Rate the last 5 books you read

[Anonymous No.22124959]

Great Expectations 4/5
The Fifth Head of Cerberus 4/5
Pedro Paramo 3.5/5
Pierre; or, The Ambiguities 3/5
The Double 2/5

[Anonymous No.22124994]

Game of Thrones 3/5
A Clash of Kings 3/5 (Overrated series so far)
The Things They Carried 4/5
Japanese Tales of Mystery & Imagination 3/5
Blindsight 5/5

[Anonymous No.22124995]

>>22124959
>Conan the Barbarian short story collection
Perfect 10/10
>The Old Testament
Pretty interesting. Dragged in some parts 9/10
>Convenience Store Woman
Aspie waifu gets into relationship shennaigans with a chud /pol/tard. Perfect waifu so perfect score 10/10
>Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Perfect children's story 10/10
>The Man Who Would Be King
It was ok. I expected more. Plot was a bit too far removed from the narrative in my opinion for me to grow attached. 7/10

[Anonymous No.22125007]

Sicilian Baroque by Anthony Blunt - 6/10 I wish there was more opinion and just a little bit fewer facts but on the whole it's excellent.
Sicily: An Island at the Crossroads of History by John Julius Norwich - 6/10 a popular history, but it's well written and had all the information I wanted so I can't complain.
The Homeric Gods by Walter F. Otto - 7/10 thought provoking despite the somewhat dubious scholarship
Naples Declared by Benjamin Taylor - 5/10 (can you tell I'm planning a vacation yet) surprisingly well written for something so full of junk info, you can tell the guy just wanted to write a memoir and rest it up as a travel book.
A Dance to the Music of Time a Question of Upbringing - 9/10 rereading a favorite series to get away from all the history research.

[Anonymous No.22125049]

The case of Charles Dexter Ward 9/10, There is a level of humanity in this work more than other from Lovecraft, it actually has a villain defeated by a hero.
Shadow out of time: 8/10, amazing concept of time travel and mind control
The mountains of madness 9/10, alien is probably my favourite movie and this book is clearly an inspiration
Shadow over innsmouth 9/10, I like the aesthetic of a decaying coastal town
The thing on the doorstep 7/10, shadow out of time covered a similar topic of mind control but was far more interesting with the aspect of time travel

[Anonymous No.22125141]

>Journey to the end of the night
8/10
>Infinite Jest
10/10
>No longer human
3/10
>Jane Eyre
6/10
>The temple of the golden pavillion
8/10

[Anonymous No.22125158]

>>22124959
In Cold Blood 4/5
Steppenwolf 3/5 (some parts 5/5 but a bit of slog)
Frankenstein 5/5
White Nights 4/5
Akira Kurosawa: Something like an autobiography 4/5

[Anonymous No.22125172]

>>22124959
The last 5 works I have read were human male on female anthro shit on AO3. I rate them 1 star - collectively. I can't even jerk it to writing this bad.

[Anonymous No.22125224]

>Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction
7/10 — I quite enjoyed Raise High, but Seymour really dragged.
>Studies in Pessimism by Copenhauer
7/10 — Good stuff: 'On Women' made me laugh at how mad he was.
>Goodbye, Columbus
8/10 — Roth is pretty meticulous; I enjoyed 'Eli the Fanatic' most
>The Trouble With Being Born
10/10 — funny guy.
>Satantango
9/10 — Unique, artful, morose. I couldn't finish the movie, though.

[Anonymous No.22125251]

>Akenfield: Portrait of and English Village by Ronald Blythe
7/8

>Across the River and into the Trees by Ernest Hemmingway
5/8

>The Traveler’s Tree: A Journey Through the Caribbean Islands by Patrick Leigh Fermor
6/8

>Night Train by Martin Amis
5/8

Nobody Move by Denis Johnson
7/8

I just started Nobody Move yesterday and finished it up this morning on my way into work. A nice taught noir novel. Plenty of witty dialogue and a compulsively readable story.

Night Train by Amis was similar in that it was a literary fiction guy trying his hand at pulp but it was more a parody that got post modern to the end. In a way it was moving and sad, especially if mental illness effects your family or loved ones. But that ironic distance Amis had toward the genre ultimately left me cold.

