|
Oh cool, the book reports we did in sixth grade thread was finally made. Yeah I too did mine on the life of pi.
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2014 22:22
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 15, 2024 10:06 |
|
|
Davincie posted:i read after dark by murakami recently and there were some obvious hints to greater things going on in the book. are they explored in any of his other books or are they not connected? I am pretty certain they are not connected at all and are self contained in the book.
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2014 22:22
|
|
|
Stravinsky posted:Oh cool, the book reports we did in sixth grade thread was finally made. Yeah I too did mine on the life of pi. I assume this is directed at my post, so, sorry! I'll leave you guys alone. Are you an English major? Grad?
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2014 22:43
|
|
|
I am a truck driver
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2014 22:53
|
|
|
Stravinsky posted:I am a truck driver Ok, yeah, was curious because the thread sometimes has an academic bent, quantifying books and readers in terms of American grade school level. Or measuring an education based on which fiction novels one reads. But I recognize I don't really have much to add to a discussion amongst people years deep into the literary canon. The thread is sort of like the record store in High Fidelity and I'm the douchey guy with the pony tail and my Life of pi book and  , heh. Some of the most erudite goons I've encountered are truck drivers or on a military deployment which is kind of cool. I studied computer science and math  Anyways, are there any particular essays that someone could recommend on The Crying of Lot 49? Analyzing it as metafiction or an allegory for someone studying literature as part of a quest to discover the meaning of life is interesting to me and I want to get an 'A' and graduate into the 7th grade :V I decided I'm going to read Tolstoy's Hadji Murad instead of those other books to sample his writing. Mostly because it's very short and I only have time for grazing right now. And it seems like it might be an interesting contrast to that little bit of Pynchon I've just read. Edit: also, why didn't Pynchon like The Crying of Lot 49? fozzy fosbourne fucked around with this message at 00:20 on Dec 31, 2014 |
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2014 00:06
|
|
|
fozzy fosbourne posted:Some of the most erudite goons I've encountered are truck drivers or on a military deployment which is kind of cool. I studied computer science and math :shobo: I'm super smart and handsome and I memorised Hamlet.
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2014 05:29
|
|
|
Stravinsky posted:I'm super smart and handsome and I memorised Hamlet. I wonder how far he got. It kind of sucks that he got chased off from the thread because it would be fascinating to see how far he would go in his quest to level up literacy of the U S of A Back to Tolstoy, smell you later
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2014 06:25
|
|
|
fozzy fosbourne posted:Edit: also, why didn't Pynchon like The Crying of Lot 49? IIRC, Pynchon didn't think it told a proper story. The reason why many of his books are so long is that he needs that much space to tell his kind of story. I like it though. I recommend it to people partly because it's so short that even if they have trouble with the prose, they can still finish the book in a reasonable amount of time.
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2014 14:27
|
|
|
What's this threads thoughts on Swamplandia? I've got it sitting at work and sort of want to buy it cause the cover looks cool.
|
|
#
?
Jan 2, 2015 17:20
|
|
|
.
whatevz fucked around with this message at 04:10 on Apr 25, 2022 |
|
#
?
Jan 2, 2015 18:34
|
|
|
What is a good place to start on Bukowski?
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2015 06:43
|
|
|
ZearothK posted:What is a good place to start on Bukowski? I would certainly start with his poetry. Some of his posthumous collections are fantastic. Stuff like Slouching Towards Nirvana or What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire are a lot of fun. I don't think I would have enjoyed Post Office as much as I did if I hadn't read some of his poetry first.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2015 07:07
|
|
|
WAY TO GO WAMPA!! posted:What's this threads thoughts on Swamplandia? I've got it sitting at work and sort of want to buy it cause the cover looks cool. I read about three quarters of the way through it before stopping because I thought it was needlessly brutal. There was cool imagery but I don't think the story was that great.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2015 18:13
|
|
|
WAY TO GO WAMPA!! posted:What's this threads thoughts on Swamplandia? I've got it sitting at work and sort of want to buy it cause the cover looks cool. My original forums name was Kiwi Bigtree but I changed it after no one ever recognized the reference  Cloks posted:I read about three quarters of the way through it before stopping because I thought it was needlessly brutal. There was cool imagery but I don't think the story was that great. If definitely does take some very, very dark turns towards the second half. The first half of the book is kind of a ligher vaguely surreal kind of family story and then it goes to some very upsetting places midway through. For what its worth though, it does end on a redemptive note rather than a destructive one, which is worth something. I still thought it was very, very good and should have won the Pulitzer Prize out of the other two nominees.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2015 19:59
|
|
|
Anyone know if "Redeployement" by Phil Klay is any good or have any thoughts on it? I'm trying to decide between that and Marilynne Robinson's "Lila" for my next book.
