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Big Mad Drongo posted:I'm currently reading and loving Candide, but it's fairly short so I'll be in the market for a new book pretty soon. A Confederacy of Dunces is pretty much my all-time favorite book, so I'm hoping there's other novels out there featuring terrible/naive people in horrible situations while the Just World Fallacy crumbles around them. If you want the opposite of that, read The Notebook by Agota Kristof. It's about good kids having to become terrible to survive in a WWII era Hungarian village.
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Jun 18, 2014 18:45
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Big Mad Drongo posted:I'm currently reading and loving Candide, but it's fairly short so I'll be in the market for a new book pretty soon. A Confederacy of Dunces is pretty much my all-time favorite book, so I'm hoping there's other novels out there featuring terrible/naive people in horrible situations while the Just World Fallacy crumbles around them. Are you aware that Voltaire wrote a sequel to Candide? It's worth checking out if you're not reading it already.
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Jun 18, 2014 18:45
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You basically have to read Catch-22 anyway, so might as well do that inbetween!
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Jun 18, 2014 19:06
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Big Mad Drongo posted:I'm currently reading and loving Candide, but it's fairly short so I'll be in the market for a new book pretty soon. A Confederacy of Dunces is pretty much my all-time favorite book, so I'm hoping there's other novels out there featuring terrible/naive people in horrible situations while the Just World Fallacy crumbles around them. Oddly enough given the ongoing discussion a lot of Vonnegut's stuff would work for this, at least in the "naive people" and "world crumbles around them" aspects. Start with Cat's Cradle or Slaughterhouse Five.
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Jun 18, 2014 19:26
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I used to be really turned off by literary writing because I guess when I was younger I used to think that all literature was about sad, old people on the Prairies. That's what I was forced to read growing up in Canada. But, that's just public education being poo poo. In the past few years I have definitely come to realise that a lot of the distinction between genre fiction and 'high literature' really is just artistic quality. Cormac McCarthy and Thomas Pynchon, for instance, are two of the best living literary authors in English, but subject matter-wise they tend to write what would be genre fiction if somebody else was writing it. It's just that they're a lot better than anybody else. Anyone who likes to read but is turned off by 'classics' owes it to themselves to seriously sit down and make the effort. Something like The Crying of Lot 49, which is short enough to be approachable, or Blood Meridian, which is a Western, are probably good places to start for people who like genre fiction and are curious. Also, for the guy who doesn't like Shakespeare, you should really just watch Shakespeare performed. It's written to be performed. Give your ear a few minutes to get attuned. If you are a native English speaker it shouldn't be any harder to understand than the Wire. I prefer watching Original Pronounciation performances if I can get it because I find it much easier to understand than Received Pronounciation, but I'm a Newfie and OP is much closer to my native dialect. Your mileage may vary. Gleri fucked around with this message at 03:13 on Jun 19, 2014 |
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Jun 18, 2014 20:05
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Gleri posted:Blood Meridian, which is a Western, are probably good places to start for people who like genre fiction and are curious. You sir or madam, are a magnificient bastard with this troll. A masterpiece? Most assuredly. A good place to start? Sweet Jesus on sale. I can't think of many books more vividly grim than Blood Meridian.
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Jun 18, 2014 20:11
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:
I just spent twenty minutes reading that article about different types of late 18th century carriages. Congratulations, I guess!
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Jun 18, 2014 20:53
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Smoking Crow posted:If you want the opposite of that, read The Notebook by Agota Kristof. It's about good kids having to become terrible to survive in a WWII era Hungarian village. Sounds fascinating, I'll definitely check it out when I'm in the mood for something darker. I tend to read lighter stuff in the summer and gloomy stuff in the winter, don't wanna kill my mood when I'm on the beach. Iamblikhos posted:Are you aware that Voltaire wrote a sequel to Candide? It's worth checking out if you're not reading it already. I had no idea! Honestly I'm an uncultured barbarian, I wasn't even aware of Candide itself until a friend I workshop stories with told me I needed to read it. Hieronymous Alloy posted:Oddly enough given the ongoing discussion a lot of Vonnegut's stuff would work for this, at least in the "naive people" and "world crumbles around them" aspects. Start with Cat's Cradle or Slaughterhouse Five. Slipped my mind, but I'm already a big Vonnegut fan and have read these. Definitely a different tone, but now that you mention it I can see the similarities. Still, I've only read about half his stuff, so I should probably get to the rest. api call girl posted:You basically have to read Catch-22 anyway, so might as well do that inbetween! Yeah, my secret shame is I started reading it in high school or early college but put it down for reasons I don't remember, probably because I was a lazy teenager. Regardless of whatever else I read I should finish Catch-22 first and make up for my sins.