[Anonymous No.22126609]

>>22125224
>>22125251
will definitely be checking some of these out thanks lads

[Anonymous No.22126643]

>Keeper of Enchanted Rooms
6/10
>City of Last Chances
6.5/10
>Alternative Approaches to Monetary Policy
8/10
>This is How You Lose the Time War
8.5/10
>The Atlas Six
1/10

[Anonymous No.22126805]

>>22124959
>The Sluts
2/5, awful degenerate pedo fantasy with no plot. Compelling premise and original format though
>HHhH
2/5, out of "respect for historical accuracy", the author refuses to fabricate anything interesting that would engross you in the story, he's perfectly happy to make up irrelevant bullshit about Heydrich though
>Trainspotting
4/5, very funny book, hits different if you're an Angloid.
>Between Two Fires
3/5, not bad for what it is but I was expecting more if i'm honest. Very similiar to Joe Abercrombie's stuff
>Behead All Satans
2/5, just kinda boring, plot isn't interesting, character's aren't interesting, prose is decent though

[Anonymous No.22126830]

>>22125141
The Junjo Ito adaptation is unironically the superior way to read No Longer Human

[Anonymous No.22127239]

>>22126830
how so?

[Anonymous No.22127271]

The Setting Sun 3/5
Lady Chatterley's Lover 3.5/5
The Castle 3/5
Disgrace 3.5/5
My Brilliant Friend 4/5

[Anonymous No.22127274]

>>22127239
Ito's art communicates his internal horror and angst more effectively than Dazai's prose. He's particularly good at taking a normal human expression and exaggerating its features just slightly enough to make it seem alien, like they're expressing an emotion that's more intense than you can understand how to feel. And as a counterweight to that, Dazai's stand in's expressions feel wholly comprehensible. Smiles that are forced in exactly the right way to try and match the impossibly intense emotion he perceives in those around him, while simultaneously revealing to the audience his constant discomfort

[Anonymous No.22127313]

>Gilman - The Yellow Wallpaper
8/10
>Stifter - Studien Vol. 1
7/10
>Carmina Burana
5/10
>Carle - Have You Seen My Cat?
6/10
>Euripides Vol. 2 (of 2)
7/10

[Anonymous No.22127321]

Lolita 3/5

[Anonymous No.22127361]

>>22127274
fair enough lad, I haven't read any manga in years but might just give this one a go in the near future

[Anonymous No.22127380]

>>22124959
>1984
0/10 I stopped reading when it became a romance, I just wanted dystopian shit
>Do androids dream of electric sheep
0/10 both the detective and the retard fall in love with a vacuum cleaner, also I don't care if they kill a spider
>Crime and punishment
0/10 a guy who killed an old woman and her sister, run away, let someone else be tried instead of him and lied to the police three times gets a 7 year sentence because he is the authors self insert also he gets saved by fucking love
>The knight of the seven kingdoms
Really liked that one, the girl shows up for a couple pages and dunk fucks her, leaves her pregnant and never comes back, also I could really feel his guilt over getting the prince killed 9/10
>Atlas shrugged
I didn't know russians invented Isekai, really wierd reading a female harem fantasy, I get why girls get so creeped out by it 4/10 my favorite character died for no reason, should have been a 2/10 but then it turned out that rich people having private orgy islands was a real thing so props for figuring it out 70 years ago

[Anonymous No.22127386]

>>22124959
>Rendezvous with Rama
5/5
>Childhood's end
Reddit
>Sphere
2.5/5
>The Ghost from the Grand Banks
2.5/5
>Not Even Wrong (by Peter Woit, a criticism of String Theory)
The bits on history of particle physics theory were good, a few chapters towards the end were boring (or filtered by undergrad brain), and the end was interesting. He used one example of a kooky harvard physicist to paint the entire string theory community as this quasi religious thing. There's a chapter on the bogs (the shut it down fellas with the word cheekbones).
Overall 3.5/5

[Anonymous No.22127390]

>>22127386
*weird cheekbones

[Anonymous No.22127391]

>>22127380
>1984
>0/10 I stopped reading when it became a romance, I just wanted dystopian shit
this is the funniest example of getting filtered I've read in ages

[Anonymous No.22127393]

>>22125141
Is no longer human really that bad?
I was planning on gifting it to my dad because he has always been a miserable drunk and he beat me as a kid

[Anonymous No.22127431]

>>22127380
I don't know how you could read 1984, Androids, then Crime and Punishment back-to-back-to-back, pan them all, and continue reading.

[Anonymous No.22127439]

>>22124959
These were all 4/5 to me:

Fear And Trembling
Anarcho-Fascism: Nature Reborn
Naturalism And Religion
Book Of The Lover And Beloved
The Book Of Chivalry

[Anonymous No.22127454]

>>22127431
Explain to me what the magic box that transferred feelings was because nobody has ever been able to explain that shit to me
Please I'm so confused

[Anonymous No.22127472]

>>22127391
why does everything have to have romance?

