/crg/ currently reading general

[Anonymous No.11835358]

The purpose of these threads is to encourage in depth discussion of literature and to help Anons with literature related questions.

General questions:
>what are you reading
>do you like it
>what will you read next

Today’s topic:
>what is the best moment so far of your current book?

[Anonymous No.11835374]

>>11835358
Just started Blood Meridan. The first two pages are the best first two pages I've read in my entire life. No kidding. The best part is obviously the prose, and also the imagery.

[Anonymous No.11835380]

>catch 22
>it's awful
>next read: going back to Nabokov probably

After the deliciousness of Ada Catch 22 seems just way too heavyhanded, forced and unfunny. As far as satire goes, Confederacy of Dunces was way better. Even the moments in which Heller does his best to make his prose sound ambitious, it just looks as if he chose a random synonym from the thesaurus every time, without rhyme or reason. The moment I saw the name of Lieutenant fucking Scheisskopf I just knew the book is awful for me. I'm somewhere in the half of it, but I probably won't finish it.

[Anonymous No.11835419]

>A Hero of our Time
>Pretty good
>Finally going to start Frazer's Golden Bough (Oxford Abridgement)
Hero of our Time is a lot of fun, mainly because like many Russian books it has this conversational tone, often speaking to the reader. It reminds me of Gogol, who's one of my favorites.

[Anonymous No.11835434]

>>11835419
You'd love Bulhakov, if you haven't read him yet.

[Anonymous No.11835504]

>>11835358
“A Good Man Is Hard to Find” and “The Life You Save May Be Your Own” by Flannery O’Connor

Tbh I read O’Connor a couple years ago (both novels and many short stories), Southern Gothic was basically my way into “real” literature and I loved her writing, but I don’t feel she’s really held up returning to her now. There is a poverty to her similes, the adjectives she uses sometimes don’t really make sense within the context of the stories. “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is basically “Wouldn’t everyone be better Catholics if they had someone pointing a gun at them at all times? Also it’s not fair we don’t get to see miracles!” I’m disappointed, maybe I need to give her more room to sit in my brain and fester.

Not sure what I will read next. I have The Lost Salt Gift of Blood by Alistair MacLeod, I’ve read the first story in the collection, called “In the Fall” before, and its one of my favorite shorts. He has a real finesse in the way he writes about nature. I’m from a rural area and always gravitate to writing that concerns that environment (though he’s Canadian and I’m from the Midwest). We’ll see how his other writing compares.

[Anonymous No.11835685]

>Pale Fire
>Unsure if I like it or not
>Umm idk, maybe Aristotle or The Trial Perhaps. Currently reading Meditations on the side but just like a chapter a night.

Probably when I started to realize the narrator is a delusional insane person. But I don't know, it's not grabbing me like I thought I would. Maybe I'm too distracted while reading or something

[Anonymous No.11835725]

>>11835358
Charivari by John Hawkes from the collection of his shorter stuff called Lunar Landscapes. Great stuff as always. Hawkes is probably the most underrated author in all of American lit.

[Anonymous No.11835748]

>>11835358
>12 strong
>I want to move away from political books after this.
>Just bought The Metamorphosis And Other Stories and an H.P. Lovecraft Collections book.
So far the best part's been the recount of the various character's reaction to the actual 9/11 event. I might read that single part over again once I'm finished.

[Anonymous No.11835832]

>>11835358
Picked up Turn of the Screw again, (I can't get over not finishing this book ! ). This particular edition I own [Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism, ed. by Peter G. Beidler.] covers an incredible range of topics and themes, some even quite out of place in my opinion.
It offers 5 different essays by prominent scholars analyzing the story from different point of views (e.g. marxist , feminist , deconstructionist ...) but I'm not qualified to offer an opinion on them.
Anyways getting to what brought me to put the book on hold every time I'd have to say that it's James' lifeless, overly formal prose.
The story is what you would expect from a ghost story from that period: very prosaic, no shock value, etiquette, weird interactions.
What keeps me going ? I don't know.
Now moving to what I will read next.
I recently bought The Hound of the Baskervilles since it's been a long time since I read anything by Doyle and it takes me back to my pre-teen years.
I feel like it's gonna be a perfect read for what remains of September .
I'm thinking of starting some non fiction as well, perhaps history (starting from the Greeks ofcourse!) as I found a good post that I'll follow.
It's surprising how much information, guides and whatnot you can find in the archive.