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Jun 18, 2014 20:59
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Honestly, the biggest issue I find with TBB is that everyone reads and talks about the same books, all the drat time. It doesn't matter if it's in a 'no genre' thread or in a thread like cosmic horror, there's like 50 books that TBB reads and talks about ad nauseam. If you look at the Cosmic Horror thread, 90% of the talk in there is about Laird Barron and Thomas Ligotti. Also, Cormac McCarthy!!!! Constantly. Right now, everyone talks about Dictionary of the Khazars. Yes, I read it. Yes, it was good. Yes, I've also read Cormac McCarthy. I wish we could talk about some new books. Also some female authors would be nice. I just finished reading The Accursed by Joyce Carol Oates and it was so bizarre and interesting. I would love to talk about it but I'm not sure where to post it and if there's anyone who would actually discuss it with me. Also, I like reading new fiction that's come out because I read a lot of classics when I was in my twenties and now, I just like to read new stuff. Doesn't mean I don't like to throw in a 'classic' here and there but that's just my preference now. It's even harder to get people to discuss new 'literary fiction' because it's even less likely anyone's read it. I think in general it's hard when you have a forum that doesn't really have a specific designation other than 'BOOKS!' Because there's so many books and people just end up talking 'at' each other rather than any real discussion happening since we aren't all reading the same things. The only books that get discussed are the ones that are so big, or so popular with this specific subset on the internet, that they get discussed constantly and forever. Unfortunately, that just happens to be mostly genre fiction. You can all feel free to flame me into oblivion now.
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Jun 18, 2014 22:22
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You should make a thread for that book! I wouldn't be able to contribute anything because I haven't read it but heck that thread for White Noise convinced me to check it out sometime, and having a thread out there could do the same with The Accursed! Sometimes just looking at the discussions going on can get me interested in something and I'm sure I'm not alone in that regard.
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Jun 18, 2014 22:32
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Srice posted:You should make a thread for that book! Yes please do. If the discussion isnt going on then start it. Even if you feel like your hanging out in the wind you at least brought attention to whatever your talking about. Hence why I never shut up about the blind owl. Stravinsky fucked around with this message at 22:53 on Jun 18, 2014 |
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Jun 18, 2014 22:50
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Srice posted:You should make a thread for that book! I wouldn't be able to contribute anything because I haven't read it but heck that thread for White Noise convinced me to check it out sometime, and having a thread out there could do the same with The Accursed! Yes, this. One thing to keep in mind though is that since we're a relatively low-traffic forum it might take a while for you to get a response; don't be disappointed if you do a big effort post and don't get a bunch of quick responses, because people take a while to go out and read new things. Sometimes threads in this forum will re-surface once every couple months as people see a book, add it to their list, get around to reading it, and come back and post their comment a month or two later. That's fine. Heck, I've still got Far Tortuga sitting on the top of my to-read pile and the thread for that was over a month ago. I want to have an uninterrupted day to sit and sink into it and I haven't had that kind of time block available yet.
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Jun 18, 2014 23:14
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Poutling posted:Honestly, the biggest issue I find with TBB is that everyone reads and talks about the same books, all the drat time. It doesn't matter if it's in a 'no genre' thread or in a thread like cosmic horror, there's like 50 books that TBB reads and talks about ad nauseam. If you look at the Cosmic Horror thread, 90% of the talk in there is about Laird Barron and Thomas Ligotti. Also, Cormac McCarthy!!!! Constantly. Right now, everyone talks about Dictionary of the Khazars. Yes, I read it. Yes, it was good. Yes, I've also read Cormac McCarthy. I wish we could talk about some new books. Also some female authors would be nice. Lmao I think the only person being all Dictionary of Khazars!! is me I haven't seen anyone else say anything about it.
