/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.9623505]

ITT: Current book you're reading, are you enjoying it?

[Anonymous No.9623507]

Leave this board and never return if any one of these applies to you:
:>you read any form of genre fiction
>you barely know your classics
>you tend to believe that if you like a given work, it is justified on an artistic level
>you think everyone's opinion should be accepted and respected
>you speak a single language
>you read contemporary versions of Shakespeare or Milton
>you read for the plot
>you read for entertainment
>you rarely read nonfiction
>you don't have a solid grounding in philosophy
>you don't have at least have some understanding of the Three Tragedians and Homer
>you have little to no understanding of literature outside of your cultural horizon
>you have little to no understanding of literature within your own cultural horizon
>you mostly read contemporary literature
>you believe 'the author is dead'
>you make your literary analysis proceed from ideology
>you think intricate prose is 'pretentious' and that the author 'should just get to the point'
>your rarely read poetry
>you think Rhythm and Rhyme is just useless rules and laws restricting creativity
>you have a hard time explaining why you like a given work
>you have a hard time forming structured and relevant literary criticism
>you tend to refuse to judge works for yourself, rather relying on the opinions of literary authorities
>you rarely read for more than one or two hours straight

[Anonymous No.9623510]

>>9623505
still life with woodpecker

only finished the first part. so far not really but now that they introduced the bomber im expecting the story to start moving along to something more interesting than just the life of a sheltered could-have-been mom

[Anonymous No.9623513]

Leave this board and never return if any one of these applies to you:
>you read any form of genre fiction
>you barely know your classics
>you tend to believe that if you like a given work, it is justified on an artistic level
>you think everyone's opinion should be accepted and respected
>you speak a single language
>you read contemporary versions of Shakespeare or Milton
>you read for the plot
>you read for entertainment
>you rarely read nonfiction
>you don't have a solid grounding in philosophy
>you don't have at least have some understanding of the Three Tragedians and Homer
>you have little to no understanding of literature outside of your cultural horizon
>you have little to no understanding of literature within your own cultural horizon
>you mostly read contemporary literature
>you believe 'the author is dead'
>you make your literary analysis proceed from ideology
>you think intricate prose is 'pretentious' and that the author 'should just get to the point'
>your rarely read poetry
>you think Rhythm and Rhyme is just useless rules and laws restricting creativity
>you have a hard time explaining why you like a given work
>you have a hard time forming structured and relevant literary criticism
>you tend to refuse to judge works for yourself, rather relying on the opinions of literary authorities
>you rarely read for more than one or two hours straight

[Anonymous No.9623518]

Zarathustra

Yeah, turns out I'm more of a Nietzsche guy than expected. Sometimes wonder if I should worry about being too influenced by it given how few books I have under my belt, but luckily that's a meme.

[Anonymous No.9623525]

>>9623505
I'm reading this. About 25% of the way through and loving it. I just love learning about the universe in general.

>inb4 tip fedora

[Anonymous No.9623529]

>>9623513
Every day I labor to live up to this standard, non ironically.
Elitism continues to improve me as a person.

[Anonymous No.9623532]

>Current book you're reading
Campbell Biology - 10th Edition
The Poetry of Sir Samuel Ferguson
>are you enjoying it?
very much so

[Anonymous No.9623811]

>>9623513
>you speak a single language
b-but anon, How do you go about learning new languages? I personally can't no matter what i've tried. What am i doing wrong?

[Anonymous No.9623903]

>>9623811
don't give up. keep studying the language.

[Anonymous No.9623924]

>>9623513
You're kind of a faggot aren't you?

[Anonymous No.9623927]

Reading Michael Kohlhaas right now and it's alright. It started out pretty great and I still like the premise a lot. But all those relations of the dozen titles, families, names etc. is way overboard for a small book like that and I think you could've solved it better. Just look at this shit, why would you need it in a book with >150 pages. At least half of them are completely irrelevant anyway.

[Anonymous No.9623929]

anti-oedipus

very much so

[Anonymous No.9623952]

Lolita

[Anonymous No.9623958]

Snow Country. It's comfy, better than most I read recently.

