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/lit/ - Literature

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2331945 No.2331945 [Reply] [Original]

[spoiler]What are you currently reading, and what are your thoughts about it, /lit/?</spoiler>

>> No.2331948

[spoiler]The Diamond Age - Neal Stephenson

Seems like a pretty cool story, bro, but I'm afraid this is secretly Snow Crash Version 2. I'm not very far in, though, so it still has a shot at some original plot.</spoiler>

>> No.2331953

[spoiler]currently reading today's copy of the guardian.

About to pick up the telegraph that is sitting next to me.</spoiler>

>> No.2332224

[spoiler]Currently reading At the Mountains of Madness.
Dubliners arrived in the mail today so I'm most likely going to start reading it tonight, what should I expect?</spoiler>

>> No.2332241

[spoiler]>>2331953
good to see someone else likes to get a view from both sides of the fence. i hate our biased newspaper system.</spoiler>

>> No.2332271

[spoiler]Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - picked it up on the recommendation of some dudes on here. It seems fairly interesting so far, although I believe I'm only a short ways into it.</spoiler>

>> No.2332284
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2332284

[spoiler]Mixed bag, depending on the chapter as festschrifts often are.</spoiler>

>> No.2332289

[spoiler]Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy

It's certainly violent and intriguing, the parts that strike me as being central to the point of the tale are the Mennonite's speech and the story of the harnessmaker and the man.</spoiler>

>> No.2332310

[spoiler]Omensetter's Luck by William H. Gass.

Such an underrated writer. The Tunnel is one of my favorite books.</spoiler>

>> No.2332323

[spoiler]>>2332310

thinking about starting the tunnel when i finish jr, can you tell me more about what you like about it?</spoiler>

>> No.2332334

[spoiler]Re-reading "If On A Winter's Night A Traveller". Just finished The New York Trilogy and figured I'd read some more metafiction while I tried to think what I actually fancied reading next. So far the tone and feel of the main story is bleeding into the alternate "found" chapters more than I remember.</spoiler>

>> No.2332340

[spoiler]No Logo by Naomi Klein

it's incredibly boring but I'm almost done so I'm going to try and finish it today</spoiler>

>> No.2332344

[spoiler]Jan Patocka: Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History

It's depressing.</spoiler>

>> No.2332345

[spoiler]The magus by John Fowles.
Similiar to the collector with the issues of class division and allusions to the tempest. Not sure I like it as much but it's pretty good. Has wickerman-ish undertones and the setting is described pretty vividly.</spoiler>

>> No.2332351

[spoiler]The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
It's interesting and I'm digging the concepts. Also gonna be childish here, but I slightly laughed at: ‘But the problems of the world had to be mastered. I had not, I said to myself, come into the future to carry on a miniature flirtation.’

He basically invented the phrase, "I got 99 problems but a bitch ain't one".</spoiler>

>> No.2332356
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2332356

[spoiler]Nausea

>mfw existence isn't necessary</spoiler>

>> No.2332360

[spoiler]A Clash of Kings</spoiler>

>> No.2332363

[spoiler]>>2332323

First, The Tunnel is a tough nut to crack, which shouldn't be a problem if you're reading JR. When I started reading it, I was worried that it relied too much on shock value, but the prose is so good I gave it a pass. It's a high concept idea, and when Gass talks about a tunnel as a pillar of nothingness instead of a hole in the ground, I was sold.

William Kohler, who is pretty much a stand-in for Gass' father, is a piece of shit. I like the book because I like reading about what goes on in people's heads.

It's slow going, but it's really worth it. I'd suggest reading some passages to see how great his writing is.</spoiler>

>> No.2332372

[spoiler]The Neurophysics of Human Behavior: Explorations at the Interface of the Brain, Mind, Behavior, and Information

Not impressed so far. Probably going to switch over to a couple books on complexity instead. Read Fooled By Randomness A couple nights ago, that was fantastic.</spoiler>

>> No.2332374

[spoiler]>>2332363

wicked intriguing, thanks dude</spoiler>

>> No.2332379
File: 105 KB, 432x597, I like what I'm reading.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
2332379

[spoiler]>>2331945
>The Importance of Being on Time and Being a Faggot</spoiler>

>> No.2332414

[spoiler]>>2332379
Well, You got the faggot part down at least...</spoiler>

>> No.2332420

[spoiler]H.P. Lovecraft

The Call of Cthulhu
The Dunwich Horror
The Colour Out of Space
The Thing on the Doorstep
The Shadow Over Innsmouth

pretty mindbending stuff</spoiler>

>> No.2332428

[spoiler]The catcher in the rye
Started reading books that aren't fantasy, I hate them all
When will it get better?</spoiler>

