/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.6071691]

What books is /lit/ reading at the moment? Include author with the title of the book. Pic related.

[Anonymous No.6071779]

Include author with the title of the book. Pic related.

[Anonymous No.6071787]

My cousin read a collection of hg wells stories and said they were mostly boring, aside from war of the worlds and the invisible man

[Anonymous No.6071795]

Recently finished, it was ok. The plot itself was the weakest part.

[Anonymous No.6071801]

>>6071795
forgot pic

[Anonymous No.6071809]

Pol Pot: The History of a Nightmare by Philip Short

[Anonymous No.6072017]

>>6071691

Got busy for a few days and couldn't read. Only like 215 pages in, so a long way to go still. I'm going to devote a good part of my weekend to reading it. I want to finish the first book, at least.

I really expected it to be dry, and I was going to read it basically to have read it.

IT's fucking hilarious so far. Would recommend.

[Anonymous No.6072031]

[Anonymous No.6072124]

>>6071809
Just look at that shit-eating grin.

[Anonymous No.6072128]

>>6071691
One of my two favorite poets. The other one being Henry Rollins (look up Nights Behind the Treeline if you don't believe me).

[Anonymous No.6072832]

I have not started reading it yet, but I finished Fight Club 20 min ago, and I am probably going to read this through tonight.

Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

[Anonymous No.6072841]

>>6071787
>War of the Worlds
>Not boring

wat?

[Anonymous No.6072861]

>>6072841
War of the worlds is great though.

As for me, I am reading Genealogy of Morals

[Anonymous No.6072884]

>>6071691

[Anonymous No.6072906]

>>6071691

[Anonymous No.6072915]

>>6072841
War of the Worlds was great.
>I got spooked reading it when I was 11

[Anonymous No.6072918]

>>6072906
oh boy

[Anonymous No.6072962]

[Anonymous No.6072978]

[Anonymous No.6072982]

trying to choose what to read first, Confederacy of Dunces, Stoner or Confessions of a Mask

[Anonymous No.6072990]

Palahniuk's Choke
Its fairly entertaining.

[Anonymous No.6073011]

[Anonymous No.6073483]

Bump.

[Anonymous No.6073494]

>>6071801
>>6072978
>>6072990
>>6073011
>>>/r/books

[Meow No.6073503]

Simulacra and Simulation
Infinite Meme

[Anonymous No.6073870]

Invitation to a Beheading by Nabokov

It's good.

[Anonymous No.6073925]

[Anonymous No.6073952]

[Anonymous No.6076068]

>>6071691

Midnight Tides - Steven Erikson

[Anonymous No.6076078]

pic for the most part. It's amazing. So far I'm going with

Gravity's Rainbow > Against the Day > Crying of Lot 49 > Inherent Vice = V.

I'm not clear what that weird Inuit meteor thing that vaguely destroyed late 19th century Manhattan was all about exactly, but I'm 100% sure it's symbolic of 9/11

[Anonymous No.6076085]

[Anonymous No.6076204]

Finishing tomorrow.

[Anonymous No.6076218]

Anathem by Neal Stephenson. Fun ideas, moving story, boring prose.

[Anonymous No.6076248]

>Selected Poetry and Prose- Rilke
What a stunner Rilke is to read. Such earthly grace in the way he walks along sowing words.

>Collected Poetry- Mallarme
Fairly early into this. Mallarme definitely requires some working with. This is the kind of poet that I feel is lost tremendously in translation (And I don't usually feel that way, not even in regards to Baudy or Rimbaud.)

>Ovid's Metamorphoses
Mandelbaum's translation is fantastic. I have to slow myself down in reading it because the words just escape so quickly and seamlessly from poet to translator. The Bacchus sections were astonishing, as were the early creation sections. Perseus has been less of interest, but the descriptions of him killing hundreds of men are a hoot.

>One Hundred Years of Solitude
I have been consistently devastated by this book. I read a chapter on the bus ride to work every morning and it always hits me hard. Probably one of the best novels I have ever read.

[Anonymous No.6076311]

>>6071801
I just finished this! I thought the same--that it was rather straightforward, though I still enjoyed it quite a bit

[Anonymous No.6076317]

Barely stared it, but the first few chapters are engaging. Just finished Brave New World and read Doors of Perception not too long ago

[Anonymous No.6076318]

>>6072990

i seem to have misplaced my anal bead. have you seen it?

