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If I don't write them down they cease to exist ten minutes later so
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Jan 11, 2018 06:20
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derp posted:Just write a blog you weirdos. It's like a diary except no one will read it I'll read an ebook, but the idea of my incredibly important and deep thoughts about life and death after reading Tolstoy being rendered in bad CSS fills me with soul-deep revulsion. Also the first chapter of The Death of Ivan Ilyich is 
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Jan 11, 2018 06:23
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derp posted:I've written a blog post every day for over a year. It's good for the brain to write words and nice to look back on my thoughts about whatever I was reading/doing The act of writing down my opinions of a book helps me have a more concrete one than "it wasn't my thing" or "I really like it." I should get back to doing that.
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Jan 11, 2018 06:45
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you all weird, as heck
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Jan 11, 2018 08:05
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Burning Rain posted:you all weird, as heck "heck is other people" -- Sarte, No Way Out
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Jan 11, 2018 08:35
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derp posted:If I don't write them down they cease to exist ten minutes later so As they should
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Jan 11, 2018 09:55
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Burning Rain posted:you all weird, as heck forreal
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Jan 11, 2018 10:46
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derp posted:I've written a blog post every day for over a year same but a Twitter and instead of opinions about books it's just me howling into the abyss and arguing over minutiae with other grievously ill weirdos
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Jan 11, 2018 15:05
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chernobyl kinsman posted:same but a Twitter and instead of opinions about books it's just me howling into the abyss and arguing over minutiae with other grievously ill weirdos same and the @'s at video game lets players
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Jan 11, 2018 15:53
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Picked up The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin It looked interesting even it seems to be filling in the post Franzen lit fic bingo card
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Jan 11, 2018 16:17
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Picked up a collection by Jorge Luis Borges. Have never read any of his stuff but looking forward to this. I finished One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez and loved it, so I guess I'm going on a bit of a Spanish novelist kick.
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Jan 11, 2018 17:14
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borges good
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Jan 11, 2018 17:17
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That's the collection I have, and it's--as far as I know--a collection of every short story collection he's released.
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Jan 11, 2018 17:17
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draculatreefores posted:Picked up a collection by Jorge Luis Borges. Have never read any of his stuff but looking forward to this. I finished One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez and loved it, so I guess I'm going on a bit of a Spanish novelist kick. neither of those authors is Spanish *blows smoke to say johnny*
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Jan 11, 2018 17:20
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Borges is absolutely one of my favourite Spanish novelists
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Jan 11, 2018 17:20
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draculatreefores posted:Picked up a collection by Jorge Luis Borges. Have never read any of his stuff but looking forward to this. I finished One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez and loved it, so I guess I'm going on a bit of a Spanish novelist kick. Read Bolano E: Also more contemporary: Alejandro Zambra is sometimes good and Alvaro Enrigue is awesome (Sudden Death is about a tennis match between the painter Caravaggio and the poet Francisco de Quevedo using a tennis ball made of Anne Boleyn's hair). thehoodie fucked around with this message at 18:34 on Jan 11, 2018 |
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Jan 11, 2018 18:30
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Ras Het posted:Borges is absolutely one of my favourite Spanish novelists I prefer the great English poets, like Faulkner
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Jan 11, 2018 18:35
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Franchescanado posted:Anyone read any Ben Okri? The Famished Road sounds really good. Yeah, it's good. I thought the realist parts were way more interesting than the magical realism though. But I'm not saying the spirit world bits detract from it, they just didn't hold my attention as hard because they tend to meander. Franchescanado posted:That's the collection I have, and it's--as far as I know--a collection of every short story collection he's released. Does anyone know how it compares to the Labyrinths collection? It's the only one I've read, and it seems to have most of the same stories. Stuporstar fucked around with this message at 19:27 on Jan 11, 2018 |
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Jan 11, 2018 19:18
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thehoodie posted:Read Bolano Seconding this, Sudden Death was probably the best novel I read last year. Even calling it a novel feels a little funny -- the tennis match is basically a framing device for a wide-ranging exploration by Enrigue. I could not recommend this more highly. Edit: i am unmoved by Bolaño.