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Jun 18, 2014 23:15
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Gleri posted:Also, for the guy who doesn't like Shakespeare, you should really just watch Shakespeare performed. It's written to be performed. Give your ear a few minutes to get attuned, if you are a native English speaker, it shouldn't be any harder to understand than the Wire. I prefer watching Original Pronounciation performances if I can get it, because I find it much easier to understand than Received Pronounciation, but I'm a Newfie and OP is much closer to my native dialect. Your mileage may vary. I'll echo this, 100%. I actually think teaching Shakespeare in English classes in school is a massive disservice both to pupils and Shakespeare himself. His plays are honestly really really good, but you're only likely to realise that if you actually go to a good quality performance of his work. Becuase of the changes in the language, Shakespeare's text can be difficult to understand, but if you see it performed by actors who understand what they are saying, you understand what they're saying, because the tone and manner with which it is said carries the meaning just as well as the actual words. Having a bunch of bored, disinterested kids read it aloud--or worse, having an English teacher read the whole thing and do all the parts--mangles the whole thing and ruins the text. For example, when I was in school one year we did Richard II. There is a scene in which Richard gets a very, very, long soliloquy in which he is having to give up the crown. It's a speech in which the main character appears to wallow in self-pity, and basically compares the injustice of having to give up the crown to the cruxifiction of Jesus. As speeches go, it is actively utterly awful, in which the speaker is the undisputed eternal king of drama queens. And when my class read Richard II in English, I completely missed the fact that that was the point, to emphasise how pathetic a person he was, due to the way the play was read and taught. It wasn't until I saw a production (reluctantly, at first) years later and saw the man playing Richard going to pains to emphasise how ridiculous the speech was, and the other actors putting on bemused looks of being embarrassed even to be there, that I got it. There is probably something to be said for reading Shakespeare without seeing it performed, if you want to do analysis unbiased by the stage, but if you just want to enjoy it, go see a performance. And if you are really on the fence, I would recommend the BBC's renditions of The Hollow Crown, which you can get on DVD. They are not complete unabridged productions of the four plays in the series, but they are completely watchable and done by very competent and well experienced Shakespearean actors (Or, if you prefer, Captain Picard, Loki, and Scar from the Lion King), and large chunks of Henry IV parts one and two are actually genuinely hilarious. I realise that will sound crazy if your only experience with Shakespeare is from English classes, but I absolutely guarantee that Shakespeare's jokes are actually funny when the actor knows how to tell them.
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Jun 18, 2014 23:24
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Poutling posted:Honestly, the biggest issue I find with TBB is that everyone reads and talks about the same books, all the drat time. It doesn't matter if it's in a 'no genre' thread or in a thread like cosmic horror, there's like 50 books that TBB reads and talks about ad nauseam. If you look at the Cosmic Horror thread, 90% of the talk in there is about Laird Barron and Thomas Ligotti. Also, Cormac McCarthy!!!! Constantly. Right now, everyone talks about Dictionary of the Khazars. Yes, I read it. Yes, it was good. Yes, I've also read Cormac McCarthy. I wish we could talk about some new books. Also some female authors would be nice. I noticed this as well, but thought this was just the result of a vicious circle that you show yourself. Since everybody talks about a small group of books, it's difficult to talk about other books because it's unclear if anyone else has read it. In other words, people only discuss a few books here because there are only a few books that enough people have read to be able to discuss them. It's why I like the awful book of the month project. This problem happens all the time with pretty much all kinds of media and is probably unavoidable. It's a big problem when I discuss books with friends as well and when people ask me which books I like I will not name the books I like most, nor the books that I'd like to discuss most, but rather the books that I think they are likely to know that I thought were good.
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Jun 18, 2014 23:33
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Walh Hara posted:I noticed this as well, but thought this was just the result of a vicious circle that you show yourself. Since everybody talks about a small group of books, it's difficult to talk about other books because it's unclear if anyone else has read it. In other words, people only discuss a few books here because there are only a few books that enough people have read to be able to discuss them. It's why I like the awful book of the month project. Hieronymous Alloy posted:Yes, this. I actually brought up the book a few times - In Cosmic Horror (it's a Gothic horror novel so I'd figure I'd mention it there), in What Did You Just Finish, and again in the Recommendations thread. No discussion to be had. I don't think that putting up a thread for every book that I've read would really be effective except to litter The Book Barn with dead threads. And yes, I have tried before to start other topics but it hasn't worked out that well. Low traffic threads get pushed to page 3 or 4 and usually never get picked up again. Looking back into the last 4 pages of the Book Barn, single book threads that aren't genre or about some 'classics' author have very low post counts, like 5-10 posts max. Even posting about 'non genre' books in the 'non genre' thread doesn't get much of a response because 'non genre' is such a broad term. CestMoi posted:Lmao I think the only person being all Dictionary of Khazars!! is me I haven't seen anyone else say anything about it. You're right actually I think most of the discussion is in the entertainment weakly book thread. Cormac McCarthy still stands though. So why aren't you talking about the book here if it's so great?
