/lit/ - Literature

No.

I would but I don't want people to judge my tastes, so I'd honestly rather just lie and say that I haven't read anything.

Sorry OP, I don't read. I'm only here to debate politics.

>>21011990
I don't read novels because I'm not a child.

>Star Wars Alphabet Squardon
8/10
>Star Wars Shadow Fall
8/10
>Halo The Cole Protocol
5/10

Decoded (Mai Jia) 5/10
The Secret Pilgrim (le Carré) 7/10
Fanny (Feydeau) 6/10

>>21011990
47 > 46 > 45

WHO ARE YOU WORKING FOR??!?!?!?

TELLL MEEEEEEE!!!!!!

>>21012051
I read Decoded years ago, it started off well but it kinda went off the rails as it progressed. I barely remember how it ended.

>>21012060
we know how numbers work anon

>>21011990
omensetter's luck, the tunnel, middle c
wdym rate them? i don't read drivel. i only touch books that are 10/10

1. Why Free Speech Doesn't Exist and That's a Good Thing by Stanley Fish 8/10 (enlightened centrist subjectivism is already what I basically believe)
2. The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt 6/10 (posits a really interesting theory on the JQ that can be tied into other theories well. It's just way too long and rambly)
3. Mere Christianity By C.S. Lewis 3/10 (This "book" is mostly a compilation of apologetics from his other books, I thought I could save a lot of time by just reading this instead of engaging with the corpus of his works, but it ended up leaving a lot to be desired).

>>21012038
Ghosts of Onyx is the best Halo book

Goodreads, post them

>>21011990
I only read what /lit/ tells me. I therefore defer any and all opinions to the learned posters of this dump.

>cannery row
7/10
>the old man and the sea
8/10
>doctor faustus
8/10

>>21011990
The Sword of Destiny - 10/10 as genre, 5/10 as literature
Blood of Elves - 9/10, 5/10
Time of Contempt - 8/10, 2/10

>>21011990
moby dick, the always changing storytelling methods are cool, ahab and quequeg are memorable and the prose is really touching a ndfunny. that said, 500 pages of outdated whaling facts, 8/10
brothers karamazov. the plot hits like a storm and i can relate to all the characters except alexei maybe, the prose is to the point without any sophistic bullshit that is made fun of by the school kids episode. a classic, 10/10
great gatsby. i don't really like it. maybe it would benefit from being longer. maybe i should have read it when i was 14. maybe i should have read it in english. the self reflections of the main characters are decently written i guess. 5/10

>>21011990
>the gate - soseki
8/10
>kusamakura - soseki
9/10
>botchan - soseki
7/10

>>21011990
>Lolita
7.5/10

>War and Peace (Maude)
6/10

>Notes of a Dirty old man
8/10

>A Thousand Sons
6/10
>The First Heretic
9/10
>Prospero Burns
8/10

>Genesis
Derivative nonsense (re: the fragments of Assyria) with some nice literary moments (e.g. the 'dreamer cometh' line; came out of nowhere and astounded me). 6/10

>Some essays by Montaigne
Loved these. His observations on solitude and sadness feel especially poignant in this crowded, superficial world. 9/10

>The Time Machine
Loved this too. Especially the scenes where the Traveller shows the device to the others by the fire, and when he is travelling through time. 8/10

>>21011990
>Mason & Dixon
7.5/10
>Against the Day
8/10
>Warlock
6.5/10

>>21011990
Notes from the Underground: 8/10

A Hero of Our Time: 9/10

Tale of Sinuhe: 7/10

>>21011990
>The Stranger
8/10
>Klara and the Sun
7/10
>All This Could Be Yours
0/10

notes from the underground
cathedral by ben hopkins
codex 1962 by sjon

theyre pretty good

Don Quixote (Cervantes)- I laughed like a madman in depression and cried like a baby for mom
Momo (Michael Ende)- I was enchanted like a flower
Cosas Vivas (Munir Hachemi) - I feared it was true

Mason & Dixon - 9.5/10
The Big Sleep - 8/10
JR - 9/10

>>21012527
I also read Klara and the Sun a few days ago.

>>21012557
Any thoughts? Do you think Klara was "alive"?

1Q84
A Pale View of the Hills
Klara and the Sun

>the way of kings
1/10, i stopped reading after 70 pages
>the knight
8/10
>in dubious battle
7/10

>>21012566
I would say that, yes, while she could probably convince every single person on the planet that she was alive or had the "heart" that Paul speaks of, she still didn't actually have it. In that way, she isn't alive to me, even though it might seem like that to everyone besides the reader. The biggest proof of this for me would be when Josie left and she got left alone outside. The only thing she could thing of is to server Josie and how her decisions would affect Josie. If her (Klara) destruction would bring Josie the most benefit, I'm certain she would self-destruct. She only had the ability to think for herself within the limits of her being useful to Josie.

