/lit/ - Literature

bump

>>22552377
I've read nothing aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

>>22552520
why not anon

>favorite reads of 2033

Snow Country
Bartleby the Scrivener
Benito Cereno
The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Blacktongue Thief
Pedro Paramo
Wildlife in North America
Akenfield
The Stonemason by Cormac McCarthy
The Passenger
Nobody Move
Papillon
The Sea Wolf
Sailing Alone Around the World
The Hamlet by William Faulkner

>>22552524
Everything zooms past my head, and especially after work, I don't even want to open any of my devices. No, I don't buy physical books but maybe I should start now.

My favorites:
Lovecraft - Dagon and Other Macabre Tales
Moers - Die Insel der Tausend Leuchttürme
Stifter - Studies
Peake - Boy in Darkness + Titus Alone
Wieland - Story of Agathon
Tieck - The Scarecrow
Gilman - The Yellow Wallpaper

This is everything I've given 5 and 4 ratings, in order of how much I enjoyed them

>>22552807
based lowwit

>>22552807
??

>>22552807
I want to see the whole list.

>>22552816
Thank you
>>22552913
It's what I've read this year
>>22552929
Here you go

>>22552729
>No, I don't buy physical books but maybe I should start now.
you really should anon, that's the only way I can read books after a long day of waging in front of a computer screen, no way I'm picking up a kindle to read at home and further strain my eyes.

>>22552377
I've spent the whole year reading picrel, it's like 2 million words and approximately 2 400 pages long.
webnovels are by no means high brow literature but this is by far the best time loop story I've ever come across, you won't find anything better than this in the genre

>>22552950
Yeah, I think I might need to. I previously thought only retards buy physical books but work sucks you dry in front of the screen. I don't want look at any device after work.

>>22552377
+Kavan, +Buzzati, good shit, been meaning to read both of those authors and specifically, those novels by those authors

>>22552377
>The tartar steppe
This novel unironically changed my life, it needs more recognition in /lit/

This has been my favorite so far. Not really horror, more like extreme anxiety/frustration. The late author's husband wrote an afterword where he compares the events in the story to Trump's presidency, which is the most retarded take ever. I guess the past few years have really cooked people's brains. Great book though.

>>22553184
>The late author's husband wrote an afterword where he compares the events in the story to Trump's presidency
why do people feel the need to tarnish their departed loved one's legacy like this? same with the Dune faggot who keeps milking his father's franchise
do they have no shame or what

>>22552377
Also read Ice this year, it was quite good and amazing with mood but some of her language use irks me. The bulk of the language seems very well and deliberately crafted but there are those odd phrases like 'shapeless shape' where it stumbles, feels like it was a place holder which she meant to change later but then forgot. The implied contradiction/negation is not exploited in anyway. Still worth a read and will reread it at some point.

>>22552377
Books Ive enjoyed most
>Kingdom of this World- Alejo Carpentier
>True Believer - Eric Hoffer
>The Duel - Chekov
>Stella Marris - corn cob
>Unbearable Lightness of Being - Kundera

>>22552377
So far, everything I’ve read by Stanislaw Lem (I wish I’d learned of him earlier) and Forrest Gump. In the not so enjoyable category: The Flounder by Gunter Grass and The World According to Garp by John Irving. Currently reading Seven Years in Tibet by Heinrich Herrer (so it’s decent) and rereading the collected works of Plato (which I always enjoy). Feel free to bully

>>22553721
Lmao im not going to direspect your boomer dad taste but how the fuck does one read that stuff and then hop over to Plato

>>22553721
What was not enjoyable about The Flounder?

>>22553802
I’m old my young friend. If you’re “lucky” you’ll also eventually have to get up three times a night to pee

>>22553879
Boring and blatantly trying to appeal to the “zeitgeist” emerging at the time, namely that women would somehow do a better job of running the world because they just would, ok? It’s pretty clear how he won his Nobel prize in lit. Many such cases I’m afraid

>>22553925
He is celebrating the differences between men and women and the way men have celebrated that difference in the past, it is not about one being better then they other. He does not say they would be better at running things and actually says they have done nothing to avoid the horrors or life, in his own words:
>The Flounder is about women and food, but it is also about women and war, including what women have done against war – unfortunately, mostly silence."
Might be time for you to get off 4chan.