[Anonymous No.6076322]

Been working on the decline and fall for about three months now. I'm nowhere near halfway.

[kitty !kitty/EnNg No.6076350]

well, i'm reading a couple of pleb things right now, 'the terror' by dan simmons, it's an utter trash, i dunno why i even waste my time, at least i read it very fast and i know that i will not read his 'hyperion' or any other book anymore; and 'arsene lupin, gentleman cambrioleur' by maurice leblanc, it's pretty amusing. oh, and also the egyptian poem about the battle of kadesh in a couple of translations including one in a slightly strange verse, but that's a pretty short one. neither of those translations seems authentic though

>>6071787

and you always trust the taste of your cousin and think that others should too?

[Anonymous No.6076355]

WAITING FOR THIS BAD BOY TO ARRIVE AT MY LOCAL BRANCH

[Anonymous No.6076378]

After trying and failing to read Gravity's Rainbow a dozen times this actually appears to be palatable. Why didn't Pynchon just write like this his whole career?

[Anonymous No.6076385]

>>6076378
Pynchon is a bad writer and you're a bad person for succumbing to herd mentality and reading his crap.

[Anonymous No.6076388]

[Anonymous No.6076392]

>>6076385

Pynch is the real deal, you fell for a meme

[Anonymous No.6077471]

Plato - Just made it to the Republic, most of the dialogues were translated well, but compared to Jowett's Republic, this one is clunky.

[Anonymous No.6077484]

>>6071691

About a quarter into Catch 22. Going to start Gombrich's Story of Art soon as well.


>>6076248

>100 years of solitude

Have you read Autumn of the Patriarch? If yes, how is 100 yrs compared to it? Because I couldn't stand AotP on the whole, but I want to give Marquez another shot

[Anonymous No.6077577]

[Anonymous No.6077584]

>>6077577
this isnt "books /lit/ trolled you into reading"

[Anonymous No.6077589]

>>6077584
Didn't get it from /lit/, and I'm actually loving it. Might turn out to be my favorite book

[Anonymous No.6077606]

>>6077589
my condolences

[Anonymous No.6077624]

>>6077606
my edges.

[Anonymous No.6077633]

>>6077624
my spooks

[Anonymous No.6077639]

>>6077606
>>6077624
>>6077633
I bet neither of you have read Cicero, disgusting plebs trying to one-up each other

[Anonymous No.6077663]

Bouvard and Pécuchet by Flaubert.
Holy shit it's funny as hell.

[Anonymous No.6077712]

>>6076388
how is it

[Anonymous No.6077777]

For myself:
>Women and Men by Joseph McElroy

For my tutorials:
>A Woman Killed with Kindness by Thomas Heywood
>Sämtliche Erzählungen by Heinrich von Kleist

[Anonymous No.6078284]

Just finished The Death of Ivan Ilych last night and started The Kreutzer Sonata today. The book also includes Family Happiness, Master and Man.

[Anonymous No.6078306]

>>6078284

I've been meaning to get into Tolstoy at some point, do you like that translation? Or the story, for that matter?

[Anonymous No.6078342]

Pls no bully.

[Anonymous No.6078352]

>>6072832
Good luck with reading it in a night. It's short but the prose is going to be a bit challenging to tackle if you start feeling tired.

[Anonymous No.6078361]

>>6078342
>"The last unicorn is the best book I have ever read"

[Anonymous No.6078362]

Do you guys just read one book at a time?

I do, but once I start reaching the end of a book I feel very tempted to start another book I've been waiting to read just before

[Anonymous No.6078364]

The Wealth of Nations (re-reading and annotating)
Leviathan
The Histories

[Anonymous No.6078365]

>>6078361
> implying it isn't the best book I have ever read

[Anonymous No.6078371]

>>6078362

>>6078364
here

I typically read non-fiction, so to avoid monotony I will frequently switch up the material.

[Anonymous No.6078407]

Currently reading 'Typee'. I'm looking for more adventure story style books like this too. Got 'Lord Jim' by Conrad up next. Any recs?

[Anonymous No.6078468]

>>6078306
I can't really speak much to the translation, but I have no particular problems with it.

I would highly recommend The Death of Ivan Ilych. I found it to be both quite funny and horribly depressing at the same time, overall an enjoyable take on something that will be befall us all. I particularly liked how he uses the structure of the story to serve his purposes, and how not a single word is wasted, every detail further elucidating the message.

