/lit/ - Literature

>>7040438
> get the Old man and the Sea
> fucking love it, decide to buy more Hemingway
> get For Whom the Bell tolls
> mediocre-tier

I was disappointed, it even made me second-guess Old man and the sea.

>>7040508
The Bell is really just overrated. Read The Sun Also Rises.

>>7040508
read the short stories ASAP

Hemingway's best works are among them

>>7040525
>>7040539

Thanks, will do.

I read The Old Man and the Sea on a fishing boat in the South China Sea last week. Not the ocean I was hoping to read it in, but I think I can cross it off my bucket list.

My favourite book is the Count of Monte Cristo.

>>7040508
>>7040525

Why did you dislike for Whom the Bells Toll? I quite liked it. Not as much as a Farewell to Arms or the Old Man and the Sea, but calling it overrated and mediocre, eh..

A Moveable Feast however.. that was a chore.

One Hundred Years of Solitude

>>7040438
You find happiness in simplicity

>>7040462
How good is this? I've heard it's crazy

>>7040673
Not OP, but happiness in simplicity is something I've noticed about a lot of the media I enjoy. Some of my favourite songs like After Hours by The Velvet Underground, the Pink Moon album by Nick Drake, Shinya Tsukamoto and Kim Ki-Duk films and books like Old Man and The Sea are all very minimalistic.

I like things that might be considered more chaotic like Noise Rock, but I find simplicity much more appealing. I wonder if my enjoyment is a result of my personality or my personality is a result of the things I enjoy.

>>7040673
Good taste. You like challenging works with alot of merit, and don't feel the need to have some obscure book as your favourite insted of somthing widely acclaimed.

>>7040745
>One Hundred Years of Solitude
>challenging

>>7040771
Hey, dude, it might have been an easy read for you and that's cool but the book is considered hard by most.

>>7040438
You frequently watch baseball games

>>7040462
You've posted mine, I think we should be friends and sperg out over Bolano

I'll post my second favourite just for arguments sake

>>7040742
do u like phillip glass

>>7040785
I think it may look daunting because of its length, huge walls of text, and confusing characters (multi-generational storyline with lots of reused names), but the actual text isn't too bad.

>>7040438

>>7040790
I've listened to disappointingly little of his work. Out side of his work on Koyaanisqatsi and a few other pieces I can't say I've heard much. Maybe I have heard a few without knowing though.

What would you recommend?

This is mine, do any of you like it?

>>7040812
hope you know phoebe rapes her brother

>>7040812
My favourite as well, judge me

>>7040462
Naco

>>7040913
it's k

>>7040812

Absalom, Absalom!

>>7040462
I started this yesterday, read about 65 pages. A guy at the dock I was reading at asked me what it was about. I wasn't sure what to tell him.

>>7040670
A Moveable Feast was utterly pointless, Hemingway writing a biography grounded in positivist constraints despite having already freely expressed the depths of his life through his exaggerated literature is a waste.

Probably Moby Dick

>>7040438

>>7040885
start with glassworks and also reich's music for 18 musicians. you might like them hehe

>>7040462
what a cool cover, good pick anon

It signifies nothing.

>>7040438
But you already posted my favorite book, anon. <3

Beckett's three novels.

>get the Old man and the Sea
>it was okay, decide to buy more Hemingway
>get The Sun Also Rises
>absolutely mediocre

I don't think I'll read much more Hemingway

>>7040670
>>7041025
A Moveable Feast is cozy as fuck.

Here's mine. This, or 2666, which has been mentioned.

>>7040438
Good taste, short attention span. You've never actually been fishing or played baseball.
>>7040462
You also like Dean Koontz
>>7040788
You think you're cool for pretending your favorite book isn't Jeeves and Bertie.
>>7040812
You're young and enjoy paedosexual sadism, you sick faggot.
>>7040913
High school Latin teacher pls go.
>>7040933
Patrician/10 *schniff*
>>7041212
You hang out at Barnes and Noble paying Magic the Gathering and Yu Gi O
>>7041283
You might understand the American south. If so, we can be friends.
>>7041410
Ex-muslim or Jew
>>7042135
You have an odd fascination with Latin American politics and think the revolution will begin there.