|
|
#
?
Jan 5, 2015 18:14
|
|
|
Barlow posted:Anyone know if "Redeployement" by Phil Klay is any good or have any thoughts on it? I'm trying to decide between that and Marilynne Robinson's "Lila" for my next book. Redeployment is interesting because it more or less follows the chronology of the stories as he wrote them over the course of a few years. What this means is that the earlier stories, especially the first one, are incredibly weak and cliche. By the early middle of the book however, you are hitting fiction that is probably the best meditation on the Iraq War yet. The second half of the collection blows The Yellow Birds and Billy Lynn completely out of the water. I would recommend reading Lila only if you read Gilead before it. You can skip Home, but there is a lot of intertextuality between the two books that I think really deepens the value.
|
|
#
?
Jan 5, 2015 19:21
|
|
|
Mel Mudkiper posted:I would recommend reading Lila only if you read Gilead before it. You can skip Home, but there is a lot of intertextuality between the two books that I think really deepens the value.
|
|
#
?
Jan 5, 2015 23:22
|
|
|
WAY TO GO WAMPA!! posted:What's this threads thoughts on Swamplandia? I've got it sitting at work and sort of want to buy it cause the cover looks cool. I adored it. A beautiful, fantastical, cruel story about loss, recovery and family. I can't recommend it highly enough. Only reason it didn't win the Pulitzer is because The Pale King came out and DFW was dead, so they didn't award it at all.
|
|
#
?
Jan 6, 2015 01:31
|
|
|
Barlow posted:I've done both Gilead and Home, I really liked Gilead but Home was pretty weak and felt like it didn't actually add that much. Hoping that this book feels a little less redundant. Its a much, much different experience from Home. To me, Home felt like an unnecessary sequel and ended up changing the context of a lot of Gilead too much to really be enjoyable. While Home felt like a revision of Gilead, Lila is very much an enhancement. It gives you a perspective on the characters that increases your understanding of them more than it alters it. UnoriginalMind posted:I adored it. A beautiful, fantastical, cruel story about loss, recovery and family. I can't recommend it highly enough. Only reason it didn't win the Pulitzer is because The Pale King came out and DFW was dead, so they didn't award it at all. Not really sure why that would matter. The Pulitzer Prize can be awarded posthumously. As far as I understood no one won because the Pulitzer board had decided no one "deserved" to win. I do agree though that The Pale King was probably nominated just to give the prize to DFW. Same thing with Train Dreams. Denis Johnson deserves a Pulitzer, just not for that book. Mel Mudkiper fucked around with this message at 02:12 on Jan 6, 2015 |
|
#
?
Jan 6, 2015 02:08
|
|
|
UnoriginalMind posted:I adored it. A beautiful, fantastical, cruel story about loss, recovery and family. I can't recommend it highly enough. Only reason it didn't win the Pulitzer is because The Pale King came out and DFW was dead, so they didn't award it at all. On the other hand I tried to read it but couldn't manage more than fifty pages before I threw up.
|
|
#
?
Jan 6, 2015 03:24
|
|
|
Mel Mudkiper posted:Its a much, much different experience from Home. To me, Home felt like an unnecessary sequel and ended up changing the context of a lot of Gilead too much to really be enjoyable. While Home felt like a revision of Gilead, Lila is very much an enhancement. It gives you a perspective on the characters that increases your understanding of them more than it alters it.
|
|
#
?
