/lit/ - Literature

You made me go on warosu to dig up this gem since I deleted it since posting.

>people actually write/read reviews on Goodreads

It's just used for finding new books that might interest you and keeping track of what you've read and what you want to read next.

Someday I'll understand why people who are clearly "economic illiterate" themselves love to complain about the economic illiteracy of the average voter.

>>5160393
S-she's a writer...

"Jenny Zhang is the author of the poetry collection, DEAR JENNY, WE ARE ALL FIND (Octopus Books, 2012). Her fiction, non-fiction, and poetry have appeared in Jezebel, Glimmertrain, The Iowa Review, The Guardian, Diagram, The Walrus, Octopus, Weird Deer, and Vice magazine. She holds degrees from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and Stanford University. She writes for teenage girls at Rookie magazine and teaches high school students in the Bronx."

She's better published than all of us.

>>5160416
I think writing reviews is good for yourself - by preparing myself to write the review I force myself to read the book with more attention, I mark more lines, I write more comments.

For me, the goal is not to have people read my reviews (but it's an added bonus if someone who I admire pressed the "like" button), the goal is to make myself a better reader.

>>5160427
>capitalism

>>5160421
>implying America's latest crash was caused by government intervention and not greedy, uncontrolled banks

I'm impressed that libertarians are allowed to drive cars; you'd think they have problems with handling more than one task at a time.

>>5160421
People who take Econ 101 and stop there are actually LESS informed than the average person.

It would be like spending a year immersing yourself in the four humors theory of disease.

>>5160427
I don't even know how to respond.

>>5160393
i'm pretty sure conrad literally spells out that imperialism is bad in the book. how can one not understand something this badly?

>>5160427
>Her fiction, non-fiction, and poetry have appeared in Jezebel
why am i not surprised

>>5160427
>>5160447

Here's some of her writing.

Even though Jason was the second shortest boy I knew, and his nickname was Shrimpy boy or sometimes Shrimpson, I knew immediately that I wanted Jason to be my boyfriend, and it was the easiest thing in the world to do, all it took on my part was nothing, because I lived, breathed, and exuded mind-boggling, head-spinning, neck-craning, heart-pounding, ravishing beauty. I was the best looking girl in fourth grade. I had straight, long black hair that never tangled. In the mornings before our teacher Mrs. Silver yelled at us to sit down at our assigned desks, the girls, who were taller and already developing tits and asses, coo-ed and ahh-ed at me, and ran their fingers through my hair and told me they wished they could be me, they wished they could have my hair, have slender arms and legs like me, and sometimes, out of sympathy, I told them that I wouldn't mind knowing what it's like to have tangly, messy hair, and sort of thick arms and legs.

http://thediagram.com/9_4/zhang.html

>>5160465
You should start a "/lit/ how can I improve my writing" thread with that. It would amuse me.

>>5160470
don't forget to email her the link

>>5160465
couldn't read the whole paragraph

>>5160468
"Paul" sounds cool

>>5160465
>http://thediagram.com/9_4/zhang.html

" I felt like my head was going to explode, I screamed out as loud as I could:
STTTTTTTTTTTAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP.
My mother looked at me with disgust, and said, Are you crazy? "

>>5160464
>Your honor, this man likes Philip Roth. And that is why my client should have custody of the children. I rest my case.

Mixing it up with some five stars

>>5160504
Go to bed Laurie

>>5160503
If you can legitimately buttress your theoretical dispositions, no matter what they are, from Wittgenstein, then he is a genius.

>>5160533
>harry potter pic
>1 star because mysoginistic

>>5160599
>1 star because "misgynist"

Modern feminism, taken as a ideology instead of a tool used towards equality of the genders, is killing culture.

>>5160641
Oh Pat.

>>5160641
best pic of the thread.can't stop laughing

abandoned "lies of locke lamora" after 50 pages, complete, retarded, shit.

>>5160638
>i kept waiting for deep meaning
Retard.