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Jan 11, 2018 20:08
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Stuporstar posted:Yeah, it's good. I thought the realist parts were way more interesting than the magical realism though. But I'm not saying the spirit world bits detract from it, they just didn't hold my attention as hard because they tend to meander. Labyrinths is a subset of the blue Borges "Collected Fiction" which arranges the stories slightly differently IIRC.
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Jan 11, 2018 20:09
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Ive got a borges collection on my bedside table and ive read the first story which was really loving good and then ive read the first page of the second story like ten times and I can't get any further than that idk whyyyyy
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Jan 11, 2018 22:09
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mdemone posted:Labyrinths is a subset of the blue Borges "Collected Fiction" which arranges the stories slightly differently IIRC. Thanks. I've been meaning to pick up one of his collections since reading it and I think I'll get this one instead. fridge corn posted:Ive got a borges collection on my bedside table and ive read the first story which was really loving good and then ive read the first page of the second story like ten times and I can't get any further than that idk whyyyyy It would help if you gave their titles. Given that the collections span a huge length of time, every story is a different experiment. It's like in Calvino's Cosmicomics, most of the stories were delightful but a couple like Time and the Hunter could get a bit eye-glazing. You could always skip the ones you get stuck on and come back to it later. Stuporstar fucked around with this message at 23:26 on Jan 11, 2018 |
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Jan 11, 2018 23:23
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The collection is called labyrinths
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Jan 11, 2018 23:48
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fridge corn posted:The collection is called labyrinths oh the second story in that is the garden of forking paths which is ok but almost too clever for its own good. skip it and read the lottery in babylon, and if you dont like that skip ahead to the library of babel, and if you dont like that then you dont like borges
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Jan 11, 2018 23:56
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ok thanks
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Jan 12, 2018 00:09
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Ras Het posted:Borges is absolutely one of my favourite Spanish novelists lol
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Jan 12, 2018 00:20
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Ras Het posted:Borges is absolutely one of my favourite Spanish novelists The Collected Novels of Jorge Luis Borges by Jorge Luis Borges Translated by Andrew Hurley Viking Press, 2003. Three volumes, 2188 pgs. Review by Ben D. Anderson Following on the heels of Vikings’ indispensable compendiums of Borges’ poems, essays, and short stories, comes this somewhat more ambitious collection of Borges’ novels. Divided into three volumes, the first volume contains the “Arabist” trilogy, Gate of Peace, Black and White Sands, and The First Governor of Jerusalem, as well as a foreword by Haruki Murakami. Published between 1948 and 1955, these first three novels are generally cited as Borges’ last real foray into the world of Islamic mysticism and the end of his preoccupation with Arabic peoples in general. Set in the late 1200s, the Arabist trilogy tells the story of the Al-Warazai family through tens of generations. The novel starts off with the marriage of Raifa Al Mohammed Al-Warazai to Princess Zeeba Rakhmatti, the immortal ruler of the ruined city of Persepolis. Her fortune, literally vanishing into thin air due to an ancient curse, is buttressed by the money of her new husband’s merchant family. The marriage sets into motion a series of events that culminates, in the center of Black and White Sands, with the reincarnated Raifa, now a barnacle clinging to the hull of the Pinta, desperately trying to stay with Zeeba, now a cross-dressing crew member of Christopher Columbus. In 1840, the Al-Warazai fortune, now squandered in failed attempts to corner the market on world almond production, is melted down by Beezhan Al-Mutasiim Al-Warazai, who takes the molten silver and casts it into a thin dagger as he seeks to find the now insane Zeeba, living somewhere on the plains of Bolivia. Beezhan finds employment as an itinerant guacho, Bolivia’s only Muslim, and a notorious horse thief. Beezhan believes that by killing Zeeba, he will free the ghost of Raifa, who now haunts his dreams. By contrast, the two novels that make up the second volume of the three-book set are calm, contemplative and decidedly non-violent. Tableness, the first novel, is a fictional autobiography of Xanthus, the heavenly librarian of the Platonic Archives, which contain all the heavenly objects that are emulated on Earth. Xanthus tells us the story of his corporeal life, as a mercenary in Scythia who dies at the hand of Vikings, and tries to impart the existence of his afterlife without giving away too many secrets. Tableness, first published in Spanish in 1958 but not translated into English until 1961, is generally regarded as Borges’ most important novel. I, however, prefer the simple austerity of his 1960 novel, The Lodestone, another time-defying epic of the