/lit/ - Literature

The bible <3

I love taking pain killers.

>>4966422
So far, Shella by Andrew Vachss

Candide by Voltaire

The Count of Monte Cristo. It's not a complex philosophical work, but it's so god damn entertaining & suspenseful, I would say it's the one I most enjoyed

>>4966422
The Magus by John Fowles. It was a frustrating reading experience, to say the least, but rewarding nonetheless.

>>4966422

god that girl is cute, too bad she knows it

Brother Kamazov

>>4966484
>too bad she knows it
Why is that, anon?

>>4966422
Le Fantôme de l'Opéra.

>>4966515
because he's not cute and he'll never get with her

>>4966479
>that court scene with Villefort and Cavalcanti

>>4966515

I remember a zen story about a master and a student. The student marvels at the sunrise and mentions how beautiful it is. The master replies "indeed, a pity you had to say so"

That's why.

>>4966539
Sauce, anyone?

>>4966422
Divina commedia.

>>4966484
please stop listening to One Direction

Catch 22

I loved how absurd the whole thing was

>>4966553

Can you please persuade me to read it?

I'd appreciate it more than you know.

>>4966618
I like to imagine catch-22 as a more refined hitchhiker's guide. it has the same humorous style and characters, but with much more depth and story. instead of rambling nonsense, its very cohesive and relatable. plus it doesn't taper off into a disappointing ending. one of my favorite books. made me cry/laugh

>>4966482
Great choice, but why did you find it frustrating? Just the whole suspense and not grasping what's happening to him at first?

>>4966487
>Brother Kamazov
>Kamazov

failed troll or failed pleb

>>4966422
for pure enjoyment, probably DFW's novels

>>4966479
>>4966525
+1

The Count of Monte Cristo.

If on a winter's night a traveler

Les Miserables

Die Leiden des jungen Werthers

Terry Pratchett's Monstrous Regiment

>>4966422
Post Office

>>4967345
God you must be such a faggot

>>4966422
i'd probably get more enjoyment out of groping those boobs for 5 minutes than reading the entire western cannon

>>4966422
The Three Musketeers

Setting Free the Bears

>>4967497
>groping
>not a full scale mouth+hand assault

Please raise your standards.

Dune

>>4966539

muh quietism

>>4966551

I laughed pretty hard actually

>>4967877
>>4966551
>>4966484
He means Sammy Kershaw. Had One Direction beat by 21 years.

>>4967871

>Zen Buddhist story
>Quietism (a Christian philosophy)

So do you just add -ism to the end of words and hope nobody notices, or...?

Is reading suppose to be enjoyable?

I've never got the feeling from reading. I've read The Brothers Karamazov, Ulysses, The Odyssey, and much more.

>>4967915
implying no buddhist has gone for 4 years without saying a word.

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit and its sister book.

>>4968041
That's because you're reading droll classical bullshit.

>>4968065
>droll

This word doesn't mean what you think it means.

>>4968065
But that's what /lit/ suggests to me and I trust their opinions.

>>4966515
Yeah. It fuckin sucks when girls know they are attractive. Allowing this is where we as men went wrong.

>>4968071
You're putting the cart before the foal.

Read some pleb lit before moving on to the greats or better yet, start with the greeks.

>>4968098
Pretty much this. Women with egos are disgusting people

>>4968122
>start with the greeks
lel cool meme bro

>>4966447
It's fun to read out aloud just for the hell of it.

>>4966474
Damn.

>>4966482
So reading the book you enjoyed the most was a frustrating experience? Hmm..

>>4966487
HAHAHAHAHA

>>4966553
It's not one of the most absurd I've read and I'm not sure it tried to be. The real post-war America was probably more so.

>>4966618
It's perhaps the only American novel that I enjoyed reading. It's not the shortest but after the first quarter it flows fast as you get used to the styles/characters/situations. I think it almost felt like watching a Hollywood movie, only much much better.

>>4966676
For me the two books couldn't be any more different. Moreover, I felt exactly the opposite of what you've stated. I honestly wouldn't be a bit surprised if you haven't read either.

>>4967122
>>4967226
I need to read these.

>>4968041
Yes. If not then maybe you're doing something wrong/reading the wrong thing. There's no point in reading fiction if you don't enjoy it because that is fundamentally the whole point of it.

Just read catcher in the rye for the first time at age 25. Absolutely loved it. Even found myself stopping periodically to savor the story. Really could relate to holden. I really felt like the author wrote a novel about me. Unfortunately I'm not wealthy like the main character. My only regret is not buying a kindle sooner.

>>4968139

For me, it was one of the worst that I ever laid my hands on.

>>4968098
>Allowing this is where we as men went wrong.
breeding women based on aesthetics alone is where men went wrong. what race is she anyway?

