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mann i love Stoner this book's cool. i like this poo poo. i also love The Idiot which i read in spring, i like characters just up and dumping philosophical arguments on each other. and The Man Who Was Thursday is my fave of all. what's a good book for me when imm done Stonin'
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Dec 3, 2023 06:41
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Cephas posted:I picked up The Summer Book and Fair Play by Tove Jansson. Halfway through The Summer Book now. It's really lovely. There's a sort of dignity and equal regard that the writing gives to the natural world--while not quite being "nature writing"-- that I find compelling. The closest comparison I can think of (which some of the jacket blurbs mention as well) is the way nature is treated in Hayao Miyazaki's works. It's also interesting to read a book by an experienced visual artist, because so much of the language of the book is carefully-constructed imagery. I remember some interview where she was like "yeah it's beautiful and clean in the archipelago because you can throw all your trash in the sea".
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Dec 3, 2023 09:58
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3D Megadoodoo posted:I remember some interview where she was like "yeah it's beautiful and clean in the archipelago because you can throw all your trash in the sea". Notes from an Island posted:The sea was chalk white in every direction as far as the eye could see. It was only then that we noticed the absolute silence. i guess when you're born in 1914 you can't help but dump your trash everywhere. (rabbit hole: here is an old swedish instructional film from 1964 encouraging people to poke holes in their garbage before tossing it into the sea, so it sinks lmao) Cephas fucked around with this message at 19:39 on Dec 3, 2023 |
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Dec 3, 2023 19:35
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Cephas posted:I picked up The Summer Book and Fair Play by Tove Jansson. Halfway through The Summer Book now. It's really lovely. There's a sort of dignity and equal regard that the writing gives to the natural world--while not quite being "nature writing"-- that I find compelling. The closest comparison I can think of (which some of the jacket blurbs mention as well) is the way nature is treated in Hayao Miyazaki's works. It's also interesting to read a book by an experienced visual artist, because so much of the language of the book is carefully-constructed imagery. I loved The Summer Book, it's beautiful and bittersweet and further drove my want to read every piece of Jansson's writing. (I've also read the first two Moomin novels, which are great too)
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Dec 4, 2023 07:38
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Cephas posted:i guess when you're born in 1914 you can't help but dump your trash everywhere. (rabbit hole: here is an old swedish instructional film from 1964 encouraging people to poke holes in their garbage before tossing it into the sea, so it sinks lmao) Lol
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Dec 4, 2023 08:53
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sharkmafia posted:Do alexandre dumas and wilkie collins count as 'real literature' or does the fact that they were nineteenth century mass-market fiction writers disqualify them I do love that dumas books are very much just contermpory or historical political thrillers of the times they were written. its probably why i find him so readable. I always feel bad for verne because apperently only until like the last 30 or so years has his books gotten GOOD full translations. apperently the american publisit thought they would be better as YA fiction and basicaly gutted the books and made a very boring poo poo translation, what sucks is when you read him in schools, schools almost always go with early translations because cheaper AND theoreticaly "more accurate" but NOPE. Dapper_Swindler fucked around with this message at 19:28 on Dec 4, 2023 |
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Dec 4, 2023 19:25
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Dapper_Swindler posted:I do love that dumas books are very much just contermpory or historical political thrillers of the times they were written. its probably why i find him so readable. quote:I always feel bad for verne because apperently only until like the last 30 or so years has his books gotten GOOD full translations. apperently the american publisit thought they would be better as YA fiction and basicaly gutted the books and made a very boring poo poo translation, what sucks is when you read him in schools, schools almost always go with early translations because cheaper AND theoreticaly "more accurate" but NOPE. Toplowtech fucked around with this message at 20:18 on Dec 4, 2023 |
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Dec 4, 2023 20:07
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Jumping ahead from page ~500 to say it's kinda surprising how much you all enjoyed Lincoln in the Bardo, considering it's pretty blatantly an inferior rip-off of Neil Gaiman's Graveyard Book, and was shamelessly trying to cash in (5 years too late, I might add) on the success of hit movies Lincoln, Abe Lincoln Vampire Hunter, and to a lesser extent the 2016 Ghostbusters reboot.
