/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.15725490]

What have you read in 2020 lads?

I dipped my toe back into reading at the start of this year, I found crime and punishment in the uni library and as you can see I've went on a tear in Russian literature over the last 3 months which has been extremely special

[Anonymous No.15725503]

hello joshua merad
we are legion

[Anonymous No.15725516]

>>15725503
ruined everything

[Anonymous No.15725554]

>>15725490

[Anonymous No.15725576]

>>15725554
Better Screenshot

[Anonymous No.15725578]

>>15725576
just make your own thread i'm deleting this one for self evident reasons

[Anonymous No.15725599]

>Mihály Babits - The son of Virgil Tímár
>Mihály Babits - On the Hungarian Character
>Anonymous - L’anomie ou le Tumulte des Tapirs
>Franz Kafka - The Metamorphosis
>Sergei Dovlatov - Pushkin Hills
>Venedikt Yerofeyev - Moscow-Petushki
>Vladimir Voinovich - The Hat
>György Belia - The Student Years of Mihály Babits
>Kawabata Yasunari - Thousand Cranes
>Gyula Illyés - People of the Puszta
>Gyula Illyés - Lunch in the Castle
>Sándor Márai - A Memoir of Hungary 1944-1948
>Homer - The Odyssey

[Anonymous No.15725611]

>>15725578
Just report it for doxing you pussy

[Anonymous No.15725712]

>>15725490
Think I've been doing alright this year, even if I do say so myself. Currently reading The Idiot and The Flowers of Evil. Enjoying both a lot.

[Anonymous No.15726137]

>>15725490
I'm reading Libra right now. Incredible so far

[Anonymous No.15726192]

>Alice Munro — Too Much Happiness
>Margaret Atwood — Wilderness Tips
>Mark Leyner — Et Tu, Babe
>Esmé Weijun Wang — The Collected Schizophrenias
>David Foster Wallace — Infinite Jest
>Stephen King — Night Shift
>William Gaddis — The Recognitions
>Carmen Maria Machado — Her Body and Other Parties
>Stephen King — Nightmares & Dreamscapes
>Carmen Maria Machado — In The Dream House
>Adam Johnson — Fortune Smiles
>Hanya Yanagihara — A Little Life
>Steven Millhauser — Dangerous Laughter
>Susan Sontag — I, etcetera
>Lisa Robertson — The Baudelaire Fractal
>James Agee — A Death In The Family
>Hunter S. Thompson — The Great Shark Hunt
>Ronan Farrow — War on Peace
>Samanta Schweblin — Fever Dream
>Claudia Rankine — Citizen
>Rachel Cusk — Coventry
>Kate Briggs — This Little Art
>Ben Lerner — Leaving the Atocha Station
>Ben Lerner — 10:04
>Olga Tokarczuk — Flights
>Richard Powers — The Echo Maker
>Nico Walker — Cherry
>Arthur C. Clarke — Childhood's End
>Jonathan Franzen — The Twenty-Seventh City, The Corrections, & Freedom
>Vladimir Nabokov — Transparent Things
And the Collected Poems of Octavio Paz

Self Isolation is wonderful for reading desu.

[Anonymous No.15726232]

>>15726137
how far are you? it's brilliant isn't it. one of the best books i've ever read, i bought the hardback because i felt so strongly (although i ruined it by spilling a tiny bit of water on the actual cover beneath the dust jacket and when trying to rub it off scratched away all the material - dreadul - although the dust jacket is beautiful)

[Anonymous No.15726247]

>>15726192
what's the recognitions like? i tried to read JR earlier today but i think i'm going to spent a lot more time in russia first. the style of it was so overwhelming when compared to the peaceful beauty and ease of reading tolstoy, no chapter breaks or anything and just constant dialogue. i think recognitions will be a better entry point for me. also, how good is franzen? years ago i thought he was nothing when i stupidly deified DFW as all 18-year-olds do but he's begun to interest me

[Anonymous No.15726254]

>Ivan Goncharov - Oblomov
>John Steinbeck - Cannery Row and Tortilla Flatts
>Ernest Hemingway - A Farewell to Arms and The Old Man and the Sea
>Cormac McCarthy - Blood Meridian
>Stendhal - The Red and the Black
>William S. Burroughs - Naked Lunch
>Osamu Dazai - No Longer Human
>Mark Twain - Roughing It and The Mysterious Stranger
>Joseph Conrad - Heart of Darkness
>Alexandre Dumas - The Count of Monte Cristo
>Franz Kafka - The Castle
>William Golding - The Lord of the Flies
>Charles Dickens - A Tale of Two Cities
>Malcolm Lowry - Under the Volcano
>Guy Debord - Society of the Spectacle

[Anonymous No.15726278]

