/lit/ - Literature

>Why yes I do set my Goodreads reading challenge to 1 book, how could you tell?

>>19315108
all of buttigieg works. i now dress up like a biker and have grown a mustache

>>19315108
Lots, standouts were Speedboat and Balcony in the Forest. Never used goodreads, seems all it accomplishes is low effort threads like these which reward low effort responses. How about next time you ask us what our best reads of the year were and to tell a little about them and including your own response in the OP.

>>19315108
I've been trying to read the aenid since the year started.
supposedly I am on book 2 right now but I dont even remember what happened in book 1

>>19315108
The Nun was so good, I love to read about european women suffering between the 15th and 19th century, it's kind of a fetish.

>>19315108

Basically a bunch of introductory books into a lot of philosophers which are synthesises of different philosophers along with a presentation of the cultural context and their personal lives to get a better idea of the context of their work. It's a series of 70 books of ~150 pages, I'm reading them both to get a general grasp of all philosopher's ideas and then I'll choose the one I'm interested in to delve deeper into their works.

>>19315108
I haven't read a book in year, I'm just shitposting here because of an rangeban

https://www.goodreads.com/user_challenges/30131710

standouts were: barabbas, the pigeon, necrophiliac, you should have left, indian nocturne, self-portrait abroad, tidings of the trees, michael kohlhaas, holy the firm, 100 selected poems e.e. cummings, the sibyl, the females, aliss at the fire, my two worlds, gilda trillim, the branch will not break, swan, moss, agua viva, bakkhai, iliad, in praise of shadows, the pugilist at rest

>Novels and short-stories

Chesterton - The Napoleon Of Nothing Hill
Barbey d’Aurevilly - The She-Devils
Bataille - Blue of the noon
Bataille - L’Abbé C
Bataille - Story of the eye / Lady Edwarda / The dead
Bloy - The Desperate Man
Bobin - Prisonnier au berceau (hidden gem)
Bobin - The Very Lowly: A Meditation on Francis of Assisi
Bulgakov - The Life of Monsieur de Molière
Buzzati - Bàrnabo delle montagne / Il segreto del Bosco Vecchio (hidden gem)
Daumal - A night of serious drinking
Daumal - Mount Analogue (hidden gem)
Flaubert - Three Tales
Jünger - The Glass bees
Queneau - We always treat women too well
Lawrence - Women in love
Melville - Moby Dick
Rabelais - Complete works (fav one)
Sterne - Tristram Shandy (worst one)
Villiers de l’Isle-Adam - Histoires Insolites

>Non-Fiction

Agamben - The Highest Poverty
Agamben - State of Exception
Bakhtin - Rabelais and his world (fav one)
Bataille - Eroticism
Bataille - The Accursed share
Bataille - The tears of Eros
Baudrillard - Fatal Strategies
Bonnefoy - L’improbable et autres essais
Bousquet - Papillon de neige (hidden gem)
Cabantous - De Charybde en Scylla
Eliade - The Sacred and the profane
Girard - Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World
Gracq - La littérature à l'estomac (hidden gem)
Groupe μ - Rhétorique de la poésie (hidden gem)
Jünger - Diaries 44-48
Kraus - The Third Walpurgis Night (hidden gem)
Leiris - Manhood
Madani - Kanye West (worst one)
Polo - The travels
Pound - ABC of reading
de Saussure - First ascents of the Mont Blanc (hidden gem)

>Poetry

Anonymous - Aucassin and Nicolette
Anonymous - Roman de Fauvel (hidden gem)
Aubigné - Les tragiques
Bataille - L’Archangelique
Bonnefoy - Les planches courbes
Cavafy - Complete poems
Char - Le Nu perdu
Char - Recherche de la base et du sommet
Claudel - Cinq grandes odes / La cantate à trois voix
Coleridge - Selected poems (worst one)
Eluard - Donner à voir
Jacob - The dice cup
Laforgue - The laments
Larbaud - The Poems of A.O. Barnabooth
Leopardi - Canti
Marie de France - Lais
Peguy - The Portal of the Mystery of Hope
Reverdy - Sable mouvant (hidden gem)
Roussel - New Impressions of Africa
Rutebeuf - Complete works (hidden gem)
Saint-John Perse - Amer / Oiseaux (fav one)
Saint-John Perse - Vents / Chronique
Ungaretti - Life of a man
VA - Erotic Fabliaux (hidden gem)

>Plays

Camus - Caligula

>>19315200
>Anonymous - Aucassin and Nicolette
>Anonymous - Roman de Fauvel (hidden gem)
Ah yes, I hope you enjoyed them. Some of my finest work.