Autumn book recommendations are well recieved.

[Anonymous No.11835843]

>>11835685

No, you're right. Pale Fire is an overrated novel, novel, not poem, which is fantastic. The concept of the novel is good but overplayed and manically pushed through, that is where I lose Nabokov. With his later novels, I sense a need to triumph over his great Russian predecessors and he can only really do that by inventing new forms which, to me, seem most of the time gimmicky and try-hard. Nabokov's actual style on sentence level remained what you can call traditional, beautiful notwithstanding, and could never truely make a style shift of the likes of Joyce.

[Anonymous No.11835848]

>>11835843
He didn't care for most of what Joyce did so I don't think he was even looking to depart from conventional literature to that extent.

[Anonymous No.11835890]

I'm going through "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" from Joseph Campbell.

I feel like I understand maybe a few sentences every page. I feel like the book contains something fascinating, but I can barely scratch the surface.

I'd appreciate any supplementary material of sorts that I could go through to better understand what the heck this man is trying to say.

[Anonymous No.11835984]

anythkngy about anarcho capitalism and a.i. lol ima speud

[Anonymous No.11836028]

>>11835890
Go watch his interviews on YouTube: The Power of Myth. The interviewer is a dunce, but Campbell is at his best.

[Anonymous No.11836075]

>>11835380
Ada was the last book I finished! Really Nabokov at his greatest, and the writing is so deft and subtle. A pleasure to read.

>>11835843
>>11835848
Nabokov was an aesthete, he believed in pulling beauty out of the English language. A good 80% of his body of writing is wordplay, and that’s because he enjoyed finding new sides of syntax, turning over the words in his mind and taking delight in prevously unseen angles. Sure, he’d never “shift the style” like Joyce did, but that was never his intention, nor does it matter when discussing Nabokov.

As for as I can tell: For Nabokov, writing was like solving a crossword puzzle. He literally, every morning, got up and stood at a podium in his underpants and wrote paragraphs on notecards, then stored them in boxes. That was how Lolita was written, and it sounds very similar to the morning newspaper routine (coffee, kitchen table, underpants). He wouldn’t even do interviews unless they were scripted, because he considered himself a wordmaster and needed to appear that way to the public. The guy liked wordplay to a fault.

I agree that Pale Fire is heavy-handed, lol. I think a lot of his catalogue errs on that side, but I stay reading him because his writing is undeniably interesting and, when it works, sublime.

I’m reading Ulysses right now. Have been reading it for the past 3 weeks and I’m on the Oxen of the Sun chapter, which is way easier/more tolerable than some of the other chapters. It starts by imitating Early Latinate prose, which simply groups words differently, and progresses through how the English language has developed, chronologically, meaning that the chapter ends in 18th century Irish prose. The way that Joyce’s writing sails like a ship on top of the rough sea of different styles is such a raw display of talent, I’m in awe at some of the flows/stressing schemes presented in this chapter.

Hope this thread picks up!

[Anonymous No.11836426]

>>11835358
>what is the best moment so far of your current book?

After years of service in a remote outpost the protagonist returns home to visit the people in his hometown. After a night out which gave him no feeling he returned home to discover that the sound of his footsteps, once enough to wake his mother who slept through all other loud noises of the town, had no effect. He feels disconnected from the people he once new and his past.
This moment hit me really hard. Makes me remember how I could be awoken at the sound of my mum whispering my name even though I would sleep through loud parties next door and fireworks, etc.

Have decided to read The Plague by Camus next.