>>21012580
>The biggest proof of this for me would be when Josie left and she got left alone outside.
I've been thinking on this a lot, and it was of course the bittersweet part of the novel. Is it really any so different than putting someone into a nursing home? She seemed content on it. Many would probably argue that people that get sent there are at the end of their "usefulness", despite being really alive. I'm still forming my thoughts on it.

>>21011990
No

>>21011990
I haven't read a long time.

>>21011990
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - 9.5
Siddhartha - 6
Catcher in the Rye - 7

>>21013232
He rapes his sister, Phoebe.

>>21011990
I'm going to assume that by "novels" you include literature that doesn't technically qualify as a novel in the strictest sense. I'm not a big fan of most 20th century novels, most are materialistic to an obscene degree.
Thus
>Beowulf
10/10
>The Fountainhead
11/10
>Kalevala
10/10.

The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea 9/10
Sun and Steel 10pl8/10pl8
Ulysses 8/10

>>21012002
fpbp

Dark Laughter, Sherwood Anderson 4/10
Soft Machine, Burroughs 5/10
Drowned World, Ballard 5/10

>>21014645
I like the meme I guess but I didn't really get that feel. It feels sorta like you have to be looking for it. Pretty much all of the other sexual stuff is blatantly alluded to or said. I don't like it bros.

>>21011990
>Slaughterhouse Five
7.7/10
>Dune
6.9/10 first time, 7.4 this time I've read it
>Dune Messiah
8.25/10 both first and second time

The Maimed by Ungar | 8/10
Short stories by Jamalzadeh | 9/10
Morphine by Bulgakov | 7/10

> zusak - the book thief
6/10 comfy, close to no substance
> beckett - malone dies
9/10 easily among the best i've ever read
> frisch - stiller
7/10 weird stuff, made me smile a few times, overall below expectations for the guy that wrote homo faber

>>21011990
>In the Miso Soup
>All the Pretty Horses
>The Warhammer novel about Skarsnik the goblin
I enjoyed all of them.

Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage:9/10

Krasznahorkai, Chasing Homer: 8/10 purely because Ive never read anything like it

Krasznahorkai, The Melancholy of Resistance:8/10

>>21011990
>Shadow of the Torturer
8/10
>Kratskog, historier og skitser
6/10
>What do you care what other people think?
7/10

>>21012568
mmmm Murakami, read anything else of his?

>>21011990
> 100 years of solitude
9/10 a bit schizo
> Jude the Obscure
8/10 typical Hardy but a bit schizo on the marriage institute
> Torrents of Spring
9/10 love Turgenev but he's a bit of a cuck

>>21012124
Stanley sounds like a faggot

women 7
ham on rye 8
hollywood 7
comfy filth, lots of laughs

>>21011990

>The Deluge: 6/10
>Roadside Picnic: 8/10
>Ascendance of a bookworm Part 4 Vol 8: anime/10

>>21012066
the savant goes mad and spends the rest of his life in the sekret club hospital

>>21014788
>I'm not a big fan of most 20th century novels, most are materialistic to an obscene degree.
>The Fountainhead
>11/10
Huh?

>>21011990
TBK
9/10

BNW
7/10

Dorian Gray
8/10

>>21016672
Are you aware of the meaning of the word "most"?

>>21012574
>>the way of kings
>1/10, i stopped reading after 70 pages
69 pages too many lmao.

>>21014808
based

>>21016167
How much time between first and second readings?

>>21017640
One year exactly.

>Starship Troopers
7.5/10 writing isn't terribly good but the ideas presented are fascinating and compelling
>Spy who came in from the cold
7/10 pretty good, not much to say otherwise
>Smiley's People
8/10 great ending to the Karla trilogy, very comfy

>>21017584
All of Rand's writing is the definition of "materialistic to an obscene degree"

I dont remember the last 3 books I read

>>21017859
Based alzheimers anon

>>21017858
The Fountainhead is all about WILL.

Stoner 8/10
The Master and Margarita 6/10
Fathers and Sons 7/10

>>21017867
In a completely materialistic sense.
I wanna know what things you've read and thought were obscenely materialistic, cause if objectivism doesn't fit that definition to a t, I don't know what does

>>21012566
This never came to me as an important question for my experience of the book. But on its own, it's interesting. She wasn't alive the way humans are. Probably more like a supernatural dog. Servile goodwill in the absence of even the slightest traces of resentment. Would be unbearable for any human to live that way, and while I initially thought those ideas were unimportant to the book, I realized that was Klara's ultimate purpose - to mechanize the unbearable aspects of human goodwill in order to move labor further away from human hands. The friction between Klara and the hired help (who was of course an immigrant) makes that aspect clearer. To make it clearer still, you wouldn't leave your caregiver in a landfill after you got better. But a machine, a product? No problem.