>>22553967
Go to bed Gunther. Seriously though, I thought it was ok but certainly not Nobel worthy and in retrospect not worth my time to read. The most interesting parts were the digressions into the local cuisine, and we’re taking about German cuisine, so … yeah

>>22553994
The Nobel is not given for a single work but the authors body of work. Really showing your inability to grasp context here but you already demonstrated that.

Also, if you really have to get up to pee 3 times a night you probably want to see a proctologist about that unless you are like 80.

>>22552949
are you an autistic woman?

>>22554008
Boy are you in for a rude awakening (or rather several a night). Post some of his other works that you’d recommend or, better yet, post your most and least favourite reads so far this year. I dare you

>>22554009
I'm a man but I have a ton of emotional and mental problems. I may also have some sort of undiagnosed behavioral disorder. I've been in therapy and on medication for over a decade

>>22554013
I have not read anything by Grass other than The Flounder but I was not defending him, just pointing out that you do not know what the Nobel is awarded for or what context is. Also, not exactly a spring chicken myself and my 76 year old father has no issues sleeping through the night, thankfully, he just spent 2 weeks with me and I am so accustomed to my solitude that every noise from someone in my home wakes me up, he woke up maybe three times in the entire 2 weeks to pee, all on the nights we put away a fair amount of beer and went to bed drunk. My house is only 800 square feet so I am not isolated from other people spending the night, every noise made by a person in my home wakes me.

>>22554061
Forgot to mention that I already posted my favorites of the year, >>22553648. Have had a pretty good year aned my least favorites were things like Ice which were still quite good despite their flaws.

I've read 0 books this year

>>22552377
L'Etranger

+Paul Celane
>>22553048
the most based chart itt

Nice thread, too bad I don't read so I can't take part in it, I'll now go back to the ecelebs thread.

>american psycho
>the crying of lot 49
>fear and loathing in Las Vegas
>the great gatsby
>my struggle 1&2 (knausgarrd)
>swing your sword (leach)
>Bobby Fischer vs the rest of the world
>Bobby Fischer goes to War
>John Lennon the life (Norman)
>snl backstage history (1985?)
>based on a true story (norm)
>happy slapped by a jelly fish
>a confession (Tolstoy)

Read some other that were unremarkable. I would recommend all of the books i listed above.

>>22552956
I second this but you should probably post it in /sffg/, no one outside of there is interested in webnovels

Just started reading this year, hence the meme reads

Recs welcome

>>22554014
I wish you well anon, but tell me: why do you read? Wouldn't someone like you enjoy other mediums a lot more? I only ask because all my local bookstores are flooded with the type of stuff you read, and I struggle to understand the value people derive from it.

Pic related +
Piercing - Ryu Murakami
And the hippos were boiled in their tanks - William Burroughs & Jack Kerouac
The sailor who fell from grace with the sea - Mishima
Bright lights, Big city - Jay McInerney

I read a lot this year but these are the only works that really engaged me deeply.

>>22552526
I asked you about Akenfield and Sailing alone around the world the other day but I didn't get a chance to thank you for your response because the thread 404d, so I'll thank you now instead. Actually picked up Akenfield based on your rec

>>22552377
test

!

>>22556915
Cool.
Cheers anon.

>>22552377
I don’t keep track of what I read in a calendar year but it’s been a great year reading-wise. I’ve done like 50% rereads of my favorite books so that helps

>>22557846
post some books then, friendo

>>22552750
Is it gay to see a giant dick in the tumbnail?

>>22556925
Samefag.
>>22557846
No one cares if you did not literally read them this year, it is just a way to find new books and maybe have some discussion and not have it be the same books everyone posts over and over.
>>22557955
Not on its own but combined with asking if it was gay is very gay. You are probably gay.