>>7042195
Pretentious.

>>7042214
pleb

>>7042161
ultimate patrician choice. and im even an atheist

>>7042218
Reading Joyce is what plebs do to feel like patricians.

Thought it was brilliant. I'm looking forward to reading the rest of his novels.

>>7042258
>, shitposted the pleb

Here's mine.

>>7042237
>choosing Pnin
>not Pale Fire, his superior American work
You like to let loose and have fun within your personal boundaries. Also, I like you.

>>7042252
You sit and watch the end credits to movies after they're finished.

>>7041019
>65 pages in
>knowing even remotely in what direction Bolaño is heading

Yeah, just say it's about a bunch of literary critics trying to solve some crimes.

The book that took me down the rabbit hole...

>>7042252
>>7042277

I do not

This, as well as most of hemingways other works which are close seconds

>>7042187
neither an ex-Muslim nor a Jew but I appreciate you actually responding to people in this thread.

You plan to go to medical school and you like to tell yourself you could have either been a great writer or a great research scientist but the truth is you never could have been either.

No I'm not joking. This book consumed my life like no other, and will forever haunt me. In a good way.

>>7042195
You probably enjoy poetry, or at least other prose books written with a keen ear to dialect and vernaculars.

>>7042262
You like humor and have just started getting into literature.
try A Confederacy of Dunces, you might like it

>>7042290
You're either 14 or a shitposter or both

>>7042349

What did you like about it?

>>7040438
nah

>>7042363

The humour, the philosophy, the setting, the characters, the structure, the predictions

although I would say I loved these things, not liked.

I own six different editions and have read it probably about 10 times now, in three different languages

Come at me

>>7042290
Holy shit that cover is fucked

>>7042187
>You have an odd fascination with Latin American politics and think the revolution will begin there.

Nope

>>7042187
>You have an odd fascination with Latin American politics and think the revolution will begin there.

Nope.

But I'm studying biology. I think we can be friends.

>>7042187
I like you, Anon. I'm from Alabama, I understand the South.

>>7042393
>>7042187
the revolution did begin there
it just failed with che

>>7042400
Alabro here, hate Faulkner though, the Unvanquished is padded garbage.

>>7042434
Took a course on Southern writers and Faulkner, and I've been in love ever since.

>>7042447
I just find his writing to be garbage. It's probably because Unvanquished has no literary abstraction in the vein of Absalom! Absalom! or The Sound and the Fury; Faulkner's straight prose is so dry it chokes the audience to death.

>>7042361

Bingo. I've got A Confederacy of Dunces on the way in the mail.

>>7042195
You engage best with a book when it challenges you and people think you're just pretentious.
>>7042237
Shockingly well-read, love prose and poetry equally.
>>7042252
huh, I'll have to look it up
>>7042262
You enjoy a solid emotional hook and probably got teary-eyed near the end.
>>7042277
You've managed to find the most worthwhile female writer of the last 50 years. Bro-tier or a cool chick.
>>7042290
You haven't read much political theory or studied psychology much.
>>7042299
You wonder where the modern world is hiding your masculinity, but have begun to accept that it's okay if you don't find it.
>>7042349
You don't care about prose but like the Ulysses guy you want books to come and drag you into the ring with only one of you emerging intact.
>>7042377
Nostalgic manbabby

>>7042434
>>7042400
Oh shit guys I'm from Alabama too

>>7042393
I studied Biology too, and yes we can be friends :')

>>7042334
Nope, I once planned to go to medical school or do research but I dropped it to be a writer when I saw how miserable lab-science made everyone I knew who was anything like me, and realizing I didn't care nearly enough about people to be happy as a doctor.

>>7042496

>You don't care about prose

Of course I care about prose...how could you be consumed by a book with terrible writing?

