/lit/ - Literature

Hey, two lines ran together. That's odd.

Nobody has read anything? I bet our mutual friend who posts in ALL CAPS has already read 25 books.

Only Crime and Punishment and The Picture of Dorian Gray. I'm just starting to get into literature, so I haven't read a lot of the classics yet.

>>2357215

Both good books, actually. But if you're just starting reading, you should read late 20th and early 21st century books. Much easier...and a lot are great.

>>2357215
how did you find crime and punishment?
havent finished reading anything this year

the charterhouse of parma - stendhal (can not recommend it, needed massive editing even according to contemporary critics)

Salambo - Flaubert (about the mercenary rebellion in Carthago after the lost war against the romans; much better than I expected, a book that puts all modern historical novels to shame, Flaubert is not the faggy author people think he is)

Short Stories and Early Novels - Raymond Chandler (short stories aren't really that good, but you can see how Chandler got increasingly better, plots of the novels seems to be made up on the spot, not bad though)

Together those girls represent the opposite ends of ugliness.

* Gogol - Taras Bulba
* Maupassant - Toine
* Maupassant - Yvette
* Barjavel - Future Times Three
And a little book about quantum physics popularization.

>>2357224
> you should read late 20th and early 21st century books.

What? Do you want to disgust him of reading for life?

The Dance of the Wu Li Masters - Gary Zukav
The Stranger - Camus (re-read)
The Nine Billion Names of God - Arthur C. Clarke
A Soldier's Legacy - Heinrich Boll

working on Mouthful of Air by Anthony Burgess

>>2357269
>I read only old books already considered as 'classics' because I'm too insecure to read contemporary literature and make my own opinion on it

>>2357304

>too pathetically self-involved and retarded to realize that nobody gives a flying fuck about his opinion about anything.

>>2357304
are you suggesting that people shouldn't bother reading classics

History of the english speakign peoples volumes I & II - winston churchill
notes from underground - dostoevsky
almost done the castle by kafka

gonna read some dumb shit some girl recommended me next...

then i need to get volume iii of english history

then idk ill check my list what i will read next. should be some more non fiction.

>>2357341

I thought we already discussed why you should delete that picture.

>>2357352
im sorry i really dont remember im drunk truman :*(

>>2357341
>dumb shit some girl recommended me
You should get recommendations from old dudes you met on Craigslist.

>>2357357
i wish but im way too scared im just kind of leaving it for ages. ill wait and see if anyoen bestows the gift of initiation upon me that's way beyond pigtail brains though they're so goddamn egoistic expect that they dont have to do anything but maybe its even true.

Tortilla Flat
From Hell
2666
The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea
The Golden Pavilion
Tropic of Cancer
A Confederacy of Dunces

Confessions of an English opium-eater - Thomas De Quincey
Dubliners - Joyce

captcha: never allyve

>>2357187
Hemingway a Farewell to Arms

Currently reading Leaving Atocha Station by Ben Lerner.

I plan on reading some Paul Auster myself soon.

1Q84
The Remains of the Day

working on The Man in the High Castle and Our Friends From Frolix 8.

Only read a bunch of short stories so far this year. Mostly Russian.

Also working on Doctor Zhivago but I've been stalled out about halfway through on that for a while. It's not that I got bored I just never feel like sitting down and reading a lot now that I'm back at school. Sometimes I just stare at my ceiling instead of doing anything. It's awful.

>>2357673
how is it? sounds horribly boring from the description

>>2357704
It's actually okay. I've read some of his poetry here and there and while they weren't spectacular they were okay. So I picked this up mainly because it kept appearing in my amazon "you might like" section.

I'm around halfway and so far it's been pretty good. Very minimalist. It's kind of like everyother contemporary lit book out though. "got high, drunk, had sex, wrote some poetry"... but set in Madrid. The characters are somewhat interesting though and overall the story does seem to progress in a nice manner that keeps me reading so there is that.

So far I'd give it 3/5

>>2357717
>It's kind of like everyother contemporary lit book out though. "got high, drunk, had sex, wrote some poetry"... but set in Madrid.

yeah this is basically why it sounds bad. an academic dealing with ennui and anxiety and resorting to drugs/sex to deal with them? whaaaaaaaat, never seen that before.

>>2357724
The sad thing is, I feel it's aimed at other "academic[s] dealing with ennui and anxiety and resorting to drugs/sex to deal with them"

I know write what you know, but when what you know is what everyone else knows it's a bit tidious.

>Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
>The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches by Matsuo Basho
>Valerie and Her Week of Wonders by Vitezslav Nezval
>Moonstone Woman: Selected Poems of Tada Chimako
>Contemplation by Franz Kafka
>Chinese Fairy Tales and Fantasies
>The Transformations of Mr. Hadliz by Ladislav Novak
>One Hundred Poems from the Japanese
>Fado by Andrzej Stasiuk
>Balkan Beauty, Balkan Blood: Modern Albanian Short Stories
>The Passive Vampire by Gherasim Luca
>House of Day, House of Night by Olga Tokarczuk
>The House of Illnesses by Unica Zurn

Those so far, and currently reading The Nature of Things by Francis Ponge and Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings.

>>2357736
Oh, definitely. I feel like the academic / intellectual community mindset at the moment (and for quite some time, actually) is very insular and inward-directed, dealing with concerns that are very inward-directed and only really relevant to people within that social clade. Which is a shame.

John Dies at the End
The History of History
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K. Le Guin

I'm new to sci-fi so I don't know how it compares but I loved it. The whole book felt very methodical and dispassionate just like it's main character and I enjoyed the lack of pretension. My favorite quote from the book:

>The First Mobile, if one is sent, must be warned that unless he is very self-assured, or senile, his pride will suffer. A man wants his virility regarded, a woman wants her femininity appreciated, however indirect and subtle the indications of regard and appreciation. On Winter they will not exist. One is respected and judged only as a human being. It is an appalling experience.

>>2357341

I would smash the fuck out of Adele. I don't care if she's a bit of a chubby. And then I'd dump her so she can write a song about how bad it feels.

The Trial
The Metamorphosis
To The Lighthouse
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

the bell jar
interview with the vampire

i enjoyed the bell. her prose is nice and the story was failry interesting, although most of the fascination probably comes from the fact that she killed herself.

interview with the vampire was almost exactly the same as the film as far as plot goes, apart from towards the end where a few things are different. not amazingly written, but it was nice to read, carried the story well. a bit repetitive at times.

>>2357799
I started reading that but got distracted half way through. It was really interesting. The Dispossessed by Le Guin was awesome. Social Science Fiction.

I haven't read a book in 10+ years but the trailers for The Hunger Games got me interested so I bought all three books and read those.

I just finished the third book and I'm currently washing down the last several chapters with beer. What the fuck man. I need to find something less fucked to read.

the cosmic serpent - jeremy narby

One flew over the Cuckoo's Nest by Kesey and I'm 3/4 of the way through 11/22/63.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce
The Last Werewolf - Paul Duncan
Sister Carrie - Theodore Dreiser
Silas Marner - George Eliot

I enjoyed them all, although Joyce was dense enough that I had to reread a chapter to understand what was going on, and read about it online afterwards to get a better sense of the book overall.

>>2358749

I forgot Winesburg, Ohio, by Sherwood Anderson. Also worth reading. Sort of like a novel made up of a number of heavily interrelated short stories with common themes of loneliness and inability to communicate with others.

dialectic of enlightenment
collection of foucault on aesthetics
fear and trembling
collection of keats poems
reading protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism now