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Srice
Sep 11, 2011

Nobody in this thread is being pretentious about it though?

I mean, there are a lot of kneejerk replies that act like the thread is, but if you'll read it you'll see that the people sharing the OP's opinion are anything but pretentious. Respond to what is being said, instead of what you think is being said!

Srice fucked around with this message at 19:52 on Jun 19, 2014

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Zoq-Fot-Pik
Jun 27, 2008

Frungy!

ZombieLenin posted:

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.


What

Zoq-Fot-Pik
Jun 27, 2008

Frungy!
Also I'm reading Catch-22 and it's good and cool. Bye

Smoking Crow
Feb 14, 2012

*laughs at u*

Iamblikhos posted:

Heaney? May I ask why? (Not why you like him, but why you'd recommend him in this context)

Heaney is a fantastic writer, extremely easy to read (especially compared to his contemporaries), easy to understand and a great intro to late 20th century poetry.

ulvir
Jan 2, 2005

ZombieLenin posted:

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.

Yes, the author that vomited this passage:

quote:

Sunset found her squatting in the grass, groaning. Every stool was looser than the one before, and smelled fouler. By the time the moon came up she was making GBS threads brown water. The more she drank, the more she shat, but the more she shat, the thirstier she grew, and her thirst sent her crawling to the stream to suck up more water. When she closed her eyes at last, Dany did not know whether she would be strong enough to open them again


Is on the same playing field as Joyce, Mario Vargas Llosa, Dostyevsky and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, I agree

Edit: Oh, every single post you've made in TBB apart from this thread is in a thread for some fantasy author, didn't see that coming. :yum:

ulvir fucked around with this message at 20:22 on Jun 19, 2014

Wungus
Mar 5, 2004

Okay but this is Joyce sooo

quote:

My love for you allows me to pray to the spirit of eternal beauty and tenderness mirrored in your eyes or fling you down under me on that softy belly of yours and gently caress you up behind, like a hog riding a sow, glorying in the very stink and sweat that rises from your arse, glorying in the open shape of your upturned dress and white girlish drawers and in the confusion of your flushed cheeks and tangled hair. It allows me to burst into tears of pity and love at some slight word, to tremble with love for you at the sounding of some chord or cadence of music or to lie heads and tails with you feeling your fingers fondling and tickling my ballocks or stuck up in me behind and your hot lips sucking off my cock while my head is wedged in between your fat thighs, my hands clutching the round cushions of your bum and my tongue licking ravenously up your rank red oval office. 

ulvir
Jan 2, 2005

The issue isn't that its about pooping. Several great authors have written about pooping and farting. The issue is the juvenile and unimaginative way its written, almost as if GRRM is bad at prose.

Edit: If anything that passage alone shows the difference between Joyce and GRRM

ulvir fucked around with this message at 20:31 on Jun 19, 2014

Smoking Crow
Feb 14, 2012

*laughs at u*

Whalley posted:

Okay but this is Joyce sooo

Those are the 20s version of sexting and weren't meant to be published.

CARL MARK FORCE IV
Sep 2, 2007

I took a walk. And threw up in an English garden.
This thread is the best thing to happen to TBB in years.

Some Suggestions For Litteral Babies:

"I feel a deep-seated anxiety at the prospect of picking up a booke that isn't a trade paperback"

Read Elmore Leonard. Pitch-perfect, naturalistic tales of lowlifes, thugs, skip-chasers and mobsters engaging in heists, scams, cons, double-triple-crosses and the occasional murder. One of America's great novelists, incredibly fun to read. Start with Swag, Get Shorty, Stick, Tishomingo Blues, or LaBrava

"Gotta have spacemen and pew-pew lazzers"

Gene Wolfe writes recursive, Nabakovian weirdo-SF that is Actually Good Literature. Gorgeous prose, fascinating mindfuck narrative structures, displays of tremendous erudition, actual thought put into worldbuilding. Start with Book of the New Sun.

"books longer than a comic book are scary and bad"

Crying of Lot 49, Man Who Was Thursday, Night Train, Child of God, I dunno, grow up and read a big boy book goddammit.