>like the Ulysses guy you want books to come and drag you into the ring with only one of you emerging intact.

What are you talking about?

>>7042511
>What are you talking about?
He doesn't know. He's just flinging out platitudes. It's like horoscopes.

>>7042511
I actually loved Infinite Jest myself, but it doesn't have the best prose out there by a mile. That's a matter of taste, but I just have a hard time believing a well-read person could think it's fantastic.
>>7042534
Busted. I kinda phoned in that second round of replies, tbh.

>>7042548

Why the fuck would I care about any opinion from you when you've just outed yourself as an imbecile. Faux-Patrician piece of shit

>>7042548
yeah tbh the sun also rises I like it because of the romanticism and prose, not because I identify with the guys impotency

>>7042647
well I didn't see you replying to all of those people with your superior perceptive abilities
sure is easy to say you're better than everyone else though without trying to contribute, huh?

>>7042669

Did I say I had superior perceptive abilities? Did I say you're way better than everyone else? Why are you so insecure?

>not because I identify with the guys impotency

Oh, I see.

>>7042684
>>7042511
>>7042647
You seem upset, pal. Would you like to talk it out?

>>7042695

And you're a shitposter from /r9k/. All these pieces of the puzzle have fallen into place.

>>7042721
It's cute that you don't think your butthurt ramblings count as shitposting.

>>7042187
I love P.G. Wodehouse I'll give you that

Come at me.

>>7042701
neato but I haven't read it to comment
>>7042787
Jesus y'all are really stumping me here, gonna add substantially to my backlog with this thread.
>>7042856
I mean, King's competent. Do you mostly read for comfiness and clarity of plot? Have you really never read something that grabbed you harder than The Stand?

>>7042496
ITT: Alabama Alpha Race.

>>7040999
where's the joke

>>7042950
Yee yee
Auburn or Alabama fans here?

God Emperor of Dune

fuck you

dante was brave

>>7043090
>translated by Nabokov

edgy

>>7042701
You find things funny that your friends think are just sad, no matter how many times you tell them it can be both.

>>7040438

>>7042856
I thought i bought this version of the novel but instead i got something else

goddamnit i judge books by the cover and this cover rules!

>>7043104
Mine.
Second favorite

>>7040812
>anyone hates phonies this much

I'd rate but there is only a handful of these I have actually read.
>tfw only started reading again in the last couple weeks
>tfw used to read a book a day as a kid

>>7044002
He got raped by his sister

>>7044003
Holy shit, I've had that L'Amour since I was a kid. Always liked the cover, 'though mine's all ratty now. Was it good? What's it like?

>>7044209
Yfw he gets raped by Mr. Antolini

Hermann Hesse - The Glas Bead Game

>>7043243

I wish I could have finished this book before I went back to college. I'm having to read 320 pages a week from text books. No time to finish TBK...

Hopefully thanksgiving week I can finish. I was really enjoying it.

>>7044233
I liked it, hence my posting it.
There is perhaps some books that I liked more but their names escape me at the moment,
The only one I can think of liking more is "Shadow of the wind."

Anyway, I read it a long time ago. I was like 12. But basically....a guy is in the desert for some reason, goes through some sort of dimensional portal, ends up in a parallel reality, however there is some weird creatures or beings that rule over everything in a very dysotopian manner. People are treated like animals. Yet the society is not unlike the pueblo people. No high technology and it is all out in the desert. Maybe it's because I was young but I remember it having a kind of underlying instinctual fear, in the way it was described.
I don't know if that makes any sense.
But go for it and read it. Be worth while if nothing else, Imo.

>>7044268
Is it as comfy as this image?

Peter Watts' Starfish.
>inb4 >genre fiction
Fuck you, I know I'm a pleb at heart. Don't need to rub it in my face.

>>7044269
I wish I wish I was this patrish.

>>7040913
Also mine.