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Dec 4, 2023 20:59
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Toplowtech posted:Well, Dumas had an insane one chapter per day in the newspaper publishing contract and he wasn't writing alone. He had collaborators and the production of the book was surprisingly more collegial and vaguely similar to the script-writing in modern tv show writer rooms than anything else. I think it's what makes it feel so modern: it was episodic and it was well constructed. Dumas apparently mostly worked the overall plot and the dialogues(there were studies with books we 100% know he wrote alone). I really hate that we don't know more details about some of his collaborators' work but hey it was the 1840s. I think if Dumas lived today, he would probably be a TV Show Runner and his collaborators would have big imdb credits. Maquet has his own novels. You can read them and decide for yourself how much influence Dumas had on the works.
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Dec 4, 2023 21:23
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Toplowtech posted:Well, Dumas had an insane one chapter per day in the newspaper publishing contract and he wasn't writing alone. He had collaborators and the production of the book was surprisingly more collegial and vaguely similar to the script-writing in modern tv show writer rooms than anything else. I think it's what makes it feel so modern: it was episodic and it was well constructed. Dumas apparently mostly worked the overall plot and the dialogues(there were studies with books we 100% know he wrote alone). I really hate that we don't know more details about some of his collaborators' work but hey it was the 1840s. I think if Dumas lived today, he would probably be a TV Show Runner and his collaborators would have big imdb credits. I never knew that. that honestly explains alot. i feel like if i found a large print version, my dad would probably enjoy dumas because he always reads paper back airport fiction and its worth a shot. on vern. the most i read of him was those classic illustraited when i was little but then i read some of him in really meh sci-fi lit course and it was the lovely first print of around the world in 80 days which the prof claimed was accurate and it was extreamly boring and dry.
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Dec 4, 2023 21:29
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Gaius Marius posted:Maquet has his own novels. You can read them and decide for yourself how much influence Dumas had on the works. I once read all of the Three Musketeers novels. The drop off in quality in _Vicomte de Bragellone_ and _Louise de la Vallerie_ was just actively painful. I've never been able to force myself to even try reading the Count of Monte Cristo sequel.
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Dec 4, 2023 21:31
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Moacher posted:Jumping ahead from page ~500 to say it's kinda surprising how much you all enjoyed Lincoln in the Bardo, considering it's pretty blatantly an inferior rip-off of Neil Gaiman's Graveyard Book, and was shamelessly trying to cash in (5 years too late, I might add) on the success of hit movies Lincoln, Abe Lincoln Vampire Hunter, and to a lesser extent the 2016 Ghostbusters reboot. weird thing is, I liked abe lincoln vampire hunter. its dumb but the story works and some plantation owners being vampires and helping keep the system running because parsiteism is interesting. its not amazing but its interesting.
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Dec 4, 2023 21:32
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I once read all of the Three Musketeers novels. The drop off in quality in _Vicomte de Bragellone_ and _Louise de la Vallerie_ was just actively painful. there is a sequel to monte cristo. that book seemed pretty defintative with its ending.
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Dec 4, 2023 21:32
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I started Species of spaces by Georges Perec today, this book owns. it’s like a strange blend of essays and novel into one. not quite one or the other.
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Dec 4, 2023 21:35
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I finished dracula last year and id love to find some more epistolary novel classics, preferebly horror.
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Dec 4, 2023 21:45
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Dapper_Swindler posted:there is a sequel to monte cristo. that book seemed pretty defintative with its ending. One would think!
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Dec 4, 2023 21:51
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:One would think! whats it called? is it buy him?
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Dec 4, 2023 21:53
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Tried to read Norwegian Wood for the 2nd time and couldn't finish it. Didn't find anything to enjoy, kind of baffled at how it was so popular. For context, I really enjoyed Wind-Up Bird and Kafka on the Shore, but this one felt like a bunch of teens complaining with awful one-dimensional characters.