"Im a badass who gets laid a lot and is generally a cool & popular dude *dons sunglasses*"

Gravity's Rainbow

CARL MARK FORCE IV fucked around with this message at 08:20 on Jul 8, 2014

Cloks
Feb 1, 2013

by Azathoth
Do people really read nothing but genre fiction? I'm reading Wheel Of Time but I'm also reading Plus by Joseph McElroy and I've read loads of literature - stuff by Calvino, Pynchon, DeLillo...

I'd like to recommend Niebla by Miguel de Unamuno and The Confessions of Zeno by Italo Svevo but I rarely visit TBB and don't know if anyone has read these or if everyone has.

VAGENDA OF MANOCIDE
Aug 1, 2004

whoa, what just happened here?







College Slice

Zoq-Fot-Pik posted:

Also I'm reading Catch-22 and it's good and cool. Bye

PYF Catch-22 quote

quote:

A moment ago there had been no Yossarians in his life; now they were multiplying like hobgoblins. He tried to make himself grow calm. Yossarian was not a common name; perhaps there were not really three Yossarians but only two Yossarians, or maybe even only one Yossarian – but that really made no difference! The colonel was still in grave peril. Intuition warned him that he was drawing close to some immense and inscrutable cosmic climax, and his broad, meaty, towering frame tingled from head to toe at the thought that Yossarian, whoever he would turn out to be, was destined to serve as his nemesis.

quote:

It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.

Clipperton
Dec 20, 2011
Grimey Drawer

ZombieLenin posted:

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.

Yeah I want to know how many people here singing the praises of Voltaire and Mishima have actually read Voltaire and Mishima and not some :effort: translation of them.

Talmonis
Jun 24, 2012
The fairy of forgiveness has removed your red text.

Cloks posted:

Do people really read nothing but genre fiction? I'm reading Wheel Of Time but I'm also reading Plus by Joseph McElroy and I've read loads of literature - stuff by Calvino, Pynchon, DeLillo...

I'd like to recommend Niebla by Miguel de Unamuno and The Confessions of Zeno by Italo Svevo but I rarely visit TBB and don't know if anyone has read these or if everyone has.

Really, aside from TBB and other such gathering places of readers, it's hard to determine what's worth reading outside of "genre" fiction, as everything else in a bookstore or god forbid the supermarket is just "Fiction". From Nora Robets schlock to Tom Clancy's military fetishism and everything in between. At least with genre fiction, you have a somewhat decent idea of what sort of book topics you'll find in that area. That's to say nothing of the quality of said books, just the means of narrowing down the search.

Pessimisten
Mar 24, 2008
I THINK TERRORISM IS OK, BECAUSE IT'S NOT REALLY THE TERRORIST THAT SHOULD BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE, IT'S THE CAPITALIST SOCIETY PIGS. ALLAH AHKBAR!

Srice posted:

Nobody in this thread is being pretentious about it though?

I mean, there are a lot of kneejerk replies that act like the thread is, but if you'll read it you'll see that the people sharing the OP's opinion are anything but pretentious. Respond to what is being said, instead of what you think is being said!

You people don't see how the whole premise of "mine is better the yours" is pretentious? Starting any discussion that way is loving stupid and childish. "Watching sports is for brain dead jocks, stop it immediately or you're classified a stupid man child... now let me present you with this selection of fine classic movies that I'm sure you're willing to welcome with an open mind after i insulted your tastes"

I don't really care to reread this thread (because frankly this thread is pretty poo poo) just to count the amount of times wizard jokes or the like were thrown out there just to make fun of "genre books" and the people who read them.


I'm just going to say this. I wont claim to have read many classics. In fact i read next to nothing at all until a few years back as reading didn't really engage me. But the ones i have, quite frankly didn't impress me a whole lot. That is not to be taken as a blanket statement of "classic literature sucks". It's just that, seeing how what I've read wasn't all that, in that it was neither very cleaver nor engaging i haven't really made an effort to seek out more. I found some books entertaining, don't get me wrong. I found Steinbeck to be read worthy, can't really say why. But the subtleties in most we're not very subtle and even when they we're they were not very enlightening or meaningful. Classic literature kind of comes across to me like poetry: I see what you're going for but i just don't care and the way you wrote it wasn't as impressive as you think.

