Stack Thread: Actually Talk About the Books Edition

[Anonymous No.20067465]

>The Man Who Would Be King
This paperback coincided with the 1975 film and features 8 other stories. Having never read it, I was confused when TMWBK only took up 36 pages out of over 200. As far as I can tell it's not abridged, though. I love the way these old paperbacks smell. Got it because I love racist authors.

>The Last Valley
Another in the "Now a Major motion picture!" series. Got it because I want to break into the history of the Thirty Years War, and I've found historical fiction to be a great way to build interest.

>The Last of the Plainsmen
Zane Grey, formerly the foremost novelist of frontier fiction, is relegated to the vintage section of my local bookstore. Reviews on shitreads complain about the insensitive sensibilities of the characters and, by extension, the author. Really, that's all the encouragement I needed to pick up one of his books. The copy I have is from 1936.

>The Big Sky
I guess this a deep dive into the life of the old west bearded woodsman, and is renowned for fleshing that world out in a way no other books had. I have a romantic feeling towards loneliness and freedom out in the wilderness, so I knew this would be worth a try.

>I, Claudius
Anons here recommended this to me when I requested historical fiction. I've long had difficulty caring about Roman history, and my hope is that this will spark a fire to learn more. I understand it's a classic.

>The Last of the Mohicans
Many reasons for wanting to read this. The movie was pretty good (absolutely gorgeous to look at), and I value fiction from an era as historically valuable (I know it's set decades before the book was written, but times weren't THAT different), because details are difficult to get wrong when your daily life is the frame of reference you have to work with. Chief among my reasons for wanting to read this, though, is that Mark Twain hated this book and wrote an essay that left fans butthurt ever since.

>The Darkness and the Dawn
This one is in service to my desire to learn the history of Attila the Hun. Looks to be a fantastic adventure, and something that will make me want to dig deeper. Written in 1959.

>The Three Musketeers
Just a nice Readers Digest copy. of a classic. Kind of thing I imagine reading with my son one day.

[Anonymous No.20068625]

>>20067465
>Actually Talk About the Books Edition
People usually don't talk about the books in the initial post because they haven't read it yet! They're showing off what they bought.

[Anonymous No.20069243]

>>20068625
For me this can be true, but oftentimes I intend to reread portions.

I powered through a few novels after the kids went to bed last week, read three books between 9pm and 1:00am, and thought about how many people I know who don't finish books.

Anyway, Laclos was a french noble, wrote epistolary novel, became scandalous, joined french revolution and developed modern artillery.

Montesquieu's spirit of the laws offered a world historical comparative analysis of the law as was known in 18th century france. His insights were colored by ideas about climates, languages, and geographic specificitrs.

Balzac's human comedy is one of the greatest literary achievements in the modern world. He pierced every slice of society's gateaux with his sociological scalpel and pealed back the delicious layers of petty bourgeois, the bureaucracy, the aspiring and fallen nobility, politicians, pimps, workers, whores, and even artists.

[THA BEAN BOY No.20069456]

>>20069243
Sucks himself off on 4chan bragging about the number of books he speed-reads at night, knowing the point of reading is achieving high-scores in raw quantity and speed--

Still confuses homophones like "peeling" and "pealing", because he doesn't actually fully digest what he reads, he just catches the gist. He must run his eyes over the lines of text as fast as he possibly can if he wants to own the other people on 4chan, and prove himself the superior human.

[Anonymous No.20069501]

>>20069456
By God. What an insufferable faggot.

[Anonymous No.20069520]

>>20067465
Mark Twain was right. You might've been able to call Cooper the great American author way back when because the US was culturally dry of good literature, but American Literature has progressed so far since the Civil War and modernism that Cooper isn't even worth a footnote.

[Anonymous No.20070511]

>>20068625
>People usually don't talk about the books in the initial post because they haven't read it yet!
I'm happy to be different from other "people".

[Anonymous No.20070553]

>>20069520
How do you explain its persistence?

[Anonymous No.20070566]

>>20070553
People like reading it and don't care about faggy concepts like The Development of American Literature

[Anonymous No.20070602]

>>20070566
Cooper fans sound like chads.

[Anonymous No.20070604]

>>20070553
What persistence? The Leatherstocking Tales are not at all popular with modern audiences. I'm willing to bet that 90% of people don't even realize The Last of the Mohicans is the second book in a series. The only persistence it has in the 20th and 21st centuries is the movie which OP mentioned. If that movie hadn't been made and managed to be a half-decent film, The Last of the Mohicans would be totally irrelevant. It's not even a common book in New York schools.

