2023 week 1

[Anonymous No.21465515]

What is /lit/ reading to start off the year? I'm reading pic related and it's absolute dogshit

[Anonymous No.21465574]

>>21465515
I'm gunna kick off with this

[Anonymous No.21465578]

>>21465515
To the Lighthouse. I blew through half the book last night while lying down in bed. Woolf's prose flows so well that I just couldn't put the book down until I was too tired to keep going

[Anonymous No.21465590]

>>21465574
It…its a bit sloppy compared with the later books. Not as bad as Patrick O'Brien's sloppiness though. I'd suggest giving the "major actions" a wiki before or after reading as they're assumed common knowledge for anyone British with a Decent Education which is what Fraser is Targetting. ("Flashman" having received a "Decent Education" despite being a lout unfit even for cavalry duties.)

The sex gets better in the later novels after Fraser takes on an implicitly pro-sex feminist supporting man position. You know: on top, stuffing that cunt until the milt pours out around his cock like her screams pour out down his bloody scratched back HAW HAW PRIZZET FRESH HORSES.

[Anonymous No.21465608]

>>21465515
Why, I was literally going to start it

[Anonymous No.21465628]

>>21465608
I've learned more about the presocratics from Wikipedia than this unreadable mess written in academic pseud wankery. Even straight up Aristotle is a more comprehensible commentary on the presocratics.

[Anonymous No.21465633]

>>21465590
Thanks for the tip, anon. This is actually me taking a breather from reading history, so I should be pretty good. What did you find sloppy about O'Brien?

[Anonymous No.21465654]

>>21465633
O'Brien doesn't know what he's doing as a novelist in the first three books:
Jack hasn't settled down into a secretly very very quiet man who is publicly and normally LOUD AS HELL.
Stephen isn't his heroin/sex/failed Ireland whipping boy yet. He hasn't even figured out that Stephen falls off of boats and ships on purpose in the first three books.

Book one is a fucking mess of bad stilted writing: as if he's cribbed it out of after action reports. Jack reads as if he's 19 years old. The writing reads as if O'Brien is 17 years old.

Aubrey/Maturin is about a marriage where "those little things you do" like falling off of boats, or bloody cutting out actions, or being broken in two by the last betrayal of the last shred of your humanity by a woman leaves you nothing except for a failed political campaign and heroin. You know, the normal things that keep you interested in a man after 10 years. Yeah a fair bit of it is watching Stephen self-destruct in public. That, and of course, BOILED BIRD SHIT.

[Anonymous No.21465672]

Some Zweig novellas.

[Anonymous No.21465696]

>>21465515

You have HORRIBLE taste, it isn't the least bit difficult. Also, you can't reasonably expect to read anything about the presocratics without encountering "academic pseud wankery". I read it about a year ago and it turned out to be the decent primer that I was expecting. Especially enjoyable was the fragment which explicitly attributes to Pythagoras his eponymous theorem. Also one of the guys in the back was a Norm MacDonald-tier shitposter. The following pearl derives from Plato's Euthydemus, and is reproduced in the book:

'Tell me,' said Dionysodorus, 'do you have a dog?'
'Yes, a real scamp,' said Ctesippus.
'And has he got puppies?'
'Yes, regular chips off the old block,' he said.
'So your dog is their father?'
'Yes, I myself saw him mounting the bitch,' he said.
'Well, now, the dog is yours?'
'Yes,' he said.
'He is a father, and he is yours-so he turns out to be your father, and you are a brother to puppies!' (Plato, Euthydemus 298d8-e5 Burnet)

[Anonymous No.21465753]

>>21465696
>Also, you can't reasonably expect to read anything about the presocratics without encountering "academic pseud wankery".
Turns out you can. I can Google anyone in the book and I get a dozen of much more readable commentaries and encyclopedic descriptions on the first page alone.

[Anonymous No.21465765]

>>21465515
You might enjoy WKC Guthrie’s ‘From Thales to Aristotle’ more

[Anonymous No.21465808]

>>21465753

You're reading midwit crap and you have primary-school-tier reading comprehension. Waterfield is not a difficult read. By appealing to le Google oracle (after proudly mentioning Wiki of all things as your go-to spot), you fail to realize that you're doubling down on your own embarrasment.

[Anonymous No.21465836]

>>21465515
Wait why? I'm actually about a third of the way into that book and I've been enjoying it so far.

[Anonymous No.21465837]

>>21465808
How about you double down on my nuts?

[Anonymous No.21465857]

[Anonymous No.21466392]

[Anonymous No.21466402]

>>21465608
It’s a compilation of fragments of works written by/about presocratics. It’s not very cohesive desu you have to mostly rely on the introductory pages to each section to help you make sense of wtf you are about to read

[Anonymous No.21466414]

Getting primed for elite theory

[Anonymous No.21466428]

Harry Potter order of the pheonix

im stuck chapter 4, burnt out

[Anonymous No.21467696]

>>21466428
>she didn't start with the holy bible
retard

[Anonymous No.21467711]

>>21465515
My /lit/ goal is to complete the 100 novellas chart

[Anonymous No.21467862]

Read this yesterday. Will probably read Story of the Eye next, because it's my last really short book. Then maybe Selected Stories of Chekhov, or The Best Short Stories of Maupassant.

[Anonymous No.21467874]

>>21465515
Then stop reading it you absolute mong

[Anonymous No.21467953]

>>21465515
I started this yesterday and am finishing it today. It's really good and much better than I expected it to be.

[Anonymous No.21468005]

>>21467862
What are your impressions anon? Actually good writing or mostly shock value?

[Anonymous No.21468020]

[Anonymous No.21468300]

>>21468005
The writing was fine; nothing very special about it. I'm not really sure why he wrote it; it didn't seem like he did so for shock value, and it wasn't pornographic; Franval even repents in the end. Maybe he just thought of the story while he was imprisoned in the Bastille and felt compelled to write it without some other motive.

[Anonymous No.21468320]

So far, It's great.

[Anonymous No.21468350]

Starting off the year with pic rel

[Anonymous No.21468378]

>>21467711
Delicious book

[Anonymous No.21468414]

>>21465515
OWC is the kind of publisher which edits the shit out of Shakespeare to modernize the languaage.
I wouldn't pick up anything by them that was written earlier than the 18th C.

[Anonymous No.21468439]

>>21465515
yesterday, I started and finished:
>The Death of Ivan Ilych
>the strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
>and Candide
today I'm probably gonna read Utopia by More or Heart of Darkness

[Anonymous No.21468463]

>>21468378
It's really good so far. Slang aint too much of an issue aswell

[Anonymous No.21468815]

>>21465515
I gave it one star on good reads, it’s absolute dogshit. So poorly written and organized. Huge disappointment.

I’m reading art after metaphysics by John David ebert and the Quran translated by Abdullah Yusuf ali. The quran is surprisingly good once you get through Al-baqarah and all the rumors are true you do need to read the Bible or else it won’t make sense. Art after metaphysics is extremely annoying to read because the author expects you too look up all of the art he is referencing in a browser while you read.

[Anonymous No.21468821]

>>21465515
>absolute dogshit
Why? I wanted to buy it.

[Anonymous No.21468850]

>>21468439
Based all good books. Candide is the best on the list imo, probably one of the greatest stories ever written. It is one of the first global adventures, incorporating peoples cultures and locations from almost every continent. And it’s very well written and funny.

Voltaire looks like he has Greta thunberg turbo autism though.