/lit/ - Literature

>>5229529
I can't pick a favorite. Too many good books. I always just say Robinson Crusoe.

>>5229529
Up to when he gets to the founding of Rome and the myths get kinda boring

>that tangent advocating vegetarianism for six pages

>>5229678
That tangent was pretty good. It got into really progressive ethics.

>>5229529

same as OP + this

Haven't read The Idiot or Brothers K yet. As of right now, C&P is my favorite novel.

>>5229529

Petronius' Satyricon and Foucault's pendulum

>>5231606
seriously?

These are, without fail, always the most boring and generic threads on /lit/.

Let's continue listing the top 50 books on the Goodreads Best Novels Ever list. You guys have already named 10 of them. Keep them coming. Where's Ulysses? That's usually the 3rd or 4th post.

>>5231709
And what's your favourite book?

>>5231709
>I'm embarrassed about posting my favorite book

>>5231606
This was my favorite back when I first got into literature. As my past self would say, "My nigga."

>>5231738

It's some obscure work that you've never heard of.

>>5231592
I really wanted to love this, but while I agree it is technically better I still enjoyed Lolita more.

>>5232014
What put you off?

>>5232077
I still thought it was brilliant, I love nabokov. I guess I just have more sentiment for Lolita since it is what got me into reading. It made me realize how beautiful writing could be when I had only ever read high school lit.

I do recognize Pale Fire to be his best work though.

>>5229529

That's a poem not a book mate.

>>5231860
Are those really hipster glasses nowadays? Everyone seems to wear those thick black frames now and I'm not just saying that because I also wear them.

>>5232264
a book is just a physical format of text, it doesn't automatically make something a work of prose?

>>5232288
well "hipster" means very little in the first place so I wouldn't be offended or anything

>>5229529

A masterpiece.

>>5232404
if they added two more colors to that gradient, it would be the best cover ever

>>5232316
"Everyone" knows that a hipster is that skinny faggot with a fixy bike,, courdeorys, a plaid overshirt, whispy beard + mustache combo, condom beanie, listening to animal collective sipping coffee shop espresso on his long-board. The only reason people ever pretend "hipsters" aren't a definable sub-culture is because they resemble it very closely. Sort of how all dark edgy people
used to proclaim "I'M NOT GOTH/EMO!" Except now post-modern society has advanced to the point where the faggots in questions just say "but when you really think about it nothing actually means anything TOPKEK"

>>5232408
kind of like the homo flag i guess

>>5232440
looks like Captain obvious is online tonight :)

>>5232422
I know absolutely no-one that fits your description, including even myself

animal collective is alright though they have one or 2 good albums

>>5232468
>Nigger detected

>>5232422
That is such a narrow definition that almost no one falls into it. I don't believe you could come up with something that describes the actual essence of the hipster culture. Just name generic characteristics that everyone associates with it when they don't actually understand what point they are trying to make.

And none of that, 'know it when you see it bullshit'

>>5232478
>That is such a narrow definition that almost no one falls into it
A clue: he is describing a specific someone he personally knows and dislikes

Therein lies all the faults and uselessness of the term

>>5232478
>"When you really think about it nothing actually means anything TOPKEK"

Kill self.

>>5232487
How are you not getting this? I never argued that. You seem to be the one struggling to define the term you pointed out.

>>5232422
>implying anything has inherent meaning
>this is what normies actually believe

>>5232501
>It's too specific!
>You're struggling!

Holy fuck dude you don't even know what the fuck you're saying. Type the fucking word hipster into google images, what I'm saying is not some huge cultural secret it's just a several year old subculture. God damn this board is so fucking purposefully retarded for the sake of being so and it's just.... Retarded. It really is

>I know exactly what you're talking about but
>CANNOT NO NUFFINZ!
>This is a very obvious and well known cultural fact but...
>SPAMBOTS TOAST MUFFINZ!

I'm going to go hang myself

>>5232541
There you go again. You could have just told me the definition you found for hipster when you binged it up and then you might understand it better and I would have nothing to say. But instead you focused on the aesthetics which means shit all. I know what you are trying to refer to but I'm not sure you do.

And your conduct makes it very hard to have sympathy for you. Just make a valid point instead of getting angry and then I might agree with it.

Definitely up there.

>>5232468
>>5232478
Not the guy you're replying to but this guy pretty much summed up the typical hipster of Logan Square in Chicago.

