timeandtide posted:

2. Fiction: Westerns. What're the major ones in the genre I should read? Any cross-genre stuff like the Dark Tower?

quote:

Holiday, vol. 38, #6; December 1965, pp. 164-5
A Review of Oakley Hall's Warlock

Tombstone, Arizona, during the 1880's is, in ways, our national Camelot: a never-never land where American virtues are embodied in the Earps, and the opposite evils in the Clanton gang; where the confrontation at the OK corral takes on some of the dry purity of the Arthurian joust. Oakley Hall, in his very fine novel Warlock has restored to the myth of Tombstone its full, mortal, blooded humanity. Wyatt Earp is transmogrified into a gunfighter named Blaisdell who, partly because of his blown-up image in the Wild West magazines of the day, believes he is a hero. He is summoned to the embattled town of Warlock by a committee of nervous citizens expressly to be a hero, but finds that he cannot, at last, live up to his image; that there is a flaw not only in him, but also, we feel, in the entire set of assumptions that have allowed the image to exist. It is Blaisdell's private abyss, and not too different from the town's public one. Before the agonized epic of Warlock is over with -- the rebellion of the proto-Wobblies working in the mines, the struggling for political control of the area, the gunfighting, mob violence, the personal crises of those in power -- the collective awareness that is Warlock must face its own inescapable Horror: that what is called society, with its law and order, is as frail, as precarious, as flesh and can be snuffed out and assimilated back into the desert as easily as a corpse can. It is the deep sensitivity to abysses that makes Warlock one of our best American novels. For we are a nation that can, many of us, toss with all aplomb our candy wrapper into the Grand Canyon itself, snap a color shot and drive away; and we need voices like Oakley Hall's to remind us how far that piece of paper, still fluttering brightly behind us, has to fall.

-Thomas Pynchon

feedmyleg posted:

deliberately paced, depressing drama with a slight science fiction twist

quote:

In The Glass Bees the celebrated German writer Ernst Jünger presents a disconcerting vision of the future. Zapparoni, a brilliant businessman, has turned his advanced understanding of technology and his strategic command of the information and entertainment industries into a discrete form of global domination. But Zapparoni is worried that the scientists he depends on might sell his secrets. He needs a chief of security, and Richard, a veteran and war hero, is ready for the job. However, when he arrives at the beautiful country compound that is Zapparoni's headquarters, he finds himself subjected to an unexpected ordeal. Soon he is led to question his past, his character, and even his senses....

mastercon12 posted:

The Third Policeman was hilarious. I was reading it in study period when I laughed out loud for a good 2 minutes.

Cosinetta posted:

Okay, christmas is coming up (I like to be ready in advance) and I want to get my dad a really good book. Lately he's been raving about Pillars of the Earth by Follet. He loves the medieval setting and the focus on the people, not the nobility.

petewhitley posted:

What these books have in common (other than that some might categorize them as self-help pap) is that they all consist of concise, focused stories from history whereby some sort of lesson is imparted.

MissSheGrrl posted:

I'm looking for a book, preferably something with a medieval historical/fantasy setting, that is somewhat dark or even horrific and really focuses on the characters. I'm fascinated by the darker sides to human nature like betrayal and torture and while I have no problems with it being necessarily violent or vulgar, I would prefer if it was at least somewhat intellectual yet entertaining.

Daveski posted:

Anyone have suggestions for further reading along those lines? Either biographies of specific people or more general books on Victorian life would be great.

meanolmrcloud posted:

Facial Fracture posted:

Plus, "Paulist Press" + dove logo looked like Catholic vanity publishing to me.

onefish posted:

For contemporary books, I think The Millons' list of "Books of the Millenium" (written after 2000) matches reasonably well with most canonical perceptions of the best recent mainstream/literary work.

quote:

(Brust adds the initials P.J.F. after his name. They stand for Pre-Joyce Foundation, a group whose members, among them Emma Bull, Will Shetterly, and Jane Yolen, believe that James Joyce ruined modern literature.)

gos_jim posted:

So tell me.