>>19315169
Are you reading translation into Japanese?

92

>>19315284
lmao how are you still alive

>>19315782
Is Norms book worth reading?

>>19316807
Of course it is, the guy is hilarious.

reading bros...

>>19315711
No, I'm a native spanish speaker. I've read everything in english, La Pasión Turca and Borges' complete tales were the only books in spanish.

>>19315782
Why didn't you read The Fall of Gondolin?

>>19318173
What are all the Japanese names at the end of each entry in parentheses?

>Surprise Kill Vanish by Annie Jacobsen
>Survival in the Killing Fields by Dr. Haing S. Ngor
>Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said by Philip K. Dick (re-read)
>Solaris by Stanislaw Lem
>Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
>The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer by Brian Masters

>>19318467
Where I was when I finished reading those books.

my favourite is manservant and maidservant

>>19318188
I started to but I didn't care for it or the Beren and Luthien. I'm not really interested in the early versions or history of the stories and that's really all they were. I loved the expanded story of Turin though.

Unironically, thanks to autists on /lit/, I worked through Crime & Punishment, Brothers K, and Demons this year (other than non-fic stuff). It has been enriching and memorable. Tank.

>>19318778
What can you tell me about Rape and The Abortion? Are they good?

>>19315108
I'll probably manage 28-30 books for 2022, just over one book every two weeks. Am I going to make it?

Wittgenstein: A Very Short Introduction
The Fourth Industrial Revolution
This Is How They Tell Me The World Ends

I think I read The Stranger and Seize the Day earlier in the year too, but that might have been late 2020.

Plan on reading a lot more now that I'm sober, going to smash out a few more by the end of the year.

>>19319151
Sorry *2021, I'm on 26 books now.

>>19315114
>Why yes, I do still somehow manage to consistently fail this challenge, how could you tell?

>>19318924

Good job. There's a lot of interesting reads so the journey is just starting.

>>19315200
>Sterne - Tristram Shandy (worst one)
>(worst one)
filtered

I started reading this year in February

>>19315108
29/49

>>19319341
He thinks Gracq and Daumal are hidden, so...

>>19319573
they are on lit

I started 7
>finished 0

>>19315200
>Agamben
Umm...why would you willingly read this extremist, antivaxxer conspiracy nut-job?

>>19319832
When you say antivaxxer is he actually anti vaccines or is he just a reasonable guy who recognizes the ineffectiveness and potential downsides of a particular vaccine and maybe advocates personal choice when it comes to its consumption?

Not many, unfortunately, because of uni and some personal issues. I'll try to read more between semesters.

>>19319841
Yeah, I'm joking. He's one of the only sane public voices left.

>>19315108
What do you think, bros?
1) Iliad
2) Plays of Sophocles
3) Oresteia
4) The Orthodox Church
5) The Orthodox Way
6) Water Wine Bread and Oil
7) Herodotus' Histories
8) Divine Comedy
9) The Decameron
10) Chaucer's Canterbury Tale
11) Malory's Morte D'arthur
12) Comedies of Shakespeare
13) Tragedies of Shakespeare
14) Histories of Shakespeare
15) Romances of Shakespeare
16) Complete Poetry of Shakespeare
17) Essays of Montaigne
18) Don Quixote
19) Complete Poetry of John DOnne
20) Robinson Crusoe
21) Moll Flanders
22) Gulliver's Travels
23) Emma by Jane Austen
24) Charterhouse of Parma
25) Eugene Onegin
26) Great Expectations
27) Crime and Punishment
28) Portrait of a lady
29) Swann's Way
30) Within a budding grove
31) The Guermantes Way
32) Sodom and Gomorroh
33) The Prisoner
34) The Fugitive
35) Time Regained
36) Nihilism by Fr. Seraphim Rose