Anyway do these plebeians read philosophy [not including marx]?
They seem to always read some bullshit nonfiction books

>>5232541
Don't worry anon, I understand you. I've known the people you're describing. Flannel shirts, tight pants, horn-rimmed glasses, "ironic" Victorian moustaches, and an all-apparent sentiment that what is good is what's obscure. Disingenuous, aloof, narcissistic...you've seen it I'm sure.

I've met many people like this, so you can deny their existence till you're blue in the face, but based on consistent observation of recurring qualities, both physical and interpersonal, I assert that hipsters are indeed a real, tangible thing. As real as jocks, goths, hicks, what have you.

>>5232621
You're more on point and ration than that guy. But don't focus so much on the details as what they stand for.

People hate them because their qualities are not genuine. They are impostors in way.

And yes some wear flannel shirts and have old fashioned mustaches. But they have no reason to have them, that is the issue. They are a mishmash of other cultures and are generally uninspired. They take other groups 'looks' and sport them in a way that make it seem like a joke. So people find their existence as an insult to those they borrow from.

>>5232621
>>5232650
In short you could just say you hate people that you think seem fake.

>>5232264

More like a comic book, by modern standards. Woo, angels and devils, zzzzz. It's practically YA. People only like it because it has a literary sounding title.

>>5233479
why favorite

>>5233481
it was hella f*cking epic

>>5232422
>skinny
>moustache and beard
>enjoy AnCo
>like espresso
Ah fuck, I guess I should probably reassess my life

>>5233479
Read it almost 3 years ago and I still think about every few days, I've never read anyting like it before or since it's a staggering book.

I'm reading moby dick right and it's cool to see where mccarthy drew some of his inspiration, the book itself is surprisingly engaging and funny, it's the first time I've really gotten into a book that is over a hundred years old since I'd always kind of paid off older books, stupid call on my part that's for sure. Not sure what to read next though.

>>5233504
V.

Read V.

>>5231860
>is this how women want their men?

>>5232541
Holy cows, my fucking sides at that pic hahaha

Without a doubt.

One of my favorites I picked up the book about 2 months ago and every day I tell my friends at least once.

Though the first book series that got me into reading was Guardians of Ga'hoole.

>>5229529

>lots of "classics"
>not a single mention of goosebumps
>not a single mention of animorphs

You're a bunch of pretentious liars.

>>5233617
The only goosegumps story I can remember is the one where the camera takes photographs of people and they are dead on the prints.

Oh and the slime monster one at the school I think.

>>5233617
I've never read Animorphs.

>>5233617
I used to read a fuckload of Paul Jennings and Asterix as a child

Fuck off casual :^)

>>5233505
this
I couldn't finish it(going to give it another try from the start soon) but it's the same, I think about it often.

>>5233626
What made you quit? I read it in a week. The only chapter I disliked was chapter 3.

>>5233630
I finished Mondaugen's story and then my copy suffered water damage and I threw it out and started reading something else. I purchased a new copy last week.

>>5233639
Which version did you get?

Also, I found that some parts of Mondaugen's Story in Africa reminded me heavily of Blood Meridian. Especially the whale carcass on the beach.

>>5233686

>>5233697
Not bad. I got stuck with the Where's Waldo edition. 500 pages of blurry text took quite a while to get used to.

>>5233703
blurry text? let me see.

>>5233707
I hate this kind of print.

Lolita or Gulliver's Travels

>>5231860
In my experience, people who go out of their way to look like this don't really know anything and never even act like they know anything.

The real know-it-all pricks tend to dress and look pretty normally, even in the city.

>>5233864
thanks for reminding me i have to reread this

i read it all in one plane trip where i was still drunk and i barely remember it

>>5231157
This.

>>5233715
>>5233707
Guess I'm the only one who enjoyed the typeface and print in this version of V.
Everyone hates on it but it really grew on me.
Shame about the cover though, it's so ugly. Anyone know if you can still get pic related anywhere?

>>5233889
>>5233864
sucks farts out of my arse

there's three absolute very definite ones that i can never decide between but that i love more than anything else:

virginia woolf - the waves
italo calvino - invisible cities
kazuo ishiguro

and recently, another that i suspect will be a favourite forever, but it's too early to tell if i'll always feel that way:

j a baker, the peregrine

>>5233916
whoops, forgot to the put the book for ishiguro - the unconsoled

>>5233907
No, you can't get that anywhere. The best modern V. edition is from Harper Perennial.

>>5233889
Where can I get an edition with this cover?