[Anonymous No.20070630]

>>20069520
Confirmed for only having read the Wikipedia page of both Cooper and Twain, utterly brainletted.
>>20070602
We are. Read The Spy.

[Anonymous No.20070651]

>>20070604
But they made a movie. Lots of movies, and in many different countries. Why do so many think it's worth adapting? Is it all a fake and gay meme? If so, why?

[Anonymous No.20070661]

I don't like hardcovers

[Anonymous No.20070700]

>>20070661
Elaborate.

[Anonymous No.20070706]

I can't bring myself to read any if these right now. I tried reading parmenidies but I can't focus. I'm not depressed or introspective enough currently to fully appreciate and enjoy steppenwolf so I put it down. I finished the shadow of the torturer but don't want to keep going, for now.
Feels like I am way to stressed to read. I need a drink or something. Probably because I graduate in May and haven't started applying for jobs yet and I still have a bunch of school shit to do, but I just don't. The stress is manifesting physically. Drinking won't really help.

[Anonymous No.20070708]

>>20070700
They're too heavy and I prefer the flat spines of paperbacks on my shelf.

[Anonymous No.20070723]

>>20067465
We need more multilingual stacks/shelves

[Anonymous No.20070729]

>>20070706
The solution to your problem is to do the thing you know you need to do. Thinking about applying yourself instead of applying yourself is the source of depression. Action is the cure. Do something, and build momentum.

>>20070708
Ah, girly wrists. Nothing to help it. You'll just have to read YA paperbacks till you die of aids.

[Anonymous No.20070753]

>>20070729
yes I know that doing work relieves the pressure, but I still don't. I have felt the wave of relief after starting work and realizing I was needlessly torturing myself. The problem is I am not in control, at least not my conscious self. There is another part and I don't fully understand the goal of its machinations.

[Anonymous No.20070769]

>>20070706
Took me a little over a year to find a job with undergrad Phys. Although I graduated in 2020 which was basically the worst possible time

[Anonymous No.20070773]

>>20070753
Take to work like you'd take a drink. Work is medicine. Just take it.

[Anonymous No.20070777]

>The Master and Margarita
Just over ⅓ of the way through. I thought the first part was kind of boring and long. I loved the second Jerusalem chapter, absolutel kino, and I like the Magic Exposé chapter. Otherwise it was boring as hell. The second part is so far beautiful, funny and page-turning, and fully restored my faith in the novel.

>Meditations
Boring and pretty useless. The thoughts thought by him are things I would've thought of myself, and I don't know why this is so highly regarded. The fact that these are the personal thoughts of an ancient emperor is pretty cool, though.

>Don Quixote
Just started reading it.

>Spalovač mrtvol (The Cremator)
I've lived in the Czech Republic for almost 16 years now, and, although I speak the language fluently, I am not at the native level and still perform pretty mediocre-ly (as in not badly, but not absolutely excellently) when it comes to grammar, syntax and especially declension. This is my first Czech author anyway. Čtu ji celkem pomalu, jelikož mně trvá dlouho až dočtu i jednu kapitolu. Existují spoustu slov, která ani neznám, takže jako Infinite Jest pro nějakého ESLa, vyhledávám slovo asi každé 3 nebo 4 věty.

>The Qur'an
Experimenting with religion and don't know whether to choose between Quranism and Unitarianism. So now I'm reading the Qur'an, and then I'll read the bible.

[Anonymous No.20070796]

>>20070777
>Boring and pretty useless. The thoughts thought by him are things I would've thought of myself, and I don't know why this is so highly regarded. The fact that these are the personal thoughts of an ancient emperor is pretty cool, though.
Exactly my take. If you had nothing else it would be a place to kick off your own thinking, but it's not very profound next to all the other philosophy available.

[Anonymous No.20070820]

>>20067465
Impressive, very nice.

I, Claudius is great. If you like it there is a sequel, Claudius the God. Also check out the BBC drama from the 70s, very comfy.

[Anonymous No.20070824]

>>20070769
fuck man how did you manage expenses during that year?

[Anonymous No.20070852]

These are my most recent purchases. The bottom one is Celtic Myths and Tales.

