/lit/ - Literature

>>6553739
Ana Karenina

Funnily enough, Ulysses. I was cocky enough to think I could read it without any guidance, annotations, etc. I'll tackle it again someday, but it really just frustrated me.

The Brothers Karamazov

>>6553752
What's challenging about Anna Karenina? Genuinely curious, I'm interested in reading it and plan on picking it up. What should I know about it before I start reading it?

A Farewell to Arms.
I got about forty pages in and gave up because the choppy, terse prose was insufferable.

In Search Of Lost Time.

It's quite exhausting without taking breaks between each volume, honestly. I need to take another crack at it.

usually when i dont finish a book other parts of my life become really busy. and i dont like to come back to a book after not having read it for a week. phenomenology of spirit sort of rekt me though.

Huck Finn. I was in 11th grade, gave up halfway through because it was so freaking boring.

Finnegan's Wake. I'm sure I'd enjoy it if I was using a companion or had paced myself, but I jumped in assuming that the infamous difficulty was just a meme. It's still sitting on my shelf unread along with four or five travel guides.

The Golden Bowl by Henry James.

I liked The Portrait of a Lady, but Jesus Christ. SO MANY COMMAS.

>>6553785
I feel like I should buy it to complete my James Joyce collection, but I feel like it might be a waste of money if I try to read it and get nothing from it.

>>6553762
I pretty much felt it was boring, nothing was happening. Too much pages explaining a simple situation.
It was when I just started reading so...

the bible

there are some REALLY boring books there, however i'll get down on it again, in a few months

Catcher in the Rye. Why do people like that shit again?

>>6553739
White Noise. Dialogue was totally stilted and unnatural, and the points Delillo is trying to make are hamfisted.

JR by William Gaddis
Yep. I pleb.

>>6553775
You don't know what you are talking about faggot, I read it last year and loved it.

>>6553739
>couldn't continue
so is this /pleb/ general?

>>6553798
Because dramatic teenagers sympathize with Holden. They imprint themselves on the protagonist and are too stubborn to realize that it's a cautionary tale.
>>6553821
Come on, anon. You know there's at least one book on your shelf that you didn't want to trudge through. We're all friends here.
What's her name?

>>6553821
Not necessarily. It could refer to poorly written books; books you were unable to finish due to poor scheduling; or books that are considered difficult reads.

I couldn't finish the Divine Comedy because of how beta was Dante around that bitch Beatriz.

Gravity's Rainbow. I got about halfway through before finding out I had the edition that's full of errors.

I dropped House of Leaves when it got to the point where it was just listing a bunch of buildings. Up to that point it had just been a bunch of edgy, "deep" bullshit and I figured if I wasn't enjoying it when it was just a conventional horror novel I probably wasn't going to get anything out of it when it was actively trying to obscure whatever it was trying to say.

Also I really resented that Danielewski made these allusions to Borges to try to make himself look smarter. Borges could do in four pages what House of Leaves completely failed at in the hundreds of pages I read.

Don't read House of Leaves, guys.

House of Leaves.

>>6553865
This. House of leaves is more of a book that focuses on presentation rather than substance.

>>6553865
I read a quarter of the book and it just tired me, which is a shame because I was really interested in the Navidson project. That aspect of the book fascinated me, but splashing Truant's bullshit grim dark ramblings bothered me. I'll tackle it again one day though.

>>6553831
> Dante
> beta

BACK THE FUCK OFF????!!?!??!

>>6553739
This isn't Lolita.

[Pic Related]

>>6553865
>>6553868
>>6553879
yes, house of leaves is one of the handful of books i stopped reading just because it was so terrible. if anyone wants my copy i will gladly send it to you because it takes up so much fucking space

>>6553754
>>6553900
>I'll tackle it again
why do you guys say this shit? If you're tackling these books in the future, it won't be "again", it'll be "for the first time". You couldn't even finish a fucking book, let alone tackle it (which entails a firm understanding of the text).

The Sorrows of Young Werther.
A short book, but I didn't find it interesting in any aspect. It's just a friendzone story, and the writing style seems very simplistic (I read a translation).

>>6553922
Calm down, anon, it's colloquial. It's simply that if someone is unable to finish it, they feel like they should take a more offensive stance on it, i.e. a tackle. Holy shit calm the fuck down, it's not that complicated to understand.

Neuromancer. Didn't understand one single scene.

>>6553922
lmao are you fuckin kidding me

>>6553922
You can unsuccessfully tackle something, you know. I'm sure that's what they meant when they said "I'll tackle it again." Their first attempt at tackling it failed so they'll retry at a later time. It's really not hard, for fuck's sake

>>6553739
Catch-22. It didn't grab me in the slightest and everything about it just rubbed me the wrong way.

>>6553739
CATCH-22.

I hated every. single. page of it. Something that had never happened to me before and hasn't since then. Dropped it after about 100 pages, cleared my mind a bit, did some research on it online and then did something I had never done up til that point: skipped some 200 pages and read the last 150 (because some folks said the book kicks off from there).

I truly hated it. Returned it to my friend, didn't speak with him for a while after that.

But I can understand the appeal it might have to some. My kind of literary humour is Gogol.

SHIT, I FORGOT. I actually giggled when Nately's Whore appeared at the end.

Atlas Shrugged.
That book is philosophically shallow and an almost criminal bore.

>>6553796
>i started reading this bible
>it sucks
>i couldn't get past the first chapter
>don't buy this author's books

>>6553993
>Returned it to my friend, didn't speak with him for a while after that.
True autism

>>6554009

No offense, but are you ugly or short, or both?

I've seemed to notice people who hate that book most are mostly reacting emotionally to how comical the goodlooking/badlooking pro/antagonist physical appearance ratio is.

>>6554022
i'm like 5'6"
pretty ugly to behonest

>>6553984
>>6553993
What's wrong with Catch 22?

Also I hope you didn't stop talking to your friend just because he lent you Catch 22. That'd be a shitty thing to do, anon.

>>6554062
No, no, of course not! What an assumption to make, geez...
It just so happens that Catch-22 is his favourite book. He had raved on and on about it and was somewhat disappointed after I gave him my opinion.

