/lit/ - Literature

>>18658863
is there*
Yes.

>>18658869
name it. ever since finishing war and peace it feels as though my reading career has past its zenith. that is it for me. i have read the greatest work that this world has to offer and it is no use trying to repeat the past. one read through war and peace or two is enough for one life. what more can a man ask for, etc.

Quijote is better, if you know spanish of course

>>18658887
>ever since finishing war and peace it feels as though my reading career has past its zenith. that is it for me. i have read the greatest work that this world has to offer
Damn, I wish that was my reaction after finishing that overwrought soap-opera. Definitely the book I most regret reading. It's a total piece of junk, but who knows, it might be good in the original Russian. The fucking English translation is embarrassing.

>>18658863
This shit sucks.

>>18658887
Agreed. Great book.

Anna Karenina

>>18660552
some chapters are indeed peak comfy but the story overall isn't
still my favorite book btw

The sailor who fell from grace with the sea

Anna Karenina
War and Peace was intellectually and emotionally draining for me. Anna Karenina was life-affirming

>>18658887
Buddenbrooks
Kristin Lavransdattar
Middlemarch
Pride and Prejudice
My Antonia
Joseph and His Brothers
The Red and the Black
The Remains of the Day
Les Miserables
Lolita

I do like War and Peace tho

>>18661369
>>18660552
What translation kings

>>18661393
peevee

>>18661393
I read the Everyman’s Library edition which was translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude.
Aylmer Maude was actually a personal friend of Leo Tolstoy who approved the translation. He even wrote a biography of him

>>18661401
Based

>>18661401
>>18661405
I read the Dunnigan and it was ....................ok...............

>>18661419
*for W&P

>>18658863
My opinion. First part of the book is boring as, I don't give a shit about the ball room wanking that every 19th century book has. After that first part however it becomes really good.

>>18661651
I love the ballroom shit. Those parts are some of the best examples of Tolstoy's grasp on human nature. I love reading about all the different characters and their pretences and quiddities

>>18661369
I feel like I accidentally merged war and peace and A.K. together because I find it hard to separate the two stories when recalling which scene comes from which book now.

>>18661387
Les Mis is a very comfy read

>>18659494
>>18659564
lmao, cunts. clearly your skulls are too thick and your brains are too smooth otherwise there is no way that that masterpiece of world literature would have left you with such single-celled takes. did you even see how effortlessly tolstoy weaved together the principles of the macrocosmic march of history that appeared in the war, with the microcosmic, private dramatic world of the aristocrats? did you even see how tolstoy exposed the same impersonal powers across the domains of love and international warfare? did you see how the whole of human experience was encapsulated with the quiet brilliance of our meek russian writer? how could anyone regard such a magnificent work, such a remarkable achievement with such carelessness?

dostoevsky had not the patient artistry
proust had not the astonishing tenderness toward the human character
flaubert had not the reserved fatherliness
stendhal had not the multitudinous breadth of field
yeah and who can hope to compare with our marvelous count? who but the unprecedented tolstoy could have written this great work that opens up and lays bare the intricacies of the human experience that halts the very wheel of history, that stifles our ambitions and pretensions to wisdom, in a moment of capture that shall never be matched?

i will pray, tonight, pray to god that these posts are bait, and that such aberrations of mind are only pretended.

>>18662622
get their asses

>>18662622
based

>>18662622
behold, a man of culture

>>18662622
>clearly your skulls are too thick and your brains are too smooth otherwise there is no way that that masterpiece of world literature would have left you with such single-celled takes.

>>18661387
>Lolita
Lolita made me sad and I wouldn't call it comfy. It's very good though.

>>18660552
>Levin and Kitty scenes
comfy
>Anna and Vronsky scenes
anti-comfy

Unironically no. There are plenty off amazing books, but none are as comfy as WAP.

>>18662622
Well, as I said, it probably is a great book in the original Russian, which is how I'm assuming you read it. The translation totally kills it for me, just awful writing.

>>18664687
this is, ultimately, my feeling. for who else was earnest enough, to write so simply, in such an unadorned fashion as our tolstoy. i think that no one else has really written a novel. tolstoy is the only novelist. we say that cervantes is the first novelist of course but what he wrote is of an entirely different variety than the work of the count. i do not deny the comfiness of cervantes but just compare the works and you will see; just think, first of don quixote, and that whole experience, and the consistency of its humor, and then think of war and peace. you will see, that whatever earnestness, whatever appreciation for the simple, everyday reality, whatever penetration cervantes displays in making plain the personalities, thoughts, and motives of everyday persons, tolstoy has matched, whilst doing away with all jesting. no, our tolstoy has aimed for a different mark than cervantes, he has aimed for the creation of a novel in its simplicity. indeed, our tolstoy is no cervantes. he is no rabelais, and certainly no shakespeare. with shakespeare, there is always the stage, with rabelais, the carnival, and with cervantes, as with dostoevsky, madness. and all these writers wrote what came out to be, not so much a novel, but, indeed, a play, a riot, a tale. but who, who I ask has simply set out to write a novel, with such earnestness as to render all these sideshows unnecessary. who has had the calmness to present us with life itself, as it is; for tolstoy has written for us, not a tragedy, and not a comedy, but a piece of writing which has captured the substance of life itself, and the count has merely shown this to us, has merely handed it over to us, as if it were a newborn babe, and just to say: here, have a look; this is life itself. and you do not laugh, as at don quixote, or at panurge, or at tristram shandy. but you laugh with joy, with tenderness, and a feeling for the universal has triumphed which has shattered our egotism. who but tolstoy has done this, i say, with such straightforwardness? who indeed has written the novel, that is, that entirely unprecedented thing, that thing we least expected, that unadorned miracle; yes, who has written that book called war and peace?

>>18664687
Wet Ass Pussy?

>>18662622
are you 18? please be 18, otherwise you sound like the most retarded basic bitch with boring vanilla takes and "ideas"

>>18658863
A Sportsman’s Notebook by Turgenev is a comfier Russian book

>>18664810
>vanilla
>boring
this is the only 18-year-old take i see, sirrah

>>18664660
>couple lives by god's law
>comfy
>couple goes agains god
>anti-comfy
hmmmmmmmm

>>18664652
t.15 year old

>>18662622
Based Tolstoychad

>>18664742
what do your farts smell like?

>>18662622
>discovers someone like Henry James
>assumes that nobody else here has heard about him and proceeds to spew garbage

talk normally in 4chan speak or prepare to get ridiculed, you idiot

>>18662622
>>18664742
Guise, I am afraid that Tolstoy's dick is humus already.

>>18658887
read David Copperfield, and all of Dickens's masterpieces. He was Leo Tolstoy's favourite author - Tolstoy worshipped him, naming his dog after Boffin in Our Mutual Friend, for example. The more you read Dickens the more you realise Tolstoy couldn't have done what he did without him.

I would start with David Copperfield or Bleak House then branch out. Here's a quote from the Russian genius himself on the former book:
'The greatest achievement of the greatest of all novelists'

>>18664742
>>18662622
also, love these posts. im sure you have but read every single one of Tolstoy's short stories and novellas, they are all unmatched and perfection. they escalate and escalate

>>18658863
Soap opera.

>>18666157
imagine thinking this is a coherent criticism

>>18658863
The works of John Cowper Powys.

>>18660552
Comfy af, Levin carries the book

>>18665603
t. 21 year old

>>18667788
>6 years older
I will take it