Your so called genre books on the other hand i do seek out. Because i don't read those to be enlightened or more sophisticated. They can be stupid, silly and juvenile. I read them as a fun pass time or simple escapism, a word i know people like to toss around as bad in several classic literature discussions. Let's just leave it at the fact that i don't share that view and find escapism something of worth. That said, i get bored of them sometimes and wouldn't mind trying something different just to get a bit of variety.

You don't get to make a snap judgement about my intellect or maturity just because you find my tastes different from yours. Your metrics have no objectivity to them. Reading classic literature in an of itself hold no real value. The value lies with what the reader takes from it. I take very little that i don't find in bigger supply elsewhere. If you on the other hand do, then that's great and i will gladly have your favorite books recommended to me when they aren't presented as "my poo poo smells better then yours, therefor i am now a better person" Your fragrance isn't as fine as you think and and in the end were both standing there smelling different kinds of poop, whether or not you're willing to admit to that.


I'm sure my imperfect English will come across in this post too.

Walh Hara
May 11, 2012

ZombieLenin posted:

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.

Why? Is this some stupid trolling? Have you ever read a good book both in translation and in original language? I actually think it's a very bad thing to only read books from the same background.

Anyway, I don't mind people discussing genre fiction really since many of them are quite enjoyable and worth reading. However I have to admit I lost some faith in the fantasy recommendations here (although I've started to recognise posters with the same taste, because so many objectively horrible books keep getting recommended anyway. Especially jarring is when bad or mediocre writing somehow gets described as beautiful. So yeah, of course you can enjoy all the fantasy you want but if you for example describe Rothfuss prose as excellent or consider Brent Weeks' plot writing stellar, or The Iron Druid the pinnacle of humor I think it is good advice to read more kinds of books. Not because it's wrong to enjoy those fantasy books (of course it isn't), but because it's not far-fetched to assume you'd enjoy better books even more. This is not "heh, silly you for enjoying that" but rather "great that you enjoy those, but here are a few books that will blow your mind if you actually try them out" combined with "please recommend actually good books only please!".

edit:

quote:

Reading classic literature in an of itself hold no real value.

Of course, as far as I am aware nobody in this thread ever said or implied anything different and you're missing the point.

Walh Hara fucked around with this message at 21:45 on Jun 19, 2014

Srice
Sep 11, 2011

"Pretentious" is a word that is thrown around a lot more than it needs to be, and that's my opinion on the matter.

I just don't see the suggestion that people should expand their horizons to be pretentious at all.

Also, there are a lot of good posts in this thread where people have been talking about books they love in a way that's not pretentious at all!

Cloks
Feb 1, 2013

by Azathoth

Talmonis posted:

Really, aside from TBB and other such gathering places of readers, it's hard to determine what's worth reading outside of "genre" fiction, as everything else in a bookstore or god forbid the supermarket is just "Fiction". From Nora Robets schlock to Tom Clancy's military fetishism and everything in between. At least with genre fiction, you have a somewhat decent idea of what sort of book topics you'll find in that area. That's to say nothing of the quality of said books, just the means of narrowing down the search.

This makes a lot of sense. If I pick up a fantasy book I can be relatively certain I'm getting a Tolkien-esque heroes journey but " Fiction"is both the Scarlet letter and the tropic of cancer.

Oxxidation
Jul 22, 2007

People are having fun talking about books they like, please take your persecution complex elsewhere. Like the Bad Thread.

I literally grew up on Stephen King novels and have an entire shelf dedicated to Terry Pratchett. Two shelves down from that are contemporary Irish novelists and McSweeney's magazines. I have Ramsay Campbell's The Doll Who Ate His Mother parked next to my McCarthy collection and the Scott Pilgrim series leaned up against about four Pynchon books. The collected works of Ray Bradbury rub spines with The Satanic Verses. The Harry Potter series is skulking in the closet but only because they take up too much shelf space. Expand your boundaries a little bit or don't, but don't begrudge people with the wherewithal to do so.