>>4968148
really? my second favorite was lolita. are you the guy drooling over ops pic?

call me a pleb but i find it hard to imagine i'll ever enjoy a book like i enjoyed Catch 22.

seriously you see the pages slip by and the end coming towards you and all you can do is pray it never ends

>>4966422
>Catch-22
Catch-22 has already been named, but Heller's writing is funny without being super pretentious or whatever. This is my chief complaint with David Foster Wallace - Infinite Jest is a 'challenging' book because... the jokes aren't funny? Or what. I don't get it. Anyway I like Catch-22, and I don't really like Infinite Jest all that much.

>basically anything by Stephen King
I get that he's like LOL PLEB LIT and choosing a popular author might be tantamount to board suicide here among the aesthetes of /lit/, but King has a good mastery of English and he can characterize effectively and quickly. There are some stories I enjoy more than others (Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, Eyes of the Dragon) but I don't think I've ever found any of his stories to be a poor reading experience, even if the plots are dumb.

>On the Road
It's one of the most unique things I've ever read, and it feels fun the whole way through. I get that the whole Beat movement was sort of aborted right as it became a thing, but Kerouac's style is pleasurable enough.

>Snow Crash
More like parts of it? Stephenson's funny and even if his tech babble doesn't quite catch the imagination as effectively as Gibson's Sprawl novels, Snow Crash is pretty fun to actually read. It has long tracts where it's literally exposition dumping, though, and that's really goddamn annoying.

>Neuromancer
It's real good and I'm tired of this post now

>>4968156

Yes, really. I honestly don't think I've read anything more ridiculously rubbish.
I don't judge people but if I saw this as someone's favourite books:
1. Catcher in the Rye
2. Lolita
it'd be hard to not raise my eyebrows a little. But it's hardly surprising really, considering the platform of this conversation.

>>4968178
>>4968178
what do you read then

>>4968160
pleb

>>4968178
Why would that cause you to 'raise your eyebrows a little'? Humbert is a straight-up villain in virtually any sane reading of Lolita, and Holden's idealization of youth and distrust of adults stems from his unhealthy inability to grow up. Neither of these protagonists are portrayed in a particularly sympathetic light the moment you step away from the conceit of them being the narrator(s).

Unless your concern is less about the weird-stuff-about-young-people/children and more about you-think-those-books-are-fucking-dumb

>>4968185
Translations of the classics.

>>4968208
>aka i don't know what the fuck i'm talking about

I'm on to you, anon-kun ~ <3

I liked Aztec by Gary Jennings.

>>4968197
I use my right to disagree with almost everything that you just said, right from Humbert is a... By your definition everyone who read Lolita would be insane and we wouldn't need psychiatrists; and I can't for the life of me even begin to imagine where you derived the following from reading catcher, " Holden's idealization of youth and distrust of adults stems from his unhealthy inability to grow up." since he doesn't idealize youth and there was no distrust of adults except maybe his teachers whom he was bored of right before the holidays, and how you diagnosed his "inability to grow up" and "unhealthy" is beyond my wits.
Then, this:"Neither of these protagonists are portrayed in a particularly sympathetic light the moment you step away from the conceit of them being the narrator(s)."
This is the exact opposite of what is true and confirms my suspicion that you haven't read either. Firstly, Holden the protagonist is the narrator himself, you useless wanker. Sympathetic light? What sort of crap do you read? And Humbert is never the villian, you're saying the opposite of what's true. He has as much sympathy throughout the novel from nabokov. If there's anything that is the villian that doesn't get the author's sympathy, it's everyone else apart from Humbert or the society. Go read those two books now before you make up more things, but maybe you will want to skip catcher, but don't take my or anyone else's words for it like you're perhaps used to.

>>4968226
What are you talking about and which language are you using to convey the talking? If you want to be understood then use normal english, this isn't some hollywood movie. In reality if you read classics you're cool, but I think you know just about nothing about it all.

>>4966487

Obvious Russian is obvious.

>>4968246
... are you trolling or being intentionally fucking retarded? I said in the original post that each is the narrator of their story, and once you divorce yourself from taking everything they say at face value, they stop seeming so sympathetic - Humbert especially. I also said any sane reading of Lolita depicts him as essentially villainous - Nabokov himself described Humbert as a bad guy - not that everyone who reads Lolita is insane. Do you actually know HOW to read?

Also, Holden fucking Caulfield doesn't idealize youth and distrust adults? Is this tip top kek or what the fuck am I even reading

>>4967915

The Perrenial Philosophy by Aldous Huxley covers the common ground between the major religions quite well. It is a good read and if you'd like to stop being an ignorant faggot who thinks religions are individual from each other and have their own mutually exclusive tenets I suggest you pick it up

>>4968277

you're only confirming that you watch too many movies and haven't read fuckall including those two. i don't have time for you so fuck off. you seem like you've been internet-bastardized but i dont care enough to give a fuck about it or even begin to explain the levels and even new dimensions of the wrong you have been cultured to blather.