I mean, it is a hit-or-miss novel, wouldn't you agree? I've never heard anyone say "Oh, I thought it was ok."

I found it annoyingly bizzare, too random for its sake. The whole thing reads like an incoherent, hyperactive tumblr post. "Im so random & quirky lol". It got stale pretty fast and nothing new came out of the non-sequiturs. Constantly introducing one silly character in a silly situation after another was, to me, very painful to wade through.

An apologist would say that the circular nature of the unending bizzare events is an allegorical device aimed at simulating the maddening experience of a person trapped inside the army's bureaucratic moebius strip, but to that I say: torture is not art.

I'd probably also throw in a 'fuck you'.

>>6554137
Damn.
Meant to write "too random for its own good" and "random for randomness' sake" but accidentally conflated them.

I'm about to drop 100 years of solitude. It's the definition of meandering.

I tried a few times within a short time span to get into Heart of Darkness but could never get through more than a few pages. The writing just seemed really... dense. Not as in stupid; it just wasn't resonating with me, and every paragraph seemed like a chore.

>>6554164
the thing about one hundred years of solitude is that in its 400 pages, there is not a word wasted. this is very rare for a book so long. skimming wont work here. id recommend reading it twice as slow as you normally do because once you get lost, like any book, it becomes a mess of meaningless words.

just finished it earlier today. it is meandering, but so is life, and one-hundred years of solitude is a novel so large that it hopes to encapsulate life in both its ridiculousness and abounding love. i understand if you want to put the book down because of its ridiculousness, but i urge you not to because each page spills with so much passion.

I got V as a Christmas present two years ago and I've never managed to get past 100 pages or so. After reading the Crying of Lot 49 on acid I cant get enough of it though.

Dracula was dry as fuck, put it down two thirds in.

>>6553920
I liked it. Send it to me?

>>6553856
It's not. You idiot.

>>6554175
I felt similarly, actually. I don't think I was prepared for it when I was reading it (I attempted to read it after my craving for stuff like The Last Unicorn, John Dies At The End and Metro 2033 so it's not really material that would prepare a reader for something more high-brow).

I should certainly revisit it sometime.

>>6553808
>Dialogue was totally stilted and unnatural
that's the point
>the points Delillo is trying to make are hamfisted
can't disagree with this tho

>>6554205
How do you know what edition that guy has, tho

Catch-22 and Fear and Loathing.
Both shit.

I only got halfway in on 1984.
The prose is not very good, and although I see how it could have been thoughtprovoking in 1948, it felt obvious in 2007 (yes, because of the book's influence).

The sorrows of young Werther.

>>6554246
I want to read it this summer but I worry I might feel similarly as to you, anon. Most people basically know the basic concepts behind the book, to the point where 1984 is considered the most frequently lied about book when people ask if they've read it or not.

>>6554271

>This summer. It's like 300 or so pages. Just pick a day, get comfy and be prepared to feel royally pissed when you finish

>>6553812

You really should revisit it, JR's incredible and actually not as difficult as it seems at first.

>>6554137
Thus your days come today and today told you the hold that I was in with the infatuation that you, well frankly, you are, but I seen't the reason you wished I was so, so I'll tell you one more time that it's truth is but you won't see what truth will what and with who, but it is with YOOOUUUUUUUUUU


I couldn't finish The Room.

>>6553993
>I truly hated it. Returned it to my friend, didn't speak with him for a while after that.
Not even to thank him for lending you his book?

>>6553761
It was because of Aloysha, wasn't it?

Or was it the Zosima chapter?

Because if the book was written without those useless cunts, it would be GOAT.

>>6554289
I say this Summer because Summer break is literally two days away for me. Just had the past few weeks plagued with redrafting portfolios and final deadlines, so I've not really had much time to just sit down with a book in one sitting. I'm also more likely to read 1984 once I've finished reading Gravity's Rainbow, which I'm currently halfway through.

>>6554010
It's this one

>>6554205
Yes, it is.

And it's shit. And it's shitty.

>>6554310
It would be better without Mtya and Grushenka

>>6553739
It by Stephen King

I don't remember thinking it was particularly bad or anything, just way too long winded to really delve into. That and I was on the tail end of a King kick so I might've just been sick of him at that point in general.

The fountainhead is the only book I can think of that I didn't finish. I mean after the first couple hundred pages I pretty much got the drift. I didn't read the last 100 pages or so and I'm pretty sure I actually didn't miss out on anything.

>>6553739
2666. i finished the first part, but that was it. all this anti-americanism sort of ticked me off. bolano has no real cultural knowledge. his mindset is just as limited as the stereotype for USA citizens

>>6553789

shit man. That's a favourite of mine. Oh well. To each his ohne.

>>6553739
The reality of the situation is that I've never found beauty in the picture, but beauty in the being that was. That is why I've never finished a single book.

Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72.
I spent more time reading Wiki pages on politicians from the Era than reading the book. I made it halfway through.

>>6554336
Idiot

>>6553739
Gravity's Rainbow, so many times. It just doesn't feel like it has any real "story" behind it. I'll hopefully finish it someday...

>>6554377
Oh yeah, I also never got through The Idiot.

It was too boring.

>>6554360
>stereotype for USA citizens

That's who Americans are.

Loud, obnoxious, judgmental, slave crazed, politically retarded, war waging, cunts.

You farmers are okay because most hold socialist views even though they are too retarded to understand.

Also, racist gaybashing immigrant fearing feminazi twats who always place Hollywood on a pedestal.

You're cities are shit. You roads are poor. Your food is tasteless. Your mentality is pathetic. Gun holding, Jesus crazed, pricks who believe they are entitled to everything because they can send poor, ignorant, murder trained troglodytes to shoot Middle Easterners.

You're fucking useless, and you think you're the king. You're a credit nation, the world owns you, and when they wake up...oh boy.

>>6554405
>obnoxious, judgemental
>cunt
>most hold socialist values
>racist
>You're fucking useless and you think you're the king
You must be half American

I don't think I get it. Do I need drugs or something?