Oxxidation fucked around with this message at 22:00 on Jun 19, 2014

Smoking Crow
Feb 14, 2012

*laughs at u*

Pessimisten posted:

You people don't see how the whole premise of "mine is better the yours" is pretentious? Starting any discussion that way is loving stupid and childish. "Watching sports is for brain dead jocks, stop it immediately or you're classified a stupid man child... now let me present you with this selection of fine classic movies that I'm sure you're willing to welcome with an open mind after i insulted your tastes"

I don't really care to reread this thread (because frankly this thread is pretty poo poo) just to count the amount of times wizard jokes or the like were thrown out there just to make fun of "genre books" and the people who read them.


I'm just going to say this. I wont claim to have read many classics. In fact i read next to nothing at all until a few years back as reading didn't really engage me. But the ones i have, quite frankly didn't impress me a whole lot. That is not to be taken as a blanket statement of "classic literature sucks". It's just that, seeing how what I've read wasn't all that, in that it was neither very cleaver nor engaging i haven't really made an effort to seek out more. I found some books entertaining, don't get me wrong. I found Steinbeck to be read worthy, can't really say why. But the subtleties in most we're not very subtle and even when they we're they were not very enlightening or meaningful. Classic literature kind of comes across to me like poetry: I see what you're going for but i just don't care and the way you wrote it wasn't as impressive as you think.

Your so called genre books on the other hand i do seek out. Because i don't read those to be enlightened or more sophisticated. They can be stupid, silly and juvenile. I read them as a fun pass time or simple escapism, a word i know people like to toss around as bad in several classic literature discussions. Let's just leave it at the fact that i don't share that view and find escapism something of worth. That said, i get bored of them sometimes and wouldn't mind trying something different just to get a bit of variety.

You don't get to make a snap judgement about my intellect or maturity just because you find my tastes different from yours. Your metrics have no objectivity to them. Reading classic literature in an of itself hold no real value. The value lies with what the reader takes from it. I take very little that i don't find in bigger supply elsewhere. If you on the other hand do, then that's great and i will gladly have your favorite books recommended to me when they aren't presented as "my poo poo smells better then yours, therefor i am now a better person" Your fragrance isn't as fine as you think and and in the end were both standing there smelling different kinds of poop, whether or not you're willing to admit to that.


I'm sure my imperfect English will come across in this post too.

I will die on the hill that says "Leo Tolstoy is a better writer than Neil Stephenson."

Talmonis
Jun 24, 2012
The fairy of forgiveness has removed your red text.

Smoking Crow posted:

I will die on the hill that says "Leo Tolstoy is a better writer than Neil Stephenson."

I'd rather read Snow Crash than something I'm going to have to try really hard to enjoy enough to get through.

But really, you shouldn't be comparing Stephenson and Tolstoy, as they are nothing alike in subject matter.

CestMoi posted:

I don't think anyone is saying read books you don't enjoy reading just that if you read books that you enjoy reading and make you think thoughts you may end up having a richer experience in this great game we call life.

I think it has more to do with the confusion at the vast majority of people not enjoying (or hell, even seeking out in the first place) work that can be considered "high culture". Really, schools should just stop forcing boring books on kids. (Protip: Do not make energetic teenagers read Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights) It scares them away from heavier topics later in life. Hell, some it even scares away from reading for pleasure at all.

Talmonis fucked around with this message at 22:15 on Jun 19, 2014

CestMoi
Sep 16, 2011

I don't think anyone is saying read books you don't enjoy reading just that if you read books that you enjoy reading and make you think thoughts you may end up having a richer experience in this great game we call life.

Smoking Crow
Feb 14, 2012

*laughs at u*

Talmonis posted:

I'd rather read Snow Crash than something I'm going to have to try really hard to enjoy enough to get through.

That's good because Tolstoy is a breezy writer that makes long passages seem shorter than they actually are. Most people don't read Tolstoy off of page count and reputation, which is unfortunate.

Clipperton
Dec 20, 2011
Grimey Drawer

Smoking Crow posted:

That's good because Tolstoy is a breezy writer that makes long passages seem shorter than they actually are. Most people don't read Tolstoy off of page count and reputation, which is unfortunate.

