/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.17987675]

Stack threads are meaningless. List the texts you have actually read so far this year.

>Collected Essays (Orwell)
>Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
>L'etranger (Camus)
>Chess story (Zweig)
>Epic of Gilgamesh (Anon)
>Under the Sun of Satan (Bernanos)
>Theogony & Works and Days (Hesiod)
>Persians (Aeschylus)

[Anonymous No.17987688]

its all meaningless innit? dont you just want attention? why would i want you to know what books i've read? who are you ?

[Anonymous No.17987696]

>>17987675
Thank you for specifying the authors, would have been confusing otherwise.

[Anonymous No.17987699]

>>17987675
your list is meaningless. just an arbitrary selection of titles. at least stack threads have actual books and editions.

[Anonymous No.17987701]

>>17987675
here's my stack

[Anonymous No.17987724]

This is unironically what I've read so far this year.

Currently reading Orwells first novel (Down and Out in Paris and London) because I'm trying to expand my horizon away from pop military history.

[Anonymous No.17987728]

>>17987688
>>17987699
It would be good for rec purposes. In stack threads people haven't even read what they've posted, so can't recommend them.

[Anonymous No.17987737]

>>17987724
Nice stack. I'd really recommend Orwell's essay collection. They can be a mixed bag, but 'Shooting and Elephant', 'A Hanging', 'Bookshop Memories', 'Why I Write' and 'Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool' are the 5 I enjoyed the most.

[Anonymous No.17987808]

>>17987701
You've made this joke once before, Rajesh. Now stop hogging the bandwidth your dad is working from home.

[Anonymous No.17987971]

>>17987688
>shitting on someone for reading, wanting recs and wanting to discuss the works he's read
anon, i...

[Anonymous No.17988369]

Bump. A thread about actual reading on /lit/ is a rarity

[Anonymous No.17988408]

>>17988369
How is this about reading? OP is just bragging on a Balinese Underwatet Basket Weaving forum. There’s no content, no discussion to be had

[Anonymous No.17988428]

>>17987675
Aeneid
Metamorphoses
Divine Comedy
The Stranger
Day in the life of Ivan Denosovich

Starting Paradise Lost tomorrow

i enjoy stack threads

[Anonymous No.17988658]

Empire of the Summer Moon
The Hero's Journey
Faust
Lord of the flies
The rum diaries
The Stranger
Plato collection of dialogues
Roadside Picnic
Sagor för barn över 18 år
Gravity's Rainbow
The Plague
Cicero (Selected works)
The Society of the Spectacle
The Goldfinch

[Anonymous No.17988673]

>>17988658
I'm anon. I enjoy reading about what people on this forum are reading, considering I'm reading your shitposts all the time

[Anonymous No.17988676]

>>17988658
How do you read so many books at the same time and why?

[Anonymous No.17988688]

>>17987688
you can't refute this

[Anonymous No.17988723]

>>17987675
>Diary of a Wimpy Kid (Kinney)
>Diary of a Wimpy Kid - Rodrick Rules (Kinney)
>Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters (Riordan)
>Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (rowling)
>Ender's Game fanfiction (Anonymous)
>Zootopia Fucktale (Anonymous)
>My Little Pony: Twilight Sparkle and the Crystal Heart Spell (Berrow)
>Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Wittgenstein)

[Anonymous No.17988740]

>>17988676
I don't read them at the same time mate. I prefer reading one fiction and one non-fiction at a time. It stresses me out reading more than three at once

[Anonymous No.17989031]

>>17988408
You're an imbecile. Sharing what you've read and asking others about the books they post is the core of literary discussion

[Anonymous No.17989066]

>>17987675
>L'etranger
what are you 16?????

[Anonymous No.17990542]

Anybody can make a list but few can add(none have added) one thing they remember.

Hidden Hand Dialogues
Gave an alternative on history and religion, semi useful

AxeMeAQuestion, Rofschild Dialogues
Gave a reading list and introduced me to(I think about this almost daily in recollection and reflectance):

that which you know, you know
that which you know, you don't know
that which you don't know, you know
that which you don't know, you don't know

Ham Rye - Bukowski
People like pretty lies and I had an easy life compared to Bukowski. (Not much to learn in fiction, kind of regret reading this but it was easy and attractive to read)

On Memory - Aristotle
If you forget a thought try and think about the things prior to relead you into your forgotten thought and be careful entertaining a prior thought because it might be the wrong one. We remember the absurd/what is rarely encountered.

Critos, Apology, Euthyphro - Plato
The state did help me therefore I should try and help the people in the state (Socrates btfo chaotic anarchy near end of Critos)

Rhetoric - Schopenhauer
Don't clash conclusions, introduce your reasoning and let the other person reach your conclusion and be careful - mixing plausibility with truth crumbles everything because it creates skeptibility

Man, the unknown - A. Carrel
Fasting increases longevity and, women have an important role in society - motherhood, she should be rearing an educated and strong child, she should not be restrained strictly to cleaning and cooking. You cannot be great without suffering.

The dream of a ridiculous man - Dostoevsky
Didn't teach me much, not surprised again, fiction is killing one bird with one stone - inferior to nonfiction

Propaganda - Goebbels
Theory doesn't matter, if your strategy works and goes against theory then continue.....
"You have to do something. If you want to fight the movie industry, you must build your own theater, even if it at first has only the most primitive equipment. And if you see that the children are being poisoned by what they read in school, you must begin to win children’s souls and give them the antidote.” My reply is simple: You can spend ten years giving the antidote to the poison that is produced by a badly led cultural establishment, but a single decree from the Ministry of Culture can destroy all your work. If you had spent that ten years winning fighters for the movement, the movement would have conquered the Ministry of Culture! Everything else is mere piecework."

Reminds me of Thoreau and his quote on men that try to remove evil by "sawing off branches" instead of "removing the roots."

[Anonymous No.17990577]

>>17987675
>Chess story (Zweig)

How did you like it? I'm looking forward to it because judges-penitent is going to read it.

[Anonymous No.17990626]

>>17987701
How many times can you laugh at the same gay joke? It's either this or a screencap of some PDFs.
Contribute or fuck off.

[Anonymous No.17990744]

1) 19/01/21: The Rim of Morning: Two Tales of Cosmic Horror (William Sloane) (Sakurashinmachi)

2) 21/01/21: The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov) (Sakurashinmachi)

3) 24/01/21: Twin Spirits: The Complete Weird Stories of W.W. Jacobs (W.W. Jacobs) (Sakurashinmachi)

4) 29/01/21: The Collector (John Fowles) (Sakurashinmachi)

5) 29/01/21: Shocking Crimes of Postwar Japan (Mark Schreiber) (Futakotamagawa)

6) 03/02/21: The witch of Ravensworth (George Brewer) (Sangenjaya)

7) 10/02/21: The Magus (John Fowles) (Sakurashinmachi)

8) 21/02/21: The Plays of Oscar Wilde (Oscar Wilde) (Sakurashinmachi)

9) 23/02/21: Classic Victorian & Edwardian Ghost Stories (edit. Rex Collings) (Sendagi)

10) 26/02/21: Transparent Things (Vladimir Nabokov) (Otemachi)

11) 03/03/21: The French Lieutenant's Woman (John Fowles) (Sakurashinmachi)

12) 12/03/21: Forrest Gump (Winston Groom) (Sakurashinmachi)

13) 19/03/21: Daniel Martin (John Fowles) (Sakurashinmachi)

14) 31/03/21: French Decadent Tales (edit. Stephen Romer) (Sakurashinmachi)

15) 06/04/21: Elvis, Jesus and Coca-Cola (Kinky Friedman) (Sakurashinmachi)

I'm about to finish Moll Flanders.

[Anonymous No.17990872]

1) Complete Stories - Franz Kafka
2) Absalom, Absalom! - William Faulkner
3) Petersburg - Andrei Bely
4) No Longer Human - Osamu Dazai
5) The Castle - Franz Kafka
6) Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
7) Mary - Vladimir Nabokov
8) The Recognitions - William Gaddis
9) The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the
Sea - Yukio Mishima
10) Serotonin - Michel Houellebecq
11) The Illiad - Homer
12) The Odyssey - Homer
13) A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man -
James Joyce
14) Look at the Harlequins! -Vladimir Nabokov
15) Bend Sinister - Vladimir Nabokov

[Anonymous No.17990883]

>>17990872
Tell me about those Nabokov novels. I loved Lolita, The Defense and Laughter in the Dark, but Transparent Things was extremely disappointing.

[Anonymous No.17990971]

Have now completed all his novels, Mary was super short, accessible but also quite rhapsodic and melancholy like Lolita, his first novel and I highly recommend. Look at the Harlequins! was his final novel, and I would say same with Transparent Things, it's not one to read early on, I think transparent things was a condensed exploration of some of the key themes throughout his oeuvre, Look at the Harlequins! however constantly referenced and parodies a lot of his previous novels including Lolita, so not one for a casual Nabokov fan, I loved it though.

