/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.4581073]

What are you reading, /v/irgins?

Time to rate.

No Exit by Sartre - pure 10.

[Anonymous No.4581076]

>>4581073
Im actually reading Ik Jan Cremer, book #2 that little girl is holding. lol

[Anonymous No.4581077]

>>4581073

At the moment I Am A Cat, I would give it a 10/10 for the prose alone.

How's Sartre outside of Nausea?

[Anonymous No.4581079]

>/v/irgins

anyway: Hell's Angels by Hunter S. Thompson

>>4581076
leer tellen

[Anonymous No.4581095]

>>4581079
dumbass

[M.N.K. No.4581100]

Still Don Quixote and reading stories from The Nightmare Factory.

[Anonymous No.4581206]

>>4581077
>prose
stop it kid

[Anonymous No.4581229]

>>4581073

Paradise Lost & Lord of The Rings (Fellowship)

[Anonymous No.4581236]

Crime and Punishment

Holy shit there's a reason this is considered one of the greatest

[Anonymous No.4581254]

Don Quixote. Loving it.

One thing confused me while reading it last night:
In the Sierra Morena this released chaingang member steals Sancho's donkey, but like 2 chapters later Sancho magically has a donkey again. How did this happen? Did my translator fuck up, or did Cervantes fuck up.

[Anonymous No.4581255]

Norwegian Wood - Murakami
Surprised By Joy - Lewis
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - Dick

I try to stay in the middle of several things...

[Anonymous No.4581262]

>>4581254
There are several considerations on those passages. They are again explicitly commented on in the second book of DQ. Whether it was a printing mistake (wrong chronology of chapters) or a deliberate weird element by Cervantes is hard to say at this point. Printing mistakes were much more common at the time of Cervantes.

In any case, Cervantes uses the mistake to create metafictional shenanigans (as always) and it's a good show. Look forward to Book II if you aren't that far yet. It's even better.

[Anonymous No.4581274]

>>4581255
>Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - Dick
enjoying it?

[Anonymous No.4581282]

>>4581073
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality by Eliezer Yudkowsky. It's a fan fiction where Harry is a genius raised by scientists. He approaches the new magical world he discovered with a scientific method and general intelligence... It's brilliant. http://hpmor.com/

[Anonymous No.4581289]

Reading Madame Bovary and Lolita at the moment, with Ik Jan Cremer, De duivelsverzen and American Psycho to be started next.

[Anonymous No.4581295]

>>4581282
You are an insurmountable autistic faggot, and a plebe.

[Anonymous No.4581335]

>>4581073

I'm reading Morrissey's Autobiography.

Delightfully insufferable/10

[Anonymous No.4581358]

[Anonymous No.4581397]

Marks' Capital - Finnish translation

[Anonymous No.4581416]

>>4581073
Decline of the West by Spengler

[Anonymous No.4581422]

The Sound and the Fury by Faulkner.

While the stream of consciousness is jarring at first, it gives the novel a unique feeling I've come to enjoy.

[Anonymous No.4581499]

>>4581077
My nigger. Soseki's like a Japanese J. D. Salinger. Kokoro had me on the brink of tears.

[Anonymous No.4581631]

>>4581073
No Exit is great OP.

Currently reading Fernando Pessoa's Book Of Disquiet
>tfw

[Anonymous No.4581640]

Half way through Stoner. It's nice, but not crushingly depressing, at least not yet I think.

[Anonymous No.4581645]

Finished 'Junky' by Burroughs approximately 25 seconds ago.
8/10 I'm a sucker for 20th century American writers and drug related literature in general.
I might tackle Naked Lunch although I tried once a few years ago and failed, hopefully now I have a better grasp.

[Anonymous No.4581646]

>>4581073
Das dritte Reich, Moeller van den Bruck

I found Decline of the West, read bits of it in a history class, but the pdf is in an incredibly crappy format

[Anonymous No.4581662]

>>4581640
It isn't crushingly depressing though. It's a demonstration of how a seemingly meaningless life can, in fact, be full of meaning and value. The impression he makes on the people around him is little, but the impression he makes on the reader (at least, if you have a sympathetic heart) is a fucking heavy emotional blow, and one that actually lasts a while after you put the book down

[Anonymous No.4581665]

>>4581254
the bit with sancho shitting and vomiting himself in the inn near the start is hilarious
seems so weird that a guy who has been dead for just shy of 400 years is able to make me laugh out loud
i love you, literature

[Anonymous No.4581668]

>>4581335
context of the gif?