>>19315169
Lots of authors I haven't read but from what I can see:
8/10, high tier stuff.
>>19315200
Lots of this is stuff I've never heard of in the NF section but Pound's ABCs are fun. In F i'd say Rabelais isn't my fav tho.
5/10 for too much french shit!
>>19318495
Phillip K Dick is fun, so is Solaris. Go and read more science fiction and classics bro! Try the classic novels like Don Quixote, Gulliver's Travels, Pride and Prejudice. Or if you want a classic SF, try Dune
7/10
>>19318778
Too many modern books that are just not worth reading. The classics you picked are really highlights imo. Stick with modern sci-fi like Ursula K Le Guin or Frank Herbert but drop all the boring modernists and stay with ppl like Carver, O'Connor, etc.
6/10, has potential

>>19319864
Whats your major? Why do these books interest you?

>>19321285
I'm a psychology major, at least on paper, but largely interdisciplinary in focus, taking classes from a variety of fields.

>True Believer
For this I was interested in the mechanisms that bind and motivate people to involve themselves in collective action. I became drawn to the subject after observing all the factions that were active during the past few election cycles.

>Selfish Gene
I wanted to ground the psychological field in evolutionary biology, so I heard that the Selfish Gene was a good place to start. I personally don't care for Dawkins religious material though.

>Pattern Seekers
I work with a lot of autistic people so I wanted to appreciate their ability to systemize data similar to me.

>Situated Learning
I'm in the initial stages of exploring alternative pedagogical constructs since I'm dissatisfied with modern education systems. This also connects with the interest in autism, neurodivergence in general, and disability accommodations/activism.

>Cognitive Psych/Comparative Psych
Those were textbooks for classes. Ethology, cognitive psych, and spatial navigation/perceptual systems are fascinating to me, for some reason.

>Predictably Irrational
Short, pop-behavioral economics book that I picked up haphazardly at the library. Not challenging, but relatively interesting as it takes aim at economists and their fixation on rational consumers.

>Creation, Gore Vidal
Fun historical fiction about a Persian ambassador traveling around the world and talking philosophy with Socrates, Buddha, and Kung. Lots of high political drama and sexy stuff, as well as what I take to be Vidal's reflections on growing old and no longer being a handsome twink.

>Noli Me Tangere, José Rizal
Rizal is an unapologetically patrician liberal of the best sort, I particularly liked the parts about using Egyptian hieroglyphics to write Philippine with, as well as the complicated mulit-language puns. Crazy freemason bastard. The book itself is kind of melodramatic but its a fun enough read.

>Men, Beasts, Gods, Ferdynand Antoni Ossendowski
This book was a pleasure to read and an all around great adventure story. If you read between the lines and about Ossendowski's life, it's also a great guide to self-promotion.

>The Golden Ass, Robert Graves
Really funny book. A lot more sexy parts than I was expecting. Graves is a really underrated author

>The Civil War, Julius Caeser
Kind of bland, to be honest. It had some good moments, but mostly I was impressed by how many people died by drowning in that war.

>America Against America, Wang Huning
This book is great. Someday neo-China is going to make it required reading for first year students in American Studies. Huning has a really analytical style that makes you feel smarter just for experiencing it. Basically breaks down the many contradictions of America, as well as the American psychology and how American's view themselves and their civilization, in a really rigorous and unassuming manner.

>Hamatsa: The Enigma of Cannibalism on the Pacific Nw Coast, Jim McDowell
Interesting exploration into ritual cannibalism in the Pacific Northwest. Good scholarship, mostly drawing from primary sources, it uses cannibalism as a kind of exposition of European-Native interactions at the time.

>The Way of the Masks, Claude Levi-Strauss
Comparative mythology. It has a weird structure of trying to find cultural symmetries between different Native bands and then comparing them to understand how the Natives conceived of themselves, their history, and their neighbours on a mythological and artistic basis. Some parts seem like they're grasping at straws, but it's got a lot of interesting historical data that makes it worth it.

>The Legends and Myths of Hawaii, King Kalakau
Really great high mythology/history book about Hawaii, written by it's last king.

>Red Pill, Hari Kunzru
It was okay.

