/lit/ - Literature

1Q84.

I wanted a light read about love and cats and cutesy shit, and got precisely what I wanted. Murakami delivers again.

Also Freedom. I am liking it a lot more than I thought I would, because Franzen seems like an insufferable asshole in interviews, and I was scared he would be preachy about the environment.

Not fiction, but I think I might either get that newish Joan Didion joint for Christmas or steal my mom's copy after she inevitably gets it herself. I haven't heard great things about it, but still. Elsewhere in Old White Lady of American Letters Grief news, I have a curiosity that might legitimately be termed morbid re JCO's memoir of her husband's death even though I've never been a huge fan. I'm probably going to pick up Danielle Evans' Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self despite reading the first story and not being terribly impressed because I just spotted a couple of remaindered hardcover copies for $4.98 at Barnes and Noble - a couple of good friends of mine really raved about it

>>2229358
>thinks anything worthwhile has been published in America since the 70s
>how cute

>>2229358
I've been reading about, among other things, why contemporary fiction is so lacking.

Just finished All Things Shining by Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly, and it was superb.

>>2229369
>probably doesn't know where to look for good contemporary books
>doesn't have college professors to tell him what is good and what isn't for contemporary stuff

Protip: the good stuff is not the stuff the hipsters talk about

>>2229369
Was it about how the amount of lacking literature these days is precisely equal to that of previous years, and how only the great books are remembered and so there is the illusion that every single book written in any time period previous to now was automatically fucking great and infallible without regarding the irrefutable fact that there were a metric ton of bad books written back then that just haven't stood the test of time, and there is an idea that idiots and falls subscribe to because they have to endure the bad literature that gains exposure today but won't be remembered in two years and they lack the foresight to see it?

If not, your books may be terrible.

>>2229369
Did you ever read Elif Batuman's thing about MFA programs/culture? http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n18/elif-batuman/get-a-real-degree

The Possessed would be the perfect stocking stuffer for /lit/ Russophiles if they weren't all low-level misogynists

>>2229365
Evans writes decent short fiction, but she's not very consistent. She has a couple of fantastic stories but also a ton of crap. There are better short story writers out there right now. Johnson and Chaon are good examples.

>>2229358
fuck yes. johnsonfags unite!

>>2229378
List them.

>>2229382
I'm sorry, no. It was more my judgment call on y part. Their main example of contemporary lit was David Foster Wallace, and they were rather respectful actually. Its a good philosophy/sociology book for those into literature.

>>2229384
Nop.

My recent reads:

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
World War Z
A Short History of Nearly Everything

>>2229378
List them.

>>2229382
I'm sorry, no. It was more a judgment call on my part. Their main example of contemporary lit was David Foster Wallace, and they were rather respectful actually. Its a good philosophy/sociology book for those into literature.

>>2229384
Nop.

I recently read some of Liliana Ursu and Zoran Zivkovic's work and really enjoyed both. The former is a poetry collection concerning isolation and alienation (from Ursu's time in America), and the later is a collection of interconnected magical realism short stories.

Also planning to start up Olga Tokarczuk's Primeval and Other Times soon too, as well as crack open the Wislawa Szymborska poetry collection I have.