[Anonymous No.4581676]

>>4581662

So far, I do find him heroic, in his own way. But yeah, the way people here talk about this book is misleading.

[Anonymous No.4581678]

Currently reading Pynchon's V.

Just got past the part about Vheissu and the attempted robbery of The Birth of Venus. Great stuff. It's crazy how knowledgable Pynchon is.

Finding Pynchon far easier to read than I did last time with Lot 49. I've settled into his style by now, I think.

[Anonymous No.4581726]

John Crowley's Little, Big.
It's sort of hard to objectively rate a book as you're reading it, but I feel like this has to be the best prose I've ever read. I'm about 400 pages in.

[Anonymous No.4581922]

Reading that Brothers Karamazov, started playing Civ 5 and have found it surprisingly addictive. I'm also trying to introduce a weaboo girl who doesn't really read a lot to more books and thought maybe Norwegian Wood would be easy enough to start from the wapanese bias.

[Anonymous No.4581997]

>>4581254
I just read that same part a few days ago. If I recall correctly, Sancho and Don Quixote came across that same thief on the road while they were on their way back to the inn. The thief saw them and straight up ran off the road, leaving them to get back Sancho's donkey (together with the pack saddle that they earlier robbed from the barber with the basin; a fact that comes up a bit later on).

As interesting as it is, I really am not enjoying Don Quixote. For every amusing incident, there are pages and pages of boring, tedious, over-described events. I see the value in the text but I guess I just don't see why it's so lauded (unless it's primarily for its historical importance).

[Anonymous No.4581998]

A Faroese translation of Hamlet by Heðin Brú.

[Anonymous No.4582013]

>>4581997
>there are pages and pages of boring, tedious, over-described events

If you're talking about the long digressive tales about shepherds and princesses or something, just skip them. They aren't that important, at least if you don't know much of the literature that Cervantes is trying to make fun of.

They're gone in the second part, which everyone likes better than the first. The characters also become much more fleshed out and it becomes amazing, so please stick through it to part 2.

[Anonymous No.4582016]

Just bought a Swedish translation of Njals Saga which will be interesting to read.

[Anonymous No.4582017]

From a Logical Point of View by W.V.O. Quine
I disagree with virtually all of his substantial conclusions but he's a nice break from Heidegger/10
i.e.: 8/10

[Anonymous No.4582034]

>>4582013
Yes, that's pretty much exactly what I'm talking about. Although Don Quixote's dialogue itself is pretty overblown and verbose (although that is very in-character for him)

It's good to know that things change for the better eventually. Thank you very much for the advice: the last time I brought up my woes in reading Don Quixote on /lit/ the only responses I got to the effect of "if you don't absolutely love everything about it, you should just stop reading now because you just don't 'get' it", which was very discouraging.

[Anonymous No.4582054]

>>4582034

Also note that at the beginning of part two, which was published ten years after part one after big success and a false sequel by another writer, the characters talk about the publication of part one, which exists in the book's universe as well, and about all the flaws in it. How meta.

[Anonymous No.4582061]

The Complete works of H. P. Lovecraft.

I've been enjoying it so far. Some tales are better than others but most of them are quite interesting. The Outsider and Polaris are esp. good

[Anonymous No.4582087]

This and rereading Gatsby for fun

[Anonymous No.4582089]

>>4582034
I'm not that guy, I'm also reading Don Quixote and I wanted to know how you didn't decide to just skip all of the long passages about time-period chivalric literature on your own? It's not like references to pop-culture are ever funny and the point is clearly just "He's nuts and has these things memorized". Cervantes even pokes fun at referencing people and books in his introduction.

I am still glad to hear that drops away and the characters flesh out some in the second half, but I have other books I want to read in between.

Do you find yourself laughing at the book, anon? I definitely have been, but describing why it's funny would sound autistic as fuck lol.

[Anonymous No.4582150]

>>4582089
I'm pretty weird about skipping things in books so I read on through even though they were fairly boring. I didn't want to miss something that might have been actually important. At a certain point, I was kind of convinced that the adventures of Don Quixote was just a frame story in which to tell completely unrelated stories of romance and tragic lost loves. If I am to say that I have read Don Quixote and talk of my opinions on it, I feel like I need to have read all of it, but that might be just me.

