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blue squares posted:I think Cormac McCarthy is overrated, and is so beloved on the internet because he takes basic genre plots and writes them pretentiously, which makes nerds feel super smart for reading them That's kind of McCarthy's point though, he forces the mythology of the American west into a violent confrontation with the actual nihilism of poverty and violence.
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Jan 5, 2016 18:53
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Aw gently caress all this time I thought Piers Anthony and Piers Morgan were the same person.
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Jan 5, 2016 20:45
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This argument is facile because it's based on the assumption that nerds need a reason to feel smugly superior. All of nerd culture is based around posturing about how other culture is lesser. To keep this on track, Ready Player One is the greatest book ever written.
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Jan 5, 2016 20:50
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i;m glad this thread turned into yet another genrefic thread. good work, guys
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Jan 5, 2016 21:04
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blue squares posted:but I read 120 pages last night and I like it. yeah, the first 3 or 4 books are decently entertaining fantasy. but it goes way downhill. I read it in college many years ago when I had much more of a tolerance for crap genre fiction than I do now, and even then I gave up around book 9 or 10. It gets very bad.
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Jan 5, 2016 21:05
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ulvir posted:i;m glad this thread turned into yet another genrefic thread. good work, guys I still got your back bro Reading The Neapolitan Series right now its. p good
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Jan 5, 2016 21:16
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Mel Mudkiper posted:I still got your back bro Cool! Are the other books as good as the first one?
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Jan 5, 2016 21:55
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Mel Mudkiper posted:I still got your back bro that was ferrante, right?
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Jan 5, 2016 22:18
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Moacher posted:I think in the future if I feel like reading something Cormac McCarthy-esque I'll just read Cormac McCarthy instead, since this was very similar but less polished and less satisfying in the end. I'll probably at least check out Legends of a Suicide and maybe Aquarium though, since they seem to be Vann's highest rated works and don't sound like more of the same South-Western setting, and I definitely liked Vann's writing more than I found fault with it. Aquarium is really good
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Jan 5, 2016 22:23
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ulvir posted:that was ferrante, right? Yeah. The concluding one just came out last year.
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Jan 5, 2016 22:37
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Walh Hara posted:Cool! Are the other books as good as the first one? Dunno, still on the first one.
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Jan 5, 2016 22:50
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The last book is kind of predictable. I would have preferred to see an ending where The Dark One conquers Napoli
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Jan 5, 2016 23:17
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Rabbit Hill posted:Well, I finished Moby Dick on Sunday. I read every word of it, and I loved every word of it. I'd say the "digressive" chapters were the best parts That's always the case, it's like that quote from Tristram Shandy where he says that digression is the soul of reading. anyway, I am reading Miracle of the Rose by Jean Genet, and it's very good, beautifully written poetic sentences about prisons, homosexuality, death, beauty, etc.
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Jan 6, 2016 00:36
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blue squares posted:I think Shakespeare is overrated, and is so beloved on the internet because he takes basic genre plots and writes them pretentiously, which makes nerds feel super smart for reading them I hope you realize that Cormac McCarthy has devoted readers outside of the Something Awful forums. Some of them are even educated! Reading The Crossing in particular might give you more complete view of the rest of his work. I'll just turn it over to Dianne Luce because  quote:The Crossing focuses on the course of life, sequential and linear, causative, perhaps fated and yet surprising, as narrative plot—as story. And McCarthy is concerned with the role or function of story in human experience of life, not only our own stories, our autobiographies, but our biographies of others, our witnessing. These concerns are manifested in the folk ballad or corrido (literally, the running or the flowing) associated with Boyd, and in the many stories told Billy by the people whose paths cross his on his journeys in Mexico... "It's really about determinism and the limits of human will to affect events" might seem like an awfully broad justification for all kinds of [stuffy British accent] genre fiction, but humans have been grappling with that theme at least as far back as Job. You don't need a straight-up poetic dialogue with the One True God to address theodicean questions. There's a lot more to even thrillers like No Country for Old Men than highfalutin prose. Speaking of which, Rabbit Hill posted:
Goddamn I love this passage. Pip, the "brilliant" little negro boy, falls overboard and is nearly drowned in pursuit of the whale. He goes crazy as a result of his near-death experience: quote:...from that hour the little negro went about the deck an idiot; such, at least, they said he was. The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body up, but drowned the infinite of his soul. This directly parallels the passage in Job where God lays out His creation, including the monster Leviathan, to demonstrate the limits of man's comprehension and show that simplistic just-world theology is inconsistent with a greater divine purpose. Except in Job, the experience was reassuring—Job came back from his tour of Creation secure in the knowledge that God knew what He was doing, even if he couldn't quite understand it. Pip, on the other hand, is offered a glimpse of a greater purpose, and it drives him insane. In Melville's version, God is a lunatic.