[Anonymous No.17991018]

Bend Sinister was probably my least favourite, I think he was still finding his voice in English prose at this point.

[Anonymous No.17991167]

>Pride and Prejudice (Austen)
I actually thought the character development was well done, I had a preconception (a prejudice lmao) that it would be a one dimensional love story but I was pleasantly surprised.

>The Four Agreements (Ruiz)
Pretty basic self help couched in a new age frame, but I think I took some positive things from it

>A Handbook of Traditional Living Vols. 1 and 2 (Raido)
I don't read a ton of political work but I like Evola so I figure I'd give these a try as it's written from an Evolian Traditionalist frame. Not particularly interesting or helpful, just read Evola / Guenon if you want this kind of stuff.

>Capitalist Realism (Fisher)
I think this was written with a very entry level audience in mind and it kinda shows, he makes points that I think most people discovered during edgy high school days. It still makes good points and I would recommend it with the caveat that the reader would need to not get stuck in Fisher's modern left paradigm.

>The Crisis of the Modern World (Guenon)
I read RATMW before I read this and the two works feel rather complementary (as I think was Evola's design). Not much new information but a good drilling down particularly with regard to social issues and individualism, and a decent chapter expounding upon the Kali Yuga age.

[Anonymous No.17991357]

>>17990542
JAN 2021
1. The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat - Oliver Sacks
Man mistakes wiafu for hat. Hilarity ensues.
2. Thinking Fast and Slow - Daniel Khanamen
Man struggles to control the acceleration of his brain. It's regularly slams into his own skull causing mild concussions.
FEB 2021
1. The Life and Death of Great American Cities - Jane Jacobs
City gets too large and starts to rot from the inside out.
2. There are Places in the World Where Rules are Less Important Than Kindness - Carlo Rovelli
These places are China.
3. Exquisite Corpse - Michael Sorkin
A very sexy corpse takes a women to the big dance.
4. On The Move - Oliver Sacks
About a sack race across the continental US
5. Voyage of the Space Beagle - A. E. van Vogt
The memoirs of a man who built a homemade rocket to launch the ashes of his dog into space.
MAR 2021
1. The Beginner's Guide to Winning the Nobel Prize - Peter Doherty
Read this only if you've read 'how to read a book'
2. Womb to Let - Joseph Johnson
Man rents out his wife's womb to a family of dwarves.
3. The Checklist Manifesto - Atul Gawande
Covers how to established marxism through a fairly elaborate checklist.
4. Understanding Media - Marshal Mcluhan
Teaches you how to watch netflix
APR 2021
1. The Drowned and the Saved - Primo Levi
Lists the people who drowned on the Titanic and those who were saved. Nothing else. It's just names.

[Anonymous No.17991996]

>>17990577
It was good, very short. Works fine as a standalone story but is given more poignancy when considering the context of Zweig's suicide. It's a metaphor for the game he played against the Nazis.

[Anonymous No.17992013]

William Golding - Pincher Martin
W. Somerset Maugham - The Magician
Richard Yates - A Special Providence
Mary Shelley - Frankenstein
Molly Keane - Good Behaviour
Roberto Bolaño - The Savage Detectives
Richard Brautigan - The Abortion: An Historical Romance 1966
George Saunders - Fox 8
Homer - The Iliad
Joyce Carol Oates - Rape: A Love Story
Djuna Barnes - Nightwood
Italo Calvino - Why Read The Classics?
Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Demons
Flannery O'Connor - Wise Blood
Homer - The Odyssey
Jan Morris -Hav
Kenji Miyazawa - Once and Forever: The Tales of Kenji Miyazawa
Philip K. Dick - Dr. Bloodmoney
Javier Marías - Venice, An Interior
Edith Wharton - Ethan Frome
Ivy Compton-Burnett - Manservant and Maidservant
Joe Haldeman - The Forever War
Antonin Artaud - Heliogabalus; or, the Crowned Anarchist
Louise Glück - The Wild Iris
Ursula K. Le Guin - The Lathe of Heaven
Anne Carson - Plainwater
Yūko Tsushima - Territory of Light
Kazuo Ishiguro - Klara and the Sun
David Foster Wallace - Consider the Lobster and other Essays
Barbara Comyns - Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead
Samanta Schweblin - Fever Dream
John Fante - The Brotherhood of the Grape
Barbara Comyns - The Vet's Daughter
Alice Munro - Too Much Happiness
Zachary Mason - The Lost Books of the Odyssey
>pic related was probably my favourite so far. so many books were so great though. i really love reading, bros

[Anonymous No.17992022]

>>17991357
i like you

[Anonymous No.17992039]

Kay - Tigana
Remak - Sarajevo
Clark - The Sleepwalkers
Clear - Atomic Habits
Goncharov - The Precipice
Turgenev - Smoke
Murnane - Inland
Herodotus - The Histories
Dickinson - Collected Poems
Thoreau - Walden
Murnane - A Season on Earth
Meyer - A World Undone
Murnane - A World Undone
Murnane - The Plains
Murnane - Border Districts
Graves - Collected Stories
Graves - Fairies and Fusiliers
Carey - Oscar and Lucinda
Murnane - A History of Books
Ishiguro - Klara and the Sun
Klemperer - I Will Bear Witness (1942-1945)
Gat - War in Human Civilization
Ishiguro - The Remains of the Day

Favourites have been A Season on Earth (I can't really hide how much I enjoyed Murnane's novels if this many are on the list, he's a fantastic author), A World Undone (Very well written and the way the chapters were structured worked really well, WW1 in general is a fascinating topic), Walden (obviously) and Herodotus.

[Anonymous No.17992058]

Novels and short-stories

Barbey d’Aurevilly - The She-Devils
Bataille - Blue of the noon (least favourite novel so far)
Bataille - Story of the eye / Lady Edwarda / The dead
Bloy - The Desperate Man
Bobin - Prisonnier au berceau
Bobin - The Very Lowly: A Meditation on Francis of Assisi (hidden gem)
Bulgakov - The Life of Monsieur de Molière
Daumal - Mount Analogue (best hidden gem so far)
Flaubert - Three Tales
Queneau - We always treat women too well
Rabelais - Complete works (best one so far)
Villiers de l’Isle-Adam - Histoires Insolites

Non-Fiction

Char - Recherche de la base et du sommet (favourite non-fiction so far - though it could be considered as poetry)
Bataille - The tears of Eros
Bonnefoy - L’improbable et autres essais (hidden gem)
Eliade - The Sacred and the profane (least favourite non-fiction so far)
Girard - Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World
Gracq - La littérature à l'estomac (hidden gem)
Groupe μ - Rhétorique de la poésie (hidden gem)
Polo - The travels

Poetry

Anonymous - Roman de Fauvel
Char - Le Nu perdu (favourite book of poetry so far)
Claudel - Cinq grandes odes / La cantate à trois voix
Coleridge - Selected poems (least favourite book of poetry so far)
Reverdy - Sable mouvant (hidden gem)

Currently finishing the complete works of Rutebeuf.

[Anonymous No.17992064]

>>17992039
>>17992013
Can some of you posters who have read a lot more give more detail about a couple of your favourites? What they're about and what you thought worked well, etc.

[Anonymous No.17992140]

>>17992064
Sure. What I meant by the structuring of "A World Undone" is that the book is divided into main chapters that (roughly) chronologically follow the war and then shorter "background" chapters that give 5-10 pages of information on a related topic that may not fit into a main chapter. For example early on there is a chapter about the Hapsburgs, later there is one that talks about war poetry, there's one that talks about the creation of the tank. It's a clever way to provide information that is often either cut from this kind of overview or awkwardly shoehorned in where it is easily missed or gets in the way of the narrative. As for Murnane the main thing I enjoyed was the imagination that his characters have. A Season on Earth and Tamarisk Row both feature kids with wild imaginations and the creation of the world around them feels very authentic. The kid in Tamarisk Row has a father who goes broke from unwise horse betting but the kid doesn't really understand this and just thinks that horse races are cool because his father talks about them all the time. It's difficult to explain but these books captured childhood in a way that I have never really seen done before. His other works are somewhat odd and often feel like glorified diary entries, but the same imagination that was present in the child characters is present in the author as an elderly man. Another one I thought was good was Sarajevo. It's an account of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand but because that is all the book is about it features a lot of information that is usually glossed over in wider accounts of WW1 or even accounts of the start of the war (like The Sleepwalkers). The book's sources is also great, instead of just listing a list of relevant books the author takes the time to recommend specific accounts of specific events and also explains why they are useful.

