetings with Old Bull and the other writer in part 2 always stuck with me. His very anti-burecratic themes were unbelievable. Wanting to rebel, but ultimately realizing there's beauty in day to day life. Not mean-spirited either.

HM:
Rabbit, Run and Currently reading: Death of Virgil.

1. Saenai Heroine no Sodatekata - I love the character interactions. Kato a bess.

2. The Major Works of St. Anselm of Canterbury - Really influential for me in terms of my faith

3. Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita - Romeo is probably the best author Japan has shit out in quite awhile.

4. Candide - Voltaire.

5. Leviathan - I'm really into government and politics.

>>14137081
just started The Last Goodbye, six chapters in right now and it’s excellent. have you read Farewell My Lovely?

>>14137287
Yes, did u like it?

>>14137300
I thought it was as good as the big sleep, but less memorable if that makes sense.

>>14137308
Yeah i feel the same way.

>>14137041

I can't nail down a list of books, but I can submit the scenes in literature I think of the most often.

1. Moby Dick - When Ahab cries that single tear into the sea and Starbuck almost convinces the old man to turn back while the sweet breeze is wafting in and bringing the memories of his youth. But he just can't be swayed.

2. Anna Karenina - Levin in the grass looking at the vault of the sky and resolving his crisis of faith.

3. Blood Meridian - The scene where the Judge is speaking about the legacy of the Anasazi and how a father's death is an important inheritance for a son, thus the lingering accomplishments of the vanished civilization are an eternal weight on the native tribes that came after.

4. The Once and Future King - The boys of the Clan Orkney slaughtering the unicorn and how their characters and reactions at the time define the unfolding of their entire lives.

5 & 6. The Idiot & The Count of Monte Cristo - Two different expositions on human character regarding hanging: the former on how the mortal vows to change are quickly forgotten if death is actually reprieved and the latter about how being at the gallows lays bare human nature.

7. Paradise Lost - Satan beholding even and being abstracted for a moment from his own evil in awe of this perfect being's beauty.

8. The Silmarillion - Aulë's creation of the Dwarves as a representation of proper reverence for Eru's creation (imitation of his father vs. Melkor's desire for Dominion).

>>14137041
Hermann Hesse - Steppenwolf - no other book has spoken to me as much or as clearly as this one.
Julio Cortázar - 62: A Model Kit - while I love Hopscotch, it feels like it was just a warm-up for Cortázar before this one.
Kazuo Ishiguro - Never Let Me Go - the story alone is really something, but the way Ishiguro writes it just made me for into it completely.
John Birmingham - He Died with a Felafel in His Hand - perfect balance of comedy, absurdity and tragedy.
Jacek Dukaj - Ice - a 1000-pages long roller-coaster of sci-fi alternate history philosophical adventure that made me question what "I" means.
Peter Watts - The Freeze-Frame Revolution - may be biased, as I've read it a few days ago and it reminds me of an idea I've had once, but it's a great sci-fi.
Jerzy Andrzejewski - Ashes and Diamonds - dialogues are more realistic than life itself and the story is just perfect.
Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz - Farewell to Autumn - decadence, psychedelics, sexual degeneracy, social revolutions aplenty, crazy shit doesn't even begin to describe it.
Henryk Sienkiewicz - The Deluge - the main character has the most epic redemption arc ever.

>>14137041
>On Liberty - JSM (Outlines some pretty revolutionary and foundational principles for freedom from tyranny)
>The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (Maximum comfy, as a kid and again as an adult)
>The Ego and the Id - Freud (Outlines Freud's theory of the Id, Ego, and Super Ego and really demonstrates Freud's excellent ability to explain his ideas. Even if you're not big on Freud, this is just an incredibly engaging read)
>1984 - Orwell (People have come to hate this one because it's popular, but this book still delivers. The third act genuinely imparts a kind of existential fear few books can achieve)
>Steppenwolf - Hesse (Again, I've seen people criticize this one for being too edgy or whatever, but I loved reading it and could forgive the more cheesy sections)
>Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love - Dr. Sue Johnson (If you ever plan on being in a relationship, or want to understand the cycles the human mind gets into in regards to romantic attachment, this book is PHENOMENAL. Drawing on theory as well as a sizable amount of the author's personal cases, this book details some of the stumbling blocks two people can run into when trying to maintain their relationship. I find myself often coming back to the theory put forward in this book, particularly in regards to keeping lines of dialogue open despite hard or painful topics or feelings getting in the way.)

>>14137041
>Lolita
Nope. Fuck off.

5. Ulysses - I picked the book up and read it three times in two months. The way which in which a day can have a whole life time meshed together stunned me. Molly becomes the archetypical women of all human societies by calling back to Penelope and at the same time refusing her or rather exposing her as the fiction that she (Penelope) is.