>>22555592
kek

>>22554061
NTA, but may I ask your age and job? It’s just weird how eerily similar your life is to mine based on what you wrote. Like the exact same shit except my dad’s a little younger and my house is smaller. Feels like truman show shit

Top 5 so far this year:
The Testament of Mary - Colm Toibin
All One Breath - John Burnside
River - Ted Hughes
The Early Stories - John Updike
A Sleepwalk on The Severn - Alice Oswald

>>22557880
>>22557984
A few books I read this year that i really liked which don’t get a ton of traction here

Niels Lyhne by Jacobsen
I-Ching
Classical Chinese poetry
The Revolt of the Masses by Gasset
The Waste Books by Lichtenberg
The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert
Maxims by La Rochefoucauld
Essays by Edmund Wilson
Paris Spleen by Baudelaire
Juvenal
Martial
Lucian
Seneca
Dostoyevsky:A Writer in his Time by Franks
Nightwood by Barnes
The Diary of Nijinsky
Herodotus
Born Under Saturn by Wittkower

My favourite books so far this year:
Empty Seahsell by Nils Bubandt
Un Semaine Du Bont by Max Ernst
The Mole People by Jennifer Toth
Pan by Knut Hamsun
The Eighth Tower by John Keel
Resonance of Unseen Things by Susan Lepselter
Users Guide to the Millenium by J.G Ballard

>>22552377
What did you think of Ice? One of my favourite books ever probably

>>22553184
I've wanted to read this for years but can't find a copy for sale

>>22556373
Im interested what someone who just started reading for the first time made of BM and Stoner?


>>22552526
What did you think of The Lost World?

>>22558058
I really enjoyed The Lost World. It wasn’t great literature but it was an entertaining adventure story and I really enjoyed the comic story about the character with chronic one-itis and the denouement of his ‘romance’
Fairly short. I finished it in about 4 days.

>>22558014
45, I pick up various work as skilled laborer, generally in finish carpentry but am not too picky about and just take what I can get when I feel like working or feel the bank accounts have been going the wrong direction for too long. Work is work, it is all about the same in the end.

>>22558087
Damn, based on your analysis about Flounder I would’ve thought you were a lit professor. Did you study lit in college? (Not who you were responding to by the way)

i normally put a top ten together at the end of the year and haven't got around to sorting what i've read so far this year
i think standouts that will probably make the cut include:
>flannery o connor - a good man is hard to find and other stories
>laszlo krasznahorkai - a mountain to the north, a lake to the south, paths to the west, a river to the east
>frank norris - mcteague
>charles reznikoff - testimony (i'm still reading it but it's my favourite thing in forever)
>marguerite duras - la douleur
>anna burns - milkman

>>22558110
I dropped out of college in the first year, realized I really did not want to spend my life sitting at a desk.

>>22558087
Weird. I’m a few years younger in a kind of adjacent work…but my dad recently stayed over for a couple of weeks and a few nights we’d go to bed drunk from beers. Wish you well, anon.

>>22558189
Interesting, how’d you get so good at analyzing literature? Better than my classmates and we’re all lit majors.

Why does everyone here read so many novels?
>>22558033
Excellent taste.

>>22558316
I spent a year going over and over the same few books until I understood every last detail as way to distract myself from a life which was in the shitter. In retrospect my life would have sorted itself out in short order if I did not so effectively distract myself.
>>22558500
I think it is mostly that OP gave novels so everyone followed suit and the philosophy fags stayed out because of it.

>>22558508
That’s really good. We do a lot of criticism but there’s always some “lens” we have to use. Well, not explicitly “have to” but it’s heavily implied. Feminist, lgbt, post-colonial, etc. I’m not even a polcel, but just want to critique from what’s in the text.

Why was your life in the shitter, if you feel like sharing?

>>22558508
I think a lot of the philosophy gags don’t actually read books but learn from places like here and youtube

>>22558548
Learning with those lenses would be really useful and I would have gotten through analyzing those books much quicker if I had that structure. They force you to focus on single aspects in context which is a very important thing to get in the habit of if you want to be effective and be able to analyze while you read. It is also very good to get in the habit of analyzing those things from perspectives you normally wouldn't so you don't fall into the trap of just seeing what you want to see as so many here do.

It was just standard life drama of the sort that you can not see past when you are in the thick of it, completely banal. As I said, would have sorted itself out in short order had I not so effectively distracted myself. 95% of it was it being 2016, all anyone could do back then was seethe about politics and there I was feeling like my life was falling apart without as much as a sympathetic ear, so I shut myself away from the world and seethed about more important things, myself.
>>22558625
Not reading has never stopped anyone from posting lists in threads like these.