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Jan 6, 2016 00:49
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Ishmael posted:To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. I'm currently on my first read-through of Moby Dick and I've only got about 100 pages left. Even though I enjoy the "digressive" chapters, I'd be lying if I said I was sad that there aren't any more (judging by the table of contents at least).
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Jan 6, 2016 02:52
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I listened to the A Brief History of Seven Killings audiobook on a recommendation from this thread (I think). It was wonderful--I definitely recommend it over reading it, assuming you're open to audiobooks--and made my new long commute so much more bearable Are there other particularly excellent literature audiobooks are out there? Trying to find something by browsing through audible/iBooks is pretty fruitless so far
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Jan 6, 2016 05:04
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TheQat posted:Are there other particularly excellent literature audiobooks are out there? Trying to find something by browsing through audible/iBooks is pretty fruitless so far Go Tell it On the Mountain by James Baldwin Breath by Tim Winton Colin Firth's reading of The End of the Affair
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Jan 6, 2016 06:21
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TheQat posted:Are there other particularly excellent literature audiobooks are out there? Trying to find something by browsing through audible/iBooks is pretty fruitless so far Breakfast of Champions narrated by John Malkovich
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Jan 6, 2016 07:36
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I'm reading Homer's Illiad. Well, trying to. It's hard to keep track of who everyone is and the second book nearly sent me to sleep. I have been assured that it gets better halfway through though. I will read book three and four tonight.
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Jan 6, 2016 13:41
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just finished houellebecq's The Map and the Territory and the one of the main things i got from it is that houellebecq has a very high opinion of himself
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Jan 6, 2016 15:05
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i did enjoy jed martin's spergin oblivious contempt of other human beings, though
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Jan 6, 2016 15:06
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V. Illych L. posted:just finished houellebecq's The Map and the Territory and the one of the main things i got from it is that houellebecq has a very high opinion of himself I have that impression, too, and that's why I haven't read any of his books yet. I want to give him a go this year, though. Which one should I start with?
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Jan 6, 2016 16:27
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High Warlord Zog posted:Go Tell it On the Mountain by James Baldwin at the date posted:Breakfast of Champions narrated by John Malkovich Thanks. Starting with Breakfast of Champions this morning. I had not read it and it is great so far If anyone else has any audiobook recs, please don't hold back!
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Jan 6, 2016 16:30
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Other authors I want to finally read this year: Bernhard, Sebald, Waugh, Lispector, Ferrante, Mahfouz and Bellow.
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Jan 6, 2016 16:31
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Burning Rain posted:I have that impression, too, and that's why I haven't read any of his books yet. I want to give him a go this year, though. Which one should I start with? map and territory is p good imo. i haven't read submission yet, and am not convinced i want to. the elementary particles or whatever it's called in english is ok, but map and territory is better he does some clever, funny & cool things in it, including turning it into a police procedural two-thirds in
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Jan 6, 2016 16:34
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Burning Rain posted:I have that impression, too, and that's why I haven't read any of his books yet. I want to give him a go this year, though. Which one should I start with? my first book of his was Submission. It was alright enough. V. Illych L. posted:i haven't read submission yet, and am not convinced i want to. why? just out of curiosity, that is.
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Jan 6, 2016 16:45
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ulvir posted:my first book of his was Submission. It was alright enough. There has been a lot of backlash in the US at least about his depictions towards Muslims in the book.
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Jan 6, 2016 17:42
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Apropos of nothing, I'm reading Charles Darwin's autobiography, and there's one part where he's talking about his literary tastes and says something akin to "No novel can be called good if it doesn't have a character you can't thoroughly love". As someone who couldn't fully get into Hopscotch because all the characters were dicks, I have to agree. 
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Jan 6, 2016 18:22
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I don't think characters have to be likeable, they just have to be interesting. I'm not reading to make a friend; I certainly wouldn't want to spend time with Humbert Humbert but I enjoyed Lolita.
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Jan 6, 2016 18:28
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V. Illych L. posted:map and territory is p good imo. i haven't read submission yet, and am not convinced i want to. the elementary particles or whatever it's called in english is ok, but map and territory is better yea, map & territory was the one i was leaning towards, thanks!