4. Complete Montaigne - much wisdom, it humbles me because I realize that even when you know that you are smart in a few hundred years some of your perceptions are going to sound stupid. Also the way in which he writes about his life and the way in which he grows it’s comforting.
3. Complete Poe - without Poe I would not have read anymore after the little prince, for a long time I thought the little prince was the best book there would ever be, not Homer, Dante, Petrarch, Cervantes, Shakespeare...but Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Then I read Annabel Lee and fuck it blew my mind.
2. Trilce - this book is by far the most human book I’ve ever read. It deals with the most primitive aspects of humanity with a language that comes back to that primal state of true representation.
1. Complete Rimbaud nothing to say
Et j’ai vu quelque fois ce que l’homme a cru vu.

>>14137041
1. Brothers Karamazov
2. Crime and Punishment
3. The Idiot
4. The Forbidden Forest (Eliade)
5. Les miserables

Cheever - Collected Stories / O'Hara - Selected Stories. Both are examples of writers whose short stories are so much stronger than their novels.
Carr - A Month in the Country. Captures a melancholy feeling of nostalgia with great writing.
Fowles - The Magus. A mysterious plot that falls apart if you really think about it, but it keeps it together while it's going. Sadly none of Fowles' other books comes close, though Daniel Martin is pretty good.
Chandler - Farewell, My Lovely. For the atmosphere, the dialogue, the style, and the byzantine plot - the same could also go for Chandler's other novels (except the threadbare Playback)
Powell - A Time to Be Born. Sharp-edged satire without tumbling into farcical parody.
Vizinczey - In Praise of Older Women. Such a pretty way of describing a horny little rutter.
Durrell - The Alexandria Quartet. Fits perfectly into my preferred niche of being atmospheric with a focus on prose style.
Wang Wei - Poems. Great nature poetry.
Stegner - Crossing to Safety. Has a way of making mundane things seem memorable, and covers a long period of decades without feeling like a consciously 'epic' kind of story.

>>14137041
shit taste lmao
just kidding
>[1.]Absalom, Absalom!
>[2.]The Sound And The Fury
>The Brothers Karamazov
>Suttree
>One Hundred Years Of Solitude
>On Heroes And Tombs
>The Human Stain
>Tender Is The Night
>The Plague
>Madame Bovary

>>14137797
>4. The Forbidden Forest (Eliade)

Interesting taste, are you Romanian?

>>14137921
yes

>>14137041
Great books, especially the intelligence report, best laugh I had in years about the Solomon fighting between americans and japs.

On sgt died from a jap speaking perfect aussy to get him to ID himself from a bush.

The seven HP books high to lowest so 7 is 10, 6 is 9, and so on and so forth *sniffs*
Then the LoTR books on normal order (scratches nose) *sniff sniff*

Anything by Chaucer
Anything by the Gawain Poet
Song of Roland
Beowulf
Nibelungenlied

Idiot
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
La Nausée
L'Étranger
Le Rouge et le Noir

>>14137938
Begone, thot.

Don't know if I have a top 10, since there are many books that would sift in and out of the second half of that list. My top 3, however, would be the works that left a profound impact on my mind when I was young and helped shape my moral character. Without a doubt, they're:

>Les Miserables
Much to love, but what I took from it: you can never truly know the interior souls of people who may be on a path to redemption. Jean Valjean's story and struggles helped reshape my understanding of the world. I'm truly indebted to this book.

>The Brothers Karamazov
My favorite line in all of literature belongs to this novel. It's the Garnett translation, and goes: "Brothers, love is a teacher, but a hard one to obtain: learning to love is hard and we pay dearly for it." It's been my mantra and has helped guide me through dark times. Finally,

>Moby-Dick
I think enough has been said about this book and why it occupies a spot for so many people. I'll just toss in my two cents and say that every droplet of praise heaped upon this work is earned.

There are other novels whose praises I can sing for their prose, style, message, etc. But I'm 28 years old and unsure whether or not there's much change left in the development of my character or if the foundation's already been set. If so, the 3 books mentioned above have much to do with it. Any time somebody asks me to list my favorite books, those three immediately share the top spot.

>>14137041
1. Faulkner’s 4 major novels. I love all of them and if I had to pick a favorite it would either be As I Lay Dying or Absalom!, Absalom! These are what really got me into good literature and are all examples of aesthetic perfection with the way Faulkner creates depth of character and consciousness within his visionary imaginings of the South.
2. The Magic Mountain. One of the books I think back on the most. It is a whirlwind of characters, ideas, thoughts, and consciousness and is so much food for thought because of its symbolic style. Mann’s other novels and stories are exceptional too, but this one is the clear cut best.
3. Gargantua and Pantagruel. Funniest book I have ever read that combines the most intelligent humor imaginable with crass and bawdy jokes. It is also an extremely profound book with a lot more depth than the jokes.
4. Invisible Man. This is another book that I think about very often for its portrayal of an individual who is tossed around by the forces of the world around him. It is a book that has an immense about of consciousness in it and I would go so far as to say that it is one of the greatest American literary accomplishments of the 20th century after Faulkner.