There were several points that were pretty damn funny, like the two of them vomiting after chugging the wine and oil "potion" and the "blanketing" of Sancho that seems to be brought up far too frequently. The windmill incident happened fairly early on and was fairly short and undeveloped, which is surprising considering how iconic of an event that is in the popular perception of the work. I'm looking forward to more comedy because at about halfway through it's honestly been about 10% comedy, 20% unnecessarily lengthy dialogue, 30% armed robbery/assault, and 40% romance.

[Anonymous No.4582160]

today, I will try to fuck, so I am reading Cortazar. Always help. I dont know why.

[Anonymous No.4582165]

Foundation and Empire by Asimov
Portable Nietzsche
The New Penguin History of the World by J.M. Roberts

am I lit yet?

[Anonymous No.4582241]

>>4582087
One must imagine Le Sisyphus happy le

[Anonymous No.4582245]

technically i'm reading i, claudius and in a glass darkly, but i haven't touched either for ages. i'm thinking about picking up the white hotel tonight, i started it years ago but never finished and just recently was reminded of it

[Anonymous No.4582252]

Just finished Long Days Journey Into Night By O'Neill

Bretty sad

[Anonymous No.4582259]

>>4581077
Friendly reminder you are reading a translation.

At any rate, I found the writing in I am a cat to be slightly dry and too purple (I know it was for comedic intent but after 300 pages I wanted to kill myself).

[Anonymous No.4582292]

D.H. Lawrence Selected Stories

Flannery O'Connor Everything that Rises Must Converge

James Wood How Fiction Works

[Anonymous No.4582301]

>>4582150

I was suprised by the windmill too. I remember as a kid Don Quixote was described to me as "about a knight who is on a quest against windmills". Seemed like a reasonably funny plot but certainly isn't what the book is about.

[Anonymous No.4582305]

>>4581678
That's next on my list. Im so excited, but I didnt find CoL49 to be that hard to follow. I had to stop reading GR though because it was just. Too much.

[Anonymous No.4582319]

>>4581236
and then there's the epilogue

[Anonymous No.4582347]

>Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
8/10 so far, really spectacular sensation work, captures everything I like about Victorian writing without being too boring.

>Rant by Chuck Palahniuk
3/10, so edgy xD

[Anonymous No.4582363]

>>4582319
This. So much.

[Anonymous No.4582392]

>>4582319
God that was so hamfisted.

[Fuhrer Kitty No.4582396]

>>4582347
>Rant
Did you also get that it was the Bible?

[Anonymous No.4582397]

Short Stories by Stefan Zweig and Robert Musil.

Going through first half of the book, stories mostly are are short pleasant rides. Stefan Zweig stories always involves male/female protagonist falling deeply in love, twist being some psychological insight or moral lesson at the end of it, of which examples are gambling, becoming adult, losing your head, and trust. Last story of the first half is "Chess Story", which is well scored New York Review Books classics.
I read 4 stories in rage of 7 to 10 so far, few more to go till reaching other half of the book dedicated to Musil, the one who wrote "The Man Without Qualities", so look forward to that.

[Anonymous No.4582425]

Reading moravagine

5/10 so far. Was expecting more travelling/mischief and less 10 page monologues on stupid bullshit

[Anonymous No.4582434]

>>4581236
Does the translation matter?

[Anonymous No.4582439]

>>4581073
contact
-carl sagan

[Anonymous No.4582444]

>>4581073
Swann's Way (the Lydia Davis translation).

It took me a little while to get used to reading sentences that are each half a page in length, but I'm glad I persevered. I'm just wrapping up the Combray chapters and so far it's living up to its reputation. Already I can tell that this will end up being one of my favorite books.

9.5/10

[Anonymous No.4582476]

Annapurna by Maurice Herzog
6/10


The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories (Penguin) by HP Lovecraft
7/10

[Anonymous No.4582485]

>>4581676
I haven't been on /lit/ for a long time. People talk about Stoner now? That makes me really happy.

[Anonymous No.4582492]

>>4582485
>People talk about Stoner now?

Only sometimes.

[Anonymous No.4582497]

The Catcher in the Rye

Meh. Maybe i should've read it in HS instead of the summaries.