eternal inhabitants of a Jesuit monastery in New Mexico. The monks lead a subsistence agrarian lifestyle, and as the ages pass, the monks and their home shrink, until they are little more than the size of ants in the present day. The Lodestone contains some of Borges’ most beautiful imagery (“Father Simon deplored the aging process, and grew distasteful of the wrinkles on his face. Looking in the mirror, he would often focus on his dully reflective fingernails, and remember when they shone as brilliantly as the scales of a carp.”), and stand as a testament to the beauty of Catholicism in an age that seeks to destroy its institutions. The final volume of the compendium is devoted to Borges’ unfinished, untitled “opus”, a meditation on the infinite that revolves around an apocryphal tapestry that purports to be a portrait of the face of God. As the tapestry is bought, sold, stolen, and traded amongst alternately wealthy, self-righteous, and amoral men, Borges seems, as a writer, to lose confidence in the ability of even fictional humans to break out of their self-destructive behaviors. Several draft chapter are included, with marginalia and crossouts included, and they show a novel that started to disintegrate faster than its blind author could hope to write it. Although he started the novel in 1963, he was forced to put it down in 1980 because he feared the frustration would affect his health. Besides arguments over having been “robbed” of a Nobel Prize, modern conversations of Borges tend to revolve around his contribution to the postmodern genres of metafiction and fabulism. We are reminded of this in every foreword in the collection, which were written by Italo Calvino, Gore Vidal, and Arundhati Roy in addition to Murakami. Indeed, it seems futile to even imagine a world of literature untouched by the influence of Borges. But in these novels, I was reminded of Borges’ humanity, and his enduring belief and faith in man and his infinitely combinatorial inventions. Perhaps that is why the infinite so successfully romanced Borges; after all, in an infinite series, there has to be one perfect moment.
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Jan 12, 2018 00:27
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gently caress off, Murakami! Stop sticking your grubby little fingers in my favorite things!
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Jan 12, 2018 01:32
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never knew borges wrote novels. where the heck do you find them? not on amazon...
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Jan 12, 2018 01:55
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Yeah they're all super out of print, you've basically just got to raid used bookstores and hope. I've only been able to find one but it was staggering
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Jan 12, 2018 02:37
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chernobyl kinsman posted:oh the second story in that is the garden of forking paths which is ok but almost too clever for its own good. skip it and read the lottery in babylon, and if you dont like that skip ahead to the library of babel, and if you dont like that then you dont like borges Too clever for it's own good is a stupid meaningless criticism
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Jan 12, 2018 02:42
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thats mostly fair. i think the story is defined by the conceit that seals its ending and i dont think its a very good conceit. not firm enough in this opinion to die on a hill about it though
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Jan 12, 2018 02:47
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my uncle works at nintendo and he says the next metal gear game is based on a borges novel
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Jan 12, 2018 03:47
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hey botl just letting you know it amused me that you trolled the best friends thread
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Jan 12, 2018 04:13
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derp posted:never knew borges wrote novels. where the heck do you find them? not on amazon... Oh they're around, keep looking
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Jan 12, 2018 04:26
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chernobyl kinsman posted:thats mostly fair. i think the story is defined by the conceit that seals its ending and i dont think its a very good conceit. not firm enough in this opinion to die on a hill about it though You should have considered this before you crossed me.
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Jan 12, 2018 06:33
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Reading Can Xue's Vertical Motion and I have no idea what is going on but I love it
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Jan 13, 2018 07:19
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I think I should read Borges's essays again, I've forgotten them almost entirely.
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Jan 14, 2018 21:33
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i just re-read the one where he goes completely off on some poor guy's book about ghosts
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Jan 14, 2018 21:45
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I at least remember the one where he complains about Agatha Christie's stories being full of superfluities like multiple suspects.
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Jan 14, 2018 21:48
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