>>7044291
On the surface it definitely is. But as any hesse book, there is some internal conflict or conflict of ideals. Overall as comfy as the last part of siddhartha.
I still love it, since it truly is the magnum opus of hesse - containing most of his ideas, resolving many problems he proposed in his earlier works. You kinda get a feeling of closure and peace when reading this.

It also contains three short-stories at the end - I highly recommend these, even if you don't wanna read the whole book. Each is about an hour long.

>>7044330
I know nothing of Hesse but it will be on my to get list

Borges' collected fictions, kinda cheating but dazeet

>>7041410
Why is this your favorite book?
I wanted it to end after about 300 pages, but it just kept going

probably read this 7 or 8 times. OP and The Road are my other two favorites

>>7040999
Hilarious

>A sort of halo, an occidental glow, came over life then. Troubles and other realities took on themselves a metaphysical impalpability, sinking to mere mental phenomena for serene contemplation, and no longer stood as pressing concretions which chafed body and soul.

>>7040508
You should try A Farewell to Arms, it is Hemingway's best book tbh

>>7046950

I found A Farewell to Arms incredibly tedious and boring. The Sun Also Rises is great though.

might as well ask in this thread

i'm a STEMfag trying to get into literature and philosophy

how should I approach reading and analyzing books?

>>7046999
Just right how a certain passage makes you feel in the margain. Start with smaller books and underline certain sentences you would like to remember. I usually do this on my second read however.

>>7043199
haha, kinda true. Applies even more to my family

>>7047004
>right
shhhhhhhit

>>7046999

>STEMfag

Why does this matter? What value could that fact possess in this context?

>>7040438
owns a reddit account
>>7040462
has had a wank while sniffing someone elses clothing
>>7040812
a chill guy with a big penis
>>7041410
the kind of guy who puts his hands on you when he talks to you
>>7042195
small and weedy
>>7042290
thinks stand up comics are profound
>>7042349
often gets freaked out by commonplace things
>>7042856
owns a sex toy
>>7043243
considers himself a deep thinker but never has original thoughts
>>7046971
sometimes cries and doesn't know why
>>7046735
wishes he was younger

>>7047018
Stemniggers are bad at anything other than memorizing formulas.

>>7047023
>the kind of guy who puts his hands on you when he talks to you
You just gave me goosebumps. I hate that so much.

I'm just a simple pleb with no complicated thoughts in his head.

>>7043172

I loved the Count of Monte Cristo

The only thing that bugged me is how he treated Maximilian. He didn't really need to drive the kid to suicide before giving him back Valentine. I get that suffering vs hope is what the novel was trying to get at, but still.

>>7042262
this is also my favorite
>post your favorite subplots:
Nately's whore had me laughing my ass off like a schoolboy

>>7048066
You're a pedophile.

>>7048075
no u

>>7047197
hmm

This is his one decent novel

I'm watching you

>>7040508
>>7040438
>>7040525

similar story

>fucking love the old man and the sea
>read some Hemingway short stories and love those
>get the sun also rises because it's usually said to be his best novel
>don't really like it

I get why it's considered good but it just bored me tbh, but I still love the way he writes so what should I read

it's not about censorship, it's about censoring yourself by reading shitty books and consuming shitty media

>>7047023
>wishes he was younger
swing-and-a-miss

>>7044180
Just started reading this yesterday. First read of Joyce, holy shit it's good.

>>7048112

Is Fahrenheit 451 one of those shitty books?

>>7048267
i mean maybe if you don't like it, you might think it's shitty compared to some of the books you do like. But if you look at it objectively compared to all the books ever written, there's no way you can consider it shitty. Even if you compare it to all the books to achieve mainstream success, it's still not shitty compared to those

>>7048267
read this in HS and I liked the setting. Not much into fiction, but this seems like a good read now considering the liberal social atmosphere.

>>7046966
no
>>7046950
yes

>>7046971
I'll be honest, i love Hemingway, but nobody beats good'ole Mr. Graves

>>7042237
just finished this, it felt like Joyce's Dubliners with a more memorable and comic character throughout. Wish it was longer

>>7050050
Love that book.