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Jun 18, 2014 23:46
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Poutling posted:Honestly, the biggest issue I find with TBB is that everyone reads and talks about the same books, all the drat time. It doesn't matter if it's in a 'no genre' thread or in a thread like cosmic horror, there's like 50 books that TBB reads and talks about ad nauseam. If you look at the Cosmic Horror thread, 90% of the talk in there is about Laird Barron and Thomas Ligotti. Also, Cormac McCarthy!!!! Constantly. Right now, everyone talks about Dictionary of the Khazars. Yes, I read it. Yes, it was good. Yes, I've also read Cormac McCarthy. I wish we could talk about some new books. Also some female authors would be nice. Seconding The Accursed as a wonderful and bizarre book. Parts of it dragged a bit (and I could have done without CAPS LOCK IS CRUISE CONTROL FOR SORROW at the end), but I loved the way she developed a consistent set of details (Topaz eyes, the "Cannibal Sandwich," poisonous flowers, overt sexuality, and probably a few others I'm forgetting or missed) associated with the demonic and dispersed them through the characters, both historical and fictional. It gave a tremendous sense of atmosphere and really made me feel tense reading some of the interactions, since stumbling across a peculiar detail that you last saw associated with vampire murders in an otherwise mundane or harmless conversation completely changes how you read the scene and everything that preceded it. Writing a supernatural horror story where half of the characters were famous historical Americans made the question of the reality of the events a lot more fascinating and complex than it would have been if all the protagonists had been purely fictional. I'd love to see a thorough dissection of it on this forum or elsewhere since I felt like I was missing a lot when I read it a few months back. Though certainly not as much of a classic, it reminded me a lot of the Master and Margarita, where the devil himself shows up with a retinue of monsters in early 30s Moscow and everyone acts weirdly oblivious and unconcerned, since, even if it's never mentioned directly, Stalin's purges are going on and everyone is clearly far more afraid of that than they are of Satan, even when magic and murders are happening right in front of them. I felt like Oates was trying to achieve the same thing with the evils of the US in the early 20th century (primarily racism, lynchings, sexual violence and the general oppression of women) and at least somewhat succeeded.
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Jun 19, 2014 00:47
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So where does a big idiot begin on the road to real literature? Is there like, a list of books to start with? Thinking back on my high school life I'm woefully unprepared for this, the only book I remember having to read(in my A level english class, mind) was To Kill A Mockingbird and instead of reading Shakespeare we watched that Romeo and Juliet movie with Leonardo DiCaprio and analysed that.
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Jun 19, 2014 00:48
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Street Soldier posted:So where does a big idiot begin on the road to real literature? Is there like, a list of books to start with? Thinking back on my high school life I'm woefully unprepared for this, the only book I remember having to read(in my A level english class, mind) was To Kill A Mockingbird and instead of reading Shakespeare we watched that Romeo and Juliet movie with Leonardo DiCaprio and analysed that. I recommend Hadji Murad by Leo Tolstoy, Citrus County by John Brandon, The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and Death of a Naturalist by Seamus Heaney. Edit: You can substitute Dracula by Bram Stoker for Frankenstein and The Art of War by Sun-Tzu for The Prince.
