/lit/ - Literature

I read doctor sleep. Loved the movie so I want to read a book

>>14940361
I’m reading Blood Meridian. Pretty good, so far. McCarthy really knows how to make our world a depressing place.

I'm getting into Gary vee and other entrepreneurship books.

How is your recommendation in that?

>>14940560
98% of the content around entrepreneurship is garbage advice that gets constantly repeated. The best advice is this: Meet people. MEET PEOPLE. Stop reading, get out of your house and meet people. Ask them what they do, what their ideas are and THINK about how you can be improving everything and anything. The higher the class of the people you meet, the better.

>>14940560
Don't read books specifically designated for "entrepreneurship", rather read books that give you the tool for becoming one.

I.e. How to think, how to become resilient, etc.

http://sebastianmarshall.com/books-for-mental-toughness-resiliency-and-critical-thinking-my-top-five-favorite

Marshall did a good job at selecting rare sources of knowledge and showing how to apply it in real life.

Another good source could be, both the direct books list and the cited book on the articles themselves in the blog ribbonfarm.

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/now-reading/

A good idea is too search for the favorite books of important CEO's, I'm particularly fond towards Silicon Valley not-so-known execs.

I have a small collection of recommendations in my are.na, but I think it's too personal for sharing it on 4chan.

One think I found ridicule and profoundly dislike in /lit/ is the idea that all you can do with knowledge from books is become a failed PhD searching for a academia job, when in the hard exec world reading very specific and not so popular books is what makes you being the winner and your projects.

Sorry, but high lit does can make you rich.

>>14940361
It's been a slow year because I've been focusing on videogames and The Night Land was extremely boring.
So far...

17/01/20: Good Omens (Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett) (Komazawa Daigaku)

30/01/20: The Diary of Satan (Leonid Andreyed) (Futakotamagawa)

16/02/20: The Black Lizard and Beast in the Shadows (Edogawa Ranpo) (Sakurashimmachi)

29/02/20: The Edogawa Ranpo Reader (Edogawa Ranpo) (Jimbocho)

17/03/20: The Night Land (William Hope Hodgson) (Sakurashimmachi)

19/03/20: The Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories (edit. Guido Waldman) (Nagatacho)

I'm currently reading The Casebook of Carnacki the Ghost Finder.

I'm reading "Pedagogic Poem", by Anton Semionovich Makarenko. 300 pages deep in this 750-pages bad boy.

I read 15 books in the first two months but things have gone off the rails a bit lately. Currently reading Sleepwalkers by Christopher Clark and The City & The City by China Mieville. Both are alright

I have had a frustrating time doing anything. Everything it is I enjoy I have lost passion for. The written word was all that life meant to me and it has kept me alive for years but now sitting down and reading even a handful of pages would give me as much pleasure as pulling my own teeth.

>>14940361
In this quarantine I read the Idiot, it was very comfy
even though it left me.. a strange feeling

Why the FUCK did Myškin go for Nastasha Filippovna?! He had to choose who he would make suffer, and he choose Aglaja ;-;

>>14940726
You should watch the Kurosawa adaptation too anon

>>14940573
I've read a book called 'Mba in a box' that I found great. The book is plentiful of good content and we'll synthetized.
But you're right I also think most of the books are about motivation and I'm not interested in it.

>>14940671
Thank you very much. I'll check those. I have a almost decent background on business. I know basic economics. So, I don't like the entrepreneur lifestyle self-help kind of book.

>Sorry, but high lit does can make you rich.

Now you absolutely killed it. Most of the readers don't have interest in the business world, that's why 'success' is not commonly related to literature. Also, readers tend to not be so proactive, they're rather contemplative.
If you actually get into literature, you have a great capacity of learn and probably has critical thinking, which is highly desirable and most business people don't have.

>>14940726
The whole time Aglaya's actions left me confused as fuck. As an outside perspective it might be easier to interpret it as playful teasing, but as a bit of idealist who says what he thinks and may take the liberty to assume similarly of others, I would not find his apprehension unusual and would probably find myself in the same predicament of finalizing any formal courtship. But what really sealed the deal was Aglaya behaving hysterically in their trio meeting with Nastasya, wherein Myshkin didn't expressly choose Nastasya, but instead faltered to choose Aglaya immediately and she ran out on him. Now the whole Epanchin family begins breaking off with him and Aglaya won't grant him audience to explain himself to her: he is somewhat left without recourse but to see Nastasya. What fucked me up though is that Nastasya ran away from him AGAIN with Rogozhin, who then killed her. That's the part that just makes me stop and go, wait, wtf just happened here? But regardless of the denouement it was an enjoyable book and I adore the Prince's candid nature at the risk of committing innumerable social faux pas'. In that way I would daresay he is literally me :^).

