/lit/ - Literature

>>5597246
How was Gilgamesh?

>>5597278
epic

>>5597283
How witty.

>>5597246
Huck Finn and Gatsby are both like top 20 all time novels for me so those are my favorites probably. My least favorite is Fight Club, which I haven't read, but I just read Invisible Monsters and it was so stupid that it created a vortex forcing me to hate everything Palahniuk has ever written even if I haven't read it.

I found Falling Man surprisingly good, but I read it before I had read any other DeLillo (I've read...4? of his books now). Henry IV (both parts) are really underrated Shakespeare as well. And for As You Like It, Touchstone is maybe my all-time favorite Shakespearean character.

Lotsa good stuff in there in general.

>>5597278
I thought the second half after Enkidu dies was brilliant.

>>5597288
I meant fav and east fav of your own list, but you tried. :^)

>>5597246
I think you're far too focused on reading books like they're "achievements" of some sort instead of reading for the purpose of absorbing its contents and using that to enrich your life.

>>5597320
I can't be proud of hearing the jazz in Hart Crane? Or connecting the images in Billy Pilgrim's schizophrenia to where they came from in reality? Or realizing Whitman is trying to turn me on?

Let's not talk about literature. I'll go back to shitposting the Sam Harris thread.

>>5597335
Not really I don't care what you've read. Not as a list. If the alternative post for you is shitposting, then don't post. Your obviously rigged questions are fucking stupid

>>5597310
Oh, I didn't get that from your OP. Here are mine. My favorite was Pale Fire, my least favorites were Invisible Monsters and the Lovecraft.

>>5597320
Yeah, how dare he post what he read and want to talk to people about it on the literature board.

I've read too many books and it would take an hour to make a pic.

>>5597385
How did you like Ship Fever? It's one of my favorites.

>>5597440
I loved Ship Fever, one of the best short story collections I've ever read. "The Littoral Zone" was my favorite but they were all good...I'm amazed Barrett's not more famous or anthologized. Weirdly enough, it was recommended to me by my mom, who has excellent taste in literature.

Also, if you use Goodreads, you can go to all books, sort by read-date, and click the cover icon (instead of the list icon) to make it give you a picture of the covers of all the books you've read most recently.

>tfw my 2014 books read image is on my desktop
>i'm posting from my laptop
>want to partake in thread but don't want to leave bed to boot up computer

It's this strange feeling of self-loathing and laziness and desperation with no outlet.

>Favorite:
Faust
I,Claudius
Under the Volcano
Collected Poems and Hyperion by Hölderlin
Man without Qualities
Gilgamesh
Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre by Goethe

>Least Favorite:
Journey to the end of the Night
Blindsight
No longer Human
New York Trilogy

>>5597246
How was Nadja?

>>5597246
I was thinking about getting into Beckett come December, how was Waiting for Godot? I was gonna get his collection that has three novels in it, is that a bad place to start?

>>5597487
I started with his trilogy and really enjoyed it, even though each next book gets a bit crazier than the last.

>>5597456
not worth it

>>5597471
Hell yes my dude. Been meaning to try some Gene Wolfe, is Shadow of the Torturer a good place to start or do you have a better recommendation?

Also how was Sot-Weed Factor? I've never read any Barth either

>>5597475
It's interesting. Breton personifies surrealism and shows were it succeeds and fails. like how annoying Nadja is when she becomes a try-hard painter If you like surrealism, you should definitely read it.

>>5597471
My my, if this isn't is Sebastian.

>>5597533
>If you like surrealism, you should definitely read it.
Well thats another book added to the to-read list

>>5597518

I have read his New Sun, Long Sun, Cerebus and that Castle of Days Collection. New Sun is where you should start out of those books, Long Sun is a vague continuation and Castle of Days contains 3 books: a collection of short storys, a collection of essays about his new sun books and a collection of essays about the general sci-fi/con scene.

The Sot-Weed Factor is a funny adventure story, you basically have your a bit naive and too good-hearted protagonist who is surrounded by various tricksters, whores, government officials, pirates, indians, slaves and other mischievous folks and he rolls along and makes the best of it.

>>5597246
Man The Dead from Dubliners is one of my favorite short stories of all time.