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Jun 19, 2014 00:53
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k-uno posted:Seconding The Accursed as a wonderful and bizarre book. Parts of it dragged a bit (and I could have done without CAPS LOCK IS CRUISE CONTROL FOR SORROW at the end), but I loved the way she developed a consistent set of details (Topaz eyes, the "Cannibal Sandwich," poisonous flowers, overt sexuality, and probably a few others I'm forgetting or missed) associated with the demonic and dispersed them through the characters, both historical and fictional. It gave a tremendous sense of atmosphere and really made me feel tense reading some of the interactions, since stumbling across a peculiar detail that you last saw associated with vampire murders in an otherwise mundane or harmless conversation completely changes how you read the scene and everything that preceded it. Writing a supernatural horror story where half of the characters were famous historical Americans made the question of the reality of the events a lot more fascinating and complex than it would have been if all the protagonists had been purely fictional. I'd love to see a thorough dissection of it on this forum or elsewhere since I felt like I was missing a lot when I read it a few months back. Though certainly not as much of a classic, it reminded me a lot of the Master and Margarita, where the devil himself shows up with a retinue of monsters in early 30s Moscow and everyone acts weirdly oblivious and unconcerned, since, even if it's never mentioned directly, Stalin's purges are going on and everyone is clearly far more afraid of that than they are of Satan, even when magic and murders are happening right in front of them. I felt like Oates was trying to achieve the same thing with the evils of the US in the early 20th century (primarily racism, lynchings, sexual violence and the general oppression of women) and at least somewhat succeeded. Wow, I'm so excited you popped up and have actually read this book! Totally agree with you on most of your touch points. I did find that it dragged a bit too, but I think that's kind of par for the course in the Gothic genre so I didn't sweat it overmuch. One thing I did wonder, if my lack of knowledge of American history affected my reading of the book at all, since I don't know much about Woodrow Wilson or Upton Sinclair. I also loved the unreliable narrator and his absolutely ill concealed misogyny and pompousness, relating this tale which is basically somewhat of a revenge tale about classism and racism in a small elitist community. It's a book that's so dense I think I could probably go back and read it and catch things that I missed on my first read through. I've read some Oates before but I don't think anything I've read by her has been so thought provoking as this book. I could see why it's so polarizing, so many people either love it or hate it. Have you read any of the other books in her Gothic Saga series? I've picked up Bellefleur but wanted to leave some time between the two books before I read it. Did you read Stephen King's review of The Accursed? What do you think of his statement about this book being 'the worlds first post-modern gothic novel'?
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Jun 19, 2014 01:17
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And just like that, The Accursed is on my list of books to read.
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Jun 19, 2014 01:55
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computer parts posted:This is doubly true if you're relying on cultural context that isn't present in the modern day (i.e., the whole nobility thing is pretty foreign for American readers). Fortunately it's almost totally irrelevant too, as she doesn't write about the nobility, and even your ignorant American readers know that nobility are oldfashioned, hereditary, and think they're superior to everyone else.
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Jun 19, 2014 03:30
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Damo posted:Yeah, makes sense. I wonder though if the annotations are written in such a way that I can just ignore them the first time through. I should just crack it open at the store the next chance I get and check it out. The annotations are presented as endnotes rather than footnotes so they're pretty unobtrusive and I found them rather helpful. I would definitely read it through once by itself before you read the annotations, though. The writer assumes you've already read the novel and refers to future events in some of the early notes which can be kind of annoying, especially if you're really touchy about "spoilers."
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Jun 19, 2014 04:22
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Speaking of spoilers, one of the neat side effects that branching out to meatier stuff has done for me is that I personally have stopped giving a poo poo about spoilers more or less! I mean, I don't go and seek them out but if I run into them, I just shrug. The fact that it doesn't bother me if I hear "so and so dies!" is quite liberating, I gotta say. Since hey, if it's well written there's a lot of juicy stuff in such a scene beyond just the death that is enjoyable to pick through!
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Jun 19, 2014 05:45
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Srice posted:Speaking of spoilers, one of the neat side effects that branching out to meatier stuff has done for me is that I personally have stopped giving a poo poo about spoilers more or less! I mean, I don't go and seek them out but if I run into them, I just shrug. You shouldn't care how so and so dies, you should care why so and so dies
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Jun 19, 2014 05:46
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Exactly! And most of the time spoilers are floating around, it's the former.
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Jun 19, 2014 05:49
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The fact that there are people in this thread talking about books without any wizards in them literally makes me sick to my loving stomach
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Jun 19, 2014 06:18
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mango gay touchies posted:Has anybody told you nerds to read gravity's rainbow yet I'm about 100 pages from finishing Grav's Rainbow, having gone in without reading any other Pynchon and knowing very little about it other than Good. "By what man's hand was this created" is all I can say  I've read a lot of stuff, but never something that is constantly so alive. And really funny, and grotesque. Just bonkers. Raketenmensch. . . .
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Jun 19, 2014 07:25
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Srice posted:Speaking of spoilers, one of the neat side effects that branching out to meatier stuff has done for me is that I personally have stopped giving a poo poo about spoilers more or less! I mean, I don't go and seek them out but if I run into them, I just shrug.
