/lit/ - Literature

I'd say 8/10. It's a fantastic book. It taught me more about race in America than any amount of time I spent learning about 'diversity' in high school. So many powerful scenes.

It's also an interesting response to Dostoevsky's "Notes From Underground," another book worth reading.

8 out of 10.

5/10, the prose is alright but it gets too caught up in SJW crap

>>5290175
I'd rate it a 1/ Sheldon Cooper

a guy who isn't a pussy joins a communist party full of pussies and the other black people who aren't pussies hate him for it

>>5290238
SJW are the slacktivism types.

10/10

>>5290185
>Dostoevsky's "Notes From Underground,"
Ah yes, I should have guessed! It has so many literary allusions to other classics.

>>5290238
>>5290248
You sirs are morons. Get that looked at.

Stop shitposting on /lit/. Thanks!

>>5290185
Damn, 80% = fantastic? Wish my parents had seen things that way. Maybe then I wouldn't have been grounded >1/2 the time I was in high school and would've been allowed to try out for the basketball team.

Bömp

8/10. Was truly great and really shows how under powered black america really is. Isn't having a rival to best something to look forward to in life? At least from a dumbass /pol/lac's perspective.

It was excellent. I'd give it an 8/10, maybe even an 8.5/10. At its roots its about Existentialism being expressed through the struggle for identity faced by a black man working for civil rights.

>>5290354
in the real world - 5/10 is average
in school - 7/10 is average

>>5290238
This /lit/ poster is a 3/10, his bait is alight but he gets too caught up in spouting epic maymays. :^)

>/lit/ talking about books by black authors

>>5290175
It's really good. The prose is excellent and the story itself is a very realistic look at racial tensions and politics. Probably one of my favirote books.

>>5290175
What do YOU think of it, thus far?

>>5294117
Perhaps he's gone back to reading it and assumed the thread was gone.

I started it, but didn't get to finish it before I had to return it to the library. I got around halfways through it, and I really liked it.

>>5294173
What section?
It surprised me at nearly every turn.

>>5290175
Want to read this. In a similar vein, James Baldwin's essays are also excellent.

>>5294117

Thanks for asking, and everyone for reply.
So far I really like it. Like i said I haven't read much books, so i'm not familiar with this authors overly excessive descriptions, I mean sometimes it's a little bit too much!

Being a new reader, I don't really like too much descriptions, I mean I get the idea of making your reader feel the emotion of a character, area, etc.. But When it's too much, it really is too much. It makes me want to skip. Are all majority of books/novels like this? Being too descriptive on things?

can anyone recommend a good book, that's pretty straight forward?

The introduction for this book is epic.
Chapter one was really awesome, chapter 2 was good. In chapter 3 at the moment.

-OP

>>5295320
Chapter 6 is when it gits gud

>>5290175
>can anyone who has read it, rate it?
Why do you want to cloud your view of the book like this? Read it, think about it, form your own views about it.

>black authors
>only write about race related things

I'LL TAKE THINGS I'LL NEVER READ FOR 400 ALEX!

>>5295320

Not sure what you mean by "too descriptive." There are plenty of writers who don't describe landscapes in the way that someone like Tolkien does, but there are fewer writers who focus on action/plot progression over character development.

Since you're new to reading, you might want to try Camus' "The Stranger," Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea," (both are fairly short and have plenty of action along with character development) or some short stories. Some short stories that you may enjoy are Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find," Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart," and "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" by Joyce Carol Oates.

Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried" is a collection of short stories about the Vietnam War that I believe you would really enjoy. I had to read it in high school, and there wasn't a single person who didn't like it.

>>5295362
>Only write about race related things
Wrong.
I related to it.
Read and find out how wrong you are.

>>5295362
>muh cracker experience is being ignored halp

>>5295362
>black writer writing in the 1950s
>expect him to ignore race

>>5295362
The book is primarily about identity. Race is going to factor in because the narrator is black and it's the 1930's. But two of the major antagonists are power crazy black men, one of whom slyly manipulates white people as a faux Uncle Tom, and the other who is a black supremest trying to kill the narrator. The only white antagonist isn't racist, he's a vanguardist trying to suppress any class revolution that the party doesn't control. It's not a conventional civil rights story.

>>5295477
See, this looks like a Feminister post, and no offense to you if you aren't her (or him) but this is the kind of thing I'm missing most from her seeming departure. I'm sure there are many other posts as good as this, but I just can't easily find them without reading through *everything*
And *thats* a dimension to this book I think everyone should read for.

>>5295320

>straight to the point

Fucking hemingway.

>>5295413
>TTTC

Only book I read in Junior Year; changed my entire view of reading

>>5295578
Feminister will return in a year, when she can be relatively certain her ex is no longer stalking her. She will be posting timestamp pics from the nose down to appease /lit/

>>5295578
>but I just can't easily find them without reading through *everything*

you truly don't understand the purpose of this website.

>backtoreddit.jpg

>>5295578
I agree butter that this does look like a post by Feminister.

I always liked Feminister's (I say the name repeatedly because of pronoun ambiguity) pithiness and seemingly wide-range knowledge on the whole gamut.

>>5295753
But how is posting here revealing her location. Short of faking her own funeral, I don't see this angle working. If this is what she's told you, I wish you would question her about it.