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Jan 6, 2016 18:57
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Burning Rain posted:Other authors I want to finally read this year: Bernhard, Sebald, Waugh, Lispector, Ferrante, Mahfouz and Bellow. Sebald owns so much. I think I read four of his novels last year.
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Jan 6, 2016 20:16
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Mel Mudkiper posted:There has been a lot of backlash in the US at least about his depictions towards Muslims in the book. if its any similar to the reactions here in europe, then its blown way out of proportion, imo
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Jan 6, 2016 21:40
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Pentaro posted:Apropos of nothing, I'm reading Charles Darwin's autobiography, and there's one part where he's talking about his literary tastes and says something akin to "No novel can be called good if it doesn't have a character you can't thoroughly love". As someone who couldn't fully get into Hopscotch because all the characters were dicks, I have to agree. I would say that, in general, the books I love best have characters I love. More generally than that, it's hard for me to stick with a book without a character who doesn't capture me in some way -- like, I don't thoroughly love Judge Holden in Blood Meridian (that seems like a metaphysical impossibility), but his character is certainly one of the main reasons I love Blood Meridian. But then there's Graham Greene, of whose works I've read at least 6-7, and each one populated with deeply unpleasant people.....but Greene's plots, themes, prose, etc., are all so profound and dexterously handled that it just doesn't matter that I don't like anybody he writes about. (Seriously, not one single character of his is anything better than prickly and off-putting. Even so, he's one of my favorite writers.) Dostoevsky, too -- does anyone really like Raskolnikov or the Underground Man, and does it even matter? These authors' great strength, though, is that they tells their stories with such patience and compassion that you don't need to like the characters as people to be invested in them. Dostoevsky ends the first chapter of the Brothers Karamazov with the lines, “In most cases, people, even wicked people, are far more naive and simple-hearted than one generally assumes. And so are we.” It seems to me that the spirit behind that sentence -- that compassion and patience with human weakness -- is infused in all of Dostoevsky's writing, and it's what allows us to care about what befalls all his characters. Except Aglaya in The Idiot. She can gently caress right off.
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Jan 6, 2016 22:16
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Pentaro posted:Apropos of nothing, I'm reading Charles Darwin's autobiography, and there's one part where he's talking about his literary tastes and says something akin to "No novel can be called good if it doesn't have a character you can't thoroughly love". As someone who couldn't fully get into Hopscotch because all the characters were dicks, I have to agree. Looks like Darwin had some dumb as hell lit opinions
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Jan 6, 2016 23:23
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ulvir posted:why? just out of curiosity, that is. houellebeqc has some severely apocalyptic tendencies where he essentially casts himself as a prophet warning of the decline of society into weakness/hedonism/nihilism. the central motif of submission is the loving front national as the sole salvation against this, in the form of the muslim brotherhood (which is itself a basically malign foreign entity aided and abetted by the Weak forces of "decent" france) from reading synopses and reviews i get the impression that it's pretty much a fascist novel - the culmination of civilisation is a kind of cathartic struggle, the sincere and wholesale adoption of some sublime aesthetic &c for which modern France is too weak and decadent. these are themes that he flirts with in the other books i've read, but making it explicit like that seems terribly distasteful
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Jan 7, 2016 00:19
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One of Vonnegut's rules of writing was "Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for." While I'm sure that's still not necessary for some people, I definitely agree with that more than thoroughly loving a character, which is pretty facile.
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Jan 7, 2016 00:25
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A human heart posted:Looks like Darwin had some dumb as hell lit opinions Dude should really stick to turtles.
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Jan 7, 2016 03:22
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blue squares posted:I think Cormac McCarthy is overrated, and is so beloved on the internet because he takes basic genre plots and writes them pretentiously, which makes nerds feel super smart for reading them You hit the nail on the head, Blood Meridian is basically a glorified Piccadilly Cowboy Western
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Jan 7, 2016 03:57
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Rabbit Hill posted:But then there's Graham Greene, of whose works I've read at least 6-7, and each one populated with deeply unpleasant people.....but Greene's plots, themes, prose, etc., are all so profound and dexterously handled that it just doesn't matter that I don't like anybody he writes about. (Seriously, not one single character of his is anything better than prickly and off-putting. Even so, he's one of my favorite writers.) Have you read Our Man In Havana, cause with the obvious exception of the loathsome Batista-era policeman most of the characters in that are relatively likeable in a dim-witted sort of way
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Jan 7, 2016 04:41
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I got some books for Christmas.
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Jan 7, 2016 07:41
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