The prose when he is walking back from the party and the scene in the bedroom after is God tier.

>>5597471

yellowcore/10

Liked: In Dreams Begin.., Herzog, Montaigne's Essays, Orlando Furioso, Hume's Enquiry, Metamorphoses, Dorian Gray, Mansfield Park, Howards End, The Waves, Civilization & Its Discontents, Liberal Imagination, Boorstin's The Image, 'Winesburg, Ohio'

Disliked: Too many to list.

Started reading in June after hiatus

Loved Lolita. Liked the rest.

>>5597579
Nice...what is Herzog like? I've only read Henderson the Rain King but I loved it, have been meaning to do something else by Bellow at some point.

And how was Stoner? Worth the hype it gets around here?

>>5597451
That's neat, thanks.

Favorite:
Ship Fever
Too Loud a Solitude
Anna Karenina

Least Favorite:
Sword Art Online light novels
Outlander
The Chronicles of Amber
Narnia
Vampire Academy
Sookie Stackhouse
and more
For some reason I can't stop myself from reading books I know I'm going to hate.

>>5597471
I read Sirius when I was 10 or 11 and it was amazing. Is it worth re-reading?
How was Rebecca?

>>5597579
You didn't like Ficciones, Feminism is for Everybody, or Murphy?

Are you a pleb?

>>5597688

wow you are a prolific reader.

My Favs from this year:

Danilo Kis
Hrabal
Vollmann
Le Guin
Wolfe
Salter

Least Favourites

In the Heart of the Country - Coetzee (Normally a big fan of his work)
The Actual - Bellow
Sense of an Ending

the most difficult book was Crash

>>5597688
Good shit. I read garbage I know is gonna be garbage all the time too, I have no idea why.

What's a good Le Carre book to start with? I was thinking of trying The Spy Who Came In from the Cold or A Perfect Spy. And I'm a big Le Guin fan (I'm >>5597385) but I haven't read Rocannon's World yet, how was that?

Honestly all the lists posted so far have been pretty great. The people who actually post the books they read on /lit/ have good taste and seem reasonable...almost as if most of the shitposting comes from people who don't actually read...

>>5597695
Ficciones was okay but heavily repetitive, most of them I had already read in Labryinths and Borges doesn't do well with repeat readings. Feminism is for Everybody was really shallow, reductive and took bizarre leaps of logic (linking any form of violence, eg. child abuse to white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, her favourite overused catchphrase), the 'choice' of sexuality, and contained nothing I didn't know already; though she is the only mainstream feminist I've read who attempted to reclaim spirituality but does it in a wholly uninteresting orientalist way: wow some religions like Hinduism have female deities. Murphy was pretty atrociously written and not funny in the slightest. I watched the chess game play out and the stupidity of it mirrors the novel pretty well.

>>5597632
Roth in the intro compares it to the style of Woolf's The Waves and Faulkner's The Sound & the Fury. That's an overstatement. Herzog is pretty myopic, it tracks an intellectual as he ruminates over his life, its missteps like being cuckolded by his best friend, it flows back in time into his memories seamlessly. You might find him pretentious as a character, the half-formed letters that are peppered throughout, addressed to philosophers, thinkers and other figures are really just there as a stylistic tics. I think Bellow sidesteps this a bit by humanizing him into a pretty sentimental father who tries to find some salvation in his children, even though he's just one step from crazy.

>>5597753
>Tokyo Doesn't love us anymore

I just started this waiting for a few other books, but owned it for a while and couldn't get into it.

I like how he writes though.

>>5597753
The Fifth Head of Cerberus is pretty crazy, isn't it?
How did you like the Wool/Silo thing, overall (or maybe you haven't finished it yet, all those different editions are very confusing)? I really liked the first story, but the rest was... ok. Is Sand worth reading?

>>5597762
I started reading through the George Smiley series. Call for The Dead is a murder mystery with spies, A Murder of Quality is a murder mystery without spies, and it's disappointing. The Spy Who Came In from the Cold is great, so I guess you can start with this one. I don't know about A Perfect Spy.
Rocannon's World was ok. It's a fantasy kind of story in a sci-fi universe. About half as good as The Left Hand of Darkness, but still good if you like the Hainish Cycle or if you're a completionist.
I don't know about the others, but I'm not from /lit/. I used to lurk 3 years ago or so.