>>6554405
You didn't even remotely begin to understand the stereotypes you're railing against
> gay bashing
>feminazi
No one is both of these. In fact a lot of the feminazis are gay and a lot of them criticize Hollywood for its lack of diversity. Is this bait or are you just retarded?

>>6554414
An expatriate.

>half American

Welsh/Scottish.

>half American

You're a fucking retard.

I bet you speak American too, right?

>>6554405
That's what Midwestern Americans are. But God damn, that is some Marxist edge ya got there, kiddo. Send a copy of that post to your Frankfurt professor so xhe gives you the credit you deserve.

>>6554426
It's like Jazz. You like it, or you don't.

There is no beginning to understand. There is only innate taste. And you don't have it.

i only made it to page 3

this is page 3

>>6554431
You're improving friend. This one is almost coherent

>>6554436
This post further proves how Jazz enthusiasts are pretentious cunts.

>>6554405

>>6554436
Okay. I guess I'll just read some more Philip K. Dick then.

>>6554426
"But sir," He came over to the pole and sat on it. A diffused sentence said he joked too much. The caterpillar in the sky fell and shattered on the ground. John faced the shard.

>>6554431
Failing to see that half of those stereotypes fit your post, hence half American.

>>6554453
>projecting

You might as well tip le fedora meme and trot over to reddit.

Don't forget your maymay cane and /r9k/ approved fuck pillow.

>>6553739
The World According to Garp. When I got to The World According to Bensenhaver it had sunk in that he was an adult and writing his second piece and it didn't his wrestling career had not retained any significance to him whatsoever. It confronted me with the reality that wrestling would lose all significance in my life.
I eventually returned to finish the book.

>>6554462
>trot over to reddit

Realizing my post had to be explained to you

BTFO by an American

>>6553739
American Psycho. Basically the GQ Handbook.

>>6553739
"Little, Big." Boring as hell.

>>6554360
>bolano has no real cultural knowledge
That's just not true.

>>6554750
This, it would have worked as a short story. As a full length novel, it's the same obvious theme repeated ad nauseum.

>>6553739
Like everything

The Scarlet Letter. It made me feel stupid when I was 15.

>>6553826
>cautionary tale

Leviathan. It was interesting until the part regarding Christianity.

>>6553920
I had a friend read it.
She's no longer my friend.
I can't borrow it from her anymore.
Help me out,
anonski

>>6554364
I really wanted to like it. Henry James can really write and I loved the psychological exploration of character, but I just couldn't get through the incredibly dense prose. It was painful to read. I'll revisit it some time.

>>6554310
>wanting to remove the two best characters in the book

sure is pleb in here

>>6553922
In american english, 'tackle' in this sense has the connotation of trying.

'tackle' is similar to 'give it a shot'

so in case you were wondering, you're bait is good enough for at least four replies.

>>6553739
100+ posts and no semon demen jokes? /lit/ be slippin'

>>6555083
>psychological exploration of character
he does this in literally everything he writes, so you're really not saying anything profoundly new

>>6553739
Fear and loathing in Las Vegas. I was expecting something totally different, it was all over the place. Just didn't enjoy it so I stopped about 3/4 of the way through.

>>6555330
???

Why are you expecting me to make some original critique of what I like about Henry James?

I don't know how many others have been exposed to this garbage, but The Bean Trees is the only book I've had to put down and never picked back up again.

>>6554405
All those buzzwords.... +1 and posting to r/4chan as we speak

>>6553739
My shrink told me to read "Antimanuel de philosophie", but I just can't finish it. It gets so fucking entitled and stupid sometimes.

>>6555328
it's because we've seen monroe's sweet ass on that bench w/ ulysses too many times now

>>6553739
A song of fire and ice.
Awful.

>>6553739
I stopped reading Science Fiction in the 90's after this being a recurring theme with new works

>>6554405
>That's who ________ are.
>Loud, obnoxious, judgmental, slave crazed, ________ ally retarded, war waging, cunts.
>You ________ are okay because most hold ________ views even though they are too retarded to understand.
>Also, ________ ________ bashing ________ fearing ________ twats who always place ________ on a pedestal.
>You're ________ are shit. You ________ are poor. Your ________ is tasteless. Your ________ is pathetic. ________ holding, ________ crazed, pricks who believe they are entitled to everything because they can send poor, ignorant, murder trained ________ to shoot ________ .
>You're fucking useless, and you think you're the king. You're a ________ nation, the world owns you, and when they wake up...oh boy.

i should prepare for the storm to wipe my pathetic existence away
i'm fucking dead kiddo

Stopped reading the Brothers Karamazov about half way through because I couldnt stand the religious drivel that went on for whole chapters when the priest guy died

>>6553739
For Whom the Bell Tolls

Its not that it was bad, I just felt i couldve spent my time reading something better

Ode to Catalina was better

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Children_of_the_Dead

I just cannot. I try so hard but the language is so dense and I'm losing the point.

>>6553739
Empire of the Summer Moon.

After 200 pages of rambling background about the history of tribal warfare in the American Plains, the subject of the biography first appears. He is a child.

I ragequit at that point.

>>6553761
One day I'll finish the Brothers Karamazov.
One day...

>>6554271
Yeah. If people ask me if I've read it, I lie and say I have. It's only half a lie.

>>6554289
Pissed because of the writing, or because you're living in a surveillance state?

>>6554888
>As a full length novel, it's the same obvious theme repeated ad nauseum.
Ellis was trying to show that Bateman's obsession with suits and vanity and 80s musicians was beyond obsession and actually psychotic. I still agree with you that it was too obvious and repeated too much. I'll admit I did like the entire chapters dedicated to describing Whitney Houston and Hewy Luis and so on.

>>6555013
That was Hobbes trying not to get in trouble and appeal to devout Christians. It's okay if you didn't like or skipped that part.

>>6553739
The Gone Away World
I just didn't like it when I started reading it
that was maybe 5 years ago though so I might give it another shot.
I remember just not liking the plot or characters.
there's some shit that transforms into other shit when people think about stuff and then there's flash-backs and kung-fu then the main character is the fake leader of some rebels. I kind of got tired of it.

>>6554405
>You're cities are shit
New York is about the only place that could reasonably call itself a city, everywhere else is just like Milton Keynes

Quo Vadis.