[Anonymous No.17992213]

>>17992064
i tend to make a thread when i finish a book and it usually gets zero replies unless it's /lit/core lol
anyway books that really struck me include:
>manservant and maidservant
this is such a strange book and style (which apparently is carried through all her work). it consists almost entirely of incredibly precise, wordy passive aggressive discussions in this awful dysfunctional victorian family. a sneering needling politeness that masks bitter cruelty. it feels incredibly pure and austere and like nothing else i've ever read. except asides from that, it's also hilariously funny. biting mordant wit. it's unlike anything i've read and i plan to read more of her
>hav
in this, jan morris, a famous travel writer writes about another super interesting city she spent time in. except this one is one she made up, an imaginative flight of fancy. a bit calvinoish. it's such an interesting place that i would love to visit if it existed, and written in an engaging and curious style with a real verisimilitude. the really interesting thing happens in the second half though where she revisits this wonderful little city years later and recounts how it's changed, not necessarily for the better.
>heliogabulus
a random anon recommended this one in a stupid thread and it was super neat. a somewhat crazed treatise on an absolutely crazed roman child-priest-emperor. it's visceral and poetic, and ranges from plots and intrigues, debasement, religious philosophy and at times schizo word salad. beautiful and shocking

[Anonymous No.17992249]

This is the best thread on /lit/ right now. That it has such few replies is a shameful reminder of how few of the people on this board actually read. I've already picked out a few books from lists here

[Anonymous No.17992279]

l'etranger - camus
crime and punishment - dostojevskij
archetypes and the collective unconscious - jung
some medieval french poetry
the death of ivan ilyich - tolstoj

[Anonymous No.17992287]

>>17988723
kek

[Anonymous No.17992295]

>>17992279
>some medieval french poetry
Based. Did you read it in Old French? Also what was it?

[Anonymous No.17992311]

>>17987675
Game of Thrones (George R.R Martin)
The Invincible (Stanislaw Lem)
Quo Vadis (Henryk Sienkiewicz)
War and Peace (Leo Tolstoy)
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (Raymond Carver)
For Whom The Bell Tolls (Ernest Hemingway)

[Anonymous No.17992350]

>>17991357
Jane Jacobs is referenced in a book I'm reading, Seeing like a state. Check it out.

[Anonymous No.17992364]

>>17992311
How was FWTBT? I've read Hemingway short stories, for whom the bell tolls, the sun also rises, moveable feast, and old man and the sea, but never got round to that one.

[Anonymous No.17992409]

>>17992364
Honestly, I've only read A Farewell To Arms and Old Man and The Sea from Hemingway before and For Whom The Bell Tolls is my favorite book of his. It's got really interesting stream of consciousness from the main character, interesting depiction of how much waiting and boredom there really is on war and how you're constantly bored and on the edge at the same time. I liked how Hemingway, despite being on the communist side of conflict, shows the war crimes and atrocities they've commited sometimes, the paranoid terror of commissars, all that kinds of stuff. The only complaint I can really have is that the romance is weak sometimes. Anyway, how's Moveable Feast? It gets recommended to me.

[Anonymous No.17992456]

>>17991357
>Understanding Media - Marshal Mcluhan
>Teaches you how to watch netflix

[Anonymous No.17992623]

>>17992409
Thanks, I'll be sure to check it out. A moveable feast was great. It felt super comfy, reading about how all these great writers and artists of the early 20th century were all hanging out in Paris. There's a road trip section between Hemingway and Fitzgerald that's like a buddy comedy. Hemingway's hatred of Zelda is apparent and he explains why. He also bumps into Joyce, mentions Ezra Pound, talks about how they were all trying to raise money for TS Eliot to quit his job in the bank and come join them until he wrote the waste land. He talks about some of the then-new Garnett translations of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, and his attempts to read Ulysses. Comfy stories in cafes or heading to a cabin in the alps for winter.

[Anonymous No.17992648]

Picture of Dorian Gray
As I lay Dying
Light in August
The Sound and the Fury
Waiting for Godot
The Confidence-Man
Pearl
Childe harold(holy SHIT byron is dull, there no life anywhere in this thing)
Shakespeare's Sonnets

[Anonymous No.17992651]

>>17987675

[Anonymous No.17992654]

>>17992623
>He also bumps into Joyce,
That's a understatment of their relation ship
They were besties and used to go to bars were joyce would egg people on and get hemingway to fight them

[Anonymous No.17992688]

>>17992623
That actually sounds great, I can see how much it influenced Midnight in Paris now. I'll read it for sure.

[Anonymous No.17992732]

>>17992654
Yeah, there's just not very much on Joyce in the book. He literally bumps into him in a restaurant and doesn't approach because he's eating a meal with his family iirc.

[Anonymous No.17993219]

1. A Tramp Abroad-Twain: Just pure 19th century travel lit comfiness (8/10)
2. All the Pretty Horses-McCarthy: S'alright. Nothing special, but it's made me more interested in reading McCarthy's more major novels (6/10)
3. The Story of Philosophy-Durant: Pretty good, especially for as dumb of a fuck as me. You can definitely tell Durant has his prefences, but everyone included is explained well and the writing is not dry whatsoever (7.5/10)
4. The Oxford Anthology of English Poetry: I'd already read most of the stuff in this in a different anthology, and by now I'd probably be better off just reading the complete poetry of Shakespeare, Pope or Donne or summat (5/10)
5. Przygody Dobrego Wojaka Szwejka-Hasek: Probably the funniest book I've ever read. Just a shame it has no ending or closure whatsoever since the author fuckin died (9/10)
6. The Corporation-T.J English: Interesting bit of non-fiction and that (6.5/10)
7. Murphy-Beckett: Really enjoyed the parts that I can say I fully got and understood, unfortunately I'm also a fucking idiot so there was a lot I didn't get. Really want to re-read it at some point (7/10)
8. Henry V-Shakespeare: Doesn't quite reach the heights of Henry IV, but seeing Hal's story continue on was good (7/10)
9. Titus Groan-Peake: Going in I thought this was the exact kind of thing I'd really enjoy, I could hardly finish it tho (2/10)
10. A Confederacy of Dunces-Toole: Oftentimes funny, and does very well to not become too repetitive or stale. Feel the writing could have been better though, I don't really want to be reading what kind of cloud the black fella blew with his fag smoke for the four thousandth time (7.5/10)
11. Billy Budd, Sailor and Selected Tales-Melville: Some absolute belters (Bartleby, Benito Cereno, Cock-a-doodle-doo!, My Chimney and I etc.), for some reason I really wasn't that into the titular story tho (8.5/10)
12. The Stranger-Camus: Very overrated for me, but still decent. The last chapter was really good however, by far the best part of the book (7/10)
13. Martin Eden-London: OH YA BEAUTY (10/10)
14. Warlock-Hall: I struggled a lot with this one early on, mainly due to there being dozens of different names and characters being thrown about, but after I got a hang on who everyone was, I started really enjoying it (8/10)
15. The Late Mattia Pascal-Pirandello: Still don't really know what to think of this one. Generally positive towards it tho. Deserves a re-read in the future (?/10)
16. Just One More Thing-Peter Falk: Very all over the place, I liked the energy of it though, and yeh it's a pretty interesting and fun read (6.5/10)
17. Poezje- Norwid: A lot of the poems just felt like they were too good for me to be allowed to be really enjoyed. Still plenty that I did enjoy, and Norwid's mastery is undeniable (7/10)
18. The Pickwick Papers-Dickens: Currently reading this, about a 150 pages in, has been wholly delightful so far, the Pickwickian's are genuinely experiencing peak life (10/10 so far)

[Anonymous No.17993263]

>>17993219
have you read any other dickens? i got a bunch of his novels for free a long time ago and i'd like to start one of them soon

[Anonymous No.17993307]

I just got back into reading for the first time since middle school (I'm 27)
There are books in other genres that also interest me but right now there are more sci-fi and fantasy that I'm excited about.

[Anonymous No.17993636]

>>17993263
The only other one I've read so far is David Copperfield. Took me a fairly long time to really start enjoying it, but by the end I really loved it.

[Anonymous No.17993646]

>Stack threads are meaningless. List the texts you have actually read so far this year.

This thread is also meaningless and honestly not very different at all from a stack thread. Both your thread and a stack thread eschew actual discussion of the books in favor of laundry lists of titles.