[Anonymous No.9623959]

>>9623505
The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao.

Sorta good. I like Diaz' prose.

[Anonymous No.9623983]

>>9623505
The Exegesis of Philip K Dick.
>tfw I took of the dust jacket
I'm reading all about it, pretty comfy mostly sometimes intense.
So yes I'm enjoying the evening hours I spend with it so far.

>>9623513
So I can't read anything?
>non-fiction is a subgenre of fiction.

[Anonymous No.9624138]

Mason & Dixon

no.

[Anonymous No.9624231]

Just started reading it. It's good so far, David is talking about African music and Classical music.

[Anonymous No.9624241]

>>9624138
Just wait till you get to the mechanickal duck

[Anonymous No.9624252]

Finnegan's Wake
Still on Book I. I feel like a lot of things are going over my head, but I'm mostly looking for all the instances of HCE and ALP and the kids. A lot of parts make me laugh aloud though, the museyroom section was gr8.

[Anonymous No.9624255]

>>9623929
Have you read A Thousand Plateaus? I used parts of the intro for an essay last semester and I'm very curious about the rest of it, and the companion book.

[Anonymous No.9624269]

The Stranger by Camus

No, but i can see how the adventure of this sperglord resonate with other sperglords. Also pretty sure the sparse prose is supposed to be a parody of "manly" writers like Hemmingway. It's still a pretty dull book.

Looking out to read Poetics by Aristotle as i absolutely loved Politics and The Nicomachean Ethics and i'm curious to see what he says about writing. To people with experience with Aristotles, how comprehensible is Metaphysics? I have a pretty decent background in other greek philosophers, if that is needed.

[Anonymous No.9624279]

>>9624241
I'm past that part

[Anonymous No.9624284]

>>9623505
>Against the Day
>not sure, I've only read the first line

[Anonymous No.9624292]

The Crying of lot 49.

It's really short so I should already have finished it but I'm not a native speaker and some sentences are quite hard to understand (but it's already hard even if you're a native speaker, isn't it?), but I like it so far.

>>9623525
You're enjoying it, but do you think it's really great, outside of entertainment? If you want to learn about the Universe, I'm sure there are better books than this one. Also, are you sure there is no strong ideological value "hidden" in that book?

>>9624231
I'm curious about this, I had no idea it was a thing. Why would David Byrne be qualified to talk about these subjets tho? I love Talking Heads, but he's just a pop artist, isn't he?

[Anonymous No.9624314]

>>9624292
>strong ideological value "hidden" in that book
I'm fairly certain there isn't. at least so far. I find learning about the universe and it's working extremely interesting and entertaining. Also, do you know of any other books that are better? I am really looking for more.

[Anonymous No.9624325]

>>9624314
Well, I don't know if there are better books than this one, but I heard Tyson is seen as a joke by a lot of scientists. It might be because of his political standpoints and not because of his science stuff tho.

[Anonymous No.9624328]

>Metro 2033
>Page 400
It's ok

[Anonymous No.9624329]

>>9623513
>all but 3 apply to me
>have browsed /lit/ for years
Fuck off m8 no one cares.

[Anonymous No.9624332]

>>9623811
>What am i doing wrong?
Your native language is English, that what's wrong

[Anonymous No.9624333]

>>9623513
fuck off

[Anonymous No.9624343]

>>9624325
I never heard of him being seen as a joke.
Politics usually ruin everything in my experience. I was going to pick up The System of the World by Issac newton. sounds pretty interesting.

[Anonymous No.9624344]

>>9624332
That can't be helped though.

[Anonymous No.9624355]

>>9624252
that book is literally hilarious

[Anonymous No.9624361]

>>9624355
He sure makes some hilarious words. "Anonymoses" and "Scandiknave" are two that stick out in my memory.

[Anonymous No.9624396]

>>9624355
Oh yeah. There's a ton of dick jokes in the there.