>>5598109

Le Carré has basically disowned A Call For The Dead and A Murder of Quality, describing them as something like an exercise in writing more so than a book. In the later Smiley books, the details given about him in them are retconned too, making them almost entirely pointless: a plot point from ACFTD ties into The Spy Who Came in From The Cold but it's not necessary to read it first.

>>5597762

The Spy Who Came in From The Cold is the best starting place. It's the first book where he has a firm grip on his own style and it's a short, dense read. From there The Looking Glass War is more along those lines, and very good, but The Karla Trilogy is what he's famous for. A Perfect Spy is, in my opinion, his best book but because it's so personal, I'd recommend reading his earlier stuff first before you get to it. It has more impact that way.

>>5597818
How'd you like Understanding Poetry.

>>5597246
Come at me /lit/

>>5598291
Patrician as fuck. How was fat vampire?

>>5598319
I found it palatable, most people on GR blew up about it.
I was wary when I starting to read because of all the low ratings, people just don't like that he started "using people" after he got his "power up".

I guess GRs has sjws also.

Shit.

How is The Glass Meangerie?

Saw this at a goodwill, but I wasn't sure to pick it up.

>>5598291
Did you finish MBoTF?? I found that book too long and lacking of rewards.

>Laurell k Hamilton
You actually read that crap?

>Favorites
The Count of Monte Cristo
A Confederacy of Dunces
Cannery Row
Dubliners
>Least Favorites
Siddhartha
Snow Country

>>5597246
I think the tendency to collect and display books you have read is slightly saddening in that the clear aim seems to be to become a sort of 'lifestyle literate'.

>>5597688
are... are those . . . comic books?

>>5599464
I second that. But what else is there in life?

Didn't get to start reading this year until June because of huge workload.

Decided to work my way through some /lit/core.

Large books ruin my reading goals :/

How do you guys read so much?

>>5599676
What do you think of Mason & Dixon?

>>5599459
>>Favorites
>A Confederacy of Dunces

>Least Favorites
>Siddhartha

This board is not for you.

>>5599702
Yeah, good taste is not encouraged here.

>>5599764
I'm guessing you're American.

>>5599702
Pleb as fuck. That's like saying you hated Hamlet but liked the Dresden Files.

>James Joyce Poems
>I have read all his works (or so I thought) and had no idea he wrote poems

What the fuck? Are they any good?

>>5599469
Yes. If you want recommendations, Saga and Hellboy are great, Sweet Tooth is ok.

>>5599702
>>5599777
Piss off you stupid faggots, Siddhartha is overrated shit.

>>5599464
>being this autistic

Bump

>>5597471
> not liking Journey
why not, anon?

>>5599879
faggot detected

>>5597385
How'd you like Open City. I read it in December and I'm still not sure about it. Little too analytical? Academic? Not that it was bad, mind you.

>>5605676
Really liked it, was very much thrown off guard by the reveal 3/4 of the way through. The whole thing reminded me of W.G. Sebald or a less-insane Nabokov, where the erudition is as much about character building as it is about showing off.

>>5597548
Please don't.

>>5598191
I liked it. I enjoyed the commentaries on individual poems over the general comments on style/poets/technique and question prompts. I didn't get a chance to really read the appendices since the due date came up so missed out on some of the metrical analyses, so I'll probably read it again next year. I wish my library had his other fiction book in circulation.

>>5597632
Forgot to reply re Stoner. I think it's good, overhyped sure, but worth a read. It's pretty plain/pedestrian look at human suffering that occurs even after you've managed to achieve some success in life (going from a pragmatic farmboy to a Prof and romantic lover of the English lit; and marrying a girl 'of your dreams'). I think it's important when reading this book to at least try and have some sympathy (or pity?) for Edith, she's just as emotionally hollow as stoic Stoner.

>>5606620
I fucking hated Edith.

>>5606638
Do you hate Stoner for raping her?

>>5606654
It didn't feel right. He should not have done it. Was just wrong.

I didn't like or dislike either of them at that point. I felt bad for both.