>>15725712
how does dead souls compare to the best of tolstoy? i'm going for that after i read some more of his short stories. just finished how much land does a man need and the message is ham-fisted but it was beautifully written. it brings to mind reading someone possibly say tolstoy's style over time became more and more minimalistic and I can see it, and appreciate the radiance of the language (this comment I read may have been referring to beckett so excuse my stupidity if this is the case)

[Anonymous No.15726293]

>>15726254
can i have a review of oblomov, hemingway, stendhal, dumas, dickens and kafka please. genuinely all of these books/authors interest me greatly and i'm wondering where to go first, and all that. i read 3 of kafkas short stories - metaphorosis, penal colony and the judgement and i loved them all, curious if the castle exceeds them

[Anonymous No.15726351]

>>15726278
I can't really compare it to Tolstoy because Ivan Ilyich is all I've read from him so far, although hopefully not for too long because I really liked that one. Just on its own though, yeh Dead Souls is really fucking great, it's a tremendous shame that Gogol decided to throw the rest of Part 2 up a chimney, because what there is to read is fucking banging. It did take me giving it a second chance to actually enjoy it though, the first time I read it a couple of months ago I barely got past the first 100 pages before dropping it. Yeh for some reason I really couldn't get myself to like it at all the first time round, but it more than redeemed itself to me when I decided to start over again with it. Bit weird innit.

[Anonymous No.15726355]

>>15726232
About 80 pages. Finished White Noise yesterday and started Libra today. Am completely addicted to DeLillo's prose, think I'll read Americana next. How was Mao II?

[Anonymous No.15726358]

>>15725490
what translation would you guys recommend for dosto’s works? i hated p&v’s translation of notes from underground, but read some excerpts from other translations after that i liked more, and i currently have mcduff’s for crime and punishment.

[Anonymous No.15726389]

>>15726247
I really enjoyed Recognitions. It's dense and long, and makes ample references and allusions that well reward readers who approach the text already interested and well read in history & theology & art/philosophy. However, the prose and characters and especially structure/framing are so compelling on their own that, even when the narrator is flitting around between a dozen characters, I was gleefully following and in-the-moment and turning many pages in quick succession.

Franzen gets a bad wrap, I think. Sometimes his themes feel a bit blunt, bordering on glib, but I'm very much a sucker for compelling family drama, and Franzen seems to have a real knack for it. I always want to know what will happen next, and his prose so elegantly hops from character to character that it just reads itself — I read The Corrections in one day, and Freedom over two. If you like ultra-suburban family chronicles, you'll be happy.
(Coincidentally, I believe Franzen has a whole essay on how The Recognitions was his favorite book ever and that it seriously shaped his ideas about fiction and writing.)

[Anonymous No.15726392]

>>15726358
mcduff is really good. a general rule is that the more recent the translation the better - for crime and punishment specifically i'd recommend oliver ready as that got rave reviews. for the rest of them, the more recent the better pretty much. mcduff is a safe pair of hands though if you can't find anything more contemporary or whatever

[Anonymous No.15726412]

>>15725490
I'm reading pic related.

[Anonymous No.15726425]

[Anonymous No.15726429]

>Thomas Bernhard - Extinction
>Knut Hamsun - On Overgrown Paths
>W.G. Sebald - Austerlitz
>Johan Borgen - Lillelord
>James Kunstler - The geography of nowhere
>Celine - Death on Credit
>Robert Walser - Jakob von Gunten
>W.G. Sebald Vertigo
>Franz Kafka - The Castle
>Celine - Guignol's Band
>Varlam Shalamov - Kolyma Stories
>W.G. Sebald - Natural History of Destruction
>Celine - North
>Hans Erick Nossack - The End
>Varlam Shalamov - Sketches of the criminal world
>Don Carpenter - Fridays at Enrico's
>William Gay - Provinces of Night
>Jack London - People of the Abyss
>Don Carpenter - From a Distant Place
>Jack Black - You can't Win
>G.B. Edwards - The Book of Ebenezer Le Page
>Heathcote Williams - Royal Babylon
>James C. Scott - Seeing Like a State
>Robert Walser - The Tanners

[Anonymous No.15726436]

>>15726412
almost picked this up in the Princeton sale but wasn't sure if i'd actually read it. What's it like so far?

[Anonymous No.15726553]

>>15725490
hello its me mr slow reader

[Anonymous No.15726699]

I enjoyed almost everything I've read this year. A couple of duds but nothing I'm upset that I read

[Anonymous No.15726774]

>>15726425
What did you think of Red Cavalry? Going through it myself now

[Anonymous No.15726851]

>>15726699
how do you get to this page from your gr account, I can never remember

[Anonymous No.15726879]

>>15726851
Its the my year in books.