>girl
>stupid fucking shelves
>uses memepictures in reviews

>>5160393
Oh man that pisses me off when people assume the author supports the character's actions in real life, especially in historical fiction.

That's like when I here people say they don't like Madmen because its chauvinistic.

the top-rated one for Jane Eyre. When I first started my account, seeing this was what prompted me to hide in my little hole with one friend and quietly find books I like and to never ever review anything or talk to anyone ever.

shouts out to all the reviews for Ulysses saying "life is too short to read this book" or "he's a good writer but it's harder to write stuff that makes sense"

>>5160663
What book is this about?

I get her point, even though she expresses it like an autist who plays with strawmen in his spare time.

>implying it could be ever "Honoured, Sir" in generic fantasy

>>5160563
>If his title had been something slightly less appealing like "Catch-33" or if the term "Catch-22" was used but hidden in the text, rather than used as the title, no one would have ever heard of this book.

oh dear lord

>>5160774
Peopole (men) like it when attractive women say they would fuck someone, because they imagine the fucking afterwards.

>>5160793
hmmm. interesting. I think I understand.

is that what I was supposed to get out of Jane Eyre?

>>5160436
My god that is cancerous

>>5160445
oh man, that comment trying to correct her spelling mistake which I doesnt even make sense

>>5160436
I think he literally didn't finish the book. Camus basically explains his philosophy word for word at the end

>>5160779

Blood Song by Anthony Ryan

>>5160393

Making fun of goodreads (or Amazon, or etc.) reviews is pretty low-hanging fruit at this point.

>>5160852
Hm, looks like generic high fantasy to me. Maybe because the people "like" that crap review so much because it's the only negative in a sea of "OMG BEST BOOK EVAR"?

>>5160938

looks like, but isn't

>>5160970
>The depiction of post-apocalyptic Earth didn't ring true either.

Because we have an actual post-apocalyptic Earth to compare it with.

>>5160970
i'm honestly baffled by this kind of review.

>>5161001

>>5161001
"Klo" means toilet in German.

>>5160393

I guarantee that if passages of Conrad were posted to /lit/ and disguised as the poster's own, they would be shit on relentlessly and called try-hard pretentious wank.

Conrad is a fucking magician with his sentences, but it's a heavy, crisp, undulating style of writing you don't really come across anymore. I fucking WISH there was someone writing like Conrad out there right now.

>>5161028
is the reviewer dead?

>>5161028
>1 star review of a religious book
>Stirner as profile pic

I wish I could read backwards terrorist gobbledigook

>>5161027
Ich buchstabiere dein Name: F-A-G.

>>5161049
>Ich buchstabiere deinen Namen

FTFY

>>5161053
Ich stehe bei was ich said.

>>5161064
du
du hast
du hast mich
ein zwei polizei
drei vier brigadier

>>5161076
fuenf sechs antegex
sieben acht gute nacht

>>5161076
DU BIST

WAS

DU ISST

>>5161087
AS AFTAS ARDEM

AS HEMORROIDAS IDEM

So that Hadrian guy is part of the /lit/ group. Wtf?

>>5160563
>I read this in eighth grade two years ago
>two years ago

>>5160438
He probably didn't even take Econ 101 since he thinks that the government tries to "keep the economy growing at unsustainable rates" which is the opposite of what it does.

>>5160393
To be fair, Conrad DID use the Africans as part of the symbolically vile backdrop.

>>5161243
A goldmine

>>5161543
I hope this one doesn't end the thread.

>>5161572
>Reading it one does not get a sense that she was 13

I don't understand

>>5161243
>>5161543
>>5161572
It was pretty bad, but what else do you expect from a teenage girl?

>>5161579
Me neither, my friend, me neither.

>>5161579
That review, reading it one gets the sense it was written by a mentally disabled person attempting to sound like a literary critic.

>The Odyssey

>>5161643
Oh.

