/lit/ - Literature

>>21049261
Wrong

>>21049261
Peake can’t write for shit.

>>21049261
The Bible

bible comment is based

>>21049261
Spring Snow

>>21049261
The stranger , Frankenstein, persuasion, book lovers, a room with a view, nausea, the unbearable lightness of being (the worst book ever), we were liars, man’s search for meaning.

>>21049261
How can you not like the last few pages of this gem ?

Phenomenal premise, but at least in translation it just doesn't deliver. Similar story with Dictionary of the Khazars.

>>21050034
I liked it. Pilate story was compelling and Satan & co antics were amusing. I just didn't really understand what it was trying to say.

>>21049561
why is unbearable lightness the worst book ever

>>21049261
For me it's Atlas Shrugged or East of Eden or The Great Gatsby.
Not horrible books, but horribly overrated.

>>21050180
It simply is

>>21049261
OP=filtered

>>21049339
You have to be at least 18 to post here, kiddo.

>>21050180
Honestly Kundera kinda sucks, and that’s his best novel. Lightness is fun when you’re 15 and just getting into literature but if you read it as an adult it’s unbearable no pun intended. The only worthwhile book he produced is The Art of the Novel

>>21049261
Siddhartha.
Stoner. It didn't really suck but it was just underwhelming. That may be the point but I'm not really gonna feel better about it.

>>21052609
Oof. Seek enlightenment anon

>>21052637
Elaborate.

>>21052647
To even think of Siddhartha in terms of merit suggests it didn’t resonate with you, its one of the few books of the 20th century where the author speaks truthfully from his heart with no designs on impressing critics or making a profound literary statement. What did you not like about it? There are very few works like it

>>21052668
I didn't take the time period into account when reading it, really. I would just assume authors of books I've read so far have not cared about impressing critics or making statements in general. It's not really that I didn't like it so much. It was just, for lack of better words, "meh" as a read to me. I'm used to reading things where even if almost nothing happens I still feel like it was nice to experience. It just kinda came and went for me.

On the other note, nothing regarding Buddhism or really resonates with me, I don't mind the "free from desire" bit of it but "escaping samsara cycle" seems like nonsense when struggle feels like the only reason to live. It's really just bare bones, nothing about the prose or characters or plot stuck out to me. It honestly feels like I've read it before, it seems like a generic Buddhist journey. Maybe just because other things base themselves on it or make references to it.

>>21049261
>>21049561
>>21050034
>>21051619
>>21050374

ITT: Kids who don't understand 20th century literature and/or have difficulty putting those works into context.

>>21052687
I think you have misinterpreted the book, perhaps you had preconceptions built going into it that dominated how you read the narrative.

It could not be further from a generic Buddhist journey, in fact the whole of the second part is devoted to deconstructing what would be a traditional path to enlightenment. Pay particular attention to the part at the river, when Siddhartha is reflecting on his own life and later when Govinda visits him when they are both old men.

>>21052698
Some of them are accurate desu, The Stranger is high school philosophy and Lolita is le reddit gold tier masterpiece XD
Putting Atlas Shrugged, Frankenstein, and Steinbeck in a list of overrated lit is stupid though for each of those authors get plenty of negative criticism

>>21049261
>I did not care for The Recognitions, Gravity’s Rainbow, Ulysses, Infinite Jest and Henry James

Dune and Starship Troopers.

There. I said it.

>>21049261

>>21049261
Most books of Albert Camus.
What a fraud.

Bible
Quran

One Hundred Years of Solitude
2666
Absalom, Absalom
Love in the time of Cholera
Atlas Shrugged
The God of Small Things

>>21050052
Mild spoilers.

For the most part it’s a satire of the Soviet Union and its unbending commitment to atheism. The citizens in the book will repeatedly explain away supernatural phenomenon with a hard-to-believe natural explanation. That is, they are willing to take leaps of faith to maintain their insistence on atheism, however irrational.

A second big message is censorship. I think it’s pretty obvious that Bulgakov associates himself with the Master. There is a lot of subtext too of the Soviet Union censoring/controlling people. E.g., people just “disappearing” (being taken out by the police).

I think the other big message is the ambiguity of evil. The book presents the devil as a type of evil that is hard to understand. The devil typically doesn’t come to innocent people and fuck up their lives. He comes to guilty people and exploits their pre-existing vices to destroy them. The devil also does good for Margarita and the Master in the end.

Not trying to preach at you, this is just what I got out of it. Curious if anyone else has any thoughts, for or against mine.

>>21049261
The Scarlett Letter

>>21052778
I've never got on with those big post-modern doorstoppers.
Butter scraped over too much bread, and never as funny as they want to be.

>>21049561
Hahah I’m glad to see someone else who feels the same way as I do about the unbearable lightness (the worst book ever). I think the alchemist is another good candidate for worst book ever

>>21053900
Only someone dumb to let himself get convinced by /pol/tards that Atlas Shrugged was good is dumb enough to not see the genius in 2666

>>21053985
>I think the alchemist is another good candidate for worst book ever
agreed, but this thread is about overrated books, not the worst books ever.