>>5233943
compiled a list of versions you might like:
if you dont live in the us, just look through amazon, they have dozens of versions of ulysses if you're willing to buy used

http://www.amazon.com/Ulysses-James-Joyce/dp/0486474704/ref=tmm_pap_title_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1407071552&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Ulysses-Facsimile-1922-First-Edition/dp/1614271526/ref=tmm_pap_title_18?ie=UTF8&qid=1407071552&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Ulysses-James-Joyce/dp/149056635X/ref=tmm_pap_title_24?ie=UTF8&qid=1407071552&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Ulysses-Facsimile-First-Edition-Published/dp/0914061704/ref=tmm_hrd_title_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1407071552&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Ulysses-James-Joyce/dp/B00158KMVS/ref=tmm_hrd_title_22?ie=UTF8&qid=1407071552&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Ulysses-James-Joyce/dp/0375507949/ref=tmm_hrd_title_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1407071552&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Ulysses-james-joyce/dp/0370002458/ref=tmm_hrd_title_26?ie=UTF8&qid=1407071552&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Ulysses-James-Joyce/dp/B002GJS35W/ref=tmm_hrd_title_32?ie=UTF8&qid=1407071552&sr=8-1

>>5231592
ma nigga

>>5234019
Thanks. I'm in Denmark, so it will have to be from a European Amazon front. Or Bookdepository, though I haven't found any I liked there.

Is Everyman Library any good?

Either Pessoa'sThe Book of Disquiet or Borges Labyrinths

get on my level plebeians.

>>5234371
>plebeians
>reading translated Heidegger

Staying on topic; Ulysses by Joyce. Don't even care which cover.

>>5234499
>less than 100 pages

Fucking kids and ADHD...

>>5234570
>quantity =/= quality

>>5234620
I bet you like Animal Farm.

>>5234621
go to bed and try again tomorrow

>>5231437
While I don't consider the Egyptian to be a stylistically great work or even Waltari's best (that would be The Roman), I have to admit that The Egyptian is one of the most enjoyable and favourite reads I have ever had.

comfiest shit ever

>>5234371
Heidegger is pretty plebian compared to Hegel.

>>5234710
Hegel's a spook

>>5232422

Ender's Game
It's seriously pick up and read for me I've prob read it 5 times by now

Not a book but Sandman as a second. It doesn't beat Ender's Game because it has lame drawn out parts with no Endless, but the rest is fun storytelling. I'm probably going to make up my own set of Rook tier mysteries and secrets to tell my children.

Captain Underpants for third because once upon a time reading the word poop was comedy gold and is the gold standard to reference to for any book that can ever come close to giving me a pure innocent laugh as opposed to the common oh I get it so witty chuckle everyone does now

>>5234783
Time to grow up, Junior.

As the timeless wisdom of the Holy Bible states, "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things."

>>5231592
this

War and Peace

It’s even hard to believe that a single human being could have written such a thing all by himself.

Of course, if the collected works of Shakespeare could be counted as a single book, a single organic structure, I would choose that as my favorite book of all time.

Other works that I deeply love are the short-stories “The Death of Ivan Ilicht” and “Kolsthomer”, both by Tolstoy. And also:

Lolita
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Nothing Like the Sun

>>5232609
aww yeah. Sweet Thursday is great too.

>>5233693
you must have your head literally up your ass for liking this book bruh

>>5234964
The Collected Works of Shakespeare? Really? I could see a couple of his works being all-time favorites certainly, but the quality of his work differs so greatly that a collection of all of it would be an imperfect mess

Fifth business by Robertson Davies. I guess he's something of a national treasure in Canada, wish he was better known here

>>5235034

It’s because of the poetry. The thing I like the most in him is his language, and even some of the most imperfect and badly-orchestrated plays, or that plays with boring characters and plot are totally drenched in poetic exuberance. I am fanatic for metaphors.

>>5234804
Oh please
The first two aren't read by children and the last was explained

If we're doing Bible quotes out of context, "First, take the log out of your own eye before you can see the speck out of your brother's"

>>5234044

The dust covers can be lacking, but the book construction/quality is solid all around. Not a bad collection to build a library around.

>>5235153
Thank you so much.

>>5235114
His early plays are shit in language bruh

>>5233617
>liking childrens books as an adult

grow up faggot

>>5236106
die of aids faggot

>>5235321

No, that’s wrong. Even early plays have sudden bursts of sublimely unequaled poetry. Some very early plays – like Love’s Labor’s Lost – are hardly more than an exploration of all the potentialities of language.

