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/lit/ - Literature

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5170952 No.5170952[DELETED]  [Reply] [Original]

What was the last book that you enjoyed?

>> No.5170957

>>5170952
What about the one you learn from?

>> No.5170966

>>5170957
Do you enjoy learning?

>> No.5170967

Wizard`s First Rule, when I was 15. I am now 21.

>> No.5170974

>>5170957
>2deep4Bertrand
I really hate dichotomies like this that lack all nuance yet hold yet seem to hold a confidence that weak people lack and are thus drawn to.

>> No.5170978

>>5170952
Agamemnon's daughter - kadare

>> No.5170980

>>5170974
What do you expect? Russell was a hack who pretty much got it wrong on the whole line.

>> No.5170981

>>5170966
>assuming that everyone is an empty hedonist

It's like dealing with children here. Has it ever occurred to you that some people do things because they provide a variety of benefits to the soul and may ultimately provide the tools to do something else. Among these things, immediate enjoyment may often not be found. Instead, one might find frustration, anger, and loathing. This does not however, mean the thing is not worth doing or that the person will not do it.

>> No.5170992

Chapterhouse Dune.

>> No.5170995

To get back to OP's question, the last book that I enjoyed was VALIS.

>> No.5170999

Chartism by Thomas Carlyle.

>> No.5171189

>>5170974
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.

>> No.5171194

I don't enjoy books. I read solely as an attempt to impress others.

>> No.5171305

Just finished Neuromancer. It was very enjoyable. Before that I read Anna Karenina, and before that, Stoner. I enjoyed them all.

I get that some books are quite difficult to enjoy while reading them but I am still glad I read them when I finished (Faulkner comes to mind, for me).

>> No.5171377

>>5170952
Why can't a boast about books I haven't read?

>> No.5171378

NW by Zadie Smith

>> No.5171384

>>5171194
Wow /v/ that retarded joke sure is hilarious the millionth time you autistically spam it

>> No.5171391

china mieville - the scar

>> No.5171399

>>5170981
So you don't enjoy acquiring tools?

>> No.5171411

>>5170952
Les Miserables.
1st time I finish a 2300 pages book.
I find Hugo is a weak storyteller. He clearly doesn't know shit about social misery. He did a bit of reasearch, the rest is weak imagination.
But he's a remarkable philosopher.
Thoughts on revolution, progress, hedonism, sacrifice, heroes, god, faith, religion, politics, war...
It's mostly a book about the XIXth Century.

The good part in the storytelling is the part about Marius, who is Hugo himself. It's the autobiographical part.

Hugo was raised by a rich authoritarian royalist grandfather, who hated the revolution and Napoleon.
Young Hugo didn't know he had a father, a Napoleon soldier (the grandfather hated his son-in-law).
The grandfather threw Hugo (who showed Republican sympathies) out of the house. Hugo was then too proud to come back begging for money. So he lived in poverty for a few years, before struggling as a translator.
Hugo himself took part in the barricades, in 1830, IIRC.

Can't say how much I loved this book.
Of course, it's not James Joyce, or Thomas Pynchon.
But I prefer content and honesty to pure stylism.

>> No.5171418

The last book I read: For Whom the Bell Tolls.

And the book before that: The Divine Comedy.

And the book before that: The Master and Margarita.

Read to learn, learn to enjoy m8

>> No.5171419

>>5170981
So you don't enjoy learning?

>> No.5171423

>>5171411
>of course it's not James Joyce or Thomas Pynchon
>reading a translation
plebbus optimus maximus

>> No.5171430

>>5171423
I read Les Miz in French.

>> No.5171433

>>5171384
Not him but I actually do that.
I only read to impress my friends and make sure to read in public as often as possible in order to show off.
I haven't read any philosopher's work but I've read multiple pages of the SEP and pretend to be an expert on philosophy.

>> No.5171871

>>5170952
Hunchback of Notre Dame, Victor Hugo. Only damn thing the French did right.

>> No.5171905

>>5170952
The Crito by Plato

>> No.5172219

The daylight war
inb4 fantasy pleb.

>> No.5172237

Not finished it yet but really really enjoying Teatro Grottesco by Thomas Ligotti. Made me realise just how much I used to force myself to enjoy Lovecraft, whereas this guy's writing is actually unsettling to me.

>> No.5172501

>>5172237
>"A modern day Lovecraft"
>Into the trash it goes

Only later did I understand the magnitude of my error

>> No.5173084

>>5170952
>enjoying books
reported

>> No.5173091

The Demolished Man

>> No.5173107

>>5170957
You learn, either because you enjoy learning, or because you want to 'boast' to the interviewer about your qualifications.

>> No.5173114

>>5170952
None of my friends read so reading to "boast" about it would be pointless.