Only just begun The Kreutzer Sonata, but so far it is certainly not a disappointment.

Read roughly half of Family Happiness about a year ago or so, kinda gradually stopped. I remember finding it surprising dull compared to what I've now been reading. I was in a much worse place mentally then, so that may have hindered my appreciation of it. It also is translated by someone else (J.D. Duff did this, Aylmer Maude the others), for what that's worth.

tl;dr good stuff, check it out.

just had this thought: why not put then"tl;dr" at the beginning of the post, like a synopsis is at the beginning of a paper? Seems weird to put it at the bottom

[Anonymous No.6078510]

>>6077712
It's a hit and miss."The Stray Horse" was beautifully written. He describes an "other" self following him through recollections of his childhood love for his piano teacher and trying to pull him away from them, a bunch of other theater-related metaphors for imagining past situations, and how women are only attracted to the child in him, all while switching back and forth in time. Near the end I found that though I was loving his thoughts about the nature of memory, I barely had any idea what was going on, the reality he was describing had entirely fragmented. It reminded me of Bruno Schulz except it was far less flowery. There was some boring parlor situation story, then one about a reclusive rich man's daughter and how her fantasy life is apparently a connection to another world, it wasn't particularly interesting. The only story that's come close to "The Stray Horse" in the collection so far is about this theater usher who isn't getting along well in the city when he suddenly gets a green glow in his eyes that allows him to see in the dark. He uses his weird appearance to threaten a butler into letting him lay down on a mattress in a dark dining room full of glass cases in order to wait for some ethereal woman to walk over him, who turns out to be his host's daughter. He sniffs her dress.

tl;dr almost of all of Hernandez's narrators have a mix of self-loathing and ridiculous pride, your typical romantic young man who doesn't belong anywhere, and they're always idealizing some woman from afar in the weirdest of ways. Apparently Hernandez wasn't that different.He had a passion for fat women too.

I also have Lands of Memory, it's next.

[Anonymous No.6078527]

>>6078362
No, I didn't want to list them all because if its something I won't finish in a day or two, I may put it down for longer periods of time before coming back to it and I didn't think it fit the query to include them all. I could say I'm also reading A Streetcar Named Desire, Don Quixote, a textbook on Ancient Greece from my college days that I didn't read back then, canonical texts from various major world religions, and quite a few others, but it seemed insincere. I have a really short attention span and have to constantly switch between what I'm reading.

[Anonymous No.6078561]

>>6071691
>the first men in the moon
>in

How could they publish this book without seeing such an error?

[Anonymous No.6078569]

>>6078561
>How could they publish this book without seeing such an error?

Without spoiling the plot of the book, my understanding is that this seeming error is in fact correct.

If one were to read the book, and its accompanying introduction, a reasonable suspicion that the title is an example of faulty grammar would be alleviated. Trust me on this.

[Anonymous No.6078609]

>>6078468

Awesome, thanks for the run down anon.
now that you mention it, I have no idea...I'm going to start tl;dr'ing my posts at the beginning now

[Anonymous No.6078662]

Tijolo de Segurança, by Carlos Heitor Cony.

[Anonymous No.6078683]

House of Leaves, and it's a horrendous piece of shit that has way too much hype.

[Anonymous No.6078769]

I haven't read any Vonnegut before.

100 pages in; it's pretty enjoyable. A fast read.

[Anonymous No.6079028]

>>6078609
makes perfect sense right? but that's the kinda thing I will only think of shortly after burning some reefer

Also, if you're interested in looking into some more Russian lit besides what's always discussed here, I would recommend One Day in the life of Ivan Denisovich by I forget how to spell his name and too lazy to look it up, and We by Zamyatin.

>>6078769
I have that edition of that book, first paperback edition iirc. Went to a new friend's house for the first time awhile back, went to his bookcase almost immediately as I am wont to do, commented how much I liked the book and that it was cool he had that edition, he told me to take it.
Also, read more Vonnegut. His novels range from worthwhile to great, and his short stories are great, too.

[Anonymous No.6079122]

>>6079028

As a matter of fact, I am! I have a collection of short stories by Gogol and Chekov coming in the mail, but I'll keep an eye out for those as well!