[Anonymous No.17993728]

>>17993646
Reading this thread proves you completely wrong

>>17993636
>>17993263
>>17992732
>>17992688
>>17992654
>>17992623
>>17992409
>>17992364
>>17992350
>>17992249
>>17992213
>>17992140
>>17991996
>>17991167
>>17990971
>>17990883
>>17990577
>>17990542

Just some examples of actual engagement and discussion of books, multiple posters sharing specific details of what they enjoyed and why, multiple posters expressing a desire to read books based on the detailed recommendation of those who have actually read them. You're just a miserable, spiteful, friendless faggot who will masturbate again today or tomorrow and go back to policing all the threads of 4chan's literature board that are actually discussing literature that has actually been read. If you're this unlikeable over the Internet you must be fucking insufferable irl. Just go away

[Anonymous No.17993748]

>>17993263
Not anon but I Recommend you start with Great Expectations. (If it's in the stack).
It's probably the easiest one to read.
Probably the best too. The Pickwick Papers is great as well though.
Most Dickens is great actually.

[Anonymous No.17993752]

>>17993646
>>17993728

Having posted that comment I feel sincerely regretful. It was really uncharitable of me and I'm sorry. I'm not well and having a really bad time of it today, and I lashed out at you. Please, don't take any notice and forgive me.

All else aside, I've been enjoying the thread and I've actually gained a bit of insight to books I haven't come across before, which is to me a good thing. Have a good day and weekend.

[Anonymous No.17993780]

>>17987675
Please r8 and d8

[Anonymous No.17994198]

Chronologically

The Silence
Taco Land USA
Hood Feminism
Blues For Charlie Darwin
Inherent Vice
The Fall
Mutual Aid
State and Revolution
Imperialism: The Highest Form of Capitalism
The Setting Sun
The Wasp Factory
The Savage Detectives
Jude the Obscure
The Trial
Falling Angel

[Anonymous No.17994333]

>>17993780
have you really read 12 books in 3.5 months?

[Anonymous No.17994374]

>>17993780
How was the Butterfly in the Typewriter? Been meaning to read it, but there's a review on goodreads that a close friend of Toole apparently wrote and he said that the book is mostly fiction. So that's kind of been deterring me from reading it.

[Anonymous No.17994565]

>>17992058
You didn't like Blue of Noon? I went into it expecting it to be super transgressive in a similar way to Story of the Eye, much more subdued and meandering, but I thought the ending was fucking stellar, with the thematic parallels he draws between sexual transgression and fascism. Have you read Eroticism, I highly recommend as it grounded a lot of the ideas he explores in his fiction in a more theoretical context, super compelling, changed the way I think about everything and made me understand and appreciate what he was trying to express in his novels.

[Anonymous No.17994581]

>>17987675
Consumerist faggot. No one cares. Donate your books to a library you pseud.

[Anonymous No.17994720]

>>17992140
>Sure. What I meant by the structuring of "A World Undone" is that the book is divided into main chapters that (roughly) chronologically follow the war and then shorter "background" chapters that give 5-10 pages of information on a related topic that may not fit into a main chapter. For example early on there is a chapter about the Hapsburgs, later there is one that talks about war poetry, there's one that talks about the creation of the tank. It's a clever way to provide information that is often either cut from this kind of overview or awkwardly shoehorned in where it is easily missed or gets in the way of the narrative.

Sounds cool, I will check that out. Thanks anon

[Anonymous No.17994746]

>The Glass Bead Game - Hesse
Not sure about the structure and warranting it's immense length but there's some really good stuff about the transcendance of art and knowledge and pedagogical wisdom about how we engage with them while living a meaningful life with some nice eastern philosophy woven in. (have already read Siddartha and Steppenwolf)

>My Struggle vol 1 & 2 - Knausgaard
These made for very breezy enjoyable reading though I'm not sure how much further into the series I'm going to read. I have vol 3 already so I'll give it a chance but maybe I'll put these down for a few years, it certainly seems to have more value for older readers. I especially like the passages about his father and Ove's disposition towards others and national identities but it's starting to feel a little one note.

>Ishmael - Quinn
Short dialogue with some interesting ideas about humanity's evolutionary metanarrative and it's implications for ecology and consumption.

>The Adventures of Augie March - Bellow
Took a few hundred pages to get into it with the paragraphs of banal chewing on scenery and descriptions of people but eventually I grew to enjoy Bellow's intricate sentences and the picaresque ups and downs of Augie's freewheeling from one job and people to the next.

>Hyperion - Simmons
I liked the sort of canterbury tales anthology structure and most of the stories, particularly the the priest's. Haven't decided if I'm curious enough to pick up the more traditional narrative sequel, will have to read more about it.

have a Dashiel Hammet collection of mystery short stories lined up and a secondary text on Aristotle's Poetics

>>17993219
based Martin Eden bro, what made it a 10/10 for you? I loved London's prose and descriptors and especially the chapters where Martin toils at the Laundry Wash but I have mixed feelings about the ending. It made more sense when I read about London's life and views but it left a bad taste in my mouth initially.

[Anonymous No.17994758]

>>17994565
It's not that I didn't like it, I thought it was okay but I'm having a really good reading year so far. I agree about the ending being very good, I also quite liked the first chapter, but I thought that what was in-between wasn't really interesting or beautiful. Even though Bataille knew what effect he was reaching for with his very heavy style, I found it rather mundane. It was my first read by Bataille and I maybe went in with too high expectations... Eroticism is on my to-read list and I'll get to it soon.

[Anonymous No.17994847]

>>17994581
How do you know he didn't read those books in the library? Don't tell me you just read the first 2 words of the OP and assumed it was a stack thread

[Anonymous No.17994849]

these are the ones i've enjoyed

Charles Le Gai Eaton - Islam and the Destiny of Man
Miguel Serrano - The Serpent of Paradise: The Story of an Indian Pilgrimage
Simone Weil - Letter to a Priest
Hideo Okuda - Lala Pipo (i don't read many novels, but this was great)
Miguel Serrano - C.G. Jung and Hermann Hesse: A Book of Two Friendships
CG Jung - Memories, Dreams, Reflections

[Anonymous No.17994863]

>>17994746
Can you tell a bit more about Knausgaard? I've been meaning to get round to My Struggle for a while. It's he really 'the Norwegian Proust'?

[Anonymous No.17994879]

>>17987675
Hamlet
Richard II
Henry IV part one
Henry IV part two
Henry V
A Midsummer Nights Dream
As You Like It
Twelfth Night
King Lear
The Tempest
Coriolanus
Julius Cesar
Antony and Cleopatra
The Merchant of Venice
Othello
Macbeth
Timon of Athens
Troilus and Cressida
Measure for Measure
Pericles
Cymbeline
A Winter’s Tale
Henry VI part one
Henry VI part two
Henry VI part three
Richard III

[Anonymous No.17994914]

>>17994879
>doesn't list the authors
what a pseud

[Anonymous No.17994915]

>>17990744
Thoughts on Daniel Martin? Worth reading? Its on my shelf

[Anonymous No.17994989]

>>17994914
We don’t know who wrote them

[Anonymous No.17995008]

>>17987724
They only made us read the first half of man's search for meaning in school kek

[Anonymous No.17995097]

>>17994863
Probably like most here I know of Proust but haven't read him. This is a multivolume autobiographical novel about becoming a writer, with philosophical asides on the nature of time and the metaphysics of art so in that sense it's very Proustian but I can't say more about comparisons beyond that. Much of the text is direct unadorned prose that some might find banal and excessive -though not rambling - but I enjoy the journalistic impressions because I find Knausagaard's introverted disposition very relatable and I agree that
'the form is necessarily taken by a spirit that knows no rest and narrates everything because everything that it has experienced still weighs too heavily upon it. ...he wants to retrieve his past. It is plainly not because that past was an idyll; on the contrary, he presents it as a time of fear and disappointment. Still, that fear and disappointment made him the man he is; and so he cannot truly understand himself, or redeem himself, without plunging into lost time. For yet another dimension of Knausgaard’s “struggle,” as we begin to grasp it in the passages dealing with the present or near-present, is that he may be doomed to repeat in his own life everything he resented about his father.'