>> No.5173189

>>5170952

I have never enjoyed reading a book. I have occasionally enjoyed the sensation of learning a book's contents, but the act of reading appalls me to the same degree as the act of cunnilingus. The end might justify the means, but I would never lick pussy for the taste.

Russell's banal assertion does not differ from any other vague truism in that it is either relatively false or absolutely true depending on which side of it one decides to lawyer from. I have read many books, the contents of which were as useful as they were tedious, without proudly informing every person in my regular correspondence. Unless the simple statement that I read is a boast, I do not boast in saying this. Yet, since I did not enjoy reading those books, am I to count my need for the contents as part and parcel of enjoyment? Certainly not without lawyer's tricks.

In this very thread, the usual suspects have reared their tiny heads to contend the eternal truth and accuracy of the quotation by Russell with the expected battery of inane semantics. The vicious circle of liberal phrase-mongering repeats itself.

>> No.5173235 [DELETED] 
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5173235

>>5170952
>Textbook either or fallacy

What a massive FAGGOT.

>> No.5173282

>>5173189
7/10

>> No.5173319

I don't know, but I enjoy reading Sci - Fi more than any other kind of book. Always dreamed and it was an ultimate goal in my life to become an astronaut so maybe thats the reason

>> No.5173325

>>5170952

Leviathan (re-read)

>> No.5173339

>>5173189

i dig literally everything you're saying ace. considering a lawyer's tricks, i further extent your dead dog hermeneutics into their logical conclusion: that all forms of communication be rendered illegal, that discourse stops at the point of argumentation, instead of proceeding from it, and that we all collectively walk off of really tall cliffs.

>> No.5173367

>>5173339

Hi Stan!

>> No.5173381

>>5170952
plutarch lives

>> No.5173382

>>5173367

sap

>> No.5173390

>>5173382

Where have you been? Why have you forsaken us?

>> No.5173404

>>5173390

Eastern Europe. Territorial squabbles and inheritance problems. blood feud shawty

>> No.5173409

>>5173339

Where's the point to be argued in empty phrases? Any fishwife can throw about 'either' and 'or' like so many air-drowned mackerel, but neither she nor we can make a worthy conversation of it.

Russell's false premise is a non-starter, as it is obvious to everyone that there are more than two paltry motives for any literary jaunt; even were we to discount the force of a teacher's authority, we could never forget the force of necessity. Necessary things require neither pleasure nor boast -- I do not eat my vegetables or shit them out for the pleasure of it, nor do my customary boasts concerning the size and texture of my stool necessarily follow.

Worship your analytic idols if you must, sing those sickening praises to this dead liberal profit, but do not make a mountain out of his every mole-hill aphorism.

>> No.5173420

>>5173409

>*prophet

Don't know how that happened. Shit.

>> No.5173438

>>5173409

I'm with you with regard to russell's idiotic quote. your post, however, was about reading as a whole. babies, bathwater, etc

>fishwife

return to us from middle earth

>> No.5173462

>>5173438
>I'm with you with regard to russell's idiotic quote. your post, however, was about reading as a whole. babies, bathwater, etc

In the bit on reading, I was shooting for the negative of Russell's positive -- reading is never enjoyed by anyone for its own sake, excepting perhaps by a certain fictional Russian. Couldn't we play with words to make it so everyone hated reading, and only liked the results?

This is what Russell does with his own word-game. Neither of us if correct, but each of our statements is as good as the other.

>return to us from middle earth

No, I like it here.

>> No.5173494

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rea9zYEqE3E

>> No.5173507
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5173507

>>5173462
>No, I like it here.

>> No.5173509

>>5171189
You sure of that ?

>> No.5173515

>>5170952

Ham on rye - Bukowski

>> No.5173519

>>5170952
Haiku by Andrew Vachss

>> No.5173525

>>5171430
>I read Les Miz in French

And you still think Hugo isn't a style author ?

Currently reading Black Spring. No easy (not an English native) but I enjoy it.

>> No.5173547

>>5170952
How about reading to gain knowledge?

>> No.5174105

>>5173547
Exactly. Isnt that entertaining...?

Anyways, entertaining for the exlusive sake of it is, for me, reading sci-fi. When I was a child my dream and ultimate goal in life was to be an astronaut. Loved all things related with the Universe.

>> No.5175197

>>5170952
Ham On Rye.

I've never read Bukowski before and I enjoyed his style. He's as raw as any Appalachian author and I dig that.

>> No.5175484

>>5171871
>Not reading Madame Bovary

>> No.5176028
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5176028

>>5170952
Willard and His Bowling Trophies

>> No.5176031

I find that I enjoy most of the books I read, and I also brag about them. So for me, it was The Importance of Being Earnest

>> No.5176050

>>5176031
The Critic as Artist is superb, better than anything I had read by Wilde when I was still in school. If you want more of his ironic, hedonistic philosophy, read both parts of The Critic as Artist.

>> No.5178525

Flashman.