>>14940774
>If you actually get into literature, you have a great capacity of learn and probably has critical thinking, which is highly desirable and most business people don't have.

Double kill mate.

Really enjoyed my year of reading so far

Completed:
- A Confederacy of Dunces
My new "Oh you're a reader, got any recommendations?" response. Comparable only in my experience to Catch-22 in valve-splitting hilarity.

-Blood Meridian
Loved this, probably the most perfect ending to a work of art I've ever experienced.

-Pride and Prejudice
Wasn't expecting this to become the page turner it ended up being. Bored for the first 15%, sneaking chances to read it at work for the last 30.

-The Metamorphesis
Enjoyable story, not completely sold on Kafka on the basis of it, will read The Trial next.

Currently Reading:
-Mason and Dixon
Halfway through this and although brilliant, it's taking me ages to read because I'm constantly going to m,y phone to look up Wikipedia pages of 18th century trivia and Google Earth for latitude lines. Giving me a serious urge to reread V and finish Gravity's Rainbow (read 350 pages 5 years ago but put it down as other things came up and took my attention unfortunately :( )

Dubliners:
About halfway through this too, reading it as an occasional diversion from M&D. Best collection of short stories I've ever read actually, favourites so far have been A Little Cloud and Counterparts.

Next:
-Heart of Darkness
-Ulysses (If i don't read this during this virus maybe I never will)
-Wolf Hall(Bit of a desire for a bestseller where there will be less comprehension required on my part)

>>14940711
Feel like this has happened to me for films. Used to watch like two a day but now can barely sit through one unless I'm in the cinema, where I go seldomly. Would be disastrous if this occurred to me with literature

>>14940876
I used to watch near as much film as well. Sitting and staring into a screen has grown difficult. Even being online for any amount of time has become struggle.

currently reading the collected poems of john Betjeman and the confessions of st augustine, both strangely comfy

Blindness is my first quarantine read so far. Very comfy and fitting.

Currently reading a book on Greek Mythology
> Start with the Greeks
Reading Dune
Reading Meditations - Markus Aurelius

>How is your year coming along?
Left my girlfriend two months ago, wanted time to myself, but I just ended up sleeping with other girls. I got what I wanted anyway, all it took was several thousand people getting sick and dying.

>Are you using this time in social quarantine proactively?
No, I should be writing and reading but I've spent the last few days drunk off my ass watching youtube videos, more or less at that point where you don't even have the energy or will to play video games.

>Post what you've read, and what you're reading
Last thing I finished was Bukowski's 'Hollywood' on a 4 hour bus trip. It sucked balls. Before that it was most of Sidney Jourard's 'The Transparent Self'. I have Bukowski's 'Women' ordered off Amazon but I guess I will have to pick something else to read in the meantime.

>>14940711
gif reminds me of a quote from a very wise man:
>The solutions is a Bessel Function? Multiple Bessel Functions? Well, that means you're actually doing physics now!

>>14940361
been reading theatre massively. Shakespeare and 18th-century comedies. Right now I'm reading Doktor Glas and I think it sucks.

>>14940451
Holy cringe

I read impulsively. I don't care about how many books a year a read I just read for personal enjoyment when the itch comes. I've read a decent amount of short stories (Poe mostly), a short novel (The Blind Owl), and cut halfway through Erotism by Bataille. I take week long gaps between books sometimes though.
Currently working my way through The Opposing Shore by Julien Gracq, about a quarter through the book. I read about 60 pages of it every 2 or so days. The prose is very, very dense so it takes some time to ferment and process in the brain.

>>14940867
>-Pride and Prejudice
it was too boring for me, can't be bothered with fiction anyways. you get the greatness of it from the old series anyway

>>14941201
Yeah for sure, I've only seen clips of the adaptations but i can definitely see how it is one of those novels that can safely be transferred to film. Not exactly the densest of prose

Finished it a couple of days ago, and restarted it yesterday, trying to place the story in a more fully realized chronology. Thinking of reading Thoreau's Walden next.