>>21049328
filtered

>>21049261

>>21053985
Wow I’m so happy to see someone who hates the unbearable lightness of being as much as i do bc everyone seems to love iit

>>21052698
Wow you’re so smart

>>21050034
I don't know what you mean, Dick of Khazars was brilliant

>>21051605
>>21052274
Why, though

>>21054774
You wanna kiss me so bad

>>21054774
nta, but I think the whole Parmenid-Nietzsche contraposition Kundera tries to draw is forced and shallow.
A lot of Nietzsche's more poetic lines depict "lightness" as a positive. I don't recall where he calls eternal return "the heaviest burden", but I do remember him saying he "didn't believe in any God who couldn't dance" and "Away from me, spirits of heaviness" when talking about elevated souls (elevated as in: living at the top of a fucking Swiss mountain).
The transformations of the spirit in Zarathustra are also turning from a camel who carries a "heavy load" (conventional slave morality) into a lion, then a child, who's purely self-centered but innocent.

>>21054327
You haven’t read the book.

>>21049339

Heart of darkness. It's quite possible that I'm just a retard though .

This fucking piece of shit.
It's my dad's favourite book so I dragged myself through the whole thing but I've honestly never hated a book so much in my life. The beginning is pretty good, the end is okay, but most of the middle made me want to slam my head in the refrigerator door until blood came out my ears.

>>21050374
Second The Great Gatsby. Literally nothing interesting happens until almost the end and the prose is nowhere near good enough to carry it.
East of Eden is good though. Not Steinbeck's best, but I wouldn't call it overrated.
Lit-snobs hating on Atlas Shrugged is a meme at this point so I'm also not sure I'd call it overrated. Overrated by ancaps perhaps.

>>21049261
Margaret Atwood novels.
>>21053992
>/pol/tards

>>21049261
House of Leaves, Gravity's Rainbow and Infinite Jest. All of those turned out to be a complete and utter shit, pretentious and disgustingly dense, based on the authors' life experiences and their filthy coomer thoughts. Disgusting and not worth to be read. Same about Stokoe, Delaney, Burroughs and Poppy Z. Brite - all their works are incredibly degenerate.

>>21056254
You are. No doubt there.

>>21056665

>>21056665
what a fucking faggot post

>>21053784
Why is the god emperor a vagina penis?

>>21050374
Gatsby sucked. Glad someone else agrees.

>>21049261
Every book I've read. They didn't suck but they were all overrated.

>>21054374
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PtcuXQT7R6A

>>21056254
I read it translated and even so I thought it was great

>>21049261
I am Sorry your tiny peanut brain could not comprehend things more complex than "green eggs and ham".Z8S

>>21057111
Lmao sick burn Albert

>>21049339
>most read book in the world
>best selling book of all time
>sucks
It's probably more of a "you" problem

Catch-22
Collapse, Jared Diamond

>>21057705
Quotations of chairman mao is the second most read book in the world, don’t see daily threads about that one
Third is the Quran if anyone was wondering

>>21049339
I can't say it's fun to read, but it's pretty damn important.

>>21049261

The myth of sisyphus

it's just forgettable boring poetic nonsense. i'll never read another albert camus book because of it

>>21056807
Because worms are hermaphrodites

anything by kierkegaard
anything by albert camus
anything by hegel
anything by kant

i think philosophy outside of ancient greek philosophy is trash

>>21049261
Steppenwolf

>>21057844
I regret the time I spent reading this piece of shit

>>21056687
What a fucking faggot you are, little fella

>>21057844
true

>>21053856
>Infinite Jest is higher than:
>The Odyssey
>Don Quixote
>War and Peace
>Hamlet
>The Republic
>Ulysses

This board is so retarded lmao

>>21056665
If someone says they like House of Leaves I immediately disregard all of their opinions on literature

>>21053856
Mein Kampf ? 30 ? Really?

>>21049302
fpbp

>>21059084
No one here reads.

>>21057705
>>21049339
the bible is like 100 different books written by 200 different people

>>21049261
Early Hawthorne, from the collection of essential short stories only The Scarlet Letter and Ethan Brand were passable, everything older than that is just pulp tier horror and not even particularly spoopy. No idea what did Melville see in him.
But I liked The Scarlet Letter and Ethan Brand well enough, are his other romances worth reading?

Slaughterhouse-Five. I don't see where the praise comes from with that book.

>>21050374
>Atlas Shrugged

People either love it or despise it. I would say it is neither overrated or underrated. It’s simply… Rated.

>>21049261
Culture Of Narcissism. pretty unpopular opinion, but his writing is so fucking dry and boring.

>>21056685
thanks for the wolf pic anon

>>21061034
I tried a bit but Vonnegut's prose is slow moving and scattered and hard to follow

>>21062323
Who cares about prose?

>>21049261
filtered

>>21061034
I agree only in that it seems to more well-known than Cat's Cradle despite Cat's Cradle being objectively better.

>>21049261
the castle

>>21049261
Agreed. It felt like a poor man's Kafka but without the weird stuff. The only reason I read it was that it thankfully was very short.

Everything written by Nabokov. I think the only book of his I did not drop part of the way through was Lolita and that was bad too.

>>21060957
I can see how it seemed good 100 years ago but it absolutely doesn't hold up.

>>21062574
Non autistic people