[Anonymous No.22127493]

>>22127472
Who can say? I suppose at least some of the time it must be used to fuel commentary on the state's impulse to control all relationships, public and private and the consequences of that, but I can't guarantee that.

[Anonymous No.22127496]

>>22124959
>Pedro Paramo 3.5/5
bit harsh

[Anonymous No.22127504]

>>22124959
>OP's diary, 1/5
>OP's mom's diary, 3.75/5
>My diary, 5/5
At this point I had sex with OP's mom.
>OP's mom's new diary, 4.25/5
>OP's diary after I tell him, 5/5

[Anonymous No.22127522]

>>22127493
yeah but why was it on everything else too?

[Anonymous No.22127580]

>Lord of Light
4/6
Enjoyed reading it. Falls off in the last chapters.
>Why Nations Fail
4/5
Does not mention jews.
>Pyramids - Pratchett
4/7
It's good, but perhaps I wanted it to be a bit more serious.
>Hogfather - Pratchett
4/6
>Heart of Darkness
4/5
I loved adventure books as a kid, this one fits right in. Very cute and chill story, shame that it's so short. Anons recommended to read more Conrad.

[Anonymous No.22127844]

A Coffin for Demitrios by Eric Ambler (9/10) - exceptional mystery novel, economically written, makes you share the MC's inexorable compulsion to keep pulling the thread of an increasingly murkey and perilous conspiracy
Empire by Gore Vidal (6.5/10) - don't care much for drawing-room social maneuvering, pampered heirs and heiresses bickering over inheritance, and other society novel crap, and there's enough of that in here to make parts of it a slog. The detail Vidal puts into coloring the world on the cusp of the twentieth century makes you feel like you're actually there, though, which mostly makes up for it
Blindsight by Peter Watts (9/10) - for me sci-fi is mostly a vehicle for exposing you to cool ideas and concepts and this book is so dense with them that I actually had to start taking notes. Competently constructed and engaging narrative.
The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu (5/10) - The sci-fi whoah-dude-think-about-it parts of this one were satisfactory, but unlike Blindsight the narrative behind it was punishingly hard to care about. I also fucking hated every character besides the based hardboiled cop dude. I am only reading the sequel because I was promised that it's way better. Also the translator should never work again because the dialogue sounds like he copy-pasted from Google
Claudius the God by Robert Graves (9/10) - historical novels walk a fine line between making characters seem like space-aliens with no recognizable human feelings or motivations, and modern people transported into exotic times past with their worldviews intact. Graves walks this tightrope masterfully and shows you Imperial Rome through the eyes of a man who feels truly contemporary.

[Anonymous No.22127959]

>James Joyce - Dubliners
4/5
>Thommas Mann - Buddenbrooks
5/5
>Rainer Maria Rilke - The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Briggs
3/5
>George Eliot - Silas Marner
3.5/5
>Henrik Ibsen - A Doll's House and Other Plays
3.5/5

[Anonymous No.22127962]

>James Joyce - Dubliners
4/5
>Thomas Mann - Buddenbrooks
5/5
>Rainer Maria Rilke - The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Briggs
3/5
>George Eliot - Silas Marner
3.5/5
>Henrik Ibsen - A Doll's House and Other Plays
3.5/5

[Anonymous No.22127964]

>>22124959

TBK - Dosto 3/5
Ulysses - Joyce 4/5
GR - Pynchon 5/5
M&D - Pynchon 2/5
C&P - Dosto 3/5

[Anonymous No.22128036]

>>22127496
still really enjoyed it and I'm sure I'll like it even more when I re-read. What would you give it then?

[Anonymous No.22128124]

>>22127472
Under the spreading chestnut tree,
I killed her, and she killed me

I think Brazil might be slightly better, but the samurai fight puts it just behind 84

[Anonymous No.22128129]

>>22127964
I agree with crime and punishment, I think it must not translate well.

However cool it with the lit shit man. Read something newer or lighter. I recommend the forever war, barbarians at the gate: the fall of the Nabisco, or bleeding edge if you have to read some Pynchon.

[Anonymous No.22128138]

>>22127844
>The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu
Dude I fucking struggled to get through three body problem. Why does everyone treat it as the second coming of Jesus?