The bittersweetness of the ending is of course from anthropomorphizing Klara, but she really is a machine. Even the other characters still treat her as a machine in the end despite all their sympathies. And that's where it becomes dystopic, the only hope being that Klara was an old model. And so she likely wouldn't reach mass production. The image of leaving all these half-souls of pure goodwill in a garbage site, all having served their purpose of being man's spokesperson to God before being left to wander in their final days, bloodlessly and calmly going through all their hazing memories...

It's not so much that the goodwill in us makes our evil bearable. It's the other way around. In the absence of vindictiveness, anger, resentment - all the engines for self-protective violence, goodness looks unbearable. I can admire kindness from a person, as I know they resisted some capacity for evil or selfishness, and will soon return to caring for themselves. But kindness from a perfect machine? I hate it. I wish Klara had a shred of evil, or even just badness. Something about lacking that just feels elementally wrong. I wouldn't feel so bad about her state if she were a little selfish. Klara ought not to have existed, and Josie should have just died. The naturalness of her impending death and the unnaturalness/supernaturalness of her revival make more sense now. There's probably more here, but this explains some of my unease. There's something inhuman about not wanting more, accepting being left behind without a single complaint, fully completing a task and living only in memory afterwards. You just know that if you tried to offer Klara something at the end, she'd refuse and say thank you. Now, if God had sent her, I'd be more at ease. But if she were purely manmade, I'd be concerned.

>>21011990
>1984
classic 10/10
>Harrpy Potter
classic havent read it yet 10/!0
>Mistbourn l

>>21011990
>Tartar Steppe
3.5/5
>Sketches from a Hunter's Diary
5/5 loved it
>Kolyma Tales
4/5

>>21011990
Collected Fictions (Borges) 5/5
The Sound and The Fury 5/5
Lolita 4/5

Green Hills of Africa, Hemingway: 6/10, weaker Hemingway but the tremendous charisma of the man and his prose still carry it to "worth reading". Much more difficult, however, to relate to hunting parties shooting rhinos as a laudable act of sport and finesse today then when it was written.

Killing Commendatore, Murakami: 4/10, love Murakami but this is his most aimless and tedious work and the magical realism idiosyncrasies do not make up for it this time. Also the more Murakami you read, the more apparent his obsessions become and it all starts to seem like self-plagiarism. Did his wife leave him at some point, and was his response to sit in a hole somewhere for long periods of time?

The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea, Mishima: 9/10, fantastic translation and you can read it in an afternoon. Wonderful exploration of aesthetics from the perspective of a child, captures the precocious teen "brilliance" we all thought we had at one point, with the typical Mishima death-beauty-sex nexus inseparable and destructive.

>Guards! Guards! and Men at Arms - Pratchett
7/10. Good for giggles, reads very easily.
>Eden - Stanislaw Lem
3/10. Waste of time, writing is awful. Solaris was 7/10.
>Snow Crash - Stevenson
8/10, I enjoyed.

>>21016320
> zusak - the book thief
>6/10 comfy, close to no substance
Would you call it a kid's book? How does it compare to the Diary of Anne Frank?

>Adam Ehrlich Sachs - The Organs of Sense
kinda cracked, it's this book about leibnitz visiting an astronomer with no eyes to find out if he's insane and how he managed to predict an eclipse no one else did, and if it will happen. it ends up being stories within stories within stories with this whole ridiculous kafkaesque thing set at the emperor's court where the astronomer was when he was younger, he told leibitz, the narrator tells us. very funny, thoughtful at times, entertaining and worthwhile imo
>Jim Crace - Being Dead
this couple get murdered and the story traces
a) their bodies slowly and graphically disintegrating, and eventually being discovered
b) the day of the murder told backwards leading up to the murder
c) their first meeting, years ago in the same place
there is some really neat stuff in here, especially in a), he finds real poetry and beautiful imagery in decay and the nature involved. the rest of it i was a bit more eh on, but i appreciated that it was very unsparing and clear-eyed. insightful and interesting
>Max Porter - Lanny
these annoying english parents have an annoying kid who's this precocious little artsy shit who plays in the woods and sees the green man or whatever and he makes friends with this rural artist guy and then stuff happens. it's written in this over-stylistic manner with bits where OLD MAN TOOTHROT or whatever his name is is hearing the voices of the entire village which crisscross the page and it's actually a great and accurate depiction of english village life in my experience. i like how hallucinogenic it gets towards the end and the whole thing has a lot of heart and the impression the author is happy to experiment and do whatever in a way that feels very enjoyable and easy to read rather than being obfuscating