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Jun 19, 2014 08:30
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Sir John Feelgood posted:Yeah, it's good to read books that aren't rendered 100% worthless once you know what happens. Sometimes things in books/movies/games/tv/whatever are a mystery though, and a significant part of the fun can be to try and guess what is really happening - being spoiled can take a lot of the joy out of that. It's like if every time you read a mystery novel it told you who the killer was on the blurb on the back - There are plenty of ways to write a mystery novel that can work even with the 'who' known, but not the 'how' or 'why', but that doesn't mean that they all are, or should be, written in that way. Books are meant to make you feel something or think about something, and trying to surprise your readers and keep them guessing is one very valid way of writing. Even if the book still has merits on its own, being spoiled can steal a lot from your first read of that book. Wolpertinger fucked around with this message at 09:12 on Jun 19, 2014 |
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Jun 19, 2014 09:07
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Poutling posted:Wow, I'm so excited you popped up and have actually read this book! Totally agree with you on most of your touch points. I did find that it dragged a bit too, but I think that's kind of par for the course in the Gothic genre so I didn't sweat it overmuch. One thing I did wonder, if my lack of knowledge of American history affected my reading of the book at all, since I don't know much about Woodrow Wilson or Upton Sinclair. I thought Stephen King's review (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/17/books/review/the-accursed-by-joyce-carol-oates.html?pagewanted=2&_r=0) was a pretty good assessment, though I didn't read it until after finishing the novel-- and I'm glad I didn't, because there are plenty of spoilers. I guess I'd agree with the label of postmodern but I think that it's doing a bit of a disservice to some of the great gothic novels like Frankenstein or Dracula, both of which have innovative story structures, unreliable narrators, and fairly complex relationships textural between the characters and the reader. Frankenstein after all is told as a series of letters by an arctic explorer who rescues Dr. Frankenstein from an ice floe while they're marooned near the north pole, which is a similar level of distance and abstraction between the reader and the action to Oates' Van Dyck describing the Slades through their diaries. I guess the mixture of historical and fictional characters and the dense "puzzle box" feel of the story are fairly postmodern elements though, and given how complex it is I'm really surprised by how little discussion there is of it on the internet. Honestly, and this is something that only occurred to me now, months after reading it, Van Dyck is creepy as all gently caress. The fact that he (writing in the 80s I think) shares most of the retrograde and unpleasant views of the early 20th century cast is one thing, but if we accept at least some of the supernatural violence really happens then we should conclude that he is intimately connected to it and probably even complicit. This is obvious in retrospect from the opening passage ("They are all dead now-- there is only me.") but what really drives it home is the fact that there is no way Van Dyck could accurately relate a lot of the tales and action through the evidence he actually has; how could he, for example, know what went through the mind of a serial murderer who was never caught? Even if we assume that some of what he describes is his own imaginary reconstruction, it still feels like he knows way too much, and combined with the fact that he is the child of an affair, probably with a demon (again, if the demons are real), I think you could easily read parts of his narrative as a kind of confession rather than just an account. We assume toward the end of the story that the demon is vanquished after losing the game of draughts, but he wasn't the only monster in the Bog Kingdom (where time works differently from the rest of the world anyway), and some of that evil could be surviving to the present day in Van Dyck himself. In other words, we naturally assume when we're starting out that we're reading a tale told from the side of the humans and modernity, but by the end I think a lot of it could equally well come from the monsters' point of view. k-uno fucked around with this message at 10:57 on Jun 19, 2014 |
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Jun 19, 2014 10:48
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Man i'm going to show these slow rear end fuckwits on TBB who's the boss. I will start this super awesome thread about being superior to people who don't read what i read, drawing a clear line in the sand where my side equals good and the other side equals bad. Then i'm going to tell these bitches that if they weren't on my side when i drew it they suck. Now that I've established my higher standing and good taste they should be be willing to pluck all my apples of wisdom for they shall see that i am the three of knowledge. Come brethren, embrace my ankles as you grovel at my feet licking the ground for the crumbles of intellectual salvation that i spill over you. Love me, for i am better! .. or maybe i should not be a complete asshat and just start a non elitist thread where i simply discuss and recommend good literature, from a perspective that isn't ten feet above the rest, since that is that i what i'm calling out others for not doing. Maybe that would actually be a good contribution to the forums and draw in people who're getting bored with genre fiction and are looking for Naaah, gently caress that noise! I'm bad rear end motherfucking lit god and sheeple need to worship and adore me. (_)_)::::::::::: D~~~~ aaaaaand post! (please read this post three times to truly catch all the splendid subtext I've hidden in it. If you don't find it you can't really criticise it)
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Jun 19, 2014 11:39
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I really did spend five or six seconds analyzing your post because you wrote be be and three of knowledge instead of tree of knowledge and crumbles when I imagine you meant crumbs. Also, did the title always say loving a child? I thought it said being a loving child. Update: OK someone corrected it. Sir John Feelgood fucked around with this message at 12:47 on Jun 19, 2014 |
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Jun 19, 2014 12:18
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poo poo, well you clearly spent more time on my post then i did. I have to admit being embarrassed by that. Here i put on my nice sassy pants and everything, just to figuratively poo poo myself in public... i won't even try to hide my shame with the edit button.