But later, Stoner, while cold and somewhat distant from his family, at least he tries to be nice to them. Edith became more and more of a cunt as time went on. The fakeness with the guests and lack of real hobbies just reminded me so much of my mother.

>>5597246
Hart Crane really is a good fucking poet, doesn't get enough love.

How is that Mary Oliver collection? I read her poetry handbook in a library years ago and still mentally refer to it at times.

>>5598045

In a way it's a very sad book. Looking back I can see that the style wouldn't be for everyone.

>>5598109

Yeah that was a trip I just read "Book of Days" since I posted that chart thing and that had some really imaginative stories in it. I liked Wool it was a nice easy/plot read, I think I have one or two omnibus books to go before I finish the series. Sand had a neat concept (scuba diving in sand dunes to find treasure) but it wasn't as fleshed out as Wool and there are no sequels yet.

>>5599676
not the same guy but i'd like to reiterate the question... i'm stunned

ITT: lies

are people using a website to make these collages?

>>5606669
>doesn't get enough love.

yes he does

but if you havent noticed he isnt exactly an easily accessible writer

>>5599783
james joyce was an awful poet

>>5608741
Do you watch tv or anime or play vidya? How much time do you spend browsing 4chan? Just stop and read instead.

>>5608741
NEET
no tv

bump for more images

>>5597753
If you liked Danilo Kis, try reading "Dictionary of the Khazars" by Milorad Pavic

favorite: Labyrinths, Compact, Maldoror, Invisible Cities, Pale Fire, Dictee
least favorite: 4.48 Psychosis

ARE PEOPLE USING A WEBSITE FOR THE COLLAGE?

>>5611765
good shit. how was The Pale King? I've had an unread copy in my room since it was published.

And is Babyfucker actually worth reading? Or is it sub-Palahniuk provocation?

>>5611795
>>5597451
>Also, if you use Goodreads, you can go to all books, sort by read-date, and click the cover icon (instead of the list icon) to make it give you a picture of the covers of all the books you've read most recently.

>>5611826
BUT THEN HOW DO YOU MAKE THE COLLAGE

>>5611765
hi oswald

>>5611845
printscreen it?

About to finish The Magus, which has been great so far. Favorites are Narcissus and Goldmund, The Leopard, and Foucault's Pendulum.

I cannot be bothered to make an image.

The Forever War, The Stars My Destination, The Demolished Man, House of God, Mockingbird, City, Teatro Grotesco, The Woman in the Dunes, Miss Lonelyhearts, The Cyberiad, Tales of Pirx the Pilot, many of Poe's stories, As I Lay Dying, The Book of Disquiet.

I cannot pick a favorite and actually enjoyed pretty much all of them. I've read a lot of scifi books since I'm doing an intense internship and stuff like Dostoevsky or Celine isn't conducive to the mindset I need to study hard and stay motivated.

Favourites: Complete Works of Arthur Rimbaud, Nine Stories, Ficciones

Least Favourites: Love is a Dog from Hell, Crome Yellow

I've also read a fair amount of philosophy, but I never completely finished a work so I don't think it belongs here.

>>5611862
hey

>Favorite
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
>Least Favorite
I dunno, maybe Colorless Tsukuru or The Immoralist

>>5612150
how was tropic of cancer?

>>5612156
If you're willing to indulge HM's ego it's a good time. Some nice prose.

>>5612167
>ego

What do you mean?

>>5612170
He writes about himself for himself, that much is clear.

>>5597246

How's Doors of Perception? I might give either Point Counter Point a read or Inherent Vice next.

My list:
The Forever War
Seven Pillars of Wisdom
I Am A Cat
Gormenghast
As I Lay Dying
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrel
Journey to the End of the Night
Memories, Dreams and Reflections
To Kill a Mockinbird
Catcher in the Rye
The Cossacks
The House on the Borderland
Something Wicked this way Comes
Vineland
The Road
Metropole
The Silmarilon
The White People and Other Weird Stories

Metropole was probably my surprise favourite even if the author did rip off Kafka a lot. My least is probably either Vineland or The Road.

>>5611447

that sounds really neat will do

>>5597320
Ugh, I hate this shit.