>>7050050
That's one of my favorites. Claudius the God isn't as good, unfortunately, but it's still great.

Duh.

>>7048066
Good taste
>>7042195
Pretentious faggot

>>7042161
This is a classic.

>>7042195
This is actually my favorite book prose wise but I am afraid to say so because everyone will think im pretentious

Zur Genealogie der Moral

I think its intresting how differently people feel about hemmingways work.

for me its for whom the bells toll>the old man and the sea>farewell to arms

havent read the sun also rises yet

To the Lighthouse, V.W.

>>7040438
nah

>>7050516

I honestly think that for whom the bells toll is his best. The final chapter is so spine-chilling and utterly beautiful.

>>7042277
>Choosing Pale Fire
>Not Ada or Ardor, his superior American work
Pleb pls go.

>>7050255
used to think you were bi

>>7048112
Its been like 10 years since I read it in high school. Can you explain how its about censoring yourself? As I recall the books plot it was just like, some dude lives with his wife he hates and they watch wall-TV and then he finds a book and is like "sick" and then runs away from the book burning committee.

So while I can see where you're coming from, the big symbolism never struck me as the other entertainment really being evil as much as just that it was the only thing available to the people in the setting. That its mostly a man vs. society story rather than man vs. himself.

>>7050563
for whom the bell tolls is the best metallica song too

>>7040462
Convince me that 2666 isn't named after Gabapentin.

do i have probelms?

>>7050563
That's my favorite as well. Then it's A Farewell to Arms, then Old Man and Sun Also Rises are tied. I love everything I've read by the man excluding a few short stories.

>>7052044
no, there is no standard that you are comparing yourself too. you are just showing your insecurity as if there was.

tbh I think 2666 was a better book slightly, but for some reason Savage Detectives really spoke to me a lot more

>>7052087
I'm reading 2666 now and just picked up Savage Detectives to read after. I'm 275 pages into 2666 and I love it. The underlying feeling of doom in Santa Teresa is great. So unnerving.

Not a joke even though I wish it was tbh

>>7052227
jee, you are a fag. not because you like the silmarillion, but because you are a fag

>>7052093
I'm around 250 pages into it and I might drop it. That feeling of doom you've mentioned just feels so nihilistic and entropic to me which really resonates to how I fear (and feel) my life is becoming.

Any recs to alleviate this feeling?

>>7048090
Try Islands in the Stream.

It's never ranked with top Hemingway but it's his later work and maybe more like Old Man than his younger works.

There's a great fish scene where character, position and stakes all shift around for all the players on the boat as the fish is played through the day.

Give it a shot. It's divided into vignettes -- if you don't like the early ones you can safely drop it without missing a grand plot.

>>7052327
Nah there's no exits

>>7040438

>>7052366

>>7050270
ur pretentious

Atlas Shrugged: greatest utopian novel since Aristotle because socialism leads to Nazis.

>>7052227
Hard to get through, but the conclusion to individual plots are intensely satisfying.

>>7052506
you got me

>>7052855
You don't know anything about sociology, psychology, history, politics, economics, or philosophy. You think "human nature" is an actual rebuttal to Marxism. You often confuse Marxist for liberals. You think anyone who disagrees with your political views is a Marxist. You probably will think I am a Marxist. You are anxious about your first day of high school coming up.

Flower's for Algernon

>>7043197
>you are me

Kafka is the best

I have not read very many books. I just come browse /lit/ sometimes.

>>7052878
But there are only two kinds of people in the world: those who produce and those who die; capitalists and failures; egoists and losers; winners and those not fit to survive; rationalists and mystics. I want to be among the living. Who is John Galt? #Trump/Palin2016

I'v read this at least once a year every year since I was nine.

>>7046999
start with the greeks

>>7046999
Along with the greeks, you may want to look into Bertrand Russell. He helped spearhead analytic philosophy and is really good at making philosophical topics accessible to new audiences. His "Problems of Philosophy" is generally pretty good

>>7042955
He had to read Catcher in the Rye for a school assignment.