Learning Russian would be pretty hard though.

Stravinsky
May 31, 2011

Talmonis posted:

I think it has more to do with the confusion at the vast majority of people not enjoying (or hell, even seeking out in the first place) work that can be considered "high culture". Really, schools should just stop forcing boring books on kids. (Protip: Do not make energetic teenagers read Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights) It scares them away from heavier topics later in life. Hell, some it even scares away from reading for pleasure at all.

You are really stuck on high school aren't you?

Stravinsky
May 31, 2011

Also where are these schools that made you guys read these things? All I got was the Great Gatsby, The Kite Runner and a book with a character named DJ Cool Hands.

Pessimisten
Mar 24, 2008
I THINK TERRORISM IS OK, BECAUSE IT'S NOT REALLY THE TERRORIST THAT SHOULD BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE, IT'S THE CAPITALIST SOCIETY PIGS. ALLAH AHKBAR!
My god, the irony of this loving thread. You'd think people talking about the virtues of lit discussions and analysis would be a bit more open to actually reading posts and discussing them. Who the gently caress really has a prosecution complex in here? I don't identify with TBB or so called "genre fiction" and i could give a rats rear end about anyones opinion in either. I simply wanted to point out how this thread proclaims to serve some kind of purpose of broadening this forum while doing the exact opposite and alienating anyone who identified with the things you state so clearly to be bad and childish.

Grow up and stop hiding behind lovely excuses. This thread was started on a bad premise, whether or not you still find value in it and you enjoy talking about classic literature has nothing to do with it. And by all means, keep it going for as long as you please. Noone's here to ruin your fun. But you can't be behaving high and mighty one second and then going "Chill bro, we just be hangin, talkin books an poo poo in here! why ya'll gotta beef?". Before i just felt like making fun of such a childish thread proclaiming others to be juvenile, but this is seriously infuriating 5th grade bullshit. Try for a second, not to act like this is some silly flame war where you can win by going "pfft, whateva scrub!"

Excuse my profanity and bad language... But poo poo, would you act like adults.

SerSpook
Feb 13, 2012




Chill bro, we just be hangin', talkin' books and poo poo in here.

Stravinsky
May 31, 2011

Pessimisten posted:

My god, the irony of this loving thread. You'd think people talking about the virtues of lit discussions and analysis would be a bit more open to actually reading posts and discussing them. Who the gently caress really has a prosecution complex in here? I don't identify with TBB or so called "genre fiction" and i could give a rats rear end about anyones opinion in either. I simply wanted to point out how this thread proclaims to serve some kind of purpose of broadening this forum while doing the exact opposite and alienating anyone who identified with the things you state so clearly to be bad and childish.

Grow up and stop hiding behind lovely excuses. This thread was started on a bad premise, whether or not you still find value in it and you enjoy talking about classic literature has nothing to do with it. And by all means, keep it going for as long as you please. Noone's here to ruin your fun. But you can't be behaving high and mighty one second and then going "Chill bro, we just be hangin, talkin books an poo poo in here! why ya'll gotta beef?". Before i just felt like making fun of such a childish thread proclaiming others to be juvenile, but this is seriously infuriating 5th grade bullshit. Try for a second, not to act like this is some silly flame war where you can win by going "pfft, whateva scrub!"

Excuse my profanity and bad language... But poo poo, would you act like adults.

Chill bro, we just be hangin, talkin books an poo poo in here! why ya'll gotta beef?

No one is telling you to give up your bad genre fiction. Just read beyond it so you can enrich your life. There is really no excuse to not do it.

CestMoi
Sep 16, 2011

Pessimisten posted:

My god, the irony of this loving thread. You'd think people talking about the virtues of lit discussions and analysis would be a bit more open to actually reading posts and discussing them. Who the gently caress really has a prosecution complex in here? I don't identify with TBB or so called "genre fiction" and i could give a rats rear end about anyones opinion in either. I simply wanted to point out how this thread proclaims to serve some kind of purpose of broadening this forum while doing the exact opposite and alienating anyone who identified with the things you state so clearly to be bad and childish.

