/lit/ - Literature

Absalom, Absalom!

I threw the book across the room after I finished it because I was so sure I'd would probably never read something as good in the immediate future. It's already been five years. It's still the best I've read.

>>8443841
>>8443841
Two books a week is average for an above-average reader. It's not that much of an investment. I'm at 80 books myself with 4 months to go.

>>8434248
William Faulkner

I got 116. It's not as good as I hoped, but I think better than average. Guess that's me.

>>8370596
The Glass Bead Game is my favorite of his. I've read Demian, got turned off Siddhartha, and think Steppenwolf was just okay.

But The Glass Bead Game is his magnum opus.

>>8330714
Came to post this, too.

Absalom, Absalom! is his best novel. It's not as popular as his other works, but it is his best work.

The Snopes Trilogy is also a great work of his. Avoid the novels outside Yoknapatawpha, because he isn't as good a writer when he goes outside his Southern county.

The Unvanquished is also a great work of his.

Faulkner is the primeval Southern gothic writer. I don't think there's anyone before him, aside from Joyce, but they use stream-of-consciousness very differently.

"From a little after two oclock until almost sundown of the long still hot weary dead September afternoon they sat in what Miss Coldfield still called the office because her father had called it that — a dim hot airless room with the blinds all closed and fastened for forty-three summers because when she was a girl someone had believed that light and moving air carried heat and that dark was always cooler, and which (as the sun shone fuller and fuller on that side of the house) became latticed with yellow slashes full of dust motes which Quentin thought of as being flecks of the dead old dried paint itself blown inward from the scaling blinds as wind might have blown them."

That was so easy. The description is so immaculate.

>>8314417
Yeah. You're correct. I guess it just helps me sleep easier at night.

>>8313713
It's purely anecdotal, but reading has made me more understanding towards other people. I used to have a short fuse when I was younger, but reading's taught me to be more patient and it also taught me to keep in the anger.

Science has backed this up. Reading fiction promotes the development of empathy in individuals. It doesn't make me better than others, but it makes me a better person.

>>8314338
My top five has books that I've read more than once. Petersburg's a great novel. Even Nabokov heaped praise upon it.

1. Absalom, Absalom!
2. Crime and Punishment
3. The Violent Bear it Away
4. The Sound and the Fury
5. Petersburg

My top five's pretty fluid, though.

The God Abandons Antony - Cavafy

When suddenly, at midnight, you hear
an invisible procession going by
with exquisite music, voices,
don’t mourn your luck that’s failing now,
work gone wrong, your plans
all proving deceptive—don’t mourn them uselessly.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
say goodbye to her, the Alexandria that is leaving.
Above all, don’t fool yourself, don’t say
it was a dream, your ears deceived you:
don’t degrade yourself with empty hopes like these.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
as is right for you who proved worthy of this kind of city,
go firmly to the window
and listen with deep emotion, but not
with the whining, the pleas of a coward;
listen—your final delectation—to the voices,
to the exquisite music of that strange procession,
and say goodbye to her, to the Alexandria you are losing.

>The Hive - Camilo Jose Cela
5/10. Not as good as Borges, Faulkner, or other modernists. I don't know why they gave this guy a Nobel prize.
>Oriental Seven Day Quick Weight-off Diet - Norvell
6/10.
>Children of the New Forest - Captain Marryat
5/10. Barely grazes the decent as a children's novel
>Jacob and Rachel - Rosemary Hart
8/10. Always refreshing to read about a retold Bible story.
>Understanding and Improving Your Personality and Self-Image
6/10. Good enough.

I'm a Catholic with Protestant leanings, and while I've read the New Testament (still slogging through the Old), I also like reading heretical literature because I like how certain people try to defend their religion.

I've had fun reading J.F Rutherford's books on 'Christianity.' Jehovah's Witnesses are a unitarian cult, and he was one of their leaders then. Do you guys also enjoy reading heretical literature? Which books are you fond of?

>>8251062
Children of the New Forest - Captain Marryat
Oriental Seven-Day Diet - Norvell
The Hive - Camilo Jose Cela
Jacob and Rachel - Rosemary Hart

Judgment: Weirdo, I guess.

R. L. Stine

>>8244379
Near the top of the class, hated everyone and was a dick to people, but did my work well and befriended teachers. I didn't know what tact was then, so I had a lot of enemies, but I remain good friends with the few friends I had. I thought I was smart, I was well-read, but I was afraid of women and instead spent time playing video games when I wasn't reading books. The only thing that prevented me from being a loser was that I look decent at the very least, and I was pretty smart. I was already reading Dostoevsky, Hemingway, Steinbeck by that time.

Graduated and passed the licensure exams for medicine.

I'm now a general practitioner doing moonlighting at a hospital.

Army of Shadows
The Parallax View
A Most Violent Year
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Cure (1997)
High and Low
Sorcerer
Chinatown
The Spy who Came in from the Cold

I'm a fan of morally ambiguous crime or spy films featuring flawed, but heroic leads.

>>8227716
The Sound and the Fury
Absalom, Absalom!

>>8222152
You forgot that Kant stated that he only wished to describe what OUGHT to be done. It would be a moral action if you as a father would sacrifice the kid, but Kant also specifically stated that people performed amoral and non-moral actions all the time.

He gave guidelines towards ethics.

>>8199166
I'd choose the orange one. Just hoarding a library of all the rare first editions and selling them online would make me very rich in little time. I can then spend the rest of my life focusing on my writing.

>>8198761
Read Mommsen's History of Rome. Sulla was SO cash.