[Anonymous No.17995115]

>>17994863
>>17995097
Here's two representative passages

“As your perspective of the world increases not only is the pain it inflicts on you less but also its meaning. Understanding the world requires you to take a certain distance from it. Things that are too small to see with the naked eye, such as molecules and atoms, we magnify. Things that are too large, such as cloud formations, river deltas, constellations, we reduce. At length we bring it within the scope of our senses and we stabilize it with fixer. When it has been fixed we call it knowledge. Throughout our childhood and teenage years, we strive to attain the correct distance to objects and phenomena. We read, we learn, we experience, we make adjustments. Then one day we reach the point where all the necessary distances have been set, all the necessary systems have been put in place. That is when time begins to pick up speed. It no longer meets any obstacles, everything is set, time races through our lives, the days pass by in a flash and before we know that is happening we are fort, fifty, sixty... Meaning requires content, content requires time, time requires resistance. Knowledge is distance, knowledge is stasis and the enemy of meaning. My picture of my father on that evening in 1976 is, in other words, twofold: on the one hand I see him as I saw him at that time, through the eyes of an eight-year-old: unpredictable and frightening; on the other hand, I see him as a peer through whose life time is blowing and unremittingly sweeping large chunks of meaning along with it.”
____________________________
“This is not a loss, at any rate not for me, I don't get anything out of socializing anyway. I never say what I really think, what I really mean, but always more or less agree with whomever I am talking to at the time, pretend that what they say is of interest to me, except when I am drinking, in which case more often than not I go too far the other way, and wake up to the fear of having overstepped the mark. This has become more pronounced over the years and can last now for weeks. When I drink I also have blackouts and completely lose control of my actions, which are generally desperate and stupid, but also on occasion desperate and dangerous. That is why I no longer drink. I do not want anyone to get close to me, I do not want anyone to see me, and this is the way things have developed: no one gets close and no one sees me. This is what must have engraved itself in my face, this is what must have made it so stiff and masklike and almost impossible to associate with myself whenever I happen to catch a glimpse of it in a shop window.”

[Anonymous No.17995137]

>>17987675
I've read:
>Humiliated and Insulted - Dostoyevsky
>Resurection - Tolstoy
>Hero of Our Time - Lermontov
>The Three Body Problem - Cixin Liu
>The Duel - Chekhov
>Three Sisters - Chekhov
>Fathers and Sons (re-read)- Turgenev
>Sketches from a Hunters Album - Turgenev
>The Days of the Turbin - Bulgakov
>Auto da Compadecida - Suassuna
>The Queen of Spades and other stories (those "other stories" being "Peter the Great Blackamoor, Dubrovik, and some short stories) - Pushkin
>Boris Godunov - Pushkin

Current reading:
>The Caucasian Chalk Circle (since I'm still not fully fluent in German, I couldn't read this play in just one sitting) - Brecht
>A Peoples Tragedy - Orlando Figes

I'm not Russian, btw, I've just being doing a Russia Deep-Dive since last November. I'm planning on reading Petersburg (Bely), Red Cavalry (Babel), Stories of the Don (Shokholov), a collection of Gorky's short stories, The Capitain's Daughter (Pushkin) and something else from Dostoyevsky before I'm done with them for now.

[Anonymous No.17995421]

>>17995137
I read Petersburg by Anrdei Bely earlier this year, it's between that and the Recognitions by Gaddis for the number 1 spot so far. I read it based off of Nabokov's praise for it, I highly recommend, it's a masterpiece imo. I only wish I could read it in Russian, as I feel some of it's brilliance will be lost in translation due to the style of the prose, but the translation was good.

[Anonymous No.17995559]

>>17995097
>>17995115
Thanks, anon. Really appreciate the time you took to share that. I'll definitely bump volume 1 up in the pile.

[Anonymous No.17995561]

>>17995137
COMMENTARY:
>Humiliated and Insulted - Dostoyevsky
Very fun to read, but inferior to Dostoyevsky's later works: way too much of the soap-opera-ness. It was rushed, and it shows. Worth the read, nonetheless.
>Resurection - Tolstoy
Literally the most feminist and anti-prision book I've ever read. This book, idealogically speaking, could perfectly be written today, but I doubt there is anyone alive with a 10th of Tolstoy's talent and capable of pulling this off. Amazing book and an unexpected good entry-point to Russian lit, imo.
>Hero of Our Time - Lermontov
Amazing. I don't know why I haven't read this earlier, but I'm glad I've read it.
>The Three Body Problem - Cixin Liu
A bit underwhelming. I liked it a lot up to midway point, where I started to get increasingly annoyed: I felt like he over-explainded stuff, I much prefer Lem's or the Strugatsky's approach to aliens. I'm still going to read the sequel, though.
>The Duel - Chekhov
Really good Novella, anyone interested on Russian lit should read it. It's about a sort of Quijote, but instead of chivalry novels, he read all the "superfluous man" stuff from XIX Century Russia.
>Three Sisters - Chekhov
Good, but not as good as other stuff from Chekhov I've read.
>Fathers and Sons (re-read)- Turgenev
Really good, but I feel like this is The Book everyone reads from Turgenev more for historical and intertextual reasons than because it's his masterpiece. This title should be given to:
>Sketches from a Hunters Album - Turgenev
A masterpiece! The confiest book I've ever read.
>The Days of the Turbin - Bulgakov
Not as good as the more fantastic stuff from Bulgakov I've read. I'm gonna check The White Guard out in the future, though (this play is an adaptation of that book, made by Bulgakov himself, for the ones who don't know it).
>Auto da Compadecida - Suassuna
The funniest book in this list by far. I'm probably the only Brazilian who read this before watching the movie. I don't know if there's an English translation of it, but there should. I'm definitely checking out Suassuna's other works.
>The Queen of Spades and other stories - Pushkin
Really interesting. Way more to-the-point than I expected from a early XIX Century writer. I'd have loved to read a complete version of Peter the Great Blackamoor.
>Boris Godunov - Pushkin
Very good, as a book, but how the hell could one perform this as a play in a tolerable way?! It has 30 something different settings, and since they are all relevant to the plot and never defined by the characters ("what are you doing here in the courtyard?", some shit like that), one couldn't even do some post-modern stuff and do it in a empty stage). Can only work as a Film, imo.

Book I forgot to list:
>The Triumph of Death - D'Annunzio
Has some amazing moments and many of dull ones. I Unironically would've preferred an abridged version of Death - D'Annunzio

>>17995421
It's the next one in my list!

[Anonymous No.17995576]

>>17995137
COMMENTARY:
>Humiliated and Insulted - Dostoyevsky
Very fun to read, but inferior to Dostoyevsky's later works: way too much of the soap-opera-ness. It was rushed, and it shows. Worth the read, nonetheless.
>Resurection - Tolstoy
Literally the most feminist and anti-prision book I've ever read. This book, idealogically speaking, could perfectly be written today, but I doubt there is anyone alive with a 10th of Tolstoy's talent and capable of pulling this off. Amazing book and an unexpected good entry-point to Russian lit, imo.
>Hero of Our Time - Lermontov
Amazing. I don't know why I haven't read this earlier, but I'm glad I've read it.
>The Three Body Problem - Cixin Liu
A bit underwhelming. I liked it a lot up to midway point, where I started to get increasingly annoyed: I felt like he over-explainded stuff, I much prefer Lem's or the Strugatsky's approach to aliens. I'm still going to read the sequel, though.
>The Duel - Chekhov
Really good Novella, anyone interested on Russian lit should read it. It's about a sort of Quijote, but instead of chivalry novels, he read all the "superfluous man" stuff from XIX Century Russia.
>Three Sisters - Chekhov
Good, but not as good as other stuff from Chekhov I've read.
>Fathers and Sons (re-read)- Turgenev
Really good, but I feel like this is The Book everyone reads from Turgenev more for historical and intertextual reasons than because it's his masterpiece. This title should be given to:
>Sketches from a Hunters Album - Turgenev
A masterpiece! The confiest book I've ever read.
>The Days of the Turbin - Bulgakov
Not as good as the more fantastic stuff from Bulgakov I've read. I'm gonna check The White Guard out in the future, though (this play is an adaptation of that book, made by Bulgakov himself, for the ones who don't know it).
>Auto da Compadecida - Suassuna
The funniest book in this list by far. I'm probably the only Brazilian who read this before watching the movie. I don't know if there's an English translation of it, but there should. I'm definitely checking out Suassuna's other works.
>The Queen of Spades and other stories - Pushkin
Really interesting. Way more to-the-point than I expected from a early XIX Century writer. I'd have loved to read a complete version of Peter the Great Blackamoor.
>Boris Godunov - Pushkin
Very good, as a book, but how the hell could one perform this as a play in a tolerable way?! It has 30 something different settings, and since they are all relevant to the plot and never defined by the characters ("what are you doing here in the courtyard?", some shit like that), one couldn't even do some post-modern stuff and do it in a empty stage). Can only work as a Film, imo.

Book I forgot to list:
>The Triumph of Death - D'Annunzio
Has some amazing moments, but many dull ones. I unironically would've preferred an abridged version of it.

>>17995421
It's the next one in my list!

