/lit/ - Literature

[kayo of the Well !KRISeMkGUY No.2660240]

What is /lit/ reading at the moment?

In between finishing off assignments and preparing for exams, I haven't really been able to do much reading apart from set texts. But I picked up a first edition hardcover Maupassant anthology called 'Tales of Passion' from a secondhand bookstore recently (the first edition of that translation, is what I mean; it wasn't around when Maupassant was still kicking), so I've been reading that. Previously I had only read Pierre et Jean and Bel Ami, both of which I loved, so I was interested to see how I found his short story work, as that is what he is famed for; I'd read Boule de Suif briefly, but only really skimming over it while I was tired and bored, so I didn't take it in. And I'm quite enjoying it so far. I admire an author if s/he is able to inject nuance and meaning into the most banal occurrences, so French realism is up there on my list. (this isn't at all to say I don't also draw pleasure from the fantastic, though)

What about you, /lit/?

[Anonymous No.2660246]

Bought a Hemingway collection. Currently on For Whom The Bell Tolls

>dem strong silent dudes

[kayo of the Well !KRISeMkGUY No.2660252]

>>2660246
I picked up A Farewell to Arms on the same trip to the same bookstore. I'm not really sure if it's a good place to start but it was there are $3 so I grabbed it.

Grabbed way too many books at once at that store, actually... Now I have a backlog of 40+... All worth it, though!

[Anonymous No.2660254]

The Hunger games by suzanne collins. Its actually pretty good.

[Anonymous No.2660262]

>>2660254
shut up cunt

[Anonymous No.2660268]

[Anonymous No.2660304]

[Anonymous No.2661448]

I finished A Canticle for Leibowitz a few days ago.
Now I'm reading:
We Were Soldiers Once...and Young, by Lt. Gen. Harold G Moore
Number9dream, by David Mitchell

The first I need to read for the school I'm heading off to, and the second is just for enjoyment. I'm liking both.

[Anonymous No.2661470]

moment
Avoiding the foul Burgundian upper inflection of course.
CAPTCHA: slow ppedingu
Here I insert implication and go back
Now I'm rereading what I wrote and the inside of my head; shit this is going to take forever.
There that should do it.
is

[Anonymous No.2661485]

"Nana" by Emile Zola, just finished "1Q84" by Haruki Mrkakami.

looking for something to read after I finish the Zola, something that's just engaging to read. I tried "The Sound and the Fury", and for all the narrative techniques in the world, I have no interest in the subject matter.

[Anonymous No.2661612]

Infinite Jest

[Anonymous No.2661633]

Confederacy of Dunces

Ignatius is obnoxious as fuck and is some kind of neckbeard. It should be called Spagheti Falls Out Of My Pocket: The Book
Except he's not self conscious at all

[Anonymous No.2661640]

Conversations with David Foster Wallace, the new collection of interviews. Awesome!
Also a biography of Maria Montessori. Shit's fucking boring as fuck!

[Anonymous No.2661647]

just fniished gravity's rainbow, about to start the recognitions

on the side, molloy by beckett for roughage and unspeakable practices by donald barthelme for funsies

[Anonymous No.2661650]

Pic related.

Talks about computer code and literary theory. Works in importance of materiality of a text. Analyses some sci-fi.

Shit's kind of all over the place, and discerning a main point has been difficult, but it's a pretty cool ride.

I'm about done with it. Should finish it tonight or tomorrow.

[Anonymous No.2661657]

I`m reading The Odyssey.

It`s meh

[Anonymous No.2661667]

Getting close to finishing Dead Souls, next is either For Whom the Bell Tolls or Norweigan Wood. Got them both sitting next to me but I can't decide which one to go for.

[Anonymous No.2661681]

Just started The Recognitions by William Gaddis.

I've found the first pages understandable but I do need to take it slow as the sentences are quite densely packed and complicated. Does it get more mindbending as it goes on?

[Anonymous No.2661692]

Finnegans wake
doing 10 pages a day
my first Joyce novel, or anything for that matter
I have no idea what's going on, but it's some of the most beautiful writing I've ever read.
I love it

[Anonymous No.2661699]

>>2661692
>pleb

[Anonymous No.2661701]

>>2661692

If you actually make it all the way through you'll be my hero.

[Anonymous No.2661706]

>>2661699

hi hodor

[Anonymous No.2661707]

>>2661699
actually, i studied literature and linguistics for 3 years at university. apart from that i realized that 90% of these literature theorists and lit. philosophers are mostly full of elitist crap, trying as hard a possible to make everything they say as inaccessible as possible to everyone, i really find it hard to see a book as brilliant when it's plain boring. but i guess i'm glad i finished it. I definitely didn't even begin to understand most of it, but I'm still glad I read it.