>>4968301
You're basically admitting you have no idea what you're talking about. You 'read the classics'? I'm thinking it's more that you just don't fucking read, but you have the temerity to get upset when someone else realizes it.

You just tried to pass off 'Holden Caulfield and Humbert Humbert are wholly sympathetic protagonists' as a legit opinion that you really believe.

Please go back to /pol/

Pan by Knut Hamsun.

Reading it was like nipping a cup filled up with vine: I was intoxicated when I finished it.

He takes a single day and turns it into an epic downward trajectory from which there is no way out. There has never been a more glorious crash and burn.

A Confederacy of Dunces. I don't think I'll laugh as hard ever again

>>4966422
I want to tittyfuck jhene aiko's whipped-cream-covered breasts

>>4966474
my nigga

>>4968122


lol are you writing this in every /lit thread?

The Harry Potter books
Best entertainment I had from books
no regrets

Memoirs of a Geisha :3

>>4966422
Breakfast of Champions

>>4966422
The Hite Report on the Male Sexuality

XXX Black titties XXX vol. 8

>>4966539
Which begs the question of why the master took on a student, let alone brought him along to watch the sunrise. The master here sounds a bit retarded.

>>4966422
book girl and the famished spirit

say what you will, this was a masterpiece in my mind

>>4969504
because the student hasn't learned when to just keep silent (and enjoy the scenery)
instead he had to open his mouth

>>4966422
god I hate asians. 99% of them still can't into humanism and have no soul whatsoever. they remind me of cardboard insects

>>4966422
miraculous adventures of rumo
the ending made me feel stronger currents of emotion than I've ever felt in real life, kind of like what most people feel normally at all times

>>4970800
My fucking nigger.
I love all of Walter Moers books, but this right here might be my favorite.
I read it in German, how does the translation hold up? I feel like it would be difficult to translate names, puns and so on.

bump

swiss family robinson

>>4968246
>Holden's idealization of youth and distrust of adults stems from his unhealthy inability to grow up."
He was diddled, future kiddy diddler.

>>4966422
Chromos, Alfau

IJ
kill me

>>4968769
Whoa I just finished this today

Didn't think that ending would give me as many feels as it did considering the whole thing was so whacky

>>4966422
American Gods by Neil Gaiman

>>4968430
My nigga.

Also, Ada or ardor.

Anything by John Schwartzwelder.

>>4974665
The number 59 seems oddly accurate

>>4974394

I had really big expectations. But it wasn't at all attention grabbing. I remember only a story about an Arab and a demon taxi driver in NYC, and an old man killing young children and putting them in the trunks of cars in the middle of a frozen lake that would sink in the spring when the ice have melted.

>>4968139
One of my favourites as well, related somewhat to Holden, but also just loved the story all the way through

>>4974742
He wrote the 59 best episodes.

>>4974936
>Crepes of Wrath
>Bart Gets an Elephant
>Treehouse of Horror I, II, VI
>Two Cars in Every Garage and Three Eyes on Every Fish

You might be on to somethign

>>4974951
>You Only Move Twice
>Homer's Enemy
>Homer vs. The Eighteenth Amendment
>Itchy and Scratchy Land

Dude was GOAT. His books have the same absurdism about them.

>>4968041
Ulysses is so much fun though
Reading Sirens out loud was some of the most fun I've had reading in quite a while.

Wise Blood.

The Sisters Brothers was an enjoyable read.

>>4968041
Mate, The Odyssey is boring as shit.
Brothers Karamazov, idk. I've only read C&P by Dosto, and apparantly Ulysses is one big Odyssey in Dublin with professor tier English. So I'm not surprised you didn't enjoy it.

Read things like The Picture of Dorian Gray (Wilde), Madame Bovary (Flaubert), To the Lighthouse (Woolf), The Cossacks (Tolstoy), The Fountainhead (Rand) if you're into regular novels.
If you like mythology and such, look up the icelandic sagas.
If you like history/WWII, read Kershaw's Hitler biografy (Hubris & Nemesis)

The point is basically, read what you like, not what /lit/ circlejerks. The sticky, however, has been very usefull to me in finding out what I like.

>>4975698
>professor tier English
actually part of what makes it so unreadable is that its crammed full of common irish mannerisms and slang, rather than complex english; your average english-speaking snob would either be too confused or too offended by some of the gutter talk to keep on reading.
That said, its an incessantly fascinating book, with some of the most complex and yet playful usage of language I've ever come across

1984 - Georges Orwell
L'étranger - Albert Camus
Count of Monte-Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
Voyage au bout de la nuit - Céline
Farhenheit 451 - Bradbury
La secte des égoistes - Schmitt
Les premier et les derniers - Adolf Galland
Any Terry Pratchett books for the lulz. If I had to pick one, it would be Mort, probably.