>>14137041
1

>>14137041
1. The Tunnel by Gass- I can't say all the things I like about this book since there is too much. But Gass prose is hypnotic, Kohler is the most human character I have read in fiction.
2. Maldoror, Lautreamont - Maldoror is a large paradox, heretical but not godless, evil but not amoral and with dark and often disgusting themes and motifs, yet it is strangely beautiful.
3. Rimbauds complete works, Rimbaud - Rimbaud is my favourite poet for many reasons, although he has been praised to death and has been fetishized to hell and back with his entire "enfant terrible" shtick, I believe his poetry speaks for itself, Drunken boat is amazing, the sleeper in the valley is a favourite also.
4. Discipline and Punish, Foucault - One of the first works of philosophy I read, it really made me enjoy reading I would say.
Can't decide between Mallarmè's complete works or Husserls Idea of Phenomenology, so I will write shortly about both.
Mallarme - Fantastic poet, truly modernist master, A Dice throw is probably one of my favourite poems simply because of it's unconventional structure and the ideals behind it.
Husserl - Idea of phenomenology was the first book I read in phenomenology which is probably my favourite field to study in philosophy overall.

>>14137041
A Canticle for Leibowitz: I just love the absolute quantity of themes addressed in this book, specifically the cyclical quality of human nature.
Foucault’s pendulum: Kept me from going down some d e e p rabbit holes.
Till we have faces: The porblem of evil as well as some of the best written characters I've ever read.
The sea wolf: Unmasks the ultimate end of materialism.
East of eden: My first epic story that had some intellectual depth to it.

>1. Decline of the West and Man and Technics
Reading Spengler changed the way I see life. He is the most important writer for this century. To be Spenglerian is the only path forward.

>2. Don Quijote, Tristram Shandy, Wilhelm Meister, Bouvard et Pécuchet
The finest novels there are. Perfectly encapsulate their times, funny, masterful portrait of the psychology of its characters.

>3. Noche oscura del alma
Excellent poetry and theology from a saint. Deeply moving.

>4. Faust
It's Faust. It is our past and our future. There is a Faust inside all of us.

>5. La vida es sueño
One of those great dramas of the Faustian mark to be ranked alongside only Shakespeare, Molière and Goethe. The finest play of the Spanish baroque theatre, which is highly underrated and less known than the English and French. Segismundo's last soliloquy anticipates Goethe's «alles vergängliche ist nur ein gleichnis» by 200 years

>6. Hamlet
Again not much to say. Probably the greatest drama I have read. One of Shakespeare's dramas contains more psychology than all the tomes of professional psychologism put together

>7. Tratado de la tribulación, Vidas
Pedro de Rivadeneira is one of those writers that is little known even in Spain. Sadly he will never be translated but he was a worthy successor to Saint Ignatius and should probably be canonised

>8. Nachtwachen
Excellent but strange novel. Kreuzgang is the greatest madman in literature and his spirit belonged to the imageboard

>9. The Master Builder
The most significant Ibsen play. Contains the full scope of Western Civilisation. It does Nietzscheanism better than Nietzsche. It's sheer will to power actualises Neetchan's rhetorical question from the prologue to Beyond good and evil

>10. I fioretti di San Francesco
There is a reason Christianity conquered the world, and it's not its theology and scholars think or its appeal to weaklings as Darwinists believe, but rather its exemplars like the first Franciscans

>Children of Hurin
>Crime & Punishment
>Moby Dick
>Invisible Man
>Anna Karenina
>Beren and Lúthien
>Dante
>War & Peace
>Paradise Lost
>Lolita

>>14137041
Ulysses - i love all the details it has, from literary references to facts that correspond to real life events (e. g. the horse race of the day during the which the novel takes place); the variety in the writing styles is amazing as well
The Brothers Karamazov - a lot of god tier religious and emotional scenes; the best ending in any book
The Manuscript Found in Saragossa - i love storytelling and there's a lot of that here (the stories are also very varied, ranging from gothic to comedy), plus the chinese box structure is great
already lost steam, i might write the other 7 entries later

>>14137041

I don't have any favorite books yet so I'll post good authors for now (I think, at least):

Martin Heidegger
Ernesto Sabato
Paul Valery
Yasunari Kawabata
Hermann Broch

Let me know who else to put in this.

>>14137041
why would you post faust if it isnt your top 10? that's up there. if faust and paradise lost arent in your top 10, suicide is probably your best option

>>14141907

Help me brothers

>>14140059
>The Tunnel by Gass
Before his death (RIP and fuck you, mods, for not giving him a sticky) it was sometimes said Gass was America's foremost living prose stylist.

>>14137041