[Anonymous No.17995647]

>>17987675
Oblomov - Ivan Goncharov
Demons - Fyodor Dostoevsky
Parmenides - Plato
Psychology and Alchemy - Carl Jung
Nos, Book of the Resurrection - Miguel Serrano
Timaeus - Plato

[Anonymous No.17995662]

>>17987675
>On Pain - Junger
>The Cossacks - Tolstoy
>Introduction to Christianity - Pope Benedict XVI
>Complete Poetry of Keats
>The Enchanted - Denfeld
>Butcher's Crossing - Williams
>Desire of the Everlasting Hills - Cahill
>The Maltese Falcon - Hammett
>The Power of Silence - Sarah:
Great book about getting closer to God through prayer in silence and the importance of silence in a Christian life. Recommend reading it with Merton's Contemplative Prayer.
>The Bone Lady - Manhein
>Galveston - Pizzolatto
>Killers of the Flower Moon - Grann
>The Lost City of Z - Grann:
Really enjoyed this one. Modern telling of Fawcett's travels in the Amazon culminating in his disappearance. Kind of a repackaging of Exploration Fawcett, but well told and framed by the author's own research and trip to the Amazon.

Currently reading:
>The Origin of Satan - Pagels

[Anonymous No.17995708]

>>17995662
Sarah's book is sitting in my amazon basket. Have you read any others, like God or Nothing or The Day is Now Far Spent?

[Anonymous No.17995787]

>>17987675
Did you like anna karenina?

[Anonymous No.17995848]

>>17995576
>XIX century
Kill your self

[Anonymous No.17995870]

>>17995708
Power of Silence is the first I've read of Sarah. I have God or Nothing on the to-read list. Power of Silence was recommended as a good starting place for his works.

[Anonymous No.17995944]

>>17994333
Nice trips but yeah i guess so. Most of them are short and sometimes I’ll pull up an audio book on youtube while I’ll do my chores or work out.
>>17994374
Really? He was probably talking about Ignatius Rising as I heard thats a more revisionist version of Toole’s life. The butterfly in the typewriter one had used interviews with some of Toole’s Friends. It even takes a few punches at Ignatius Rising.

[Anonymous No.17996126]

My Century by Aleksander Wat
Copse 125 by Ernst Junger
Always with Honor by Pyotor Wrangel
Mine Were of Trouble by Peter Kemp
Three Sips of Gin by Peter Bax
White Fang by Jack London
Of Wolves and Men by Barry Lopez
Beasts, Men and Gods by Ferdynand Antoni Ossendowski
Fragebogen (The Questionnaire) by Ernst Von Salomon
The Garden of Eden by Ernest Hemingway

Currently reading The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald

[Anonymous No.17996130]

>>17987675
does it count if it's audiobooks?

[Anonymous No.17996204]

>>17995787
Yeah, I loved it. Haven't read W&P yet, but it's got a lot to live up to. I particularly miss Levin.

[Anonymous No.17996218]

Read and in progress

Please be nice

[Anonymous No.17996275]

>Finished
Dostoevsky - The Brothers Karamazov
DFW - A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again and Other Essays
Guy Debord - The Society of the Spectacle
Mark O'Connell - To Be A Machine
Hobbes - Leviathan (only first two parts)
Descartes - Discourse on the Method
Descartes - Meditations on First Philosophy
Spinoza - Ethics
Locke - Second Treatise of Government
Gene Wolfe - The Shadow of the Torturer
Jung - The Undiscovered Self
Jung - The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
Locke - An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Cicero - Selected Works (Penguin Classics)
Hume - An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
DFW - Infinite Jest
Voltaire - Candide
Shakespeare - Hamlet
Nancy Mitford - The Sun King

>Currently Reading
Kant - Critique of Pure Reason
Napoleon: A Life
The New Testament
The Complete Poetry & Prose of William Blake

I post a lot in these threads so hello to anyone who remembers me from any previous threads.

[Anonymous No.17996284]

>>17987675
i didn't read anything in years used to be 50+ books a year

[Anonymous No.17996313]

>>17992350
I will anon. Cheers xo

[Anonymous No.17996331]

>>17996275
>Descartes - Discourse on the Method
>Descartes - Meditations on First Philosophy
I've been thinking of reading Descartes for some times now. The thing is I already have a good knowledge of his thought thanks to my studies and interests. Would you say he's worth reading directly? I know I'll read him anyway one day or another but your answer might reduce the time before I get to it.

[Anonymous No.17996479]

>>17987688
Do doujins count?

[Anonymous No.17996889]

>>17987675
>Chess story (Zweig)
I love that every chess movie is just the subplot of the autistic guy the protagonist plays against. It's like no one figured out he was meant to be the antagonist. The Queens Gambit would be much better if she was absolutely destroyed by a nobody at the end.

[Anonymous No.17996906]

>>17996889
they fucking put a metaphor for Hitler as the protagonist in every Chess movie!

[Anonymous No.17998070]

>>17996331
Both works I listed by Descartes can be read in a single sitting. Personally, I found them really easy. They aren't as methodological as, say, Spinoza or Kant. They are both close to being the titular "meditation" which makes them more reader-friendly and enjoyable. They can still both be confusing at times, mostly because it's so easy to find flaws in Descartes's final conclusions. They are worth reading because they are basically the foundation for modern philosophy and they get referenced a lot by later thinkers.

[Anonymous No.17998082]

>>17996275
Nancy Mitford is a weird outlier here, what led to you reading her?

[Anonymous No.17998127]

>>17998082
Felt like a good starting point for early modern French history. Also, a lot of good /lit/erature is set during Louis XIV's reign (see: The Three Musketeers, The Man in the Iron Mask).

[Anonymous No.17998136]

>>17987675
I only read on the toilet, and I've been reading being and nothingness

[Anonymous No.17998144]

>>17998127
It all makes sense now. Was the book any good?

[Anonymous No.17998162]

>>17998144
It goes in depth hard. I feel like the author kept using as much anecdotal detail as possible in order to increase the size of the book. For example, one of the things talked about is the cook book of Versailles's top chef. I still liked a lot of the vivid imagery of Versailles parties though.

[Anonymous No.17998598]

>>17995559
I enjoyed vol 1 a bit more than 2, the former focused more on awkward adolescence and his relationship with his father while 2 was more about being a husband and new father. Like I said I think they're probably better spread out over several years as they were written rather than binged successively

[Anonymous No.17998759]

>>17987675
I'll just list the /lit/ relevant books.
>Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis
>An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
>The Confessions of St Augustine
>The Falcon and the Snowman by Robert Lindsey
>On Writing by Stephen King
>Cultural Literacy by E D Hirsh

[Anonymous No.17999302]

>LotR
>2666
>Consider the Lobster
>Anthem
>Jugend ohne Gott
>Don Quixote part two
>Meditations
>The Idiot
>Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Currently reading The Grapes of Wrath

[Anonymous No.17999663]

>>17994746
It's hard to say really, just fuckin the prose was almost always brilliant, the energy, nearly all the characters I thought were incredibly well written, and just reading through the changes and progression that occurs in Martin and his mind during his constant toil was absolute dynamite. I don't think I've read any book where the very object of fuckin untouchable perfection that sets off the motions and motivations of the main character at the beginning of a tale, finishes it as such a pathetic nothingness of like Ruth does. And I didn't mind the ending too much, wasn't nearly the best part of the novel, but I thought it at least made a lot of sense, and I did like how Martin both started and ended his new life with Swinburne. Cyclicality and that.

[Anonymous No.18000095]

>>17999302
>>17996275

How are DFWs essays? I've heard this things about them. Someone even alleged he was a better essayist than fiction writer

[Anonymous No.18000104]

>>18000095
It was probably me. Read Big Red Son already, anon.

[Anonymous No.18000116]

>>17987675
>Discourse on Decadence - Ango Sakaguchi
>No Longer Human - Dazai Osamu
>The Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka

[Anonymous No.18000128]

Read all this so far. I got back into reading around November 2020. So far I’ve pretty much just been reading stuff that I’ve seen posted on /lit/

[Anonymous No.18000149]

>>17990883
Transparent Things is his meta-meta-meta, wink-wink, troll book. Only for hardcore Nabokovians.

[Anonymous No.18000158]

The Box Man,
HPL: Lord of a Visible World,
Gulliver's Travels

The Enchanter,
Secret Rendezvous,
The Unquiet Englishman,
The Sun Also Rises,
The Letters of TSE Vol.1,
Nippon Modern,
The Novel A Biography,
Glory,
Edgar Allan Poe: Complete Tales

The English and Their History,
Songs of a Dead Dreamer,
Grimscribe,
Sentimental Education,
Greek Plays: Aeschylus,
The Art of Fiction,
The Eye,
The Great Expectations,
Killers, Clients and Kindred Spirits, Consciousness and the Novel,
Mary

Japanese Film Art and Industry,
Imperial Twilight,
Georg Trakl’s Poetry A Study,
Kafka: Early Years,
Japanese Cinema Film Style,
Catcher in the Rye,
Flaubert Biography,
Typhoon and Other Stories

[Anonymous No.18000164]

>Dune (audiobook)...
I hate myself

[Anonymous No.18000171]

>>18000095
Pretty good, though some are already quite outdated.