>>7045574
incredibly well-written, funny, bizarre. it's basically a superhero comic for erudite adults

read it in college with a very good professor who gave great lectures on it, that probably helped

this or the trial tbh

>>7043090
you're young and are just starting to read literature

If I'm being honest, I have to say The Lord of the Rings.

>>7050702
Seconded

Honestly my favourite novel, but Nightwatch is better objectively.

>>7050275
Feels impressive because he can google original German titles of Nietzsche's works.

>>7054431
which one? i like the fellowship of the ring

>>7050722
sorry for late reply, but in my opinion the message of self censorship comes from certain key details in the book. It's not that the shitty entertainment was the only thing available to people, it's that society chose to be that way. It's explained in the book that different groups of people kept getting offended or uncomfortable with topics in books, and public outcry caused ordinary citizens to start burning these books.

This advanced to a point where society was so uncomfortable with books that the government made them illegal, similar to how our society become so comfortable with gay marriage that the government was able to make it legal. It wasn't that the government was being oppressive, they were just following the desire of the public not to be made uncomfortable.

And I know that still sounds like a man vs society story, which is because it kinda is, but it's also man vs himself because individual members of society had to make the decision that being pushed outside their comfort zone by books was not ok. The most poignant scene in the book to me is when the main character's wife has a couple friends over, and they're sitting around watching their TV. It's explained that one of the friends has had about 10 husbands, and one just recently killed himself, and she is completely unconcerned with this. The main character gets so pissed off that he starts reading her some poetry, and she starts uncontrollably crying.

That woman was censoring herself by never reading anything or doing anything that would take her out of her comfort zone. Meanwhile, the woman and everyone else is living in complete ignorance of the realities of life around her. I just think the most important distinction of why it's man vs himself is that the government didn't force people to become this way, they wanted to become this way.

Also it's unrelated but I love the character of the teenage girl in the beginning of the book. She's a great kinda symbol for how we will occasionally meet people in life who will challenge us and push us to be better.

Have ye read the white whale?

>>7055850

10/10 book.

>>7055707
Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers’ hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as much as to say,- Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness.

>>7040525
>the Sun also rises
Isn't that about a guy whose dick gets blown off in a war or something?

>>7055894
it's about a bunch of faggots eating in cafes, seriously that's the entire book

>>7042290
there's a girl in my lit class that said this was her favorite book
she's also a dyed-in-the-hair radical feminist

>>7040438
Blood Meridian by Cormick MacArthur. Also, Lovecraft's stories are some of my favorite reads.

Stoner

>>7040438
I've read this and The Metamorphosis at least once a year since I read them in high school.

Since they're both so short and I find them both comforting/reaffirming in different ways, I always go back to them. They're like comfort food.

>>7048090
A Farewell to Arms is his true best novel

>>7055907
it's about a cuck

>>7056440
by who?

>>7042349
me too

>>7044180
similar to the guy above, started this maybe a week ago and it's really really great so far. have read through "ivy day in the committee room".

>>7050224
Oh man, that book was hilarious.

>>7043104
>The woman looked up. Neither courage nor heartsink in those old eyes. He pointed with his left hand and she turned to follow his hand with her gaze and he put the pistol to her head and fired. The explosion filled all that sad little park. Some of the horses shied and stepped. A fistsized hole erupted out of the far side of the woman’s head in a great vomit of gore and she pitched over and lay slain in her blood without remedy. Glanton had already put the pistol at halfcock and he flicked away the spent primer with his thumb and was preparing to recharge the cylinder. McGill, he said. A Mexican, solitary of his race in that company, came forward. Get that receipt for us

That book is phenomenal.

>>7048085

I wanted to like this book but damn, some of the descriptions of unimportant things really dragged on.
There was like 5 pages of describing a church and I wanted to die.

>>7053098
Got me laughing. Good on you m8

I haven't read that many books. I really liked this one though--does anyone know if Kundera's other books are worth reading? Maybe someone could give me a recommendation?