[Anonymous No.2661717]

Corey Robin's second text which seeks to define conservative thought and ideology. I also recommend his first book, Fear: The History of a Political Idea.

[rapture !!s6JqdRhQGSg No.2661718]

ok, so a note on method first: i have some pretty serious untreated ADD, but have found that i can cope by reading 20 pages at a time per book and then cycling a series of ~10 books; thus, my movement through any given book is slow, though the connections between books become, i've found, more distinct and the time in between better suited to some reflection. anyway: just finished austin's "how to do things with words," working on:

1. rethinking facticity; raffoul and nelson
2. the open work; eco
3. time and narrative (1st volume; plan on moving through other two respectively); riceour
4. signs; merleu-ponty
5. speech acts; searle
6. interpretation of cultures; geertz
7. to the lighthouse; woolf
8. ulysses; joyce
9. selected poems; coleridge
10. the waste books; lichtenberg
11. machiavelli in hell; de grazia
12. machiavelli in the making; lefort

[Anonymous No.2661719]

>>2661707

wut

[Anonymous No.2661751]

been reading alot of bukowski lately

[Benny Profane !!muO1YE/mn/J No.2661754]

>>2661719

ignore the copypasta

[Anonymous No.2661767]

>>2661754

[Anonymous No.2661790]

>>2660246
Me too, and I have to read it all by Friday.

[Anonymous No.2661796]

I'm reading A Farewell to Arms and I'm then going to either use my last week of uni library access to have a go at Marx or I'll just have a go at In Search of Lost Time

[Standard Toaster !RQTOASTvfI No.2661797]

I just finished Ulysses and am now reading A Dance With Dragons.

[Anonymous No.2661802]

I read the first 3rd of Blood Meridian but a woman I started sleeping with the last week of the spring semester kept telling me how 1984 is her favorite book. I got laid by talking about George Orwell so I decided to start reading it. I'm a few chapters in and enjoying it.

[Anonymous No.2661806]

I'm reading Der Besuch Der Alten Dame. Trying to learn German, and it's one of the few books I can actually read at all in the language.

Reading The Satanic Verses next. I'm curious to see whether or not Rushdie went out of his way to just insult Islam (which is the vibe I got from what my friend told me about the book).

[Anonymous No.2662210]

Jugglin' a bunch of books at the moment.

Doing a few stories from Arabian Nights per day, a good chunk of the run with the hunted bukowski anthology, a few stories out of Labyrinths, Notes from Underground, and just started on a Rimbaud collection as well.

[Anonymous No.2662271]

Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday.
Great book, lots of interesting stuff about the bloody maniac.

[Anonymous No.2662279]

>>2662271
>Academic Agenda: how I slandered the man who led to the death of my father because I was emotionally involved

[Anonymous No.2662802]

The Master and Margarita (loving it btw)
The Complete Works of Epicurus (quite short what left)
Justice by Michael J. Sandel
2666 by Bolaño

[Anonymous No.2662814]

Started reading Lovecraft for the first time a few hours ago.

The Unnamable (Very, very good. I loved everything about it.)
The Book (Very good.)
Nyarlathotep (Good but the ending was weird.)

I'm going to read more of him soon.

[None No.2662849]

Foucault's Pendulum

re-reading many of Poe's shorts

oh and 50 Shades of Grey... lol just kidding.

[Truman Capote !!cO9KVBDtkqQ No.2662854]

>>2662279
>all criticism of mao is inherently biased

[Anonymous No.2662859]

>>2662849
>50 Shades of Grey

Whats that?

[Anonymous No.2662861]

The sound and the fury.

[Anonymous No.2662866]

Reading The Grapes of Wrath, it's pretty damn great.
I think I'm going to read A Farewell To Arms next, though I'm not sure what to expect since I wasn't crazy about The Old Man and the Sea.

[Anonymous No.2662880]

>>2662854

Nah yeah but that shit has been put through the ringer man. It's like super-biased. Even biased motherfuckers are like "yo that's biased".

[Anonymous No.2662891]

The Children of Húrin, Tolkien.
Next: The Road, McCarthy.
Following: Palm-of-the-Hand Stories, Kawabata

[Anonymous No.2662984]

Previous: Moby-Dick (absolutely stunning, and surprisingly readable)
Current: V. (despite being underwhelmed by The Crying of Lot 49, I decided to give Pynchon another shot, and boy am I glad I did. It's just awesome: great plot, great characters, great prose, an average of at least one profound thought beautifully expressed per page. I can't wait to read Gravity's Rainbow now)
Next: As I Lay Dying

[Anonymous No.2662994]

>>2662984
She has dry skin around her nose. must have missed it with the moisturiser

[Anonymous No.2663003]

I'm reading Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson

[Anonymous No.2663006]

>>2662994
and what have Lena and her dry nose got to do with the post you quoted?