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Dec 4, 2023 22:00
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did he describe their ears a lot and did they all have huge tits
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Dec 4, 2023 22:01
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The protagonist was getting laid a lot, that's for sure
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Dec 4, 2023 22:10
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Briefly returning to the topic of Dumas - is it still the Robin Buss translation of Monte Cristo that’s generally recommended? I have a tendency for analysis paralysis when it comes to translations and obsess about getting the ‘best’ translation (whatever that means, if I knew I’d likely not be in this situation) and eventually get overwhelmed and fail to buy and read the book under consideration. I have the same problem when it comes to picking from the twenty different kindle versions of out-of-copyright book other than Oxford, Penguin and Everyman versions usually being decent.
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Dec 4, 2023 22:30
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Dapper_Swindler posted:whats it called? is it buy him? Reading up actually it looks like the one I was thinking of wasn't by Dumas at all, but a guy named Flagg. My dad had a set of Dumas books from the early 1900s and it was in there with the others so I'd assumed it was a maquet sequel.
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Dec 4, 2023 22:39
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MisterBear posted:Briefly returning to the topic of Dumas - is it still the Robin Buss translation of Monte Cristo that’s generally recommended? It's the only unabridged modern translation a.p. dent posted:Tried to read Norwegian Wood for the 2nd time and couldn't finish it. Didn't find anything to enjoy, kind of baffled at how it was so popular. For context, I really enjoyed Wind-Up Bird and Kafka on the Shore, but this one felt like a bunch of teens complaining with awful one-dimensional characters. I have no idea what people see in Marukami, every fiction work he's written that I've read has been awful, just terribly dull. His non fiction work on Aum was good though and Drive my Car which is loosely based on a short story of his was the best movie of 2021 Gaius Marius fucked around with this message at 22:51 on Dec 4, 2023 |
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Dec 4, 2023 22:39
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a.p. dent posted:Tried to read Norwegian Wood for the 2nd time and couldn't finish it. Didn't find anything to enjoy, kind of baffled at how it was so popular. For context, I really enjoyed Wind-Up Bird and Kafka on the Shore, but this one felt like a bunch of teens complaining with awful one-dimensional characters. I remember staying up all night to finish Norwegian Wood because I liked it so much, but also I was 20. Suspect it'd go over pretty differently now
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Dec 4, 2023 23:21
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Dapper_Swindler posted:I do love that dumas books are very much just contermpory or historical political thrillers of the times they were written. its probably why i find him so readable. I always feel bad for verne because apperently only until like the last 30 or so years has his books gotten GOOD full translations. apperently the american publisit thought they would be better as YA fiction and basicaly gutted the books and made a very boring poo poo translation, what sucks is when you read him in schools, schools almost always go with early translations because cheaper AND theoreticaly "more accurate" but NOPE. Yeah, I agree. Despite technically being an english major i've never had very much patience for books that are written in an opaque/obtuse style. dumas's books are extremely readable and as something I'm doing for fun that makes them far easier to get into than, like, ulysses
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Dec 4, 2023 23:34
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The horrible 19th-century Verne translations are English, not American, and he's had good translations since at least 1962, when Anthony Bonner translated the library copy of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea that I fell in love with as a kid. (I later got a nasty surprise when I checked out another copy with the 1873 translation.) Basically all public-domain translations of 19th-century French literature are Victorian monstrosities laden with gross misunderstandings at best and riddled with active censorship at worst (usually both), but postwar translations are at least decent efforts as a rule. Sham bam bamina! fucked around with this message at 00:32 on Dec 5, 2023 |
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Dec 5, 2023 00:26
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I don't know how I didn't know Jules Verne was French
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Dec 5, 2023 03:06
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I think people just assume Phileas Fogg is something of a author self insert and figure he's english.
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Dec 5, 2023 03:16
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I mostly like Murakami when his writing focuses on liminal spaces and aporetic creatures. I personally find that his writing can have a sort of hypnotic effect where all of the mundane tropes he's known for are just fodder for one or two scenes of violent intrusions of the uncanny. A lot of his stories defy explanation or resolution and are very mysterious, and after I finish reading his novels, I usually end up having strange and vivid dreams about them some time afterward. Like it gives my subconscious something to chew on. For an author as popular as he is, it's hard for me to think of who I would recommend him to. I guess early 20-somethings who would find his coolly detached and self-assured characters compelling, or people who are into oneironautics?