>>21017858
You either have no idea what materialism means or you have no idea what Rand wrote about mate.
The term "materialistic" is often misused as a sot of synonim for "greedy", or for those that desire material posessions. This is just one aspect of materialism. Materialism refers to all which is related to the material aspects of life, ie physical reality as it is, as opposed to the abstract and spiritual (the term "spiritual" not to be misunderstood as exclusively religious, it also includes morals and values). For example, Marx and Engels' theory on history was named "historical materialism" because it's history from the perspective of material social relationships (productive, economic, political).
Rand's books are not about "money good, rich people good, poor people bad", as people who haven't read Rand seem to often assume. The main character of Fountainhead openly rejects money, prestige and power whenever accepting those things would require him to compromise on his ideals. The point of the Fountainhead is that you should be true to yourself and stick to your own principles, it's fundamentally a story about abstract ideals, and not material matters.
Rand is very clear about her views on writing on the preface to the 25th anniversary reprint:
>Certain writers, of whom I am one, do not live, think or write on the range of the moment.
Novels, in the proper sense of the word, are not written to vanish in a month or a year. That
most of them do, today, that they are written and published as if they were magazines, to fade
as rapidly, is one of the sorriest aspects of today's literature, and one of the clearest
indictments of its dominant esthetic philosophy: concrete-bound, journalistic Naturalism which
has now reached its dead end in the inarticulate sounds of panic.
>Longevity-predominantly, though not exclusively-is the prerogative of a literary school which is
virtually non-existent today: Romanticism. This is not the place for a dissertation on the nature
of Romantic fiction, so let me state--for the record and for the benefit of those college students
who have never been allowed to discover it--only that Romanticism is the conceptual school of
art. It deals, not with the random trivia of the day, but with the timeless, fundamental, universal
problems and values of human existence. It does not record or photograph; it creates and
projects. It is concerned--in the words of Aristotle--not with things as they are, but with things
as they might be and ought to be.
>And for the benefit of those who consider relevance to one's own time as of crucial
importance, I will add, in regard to our age, that never has there been a time when men have
so desperately needed a projection of things as they ought to be.

>>21018079
Have you read Temple of the Golden Pavillion.

>The Confusions of Young Törleß
6/10
>Father Goriot
7/10
>Die Marquise von O./ Das Erdbeben in Chili
8/10

>>21017911
First of all, every single piece of Marxist literature ever. Including both Orthodox and Neomarxist.
Also American classics like Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, the great Gatsby or to kill a mockingbird; in Spanish, the writings of Roberto Arlt or Alejandro Casona.
Any novel which is just a recollection of a series of physical events with no trascendental, timeless purpose and meaning is materialistic by nature. Commentaries related to a specific time period or social context are dependent on it, and thus aren't abstract.

>>21012301
I just kind of pity you. Two of the greatest novels ever written and you can't appreciate them fully? Very sad.

>>21017867
>>21018177
Rand was a firm atheist whose ideology "Objectivism" was explicitly materialistic. This is basic information about the author. Thanks for shitting up /lit/ with your ignorance though.

>>21018327
Check out the wiki reader.

>>21018177
epic greentext fail

>>21018327
>Rand was a firm atheist
Yes. But understand the reasons behind her critique of religion. She opposes the belief in God because she, following Nietzsche, understands that religion, particularly the Abrahamic religions, seek to dominate and humiliate man, to strip man of his own beliefs and replace them with submission towards something which demands to be worshipped as absolutely superior to man.

""It is not the works, but the belief which is here decisive and determines the order of rank--to employ once more an old religious formula with a new and deeper meaning,--it is some fundamental certainty which a noble soul has about itself, something which is not to be sought, is not to be found, and perhaps, also, is not to be lost.--The noble soul has reverence for itself.--" (Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil.)"

>whose ideology "Objectivism" was explicitly materialistic.
Why?

>>21011990
>The Guermantes Way, volume II
3/10. Dogshit. Slog. Boring. Excruciatingly boring. 400 page dinner party with boring, stilted french upper class. Absolute dogshit. I hate Prost.
>Sodom and Gomorrah, volume I
Opens with a 80 page metaphor about how gay sex is like orchids. Dreadful, just absolutely dreadful. After that: more boring dinner parties. More catty faggot attitude in the french upper class. 2/10.
>Sodom and Gomorrah, volume II
Has 200 straight pages of fake etymology of proper nouns of fake French hamlets, woods and lakes. A very rare -200 out of 10.