[Anonymous No.4582503]

The Idiot by Dostoevsky

[Anonymous No.4582506]

Finished The Idiot like half an hour ago. I'll probably just re-read the divine comedy now. Also almost every day few passages from Marcus Aurelius. Don't feel like getting into something new right now.

After this phase goes, I'll probably start with The Crime and Punishment.

[Anonymous No.4582507]

>>4582485
Stoner's been on the bestseller lists recently, if I'm not mistaken. It's always been discussed on /lit/ though, yeah.

[Anonymous No.4582508]

>>4582506
>>4582503
What did you think of it?

[Anonymous No.4582511]

under the volcano

im about a quarter of the way through it and i just cant seem to get into it

[Anonymous No.4582515]

>>4582434
Translation always matters with anything that must be translated, and that has more to do with faithfulness, that has to do with which you find the most pleasure in reading. In any work that's translated, I try to find at least three or four translations and compare to figure out which one suits me the best. In the case of Homer, I actually found four translations I think are excellent, but in very different ways: Bryant, Fitzgerald, Lombardo and Powell (Iliad only)

[Nova !D.4WEYmL1U No.4582517]

Reading Brandon Sanderson's The Way of Kings, part one. About one fifth of the book left and holy shit it has picked up in the last half. Really loving the characters, Dalinar in particularly is really interesting and I quite like the setting of Roshar. Really excited to pick up part two, actually.

[Anonymous No.4582523]

>>4582508
It's Dostoyevskij... starts amazing, then it drags for half a book, and an amazing ending.

I've often read about this book before I've actually read it that the 'idiocy' of the protagonist is supposed to be merely how out of place his good nature is within the upper class Russian society. While this is certainly true, I think that the prince is really a naive idiot and F.M. subtly hints at that only a naive idiot could hold such high and lofty beliefs about Russia in general and individuals in particular.

My favorite part was Ippolit's story about helping the poor family with the help of the former classmate he 'hated'.

It's a good book. Even the parts that drag as I've written earlier are interspersed with very interesting passages. I plan to return to it in the future, as I'm sure I've missed or misunderstood a lot of things.

I've read a Czech translation.

[Anonymous No.4582632]

I'm halfway through Y. Kawabata's Beauty and Sadness (Hibbet translation) and will finish it later today. I read Snow Country (Seidensticker translation) in December and was touched so I thought I'd give this a shot after seeing it in my local library.
I'm not enjoying it as much as Snow Country, though I do like it. I'm seeing some of the dialogue about art somewhat devoid of substance (perhaps it's only Keiko) but this isn't so major.
muh mid-20th century low-affect narration still makes it a 7/10

I want to read some Montaigne next, but I'm not sure where to start. Anyone have suggestions?

[Anonymous No.4582673]

The Well of Loneliness.
7.5/10.

[Anonymous No.4582736]

Just finished Speaker For the Dead by Orson Scott Card.

I was thinking of starting either the Galactic Milieu or the Wheel of Time series but after watching the butchered mess that was the Ender's Game movie I feel like just continuing with the series.

[Anonymous No.4584512]

Just finished Solaris.

Currently reading through The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories by Gene Wolfe.

Then it's onto Words of Radiance when that comes out.

[Anonymous No.4584743]

Reading Ovid's Metamorphoses
Also halfway done with War & Peace but I haven't read it for a couple of weeks.

Sometimes I relax and wind down with Of Mice and Men (need to read it for school as well)

Planning to read Cantenbury Tales next (the middle english would be a cool challenge, I hope)

[Anonymous No.4584792]

Why would you waste time on reading when you can just listen to Audio books whilst doing other stuff at the same time?

[Anonymous No.4584796]

Nothing.

I finished Stoner yesterday. Engulfed the book in two days. This hadn't happened to me since...

It left me deeply affected, torn to pieces.
>tfw

[Anonymous No.4584809]

The Elementary Particles by Michel Houellebecq, I've not read a book in about 3 months but I'm halfway through this one in a couple of days, really enjoying it so far. Not sure what to read next when I'm finished with this one.

[Anonymous No.4584816]

Finished reading If on a Winter's Night a Traveller and rereading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Shit was fun. Now starting Pale Fire. Pretty good so far.

[Anonymous No.4584823]

>mfw 4 books are currently shipping

[Anonymous No.4584837]

>>4584796
>It left me deeply affected, torn to pieces
I know that feel after finishing The Magus recently. It feels horrible and amazing at the same time.