>>7058030
Testaments Betrayed

Actually all the Fafhrd and the gray mouser series

dostoevsky is the best

>>7055869
Wow. I am a huge fan of Moby Dick and this had me in tears. One of the best /lit/ posts I've seen in awhile

>>7040438
I'll honestly be impressed if anyone's even heard of it.

>>7058030
They are. He's an underrated author here.
Life is Elsewhere is good.

First book I ever read <3

How can you have a single favorite book? Hell, how can you have single favorite anything?
I like pizza, but I like burgers too.

>>7041211
+1

>>7045581
The greatest book in this thread by far

>>7058433
I have read it in russian translation in the library for one day. It is very nice and sad book with some hilarious moments.

If I had to pick an all-time favorite, it would be Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson.

I think I've read it at least 5x now and it never ceases to amaze me.

>>7040812
>"FUCKING NORMIES REEEEEEEEEEEEEEE" the novel

nice

This book shook me when I was in high school. I was curious to see what I'd think of it if I'd read it today almost 8 years later. The impact is significantly less, but still made me think.
>>7044269
This was my favorite book as a kid. I used to have my dad read it to me in funny voices of all the characters.

TRANSCENDENT TASTE

>>7050702
comfy as fuck

>>7059509
I like Jesus' Son as well. Are his other books similar ? I think I tried something else and was slightly disappointed.

This thread is lacking the Good Word

I would like to be judged by a frenchfag. This is my favourite and I consider it more edgy and pedo than Lolita. And of course - 100 times deeper and more interesting

>>7059509
They can seem hit and miss if you are hoping for the same subject matter as Jesus' Son, but the writing is always stellar.

Train Dreams is an amazing novella that beautifully captures what it might have been like to live in an America on the cusp of modernization. I loved that one, but it is quite different from Jesus' Son.

Angels, Johnson's first novel, has a bit more in common with JS tonally and thematically since it deals with a certain kinda of desperate living, but is darker and more violent.

I had a hard time getting into Tree of Smoke, although the critics lauded the hell out of it. The same for Fiskadoro, although I was much younger when I read it and perhaps not in the right mindset to appreciate it (I was hoping for it to be more like Jesus' Son and it ended up being this unique, bizarre post apocalyptic story).

I recently reread "The Name of the World" and really, really enjoyed it even though I found it unremarkable other then a few brilliant sentences back when I first read it.

I could go on, but I think you get the idea. You have to take each book on its own terms because they are all so vastly different in their ambitions.

I think what it comes down to is that you have to be in the right mood, or perhaps the right place in life, or both, for each of his works. At least that has been my experience. The one thing you can count on. though, is that they all will have those sentences like only Johnson can write, the ones that come out of nowhere and punch you in chest and stagger you with their beauty and unexpectedness.

>>7059667
oops, this:
>>7060749
was meant to be a response to you and I clicked the wrong thread number.

>>7060749
What about Nobody Move?
not that anon btw but i have it somewhere i think and i've never read it

>>7045581
As you draw your last breath, the last lines of the book are the things you will remember.

I promise you.

>>7060822
Nobody Move is a good time. It is essentially Johnson doing a pulp fiction story. It isn't particularly profound or anything, but it's got fantastic dialogue and some really great noir-ish lines in it, like:

"At that moment Anita came out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel, her black hair slicked back, and flashed a smile that would have blown the doors off jesus christ."

It's definitely worth a read... I think he published it serially in playboy first, so it moves along at a good pace and keeps you reading.

>>7055869
HA! GAYYYYYYYYYY!!

>>7042787
Heh. More cock.

>>7046966
>I found A Farewell to Arms incredibly tedious and boring. The Sun Also Rises is great though.

I wouldn't say incredibly tedious but agree with your ranking.

>>7052044

Bret Easton Ellis has an excellent podcast, if you're into that kind of thing, anon.

The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann

pics arent working so

Of mice & men

>>7063190
Weak and short

I'll keep it agrarian though.