>>22558647
I don’t think the debatelords post in threads like this for obvious reasons

>>22552377
i read 0 books but i think i made over 80 threads this year

>>22558647
Yeah, I guess I should try and look at it that way. It just feels like a crutch sometimes. Maybe I’ll starting effort posting with own critiques as practice.

>It was just standard life drama of the sort that you can not see past when you are in the thick of it, completely banal.
Lol, woman problems I assume?

>>22558715
>Lol, woman problems I assume?
I wish, that would have been easy. Friend who I was in business with fucked me over and ruined my name in town but it wasn't really that big of a deal, it was just that the majority of my encounters with people were either people judging me based on lies or people informing me that my problems did not matter because their politics were clearly more important then my trying to figure out how to feed myself for two weeks on $25 and facing eviction. So I did not see the opportunities which existed and became angry at the world.

>>22558888
First, nice dubs-dubs-quads get

More seriously, that doesn’t sound banal at all. Pretty serious stuff, imho. Anyway, glad you’re in a better place now.

Some favorites (new here)
>Lolita - Nabokov
>Blood Meridian - McCarthy
>Wuthering Heights - Brontë
>Age of Innocence - Wharton
>Beloved - Morrison
>Sun also Rises - Hemingway

Since this is the only decent fiction thread up on /lit/ right now I might as well ask, I'm thinking about reading pale fire, would it be a difficult read for a somewhat beginner? are there any prerequisites before I start it?

>>22559816
Few books require prerequisites. Want to read a book? Pick it up and read it. You can always return again to it some other time to get more from it when you are more knowledgeable and experienced. You can only get knowledgeable and experience from reading. Read what you want. Pale Fire is open ended and up to you how to read it. The poem and the commentary are separate entities but play off of each other and a lot is revealed once you start to make sense of what is going on. It was clever but I didn’t care for it, I did read it like 10 years ago though so maybe I’d like it for today. Other people love it. Find out for yourself

>>22558074
yeah i love the ending where she ditches him for some prissy rich boi that was funny ah hell

>>22558500
>Why does everyone here read so many novels?
I see no point in reading non-fiction, I might pick it up out of interest if some philosopher's ideas were prevalent in a novel I'm reading but I wouldn't go out of my way to engage with it
I read primarily for my own enjoyment, be it plot or prose or emotional investment in characters, these are all things that I would not find in some philosopher's works, I could honestly just go watch youtube videos summarizing their ideas and be done with it since I take no enjoyment from the process of reading their works.
at least that's my point of view, maybe there are people out there who actually enjoy reading Hegel & Derrida

>>22559868
I’ve found there are two types of philosophy: the intellectual, systematic kind that can be masturbatory, and the more spiritual and applicable kind that help a person live a better life

>>22559868
>I read primarily for my own enjoyment
Low IQ faggot

some of my favourites so far this year, going to read blood meridian now and then maybe the next volume of Hobsbawm's age of series

>>22559851
He wasn’t rich. He was a middle class clerk. The equivalent of a cubicle drone. After she tells him what she wants is a man of action and adventure. So he runs off to the jungles of South America to prove himself. And she marries a cubicle drone while he’s away.

>>22552377
I read Outer Dark. That’s it.

>>22552377

bump

>>22552377

>>22560599
was it nice

>>22556837
sell me on the anatomy of melancholy

>>22552377
ive read one book this year.

>>22564905
You'll only enjoy it if you share a particular kind of autism in common with the writer.
https://youtu.be/WGJWREm5rhA?si=Fr5xfqM2lIas-jw4

>>22564905
Nta but it’s like the love child of Montaigne and Rabelais, with the spirit of Montaigne. Very meandering, and reference and quote heavy. My only gripe with the book is the medical and anatomy parts, which are interesting but I’m not always in the mood for. I like it a lot but I’m slowly making my way through it to not get burned out

>>22553648
Based Elkin reader. I see you.