>you cant enrich your life with the lessons of already well-established "classics"
>you cannot enjoy classics genuinely
>there is no other reason to read classics apart from hollow self-validation

>>5597385
Thomas Pynchon - Slanted Titles

>>5612170
nobody on this board actually fucks girls, so therefore, since miller has apositive sexual identity and is confident in his libido.

Holy fuck I've read a ton of biographies this year.

>>5612690
>reads autobiographies
>being this /tv/

>>5612713

>Miles
>Moveable Feast
>not two of the greatest reading experiences of all time

>>5612713
you probably learn a lot more how to live life from bios than fiction.

>>5612760
you have just reached a level of plebness that i didn't know was even possible

>>5612745

>>not two of the greatest reading experiences of all time

you couldn't be more /r/books if you tried

>>5612760
nah, not really

depends on the quality of the work tho

>>5612774
reading fiction to learn how to live your life itself or for muh human condition is pretty pleb m8.

red them in French, started in summer.

Here's what I've finished so far this year. Currently slogging through the magic mountain by thomas mann

>>5599657
How was Bonfire of the Vanities? I just picked it up for $2 used and I'm really looking forward to it, think I might read it next.

>>5612227
>The House on the Borderland

What did you think?

Have been slacking this year.

Favorite: Heart of Darkness
Least Favorite: The Children of Men

>>5614233
How was The Gambler?

>>5614422
how was Capital? i've been considering buying it and checking it out but it still costs quite a pretty penny.

>Liked
In Defense of Sanity: Best essays of Chesterton
>Prejudices Complete Series - Mencken
>Conspiracy Against The Human Race & Teatro Grottesco - Ligotti

>kinda disliked
The Tunnel - Sabato
Richard Yates - Towel In

>>5598291
>all fantasy
Are there people like this, on this board?
Why waste your life reading brain dead urban garbage when you can enlighten yourself with real literature?

Here's my shit

>Favs
Aniara, The Fall, To The Lighthouse

>Least fav
The Narrowing Circle

What should I read next?

Sabbath's Theater or Pale Fire?

>>5617031
read the one that interests you most. quit appealing to the masses.

>>5603392
He stopped believing

>>5617083
I guess he just couldn't hold on to the feeling.

Now that I write it out like this, it looks really random and not all that flattering, haha.

>>5612227
What did you think of I Am a Cat? I got like 2/3 of the way through it until it started to feel like just more of the same...

>>5617289
>the island of dr moreau
mah nigga
just finished the invisible man, thought it was alright, not nearly as good as the time machine. I love H.G. Wells, what did you think of Dr. Moreau?
On topic, I read this year:
Animal Farm
Ender's game (ugh)
Dance with dragons (double ugh)
A Doll's House (great)
Dune (boring)

Have really been slacking this year, I promise to myself next year I'll do better.

>>5606669
Mary Oliver is the Billy Collins of nature poetry. Tread cautiously.

>>5617388
Island of Dr. Moreau was pretty good. It starts a little slow but picks up after a while. It has a lot of dry humor and blasphemy. =D
Invisible Man was my equivalent of angsty YA in high school.

>>5597246

need to add some more.
rate and comment.

>>5615999

Used the tale within a tale frame quite well but I felt like some of the horror aspect such as the pigs felt a little outdated.

>>5617289

It was an interesting observational piece and the stuff on optics took me by complete surprise since I didn't expect to read anything like that in the novel I just felt like a lot of humour took me by complete surprise. Maybe it's because I am not Japanese or that I wasn't around when it was written but those are my reasoning for it still a good book though.

>>5617939
It's all shit on that list ,save a few exceptions

>>5617939
Parzival is reactionary?

>>5599676
I didn't post my reading list, but I read a lot in this year (102 books so far).
It was sort of special year in my life, got a job in public sector in which I had few duties, so I could read a few hours each day with the risk of getting caught. Also after that I get stressed (maybe even a tiny bit depressed) (money and family issues), so I escaped into books.

For comparison I read 45 books last year whole year, before that only 39, before that 21.

So I know where you're coming from.

