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i like arto paasilinna, who is a very witty if somewhat formulaic observer of contemporary mentality and society ras het, have you got thoughts on where he fits into the finnish literary tradition/where he "comes from"? it'd be interesting to see if he resembles some of the more, uh, heavy types
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Jul 24, 2015 14:14
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mallamp posted:There are some obvious true lit gems though, that I'd vote if I'd have time for bookclubs, like Dinosaur Lords, story of two men with Aspergers who think Jurassic World is real and go on roadtrip to Costa Rica and Traitors Blades - poignant character study of icehockey turncoat Marian Hossa Y'all want real lit up in here, vote for it otherwise it's gonna be knights on dinosaurs forever
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Jul 24, 2015 14:23
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There should be 2 books of the month and one is bad and determined by stupid democratic vote and the other is determined via the choice of a tyrant and the tyrant has to like good books and post in this thread a lotm, but not be one of the people I don't like very much. Furthermore, the tyrant book has to be in the original language and everyone is given a year to read the book + come up with insanely long and dull posts abouit themes in the book and no one ever actually discusses it they just post their own theories and talk past each other.
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Jul 24, 2015 14:32
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I unironically second that motion.
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Jul 24, 2015 14:34
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CestMoi posted:There should be 2 books of the month and one is bad and determined by stupid democratic vote and the other is determined via the choice of a tyrant and the tyrant has to like good books and post in this thread a lotm, but not be one of the people I don't like very much. Furthermore, the tyrant book has to be in the original language and everyone is given a year to read the book + come up with insanely long and dull posts abouit themes in the book and no one ever actually discusses it they just post their own theories and talk past each other. Ah so you mean me
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Jul 24, 2015 14:36
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CestMoi posted:There should be 2 books of the month and one is bad and determined by stupid democratic vote and the other is determined via the choice of a tyrant and the tyrant has to like good books and post in this thread a lotm, but not be one of the people I don't like very much. Furthermore, the tyrant book has to be in the original language and everyone is given a year to read the book + come up with insanely long and dull posts abouit themes in the book and no one ever actually discusses it they just post their own theories and talk past each other. *passes note* Do you like me y [ ] n [ ]
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Jul 24, 2015 14:44
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I was really hoping one of the books was actually about Marian Hossa, it wasnèt.
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Jul 24, 2015 14:51
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V. Illych L. posted:i like arto paasilinna, who is a very witty if somewhat formulaic observer of contemporary mentality and society His 'erotic farce' Kymmenen riivinrautaa (Ten Grates, I guess) was so boring I want to give the book to an enemy. just need to find one. have you read it and are the other ones similar? Burning Rain fucked around with this message at 15:15 on Jul 24, 2015 |
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Jul 24, 2015 14:54
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legit though knights riding dinosaurs is winning and ISIS might be right about us
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Jul 24, 2015 15:06
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Burning Rain posted:His 'erotic farce' Kymmenen riivinrautaa (Ten Grates, I guess) was so boring I want to give the book to an enemy. just need to find one. Paasilinna is a conveyor belt writer - to live comfortable off books in in a small country like Finland you have to write A Lot, and afaik he's mostly retreaded the ideas from his earlier and better books. I don't read a lot of modern Finnish lit, tbf, and there's very few "heavier" writers that interest me in any way thematically. Antti Hyry is wonderful, he writes these weird ethereal stories about the everyday life of Christian communities in Pohjanmaa, across the coast from Northern Sweden. He might've been translated into Scandi languages but not into English. Antti Tuuri is from over there too and has similar themes, he's more popular and more likely to have been translated. Although with those guys too for me there's this whole Otherness cos their Finland is surprisingly different from the one I grew in, as I'm from a factory town in the Southeast. Hannu Salama has written these very proletarian novels about that whole subculture, him I like a lot. And he's probably been translated to Swedish. I think, in a very broad way, Paasilinna's themes reflect a sort of strong anti-elitist ethos we have had in our literature, where a lot of the most popular and most acclaimed novels depict these rural communities and the eccentricities that arise in them. So much of Finnish high literature is about misery and boredom: just thinking about dudes I like, there's our only literature Nobelist F.E. Sillanpää, who wrote about starving people in the Civil War, then there's Ilmari Kianto who wrote about starving people before independence, there's Timo K. Mukka who wrote about starving people killing and raping each others after WW2... There's a very strong naturalist tradition. Like, Faulkner and Steinbeck are positively chirpy compared to a lot of our classics. The first novel written in Finnish, Aleksis Kivi's Seitsemän veljestä, is about a set of brothers who move into the woods because they'd rather drink, fight and gently caress than go to school. After our late urbanisation I think our literature has in some ways not had any real basic points of reference compared to what came before the '60s and '70s, and guys like Paasilinna, Kari Hotakainen and Miika Nousiainen represent a kind of tamer, more comic and more popular reinterpretation of classic rural and working class themes. Some of the popular female authors of the last few years, like Sofi Oksanen and Katja Kettu, also focus pretty strongly on the trauma of war and the misery of women (although Oksanen writes more about Estonia). And to clarify, I like this whole Jante's law vibe that underlies this all, I just think that apart from Hyry there hasn't been a single writer recently who's combined these themes with a genuinely great creative imagination.