>>4975698
>To the Lighthouse
>regular novel

>>4975698
Madame Bovary... It's boring as hell. If you want something very similar but where stuff actually happens I recommend, Germinal, by Emile Zola.

>>4966422
Cien años de soledad.

>>4975855
I'm trying to get into reading more and I keep hearing about this one. How difficult is it (serious question) and does it matter if I read it in English or not?

>>4975919
It has a lot of characters with similar names, that could be a difficulty, but in general it is easy to read. I have only read it in spanish.

>>4975698
>the icelandic sagas
Please tell me more.
I just did a quick search on amazon, is there a collection that doesn't look shitty/ is there any recommended translation?
Are there any individual sagas I should look up? I can cop the saga of Grettir the Strong and so on

>>4966422
The Last Wish, that old Witcher short story collection. It was surprisingly gripping, first book in a long time I've been reluctant to put down.

>>4966422
Lately, 10th of December.

Lifetime, probably some pulpy sci-fi like the Night's Dawn trilogy.

>>4975719
Ah, I really only have /lit/ to go by, so I have no actual clue.
>>4975772
It's pretty standard, isn't it? I mean, it touches poetry/philosophy at points, but I had no trouble reading it like any other novel.
>>4975813
Hmm, maybe I found it so intruiging because, besides the slutting around, Emma really reminded me of my mother.
>>4976050
I've read the penguin translations, they have been fine, with thourough translation notes for ambiguous words etc., The Saga of the Volsungs and the Prose Edda are on my shelf right now, though another anon recommended Egil's saga, saying it was better than the Volsunga Saga.

The Prose Edda is basically the story of the Norse gods, where there is a man asking Odin questions, and Odin is answering in stories.

The Saga of the Volsungs has an off putting first few chapters, because it explains where the actual heroes come from (There was Odin, who had a son called Sigi, who had a son called Rerir, who had a son called Volsung, who had a son called Sigmund, who had a son called Sinfjotli, etc.) But it is a very entertaining book, and if you're into Tolkien and Wagner, they've been heavily influenced by it.

>>4968139
I read it in my early twenties and also related to Holden. But I FUCKING HATED HIM, and the book. Probably because I JUST STOPPED being that guy and fucking hated him.

>>4966422
Vlad Taltos: Teckla.

>>4977556
Actually it's probably a toss up between that and the two Conqueror books by Ari Marmell.

Asshole protagonists make me laugh.

>>4977560
you would possibly enjoy invisible monsters by chuck palahniuk then. i know his books are meant for middle schoolers. and thats when i read them.

>>4969504

Masters are always tsundere in koans and taoist jokes.

the kreutzer sonata by tolstoy
close seconds are the great gatsby by fitzgerald and a movable feast by hemmingway.

>>4966474
nice

George Orwell's 1984.
I found it to be easy to read, and the ideas behind it still hold relevance to this day.

>>4966422
Siddhartha
Call of the Wild
something RA Salvatore I bet because middle school

>>4977587
I have this one lying around in the short story collection, might read it because of your comment.

>>4966422
The Hobbit when I was 8 was probably tops.
Others are The Fountainhead when I was 16, The Republic when I was 19 and I got high and read Mountains of Madness a couple weeks ago for the effect and I remember nothing but that sort of under-the sheets terror you get when you're a little kid.

>>4975919
Translation always matters. Stuff always gets lost in it; the better the translation, the the less stuff you lose.
To give you an exmple, my native language is spanish and I got the spanish edition of Lem's Solaris; the translation was not direct from polish to spanish, oh hell no. The translation went like this: polish to french, french to english and english to a terrible, terrible spanish.
So, if you can't read the original language my advice is for you to look into the different editions available for a book ni your native language, and try to get the best translation.

Also, speaking specifically of García Márquez's writing: yes, language does matter in this case. A lot.

Very much enjoyed the melancholy atmosphere of these books that so many seem to dislike, it made the emotional moments stand out more, brusque as they were.

That and Wolfe's prose is just something else.

>>4966422
A Wrinkle In Time.

>>4968430
That isn't Jhene Aiko.

>>4968139
22 when I read it. I thought I hated Holden so much because he was an entitled whiny ass, but it dawned on me that, that is exactly how I was when I was that age. Salinger hit the nail of what it feels like to be an isolated semi-intelligent teenager ought to be. One of my absolute favorites

>>4982918
Then who is it?!

>>4968185
Early Tom Clancy novels.

>>4969504
http://begthequestion.info/

Might is Right

>>4982988
Just some Asian women.

>>4966447

Irvin D. Yalom: the Spinoza Problem. my favorite!