Think on Richard III, for example. It’s pretty simple in the matter of language, and yet it contains that first opening monologue of Richard, and the great dream of Clarence.

Just look at this beautiful excerpt from - and who would have tought that such and early and uninteresting play would contain such a gem – The Two Gentlemen of Verona:

For Orpheus' lute was strung with poets' sinews,
Whose golden touch could soften steel and stones,
Make tigers tame and huge leviathans
Forsake unsounded deeps to dance on sands.

There is hardly any poet that can create something this beautiful. And this is from The Taming of the Schrew:

For I will board her, though she chide as loud
As thunder when the clouds in autumn crack.

>>5236406

And from the same play, look at this sudden outburst of natural and topic language, of a very experience-founded writing:

Why, Petruchio is coming in a new hat and an old jerkin, a pair of old breeches thrice turned, a pair of boots that have been candle-cases, one buckled, another laced, an old rusty sword ta'en out of the town-armoury, with a broken hilt, and chapeless; with two broken points; his horse hipped -- with an old mothy saddle and stirrups of no kindred -- besides, possessed with the glanders and like to mose in the chine, troubled with the lampass, infected with the fashions, full of windgalls, sped with spavins, rayed with the yellows, past cure of the fives, stark spoiled with the staggers, begnawn with the bots, swayed in the back and shoulder-shotten, near-legged before, and with a half-cheeked bit and a head-stall of sheep's leather, which, being restrained to keep him from stumbling, hath been often burst and new-repaired with knots; one girth six times pieced, and a woman's crupper of velure, which hath two letters for her name fairly set down in studs, and here and there pieced with pack-thread.

>>5236106
>acting like a tryhard on a philipino imageblog

>>5236413

And what about this rhyming excerpt from Love’s Labours Lost:

This fellow pecks up wit as pigeons pease,
And utters it again when God doth please:
He is wit's pedler, and retails his wares
At wakes and wassails, meetings, markets, fairs;
And we that sell by gross, the Lord doth know,
Have not the grace to grace it with such show.
This gallant pins the wenches on his sleeve;
Had he been Adam, he had tempted Eve;
A' can carve too, and lisp: why, this is he
That kiss'd his hand away in courtesy;
This is the ape of form, monsieur the nice,
That, when he plays at tables, chides the dice
In honourable terms: nay, he can sing
A mean most meanly; and in ushering
Mend him who can: the ladies call him sweet;
The stairs, as he treads on them, kiss his feet:
This is the flower that smiles on every one,
To show his teeth as white as whale's bone;
And consciences, that will not die in debt,
Pay him the due of honey-tongued Boyet.

And this too, from the same play:

A lover's eyes will gaze an eagle blind.
A lover's ear will hear the lowest sound,
When the suspicious head of theft is stopped.
Love's feeling is more soft and sensible
Than are the tender horns of cockled snails.
Love's tongue proves dainty Bacchus gross in taste.
For valor, is not Love a Hercules,
Still climbing trees in the Hesperides?
Subtle as Sphinx; as sweet and musical
As bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair.
And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods
Make heaven drowsy with the harmony.

And in King John, that is hardly read, there are countless beauties, like this:

Ha, majesty! how high thy glory towers,
When the rich blood of kings is set on fire!
O, now doth Death line his dead chaps with steel;
The swords of soldiers are his teeth, his fangs;
And now he feasts, mousing the flesh of men,

And this (note the mixture of poetic and natural language, the very ordinary-life similes used by the character of Falcounbridge the Bastard):

Here's a stay
That shakes the rotten carcass of old Death
Out of his rags! Here's a large mouth, indeed,
That spits forth death and mountains, rocks and seas,
Talks as familiarly of roaring lions
As maids of thirteen do of puppy-dogs!
What cannoneer begot this lusty blood?
He speaks plain cannon fire, and smoke and bounce;
He gives the bastinado with his tongue:
Our ears are cudgell'd; not a word of his
But buffets better than a fist of France:
Zounds! I was never so bethump'd with words
Since I first call'd my brother's father dad.

Nobody could have imagined how far he was going to go, but from the beginning his plays contained (although not that much in the first ones, I agree) some of the greatest poetry ever created.

>>5233479
Someone help me

I read half of this book and am completely bored. What is there to like? I am 18.

>>5233715
Whats wrong with it?

Leo Strauss' Rebirth of Classic Political Rationalis.

>>5234804
Ender's Game is very rich in subtext but because the prose is sloppy and its YA, you will never see /lit/ admit to thinking much of it.