I liked the characters enough, and I'm sure I'll continue it someday, but it was just so dry. I don't know whether it's actually just like that or if I simply have a bad translation. I hope for the latter, given the author's Nobel status. In all it feels like a novel written by a person with some grandiose ideas but who was also an inarticulate amateur who couldn't get his prose to pop.

notes from the underground - read about 50 pages then decided to read a few essays on it instead. Dostoevsky's prose in notes from the underground is almost incomprehensible at times and it's really difficult to grasp the broader themes of the book when you have to reread every third line.

heart of darkness - i've tried to read HoD about 3 times but every time i make it up to about halfway and either give up or get distracted and start reading something else. apparently it gets a lot better after halfway too but the first half is so dense and hard to follow

>>6553798
the catcher in the rye challenges american perceptions of masculinity and accurately creates the voice of a teenage boy. it's extremely responsive for the audience it was marketed to.

actually reading it as an adult can be tedious but there is so much to be analysed in the novel that it still retains its merit.

>>6554271
it's worth reading just so you can sincerely dislike it. as the other anon said the prose is bad. it's also predictable and corny, and orwell's masculine insecurity and misogyny is really obvious

>>6554888
i agree that it could have worked as a short story but i think this would have gone against ellis' purpose. american psycho is meant to be painful to read, if it was in the form of a short story it wouldn't be half as horrific. the way B.E.E. escalates the violence throughout the novel as Bateman descends further into sanity is essential to the plot and this wouldn't be possible in the form of a short story

>>6554750
>Basically the GQ Handbook
gtfo

>>6554027
WHEN WILL YOU LEARN?

>>6553739
The idiot

I wanted to love it but I didn't see the point and I didn't like the language

>>6555021
gimme a # or skype name and i'll hit yah up

>>6554405
This is why the cultural cuckolds of Europe hates us. They are angry that we don't live like them. Angry that they can't treat us like their third world colonial possessions. Angry that they can not shame us into servitude. They can look on us with disdain all they want, but we made our own path and it makes them quake with rage that somewhere in the world people dare to live differently than sacred Europe.


AND I SAY THATS GOD DAMN RIGHT


Go take your estrogen pills and cheer as leftists students march hand in hand with Muslim immigrants burning your cultural heritage both literally and figuratively.

This is America son. This is OUR website. You are here by OUR grace. When here, you are OUR vassal. Never forget that.


We are the United States, look upon our works and tremble.

>>6556546
sent :)

Lord of the Flies, The Fall and The Plague. I found neither prose nor plot in them.

>>6553739
Metaphysics

Starting with the greeks is overrated. These guys were scientifically retarded.

Tristram Shandy bored my nuts off. but i was 18 and got lost a lot. my bookmark is still at page 400 or so. ill try again someday

>>6554405
>all that trolling
>without once using the words "literally" or "meme" or "reddit"

Nice job, anon. Really nice job. You actually put some thought into that one. Most people would've eventually resorted to easy 4chan speak somewhere in there, but you actually put forth the effort to use real words. I'm impressed.

>>6553739
Wuthering Heights.

Honestly, it was just boring.

>>6553974
unsuccessfully tackling something is like attacking the curb with your forehead.

Glamorama.
I loved American Psycho, enjoyed Lunar Park, and Glamorama was the only other BEE book my library had.

I got to the 170-page mark, where it gets interesting, but at that point I was just too used to picking it up, reading a couple of pages and getting bored to continue.

Underworld. It's not challenging or poorly written, it's just long. Occasionally I start it over again, but I never finish it.

>>6555255

>Zosima and Alyosha
>Not Ivan and that faggy in town atheist whose faggotry is still recognizable today
>Not Fyodor Pavlovitch, the man we love to hate.
>Not Krasotkin, the boy who feared nothing.

Pic related.

Inherent Vice.

I can appreciate Pynchon's ability to get into character while writing, but holy Hell. Everything from the pages of dialogue consisting of 2-5 word sentences to the run-on sentences used in narration just made me feel like I was reading a shitty blog or something. Unfortunately, I couldn't get past that to appreciate the book itself.

>>6553764

You get used to it after page 50. By page 100, you love it. If I remember correctly, it's 248 in length. 240-248 you realize how powerful it is. Every book by him starts rough, moves to bliss, then drags you to emotional hell. All of them are good. He, Dostoyevsky and Kierkegaard are my favorites.

>>6553796

Go with the KJV and treat it as poetry. WAAAAY easier, if not more beautiful. KJV is best V.

>>6554181

What is Vanity Fair by Thackery? it manages that without meandering. Has life changed so much in a few hundred years, or is 100 years just shit?

>>6556332

>Misogyny
>Having the only femlae characte go from being the zenith of his personal vendetta, then find her vindicated by her sexual freedom, her guiding him to systemic enlightenment, only to be broken by her tragedy purer than his own.

Look, I want to agree with you, but that's shite. He's only using masculinity as a construct that needs to be destroyed to break a male, which is rather logical. Its part of what make him himself, and its dstruction serves to further his tragedy.

>>6554289

Pretty sure it's less than that.

>>6556266
>Confusing Orwellian with Huxlian
>2015

Bruh. Western is Huxlian, Eastern is Orwellian. Just because the wesetern governement wants eyes on you, doesn't mean they're restricting your pleasure.

>>6554442
wow, rude

Not the guy you responded to but I like jazz, man. Please don't base your opinion of jazz fans on some idiotic phrasing in one single post.

>>6556764
I'd agree with that, anon, but it's still a tackle. Hence this thread.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Everybody raved about it but it was utter bish

>>6556264
I'm with you, anon.

>>6557000
People liked it because it was 3edgy5u. The writing was just on par with any other random contemporary flavor of the week novel. It's not anything that will ever be remembered.

>>6556854
Have you read Pynchon's other works? Does IV pale in comparison to his other pieces or was it your first introduction to the guy's material?

>>6554436

Hardly.

People like what they know, and Jazz is a big genre with little exposure. Show me a man and I'll show you someone who likes jazz.

>>6556152

That's who Banjo Kazooie fans are.