[Anonymous No.18000425]

>>17994915
I had a boner for Fowles and Daniel Martin killed it. 700 pages, full of text, of sheer dullness. It's not poorly written at all, and it has some interesting flashbacks, but overall it was very boring and too long.

[Anonymous No.18001576]

>>18000158
What did you think of the Nabokov books you read? Not sure weather I want to read the Enchanter or not as he never chose to publish it.

[Anonymous No.18001614]

Rate me

[Anonymous No.18001660]

>>17987675

Emma by Jane Austen (5/5)
Confessions by Augustine (5/5)
Great Expectations by Dickens (5/5)
Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky (5/5)
The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James (4/5)
Swann's Way by Proust (4.5/5)
Within a Budding Grove by Proust (5/5)
Hamlet by Shakespeare (5/5)
On the Incarnation by Athanasius (5/5)
The Orthodox Church by Ware (3 / 5)
The Orthodox Way by Ware (4.5/5)
Beginning to Pray by Bloom (3/5)
Nihilism by Rose (3.5/5)
Orthodoxy and the Kingdom of Satan by Bailey (2/5)
Eugene Onegin by Pushkin (4/5)

[Anonymous No.18002084]

>>17996889
>>>Chess story (Zweig)
yeah the book is cringe, but then NPCs dont have soul so they cant be creative

[Anonymous No.18002116]

>>18001660
i already asked this in this thread and got good answers (>>17993263)
but what are your opinions on any other dickens you've read?

[Anonymous No.18002140]

>>18001614
All over the place, but pretty interesting.

[Anonymous No.18002151]

>>17988428
If you liked dante and milton im sure you'd love william blake

[Anonymous No.18002152]

>>17987675
some books i read are not available in english or i simply dont know the english title, so i'll just list a translation of the title instead
>two years of night - damir ovcina
7/10 great atmosphere
>murder in highgate - anthony horowitz
3/10 was a gift, wouldnt buy
>wild sheep chase - haruki murakami
7/10 weird but entertaining, first murakami i read
>state of emergency - giorgio agamben
6/10 interesting insights but a little academic
>the stars are legion - hurley
6/10 lesbian spacegore, nice idea bad execution
>marx once again - diego fusaro
6/10 not bad just a little underwhelming
>seventy passed - ernst jünger
7/10 comfy
>the woman in the dunes - kobo abe
8/10 frustrating at first, but gets better and better
>a methodology of possession - ellis
1/10 only good thing was i got a refund
>armin mohler, a political biography - weißmann
6/10 dry but unique
>american terrorist - lou michel
8/10 very interesting and well researched
>a traditionalist confronts fascism - evola
5/10 quality of the essays varies
>sankya - zakhar prilepin
7/10 brutal but interesting
>kokoro - natsume soseki
9/10 great work
>yukio mishima, life and death - henry stokes
8/10 very good
>selected tales - f g jünger
7/10, dalmatian nights is 10/10 comfy
>leviathan and its enemies - samuel francis
8/10 great, wouldve been a 9 but -1 because it repeats itself a lot
>america - baudrillard
6/10 just weird
>sexual utopia in power - f roger devlin
6/10 essays vary in quality
>marx from the right - several authors
8/10 all contributions interesting in their own right
>anti-tech revolution - ted kaczynski
4/10 drivel
>europe central - vollmann
6/10 very well written, way too long
>accidental guerilla - kilcullen
6/10 his later works are a lot better
>post capitalist desire - fisher
8/10 interesting thesises
would recommend: two years, sheep chase, seventy passed, woman in the dunes, american terrorist, kokoro, mishima bio, dalmatian nights, leviathan, marx from the right, post capitalist desire

[Anonymous No.18002424]

Real World -- Natsuo Kirino (3.5/5)
> Great depiction of the teenage mind; angst and developing identity run alongside a young person's lack of perspective (and therefore long-term consequences) and feelings of isolation that border on narcissism...(the male protagonist is rather flat)
Snow Country -- Yasuri Kawabata (4.25/5)
>Beautiful setting and tone, great use of characters' conflicting worldviews to underscore the realities of their social status (and therefore theme)
Surfacing -- Margaret Atwood (3.25/5)
>Clarity of writing and the buildup of the protagonist is great...but cliched feminism and male characters whose misogyny is cartoonish
A Storm of Swords -- George R R Martin (3/5)
>Plot and worldbuilding overcome what could be a boring writing style (might not be in a good place to give it a fair score as I've seen the show)
To The Light House -- Virginia Woolf (4.5/5)
>Feminine perspective without resorting to cliche; gender roles alongside balanced introspection from the characters make this refreshing after reading something as heavy-handed as Atwood
The Pegnitz Junction -- Mavis Gallant (4.75/5)
>Amazing technical writing used to passively establish characters and their traits
The Leaf Storm -- Gabriel Garcia Marquez (3.5/5)
>Felt like it dragged a lot...it established a microcosm of characters in a visceral setting
Revenge -- Yoko Ogawa (3.75/5)
>Clear prose and precision in tone; haunting imagery
Nineteen Seventy-Four -- David Peace (3.25/5)
>Great authorial voice (impossible read it without your inner monologue adopting an English accent)...some aspects of it were repetitive
Ararat -- Christopher Golden (0.5/5)
>Boring build-up, awful characters, a premise that isn't explored, cliched plotting...by far the worst book I've read this year (Stoker Award has low standards)
Runaway Horses -- Yukio Mishima (??/5)
>Not far enough in to have an opinion yet
Thus Spoke Zarathustra -- Fredrich Neitschze (??/5)
>1/3 of the way in. Haven't read him in years but this seems a lot more accessible than what I remember

[Anonymous No.18002478]

>>18002424
Whoops, I butchered the spelling of Nietzsche

[Anonymous No.18002507]

>>18001614
whoa lots of crossover with me: >>17996275

[Anonymous No.18002789]

>>18002116
Not him but Hard Times is sorely underrated and a personal favourite. I read it while working in a bank, which I felt enhanced the narrative somewhat, but still.

[Anonymous No.18002819]

I only read what she tells me to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tr8ShDbnpaA

[Anonymous No.18002884]

>>18002819
"Oh-kay? You know what I'm sayne? [Doublechin chuckle]"

[Anonymous No.18003067]

>>18001576
His early russian books are as good, if less ambitious - at least those I have listed there, than his English ones. Enchanter is small perfection, much more than a warm up for Lolita. Origins of Laura is the one you should skip.

[Anonymous No.18003109]

>>18002819
>>18002884
"White. Cis. Men. Can fuck off." *hand gestures intensify*

[Anonymous No.18003149]

>SSS Class Suicide Hunter
>Second Life Ranker
>Siege of Rage and Ruin
>Fate of Africa
>Johannes Cabal Series
>Ascendance of a Bookworm
>The Devil and the Dark Water
I'm actually a little concerned by how much time I've put into shitty asian web novels ever since I realized I can just read them on my phone at work.

[Anonymous No.18003240]

>>17987724
Filling your head with BS propaganda.

[Anonymous No.18003253]

>>18002819
>>18002884
>>18003109

Ideology in place of meaningful criticism; superficial reading masquerading as thoughtfulness. Blind to her own tangible privilege while lamenting a contrived personal empathy towards those she posits with midwit identitatian labels. Too bad her eating habits aren't as restricted as her thought patterns.

[Anonymous No.18003300]

>>17987724
What made you take the Beevpill?

[Anonymous No.18003680]

>>18002140
Reading diverse is important innit

[Anonymous No.18003941]

So far


The first 49 stories- Hemingway
Infinite Jest (reading) -DFW
Lolita - Nabokov
Spring snow - Mishima
The rat trilogy - Murakami
After the quake - Murakami
Inherent vice - Pynchon
Botchan - Soseki
Dubliners - Joyce
Atonement - McEwan
Stoner - Williams
The informers - Ellis
The complete poems of Yeats
The collected poems of Elliot
The story of art (reading) - Gombrich
The Russian revolution (reading) - Trotsky
Japan and the culture of four seasons - Shirane

[Anonymous No.18004740]

>>18003941
If you liked Atonement I recommend Saturday. I think it's the best thing McEwan's done

[Anonymous No.18005220]

Sabbath's Theater
American Pastoral
The Counterlife
The Sot-weed Factor
The Floating Opera
Giles Goat-boy
Lost in the Funhouse
The Executioners Song
The Lost Scrapbook
Players
End Zone
Tenth of December
Waiting For the Barbarians
Disgrace
The Ice-shirt
Rainbow Stories
Europe Central

Starting The Fairie Queene or Tristram Shandy tomorrow.

[Anonymous No.18006368]

>>17987675
Stop making these threads. They do nothing but show how idiotic /lit/ is.