>>5161643
forgot pic

>>5160563
>it's basically Dilbert in WWII
that's my new go-to description of Catch-22

>>5161630
> genocides happen because people put forward too few ideas
Oh wow

>>5161655
Hahaha. Hey, at least she read it.

>>5160465
>in the mornings before our teacher Mrs. Silver yelled at us to sit down

Ridiculous, just ridiculous. I suppose one could blame it on the juvenile narrator, but this just sounds like a middle-schoolers first short story.

And don't tell me that's the point, it's lazy writing. Lazy, shitty writing.

goddammit I'm so rustled

>>5161655
>>5161656

Funny thing is she probably made an accurate description of Heart of Darkness, does she realize she doesn't give any arguments why we're not depraved and why Joseph Heller has to care about black people? I read this as a positive review despite her rating.

>>5162835
It just screams BOHOO THIS BOOK WAS TO NEGATIVE FOR ME, I ONLY WANT TO READ OPTIMISTIC DEPICTIONS OF HUMANITY.

Fucking stop reading bitch, wisdom is bleak and that's a word from the wise.

>>5162830

>>5162841
And this was actually published...

>Review: THE ROAD by Cormac McCarthy
1.5 stars

>The author wrote. Short sentences. Clipped and cold, like the air of his novel. Ash covering everything. He stumbled forward.

>Why dont we use apostrophes, Papa?
I dont know. We dont use quotation marks either.
Is it confusing?
Maybe. But we do use pathetic fallacy.
What's pafethic phallacy?
Pathetic fallacy. "To signify any description of inanimate natural objects that ascribes to them human capabilities, sensations, and emotions."
Oh. Like the weather? Like nature?
Yes, like nature.
Does it hate us?
No, it doesn't hate us. But the author does. He wants to manipulate emotional responses in readers to our relationship by making us suffer. He wants to explore me, an ordinary man, in an extraordinary circumstance.
Is it interesting?
Not really.

>>5162844
I think it's just a PDF he added to the system

>>5160638

But these reviews are right.

>>5160465
Dat Mary Sue.

>>5162903
It helps if you include which book they're talking about.

>>5160393
Heart of Darkness is incredibly fucking dull, though. The ending is good, and has a nice style, the other 80% is utter shite. Completely uninteresting in every way.

>>5160465
I will from now on remind diagram that they published that story in each cover letter. I think magazines deserve to be hack-shamed.

>>5163426
You are a disgrace to your language.

>>5161630
I throw up a little every time I remember her review of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/26564016?book_show_action=true&page=1

>Jenny Zhang

chinks should stick to math, they obviously can't read

1 The Hunger Games
2 Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
3 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
4 Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
5 Twilight
6 Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
7 To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird
8 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
9 Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
10 Catching Fire

Do we agree with this list?
https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1.Best_Books_Ever

>>5163466
Tell me what's so good about it.
>boring sailor you couldn't give a shit about tells a story
>twenty pages of bullshit on the Thames and in Belgium
>gets to Congo
>oh noes, dead niggers and chain gangs! so scary and inhumane! So poorly described.
>some bullshit talk about Kurtz and that, completely irrelevant in the end, nothing actually happens.
>fight on a boat, underwhelming, not exciting whatsoever. Nigger dies, meh.
>Disciple nut, makes Kurtz a bit more interesting
>Kurtz is alright. Apocalypse Now feel to it. Lord of Niggers
>some tribe shit, ride home, nigga dies and is all Horror! (this roused a feeling in me)
>ending, which is good, and has an appealing style. The Horror gave me a quick shiver.