>>14940686
>focusing on videogames
>focusing
Cringe

>First seven Vonnegut books, five of which I had read before, but not since high school - I still think Cat’s Cradle is his best, but I was more struck this time by how fully formed The Sirens Of Titan is and how interesting it is that Slaughterhouse became his best known work mostly due to timing
>Dubliners - Portrait is maybe my favorite book and I put this off for years. Araby, Eveline and The Dead were my favorites but I really enjoyed the whole thing
>The Sound And The Fury - read the first half and then started over just because I was so struck by it. Looking forward to much more Faulkner in the future
>Notes From Underground - I had only read his longer novels, this was an interesting read. The extent of the self loathing on display here was pretty brutal
>The Elementary Particles - lots of interesting ideas here, but I’m still processing how I feel about it as a novel
Currently making my way through Anna Karenina. Going to read Journey To The End Of The Night and Look Homeward, Angel next. And maybe The Plague lol. Fun quarantine so far

>>14942101
>Notes From Underground - I had only read his longer novels, this was an interesting read. The extent of the self loathing on display here was pretty brutal

This one is great. The guy from this book could easily frequent this website if he was real.

>>14940361
Just finished The Bell Jar and Dance, Dance, Dance; now reading American Pastoral.

>>14940361
I read and finished Kokoro. I feel as if I'm no so alone in my jealousy anymore and I feel good about it.

>>14940726
Aglaya is s-tier /lit/ waifu material prove me wrong

Also the whole Hippolite section was baller

>>14942885
> if he was real
>if

Hunger by Knut Hamsun - Okay. I liked the parts where he spends time with the girl
Hero of Our Time by Lermontov - Loved this. Slightly redpill on women.

Currently reading A Portrait of the Artist by Joyce

>>14940361
>LoTR
>Isaac Asimov The gods themselves
>The Great Gatsby
now continuing the illiad which i left off 2 years ago

>>14940528
>implying our world is not a depressing place.

>>14942885
Yeah I was shocked by how modern some of his thoughts/assertions were. Undeniably vile, but honest in a way (especially for when it came out) that genuinely surprised me. Ain't too much changed.

Finished House of Leaves today. The style was the most interesting part by far. Wish it had more horror but guess that's not really the point of the book. It was an interesting idea at least.

>>14943220
Is it though as a read? How long did it take?

>>14943544
Not tough. If you flip through it and just look at the pages you'll think wtf is this shit but it makes sense and really helps drive the narrative. The super dense and pretentious tangents can be slog tho

surprisingly short. There are sections of pages with just one word to a short paragraph so you can blaze though some of it super quick. Probably the best part imo

>>14940867
is confederation of dunces any good?

>>14944164
it's pretty funny.

>>14943794
>you'll think wtf is this shit
LOL
>There are sections of pages with just one word
Yeah, I have it and I was keeping it for this summer, when I'll have more free time

I'm not necessarily swallowing the Christian pill that /lit/ pushes hard, but I'm checking things out. I was raised Catholic so it's nice to kinda go back to things. Lewis's writing is a little sloppy? Weird? Dated? I don't know. And his philosophical arguments in the beginning of the book to set the stage for Christianity don't seem that tight (there's an objective morality out there and SOMEONE..some MIND came up with it). I'm not a bugman, I promise, but these arguments are not very convincing. I get it though, Christianity and this sort of thing isn't found through reason, it's found through faith. Anywho I'm a little drunk already and so far the book is mostly comfy.

>>14940708
city & the city is the only Mieville I've read and i fuckin dug that shit. Don't forget to watch the BBC show after reading. people keep talking about Mieville being a 'weird fiction' writer. what does that mean? what does the genre of 'weird fiction' contain? modern urban cities and Cthulhu?

>>14940361
Too exhausted to read anything too deep. So the Wizard of Earthsea series.

>>14944261
It sounds awful

>>14944324
Read Benedikt XVI

I just finished 2666 this afternoon and really enjoyed it. I'm gonna start The Stand tomorrow. /lit/ may hate me for it, but King's always been a guilty pleasure read for me. I've never read The Stand & this will, hopefully, be the most appropriate time in my life to give it a read.