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Jul 24, 2015 15:36
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I was reading about William T. Vollman since his new book is coming out and goddamn if he ain't the gooniest fucker
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Jul 24, 2015 15:39
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Mel Mudkiper posted:I was reading about William T. Vollman since his new book is coming out and goddamn if he ain't the gooniest fucker I enjoyed parts of Europe Central quite a bit, though other parts kind of drag on and seem a bit pointless. Some of the Rainbow Stories are great.
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Jul 24, 2015 15:48
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:If y'all want the Book of the Month to keep going, chime in with suggestions in the thread at the top of the forum. Man I meant to take part in this discussion but I have had the busiest drat week at work. I feel like I let you down; that thread was full of so many sadsacks holy crap. Just a barrel of turds. I voted for Between the World and Me since I just finished that for my "Read a book released in the past 2 months" for Stravinsky's challenge thread and thought it was good. At the very least I feel like the type of discussion it would generate could potentially be interesting.
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Jul 24, 2015 16:02
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Guy A. Person posted:At the very least I feel like the type of discussion it would generate could potentially be interesting. This is my motivation. Coates has written the most important book on race in a generation and its going to be much more fun to discuss than just going "this book is goofy lol" for a month.
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Jul 24, 2015 16:06
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Burning Rain posted:His 'erotic farce' Kymmenen riivinrautaa (Ten Grates, I guess) was so boring I want to give the book to an enemy. just need to find one. no, but those of his books that I have read are very similar to each other, those books being year of the hare, collective suicide and the senile surveyor, all of which have been translated into norwegian so they're probably relatively successful examples of his work salama has been translated into norwegian with his midsummer dance, is that any good? V. Illych L. fucked around with this message at 16:28 on Jul 24, 2015 |
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Jul 24, 2015 16:25
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Finnish literary history is an absolutely fascinating subject for study, since I think it's really interesting how all these major literary movements and trends of the world are reflected in a relatively small literary scene that's very vibrant and pretty experimental in some ways while also kind of close-minded and circle-jerky in others, but like 90% of the actual books themselves are so boring Aleksis Kivi is legit good though, as mentioned, and has been pretty widely translated. He's at least got some proper drinking and fighting action going on.
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Jul 24, 2015 16:56
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Between the World and Me is just over  for the kindle edition. I think I'm gonna get it
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Jul 24, 2015 17:14
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ulvir posted:Between the World and Me is just over I did cause the hold line at the Chicago Public Library was like 130 people lol
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Jul 24, 2015 17:29
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The best thing about nook/kindle is how much you save on new e-books vs. hardcovers In the last four years I have saved approximately 2,430 dollars on books with my Nook.
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Jul 24, 2015 17:32
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I've saved that and more, because I don't read anything written in the past hundred years.
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Jul 24, 2015 17:36
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Mr. Squishy posted:I've saved that and more, because I don't read anything written in the past hundred years. Congratulations of scavenging the junkyard of the human experience. Nothing worth reading exists before WWI
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Jul 24, 2015 17:38
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Guy A. Person posted:I did cause the hold line at the Chicago Public Library was like 130 people lol I estimate it'll take between 6 and 12 months at the very least before I'll see it (untranslated) in any book store or public library around here. Mel Mudkiper posted:Nothing worth reading exists before WWI 
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Jul 24, 2015 17:47
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Mel Mudkiper posted:This is my motivation. Coates has written the most important book on race in a generation and its going to be much more fun to discuss than just going "this book is goofy lol" for a month. I just finished it rather than read matroya because someone loaned it to me and the guy who responded to me in the general discussion thread was right, its basically a book to see if you paid attention to us news the past year. I mean you can use the book to talk about race relations due to it adding a layer of abstraction (instead of an event its talking about a book) but I really don't think its that important. Every point he makes has been already put forth. Plus the d&d style arguments that would be made in that thread would be awful.
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Jul 24, 2015 21:58
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Mel Mudkiper posted:This is my motivation. Coates has written the most important book on race in a generation and its going to be much more fun to discuss than just going "this book is goofy lol" for a month. I honestly don't see how it will turn out any different than any number of discussions about Ferguson or Freddie Gray. Like Stravinsky said, there would be an extra layer of abstraction because you'd start off talking about a book about a thing instead of just talking about thing directly, but I feel pretty confident that the layer of abstraction would end up shredded pretty quickly and it would just devolve into a comments section argument.