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Dec 5, 2023 05:09
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Cephas posted:early 20-somethings who would find his coolly detached and self-assured characters compelling
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Dec 5, 2023 05:12
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I like his book about running.
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Dec 5, 2023 05:23
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I once read all of the Three Musketeers novels. The drop off in quality in _Vicomte de Bragellone_ and _Louise de la Vallerie_ was just actively painful. But the Monte Cristo sequels? There are none by Dumas himself (some were produced after his death) and all are more or less the equivalent of the Dune books by Frank Herbert's son. It's fanfiction really. Are you talking about the American Edmund Flagg's books? Or is it the Portuguese 'fanfic' fakely attributed to Dumas too (A mão do finado/La Main du Défunt). It was written in 1853 by Portuguese author Alfredo Hogan and published without any author name because his editor was a greedy bitch and couldn't slap Dumas' name on it without problems. It was translated in French, German, and Spanish* but never in English. Dumas had to sue to get his name removed from some translations of the book. Both are "okayish" read (by fanfiction standards) even if the Portuguese one isn't really into Dantes' original characterization. Also congratulations for having a badly translated "Dumas" book published in French. *the Spanish edition of The Count by the Enciclopedia Pulga is some extra fun because they altered the end of The Count of Montecristo's second book to have Valentine die and then added "La mano del muerto" literally at the end of the Dumas Book as if it was part of it, without telling the readers. I wonder how many people believed it was the original text. Toplowtech fucked around with this message at 06:16 on Dec 5, 2023 |
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Dec 5, 2023 06:00
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There's no need for a continuation of the count of monte cristo in any case, stories should be allowed to end I do think it's funny that people have always been on that fanfic grind for as long as we've been writing things down and likely even before that
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Dec 5, 2023 06:20
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sharkmafia posted:I do think it's funny that people have always been on that fanfic grind for as long as we've been writing things down and likely even before that
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Dec 5, 2023 06:26
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Toplowtech posted:. I think it must have been the Flagg version. My father had a "complete dumas" reprint set that included a Monte Cristo sequel, which stared at me from the shelf a fair bit in my youth but which I never actually picked up, because it would so obviously have been awful.
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Dec 5, 2023 14:13
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I AM GRANDO posted:I like his book about running. I liked that one also. The one scene I liked in Norwegian wood was about an old man eating a cucumber
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Dec 5, 2023 14:21
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Underground is fantastic.
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Dec 5, 2023 14:58
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the most frustrating thing about (Haruki) Murakami is that there’s always a glimpse of a better book in all his novels. the magical/fantastical elements are always somewhat interesting and intriguing, and he is good at depicting the ennui of a lonely late 20s aspiring creative, but then he fills it with the supple breasts of a mature-for-her-age or perfectly shaped ear or whatever the gently caress, and the resolution to the interesting phenomena is always either “do nothing”, “bang that teen” or both
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Dec 5, 2023 16:21
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sharkmafia posted:Yeah, I agree. Despite technically being an english major i've never had very much patience for books that are written in an opaque/obtuse style. dumas's books are extremely readable and as something I'm doing for fun that makes them far easier to get into than, like, ulysses yeah, i like purple prose and extreamly emotionally descriptive writing, one of my favorite books is the last unicorn and most of that is stuff high school me would have called pretentious as gently caress and it can be but like works because you give a poo poo about the writing and makes the feelings and places feel real even when the book purposely vague on its world and details because none of that matters really to the story. Dumas is fun because its just kinda of weird peak into literature from 100 plus years ago but not the uber ART kind My issue is when i tried reading mobey dick and i understood and liked it because it feels like your in a seamens bar listening to some old sailor go on a very very long story with tons of tangents. the issue is the story just kinda goes up its own rear end. which ehh. its probably why i never read ulysses because all i heard about is its super hard to read and just about some dude becoming a cuckold or something.
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Dec 5, 2023 20:57
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Dapper_Swindler posted:
ye gods
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Dec 5, 2023 20:59
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