>>14944521
Just finished it, do you have the original published or the unedited?

>>14944521
Nice! I'm going to read it, soon or later
Have you read Savage Detectives? If yes, how did you found it?

Just installed Xubuntu on an old broke laptop, and got a $30 battery to put in it
works like new now and I want to use it to practice programming so I ordered The C Programming Language 2nd Edition and have been having comfy programming in bed at night
If a code textbook doesn't count though, then I've been reading the Sefer Yetzirah as well

>>14944452
I just might, from what I gather he's a strong theologian

>>14944576
Unedited

>>14944717
2666 was my first Bolano read so I can't comment on anything else he's done. But 2666 made me interested in checking out more of his stuff.

>>14941244
>hating on vidya
Cringe

>>14944270
It's worth the time. Different from anything I've read before.

>>14940361
Fun little series, though the entire trilogy is shorter than most novels. I knocked it out in two days, despite only reading before bed

>>14940361
I finished Blood Meridian about a week ago. I had been meaning to read Ovid's Metamorphoses and The Bible, but online classes haven't given me the liberty to do so.

Currently going through the "start with the greeks" charts and trying to read some fiction books alongside that

>>14940361
How is "Joseph and his Brothers"? I'm kind of familiar with the story from the bible, but is that enough for me to get the message of the book and also to enjoy it?

>>14942921
Ho'ws The Bell Jar?

>>14941244
>cringe
Nice buzzword, you made me topkek based boomer m8.

>>14944841
>But 2666 made me interested in checking out more of his stuff.
Nice!

>>14940361
I read Speak, Memory, The Eye and Lolita so now I'm reading Pnin

Just finished Stoner. What did my cat think of it?

>>14940361
I’ve been meaning to read but so far all I’ve done is learn two Chopin Nocturnes and browse 4chan and YouTube

>>14946975
Have you read Ada or Pale Fire yet?

>>14942974
based

>>14940361
Bigs where did you hide Mumkey’s body?

>>14947337
which knock turns

>>14940867
>Dubliners
What do you think of it so far? I enjoy the stories so far but a lot of what he alluded to seems like it had to with England relationship to Ireland.

>>14940560
Get in the fucking gulag mate

So far in quarantine I’ve read: zizek’s the desert of the real, the illustrated rules of football, the chapotraphouse book, and aristotles poetics.

>>14947340
No, which do you prefer? So far, each book has been great but progressively worse than the last. Speak, Memory was too good.

Re-read Under the Volcano and Ada or Ardor.

Both 10/10's.

>>14940361
Welp OP checking in again. Just left off reading today on page 139, I'm definitely enjoying the book a lot. Despite a minor linguistic anachronistic inconsistency here or there, I find the book to be very engaging. The epistolary style allows for a great juxtaposition of character profiles and motivations that I wouldn't say is otherwise prevalent even in the most psychologically explorative authors, and it does wonders for the pacing of narrative. The "time skips" (epistles dates thirty years apart side-by-side) aren't as jarring as I was immediately concerned with upon beginning the book. Overall very interesting, and I should read more Williams in the future.

>>14946053
Don't worry about not knowing the narrative, Mann is an apex-level story-teller who always does in incredible job of taking the reader by the hand and guiding them through the story set-piece by set-piece, furnishing it with the perfect amount of expatiation to deliver a clear picture. I didn't know the story as well myself before reading it but after reading it (twice) I wish there were any authors alive now who would or even could deliver novelistic adaptations of all of the most important Biblical stories as Mann does here. The amount of character, context, and psychological coloring he adds to the story that is otherwise not present in the original stories fleshes them out in such a degree that it really feels as if you knew the characters, were true friends with them, yet makes it especially harder to finish the book after a 1500-page, 50-year-long journey, and you have to bid final farewell to those seemingly lifelong friends. The hardest part of the book, imo, is the 40 page introduction where Mann endeavors to set the stage with regards to the context of the ideas of individuality vs tribal custom, the nature of the gods of their neighbors, and that in relation to the nature of the God of Abraham, the reconciliation of ideas, and other like philosophies that nowadays people may not give account for but was absolutely a consideration and an integral part of life for the people of back then. And I only say it's hard because you may open the book expecting the story to begin, and you receive a few choice lines of dialogue, but then you get unexpectedly hit with a (perfectly necessary) lore dump to set the historical stage before the story really starts unfolding. It's my favorite book of all time.