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Jun 19, 2014 13:18
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Pessimisten posted:Man i'm going to show these slow rear end fuckwits on TBB who's the boss. I will start this super awesome thread about being superior to people who don't read what i read, drawing a clear line in the sand where my side equals good and the other side equals bad. Then i'm going to tell these bitches that if they weren't on my side when i drew it they suck. Now that I've established my higher standing and good taste they should be be willing to pluck all my apples of wisdom for they shall see that i am the three of knowledge. Come brethren, embrace my ankles as you grovel at my feet licking the ground for the crumbles of intellectual salvation that i spill over you. Love me, for i am better! I did both things and this thread has 4 times the replies and actually has people changing their reading habits. I didn't make this thread because I want you guys to know how much better I am than you, I made this thread because I believe that this forum could be so much better than it currently is.0
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Jun 19, 2014 14:04
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Pessimisten posted:Man i'm going to show these slow rear end fuckwits on TBB who's the boss. I will start this super awesome thread about being superior to people who don't read what i read, drawing a clear line in the sand where my side equals good and the other side equals bad. Then i'm going to tell these bitches that if they weren't on my side when i drew it they suck. Now that I've established my higher standing and good taste they should be be willing to pluck all my apples of wisdom for they shall see that i am the three of knowledge. Come brethren, embrace my ankles as you grovel at my feet licking the ground for the crumbles of intellectual salvation that i spill over you. Love me, for i am better! There have been a ton of excellent suggestions for quality non-genre books in this very thread, along with quality commentary about some of them! Plus some common misconceptions about literary works were cleared up. It's a good thread and you should read it from start to finish imo.
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Jun 19, 2014 15:38
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Yeah but there was also suggestions of "read Faulkner" which I mean, loving come on dude was a second fuckin' rate Joyce fanboy who used the tool of "make this description of something ordinary stupidly hard to read to make my fans pay super attention to how much I'm writing about this" which is on par with horror movie directors making a shot dark and quiet to make the audience pay closer attention to a jump scare. Faulkner was a guy who knew how to make really interesting, flawed as hell characters full of vices, and chose to do this by complicating up his prose just to create a fuckin' wall for his fans to hide behind and throw stones of insular smuggitude at everybody else who opened up As I Lay Dying, got to chapter two and said "man, gently caress this pretentious poo poo." You want an author who pounded out a book in record time? Mo Yan wrote Life And Death Are Wearing Me Out in 42 days, and that one novel shits all over Faulkner's entire catalog. You want an author who took Southern Literature to amazing new heights/depths, you put down Faulkner and start giving Katherine Porter the respect she's been owed for half a fuckin' century; her short stories are incredible, and Ship Of Fools is such an intensely good book. You want an author who does amazing stream of consciousness writing? Oh my god look anywhere; Faulkner is the Stephanie Meyer of stream of consciousness's YA market. You want an alcoholic author who actually knew how to string a phrase without deliberately alienating people there's this little fuckin' guy called Ernest Miller I Write About Dickless Drunks And Bullfighting Malaise Hemingway. Fuuuuuck Faulkner forever.