Jan 6, 2015 15:24
|
|
|
UnoriginalMind posted:I adored it. A beautiful, fantastical, cruel story about loss, recovery and family. I can't recommend it highly enough. Only reason it didn't win the Pulitzer is because The Pale King came out and DFW was dead, so they didn't award it at all.
|
|
#
?
Jan 6, 2015 15:55
|
|
|
Rabbit Hill posted:Coincidentally, I just checked out Gilead from the library and was about to start on it tonight. Is it advisable to skip Home entirely and read Lila next? It feels weird to recommend skipping part of a trilogy but honestly I would. Home really doesn't contribute anything meaningful and really damages parts of Gilead imho.
|
|
#
?
Jan 6, 2015 17:23
|
|
|
I finished Waiting for the Barbarians by Coetzee and I need more literature like that.
|
|
#
?
Jan 6, 2015 22:30
|
|
|
Wraith of J.O.I. posted:Has anybody read any of the "My Struggle" series by Karl Ove Knausgård? Been reading a bit about them and it seems right up my alley. It's very modern, in the sense that it's a guy doing a fairly well-written tell-all about his life and the life of those closest to him. None of those lives are very special, for the most part, being regular middle-class types. Being a tell-all, it's enormous.
|
|
#
?
Jan 7, 2015 14:50
|
|
|
V. Illych L. posted:It's very modern, in the sense that it's a guy doing a fairly well-written tell-all about his life and the life of those closest to him. None of those lives are very special, for the most part, being regular middle-class types. Being a tell-all, it's enormous.
|
|
#
?
Jan 7, 2015 16:26
|
|
|
I have volume 1 and am debating reading it now or waiting for the entire collection and reading it one lump
|
|
#
?
Jan 7, 2015 16:45
|
|
|
Finally got around to starting The Tin Drum and it's hilarious and great Also just read Kate Chopin's The Awakening the other day and it was excellent, and especially interesting to consider how controversial it was in 1899.
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2015 16:21
|
|
|
I'm reading The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Stern and the fact that this book was written in the mid 1700s is incredible. 40 pages in and he keeps getting distracted from narrating his birth, he almost started writing about his baptism then remembered that he'd need to be born before he was baptised, then in the next chapter berated the reader for not reading closely enough to realise that his mother couldn't possibly be Catholic, because Catholics have devised a method for baptising in the womb by squirting water on the foetus. All this 150 years before Joyce!!!!!!
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2015 16:33
|
|
|
CestMoi posted:I'm reading The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Stern and the fact that this book was written in the mid 1700s is incredible. 40 pages in and he keeps getting distracted from narrating his birth, he almost started writing about his baptism then remembered that he'd need to be born before he was baptised, then in the next chapter berated the reader for not reading closely enough to realise that his mother couldn't possibly be Catholic, because Catholics have devised a method for baptising in the womb by squirting water on the foetus. The "film adaptation" with Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon is pretty great
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2015 16:55
|
|
|
CestMoi posted:I'm reading The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Stern and the fact that this book was written in the mid 1700s is incredible. 40 pages in and he keeps getting distracted from narrating his birth, he almost started writing about his baptism then remembered that he'd need to be born before he was baptised, then in the next chapter berated the reader for not reading closely enough to realise that his mother couldn't possibly be Catholic, because Catholics have devised a method for baptising in the womb by squirting water on the foetus. Laurence Sterne is utterly incredible. I genuinely think he's one of Britain's absolute best novelists. Tristram Shandy is very difficult though, I read A Sentimental Journey after attempting TS for the first time and a lot more of TS made sense after it. It's only after reading it a second time I enjoyed it a lot. It's actually quite a sincere book lurking beneath literary experimentation and general hilarity. Trust me, as you go on the number of wows you'll make at the style dwindles, but that doesn't matter, because it's still funny and engaging. In many ways the book engages with the many still-important philosophical discussions happening at that time such as determinism and materialism in such an eloquent and witty way I'm not going to do the book much justice, but basically the book's renown throughout Europe at the time is not purely down to its weirdness (although it's a big factor). Oh man. I love this book so sorry for just ranting at you. Earwicker posted:The "film adaptation" with Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon is pretty great Seconded - also the TV series The Trip and The Trip to Italy feature the same Steve and Rob characters, and it's (kind of) a spiritual successor to A Sentimental Journey (I like to think).