=/

>>5161630
>>5163482
>It’s funny to say, but this book actually inspired a real crisis of faith in my life. I’ve had some occasions where I’ve had major fallings out with God and then other occasions where I’m a big fan – like ya do. A crisis of faith is not unusual for me. There’s this thing that goes down in mainstream Christianity that is really annoying (I’m sure it happens in other religions, too, but I’m talking totally pop culture Christianity here so that my point makes sense). It’s this thing where people will frame a story as though the hero’s dreams are sure to fail, but then, suddenly, through the power of prayer, God swoops down and fixes everything in a magical money donation. Don’t get me wrong; magical money donations are the bomb. But does that mean that for those whose magical money didn’t come through, God’s showing that he’s angry with them? Does God speak in a reward/punishment system? I don’t think so, but I don’t really know anything about it. I know that in that situation, you’re supposed to say that God has a better plan, but that lacks something to me, also. To be clear, this isn’t a criticism that I’m making of religion in general, or even of Christianity in general, but of this Disneyland Christianity that is everywhere in America. It’s a religion of total convenience where everything has a vague, cliché explanation and, if it doesn’t, we don’t look at it. And the way people tell these stories is like they’re telling the plot of the newest movie about a down-and-out kid’s sports team. The stories are all informed by the plot development of Disney movies.
>Like this Disney filter, Edward and Bella’s relationship is very convenient.

How many cats does this woman own?

>>5163482
She offers nothing in the way of critique other than "lool this sucks, and if you says it doesn't, you suck."
It seems as if she (and those she interacts with) read just to be considered readers. What gives?

Schizophrenia is no laughing matter.

>muh feelings

>>5163521

>>5163493
First mistake: you are reading for the story.
Second mistake: you are not addressing the critique of colonialism and enlightenment.
Third mistake: not addressing the holy darkness that lies in humanity.
Fourth mistake: not considering the wonderful prose.

>>5163530
>Who wants to read about a man getting turned on by little girls?

>>5163493

Your ability as a reader is injured by your insistence on the literal. The "horror" of The Heart of Darkness isn't that the Congo people are savage, but that going to the Congo exposes the hollowness of British culture, alienates Kurtz, shows him it is just culture. Kurtz then decides that power's everything, starts raiding, takes a native wife, etc. (It's kind of insinuated that Kurtz corrupts the natives with British imperialism, his what was it, diamond or gold lust, and not vice versa.)

>>5163530
This is actually a fair moral assessment of Nabokov. She's just too much of a pleb to get drawn into Humbert's web, and the rest of the exquisite craftsmanship of the novel (multiple satires, levels of satire, the shifting between bathos and pathos, etc.)

Does anyone with a GR account want to post Paul's complete Ulysses review?

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6752242?book_show_action=true&page=1
http://www.goodreads.com/story/show/280590-ulysses-review-part-2?chapter=0

>>5161543
>literally a Jew during the Holocaust
>you whine too much!

>>5163482
> I love: ... Virginia Woolf..
> I hate James Joyce

>>5163544
>>5163547
Maybe it's the fact that I study history, know about Congo, am very familiar with critique on colonialism, and found the God complex created by lawlessness cliché (I know, I know, it's a nineteenth century novel, it wasn't cliché back then)

I got the message, he is expedient, a free man, a monster. Congo changes a man, and once he'd be back in ''the real world'' it is expected of him to return to normal (almost like Lord of the Flies).

Like I said, Kurtz is actually alright. But you don't meet him untill the book is over 60% finished. Everything before that is just describing Congo, a broken boat, and some conspiracy that doesn't end up affecting anything.

I understand the historical merrit, and no doubt that it caused some shock among contemporaries (Virginia Woolf apparantly loved it) But it was all just so cliche and monotonous to me. (once again, except for the final 20 pages or so)

>>5161543
I have no words...
A fucking diary.. ''too much information''
GUESS WHAT, YOU AIRHEADED FUCKING BABOON, IT'S NOT MEANT TO BE A NOVEL.

This is like the Bukowski critique I read, saying ''Women'' was bad, because she knew someone who thought exactly like Chinaski does in the novel, and that was of thinking was bad.