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Jul 24, 2015 22:34
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I dunno I feel like that although the book was spurred by those events and his son's reaction to them, the bulk of it is his life experience dealing with a whole range of aspects of the black experience. I think when you talk about some specific incident it will immediately get bogged down in details and arguments about what happened: what was the exact sequence of events, was the person complying, what is their history, did the officer have reason to fear for his safety, etc. There's not a lot to latch onto in that regard. The parts I found fascinating were the different stages he went through and how he began to understand the reality around him: not only racism but his parent's own fear and how that informed his upbringing, the psychology of life on the streets among gangs, his experience at college meeting a bunch of other African Americans with other life experiences, his own fears as a father. It might not be as groundbreaking as the buzz suggests, but I don't think people are going to read the entire book then come into the thread to post the usual Facebook crap.
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Jul 24, 2015 23:54
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Also I think it's a better than even bet that the type of dudes who want to read about knights on dinosaurs aren't reading insightful essays on current events anyway.
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Jul 25, 2015 00:03
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Hey man, I read about Knights on dinosaurs AND The Economist. Don't judge!
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Jul 25, 2015 00:06
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No offense to my Dino Dudes E: Sorry homemaster you beat my triple post, I'm phone posting
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Jul 25, 2015 00:07
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Stravinsky posted:I just finished it rather than read matroya because someone loaned it to me and the guy who responded to me in the general discussion thread was right, its basically a book to see if you paid attention to us news the past year. I mean you can use the book to talk about race relations due to it adding a layer of abstraction (instead of an event its talking about a book) but I really don't think its that important. Every point he makes has been already put forth. Plus the d&d style arguments that would be made in that thread would be awful. I don't think the value is in his arguments is that they are wholly original, its that they are authentic, consistent, beautifully portrayed, and act as a fundamental synthesis of the last 50 years of race.
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Jul 25, 2015 00:25
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Mel how do you afford all the hardbacks you must buy
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Jul 25, 2015 00:50
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Probably has a real job.
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Jul 25, 2015 00:51
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blue squares posted:Mel how do you afford all the hardbacks you must buy About 30~40 a year and lucky enough to have a job that can afford it. Its also my major "pleasure" expense EDIT: When you consider almost all the purchases are e-books which run about 12.00 or so and spread it out over a year it comes out to like 30 dollars a month which honestly isn't all that bad I don't think. Mel Mudkiper fucked around with this message at 00:57 on Jul 25, 2015 |
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Jul 25, 2015 00:52
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V. Illych L. posted:salama has been translated into norwegian with his midsummer dance, is that any good? Yeah it's fine, not my fav but his #1 classic cos he quite infamously got sentenced for blasphemy for it.
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Jul 25, 2015 01:10
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im reading the feast of the goat, and there's a part where trujillo pisses himself and gets really annoyed
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Jul 25, 2015 10:29
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like theres a dinosaur, and a knight, and its so epic lol
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Jul 25, 2015 12:19
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Hi TBB, I've been reading through this thread and saw some cool & good recs so I thought I'd try asking too. In June I finished a school semester during which, because of some poor choices in classes and professors, the only books I read were Quebecian (and otherwise French-Canadian) novels that didn't appeal to me at all. I was really looking forward to free time and reading for fun after that, but now that I have it, nothing on my shelf or Kindle looks appealing, and I put everything down after ten pages or so. So I thought that maybe I should try asking for recommendations for some new stuff? Some authors I like include Colette, Dostoyevsky, Zadie Smith and Kenzaburo Oe, but I'm open to a lot of things as long as they're not overly grim and pessimistic. Thanks in advance!
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Jul 25, 2015 23:46
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Ventadour posted:Hi TBB, I've been reading through this thread and saw some cool & good recs so I thought I'd try asking too. gently caress it, I'm recommending JApanese lit now Some good Japanese books are The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi (usually paired with a novel called Arrowroot) by Junichiro Tanizaki, Collected Short Stories of Ryunosuke Akutagawa (near the end it gets depressing and you can actually see where he quits writing and kills himself), Coin Locker Babies by Ryo Murakami, Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata, Confessions of a Mask by Yukio Mishima and this book of Noh drama
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Jul 26, 2015 00:06
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Thanks! I've read two of those before (The Secret History of Lord Musashi and Snow Country) and enjoyed them a lot. My country is pretty bad with translations of Japanese lit, so in case I don't find these, what are some good translations to English?
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Jul 26, 2015 00:12
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Ventadour posted:Thanks! I've read two of those before (The Secret History of Lord Musashi and Snow Country) and enjoyed them a lot. akutagawa murakami mishima The Noh thing is already in English. WHat country do you live in, if you don't mind me asking
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Jul 26, 2015 00:34
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Poland. Haruki Murakami aside, Japanese authors don't seem to sell well over here, so my options are usually limited to digging through libraries and second-hand stores for things published decades ago, or English translations. Even my university library's Japanese lit section is very small and is majorly made up of English, German or Russian translations.
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Jul 26, 2015 00:53
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