>>22565094
Nta, but sell me on Rabelais? I don't speak French so I never really saw the point of reading G&P in translation, but I generally love lit from that period, DQ, Shak., Montaigne, etc.

>>22565094
Also, would I get anything out of it if I dislike low shitnpiss humour?

>>22565489
It doesn’t have shit and piss humor like Rabelais. It has those long listings he’s known for and theology, philosophy, medicine, and anatomy as topics. Burton is closer to Montaigne than Rabelais imo but I definitely see resemblances to the latter
>>22565474
It is definitely a book hard to translate as he makes up words and phrases, and wordplay. Frame’s translation has the French in quotation for that type of stuff. It’s still worth reading IMO. The spirit of the book is great, short chapters, and a mix of highbrow and lowbrow at once. One of the most erudite books and one of the crassest at the same time

>>22552950
e-ink is the same as paper and ink

>>22564987
which one?

>>22560112
why else would you read?

I read tons of Prattchet's Diskworld and Stephen King crap. Both turned out to not be as good as I expected.

Pulp by Bukowsky. Loved it. And we more short stories. Considering diving into Bukowsky for few months. He also inserted the writer character of Céline into the story, seemed like he really admired his work. Might check him out as well.

Osudy dobrého vojáka Švejka. It was long, but didn't took long to realize that Hašek was genius. I envy, wishing I could write like this.

Witcher... I made a serious error of reading the book before watching the show, and it completely ruined the show for me.

Few books: on chess world championships - namely Tals' on Botvinik-Tal 1960, and Karpov-Korchnoi 1978; Kasparov's My Great Predecessors series. I usually can't force myself to study chess books for more than two days, but I can get really hooked on these with some narative in them.

Top 5 books I've read so far this year:
At Swim-Two-Birds, by Flann O'Brien
Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, by John Le Carre
Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, by Mario Vargas Llosa
Moby Dick, by Herman Melville

The Passenger and Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy
Solenoid and Nostalgia by M. Cartarescu
Sun House by David James Duncan
Larry McMurtry: A Life by Tracy Daugherty
Artists Who Kill by Alexander Theroux
Laurus by Eugene Vodolazkin
Shadows of Love, Shadows of Loneliness by William T. Vollmann

Starting The Wolves of Eternity by Karl Ove Knausgaard

>>22560585
there was really no class element?

>>22564987
why?

>>22552377

>>22569322
How is The Long Ships?

>>22569405
Very good adventure book. Prose is dry just like its humor. Touching too. Definitely not the typical savage Vikings you usually get from modern media. There’s a movie that’s loosely based on the first part of the novel which is entertaining on its own right. But none of the characters from book appears in it.

Shape of Ancient Thought
Without Conscience
Pali Buddha Sutras (Lucid24.org)
Across Asia on the Cheap
Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism
A Comprehensive Manual of Abhidhamma
Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies
Bhagavad Gita (Winthrop Sargeant)
Being and Event
Sepher Yetzirah (Aryeh Kaplan)

My favorite 6 from this year so far.
I actually haven't read a whole lot this year, I picked reading back up some months ago after a mutiple year hiatus where I didn't feel like reading anything.

>>22568378
No. If anything the narrator was the wealthier man. Though I don’t remember If he knew that yet.

>>22552377
the only good book I read this year is Stanley Kubrick Archives.

>>22552949
you have to be trolling
>>22556634
I think this sometimes too, what do people get from reading a shitty halo or celebrity book? I absolutely understanding reading for entertainment only but usually that's people reading an original story or bullshit like stephen king ffs. Idk I feel like if someone is gonna read a toddler book about star wars characters fighting it's better to just watch the movies

>>22552377
pic rel only series i have enjoyed this year

i have dropped sun eater (third book), lotr (second book), percy jackson (first book), discworld, arcane ascension (first book) and the magicians

other books i have liked: Dune and 1984 (not surprising)

>>22571948
forgot pic

>>22552377

I've never intended to read so much poetry this year, but here we go. I enjoyed them a lot:
The Divine Comedy
Paradise Lost
Odyssey

These were at least interesting:
Technical Thermodynamics
Physical Chemistry

I’ve only read 15 books this year. I have to finish strong and hit 25.