Proust is absolute and complete fucking dogshit. The worst writer of all time, zero doubt about it. Retards who desperately try to justify the massive sunk cost they've put into reading this french homo-cuckold will insist that his run-on-run-on-run-on-run-on sentences are actually stylistically """bold""" and """mirrors""" how memory works, because that's what they gather that the books are about from the shitty adolescent essays Proust has sprinkled in every few hundred pages, but it is not bold, it is not interesting, it is not beautiful.

He is a favorite of anemic academics for writing 4000 pages about being a homosexual and being cuckolded, something anemic academics can relate to. They can freely brand him the greatest of all time, as no one in the entire world save anemic academics have slogged through the massive ritual of abject masochism it is to finish his works.

I have picked up a cocaine habit trying to power through this shit writer - only when my mind is completely caked in potent psychostimulants can I manage his torturously boring prose, his unrelentingly boring death march.

I fucking hate Proust, and I will fight anyone IRL who thinks he is not the shittiest writer of all time.

>>21011990
Behead All Satans 8.5/10
The Tainted Turd 7/10
Harassment Architecture bunkertroon/homosex

>>21011990

>Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas
8/10

>The Trial
6/10

>The Savage Detectives
10/10

>>21018380
What do you think about In Shadows of Blooming Young Ladies or however shitty name it is in english? I thought its really comfy from roughly half of novel to end when he is talking about hanging out with these 4 or 5 prime pussy. There were some sentences that really made me think and moved in how insightful and pretty they are. You at least like this part, right?

>>21018405
>>21018380
also run-on sentences depends on translation too. Boy-Zelenski for example simplified Proust style by for example shortening many of sentence structure, his work is much appreciated but also criticized from modern translator perspective

>>21018405
The first two volumes (Swann's Way and the one you're talking about) are among the greatest of all time, and that is the most mind-boggling thing of it all. The drop in aesthetic quality beginning with the Guermantes Way is obscene, impossible, unfathomable.

The main reason I still power through is that people tell me it turns as good again with The Fugitive and Time Regained, but I do not know if they can be trusted. At this point, I need it to turn good again. Should I reach the end without it having done so, I would surely delude myself to not go mad with the waste.

>>21011990
>Memory of Light
I liked the Last Battle but hated how lame the Dark One was and how cutely everything wrapped up
6/10
>Antkind
Very funny, reads almost like Douglas Adams with how zany it is.
8/10
>V.
The nosejob convinced me Pynchon is a genius but it just kept getting better. I will miss these characters.
9/10

>>21011990
>Outer Dark
7/10
>Dune
9/10
>Ender's Game
9/10

>>21018379
You mentioned earlier your own misunderstanding of the word "materialism". Materialism includes human thoughts and ideas, it simply rejects the divine or transcendental aspect. Therefore you can have pure human will, as well as human principles, while being firmly rooted in materialism, since the belief would be that will and principles are arising from the material cause of the human being itself.

>>21018486
>Materialism includes human thoughts and ideas
It includes *some* thoughts and ideas, those which are transient instead of transcendental. Trascendental ideas are by definiton immaterial and abstract.
>Therefore you can have pure human will, as well as human principles, while being firmly rooted in materialism
Yes you can, and that's how most people nowadays operate, but point still stands that it's not the only option.
It's is possible to live disregarding all material matters and focusing only on spiritual matters.

>>21012030
I came to this thread to say the same but in a less douchy way

>>21011990
>Inherent Vice
6/10 kind of overrated vs Pynchon's other stuff
>The Alchemist
3/10, cool setting but very little else of worth
>Cosmopolis
8/10, better than the movie

>>21018591
>better than the movie
I really enjoyed the movie, this sounds interesting. I've never dead any Delillo so maybe this is the place to start.

>>21011990
LOTR FOTR 6/10
Moby Dick 5/10 (im too stupid to get it)
The Odyssey 9/10

>>21018536
>transient instead of transcendental
Define the difference. Hell, materialism would even allow Jung's archetypes, just rooted in commonly shared biology among humans rather than some woo woo manifestation of a divine collective unconscious.

Also, suggesting Rand's work focuses on "spiritual matters" and not "material matters" is one of the funniest misreadings of an author I've ever seen.

the magus 8/10
winesburg ohio 9 or 10/10
the wallcreepe 6/10

>>21018658
>the magus 8/10
I just started this, I've heard it takes an odd turn part way through into weird psychoanalytical territory. If I hate Jung with a passion, am I likely to enjoy or hate the book later on?