Loud, obnoxious, judgmental, slave crazed, collectionally retarded, war waging, cunts.

You fighting game fans are okay because most hold feminist views even though they are too retarded to understand.

Also, beakbashing grunty-fearing triple jumping twats who always place moles on a pedestal.

You're colllectathons are shit. You music are poor. Your jokes is tasteless. Your difficulty is pathetic. handholding, jiggie crazed, pricks who believe they are entitled to everything because they can send poor, ignorant, murder trained wind-up mice to shoot Canary Mary.

You're fucking useless, and you think you're the king. You're a nostalgic nation, the world owns you, and when they wake up...oh boy.

>>6553764
I don't believe in saying that something gets good at a certain point because either its good or not but I did struggle with Farewell at the beginning but when I got used to Hemingway's writing style I began to enjoy it. Give it another go, you obviously don't have to if you don't want to because I believe books are for pleasure and if you're not getting pleasure from it then its not worth doing.

The Tale of the Heike. I heard it described as "the Japanese Iliad" but it reads like a grocery list. No passion, no excitement whatsoever.

>>6553739
Ghosts of Sleath - James Herbert.

Not every action requires a string of adverbs to describe it,

>>6553739
Mein Kampf

>>6553906
Holy shit, is that pic real? On the one hand Divine Comedy is interesting enough for self-insert fanfic but on the other how many people bought that because of the cover and its implications.

I do want to see the pictures, though.

I could get past Lolita after the first half. I was just overwhelmed with Nabokov's language and prose. My brain couldn't simply take it anymore.

I also stopped reading Hitchhiker's Guide after the first chapter because the book seemed like it was trying so hard to be goofy and humorous but I found it utterly stupid.

>>6553739
Tender is the Night.

Started it twice, didn't get far. Too many ill-defined characters introduced all at once.

Dropped La Princesse de Clèves, Molloy and V. Just lost interest.

>>6553775
Huck Finn is a great book

>>6553808
Same. I really couldn't get into this book.

>>6557781
Inherent Vice is nothing like his other stuff. It's a stoner crime novel.

>>6554195
It took me ages to finish that shit. Did Lucy dying really warrant like 8 chapters?

>>6553808
same. and i wanted to like it really badly but i put it down one night and couldnt pick it up again.

Dum dums in this thread who blame the book because they "couldn't pick it up again" lmao

LAZY
A
Z
Y

The Road. Granted, I only read a few pages, but I couldn't get over McCarthy's style. Maybe I'll pick it up again another time.

count of monte christo

fuck that shit

>>6556332
Naw, dude. It's a bad book.

>>6553790
It's following a man descending into madness.

Suprised few Moby Dicks here, but again you dont have to read it cover to cover.

Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann is mine. No idea why, but can not get into it enough to get rolling, and I love the theme.

Recomend the Idiot if you struggle with Dostoyevsky. Specialy the frist part ending in the party, Nastassya Filippovna is one of the best, and the beheading scene and the start of the book with Rogozhin.

Audioversions can also get you started, Like Orson Wells did a lot of classics as plays, the audio is terrible, but you get the Horror the Horror.

I am very proud of making it 150 pages into Finnegans Wake but that was all I could do. I wouldn't have gone that far even if I wasn't supposed to read it for a class.

That Hideous Strength, I LOVE the first two books and have read them at least 5 times each but That Hideous Strength took me a few tries just to get trough it once.

A collection of Shirley Jackson short stories. I got through 80 pages, but Jesus Christ, I couldn't take any more proto-tumblr, menopausal, capricious bullshit.

>>6553775
Never read it in high school, or I might have hated it. Read it about a year out of high school and I never laughed so hard as I did when they find all Huck and Tom's "work" and are just floored as to who could have possibly organized all of it.

>>6556162
I liked it as a whole, but it seriously dragged at certain parts.

>>6553775
are you serious? do you hate fun?

Romeo and Juliet was a pain to read.

>>6554310
I skipped the zossima chapters

A Personal Matter.

I'll finish it. It's actually well-written. The book's due on 11 September 2015 so I have time.

I stopped reading it at this not-that-detailed description about anal sex. It was really just the context of the situation and my prudish ex-Catholic brain couldn't handle it

But I can handle reading about rape and WWII war crimes just fine !

>>6554195
this is a fine way to read dracula tbh
the first third is the best by far

>>6553752
>>6553762
This. I've tried it three times and it's just a little boring.

Oblomov.

It hit way too close to home. Couldn't handle it.

>>6554010
The bible is actually quite an interesting read. If you skip the middle.

pretty much every book because i'm lazy and have a short attention span

This book is tripe. I tried my best but couldn't continue after chapter 10.

>>6553739
stoner

it was just too depressing at the time. got a little over half way then stopped and returned it

Where can you get a copy of Ulysses like that?

>>6553739
Phenomenology of Spirit

>The determinateness which corresponds to the being-for-itself of the inorganic as such therefore comes on the scene in the realm of the organic as being subsumed under the organic’s being-for-itself in the way that in the inorganic it is subsumed under the being of the inorganic.

Gravity's rainbow

>>6553739

I always aim to finish what I start, but Swann's way is currently testing my patience.

>a full chapter about some spoiled baby wanting his mom to notice him
>sentences that go on for two fucking pages jesus christ

How is it even possible for anyone to read this shit? Who thought it was okay to publish this? Why, just why?

>>6556550
ayy lmao

Put down John Hawkes's Second Skin because I just wasn't enjoying it. Life is too short, and there are too many enjoyable books, to force yourself to read something joylessly.

>>6554271
1984 is alright. But don't expect you will find new great insights into the working of modern society.

It's a must read regardless imo. It's just so important despite not being a great read perse

>Lord of the Flies

I probably heard way too much about it before I started reading it. Granted, I might've found it fascinating at age 12, but as a 22 year old I found that Lord of Flies had nothing interesting in particular that I wasn't already aware of. Stopped around page 110 or so

>>6565672
even esteemed philosophers accused Hegel of being an indecipherable cunt. Bearing that in mind I think it will be hard for me to even read a chapter of his Magnum Opus

>>6566061
I read that when I was 9 or 10, again when I was about 16, and again when I was 25. It was best when I was in high school.