[Anonymous No.15726881]

>>15725490

>The System of Objects - Baudrillard
>The Mushroom at the End of the World - Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing
>Essays - Montaigne
>Enquiries - Hume
>Thus Spoke Zarathustra
>Twilight of the Idols
>The Antichrist
>Nic. Ethics - Aristotle
>Deleuze & Guattari - Robert Bogue
>Genealogy of morals (2nd)
>Lion and the Unicorn - Orwell
>Nietzsche - ed. Richardson & Leiter
>Lolita - Nabakov
>Leviathan - Hobbes
>Meditations & other Metaphysical writings
>Ethics - Spinoza
>Spinoza: Practical Philosophy - Deleuze
>The Castle - Kafka (3rd re-read)
>The Ego and His Own - Stirner
>The Next Revolution - Bookchin
>Letters & Writings - Epicurus
>Apology, Symposium, Laws - Plato (working way through dialogues intermittently)

[Anonymous No.15726921]

>>15726392
thanks anon. does this hold true for tolstoy? ive heard that maude is best since tolstoy himself endorsed it

[Anonymous No.15727005]

>>15725490

[Anonymous No.15727073]

thanks to whoever posted Alfau here, really enjoyed it

[Anonymous No.15727222]

My favorites so far are Imperium by Kracht, the Unnecessary War by Pat Buchanan, and I suppose the Lightning and the Sun because Savitri Devi is so wonderfully extreme. On the outside she might appear nutty but there's logic to it. She can write an engaging historical narrative too.

[Anonymous No.15727233]

>>15726436
He gives a general insight of vedic society, then goes to explain about artha ("politic/power"), kama ("pleasure/love"), dhamma ("duty/destiny"), then explains about moksha/nirvana, and I'm about to read the part that deals with buddhism and jainism. He's an erudit, with access to obscure sources, more open minded than Max Muller. He writes well enough to keep me reading. I'd recomend the book.

[Anonymous No.15727278]

Is okay I guess. I've slowed down a lot. Just started The Good Soldier Svejk this morning, I'm very much enjoying it.

[Anonymous No.15727344]

>>15725490
Which one was your favourite Dostoyevsky book?
I've only read C&P

[Anonymous No.15727365]

>>15727222
How did you get through In the Buddha's Words?
I'm like 1/20 through and the repetitions are driving me nuts.

[Anonymous No.15727407]

>>15725490
Moby-Dick, Don Quixote, Trout Fishing in America, and some textbooks pertaining to my major. I’m currently reading Suttree

[Anonymous No.15727496]

>>15727365
It might seem obvious once you hear it but habit is the key to getting through any long or challenging work. Just have a set time every day and eventually it becomes enjoyable.

[Anonymous No.15727742]

>>15725490
I haven't read as much as I liked, but I liked almost everything that I have read.

[Anonymous No.15727780]

>>15727742
How’s the Consumer? I got the ePub from some anon here.

[Anonymous No.15727815]

>>15725490

[Anonymous No.15727836]

>>15726192
>>15725712
How do you read so much?
I’ve only read 10 this year

[Anonymous No.15727867]

>>15727836
Try reading with more dedication than "30 minutes before bed" or whatever other unambitious habit you pretend

[Anonymous No.15727946]

I got off to a great start but have had to work a lot of hours lately and haven’t been able to finish anything in a while

A Time to Keep Silence By Patrick Leigh Fermor
A German Officer in Occupied Paris by Ernst Junger
In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
Nazi Literature in the Americas by Roberto Bolano
The Last Tycoon by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Round Ireland in Low Gear by Eric Newby
A King Alone by Jean Giono
The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat
On the Marble Cliffs by Ernst Junger
Moneyball by Michael Lewis
The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow
Another Day of Life by Richard Kapuscinski
Oliver Cromwell by C. V. Wedgwood
Troubles by J. G. Farrell
A Bend in the River by V. S. Naipaul
Loving by Henry Green
Butcher’s Crossing by John Williams

[Anonymous No.15728039]

>>15725490
Haven't read a single book. Apathy is real.

[Anonymous No.15728157]

>>15727780
I also got it from here lol
It have interesting and well written passage sure, but Its mostly an exercise of the author trying to be more and more edgy.

[Anonymous No.15728259]

1: Don Quixote
2: Lire Lolita à Téhéran
3: For Whom the Bell Tolls
4: The Long Goodbye
5: A Stolen Life : A Memoir
6: Basic Teachings of the Great Philosophers
7: Underworld
8: The Grapes of Wrath
9: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
10: Letters to a Young Contrarian
11: Moby-Dick
12: Letter to a Christian Nation
13: The Seat of the Soul
14: The Saturday Night Ghost Club
15: Bridge to Terabithia
16: The Reader

[Anonymous No.15728265]

>>15727222
based houelbecq
I used platform as a guide to visit south east asia

[Anonymous No.15728318]

>>15727222
Always good to see Glen Cook
How was The Monk? Been on my list this year