>>5161630
Honestly there are some decent point. Like
>John Galt's monologue is really long-winded and trite but Rand want have us believe everyone in the worl was paying attention

>>5163704
But the point of the book went over your head. The Congo isn't a crazy place that changes people. Belgium and England aren't "the real world" of civilization and humanity. The book explicitly states that the eponymous heart of darkness is in England at the end.

>>5163737
>Belgium and England aren't "the real world" of civilization and humanity. The book explicitly states that the eponymous heart of darkness is in England at the end.
I know. But the characters think that Europe is civilization, and will heal Kurtz. It wouldn't be anti-colonialistic if the message was: Don't go to Congo, because they're so fucking savage that they'll make all of us savages! It's the colonial powers ruining not only their own people, but other countries aswell. Turning themselves into worse monsters than the savages they are trying to civilize (something something white man's burden).

It was just the writing style, and the fact that I did not care whatsoever about anyone in the book except Kurtz. I didn't learn anything from it, the inhumane treatment of niggers was described in an underwhelming fashion, etc.

But we all have different tastes and likings, I suppose.

>>5163831
Maybe because you're 13 and still refer to black people as niggers.

>>5163877
>Discussing Heart of Darkness
>Getting hung up over someone saying niggers
Please don't tell me you're the Anon that was replying to me earlier. It would severely discredit everything you've said.

>>5163547
>the hollowness of British culture, alienates Kurtz, shows him it is just culture.
Can you explain this for me? I'm not sure I understand.

>>5163877
Shut up you stupid faggot. Not even niggers want to be niggers.

>>5163951
Not the Anon you've asked, but I'm guessing it had to do with the influence of the era of ideology (the isms) and Victorian England. Everything being strictly perscribed, whereas Congo has no laws. The rules don't apply. It's just subjective culture, not an objectively determined way of life.

Or to quote a song about Vietnam:
'I don't wanna go home, where I'm just an ordinary human being'

>>5160465
>literary fiction

>>5160465
>because I lived, breathed, and exuded mind-boggling, head-spinning, neck-craning, heart-pounding, ravishing beauty.
shut up

>>5163831
No the message is: you think you are civilized? Go to congo and see that you are nothing but a monkey with pants.

>>5164385
The funny part is that she is not that good looking but she probably thinks she is.

As my wife put it after reading that passage: probably she is the kind of person that things that anything non-pc a dead white male does is an attack on her person, while anything non-pc a woman does is quirky, edgy and charming.

>>5164430
I'm not saying she's not good looking, she probably is. She's the type of woman that should be seen and not heard.

>>5163831
There's always The Dream of the Celt if a more historical, less symbolistic version of Heart of Darkness is what you wish. Has gripping enough scenes to make even you gag, especially since they are coming from an eighty year old man.

>>5160393

>>5164448
She is not good looking though:

https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1331756726p5/5162372.jpg

Thanks for reaffirming my hatred of women, everybody

>>5164449
Thanks a lot, I'll write it down.

>>5160625
Yeah the cogent arguments begin on page 51.

>>5164570
It feels good to help out another self-loathing misogynist homosexual such as yourself.

>>5163704

But it was all just so cliche and monotonous to me. (once again, except for the final 20 pages or so)

Minus 'cliche,' I think this verbatim about The Dead by Joyce; change last 20 pages to last 2.

I loved Heart of Darkness, though. Just read it for the first time a few months ago.

>>5160436
Why even bother to read when there is such plebish niggers around ? Why do people (American SJW in this case) have to analyse everything through their own damn lenses, thinking they got it all ?

FUCK

>>5160428
>a good reason to use goodreads reviews

god damn it, now i have to give it a shot.

Guess the book.

>>5166420
Book of the New Sun?

>>5160421
>Blaming market crashes on the government
How can one be so blind? Incompetence of the gvt certainly didn't help, but that doesn't imply causation.

>>5166436
Nope. It's a comedy.

>>5166459
Please don't tell me that it's the divine one.

>>5166471
Not sure what you mean by that. I'll have to leave you hanging though, its 4am here and I don't know why i'm awake.