>The Italian War as Seen by a Japanese, Harukichi Shimoi
Short, basically comprised of three or four letters from the front. Still, lots of sweet and poetic moments. Shimoi had a real knack for imagery and there are some parts (like when he's going across the river in a speedboat while getting fired at with machine guns) that stand out in my memory for a while.

Not an exhaustive list, but some of the stuff that stood out over the last year.

I focused more on the medieval period this time. Will finish the year with fiction

>>19315108
the book of yo mama ass

>>19315108
>43/52

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
From Hell by Alan Moore
The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard
Man and His Symbols by C.G. Jung
Watchmen by Alan Moore
Synchronicity by C.G. Jung
Dubliners by James Joyce
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood by Quentin Tarantino
Coincidance by Robert Anton Wilson
Libra by Don DeLillo
The 42nd Parallel by John Dos Passos
JFK and the Unspeakable by James W. Douglass
The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy
Savage Night by Jim Thompson
Actual Air by David Berman
Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison
Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor
Masters of Atlantis by Charles Portis
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

>>19315169
>>19315200
>>19315782
>>19318778
>>19319056
how do you guys read so much

>>19323275
1) pick up a book
2) sit down
3) open it
4) start to read

>>19323275
Make reading a priority. You can fit an hour or two of reading into almost any day if you avoid excuses and distractions. In order to do that, however, you need to genuinely love reading.

>>19315108
bros k
world as will
houellebecq
philosophy

I read 40 books last year, this year I've read 0, I've not felt like reading ever since my cat died

>>19324023
"Canticle of Leibowitz" has a passage on cat death. My cat looked absolutely horrid after death. Emaciated with a festering cancerous ulcer. He was looking sicker than usual but I'd thought he would have lived longer. I remember twisting and turning one night thinking about him, I went out to talk to him about his life and tell him how he has accomplished everything he needed to and was always an object of my respect because he wasn't a pussy bitch who demanded pets but rather was a tough outdoor cat with a melancholy disposition who always stayed in the environs watching and following me at a distance. Anyways I starting feeling some sort of dread at night and I prayed God would end his life quickly in his sleep rather than slowly starving by refusing to eat or something when he got really bad (he was eating fine and well at the time). Anyways the next morning I saw him dead in the same place I talked to him. Puddle of saliva. Horridly stretched out without a spark of life. Washed and laved him thoroughly with water, removing all the encrusted filth from his cancer, then wrapped and buried him. It all seemed like chance to me that he died then and there. Of course, I saw ants crawling on him that day...never saw that before. So maybe that's when I knew he would go. But that dread I felt in my bed....I can't explain it. Neither God's instantaneous answering of the prayer. Death is ugly a dead body is very ugly.

>>19315200
>Sterne - Tristram Shandy (worst one)
Funny, I read this too and it was (best one)

>>19324122
I wonder if its worth reading something like that after reading the Sot Weed Factor by Barth LMAO

>>19315174
Hey ! Incel stay THE FUCK AWAY OF THIS THREAD !!!>>19315200
How the fuck do you read all this without being frustrating as hell ?? I can't read that fast cuz my brain doesn't work that damn way.

>>19321233
No way in hell ! All of Shakespeare in a year, is that even possible ?

one of my worst years for reading in quite a while :(

>>19321588
Not funny asshole !
U don't get the memo...

>>19315108
1. Neuromancer
2. Blood Meridian

That's it. I was planning to read at least 25. Oh well.

if you aren't reading at least one book a month then you aren't trying at all and need to either get your shit together or re-evaluate if you even like reading

>>19319552
30/49

I had to cut my goal from 15 to 10 several months ago cause I knew I wasn't gonna make it.
Woman eats up alot of time but I'm happy to have her
Hopefully I can get the goal done, I finished 7 thus far
>Conquering Sword of Conan
>some of Xenophons writings
>city - literally dogs succeed man
>roman fan fiction Trojan War journals
>live and let die
>at the Mountains of Madness
>Alexander the Great Biography
Alot of its been meh. Best book thus far was the Conan book, but James Bond was bretty good too. Alexander book was solid too

>>19324630
It happens anon. This year will be the fewest number of books I've read since 2016.
Sad but is what it is