>>6566074
I had a similar situation except with Brave New World. I read it at 13 and thought it was boring; reread it at 22 and really enjoyed the book.

>>6566071
He does have really good ideas but his writing doesn't help at all.

>>6562576
Tonally, if you read 20 pages or so you get the atmosphere and idea of the novel. I personally think it's cool when a novel can convey itself from any random page.

>>6561272
Sounds like I'd dig it. Kinda like Burroughs without the cut-up method I'm guessing?

>>6562685
Finnegans Wake is? I've heard that, but I've also heard that it's meant to be an exploration of dream logic. I've also been told there's some really obscure greek or celtic religious implications. It's like none of the interpretations agree with what the book is about. That'd just frustrate me, honestly.

Paradise Lost, it was just so dry and boring. I wanted to enjoy it so much but felt too much like a chore.

>>6562747
What's so challenging about Moby Dick?

>>6565672

>>6566596
I'm really interested in reading it soon, I hear it explores God's motivations for actions towards man. Anything I should be aware of before reading it?

>because poorly written
On the Road. I thought I was going to enjoy it greatly, but I dropped it pretty quick. I heard Truman Capote's quote on Freaks and Geeks that it "isn't writing", but "typing", and this actually piqued my interest. But fuck it really was just inane, rambling shit.

>because too challenging
The Name of the Rose. It wasn't too challenging per se, I just quickly tired of having to look up all the archaic and esoteric terms. If I come across a word I don't know, I typically look it up immediately, especially if I can't figure out at least an idea of what it means from the context, and there were just too many. Plus, half the time I could find no definition or other reference to the terms except for the book.

>>6553739
Two come to mind: Naked Lunch and Ready Player One. The former was just too much of a postmodern mess for me to consider reading more than a few pages and the latter is quite literally dog shit.

>>6554310
Alyosha is the strongest character in the book, Right from the get go, the narrator shows how much he likes Alyosha. Alyosha is tempted by Ivan's intellect to end his Alyosha's faith. Even at one point, it seems Ivan is successful when Alyosha says he's not sure he believes in God. In the end though, Alyosha remains faithful to his beliefs despite the hardships with his family. I have also read some call Alyosha the "dumb" character in the book when it's quite the opposite. He's very intuitive.

Notes From Underground.

It was a mixture of struggling with the first part of the novel and having to tackle exams at the same time. I thought it'd be a nice break from revision to read an author I was interested in.

>>6566598

Dense, archaic language. Chapters that (not to me, but to others, maybe) could be considered too boring or in-depth into the process of whaling.

>>6566684
>ready player one

this, i was expecting anything else. i don't know how they did it, but it's an actual printing of shit.

>>6553752
m8 its the biggest emotional rollercoaster you can ever experience

>>6566735
>intuitive.
sounds like code for dumb

Ulysses.
Nothing to do with difficulty, although I'm sure there are allusions there that I hadn't noticed.

I just saw through the entire charade pretty fast. It's a book of literary gimmicks.

100 years of kek

because it was too fedoracore and overhyped for my liking

I wanted to read Lord of the Flies.

But I just couldn't even though it had my attention.

>Reading it
>Give up for some reason
>Read Lolita
>Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
>Slaughter house 5
>The metamorphosis
>One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest
>Fight Club
>Burnt Tongues
>Most of the books of /Lit/ starter kit
>After that I'm gonna read all the Dune books packed into one super Dune book.

I'll get to it. I just can't read it for some reason.

James Joyce's lack of commas usually leaves me feeling lost.

>>6554390
>>6556544
>The Idiot
At least I'm not the only one :/

>>6567649
m8, ur b8 is gr8

I recently stopped reading The 120 Days of Sodom, just to read other things, though, intending to go back and finish it. It is pretty dry, though, and I can't imagine it will be engaging for so many pages. Is it worth the read, /lit?

Several Stephen King books. Most notably Cujo. 100 pages about fucking cereal and the least realistic dialogue is ever read.

>>6554445

I have to agree. I bought a 4 volume collection of PKD and I blew through Man in the High Castle but I just seemed to slog through Eldritch

>>6566061
try "the inheritors" cool prose experiment imho

>>6553761
Same here. I got 300 or so pages in, then found out the Signet translation is shit, and now I've scrapped reading it until I can get a better translation, which I guess is the P and V translation b/c that's what everyone recommends.

Recently, The Lost Head of Damsceno Monteiro by Antonio Tabucchi. Before it wast La Ciudad y los Perros ( The Time of the Hero) by Mario Vargas Llosa though I recently started it again and I'm pretty much hooked.

>>6568418
Missing Head*

>>6567990
I've seen it described as de sade sitting down with a bunch of dolls and slapping them together in different ways. Never read it myself but I found that funny.
>>6568387
But constance garnett is fine and p&v are repugnant shit, anon. Just finish it, you've already gone halfway.

>>6553739
pic

>>6563450

Skipped possibly the second best part of the book. Zosima's flashbacks about his brother were literally emotionally crushing.

Samuel Boswell
found it vexing to read

>>6568387
>translation

Too many to count. Recently, any novel by Kobo Abe that's not The Woman in the Dunes.

>>6569561
How is The Woman In The Dunes? Should I read the book before seeing the film?

>>6556307
new York has a grid system too
p.s. fuck off leave MK out of this

Neuromancer.

For some reason the cyberpunk genre and Neuromancer's prose annoy the hell out of me.

Pic somewhat related.

>>6553993
Catch 22 bored me, I really wanted to like it

>>6553739

>On The Road
Definite - tried three times, couldn't bring myself to give a fuck what was going to happen next.

>The Trial
To be fair, I was only twelve. Must revisit.

>Finnegans Wake
Suspect I shan't bother. Loved Ulysses, but I'm convinced people not from Dublin just can't get it, and since I felt I got it and was largely mystified by the section I read through... probably not. I know there's guides, but I'm honestly not that curious.

>Plato
Was it Vicky or Nitch who said it? Plato is boring. Really, really boring.