>>6078769

I haven't read that, but Cat's Cradle is a good one, too, imo. I prefer it to Slaughterhouse, actually

[Anonymous No.6079307]

halfway through the first novella. an Anon recommended it to me. it's pretty good

[Anonymous No.6079561]

>>6078769
>>6079122

If you've enjoyed your experiences with Vonnegut, I would also suggest some Joseph Heller. I'm going to assume you've read Catch-22, and recommend Picture This and Something Happened. I enjoyed Catch-22 but thought those two were much better.

[Anonymous No.6079590]

Not really literature, but I'm reading it right now.

[Anonymous No.6079642]

>>6079590
lol i posted about this book in another thread. the last two chapters are real good. not thrilled about the first few chapters, i think there are better intros out there.

[Anonymous No.6079697]

Critique of Pure Reason by Kant

[Anonymous No.6079706]

Just finished pic related. Started it last night after finishing stoner, wanted something a little less heavy. It was entertaining enough, but I really failed to see how people find it so profound. The primary message being the horrors of war, pounded into the reader's head with soitgoes soitgoes soitgoes is kind of usurped by the other main theme, that death doesn't matter and we poor humans don't see the world for what it truly is like the based tralfamodorians.

6/10 was ok. The humor was the best part I think.

[Anonymous No.6079755]

>>6079561

The hell, I'm 150 pages into C22 right now. Weird.
I never pictured Heller as being anything but a one hit wonder kind of guy; interesting to see he's done more that's arguably better. Why do you think they're better?

>>6079706

Yeah same. I'd give it a 7, probably. Have only read that and Cat's Cradle, but I liked CC better of the two.

[Anonymous No.6079796]

>>6079706
>>6079755
try Timequake for an easy read. if you really want to laugh your ass of then Hocus Pocus

[Anonymous No.6079818]

>>6079706
Yeah, It might have seemed more profound back in the 60s but we grew up with post modernism. I also liked the humour the best, along with the metafictional Kilgore Trout.

[Anonymous No.6079827]

>>6071691
Hyperion- Dan Simmons

[Anonymous No.6079841]

>>6079755
Catch-22 was his first published work, and I feel like he vastly improved on his delivery, his distinct style.

Something Happened came something like 15 years after Catch-22 and iirc he spent roughly a decade working on it. It is the best of the three in that sense to me, but I did also find it a relatively difficult read as it is not only dense as all fuck, but also has long chapters, paragraphs, sentences, and even parentheticals (upwards of two or three pages easy).

Picture This is among my all-time favorites. It came out in the late 80s, so about 25 years after Catch-22. It is a remarkably unique work in that it has no protagonist, no plot. Hits on all of his favorite themes, narrated by Aristotle in a painting being done by Rembrandt (actual painting, not recognized as Aristotle until the 20th century), and exploring the golden age of Holland, classical Greece, and modern America, lampooning capitalism, war, etc. all the while. I recommend this more than any other book.

[Anonymous No.6079845]

About to start this. What am I in for?

[Anonymous No.6079861]

Picked this up after finishing Walden. I just wanted something easy to read while on a long plane ride and it served that purpose well. I picked up a bunch of used books so I'm either going to read To The Lighthouse or Portrait of an Artist next.

[Anonymous No.6079872]

>>6079796
I did not find Timequake to be such an easy read, but I had just ingested two tabs of LSD roughly six or seven hours before reading it, so I imagine that might have something to do with it.

[Kirtpole No.6080020]

Hopscotch by Julio Cortazar

[Anonymous No.6080030]

>>6080020
Have you read "Letter to a Young Lady in Paris" yet?

[Kirtpole No.6080040]

>>6080030
No, should I?

[Anonymous No.6080045]

>>6080040
You should read all his short stories, but Paris is his best

[Kirtpole No.6080052]

>>6080045
I have Bestiario, I just haven't read it yet. I will after Hopscotch.

[Anonymous No.6080063]

>>6077777
Where did you find a copy of that? I have been looking for it and I have been unable to find it.

[Kirtpole No.6080067]

>>6080063
I'm from Argentina, so you can find it in any bookstore in here. I don't know in your place though...

[Anonymous No.6080071]

>>6080063
There's an epub floating around the most obscure regions of the web

[Anonymous No.6080265]

>>6078306>>6078306
Come to think of it, one issue I have with either Tolstoy or the translation is sporadic inconsistencies in tense.