[Anonymous No.20070866]

>>20070852
You and I are on a similar track. I almost picked up Les Miserables yesterday, but I looked inside and decided "maybe at the end of my life".

I'm also getting into old English, and I have a Northern European folklore collection.

[Anonymous No.20070998]

[Anonymous No.20071037]

>>20070753
thats cope bro. you are in control. you believing you are not in control is just a rationalization to not work. stop psyoping yourself

[Anonymous No.20071200]

I haven't read much of these yet. I was in the mood for some schlocky sci-fi and horror. The Spirit Casebook is kind of cool. Illustrated stories by Will Eisner.
I'm working my way through Magic by Albert Hopkins right now. It's an overview on magic tricks (stage magic, not the occult) dating back to the Greeks. It covers topics from fire eating to ventriloquism to the stage itself. Digging it so far.

>>20069243
What should I read first from Balzac? My local bookshop has a decent-sized collection of his works.

[Anonymous No.20071364]

I don't read clearly but I picked up some books to get started. I never really take time to relax.

[Anonymous No.20071541]

>>20071037
perhaps. whether or not I am in control is one of the pervading thoughts I wrestle with. Why do I not want to work? That's harder to pin down.

[Anonymous No.20071566]

Current reading list stack

[Anonymous No.20071576]

>>20071200
One of the best stacks I've ever seen on /lit/, A Princess of Mars is amazing. It has everything, friendship, love, treason, red niggas, green niggas, white niggas, I love that book.

[Anonymous No.20072188]

>>20070630
I like Cooper's books. I grew up in the Leatherstocking region. But I also recognize that his influence on American literature is minimal.

[Anonymous No.20072208]

> The Man In The High Castle

I don't usually like fiction, but this is pretty solid alt-history so far.

> The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

I've read this Shirer volume a couple of times, and it's always good.

> The Life and Writings of Jefferson

What can I say, Jefferson is a solid and entertaining writer to read.

> Hitler's War

Irving is controversial and seems like kind of a doofus, but I'm interested in how his history measures up.

[Anonymous No.20072395]

>>20071200
My first novel was Pere Goriot and Les Chouans for a French course in undergrad, then later Sarassine and about half the others. PG hit home for me because it seemed to describe my siblings well.

>>20069456 Here's a (you) fella.
good catch, phone-posting. transitioning between multiple languages always LEEDS to these sorts of errors. I struggle to properly spell english since I learned German. Editing the works of others has shown me just how much easier it is to destroy someone else's writing than it is to do my own.

[Anonymous No.20072403]

>>20069243
>>20069456
I didn't read all three books in one night, I meant over the course of the week. It took 2 days for each one because they were short, large text, and page turners. The Ripley series from Highsmith in the Everyman collection. I had read TMR before grad school, always loved the French, German, British and American versions. Found the bio of highsmith, listened to the BBC in our time podcase while working out, and decided to get them.

Writing academic nonsense, and reeding dense/ foreign texts, allows me to read novels at lightening speed. The french I read at about 80% and German at 50%.

[Anonymous No.20072409]

>>20070706
Whatdya get at home depot? I just picked up some demo hammer bits on sale 80 off.

[Anonymous No.20072413]

>>20071200
If you like this sort of stuff, "Not at Night", "Religion and the Decline of Magic" and The history of Magic from Lynn Thorndike might be your thing.

[Anonymous No.20072462]

>>20071200
That's some good shit, there.

[Anonymous No.20072464]

>>20072208
>how his history measures up.
Better than Shirer.

[Anonymous No.20072574]

>>20072464
Maybe. I think Shirer did quite well, especially writing so soon after the war without the breadth of documentation that Irving has.

[Anonymous No.20072686]

>>20072208
>>20072574
>>20072464
As a pro, here's the deal: shirer is famous for being there day 1, but he isn't a trained historian, but a journalist , so he skews away from analysis. DI was considered great in his early days but started going off the rails. He's a smart guy, intelligent, but contrarian to his own detriment. I personally know Richard Evans, read his defense of history. Irving had good books that are now sidelined

[Anonymous No.20072694]

>>20072686
>I personally know Richard Evans
Piss in his coffee for me. There's genuine critiques to make of Irving, but Evans can't make any of them because he's a faggot system shill.

[Anonymous No.20072749]

>>20072686
>He's a smart guy, intelligent, but contrarian to his own detriment.