>>19324630
Well at the very least you read two amazing books

I don't know how many of these are available in eglish, so I'll just translate the titles if i don't know the english one
>damir ovcina - two years of night
>stephen graham - the art of hiking
>anthony horowitz - murder in highgate
>haruki murakami - the wild sheep chase
>giorgio agamben - state of emergency
>kameron hurley - the stars are legion
>diego fusaro - marx once again?
>ernst jünger - diaries from 65-7something
>kobo abe - the woman in the dunes
>karlheinz weißmann - armin mohler, a political biography
>lou michel - american terrorist
>julius evola - a traditionalist confronts fascism
>zakhar prilepin - sanky
>natsume soseki - kokoro
>henry stokes - life and death of yukio mishima
>friedrich georg jünger - novellas
>samuel t francis - leviathan and its enemies
>jean baudrillard - america
>roger devlin - sexual utopia in power
>benedikt kaiser - marx viewed from the right
>ted kaczynski - anti tech revolution
>william vollmann - europe central
>david kilcullen - the accidental guerilla
>mark fisher - postcapitalist desire
>haruki murakami - norwegian wood
>alain de benoist - on the brink of abyss
>richard werner - princes of the yen
>stefan scheil - logic of powers
>mark fisher - ghosts of my life
>armin avanessian - accelerationist reader excerpts (published in different volumes in german
>ernst niekisch - the third imperial figure
>haruki murakami - windup-bird chronicle
>charles taylor - the malaise of modernity
>peter kemp - mine were of trouble
>dominique venner - the rebellious heart
>zhao tingyang - everything underneath the sky
>alain de benoist - on carl schmitt
>mike ma - gothic violence
>john hoewer - europapowerbrutal
>rainer mausfeld - fear and power
>helmuth kiesel - ernst jünger, the biography
>matias faldbakken - power and rebel
>natsume soseki - i am a cat
>alain the benoist - my life
>nikos kazantzakis - alexis sorbas
>wolfgang streeck - buying time
>michel onfray - theory of dictatorship
>tito perdue - morning crafts
>natsuo kirino - out
>rolf peter sieferle - marx, an introduction
>savitri devi - india travels
>jrr tolkien - the fellowship of the ring
>yukio mishima - frolick of the beasts
>corneliu codreanu - for my legionnairies
>hiromi kawakami - the nakano thrift shop
>andreas wehr - what now, europe?

best: i am a cat, princes of the yen, out, ernst jünger biography, leviathan and its enemies
worst: the stars are legion, evola, indian travels, theory of dictatorship

>>19325697
>chamiel
Is it good?

>>19321379
>I'm in the initial stages of exploring alternative pedagogical constructs since I'm dissatisfied with modern education systems
Not the anon you were responding to but what do you see wrong with the current education system. I often hear normies say that there needs to be educational reform but they never have any concrete suggestions. Most of it boils down to "more funding"... It's the same thing with libraries (pic rel.). Everyone's just repeating the popular talking points without giving them any thought. Also where are you from?

>>19323275
I actually enjoy reading and spend my free time doing it. The real question is what the fuck are you people doing here?

>>19326143
Yes, it's a good short fantasy story.

>>19324021
>hurr you can read 70+ books a year if you read 2 hours a day
the absolute state of this retard

>>19324620
You're pathetic.

>>19315108
I've only read twelve books this year. It feels so bad, I managed 21 last year. Oh well, I will read more next year. Next year will be my year, when I finally get it together...

>>19321276
I've heard a lot of good things about Dune but what about the sequel and the entire series? Lots of my friends can't get into the second book.
Thanks for the post btw anon. Any other science fiction recs besides Dune? Something less well-known perhaps

I'm at 35/50. Started in August, aiming for 10 books a month.
I could've done more but I'm still finding out what interests me, so I've been giving up on quite a few books too. Like Fantasy, for instance; contrary to what I believed the genre is just not something that I enjoy at all.

>>19327356
I didn't like Messiah as much as the first, but Children was good, and God Emperor. I stopped reading there.

After Dune I read The Three Body Problem books and enjoyed them a lot.

>>19321276
I really liked the melancholic feel and sense of grief in Solaris, actually. It's the older translation re-translated from French however so maybe that's it. However it really moved me.

>>19315170
very short introductions?

>>19316807
funniest book I read this year

>>19315108
I am trying to read all Goosebump classics.