>>5605676
yeah, wikipedia novel

Favorites: Orlando, Symposium, All Quiet on the Western Front, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists

Least: Dune Messiah, Meditations, Psychopathology of Everyday Life

>>5616753
I liked it, but it didn't change my life

>>5616870
How was 50 shades?

>>5619099
I liked it, it changed my wife

>>5597246
So no Faulkner because you've already read everything orrrrrrrrr

>>5618655
I have been reading around 30-40 for the past 4 years since collage is a bitch.

>>5618775
>least favorite
>Meditations
Explain yourself

Didn't make a chart but I do keep a document with all my books read, albums listened to, and movies watched throughout the year.

The Loser - Thomas Bernhard
Tragic Relief - C. Frakes
The Book of Da
In the Sounds and Seas vol. 1
Rice Boy
The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Zafon
Mason & Dixon - Thomas Pynchon
The Land at the End of the World - Antonio Lobo Antunes
Hypothermia - Alvaro Enrigue
Morphine - Mikhail Bulgakov
Play it as it Lays - Joan Didion
Exercises in Style - Raymond Queaneau
Varamo - Cesar Aira
The Outsiders - S.E. Hinton
Pastoralia and other stories - George Saunders
Thinking in Pictures - Temple Grandin
Man the Holocene - Max Frisch
Child of God - Cormac McCarthy
Leaving the Atocha Station - Ben Lerner
Mao II - Don DeLillo
Fare Forward Letter From David Markson - Laura Sims
How to Get a Date Worth Keeping - Henry Cloud
Schopenhauer
Agape Agape - William Gaddis
Apollo's Song - Osamu Tezuka
The Tropic of Cancer - Henry Miller
A Drifting Life - Yoshihiro Tatsumi
Demo - Brian Wood, Becky Cloonan
The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer
Mortality - Christopher Hitchens
Language Arts - Cedar Sigo
V. - Thomas Pynchon
The Dark Passages of History - Thomas Pynchon
Blinding - Mircea Cartarescu
On The Road - Jack Kerouac
Junky - William S. Burroughs
Suicide - Edouard Levé

And I plan to finish The Club of Angels by Verissimo and 10:04 by Ben Lerner before year's end. Hopefully some John Hawkes or something else too.

>>5619213
How was Morphine?

>>5619213
What is "The Dark Passages of History" and why have I never heard of it?

>>5619368
Mediocre. I haven't read any other Bulgakov but the work didn't really do anything for me.

>>5619372
Sorry that one was mislabeled. That's a collection of scholarly essays by David Cowart. I put the dash rather than a semicolon.

Tagging post so no more confusion happens>>5619213

>>5597548
>>5606508

lol

bump

>>5597471
I just finished Watership Down. I really enjoyed it.

How did you feel about it Anon?

>>5597688
update
Favorite: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrel
Least favorite: The Last Battle

Where do y'all get/make these nifty images?

>>5619213
Is it weird I wanna see your other lists too?

>>5625392
paint

>Favorite:
Maus
>Least Favorite:
Sidarta

>>5625392
Add the books to good reads.
Take screencap

>>5626261
>Some nigger bitch "we should all give me power"
>Favorite is the race baiting muh 6 gorillion comic for 7th graders

Tumblr please stay on /co/

>>5626261
>Fangirl
best YA I've ever read

Guys I want to make a collage too but what's the easiest way to do it?

>>5626269
wat

>>5616949

Discounting all the academic studies and plant physiology journals it's not much.
>In Descending Order of Favorites
Death in Midsummer
A Moveable Feast
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog
Under Milk Wood
Ishmael
Dubliners
Trout Fishing in America

>>5597246
Well I just rated all of them, however:
>Favorite
2 because I can't decide between them:
FreedomTM by Suarez
Permutation City by Egan
>Least favourite
The old man and the sea

I started reading some discworld novels just recently they're way better than I expected. Also those are pretty much all books (besides maybe 3 others) that I read the whole last ~5 years (started june this year because of some accident, due to which I need more rest).

>>5628474
What is fedora about my statement?
What is the sense in reading, if you don't take any knowledge away from it?
The only thing I see that pleb doing, is waving his 'e'cock in the air because he read "x" amount of books.
Are we reading just to rack up a "kill count"??