>Something by Franzen, don't remember which.
Had some Indian gang blackmailing dudes (referred to as "inducing The State" or something). Fucking snoozefest, stilted prose and if that was actually the political metaphor I was beginning to suspect it might be, then grow the fuck up.

>>6571704
>Plato is boring. Really, really boring.

Dude what. I think you're mistaking Plato for Aristotle. Or just had a bad translation.

>>6566735
I thought that Alyosha said that he didn't believe in order to demonstrate that even the faithful have doubt. Just because Alyosha is a perfect superchristian doesn't make him a well written character. I liked him but I feel like you missed the point

>>6571741

Maybe? I dunno if it was goodreads or Amazon, but there was an irate review of one of the Dialogues that captured a lot of my sentiments about it. You see it posted now and then.

>Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
Turns out I was reading a shitty translation, but after about 300 pages or so I just couldn't will myself forward.

>The Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe
Every single step of the way, you can see the next plot turn a hundred pages before it even happens. And when changes do occur...you don't even care about them. Because all the characters are just sort of uninteresting. I love his nonfiction, but I put this one down a while ago.

> IT, by Stephen King
King's my go-to for "guilty pleasure" reading, because even when it's a long one (elephantitis of the typewriter, doncha know), I can plow through it quickly and feel good about myself. But this book is a) horribly written, b) way too fucking long, and c) constantly trying to be edgy, which for King seems oddly out of place. I pick this one up every year around Halloween, thinking I'm going to enjoy it, and just stop after 20 or so pages out of disgust for myself, and go take a shower.

>Ender in Exile, by Orson Scott Card
Like everyone else, I loved Ender's Game when I was 12. I thought it was incredible. Each sequel gets progressively worse, but this one--last written, but takes place right after Ender's Game--takes the cake.
Name something bad found it typical shitty books, and this one's got it. Annoying characters? Check. Stilted dialogue? Check. Complete lack of any plot? Check. No basic literary devices (i.e. metaphor, symbolism, etc.) to speak of. Check, check, check. It's like shitty fanfic written by a shitty author about a shitty series. Worst book I've ever read.

>>6567377

A lot of people say to just skip the whaling stuff, actually. I did.

>>6571776
Nooooo, but that's the best part...
said no one ever

>>6571766
>IT, by Stephen King

Dude, that's seriously his best. If you're not exaggerating about the twenty pages, then just skip the opening part (with the gay-bashing murder) and cut to the main section.

You seem to be familiar with King, which suggests you're familiar with how often and how badly he writes about characters who are writers. There is, fair warning, a metric shit-ton of that in IT. If you can stomach that, it's worth it.

>>6571766
bonfire of the vanities has the slowest fucking plot imaginable for what should be a potboiler. 50 pages in I thought it would go somewhere in the next 100 pages that it took 500 to get to.

it's also pretty racist but /lit/ probably doesn't care about that

>>6571808
>familiar with King

Word. I have read every novel and short story collection except The Stand (Uncut, read the cut version), The Dead Zone, Blaze, Under the Dome, Just After Sunset, 11/22/62, and Mr. Mercedes.

I started IT years ago, so even though my 20 pages are only scratching away, I'm about a third of the way through the book...I don't know what it is. There's an aggressiveness to the writing that I literally have not seen in a single other King story, short or long.

>>6566590
I personally treat as something that's very fun to read aloud, which is how many groups have chosen to approach it. As difficult as it is to understand, I think the language at times can be very enjoyable a basic surface level.

>>6571817
>pretty racist
Yeah, I get the feeling that 91% of /lit/ are white males. Of which I am one.

>>6571833
You're right about that. It seems like it's been written to bring out an awful Dublin accent in anyone reading it. Plus, Joyce seems to really have a good ear for rhythm as a lot of the words sound like it's creating something loosely musical.

>>6554442

uh most jazz enthusiasts are into bebop or pre-war jazz which by nature is very non-pretentious

free-jazz and avant garde stuff is a bit pretentious (the fans, I mean), but the material is for the large part very deserving of it

>>6553739
gravity's rainbow. it's just a bunch of dank memes from the 20s. I'm neither american or from the 20s and 20s memes were pretty shit by todays standards. please someone give me one reason this book is any good.

anything written by brian herbert. he just doesnt get it. he's a terrible author.

>>6553785
is difficult synonymous with boring?
why does anyone read james joyce at all or is it just a such complexity much culture wow dank memes?

>>6553879
one of my exes became obsessed with house of leaves before becoming a transexual. so I can't bring myself to pick it up.

one of my exes read perfume then became obsessed with the idea that I wanted to melt her down and turn her into a perfume.

>>6553931
it is a good book. it is friendzone but its done in such a good way you can understand why there were so many faggot betas copycat suicides.

>>6554009
ayn rand has good points. i think its best to read the objectivist lexicon religiously to learn the idioms before reading her works of fiction. its this kind of outdated pure libertarianism but she makes some good points in terms of the persecution of the american businessman who is simultaneously the subject of a persistant witchunt despite being the captains of industry who literally are the only reason the economy doesnt collapse and anyone has a job.

>>6554195
tbh, I read dracula in highschool. its a very simple book. dumbshits all thought it was literally about a vampire that turns into a werewolf and were bored as shit.

>>6554246
you should read it. it's like less than a cm thick. i bet you didnt even read animal farm either.

>>6554344
so you never got up to the "rape" or the communist takeover? or how she's not championing those with wealth but those who can create?

>>6554445
VALIS is the only book you need to read by dick. it is the most complex. essentially it is him going crazy. but then perhaps not crazy. but then definitely wack job crazy. or maybe not? its also distubingly like every single schizophrenic episode I've ever heard about what with the satellites injecting ideas into his head with a pink laser.

>>6554750
it was written after his success with a previous novel. it's autobiographical about his dismay with making it yet still not feeling confirmed.

>>6556114
I would have to agree. it really just reads like a poop that took a pee to me. maybe its the extremely simple language that makes it so appealing to such a wide audience the same way that twilight and happy potter is universally regarded by women to be the zenith of creative writing?

>>6556733
bronte sisters are shit, same with jane austin. but they fit a niche market with upper class women who had only recently started to become a sizable group. they were rare but not as rare as they once had been. everyone of their stories is autobiographical about moving to london, meeting a man, finding out that he just wanted their money then fucking off back home to scotland and writing a miserable story about.