Dune (Herbert): 4/5
Our Ancestors (Calvino): 3.5/5
- The Cloven Viscount: 4/5
- The Baron in the Trees: 3/5
- The Nonexistent Knight: 4/5
Perfume (Süskind): 4.5/5

>Hawthorne's Twice told tales
9/10 overall, very few stories were below 8/10
>Conrad's Youth, Typhoon, Shadow-Line
8 to 9/10
>The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
8.5/10

>>21012030
>>21018562
Finding fiction to be pointless or childish is one of the lesser known and inconsequential - but nonetheless surefire - clinical signs of autism.
Good luck and have fun with your monotone voices and spastic hands.

>>21018626
I felt like the first half of the movie was really slow but loved the second half. The first half of the book was more enjoyable since we get insights into Packer’s stream-of-consciousness moving things along. The end of the film is incredible, though, Paul Giamatti’s performance especially. Cosmo was my first DeLillo book and I’m now reading Underworld.

>>21018380
pasta?

>>21018639
You are the one assuming she wrote about property, money or power when in fact she wrote about metaethics and the importance of the human spirit.
>Define the difference
Temporary, circumstancial vs Eternal.
"I want to buy the newest smartphone model because it's shiny and cool and I'll be able to brag about it to all my friends" is a materialistic thought, "Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears" isn't.

>>21019177
>Eternal
Human beings, and, indeed, the human race as a whole are not eternal. You fall into the trap of assuming materialism is equivalent to hardware but not software. Your computer is entirely material, and it is composed of both hardware, and also software which directs the flow of energy and information. You can't just claim that since software transcends the hardware and has manifold applications across many generations of hardware that somehow makes the software "spiritual" or "non-materialistic". That's just retarded.

>>21011990
>The Sword and the Helix
7/10
>Foucault's Pendulum
8/10
>The Glass Hotel
7/10

>>21019224
>Human beings, and, indeed, the human race as a whole are not eternal
Certainly not the human body, but there are topics interesting to the human intellect which are indeed eternal, and ethics is one of them. What is truly good has always been good and will always be good, everywhere and anywhere.
Desires can correspond to physical needs (water, food, sleep, etc...) or social needs (prestige, power, companionship, etc...) and those are temporary in nature, but there are desires which are abstracted from any particular physical context. The final act of the Fountainhead is about letting go of any desire of control over others, and to pursue creation for the sake of creation itself, and not as a means to something else.

>>21019282
>What is truly good has always been good and will always be good, everywhere and anywhere.
False. The presence of a conscious mind is required to evaluate what is good and what is bad based on what is valuable to that mind. Since human minds are finite, what is good or not ceases to be such when conscious minds are absent.

>>21019296
>The presence of a conscious mind is required to evaluate what is good and what is bad
"If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"
When does a thing that is judged as evil by a human mind actually become "evil"? Was it already evil before being judged or only afterwards?
Is the concept of "evil" just the opinion of the beholder or an intrinsic quality of the object being judged? The former position is moral relativism, which degrades the concept of morality into a mere subjective appreciation which could be wrong.

>>21011990
From most recent to least
The sun also rises 9/10
Solaris 9/10
American Psycho 9/10
I'm easy to please

>>21011990
>houses of leaves.
8/10 don't let people over hype it to you but it's still a solid book.

>Tales from the gas station
7/10 It was a cool concept and interesting exploration of excepting the unknown and terrify reality around you, but it was written by some one who uses reddit.

>can't remember what I read specifically before these two.

>Nabakov - Despair
5/10. Parts were funny, but the writing is outright obnoxious. I don’t know why I decided to start here with Nabakov. Even his leading biographer doesn’t think much of this story.

>Dan Simmons - Carrion Comfort
6/10. The first two-thirds were Stephen King tier comfy horror novel, then it goes off the rails for 250 extra pages.

>Flann O’Brien - The Third Policeman
8/10. Hilarious. Absolutely absurd with tons of fake science gobbledygook that could almost be believable. Would recommend to anyone.

>Henry James - Wings of the Dove
Not my favorite James...I prefer his early novels, up to the Bostonians. I would say Wings is better than The Golden Bowl however, which is really too much for me. But it's still always enjoyable to read his ridiculous phrase construction. James seems to have gotten increasingly depressed throughout his life, the late novels have much less comedy and what comedy there is always feels kind of sad or even at times unpleasant. The early european novels are brimming with an almost mystical love for life despite all the bad stuff happening. Confidence, Roderick Hudson, and Portrait of a Lady are the standout early European novels imo. If you like more experimental modernist stuff then the Wings, Ambassadors, GB trio will be more enjoyable to you though as that's where he goes all out with the prose style and endless psychological analysis.