Facial Fracture posted:

Who were/are some good Central/Eastern-European writers I probably haven't heard of? (I've read the Big Russians; leaving them aside, you can assume a fair degree of ignorance on my part.) I'd particularly like to read some Polish stuff.

barkingclam posted:

You might also want to check out Multatuli's Max Havelaar. It's a novel about one man fighting a corrupt government in Java, then a Dutch colony. I haven't gotten around to it yet, but I've heard good things.

ChirpChirpCheep posted:

Are there any lists out there of what is considered canon for 20th-21st century literature (or like top 100 books or whatever?) I need some new stuff to read and figure that's as good a place as any to look for things.

ShutteredIn posted:

On another note, has anyone here read Ismail Kadare and could recommend where to start?

Kontradaz posted:

Imapanda posted:

barkingclam posted:

its about world war one, but the good solider svejk by jaroslav hasek is a great read

Dukket posted:

I am NOT looking for CATCH-22 style comedy

Chamberk posted:

Any good fiction books on the Russian or Chinese revolutions? I've read Dr. Zhivago, which was pretty good, but anything on those subjects would be great.

Urdnot Fire posted:

cast-away fiction

Irritated Goat posted:

I'm looking for books that star a "villain" as the main character.

Nick Cage posted:

One of my regrets is not taking lit in college, and so I try to read as much as possible in my spare time, and I find like I'm sure most of you do that you get the most from a book by first reading it and then reading a bunch of crit which considers it.

So the problem is now I'm frequently running into names like Lacan, Foucault, zizek and baudrillard (to name a few,) and so my understanding of them is mostly through tertiary tangential references to their ideas, and I'd like to have a broader and more fundamental knowledge of lit crit theory generally.

Can anyone recommend any book/s which cover this material? I don't mind if its a college textbook. I'm afraid if I attack it chronologically through primary texts I'm gonna burn out pretty fast, and i don't think that's the best approach usually anyway.

Floofykins posted:

Looking for some non-fiction books about societies before the 1900s. Specifically interested in the average lifestyle of people living in Renaissance, Medieval, and Victorian eras.

ArcticZombie posted:

Does anyone have a recommendations on the best translation/version of A Thousand and One Nights (or Arabian Nights)?

Happy Hedonist posted:

Now my question is, is there a similar book on WW1? I've read The Guns of August and while it is perhaps my favorite history book it obviously focuses more on the cause and lead up to the war and then sort of glosses over the next 3 1/2 years. What I'd ultimately like to read is a narrative in the same vein as Beevor's The Second World War. I want a better understanding of the war as a whole so in the future I'll be able to pick aspects which interest me and read about those.

Spadoink posted:

trapped in the north, stranded in the woods, whatever (I don't read these).

blue squares posted:

What would be considered a modern transcendentalist novel? I've read some Thoreau and I plan to revisit all of his stuff and Emerson's, but I'd like to reading something that came out within the last five-fifteen years, too. Does it exist?

Sir John Feelgood posted:

Misanthropic fiction.

I've read Gulliver's Travels.

quote:

nothing but a hodgepodge of filth like me, rheumy, flea-bitten, aloof, who, chased by hunger, plague, tumors, and cold, ran aground here, arriving broken from the four corners of the earth. They couldn’t keep going because the ocean stood in their way. That’s France and that’s the French…. Vicious and spineless, raped, robbed, gutted, and always halfwits…. We don’t change a bit! Neither our socks nor our masters nor our opinions or, if we do, too late to have it matter. We’re born followers and die of it! Soldiers without pay, heroes for all humanity, talking monkeys, tortured words, we’re the minions of King Misery! We’re in his grasp! When we’re foolish, he squeezes…. His fingers forever around our necks, it’s hard to speak…. No way to live….