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Jun 19, 2014 15:56
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k-uno posted:I thought Stephen King's review (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/17/books/review/the-accursed-by-joyce-carol-oates.html?pagewanted=2&_r=0) was a pretty good assessment, though I didn't read it until after finishing the novel-- and I'm glad I didn't, because there are plenty of spoilers. I guess I'd agree with the label of postmodern but I think that it's doing a bit of a disservice to some of the great gothic novels like Frankenstein or Dracula, both of which have innovative story structures, unreliable narrators, and fairly complex relationships textural between the characters and the reader. Frankenstein after all is told as a series of letters by an arctic explorer who rescues Dr. Frankenstein from an ice floe while they're marooned near the north pole, which is a similar level of distance and abstraction between the reader and the action to Oates' Van Dyck describing the Slades through their diaries. I guess the mixture of historical and fictional characters and the dense "puzzle box" feel of the story are fairly postmodern elements though, and given how complex it is I'm really surprised by how little discussion there is of it on the internet. There are a *lot* of reviews of the book but not much discussion from laymen I think precisely for the reason of the 'puzzle box' feel mixed with the Gothic theme. It's a book that kind of defies categorization, and I think a lot of people don't really pick it up because they're not sure what to expect. People looking for postmodernism will pick up Don Delillo or Paul Auster but don't think about picking up what they're assuming will be a traditional Gothic novel which is unfortunate because they're missing out. Most of the people that *do* pick it up do so thinking it's going to be a traditional Gothic and end up hating it. Looking at the reviews on Amazon and on Goodreads you can see who did their research and knew what to expect and who picked it up looking at the cover and thinking they were going to get a dark historical fiction novel about vampires without any of the social commentary. I imagine to those people the narrative decision that Oates makes really throws them off. It's a hard sell to try to get people to read this book - I have a friend that has very similar tastes in reading material but I don't even think I'd recommend this to her. k-uno posted:Honestly, and this is something that only occurred to me now, months after reading it, Van Dyck is creepy as all gently caress. The fact that he (writing in the 80s I think) shares most of the retrograde and unpleasant views of the early 20th century cast is one thing, but if we accept at least some of the supernatural violence really happens then we should conclude that he is intimately connected to it and probably even complicit. This is obvious in retrospect from the opening passage ("They are all dead now-- there is only me.") but what really drives it home is the fact that there is no way Van Dyck could accurately relate a lot of the tales and action through the evidence he actually has; how could he, for example, know what went through the mind of a serial murderer who was never caught? Even if we assume that some of what he describes is his own imaginary reconstruction, it still feels like he knows way too much, and combined with the fact that he is the child of an affair, probably with a demon (again, if the demons are real), I think you could easily read parts of his narrative as a kind of confession rather than just an account. We assume toward the end of the story that the demon is vanquished after losing the game of draughts, but he wasn't the only monster in the Bog Kingdom (where time works differently from the rest of the world anyway), and some of that evil could be surviving to the present day in Van Dyck himself. In other words, we naturally assume when we're starting out that we're reading a tale told from the side of the humans and modernity, but by the end I think a lot of it could equally well come from the monsters' point of view. That's a clever reading and I think there's a lot of evidence to support it. For instance, I always found it strange when Van Dyck talks about how he burned the Fleur de Lis notebook that contained Amanda Fitzrandolph's story about her seduction and subsequent abduction. It could have been as simple as his misogyny manifesting itself but it could be for a more sinister reason as well. What did you think of the ending with pretty much all the dead characters coming back to life except for Winslow Slade, the one who brought the curse down upon them in the first place? I know the main theory was that Axton Mayte and his devil's kingdom were the mirror world to Winslow Slade and the elitism at Princeton, I suppose the death of Mayte and Slade brings about restoration of the normal world order. I read that Oates actually started the manuscript for The Accursed 20 years ago and put it aside and has continued to work on it and rewrite it over the years, and knowing how prolific she can be, I wonder if that's part of the reason this novel was so successful -- that she actually took more time to hone this novel more so than her other works.
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Jun 19, 2014 16:08
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Smoking Crow posted:I recommend Hadji Murad by Leo Tolstoy, Citrus County by John Brandon, The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and Death of a Naturalist by Seamus Heaney. Heaney? May I ask why? (Not why you like him, but why you'd recommend him in this context)
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Jun 19, 2014 19:13
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To read literature correctly, you cannot rely on translations. Therefore, I call shenanigans on all recommendations in this thread for literature not originally written in the English language. Unless, of course, you are recommending things written in non-English languages to people who already speak (or can at least read) them. If we are going to do pretentious academic douchebaggary we have to do it right. Edit P.S. "Genre" fiction is literature and indistinguishable from the category "real loving works of art." This is the case no matter how many self-deprecating quotes from authors you dig up. ZombieLenin fucked around with this message at 19:51 on Jun 19, 2014 |
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Jun 19, 2014 19:30
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