>Quentin Skinner - the Foundations of Modern Political Thought - Volume 1: The Renaissance
I dont really have the knowledge to assess history, but I liked the way he framed the relation between political ideas and the social structures in which they exist(and which they partly determine). Learned some new things about the renaissance and late medieval. It does seem that the renaissance is a bit of a meme and wasnt really that marked a departure. This guy seems to be saying the big change was that the cities of Italy had started asserting more independence from feudal lords and from the papacy, electing consulars to govern them, but this was something of a long gradual process. These cities were doing stuff like this back in the 12th century it seems and the renaissance marked a kind of preponderance of these conditions. Anyway I recommend this book, and will check out the later volumes.

>Selected poems by Vasko Popa (in english translation)
I prefer the rougher more amateur ones, eg the first one in pic related rather than his more distinctive style he developed later. He is not bad but he is not quite first rate either I dont think. Perhaps in Romanian he is better, but the strength of the images doesnt translate here the way it does for someone like Trakl. I am not judging the lyricism obviously as it's a translation.

I just noticed your OP post says novels, not books in general, but I've already written the entire post so I'm just going to submit it.

1. Station Eleven - 7/10 - I liked that it's a post-apocalyptic story whose focus isn't solely a crude rendering of contemporary political thought. This one cares more about spending time with its people and fleshing them out. I hate that it has that 'everything is connected' shtick to it though.
The Thief - Fuminori Nakamura 8/10 - I'm a sucker for noir and for hustler stories (in this case, pickpockets). The writing is spare, it's worldview is existential, and it's breezy but thought-inducing. It's a good blend of literary and genre fiction
Devil in the White City -Erik Larson-5/10 - this shit is boring. The alternating structure is cool, but the life of Burnham is much less interesting than the life of Holmes, and even the way he writes about Holmes dances around the murders, saying things like "and them he met a girl, and she DISAPPEARED, but mysteriously, she left all her belongings".

>>21011990
Book of the new sun
Very good

>>21019351
It only "degrades" it, /in your opinion/. There simply is not an objective evil, the closest you can get is something intrinsically "bad" like pain, which has evolved for the express purpose of giving information to the brain to inform it of something negative happening. External to conscious systems, there is no such thing as evil and good.

>>21019009
Nope, my honest opinion, fueled by cocaine and hatred.

>>21011990
>Women in Love by DH Lawrence
7/10. I liked it but it wasn’t as good as Sons and Lovers, or The Rainbow. Still worthwhile
>Tropic Of Cancer by Henry Miller
10/10. One of my favorite books. I reread it a couple times a year
>The Road by McCarthy
9/10.I’ve read it a couple times before and I’ve read most of his books and this is still my favorite, even if it’s an Oprah book club book. I don’t base my opinions on what others like. McCarthy still has the issue of sounding like a caricature of himself now and then but he is one of the best at creating an ambiance. The sparse and bleak style is perfect for the book

Rings of Saturn, Sebald - 8.5/10
A Scanner Darkly, Dick - 9/10
Black Wings has my Angel, Chaze - 9.0/10

Been a good little run.

>>21018423
You don’t like 100 page dinner parties and bakers with nice bums?

>>21018380

My friend, your passion has inspired me to never touch Proust. Thank you.

Do be careful in the snow.

The Lucifer Principle: 5
The Great Gatsby: 4
The Catcher in the rye: 3

>>21020937
This is out of 5 by the way

>>21011990
Read these three, didn't like any of 'em.

>>21018122

i'd consider it young adult fiction. no comparison to anne frank, wich is not even close to comfy.

>>21018278

törleß was a really fun read, back in highschool. why didn't you like it?

>>21018662
keep reading. the book itself isn't psychoanalytical, there's only a character who, about 400 pages in, will claim to be a psychoanalytically oriented psychiatrist and use psychoanalytical jargon. but it's closer to parody than to being an endorsement of analysis

>9/10
>8/10
>5/10
>4/10
>3/10
>1/10
The Reign of Quantity

>>21021309
But those numbers refer to quality.

>>21016429
The title is meant to be provacative. What he's says is that you can't escape implicit assumptions, right or wrong, when talking about free speech. "Zero regulation" means some are less free to speak de-facto, regardless of if such a policy would ensure that the largest number of people have free speech. It's an "I'm smarter than you" centrist book, so comes with the territory. He's right though I would say.

>>21012030
Technically, omitting the comma after "novels" changes the meaning, but I know what you intended to say.

>>21012060
I'll have a look at that Conan Doyle. I like his other stuff. But that looks a bit different. I hope it has ADVENTURE and not just Little Women-style social gossip.

