2obscure4U

[Anonymous No.2286070]

ITT: You suggest a great book you've read that you are completely positive no one else on /lit/ has ever read.

The novel "How to Quiet a Vampire" by Borislav Pekic.

[Anonymous No.2286092]

"After" by Francine Prose

At least, I liked it in high school.

[Anonymous No.2286095]

The 44 Scotland Street series. Shock! Horror! Reading something that you can't boast about to appear intellectual!

[Anonymous No.2286099]

"Life as We Knew It"

The cover says it all, really.

[Anonymous No.2286100]

This too is from my home country and is somewhat more high-brow. A few of you might have read Lanark as it's often compared to Ulysses, but I find that Alasdair Gray is at his best when writing short stories.

[Anonymous No.2286112]

I've been planning to read that one OP! I plan to read most all of the books in the Writings from an Unbound Europe series.

I'm still not sure that anyone else here has read Kornel Esti, though I know there's another Kosztolanyi fan around.

[Anonymous No.2286156]

I've made multiple threads about this book in the past. None of them have ever gotten responses.

[Anonymous No.2286165]

>>2286112
Oh, and I don't think anyone here has read this one either, as I'm the only person on both Goodreads and LibraryThing who has read it.

It's a very, very pretty book of Junichiro Tanizaki's haiku. Includes calligraphy of the Japanese versions, romanji, a generous introduction and a nice notes section. I had no idea Tanizaki was such an amazing poet, but his haiku on the bombings in WW2 and his family's constant shuffling around were very affecting.

[Anonymous No.2286170]

>>2286092
NOPE I read that in Middle School.

[Anonymous No.2286172]

>>2286170
Oops wrong post.
I meant >>2286099
I liked it, it was my first END OF THE WORLD type book I read.

[Anonymous No.2286176]

Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture

Awesome book.

[Anonymous No.2286185]

Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov. Witty but melancholic, a surreal novel set in Ukraine after the fall of the Soviet union. Much recommended.

[Anonymous No.2286192]

catcher in the rye

[Anonymous No.2286197]

Oh, and also, the first and second volume of the 1001 Great Stories series. I'm probably the only person here to have read them as there are less than five people who have done so on Goodreads, but I very, very highly recommend them to any lover of world literature.

The stories were selected by someone actually well-read in world literature, and so that have completely amazing variety. The two volumes introduced me to several authors completely new to me who I now adore.

[Anonymous No.2286214]

>>2286197
And also also One Thousand and One-Second Stories by Inagaki Taruho. Japanese absurdism in the form of tiny bits of charming flash fiction/prose poetry.

Plus, Mishima praised him highly! He was quotes as saying "There is Before Taruho and After Taruho," attesting to his literary importance.

[Anonymous No.2286241]

>>2286214
I could probably go on for a while, since I think I tend to read things not popular on /lit/.

But, I also recommend The Young Girl's Handbook of Good Manners, which I think is considered the first book that successfully combined humour and erotica. It contains such exceedingly useful advice as:

"Putting honey between your legs to get a little dog to lick you is permitted in a pinch; but it is uncessary to return the favor."

"Never enter a whorehouse to ask for a tribade if you do not have twenty francs on you."

"Never masturbate a young man by the window. You never know on whom it might fall."

[Anonymous No.2286247]

[Anonymous No.2286253]

>>2286070
HA!
Jokes on you OP. I read that book (Serbianfag here).

[Anonymous No.2286259]

>>2286253
Hay Serbianfag, do you have any recommended Serbian poets? I just picked up a book of Serbian poetry and I'd like to know who to look out for.

[Anonymous No.2286267]

>>2286259
I am sorry dude I can't help you there. I tend to avoid poetry like the plague.

[Anonymous No.2286277]

The Spiral Stair by John Bentley Mays
Cockroach by Rawi Hage

[Anonymous No.2286408]

>>2286253

OP here, nice. It's pretty good. It reminds me a lot of Catch-22 actually.

I thought a lot of the later parts where he starts to go insane were kind of forced/sloppy though.

[Anonymous No.2286428]

>>2286408
I think that the sloppiness you mention is just a symptom of his rapidly deteriorating mental health.

You brought up a lot of memories with your post OP.
I loved that book.

[Anonymous No.2286433]

>>2286259
Vasko Popa.

[Anonymous No.2286434]

>>2286408
I forgot to mention this in the previous thread - if you have time look up his novel Rabies.

[Anonymous No.2286464]

>>2286433
Thanks! There's a good 20 pages of his poetry in this.

[Anonymous No.2286467]

>>2286428

Yes, I understand what the author was trying to do. It just kind of felt overwrought. Went on for too long. Felt like a lot of filler to beef up the book's spine.

[Anonymous No.2286524]

Some more books I highly recommend that I'm not sure anyone else here has read (though I'd love to be proven wrong on that):

Angel Riding a Beast by Liliana Ursu
My Tired Father by Gellu Naum
The Oval Lady: Six Surreal Stories by Leonora Carrington (and maybe The Hearing Trumpet? I never see anyone talk about it)
Teahouse by Lao She
River of Stars: Selected Poems of Yosano Akiko
Friends by Kobo Abe (a great example of his playwright abilities)
Tales of Galicia by Andrzej Stasiuk
Primeval and Other Times by Olga Tokarczuk (though I've been rec-ing the hell out of her and Stasiuk, so maybe someone's picked them up by now)

[Anonymous No.2287154]

The Manual of Detection - Jedidiah Berry

[Anonymous No.2288175]

Bumping for more. I love these types of threads.