>>5160465

This is what my boy Yvor Winters called the fallacy of imitative form; just because a story is about an adolescent, doesn't mean it should be adolescent. There's a reason the greatest story of adolescence, in the A&P, is actually (very subtly) told by a narrator looking back on his life.

Also Jesus christ there's an insipid MFF threesome at the end.

"Jason cautiously climbed onto my bed. He was still wearing his green sweater and it obscured most of his ass and his genitals. He looked like a granny smith apple with two toothpicks sticking out of the bottom. He was straddling Frangie’s knees, and Francine was telling him to move up higher, to get closer to her vagina. Frangie’s raccoon eyes looked up towards the ceiling. I kept waiting for her blink, to make a sound, to say she wanted to go home, but she just laid there, her hands tied up to the posts of my bed."

>>5161662

If Catch-22 is Dilbert, then what book is Dilbert 3?

>>5161656
>>5162819

>>5166526
Should I have a go at getting published in Diagram, fellows? If she can do it, so can I, right?

>>5166533
She's right though.

crazy idea for people posting reviews: tell us what the fucking book is

>>5166537
Go for it. Use a pen-name. I regret publishing my first story.

>>5166538
About which?

>>5160563
lol the younger generations don't have patience anymore

all of the flashing lights and sounds on TV and music has warped their brains unfortunately

some research is starting to show that it's likely the major culprit behind ADD

>>5166551
Ooo! Maybe I'll use a female pen name, just to garner more attention.

>>5166488
Found it
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/310612.A_Confederacy_of_Dunces

>>5160533
To be fair, the gender stuff in Taming of the Shrew is pretty fucked up - and the play itself is far from Shakespeare's best work. I could get past that and enjoy the good aspects for what they were (by Goodreads standards I'd give it 3 stars. which means "liked it") but you don't have to be a raging feminist to get turned off by a guy trying to 'tame' his arranged wife into submission.

>>5166589
>he didn't realize it was a satire and that the wife was patronizing her husband

>>5166554
All of it.

>>5163492
Hunger Games is a fucking masterpiece of literature.

>>5160408
who the fuck is ken liu?

>>5166537
I always think that this is the worse possible idea you can have. Read something and think "this is shit, I can do better".
Because they don't think it's shit, they like that shit and they want that shit and if you are going to try to give them what you think it's good they are going to think it's shit.

And even if you say "no worries, I'll just write shit" it's never gonna stink to their noses right. You are just going to waste months wading through other people's shit trying to figure it what the editors want and like in that shit, not understanding why their shit gets published and your shit doesn't even if it stinks and it's brown all the same.

>>5161656
I feel homicidal

>>5166538
>writing a review for not a only a work of Shakespeare, but one of his most famous works

>>5166530
Gravity's Rainbow

>>5161656
To be fair, The Odyssey is incredibly boring to read. The story is great, but the poetry is mind numbingly boring, let alone 600 something pages of it. Nevertheless, she's still a moron.

>>5166597
I have honestly no idea. He sometimes pops up on /lit/ SF recommendation threads, so I added one of his books to my to-read shelf, and found that review.

>>5164456
>faggot ninjas

Is this review for the perfect book?

>>5166533
Dresden is fair at least, Butcher wrote the first couple books basically on a dare. He wrote formulaic garbage with a few neat bits and it sold well enough that he was dared to make a sequel. Dude didn't take shit seriously until the 3rd book.

>>5167624

>dont make your racist characters sound racist

What a dumb fuck.

>>5160393
Fucking leftists.

>>5167624
I disagree with him but you have to admit that suttree would have been better if it was 100-200 pages shorter

>>5162846
pretty good review actually

>>5160393
There are many negative reviews on Hyperion because the book continues on The fall of Hyperion, instead of just being auto-conclusive.

MANY negative reviews.

>>5160421
>Jefferson avatar

Oh lawd that's hilarious