>>21021317

the numbers don't. the meaning that you award them does, retard.

Breakfast of Champions - Pretty good, classic as far as I'm concerned. Kind of falls flat with its messaging, seems a bit all over the place, but very enjoyable. Vonnegut at his finest.

Don Quixote - had to do it. Never read it before and it's about time. I also don't typically read really old stuff. Don Quixote was surprisingly enjoyable, it's striking to me how much it reads like a book that is would be considered a milestone even today. It's such a clean and illuminating examination of delusions of grandeur, really surprised me, totally surpassed my expectations.

Myth Directions - I like to explore and go on walks and walk into offices and make myself a coffee, I like to treat life like a really immersive open world game, anyway, in my adventures I came across this community hall and they had shelves and shelves of books and I'm like "are these free?" And they're like "yes! For the love of God please take them!". I found a few cool things, Grays anatomy, some coffee table book called "from zero to infinity" that looks pretty sweet, and a bunch of l Ron Hubbard books, including Dianetics. Anyway, I saw this pulpy thing called "Myth Directions" and it fucking spoke to me. I read it over, maybe, six hours and by the end was like "oh, that was lovely". It was obviously some serial so I didn't have a lot of context, but the author made it work for me regardless. I'm fairly certain it's from the seventies or eighties. I love pulp like that, especially really old readers digest stuff. It's not exactly high culture, but it's a bit like McDonald's, just a fun little treat best enjoyed in moderation.

>>21018122
I think Guards! Guards — Men at Arms — Feet of Clay is the high point of the Discworld series.

They say Lem loses in translation, but who knows? I find him a bit annoying too. It's all just ideas plus sarcasm. There's no LOVE there.

>>21012301
War & Peace will grow on you. As the years go by you will be gladder and gladder you read it.

>>21020001
First time I've seen someone mentioning Popa. I was surprised, reading him, how much Ted Hughes borrowed (stole) from him for Crow.

>>21021348
>cope
0/10
meaning: it's weak

>>21014808
If you like The Sailor, you might like this interview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khZssAUb5lQ

>>21021348
>>21021369

Technically he is correct, Anon.
Both retards anyway, I rate them 5/7.

>>21021130
Not sure. The prose wasn't good, it wasn't very insightful or entertaining. I read it in German btw.

>>21011990
Does "read" include "re-read?" Let's assume not.

— The Enormous Room (e. e. cummings)
Autobiographical account of his internment in France during WWI. Not bad. Like Dostoevsky, he encounters in prison some of the worst of humanity and some of the very best.

— Shogun (James Clavell)
About as good as a trash novel can be. Clavell obviously both loved and hated the Japanese, but I think the former emotion prevailed. (He was a POW there in WW2.)

— The Decameron (Boccaccio)
I'd read bits before this was systematic. Lots of good stories; some not so good. Surprising how familiar it seems after reading Dante — all the same places, landmarks, people, families, etc. It's one of those books that you read and say, oh, so X stole that from here! I've heard many contemporary comedians reworking his jokes.

>>21020930
>My friend, your passion has inspired me to never touch Proust. Thank you.
Hahaha. A more interesting question:

Have you ever read a review that praises a book in such a way you think "I am NEVER going to read that"?

And have you ever read a fiercely critical review which leaves you thinking "that sounds GREAT"?

>>21018380
When your older anon.

>>21011990
Genealogy of Morality
Beyond Good and Evil
Nietzsche and Asian Thought

Genealogy is better than BGE
Asian thought was kind of interesting and will explore some areas in the future, particularly Zen and general Brahmin shit

>>21021427
good for you fellow Nietzsche appreciator, but OP asked for novels, and none of those are novels

Fishing in the good old days, Bob Kearney - great read, informative and entertaining.
Never let me go, Kazuo Ishiguro - Dramatically lethargic.
Mythos, Stephen Fry - Enjoyably pompous.

>>21021358
>I think Guards! Guards — Men at Arms — Feet of Clay is the high point of the Discworld series.
Yesterday finished Equal Rites (1st witches), it was ok, a simple fantasy story. Didn't inspire me to plunge into Wizards or Witches, but it's too early to judge. Will try some Death next.

>They say Lem loses in translation, but who knows? I find him a bit annoying too. It's all just ideas plus sarcasm. There's no LOVE there.
It's not translation at all. I read it in Ukrainian and compared some parts with the original (don't know Polish at all, but it's similar enough for me to understand). Eden was his 1st or 2nd novel. His writing skill hadn't developed yet, I guess. Sentences are dull, everything is a description, characters are superficial and secondary. It felt very amateurish. Solaris was written a couple of years later and was much better (if we ignore the awkward backstory retelling).