[Anonymous No.22128276]

>The Member of The Wedding
9
I offically love McCullers now
>The Crying of Lot 49
7
very amusing but the prose wasn't for me
>The Relic Master
4
quick fun read but dropped the engaging plot and themes for a dumb heist
>The Sot-Weed Factor
9 plus top kek
what a wild ride that was
>White Noise
6.5
pretty good, though the ending felt a little flat

[Anonymous No.22128433]

>>22128129

thank you.

[Anonymous No.22128833]

>>22124959
The Brother Karamazov-F.Dostoevsky- 5/5 Probably his best(but I still prefer The Idiot because as an autistic fool I can empathize with the protagonist better) and it's probably gonna be sticking in the back of mind popping out every now and then for years to come. good stuff
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Works Volume 1 10/5 a masterpiece the likes of which has and will never be seen again, I built an altar complete with candles, turtles figurines, and a plate for offerings
Doors of Perceptions/Heaven and Hell- A. Huxley 3/5 2 short essays on psychedelic drugs that devolves into reflection on the beauty of the world the spark of the divine, various religious/tribal mystic practices to reach altered states of consciousness. kinda cool if you're into stuff like Confession of an English Opium Eater, A Rebours and the likes
The Gulag Archipelago-A. Solzhenitsyn 5/5 aaaaaaahhhhhh fuck everything!!! and I'm also now strangely at peace with it. the line between good and evil cuts through the hearths of every men but as long as I can keep mine uncorrupted I'll be fine and life will be worth living
The Narrow Corridor-Daron Acemoglu & James A. Robinson 5/5 nice follow-up to Why Nations Fail that focuses on what conditions make freedom possible

[Anonymous No.22128857]

>>22127380
nice bait here's your (you)

[Anonymous No.22129635]

>>22128138
I liked Three-Body well enough because I'm a big STEMfag and thought the parts in the VR game where the protag was witnessing all the insane shit that the chaotic orbit around the three suns did to the planet were cool. I also liked the parts where the Trisolarans were unfolding the sophons out of their different dimensions. Putting that aside, basically every scientist character in the novel (i.e. almost every character) has the most incomprehensible, autistic motivations I've ever read and I cannot imagine how I'm supposed to suspend my disbelief to the point where I can take things like pro-alien human genocide terrorists seriously. The fact that Da Shi is the only character whose thought processes resemble a normal human's makes me wonder if this whole series is some kind of coded crypto-Maoist treatise on how intellectuals are psychopaths who should be put into prison camps and never allowed to influence broader society in any way.

[Anonymous No.22129732]

>>22124959
>Viy profile pic

patrician taste anon
>Haunted England: the penguin book of Ghosts
Brief and well researched glimses into some of England's haunted places (7/10)
>My Dark Vanessa - Kate Elizabeth Russell
A depressingly realistic look into a teacher-student romance (7/10)
>The Worm in the Bud: The World of Victorian Sexuality - Ronald Pearshall
what it says on the tin, interesting if dry and often disturbing look into sex in the victorian era (6/10)
>Brother - Ania Ahlborn
A mixed bag but very engrossing, read it in less than 5 hours. I hope the movie adaptation will still happen (7/10)
>Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination - Edogawa Ranpo
One of the best short story collections I've read, short and very clever and sometimes deeply disturbing (The Caterpillar will haunt be for a while) (9/10)

[Anonymous No.22129757]

>>22124959
The Red Knight 4.5/5
The Blacktongue Thief 4/5
Dune (reread) still 5/5
Red Rising 3/5, fun read but not much depth
Spellslinger 3/5
Against All Gods 3/5 (don't read this if "muh communism and polyamory are so enlightened" makes you angry. It'd be much higher if not for that)
Shadow of the Torturer 4.5/5 so far

[Anonymous No.22129856]

>>22124959
My Struggle (Knausgaard) - 5/5
Exodus from the Long Sun - 4/5
Explorations of Captain James Cook - 4/5
Salem's Lot - 4/5
Unfinished Tales (Tolkien) - 4/5

[Anonymous No.22130460]

>>22127580
I read The Secret Agent for a class and although I’m not a Conrad fan I enjoyed it. Make sure to read a little history about it, especially its role after 9/11.

[Anonymous No.22131315]

>>22129635
The Maoist stuff was the best part of the book imo. Hearing about the cadres and struggle sessions was wild. I liked the aliens too, but the whole middle bit with the VR I couldn't get into. Wtf was that pocket nuke the girl had too. Shouldn't that shit be super heavy.