>>5295320
>Chapter 3
You take the exposition an author gives you. Unless they're shit, they have good goddamn reason. I didn't want to hear that damn uncle Tom go about some Jesus miracle putting his dick where it don't belong, but I read through it, and completely agreed with the narrator about wanting to get the hell out of there.

>>5295774
>But how is posting here revealing her location. Short of faking her own funeral, I don't see this angle working. If this is what she's told you, I wish you would question her about it.
Her ex is the sort who might disclose her details--such as full name and birth and other photos....--online out of butthurt if she refused to get back in touch with him.

>>5295756
>The Purpose of 4chan: The lulz
>The Purpose of 4chan/lit/: To contain the pretentious and stupid
Beg pardon.
You're right. It's not a place to learn, just swagger and fool around.

>>5295724
I don't like this myth. Prose-wise he is very straightforward as in he says thing in some of the most simple ways possible but that doesn't mean he doesn't describe scenery like a motherfucker.

9/10 first half
6/10 after he becomes involved with "the brotherhood"

Overall 7.5/10

>>5295808
Are you communist? Is that why?

>>5295868
No I thought the second half was only slightly above average whereas the first hall was phenomenal in almost every respect.

>>5295877
I kept thinking he'd meet that rich man's son again some time, but, as I said above, I was surprised at all the different turns. Maybe you were just expecting the plot to go in some direction and it disappointed.

>>5295938
No, I just noticed what I thought was a pretty stark drop in quality.

>>5295938
>>5295984 isn't me but I agree

The brotherhood section was a good idea executed poorly

>>5295984
No. This is just your opinion. You had expectations.

>>5295877
The second half is pure allegory, whereas the first is only allegory at times, particularly Chapter 1. The second half is actually the more meaningful part.

>>5296028
I think maybe you're an idiot...? Shouldn't it go without saying that it's an opinion? Why take it personally that book completely stalls in the second half? Maybe you should read it again with a more critical ear, as I understand from other posters that you mostly read genre fiction/new atheist tracts.

>>5296044
To complain about the second half is miss the entire groundbreaking aspect of the story. Post existentialism and post Marxism both largely made their debut in Invisible Man, and their prominence is in the second half. The first half is about him getting fucked over and over, the second is about going deeper than that.

>>5296072
I just found it clumsy

>>5296029
Yeah. It was an idea that has real merit that wasn't written well in relation to the first half of the book

>>5296081
It does take a lot more effort to critically read than the first half.

>>5296088
No shit! It was a fucking train-wreck

>>5296086
How so? The narrative style is intentionally "surreal" starting with the flashback toward the beginning. As the narrator finds life more and more absurd, the style accommodates. It *has* to be incongruent to reflect the narrator's changing perception of life.

>>5294372
If you like James Baldwin's essays, you'll love Invisible Man. Ellison and Baldwin share the uncanny ability to write sentences on paper that sound like a booming orator.
I think The Fire Next Time should be required reading in American high schools.

>>5295362
>I can only relate to boring white men

>>5296100
Yeah. The ideas behind the second half were fantastic. Nevertheless it was poorly written.
Poor characters. Poor character development. Poor dialogue and then it gets half assed and runs out of steam.
It's reads like Ellison had no idea where he was going with it.
Maybe he had a deadline to meet.
I'm sure you'll come up with some kind of erudite reason as to why I'm wrong and lacking in the critical thinking skills to understand Ellison's vision.
Maybe I'll read it tomorrow.

>>5296044
I used to read genre fiction, but now it's mostly non-fiction.

I liked the second half a lot. I think changes but after the hospital, but I felt that was completely appropriate. I felt left in the dark with that Brother Hambro section where he gets trained, but that wasn't important to the story. It felt weird on purpose.
(Oh gawd and the handwriting on the note! WO)

>>5296072
Thank you

>>5296153
The second half doesn't have characters, it has ideas. To say "poor character development" is like saying there's poor character development for some character in Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

>>5296162
>Thank you
You already know I got your back.

>>5296044
I used to read genre fiction, but now it's mostly non-fiction.

I liked the second half a lot. I think it does change after the hospital scene, but I felt that was completely appropriate. I didn't like skipping the training sessions with brother Hambro, but in hindsight that section weren't important to the story. It felt weird on purpose.
(Oh gawd and the handwriting on the note! WO)

>>5296072
Thank you

>>5296175

I read this in school. Didn't like it because the teacher constantly asserted white people as evil, in every scene. There were some scenes where I asserted that perhaps the author was trying to say that black people inadvertently hurt their own cause (see the fight scene before the narrator's first speech) and I tried to think of it in terms of outside race, and found I could make connections.

Good writing and symbolism, just hated how my teacher made it into a white privilege book

>>5296029
What was the second half an allegory to?

I read it when I was in the 7th grade. I remember getting zero enjoyment from it. And when I got to the end I remember having no idea what the last sentence meant.

5/10

>>5296044
Butterface is an idiot and it took her months to read this book.

>>5298474
-> >>5296072

>>5298517
Maybe above 7th graders heads. You might like it better if you give it a try.

>>5298535
This coming from someone who doesn't even read.
It took maybe a month and half or less, and this is while I was working and reading little bits and pieces of other things. I took in this book at my own pace, so what business is of yours? I wasn't struggling with words, I was stopping and thinking. Fictions as deep as this take more time than the history books I read with their rather simple names and dates format.

>>5298609
Is that really an allegory though?

>>5298609
You are beyond pathetically fucking stupid