>>7040438

>>7046950
>>7040508
I thought For Whom The Bell Tolls was easily his best work. A Farewell To Arms I read first, and while probably groundbreaking at the time, it felt a little half baked.

>>7040438

>>7063296
I also really really like this book

Out of everything I've read so far it's pic related. Though I'm sure I'll eventually find something I like more.

>>7052878
But human nature is a rebuttal to Marxism.

Take feminists for example. They ignore the basic differences between men and women and they are forever unhappy for it.

This is Marxism in a nutshell.

>>7042277
Yeah since when was Pale Fire a superior work to anything Nabokov did? It may be his worst American work. It's certainly inferior to Pnin, Lolita, Ada.

Do people just like it because it's more obscure than Lolita and so they can namedrop a slightly less-heard-of work?

>>7064230
just don't post here, there are boards for you

>>7064230
>>7052878 hit nail on the head.

>>7064241
Pale Fire was more interesting than any of his other books as a stylistic experiment. It's just kindof a chore to read because it's narrated by a self-obsessed blowhard.

>>7064247
>>7064250
>y-y-you're wrong b-because I say so!

Not the guy who posted Atlas Shrugged btw.

>>7064247
>>7064250
He clearly meant Cultural Marxism and not Marxism itself.

>>7050702
I read Walden II by Skinner.
It was a fun read

>>7050168
Frigid bitch.

>>7042950
>Alabama
>alpha
ok

>>7042195
Good taste

>>7042161
>>7042223
>not Chouraqui
Fucking plebs, I swear to God.

>>7054170
I bet a million bucks the anon still didn't get it.

>>7054221
Wow, someone actually likes something good that isn't /lit/core.

>>7055850
Okay, Trotsky.

>>7057908
Better than White Noise.

>>7058030
Only The Joke.

>>7058302
One of the patricians has this as his only five star, so I guess.

>>7045581
>>7059209
If you identify with this, you're probably a pseudo-intellectual.

>>7063346
Really impressed with some of these favs.

>>7064208
Probably, but you'll keep coming back to it.

>>7052855
Correct. Which is why I am not a socialist. I am a communist. Socialism is Aryan; communism is Jewish.

As for Ayn "On Welfare" Rand, her work as a philosopher would be greatly improved had she actually engaged with other philosophers of the time rather than trying to juxtapose her misinterpretations of Aristotle, Adam Smith, and Friedrich Nietzsche. Atlas Shrugged is nothing but a collection of stiff, uneven prose. Her idea of climaxes are boring monologues. In a nutshell, she basically became Max Stirner for ignorant hedonistic capitalists by promoting Objectivism. The only thing objective about her is her stupidity.

The worst part is you probably think her ideas are revolutionary and do not realise that bourgeois liberals had been plugging away at the same ideas for hundreds of years. Her ideas were and continue to be the status quo with pseudo-philosophical sprinkles, which Libertarians and capitalists parade around as if her visionary world were a utopia. Although immensely popular with the aforementioned, there are many inconsistencies and inaccuracies found within her texts. For example, "The Fountainhead" is devoid of election funding, lobbyists, public relations, the CIA working for American enterprise, agricultural subsidies, environmental problems, religion as a Right-wing rather than Left-wing force, et cetera. The pure ideal of capitalism she describes is obstructed by all manner of humanist, universalist, and egalitarian forces. In addition, she ignores all of the forces on the Right which would forestall her ideal. It is rather dishonest to exclude one's own supporters. Hell, I'm not even mad about her. I find the Green Party to be more of a threat.

>>7064230
*Marxism is a defiance of human nature

You're just too weak-willed to betray your monkey brain. You are homeless in your own body and you will never know it.

>>7064241
There is far more to Pale Fire than you caught.

>>7064287
Cultural Marxism is a buzz phrase meant to stir up Burgerstan. No one should take it seriously.

>>7046993
The Long Goodbye is his best imo but The Big Sleep has some of his best prose.