[Anonymous No.2288204]

the spire by william golding

it's not at all obscure but i'm just guessing that nobody on here has read anything by him other than lord of the flies

[Anonymous No.2288211]

Atmospheres Apollinaire by Mark Frutkin

- excellent quasi-documentary quasi-imaginative biography that captures the zeitgeist of modernism in Paris near the turn of the twentieth century. Apollinaire and Alfred Jarry are characters.

[None !!22qbPSLZwrI No.2288212]

a year in upper felicity. it's about a chinese american who moved to china and lived in a commune for a year during their cultural revolution. really well written. pic related.

also, a noble treason by richard hanser. a story of the white rose and its beginnings. one of the more emotionally charged accounts i've read of it. if you liked german lit like hesse or mann it's something to consider.

[Anonymous No.2288485]

Pierre Drieu La Rochelle - Will-o-the-wisp. For anyone interested in Camus or fiction from the 40s and 50s give it a read.
Andre Malraux - Man's fate or The Human Condition. Heavenly influenced by Nietzsche, about communist revolutions.
Paul Nizan - The Conspiracy. Regarded by Sartre as an important work, came out recently in a really good edition with introductions by Walter Benjamin and Sartre.
Rainer Maria Rilke - Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. Not really that obscure, but he deserves to get some more attention for his only novel.
Cees Notebooms - Rituals.

>>2286524

I sometimes see your recommendations in various threads and think I like you! Please keep posting.

[listserv !!Wqo2DQRkhKC No.2288499]

The Amar Chitra Katha comic books.

Also, (though less likely), Gitanjali by Rabindranath Tagore. [I was fortunate enough to have a copy with a foreword by W. B. Yeats - which is also up on Wikisource if anyone cares for it.]

[Anonymous No.2288532]

The Vivisector by Patrick White.

One of the greatest books i've ever read, and hands down the most interesting portrayal of an artist ive ever experienced.

[Anonymous No.2288541]

>>2288499
Nope on Gitanjali! I've read that one, with the Yeats into too. Amazing stuff.

[Anonymous No.2288557]

Can't be entirely sure, but:

Martin A Hansen - Løgneren (The Liar)


Book is absolutely awesome, also fairly short.


You can buy it on amazon for like 5 dollar.

http://www.amazon.com/Liar-Martin-Hansen/dp/0704334992

[Anonymous No.2288563]

>>2288532
totally read this and recommended it to someone just yesterday. fucking LOVE this book. read it in two days it was so good

[Anonymous No.2288564]

>>2286095
I read the first 3 books in his "No1 Ladies Detective Agency" series and loved them to bits, Mma Ramotswe is awesome.

[Anonymous No.2288578]

>>2288563

Word up. This novel doesn't get the recognition it deserves. Its up there with the greats!

[Anonymous No.2288590]

>>2288564
I've yet to read those - my mum owns them but she's lent them to someone so I'm waiting for them to be returned rather than buying it. I'm now on the most recent (the seventh) Scotland Street novel though and I only started reading them at the start of the year. In terms of addictiveness it's the literary equivalent of crack cocaine. Love Alexander McCall Smith.

[Anonymous No.2288601]

>Andre Malraux - Man's fate

Dude, c'mon, that's a Penguin classic.

I'd be more surprised if you had read Way of Kings or The Conquerors.

[Anonymous No.2288609]

Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh. Everyone seems to have read 'A Handful of Dust' but for seem reason this, which is far superior, is more or less ignored. I couldn't recommend it more, it's a superbly funny satire.

[Anonymous No.2288613]

system of dante's hell - amiri baraka

[Anonymous No.2288616]

>>2288613
>This is an excellent autobiographical novel about the coming of age of a young, Black, male homosexual. He grapples with issues of insecurity and shame.

>Anyone familiar with the work of Amiri Baraka (formerly known as Leroy Jones, and then LeRoi Jones) knows that he is extremely homophobic and heterosexist. He is vicious and searing in his hatred of gays. And yet he himself is gay. Of course he covers that up now and will not admit to it.

What. The. Fuck.

Care to comment on why it's good?

[Anonymous No.2288623]

>>2288616

what are you quoting from, dude?

like it's an excellent stream of consciousness type novel and i didn't pick up on any homophobe vibes, maybe the "searing hatred" came later in his career? since he also wrote the play the toilet while he was still leroi jones and that seemed pretty sympathetic to gay ppl as well

[Anonymous No.2288624]

Finnegans Wake

[Anonymous No.2288635]

>>2288623
The one and only amazon review.

[Anonymous No.2288677]

>>2288635

amazon don't know shit

i mean i'm not going to defend everything amiri baraka's said/written (read his play a black mass if you want to get real uncomfortable real fast) but system of dante's hell has absolutely great prose and any "vicious hatred" is from other characters the protagonist encounters