>>6560297
>the way it roles off the tongue
>loh
>li
>tah

nobokov is one of the best writers ever.

>>6562579
why? it's a good collection of short stories.

>>6553739
Blood Meridian

>”And the Apaches came pulsing out of the desert like some weird djinn and their genitals were lolling as they took the heads of the Spanish and scalped them with their tomahawks and the birds were crying and the earth drunk up the blood watching the pyrolatrous weskits of the damned torn up by the Apache chief with the genitals and the crying stars looked at the murder and broken bones and the blood and the genitals and the ululations of some weird borracho pissing Tecate into the wild void of the endless vast ultimate consuming space and the genitals and the Indians crying like some weird Indian”

pages 1-350

Breakfast of Champions. It was my first Vonnegut; I just hated the children's book tone and his way to make his points passively and in a sort of underhanded way. And yet he was a bit condescending about it too. After a hundred or so pages I couldn't see what value the book was bringing me and I dropped it. The characters seemed interesting but I couldn't move past the rest.

>When Dwayne Hoover and Kilgore Trout met each other, their country was by far the richest and most powerful country on the planet. It had the most food and minerals and machinery, and it disciplined other countries by threatening to shoot big rockets at them or to drop things on them from airplaines.
>Most other countries didn't have doodley-squat. Most of them weren't even inhabitable anymore. They had too many people and not enough space. They had sold everything that was any good, and there wasn't anything to eat anymore, and still people went on fucking all the time.
>Fucking was how babies were made.

The illiad. Granted last time I tried reading it was in high school, but holy shiet. Too many memes.

>>6572416
That book suxx, sorry your opinion of Vonnegut was spoiled by it. Everything bad people say about him is actually true in that book. Try Slaughterhouse-Five or The Sirens of Titan sometime.

>>6572416
>>6572441

Wow, so weird how people differ on this. BoC is the best of the three best (Mother Night and S-5) Vonneguts imo.

it's been said before, but catch-22 is a chore

>>6572416
I hated that book as well. It starts out kind of interesting, but it quickly fades into incoherence and meaningless bullshit. Of course, you don't figure out how that's all it is until you get to the end and he does the "TA-DA! IT'S FUCKING NOTHING!" he's known for.

I read cat's cradle by him, it's the same bullshit. His only good book was slaughterhouse-5.

One book couldn't get very far into, that /lit/ has a massive boner for is Gravity's rainbow. The prose are little annoying....but I got a little into and think, "Oh....it's a comedy I guess." Then keep reading, keep reading, waiting for the comedy to happen....never does. Just fart and boner jokes. Go fuck yourself with that shit, you unfunny faceless douche.

The Sound and the Fury. I'll admit it I had no idea what was going on even during Quentin's chapter and it was boring.

>>6572611

It was funny, to me, for the first 3rd or so, but its humor was so repetitive, it kinda wore me out by the end.

So not quite a chore, but not some great novel

>>6554342
I really like It, but even I agree there's a good 100-200 pages that can be cut right out of the book. He gets way into depth with some of the minor characters that have nothing to do with the story, and nothing of consequence happens with them, but fuck it, let's write 30 pages on them. You really need to recognize when to skip ahead.

Mansfield Park

I stopped at 120 pages because I was forcing myself to be interested.

>>6572631
I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this. but anything that is wildly popular is easy to understand. it's just that when you get into the real pseudo intellectual territory, you get this and everyone will be telling you how clever it is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdzSN6Zc2Zw

like all art, there will be art that speaks to you and the only way to find it is to read. if it's on a list of 100 books to read before you die type things, it's mostly going to be pop shit.

>>6572683
Not sure what you're even referring to. If it's Vonnegat, fuck you, he had one good book, all the other's he just throws random shit up on the page and hopes it works. If it's gravity's rainbow, it's painfully unfunny, and a chore to read. Eat me.

Wizard's First Rule by Terry Goodkind. There was a really cringey sex scene and I just couldn't get past how terrible it was so I stopped reading. Have people even heard of this book/author? I just found it in a shitty little secondhand shop a few years back.

>>6572661
>He gets way into depth with some of the minor characters that have nothing to do with the story, and nothing of consequence happens with them, but fuck it, let's write 30 pages on them.

But-but-but the Patrick Hockstetter passage is among the book's best.

>>6572786
Oh, was that the little psycho, murderer kid what jacks off that other kid in the junkyard?

Yeah...that was pretty good, could still be cut down some.

I'm talking more about the opening, that whole gay bashing thing could have been really cut down, i get why you would focus on that some because it's the first murder in the cycle, but goddamn, go easy man. You get li,ke 100 page in, and the story hasn't even started yet.

I stopped at page 50 or so in the sound and the fury, benjys retarded right? Because the way everything in that book is written is head up the ass retarded.

>>6572823
No, Benjy is a God.

>>6572831
Thanks Based Anon. This guy gets it.

Fuck this guy though >>6572823

>>6554310
>/r/atheism good post

All the characters were real. Simple as that. Even when he described minor characters they were fully recognizable archetypes of people you have spoken to or befriended in your lifetime. Even though we're not getting the magic of reading Dostoevsky in his native tongue, the personalities, physical appearance, and resulting actions of these characters are true, perfectly aligned.

>>6572880
nobody cares about reading dostoevsky in his native tongue. many russians claim his prose style improves with translation

>>6572835
The way it's written is too hard for me, am I retarded?

>>6572910
Yes, the character of Benjy is Faulkner's way of saying to you, personally, that you're the one who's retarded.

>>6572910
either work through it or work up to it by reading easier things. or u can just think ur a natural dumbdumb and blame it on that.

>>6572910
Read the whole book, and then reread Benjy's section.

>>6571573

I liked it a lot. Very surreal and atmospheric. I have the movie on my computer but haven't watched it yet.

>>6566580
More like a Raymond Chandler novel starring a hippie. Think The Big Sleep.

>>6572367
Oh man, that's genuinely put a damper down on me, I was looking forward to reading Blood Meridian.

>>6553739

One day I will return to her.