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2015 17:44
|
|
|
O cool it was actually popular at the time? I just assumed it was one of those things that was very ahead of the curve and it got rediscovered in the 20th century or something.
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2015 17:55
|
|
|
CestMoi posted:O cool it was actually popular at the time? I just assumed it was one of those things that was very ahead of the curve and it got rediscovered in the 20th century or something. Yeah - I don't have a source to hand, but the first two volumes got published together, without mentioning who the author was. Such was the demand from London high society generated from the book that Laurence Sterne was able to commission a portrait on the next volume to say 'yep, it's me'. "I write not to be fed, but to be famous". Although he did actually get 'fed'. This guy who was only really known in ecclesiastical circles for some great sermons could build his own Shandy Hall down the road from his church.
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2015 18:21
|
|
|
Wraith of J.O.I. posted:Has anybody read any of the "My Struggle" series by Karl Ove Knausgård? Been reading a bit about them and it seems right up my alley. First two books are pretty good, almost like modern Proust (not as beautifully written though), but after that it becomes crap. Like average young adult book with smug as gently caress main character. I've heard last book is good again but I haven't bothered with it because I don't want to finish book 5.
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2015 18:44
|
|
|
mallamp posted:First two books are pretty good, almost like modern Proust (not as beautifully written though), but after that it becomes crap. Like average young adult book with smug as gently caress main character. I've heard last book is good again but I haven't bothered with it because I don't want to finish book 5. I thought only the first three books were out in English... you read it in another language?
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2015 19:35
|
|
|
ZearothK posted:What is a good place to start on Bukowski? freshman year of college Max posted:I finished Waiting for the Barbarians by Coetzee and I need more literature like that. Like postcolonial? Things Fall Apart is probably the type specimen of the genre. Try Kingsolver's Poisonwood Bible. Zakes Mda's Heart of Redness isn't really postcolonial, but it is set in South Africa and deals with some similar themes, albeit seen from a very different perspective than Coetzee's. chernobyl kinsman fucked around with this message at 05:28 on Jan 13, 2015 |
|
#
?
Jan 13, 2015 05:22
|
|
|
Max posted:I finished Waiting for the Barbarians by Coetzee and I need more literature like that. Try Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, Wizard of the Crow is one of my favorite books and Petals of Blood is a good place to start
|
|
#
?
Jan 13, 2015 06:03
|
|
|
tatankatonk posted:Try Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, Wizard of the Crow is one of my favorite books and Petals of Blood is a good place to start I just picked up Petals of Blood a few months ago after reading about its insane publication history
|
|
#
?
Jan 13, 2015 17:31
|
|
|
Wraith of J.O.I. posted:I thought only the first three books were out in English... you read it in another language?
|
|
#
?
Jan 13, 2015 18:39
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 15, 2024 10:06 |
|
|
Mel Mudkiper posted:It feels weird to recommend skipping part of a trilogy but honestly I would. Home really doesn't contribute anything meaningful and really damages parts of Gilead imho. So I just finished "Lila," it was a great read even if not quite as refined as "Gilead." The fact that "Lila" is both a prequel and focused on a character that was heavily underdeveloped in the original novel made it worthwhile. Both novels do a capable job of examining faith, with "Gilead" being the meditations of an educated man and "Lila" being the impressions of a working class women. I'd second your thought that "Home" was lacking and if you aren't doing the trilogy it could be skipped. Plotwise it repeats the exact same ground as "Gilead." The Jack Boughton character was far too relatable and friendly in "Home," he seemed to lack any clear characteristic that would make it obvious why someone would be so wary of him. The way that he's described by Aimes in "Gilead" you get the sense that he's dangerous, a potential psycopath, but in "Home" he's reduced to being a melancholy alcoholic. Thinking about it further actually hurt my appreciation for that part of "Gilead."
|
|
#
?
Jan 13, 2015 19:38
|
|