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/lit/ - Literature

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2909987 No.2909987 [Reply] [Original]

ITT: Books you highly recommend and books to avoid

Recommend: pic related

Avoid: Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance

>muh chautauqua

>> No.2910000

Recommend: Foucault's Pendulum
Avoid: OP's pic. legitimately terrible book, full of meaningless pop culture name dropping and obviously designed to be sold to a movie studio.

>> No.2910014

Recommend: Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks
Avoid: This Is Your Brain on Music (it's got significant factual errors that aren't obvious)

>> No.2910032

Recommend: Wide Sargasso Sea
Avoid: Tess of the D'Ubervilles

>> No.2910035
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2910035

Recommend: Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, quite entertaining, just finished it, can't say I particularly agree with the cynicism, but it has lovely prose, and done well stylistically.

Avoid: Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, somewhat entertaining, LEL POP CULTURE-DAYMN THIS GAMER CHICK IS HOT IM IN LOVE-PACMAN IS STILL COOL GUYS shit ugh fuck off

>> No.2910085

>not liking ready player one

>> No.2910116

Recommend: Snow Crash by Neil Stephenson, or Diamond Age. Either one.
Avoid: I don't think there is any book I can say I've legitimately disliked to the point of telling people to avoid it. I just finished The Wind Up Bird Chronicles and wasn't terribly thrilled by it, I suppose.

>> No.2910123

>>2910035
I'll remember not to read Ready Player One then. Sounds like a piece of shit.

>> No.2910124
File: 41 KB, 314x471, Sailor-and-Lula_The-Complete-Novels.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
2910124

I highly recommend the Sailor and Lula novels by Barry Gifford, but please avoid Leviathan by Paul Auster

>> No.2910129

>>2910116

50 shades of grey

>> No.2910135

Recommend: Shogun
Avoid: The Scarlet Letter

>> No.2910143

Recommend: We Are All Zimbabweans Now by some guy who used to be in the SLA

Avoid: OP's pic. I felt like I was reading the movie version of a book

>> No.2910823
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2910823

Recommend : Claustria by Regis Jauffret. Obviously one of the best french book of 2011.

Avoid : le club des incorrigibles optimistes. Made me swearing. The writer talks of him all the time. He writes badly. Boring, ya know. He acts like it is a big deal, but this book is empty and worthless as the sole of my broken shoe.

>> No.2910846
File: 187 KB, 302x500, 5161144143_9d8e45233a.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
2910846

Recommend: Dune messiah

Avoid: Their eyes were watching god, it's a shittier a walk to remember

>> No.2910883

Recommend: A Scanner Darkly
Avoid: Snow Crash

>> No.2910896

Recommend: Until I Find You, John Irving (watch out it suffers from poor cover art...not something you want to read on the subway)

Avoid: The Naked Lunch, William S. Burroughs

>> No.2910930

>>2910896
Holy shit, you must be the biggest pleb on the face of the fucking planet.

>> No.2910944

Just off the top of my head (I'm probably leaving some good books out):
>Recommend:
Anathem by Neal Stephenson (his other books are great too), anything by Kurt Vonnegut, Atlas Shrugged/The Fountainhead, Stranger in a Strange Land
>Avoid:
Wuthering Heights, Heart of Darkness, The Alchemist, most Hemingway novels

>> No.2910946

>>2910930

Nope I just prefer my books without gay pedophilic necrophilia. What is wrong with Irving? He is a literary author and is one academic generation from Vonnegut. Burroughs was a junky hack.

>> No.2910950
File: 141 KB, 563x528, 1345005019150.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
2910950

>not something you want to read on the subway

>> No.2910958

>>2910950

It is a giant pink book with a heart on it. Also if you have ever lived in NYC you would know that the subway is faster than a cab and owning a car is a mistake.

>> No.2910972

My friends actually like this book, and they're somewhat of a crowd that hates meme-dropping, obnoxious pop culture references that don't fit and other things like that.

Could someone try and split their bias against Ready Player One, give me a summary, and then tell me what they hated about it?

>> No.2910994

>>2910972

target audience is world of warcraft crowd, reeks of the worst type of fanboy pop-culture effluvia, story is meh, characters aren't compelling, the entire rationale for the entire 'treasure hunt' part of the story is fucking retarded...

its a bad children's book

>> No.2910998

>>2910972
Your friends are just as bad as the people they claim to hate. Believe me, I knew some people like that, and they were just fucking awful.

>> No.2910999

>>2910998
>>2910994
Well, I still know next to nothing about this fucking book.

>> No.2911006

>Recommended: "Kitchen" by Banana Yoshimoto

>Avoid: "Infinite Jest" DFW sucks dicks like an OP.

>> No.2911010

>>2910999
This post :>>2910994 explained it completely, you blind pleb.

>> No.2911014

>>2911010

What is wrong with being a pleb? I for one am for the people not against them.

Recommend: In Dubious Battle

Avoid: Atlas Shrugged

>> No.2911030

Recommend: Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance.

Avoid: American Psycho (Unless you're really into long, bland diatribes about bland corporate life).

p.s. No-one point out that's the whole point of it, I know that. It's still boring as fuck for most of the novel because of it.

>> No.2911038

>>2910944

I don't think I've ever seen someone like Rand & stranger in a strange land simultaneously.

>> No.2911041

>>2910846

Is messiah anywhere near as good as Dune? I liked Dune and I don't want to ruin it with sequels.

>> No.2911045

>>2911041
They maintain a pretty high standard.

>> No.2911061

Recommend: Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn.
Avoid: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. No book with a concept that interesting should make me fall asleep that quickly.

>> No.2911069

>>2910000
A book by Abed Nadir for Abed Nadir, now a major motion picture by Abed Nadir

>> No.2911092

>>2911061

In fairness though, the film adaptation was heart wrenching.

>> No.2911144

>>2911041
Stop at book 3-4
5-6 are just weird as fuck and filled with sex