>> No.2332431

[spoiler]I'm currently reading The Sound and the Fury. I don't like it, but I know I should finish it. I'm also The Robber Bride which is much more enjoyable, though it is making me see Atwood's god in the machine.</spoiler>

>> No.2332440

[spoiler]>>2332431

I was going to give the Sound and the Fury a go when I finish some others on my list. Is it boring or what?</spoiler>

>> No.2332449

[spoiler]It's not boring at all. The first half is a pretty arduous read due to the pov narrator. It cleans up after that and moves along at a pretty good clip, but I'm not really emotionally invested. I know that it's a "great" piece of literature, but I am definitely a product of my generation, and so far the payoff just hasn't been there for me.</spoiler>

>> No.2332451

[spoiler]Sorry, above post is for
>>2332440</spoiler>

>> No.2332464
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2332464

[spoiler]>>2332420
If you haven't already, make sure you read 'Pickman's model' - it's my favorite Lovecraft story. From what I've seen it seems to be spectacularly underrated.</spoiler>

>> No.2332471

[spoiler]reading If on a Winters Night a Traveler

It's well paced, fun, whimsical, etc. Although, I'm a pretty big sucker for fabulists.

Also, if anyone can recommend any other Italian authors worth checking out besides Eco and Calvino, that would be awesome.</spoiler>

>> No.2332478

[spoiler]>>2332431
For me, Sound and the Fury really only came together in the last 20 pages and I'm still kind of wondering if it was worth it.
As I Lay Dying has the same sort of things going on but is much more intelligible, not to mention there's actually a plot. Less impressive on Faulkner's part, I guess, but more immediate.</spoiler>

>> No.2332490
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2332490

[spoiler]I'm not far in, but it's alright. It will probably get better when Stephen's a teenager and a young adult.
It doesn't amaze me like Ulysses did, but I still like Joyce's style.</spoiler>

>> No.2332496

[spoiler]Vineland by Pynchon

I like it, its funnier and more accessible than lot49, v and GR</spoiler>

>> No.2332519

[spoiler]Infinite Jest

It is intrincate and depressing.</spoiler>

>> No.2332527

[spoiler]Finished Gatsby about an hour ago. Started The Big Sleep after it.

I like it. It reads better than the clumsy pulpiness that I expected.</spoiler>

>> No.2332529
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2332529

[spoiler]"Web of Angels" by John M. Ford - it's interesting more as a first novel than of itself, I think. The emotions are a bit flat and I think it's clever for no reason. And generally I like cleverness. Also it has a godawful cover, truly dire.

>>2332374
Seconded, this sounds intriguing.

>>2332490
I like all of it, but I think it improves as it goes on.</spoiler>

>> No.2332534

[spoiler]>>2332428
How old are you?</spoiler>

>> No.2332543

[spoiler]JFK and the Unspeakable - James Douglass
It's pretty good, it's well-written so it doesn't read like a textbook, which is always good. I'm learning things</spoiler>

>> No.2332754

[spoiler]>>2332428

Don't give up. I suggest trying out:

Anything by Dostoyevsky
The Three Musketeers or The Count of Montecristo by Dumas
Dead souls or one of his more popular short stories by Gogol.
The Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts by Mark Twain.</spoiler>

>> No.2332779

[spoiler]I just finished reading The Hunger Games trilogy, and I have to say: it's pretty decent. Though there are parts that I saw coming, I feel it was balanced out with parts that just were impossible to predict.
Lots of plot twists, ect.

Overall, they're good books and I suggest reading them.</spoiler>

>> No.2332800

[spoiler]I just finished deepness in the sky by vernor vinge

That and the other books are pretty silly but goddamn I couldn't help but read them

Got no idea what to read next</spoiler>

>> No.2332806

[spoiler]>>2332754

Yes, recommend dostoyevsky or gogol to someone who just wrote he doesn't like anything other than fantasy books

You could have proposed Ulysses while you were at it</spoiler>

>> No.2332829

[spoiler]Is Grimm's Fairy Tales something that a 19 year old should sit and read through?

It looks pretty interesting, but dunno whether to read something else instead.</spoiler>

>> No.2332849

[spoiler]Great Dialogues of Plato.
I'm currently on "Symposium". Shit's great. The Republic takes up like 3/5ths of the book though, Jesus Christ.</spoiler>

>> No.2332883

[spoiler]The Gulag Archipelago

Solzhenitsyn's writing is darkly illuminating, to say the least.</spoiler>

>> No.2332928

[spoiler]>>2332806
but gogol and dostoyevsky had written quite enjoyable books, even if one doesn't enjoy non-fantasy fiction (I'm primarily a fantasy reader as well) in general.</spoiler>