[Anonymous No.2663007]

>>2662994
Nope, she has a slight cold which makes her use tissues a lot, thereby drying her skin.

lrn2sherlcok

[Anonymous No.2663010]

>>2660240
Presently: Valis and Bleak House
Next:A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

[Anonymous No.2663011]

Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence. Progress has been slow and will remain slow due to exams.

[Anonymous No.2663012]

>>2663007
i would lick her dry snot

>>2663006
it was just my entry into the thread. i thought i quoted OP

[Anonymous No.2663023]

I'm on the last leg of Anna Karenina and it seems that part 5 is really dragging so far. It's like I've stumbled into some kind of shonen filler arc. I enjoy Levin's sections more than Anna's but I connect more with Levin and I enjoy the discussions of politics and agriculture. It's a good thing that Tolstoy is a hell of a writer. Even when the plot is dragging it reads so smooth I don't mind as much. If I ever read again I'll probably read the abridged version that I have over the original. 4/5

Started on the Hunger Games. It lacks any cleverness or subtlety and Katniss is a boring narrator, but god damn does it read fast. I blew through 50 pages in about an hour which is unheard of for me (that's usually an hour and a half to two hours depending on the book). I can see why it's so popular because it is such a quick read. It's quick because Collins never stops to draw any particular attention to anything that happens or any of the locales. I'm supposed to feel shocked or sorry when Prim gets chosen but it feels like such a footnote in the book itself. Nothing particularly stands out in the book aside from its interesting setting and premise. Haven't reached the love triangle bits so my score may drop a point. 3/5

[Anonymous No.2663029]

>>2662994

[Anonymous No.2663036]

>>2663023

Anna Karenina is my favourite book. For such a stereotypical "classic" it doesn't seem to come up very often on /lit/. Glad to see someone is making progress with it and enjoying it.

[Anonymous No.2663047]

>>2663029
>hair looks like wig

lol'd

[Language reform guy No.2663074]

Found an introduction to criminology. So, i've been reading that. Sort of interesting. Very long.

[Anonymous No.2663079]

>>2663036
Yeah it's the very definition of a classic for better and worse. It's a shame that its reputation as a doorstop comes solely from its length. Comparing my original and my abridged version I definitely agree with what was cut in the abridged version, but like I said Tolstoy is a hell of a writer. He really gets you in touch with Levin's love of nature and work and his devotion to his career. I feel like Tolstoy wrote two novels really, one for Anna (the European novel of passion) and one for Levin (the Russian novel concerned mainly with Russian topics) and decided to combine them, maybe for the sake of making money from serialization. Or maybe he was tricking his European minded readers into reading a Russian novel.

[Anonymous No.2663095]

"The cultural contradictions of capitalism" by Daniel Bell.

I read parts of it in college and loved it. My copy arrived two days ago. Some of it is outdated, and I don't like prophets of doom as much as I did some years ago, but it's a thought provoking read. Clear and deep at the same time. And you have the feeling that Bell is not leaving any social phenomena out. It's amazing how he connects the different social domains interactions.

I'm not a native english speaker, so I had issues with a couple of words though.

[Anonymous No.2663165]

>>2663079

I'm not sure if Tolstoy dragged it out on purpose considering that he had issues serialising the latter parts of the novel and had to publish it in book form. And to be honest, I'm almost inclined to take pity on anyone declining to read it simply beause it's long -- it may be long but it reads so easily that anyone could get through it without issue. Many readers find that some parts -- especially Levin's ramblings about rural life -- drag on way too much and become boring, I think that the true heart of the novel lies in these "ramblings" and that they're just as essential as any of the other parts.

The beautiful thing about AK is the intricacy of the world Tolstoy creates: it's got six(!) protagonists, each of them have fantastic complexity and profoundness, and the way the characters interact is so genuine that find that you can understand and relate even to people you don't particularly like (Alexei). The moment I realised how real the characters in the novel really are was when it struck me on page 400 or so that Anna Karenina and Kitty and Alexei and Stepan were not real and had never existed: the sadness I felt was like what you feel when you think of a dead friend. Tolstoy's world is so real and intricate and complex and complete; it's almost as if the world in AK could be its own world, parallel to ours, in its own right.

Anyway, forgive me for harping on about my own interpretations of a book for which I confess I have almost too much love. I'll leave you to get on with it and I do hope you get something worthwhile out of it :)