This seems true. He doesn't fit with the 70 IQ wignat fanclub that's gravitated to him, for sure. It seems like the more he got beaten down by the establishment the more he became purposefully contrarian. Despite that he seems very respectable and serious as a historian.

[Anonymous No.20074324]

>>20072694
He's very generous to his students and colleagues, was kind to me, and may be reacting to accusations of antisemitism at the start of his career. Jews called him antisemitic because he demonstrates the connection between outbreaks of disease in Hamburg with the arrival of boats of refugees from Russia after Jewish expulsions. He denounced the accusations, but this might be why he took down Irving

Irving shouldn't have done what he did, once you mess with the Jews that make up half the profession there's not much you can do.

[Anonymous No.20074359]

>>20074324
>Irving shouldn't have done what he did
Pff, queer. People like you never stand up for anything, and don't deserve respect.

[Anonymous No.20074518]

>>20074359
Irving was retarded enough to ruin his reputation with that libel lawsuit. If he hadn't done that he'd just be seen as a historian with a heterodox approach.

[Anonymous No.20074535]

>>20074518
>ruin his reputation
With who, retards? He's more credible than ever for having stood alone against the entire kike community. A coward like you predictably can't understand that.

[Anonymous No.20074566]

>>20074535
>With who, retards?

Hey retard, Irving's legacy will go to shit if it's only kept alive by a few 40 IQ wignats. Do you think he wants that? Or would he rather be taken seriously in the mainstream like he was when he wrote Dresden?

[Anonymous No.20074647]

>>20074566
>Or would he rather be taken seriously in the mainstream
Judging by the tone of his blog, no. He is a wignat.
(captcha ended with HH)

[Anonymous No.20074702]

>>20070777
>The Qur'an
I urge you, when reading it, to give more of your focus to the stories of the prophets therein. A lot of people find the Qur'an repetitive because the prophets are not as dynamic character-wise as they are in the Bible. In the Bible, no prophet is similar to another; In the Qur'an, they largely say the same things and give the same commands. There are chapters in the book where you feel like the names of the prophets and their peoples (such as lot and sodom, moses and the egyptians, shuayb and ashab al-aykah) can be interchanged without difficulty, since they say the same things more often than not verbatim. A lot of people read this and consider it a literary defect without considering the authorial intention behind it. The Qur'an is trying to convince its listeners that the one who delivered it is part of a longstanding prophetic tradition of divine messenger-ship, and that what happened before (regarding the prophets and their people) is entirely relevant to the mission of the one who was reciting it, that being the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ.

[Anonymous No.20074883]

>>20074647
>Hurr durr Irving actually WANTS to be shunned by virtually every member of his profession and banned from visiting all of Western Europe

You genuinely are retarded.

[Anonymous No.20075146]

[Anonymous No.20075171]

>consooomer thread
>Why is no1 talking about what they consoomed??
Because most of you people enjoy looking at the spines of your books on the shelves more than actually reading. *Especially* the people eager to show off their new purchases

[Anonymous No.20075735]

>>20070769
I for one am looking forward to my government gibs after graduation.

[Anonymous No.20076014]

>>20070706
my mental health is fucked up and i have no advice on that.

Plato I would say don't worry if Parmenides is too hard, it's supposed to be one of his hardest dialogues and theres a shitload even from antiquity written on how to interpret that specifically. If you want you can read some of the easier and fun ones like Cratylus, Symposium, Meno

Gene Wolfe I stopped after Shadow for a bit too but then I read the next two books last weekend and I would say its absolutely worth continuing, the 2nd and 3rd books are I would say significantly better than the first one. haven't started on citadel yet.

[Anonymous No.20076030]

>>20070852
any thoughts on good old english textbooks? or anything to say just about the one pictured?

[Anonymous No.20076075]

The one in the picture is more of a reader because the grammar section is really short and doesn't play around. I already know Greek which is similar to Old English and I'm still having a tough time with it so I can't recommend it for most solo learners.

[Anonymous No.20076086]

>>20076075
>>20076030

[Anonymous No.20076818]

>>20070777
Fag

[Anonymous No.20077638]

>>20072413
Thanks for the recommendations; I'll check them out. The History of Magic looks right up my alley.

[Anonymous No.20077963]

I'm just about to finish my greeks and then tackle these bad boys.

[Anonymous No.20079341]

Bump

[Anonymous No.20079543]

>>20075146
Your picture is flipped upside down, Anon.

[Anonymous No.20080388]

>>20076818
I will molest you