>>14947732
have you read stoner? Is his prose style quite similar in Augustus?

>>14947418
Op.9 no.2 in Eb, and the Op. posthumous in C# minor.

>>14947568
Ada is my personal favourite but it definitely divides opinion much more. Pale Fire is loved by most people I've talked about it with.

>>14947732
Jealous of that Joseph, it costs at least 60 bucks for any copy I can find online

>>14947732
For once I'm jealous of you anglophones; to have nice editions of JAHB in print. It's been very hard for me to find good copies of any of the four books, as the series hasn't been in print in swedish for a very long time. It strikes me as a bit strange that no publisher has decided to do it, since we've had quite a bit of a Mann revival in the last decade, with many of his greater novels, including a group of novellas, receiving fresh, new translations.

>>14947745
Haven't read Stoner, can't tell you about that. But it's about as modern of a book as I read and the language is very commonplace/ordinary (not as in that being a detraction, mind you).

Last five...

Lloyd Shapley and Robert Aumann - Values of Non-Atomic Games
Nicole Oresme - On Seeing the Stars
Jeremy Bentham - Deontology; or The Science of Morality
John Harsanyi - Rational Behavior and Bargaining Equilibrium in Games and Social Situations
Jeremy Bentham - The Principles of Morals and Legislation

Currently...

Roger Bacon - Opus Majus
Werner Hildebrand - Core and Equilibria of a Large Economy
Nicole Oresme - De Moneta (+English Mint Documents)
Jeremy Bentham - Economic Writings vol. I (currently Philosophy of Economic Science)
Aristotle - The Topics

After:

Thomas Bradwardine - Speculative Geometry
Anatol Rapoport - Conflict in Man-Made Society
Nicolas Copernicus - On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres
John Stuart Mill - A System of Logic: Ratiocinative and Inductive
Aristotle - Sophistical Elenchii

σ-algebras aren't easy. :3

>>14947798
>very commonplace/ordinary
Definitely got this from stoner but I found the style really comfy
Ill give augustus a read at some point,

>>14947799
Holy based

>>14947732
Thanks for the input, I'll definitely read the book, but when it comes to Mann I want to read Buddenbrooks before moving on to Joseph (by the way, I've already read The Magic Mountain and it's one of my favorite books; the amount of contemplation and philosophical discourse is amazing, as is the comfy atmosphere, and the only flaw with the book I can find is the comfiness progressively disappearing in the last third, but that's all according to Mann's plan in any case, since WW1 is on the horizon).

>>14940451
Stephen King is a drug-addled pedophile

>>14940938
See /fit/ ‘s self improvement general thread

>>14940867
What I've read from Wolf Hall is excellent

>>14947872
>giving me advice
>me

Almost too ridiculous for words. But let me give you a few pointers:

1) Self-improvement is masturbation - Tyler Durden

2) Every single person on /fit/ who is not lifting because he thinks girls will like him is an equal and equivalent loser who is just elevating his bullshit stoic retreat from life in the form of weightlifting

And I know this because I already spent months on that board from 2013-2014 while I was weightifting, which is probably longer than you have spent on this website either way.

So no, I will not go to /fit/'s self improvement general thread, you will not be telling me anything, and in fact, you will be the one asking ME for advice.

>>14947950
And don't just take my word for it, read through my posts:

https://desuarchive.org/fit/search/username/Deep%26Edgy/

They're probably some of the best posts by someone who isn't a specialist athlete on that board:

>A lift performed at a certain weight is more impressive than otherwise when the person lifting it maintains stricter form with a more defined body. The ultimate goal of powerlifting, and the superior sport of olympic weightlifting, isn't to lift heavier and heavier weight, which is a superfluous achievement that could be done through virtually any means available to the athlete, with virtually any assistance. (but given the rules in place in contemporary competition, typically involve turning your body into a crude means to an end by making it into a vastly overweight grotesquery). The fat and ugly lifters, viewed on a grand scale, are really only footnotes on the way to more beautiful people, who embody the athletic ideal, performing the lift.