[Anonymous No.9624403]

>>9624396
Literally in the first paragraph
>"his penisolate war"

[Anonymous No.9624504]

>>9624403
lmao. James Joyce really his king shit of dick jokes

[Anonymous No.9624833]

>>9623532
>Campbell Biology - 10th Edition
nice, i actually continued reading my organic chem book because i liked my classes so much. even though i wont really use it in a lab or anything, its nice to know how things work.

[Anonymous No.9625089]

>>9624833
>its nice to know how things work
Agreed. It's #4 on The Open Syllabus Project so I'm giving it a go. It's very informative so far.

[Anonymous No.9625117]

>>9623952
>so anon whats that book about

Paedopheelya

[Anonymous No.9625136]

>>9624269
>The Stranger
>a dull book
>adventure of sperglords

Found the high schooler

[Anonymous No.9625190]

>>9623505

Yeah, it's pretty good
You?

[Anonymous No.9625442]

Fahrenheit 451
Yea its getting interesting in the second half

[Anonymous No.9625471]

>>9625136
Mate, this is the kind of book high schoolers eat up, take your projecting to the cinema theatre where it belongs.

[Anonymous No.9625487]

>Cicero - De Natura Deorum
S'good. Real good. I'm not reading it in Latin because I'm not quite there yet and that would mean a lot of re-reading (something I'm doing right now with Senecae - Epistulae)

>>9623983
Fiction doesn't equal genre fiction. Read.

[Anonymous No.9625495]

>>9624269
I loved Ethics too, and Poetics is good. I made it halfway through Physics, picked up on only a few key points, but I'd say for a real comprehension you'd need to read some of the Organon, and then besides that: re-read and take notes. It's the driest of the Greeks

[Anonymous No.9625653]

>>9625495
i've read the first two books of the Organon, i guess i'll read the other two or three before touching Metaphysics. Thanks for the answer.

[Anonymous No.9625655]

>>9625487

Genre fiction doesn't equal bad fiction (yeah sometimes of course, but same with lit fic)
Also the Exegesis doesn't fit neatly into genre fiction anyway

[Anonymous No.9625725]

Very interesting. I have Moby-Dick on deck.

[Anonymous No.9626074]

>>9625190
I apologize.

[Anonymous No.9626224]

Making my way through and enjoying it because it's a compilation of works by guys I expected to have to read in college and never really did, but a lot of the selections are a little difficult to take too seriously. Especially the ones on how the humanities in general stack up to science when it comes to truth and understanding. First selection is Wilde I THINK seriously arguing that art creates nature. Seems to point out how that argument doesn't work too though. Dunno. Still interesting and it's good to know the arguments and Wilde is brilliant etc. The selections by painters seem more lucid generally. Would recommend.

[Anonymous No.9626239]

>>9623505
>Current book?
Steppenwolf

>Am I enjoying it?
The parallels I see of myself in this book are astounding, all egoism aside; and with cliche brought forward, I really feel as though this book is reading me frighteningly (excitingly?(frightcitingly?)) well. Absolutely would recommend to anyone who feels out of place in and appalled by the bourgeois yet yearns to be a part of it, akin to a yearning from an unbridled, childlike love of all that is apart of your life.

[Anonymous No.9626497]

Finnegans Wake

Absolutely, it's a blast to read despite understanding basically nothing.

[Anonymous No.9626513]

>>9626497
It's a very funny book if you like absurdly complex puns and dick jokes.

It also touches on quite a lot of timeless themes in a manner not done either before or since. It's Joyce's true masterpiece.

[Anonymous No.9626519]

>>9624255
yep. it's definitely wilder and crazier than AO but definitely worth your time

[Anonymous No.9627852]

Lolita
Nabokov is a genius

[Anonymous No.9627863]

>Current book you're reading
Ulysses

>are you enjoying it?
I don't think I'm smart enough to get it, but I like how the wordplay feels

[Anonymous No.9627909]

>>9623505
platform by michel houlbeqque
NO

[Anonymous No.9627913]

The Good Soldier Švejk

It's what Catch-22 could have been, it's actually funny, loving it

[Anonymous No.9627990]

>Zettel's Traum
I really like the part where they talk about Edgar Allan Poe and make horrible dick jokes.