[Anonymous No.18006420]

>>17990542
I think non-fiction has its worth because it can express fantasitical ideas while grounded in human psychology. It might be a form of escapism but some non-fiction books are so depressing to me because ive lived a hard life of mk ultra and being gangstalked that I need breaks from dealing with harsh shit.

[Anonymous No.18006500]

In Search of Lost Time
A Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man
Reading Proust
By Night In Chile
Billiards at Half-past Nine
The Clown
Cancer Ward
In the First Circle

Currently, I'm reading Ulysses, about 40% in so far. Next up afterwards, I will read Doctor Zhivago.

[Anonymous No.18007458]

>>18006368
>>18006368
This is one of the best, on-topic threads up right now, are you insane? Would you prefer it was a thread shilling the awful writing of F Gardner, or another religion thread, or a thread on obscure philosophy made by boys in their late teens/early twenties desperate to seem intelligent after skimming Wikipedia and spark notes?

[Anonymous No.18007900]

>>18006500
How did you find by night in Chile? I thought it was terrific. It's rare to see someone in here having read one of Bolano's shorter works. I felt weirdly nostalgic and wistful at the funeral near the end - he did a great job of showing these literati all aging. Death comes for all.

Also - how was reading Proust? Did you find it helped you get more out of isolt?

[Anonymous No.18008365]

>>18007458
I agree, this is a great thread.

My list:
Wishful Drinking - Carrie Fisher
> Short and nice read, I enjoyed her witty language. But damn, her life was fucked up.
Modern Romance - Aziz Ansari & Eric Klinenberg
> A book about dating in the modern world and how apps like Tinder have completely changed the game and mindset of single people today. Also an overview of how the view of marriage has changed in America the last decades and how dating varies based on country (Japan, Argentina, France et cetera). If you liked the episode about dating in Master of None you will enjoy this book.
A Promised Land - Barack Obama
> At times captivating, at other times a bit long-winded. I enjoyed the part where he reflected over what a pseud he was in College and how he would read Marx, Marcuse, Foucault et cetera to pick up art hoes(without success).
Ubik - Philip K. Dick
> A bit rough around the edges perhaps, but I found myself really liking this book.
The Prince - Niccolo Machiavelli
> Felt nice to finally read this one, seeing how it is so often mentioned and referred to today.
A Giacometti Portrait - James Lord
> If you have even the slightest interest in Giacometti, you should read this. A very fascinating artist.
How to Avoid a Climate Disaster - Bill Gates
> Learned a fair bit from this one, like the mental models he has developed to help process new information about climate change for example. However, if you only wish to read one book about climate change I would probably recommend you to read something written by a real expert.
On Libert - John Stuart Mill
> I was very impressed by Mill.
No Country for Old Men - Cormac McCarthy
> Liked it. After I have read Moby Dick I'm looking forward to reading Blood Meridian.
Klara and the Sun - Kazuo Ishiguro
> I thought that Klara worked as a fantastic lens through which we could observe the relationship between the Josie and her mother. To me, this was an interesting portrayal on the struggles as a parent of having a child with a potentially deadly sickness and how hard it is to cope with the loss of your own child.
Rendezvous with Rama - Arthur C. Clarke
> Really made me think about how the world would actually react if an alien vessel entered our solar system. I liked Clarke's take on it. Apparently the sequels are shit though.
Confessions of a Mask - Yukio Mishima
> First thing I read from Mishima, really liked it. In many ways he is radically different from myself, but I still found his writing to resonate with me. Will read more from Mishima for sure.
The Book of Eels - Patrik Svensson
> The history and nature of eels woven together with the author's experience of bonding with his father through fishing. A cozy and very interesting read, I learned a lot. I was surprised that some very notable figures apparently had studied the eel quite closely.
Doctor Glas - Hjalmar Söderberg
> Great book. If you liked Crime & Punishment you should read this.
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
> Nice writing.

[Anonymous No.18009090]

bump

[Anonymous No.18009118]

>>18008365
You seem to have pretty bad taste.

[Anonymous No.18009150]

>>18008365
Nice mix, anon, I like it.

[Anonymous No.18009158]

>>17996275
what language did you read candide in? will i lose much reading a translation into english?

[Anonymous No.18009288]

>>18009158
>>18009158
Not him but you won't. Poetry suffers translation, fiction is hit or miss but doesn't lose nearly as much. Philosophical fiction, philosophy, and non-fiction doesn't lose anything at all. Ultimately translation will only ever affect prose aesthetics

[Anonymous No.18009357]

>>17996218
I wasn't a fan of Island when I read it. Hopefully you end up liking it.

[Anonymous No.18009766]

>>17990542

Plato's Republic
Obvious cave allegory and how those who discover the truth will be seen as crazy by everyone else but also his hierarchy of gold silver and bronze men with philosopher kings on the top, guardians in the middle and workers as bronze. Also children raised by the community.

Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics
Doing the right thing must be right throughout the entire course, i.e must be the right thing for the right reason at the right time in the right manner, etc. Furthermore virtues are the relative midpoint between two moral failings (so bravery between courage and recklessness)

Aristotles Metaphysica
An object is an object when matter (the material elements) is composed to take some form. Divinity is that which is the incipient of motion and everything.

Aristotle On the Soul
Imma be real, I didnt retain much from this

Aristotle Politics
Ideal Government should be a mix between oligarchy and democracy such that the few wealthy don't hold too much power over the mass of the poor and vice versa, ideally it is balance with the middle class in the lead since they are most apt to reason.

Marcus Aurelius Meditations
I am part of a bigger plan and all which falls on my lap is my duty to deal with. I should not be upset with death for it is inevitable and comes to all. Furthermore I should treat all with compassion and if they transgress upon me they do it out of error in thinking, thus I ought to try to correct their misconception instead of getting upset.

Epicurus Letter to Herodotus
Everything is material, and all that we see is as it is objectively, any error in perception is merely lack of information.

Epicurus Letter to Menoeceus
We ought to pursue what is pleasurable, but not in a hedonistic way.

[Anonymous No.18010726]

>>18009766
Really nothing from On the Soul? I'm about to start Aristotle and your other summaries are good, but given his teleology and later synthesis with Christian thought I'm surprised it didn't make an impression.

[Anonymous No.18011080]

The odyssey
Moby dick
Notes from the underground
Death of Ivan illych
The metamorphosis
No country for old men
Blood meridian
Mythology
A moveable feast

[Anonymous No.18011275]

1. Ice (Anna Kavan)- Comfy novel. Reminds me of Kafka and Ballard at times.

2. Swann's Way (Proust)- Felt beautiful at times, felt boring at others.

3. The Thief's Journal (Genet)- Waste of time. Seems like a nice sentence here and there but dropped after halfway.

4. Notes From Underground (Dostoyevsky)- Brilliant, loved it, and very humorous at times too.

5. The Color Purple (Walker)- Read for school, was decent.

6. I Am Dynamite! A Life of Nietzsche (Prideaux)- Very fascinating and a brilliant biography.

7. A Coney Island of the Mind: Poems (Ferlinghetti)- Some good stuff scattered through, sad to see he died a few days after I read this.

8. On the Genealogy of Morals (Nietzsche)- First two essays were good, the last one bored me.

9. The Sorrows of Young Werther (Goethe)- Masterpiece and excited to read more by Goethe.

10. America (Baudrillard)- Interesting stuff and nice prose.

11. Death of a Salesman (Miller)- Read for school, pretty good stuff.

12. And The Mountains Echoed (Hosseini)- I always gotta read this fucker for school but this novel was his best work imo.

13. Stoner (Williams)- Lit convinced me and I ended up loving it.

14. The Elementary Particles (Houellebecq)- Very interesting and humourous. Well executed ideas.

15. Berlin Alexanderplatz (Doblin)-Currently reading Good stuff so far, a bit odd but love the atmosphere.

[Anonymous No.18011514]

>>18011275
Some great picks there. Glad you enjoyed Stoner. Move onto Faust next for Goethe!

[Anonymous No.18012699]

>>18007900
I generally liked By Night In Chile, but I didn't think it was one of Bolano's stronger works. I liked the narrative style and the absurdism, but generally couldn't connect with it as much as, say, The Skating Rink.

Reading Proust was good, although I felt that Lagercrantz's analysis was off and lacking at times (he didn't touch Proust's style, for one, and he felt a bit too moralizing at some points). I absolutely adored reading In Search of Lost Time, and wished to quench my thirst for more by reading Reading Proust. Now, I've actually started listening to it on audiobook whenever I go to work, the gym, etc. (so about one hour daily). The novel is so rich that re-reading (or listening, this time) doesn't feel a chore at all.

[Anonymous No.18013484]

>>18011275

Glad you're enjoying Berlin Alexanderplatz man, I think it's one of the most underrated books here on /lit/, mostly due to it not being so popular in the anglosphere I guess