Currently half way through Ender's Game. I'm not sold on it yet.

[Anonymous No.4584859]

I'm almost done reading Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky.

>mfw Ivan starts to lose it

[Anonymous No.4584924]

Vonnegut - Breakfast Of Champions

[Anonymous No.4585186]

Taken by the Wendigo

I'm hard.

[Anonymous No.4585193]

just finished the sound of waves
i am also reading The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester
on the side I got The Divine Comedy by Dante & Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

[Anonymous No.4585194]

>>4584823

Wasn't the guy in the pic an academic of some sort?

> Pale Fire
> A Short History of Decay

[Anonymous No.4585202]

>>4581073
Memoirs from the Underground.

I'm about finishing the parts where he is explaining his philosophy and I'm stunned, I didn't though that Dostoievski would be this gorgeus,

[Anonymous No.4585203]

>>4582736
Dude don't. It's much better just left the way it is. The end of the fourth book doesn't even conclude anything. It's just a load of pseudo-spiritual bullshit

[Anonymous No.4585213]

>>4584859
>TBK
If only we had the sequel, especially for Alyosha's development
>yfw=mfw

[Anonymous No.4585410]

>>4581073
Beyond Good and Evil by Nietzsche

[Anonymous No.4585424]

>>4581073

The Reprieve, also by Sartre.

[Anonymous No.4585439]

1Q84
My first Murakami book, probably a mistake, I should've went with something easier but I'm enjoying it.

[Anonymous No.4585602]

>>4581073

nice pic, now I'd like to read Lolita again

[Anonymous No.4585610]

Germany Marches East by Winston Churchill
Numbers (bible)
Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche
American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis

[Anonymous No.4586370]

How many books do you guys usually read at a time?

Is it bad to read multiple books at once?

[Anonymous No.4586419]

After the First Death by Robert Cormier, it's just some average YA I have to read for school 5/10

[Anonymous No.4586514]

>>4581073
Norwegian Wood- Haruki Murakami.
I love it, but I just finished Dance Dance Dance, and Sputnik Sweetheart so it feels a little like I've read this all before.

All in all, I'm really enjoying this. Out of 10, I'd give it an 8. If I had read Norwegian Wood first, it'd probably be a 10 for me.

[Anonymous No.4586559]

>>4585202
lol dude keep going, it's the world's first greentext story

[Anonymous No.4586569]

>>4586370
>Is it bad to read multiple books at once?
Uh, no, what the fuck?

[Anonymous No.4586573]

>>4586370
Not at all. I'm always reading multiple books at a time.

[Anonymous No.4586924]

>>4581254
wow why dont u read the book u stupid dumbfuck and its not a donkey its dapple

[Anonymous No.4586935]

>>4581997
You are not enjoying it because you are not reading it in it's native language.

[whydididothat No.4587027]

Dodger by Terry Pratchett

[Anonymous No.4587031]

>>4586935

I tried reading it in its native language once, but because I didn't know Spanish and so I didn't know what was happening.

[Anonymous No.4587070]

>>4581073
Just finished The Idiot like 5 mins ago.

That fucking ending man. Soooooooo cheesed off right now.

Feel like reading the Grand Inquisitor just to cool my nerves.

[Anonymous No.4587075]

>>4581073
that pic gives me fatherly protective feels

[Anonymous No.4587081]

>>4587075
Yeah, chances are that you're gonna marry (if you ever do) a fat whale and your sons are gonna turn out ugly as a bat.
That's why I'm not marrying.

[Anonymous No.4587087]

The Master and Margarita

too early to tell

[Anonymous No.4587093]

>>4587081
i'm with you there m8, chances of spawning such a sweet patrician child are so small that you're better off opting out of a raw deal.

[Anonymous No.4587101]

>>4587093
Do you think the one in OP's pic is for sale?

[Anonymous No.4587114]

>>4587101
the responsibility for a nice child would be terrifying as well.

[Anonymous No.4587168]

I really need to get off this site, way too many pedos and animefags

[Anonymous No.4587184]

the colonizer and the colonized by albert memmi
it's good and all but if i read anymore about africa i'm gonna shoot myself in the face with misery

[Anonymous No.4589272]

>>4581073
pic sauce pls

[Anonymous No.4589275]

>>4589272
google image search and then krautchan wiki