>Augustus
>Butcher’s Crossing
>Silence
>Moby Dick

>>22571213
>I think this sometimes too, what do people get from reading a shitty halo or celebrity book? I absolutely understanding reading for entertainment only but usually that's people reading an original story or bullshit like stephen king ffs. Idk I feel like if someone is gonna read a toddler book about star wars characters fighting it's better to just watch the movies
Exactly. I'm not even trying to be mean in any regard but why get low-intellect entertainment from an inherently intellectual medium? Why not watch movies, play fortnite, call of duty, etc. I feel like the entire cultural meme fetishistic worship of reading being le good has ruined literature as a medium. It's like when stupid people think if you just ape what smart people do you magically become smart.

>>22572109
>inherently intellectual medium?
is it though? you put a lot of emphasis on the supposedly intellectual nature of literature compared to other mediums, but the vast majority of it isn't.
one could also consider film to also be an "inherently intellectual" medium, surely there are plenty of great films out there, but there's also a lot of garbage to sift through.
you have to keep in mind that novels, much like theater, were inherently made for the purpose of entertainment, most people do not read because it makes them seem smart, they read primarily to entertain themselves.
you're trying to gate keep a notion of literature that has never existed

>>22572185
>is it though? you put a lot of emphasis on the supposedly intellectual nature of literature compared to other mediums, but the vast majority of it isn't.
Reading is an inherently intellectual act, you aren't born with the ability to do it. Film or anything else is not the same in that way. In fact, film is an inherently propagandistic medium for this reason. The fact that the vast majority of literature is low entertainment is the same as what I was saying.
>you have to keep in mind that novels, much like theater, were inherently made for the purpose of entertainment, most people do not read because it makes them seem smart, they read primarily to entertain themselves.
This was true in the nineteenth century but there are better modes of entertainment available now for just about everyone. Reading trash is very much a cultural holdover which is why we're seeing a transformation in publishing.
>you're trying to gate keep a notion of literature that has never existed
It existed for most of human history and only began to break down steadily since cheap publishing and mass literacy became commonplace in the West, but is now redundant once again.
also
>gate keep
You have to go back.

>>22572108
I have read 1 book this year.

:'(

I worked all year.

>>22553721
>In the not so enjoyable category: ... and The World According to Garp by John Irving
please say why?

>>22572218
>Reading is an inherently intellectual act, you aren't born with the ability to do it.
Are videogames an intelectual medium too?

>>22572724
Depends on how much of the gameplay is intellectual as opposed to skill and reflex and so on. Puzzle games are, although it's a much more limited use of the intellect compared to something like reading.

>>22572218
>Film or anything else is not the same in that way. In fact, film is an inherently propagandistic medium for this reason.
I'd argue that it takes a degree of intellect to truly appreciate what you see being presented to you through visuals, in fact there is a certain artistry in crafting propaganda through film.
film is more than just seeing things, being born with sight doesn't mean your brain will be able to perceive what makes something great.
>It existed for most of human history and only began to break down steadily since cheap publishing and mass literacy became commonplace in the West, but is now redundant once again.
that's just your survivor bias at work, you simply assume it's the case because most of the surviving works you're exposed to were the best of their era and the only ones that were selected to be preserved for the future due to how limited the tools were back then.
there's nothing that proves the level of past writing was superior because literacy was inaccessible to the masses, most of the low effort works were simply lost in time, hell you could point out to plenty of authors whose works were only rediscovered later on and never gained traction in their time.

>>22556837
this is the best chart in the thread, good taste

>>22571039
Huh, thanks anon it's kinda weird to realise how badly i can misremember something i only read 5-6 years ago.... still a great ending, one of the all-time great cuckings in lit, honestly made better by the fact the other guy isn't even richer.
also i guess main guy comes back rich from the challenger expeditions

>>22552377
>the Tartar Steppe
Check this out OP
>>22566029

>>22574246
It’s actually a great ‘bros before hoes ending’
Narrator finds out he’s rich and the woman he loved married someone else in his absence. Challenger says he’s going to start his own museum. The old skeptic says he’s going to retire. Roxton says he’s going back to the plateau to explore some more. The narrator says, I’d like to go back with you. And Roxton shakes his hand like ‘welcome aboard.’