Grow up and stop hiding behind lovely excuses. This thread was started on a bad premise, whether or not you still find value in it and you enjoy talking about classic literature has nothing to do with it. And by all means, keep it going for as long as you please. Noone's here to ruin your fun. But you can't be behaving high and mighty one second and then going "Chill bro, we just be hangin, talkin books an poo poo in here! why ya'll gotta beef?". Before i just felt like making fun of such a childish thread proclaiming others to be juvenile, but this is seriously infuriating 5th grade bullshit. Try for a second, not to act like this is some silly flame war where you can win by going "pfft, whateva scrub!"

Excuse my profanity and bad language... But poo poo, would you act like adults.

This Noone guy sounds pretty scary :D hahahaha I'm just kidding man you have a good day

Zoq-Fot-Pik
Jun 27, 2008

Frungy!

A Rambling Vagrant posted:

This thread is the best thing to happen to TBB in years.

Some Suggestions For Litteral Babies:

"I feel a deep-seated anxiety at the prospect of picking up a booke that isn't a trade paperback"

Read Elmore Leonard. Pitch-perfect, naturalistic tales of lowlifes, thugs, skip-chasers and mobsters engaging in heists, scams, cons, double-triple-crosses and the occasional murder. One of America's great novelists, incredibly fun to read. Start with Swag, Get Shorty, Skip, Tishomingo Blues, or LaBrava

"Gotta have spacemen and pew-pew lazzers"

Gene Wolfe writes recursive, Nabakovian weirdo-SF that is Actually Good Literature. Gorgeous prose, fascinating mindfuck narrative structures, displays of tremendous erudition, actual thought put into worldbuilding. Start with Book of the New Sun.

"books longer than a comic book are scary and bad"

Crying of Lot 49, Man Who Was Thursday, Night Train, Child of God, I dunno, grow up and read a big boy book goddammit.

"Im a badass who gets laid a lot and is generally a cool & popular dude *dons sunglasses*"

Gravity's Rainbow

Swag

Zoq-Fot-Pik
Jun 27, 2008

Frungy!

Pessimisten posted:

You people don't see how the whole premise of "mine is better the yours" is pretentious? Starting any discussion that way is loving stupid and childish. "Watching sports is for brain dead jocks, stop it immediately or you're classified a stupid man child... now let me present you with this selection of fine classic movies that I'm sure you're willing to welcome with an open mind after i insulted your tastes"

I don't really care to reread this thread (because frankly this thread is pretty poo poo) just to count the amount of times wizard jokes or the like were thrown out there just to make fun of "genre books" and the people who read them.


I'm just going to say this. I wont claim to have read many classics. In fact i read next to nothing at all until a few years back as reading didn't really engage me. But the ones i have, quite frankly didn't impress me a whole lot. That is not to be taken as a blanket statement of "classic literature sucks". It's just that, seeing how what I've read wasn't all that, in that it was neither very cleaver nor engaging i haven't really made an effort to seek out more. I found some books entertaining, don't get me wrong. I found Steinbeck to be read worthy, can't really say why. But the subtleties in most we're not very subtle and even when they we're they were not very enlightening or meaningful. Classic literature kind of comes across to me like poetry: I see what you're going for but i just don't care and the way you wrote it wasn't as impressive as you think.

Your so called genre books on the other hand i do seek out. Because i don't read those to be enlightened or more sophisticated. They can be stupid, silly and juvenile. I read them as a fun pass time or simple escapism, a word i know people like to toss around as bad in several classic literature discussions. Let's just leave it at the fact that i don't share that view and find escapism something of worth. That said, i get bored of them sometimes and wouldn't mind trying something different just to get a bit of variety.

You don't get to make a snap judgement about my intellect or maturity just because you find my tastes different from yours. Your metrics have no objectivity to them. Reading classic literature in an of itself hold no real value. The value lies with what the reader takes from it. I take very little that i don't find in bigger supply elsewhere. If you on the other hand do, then that's great and i will gladly have your favorite books recommended to me when they aren't presented as "my poo poo smells better then yours, therefor i am now a better person" Your fragrance isn't as fine as you think and and in the end were both standing there smelling different kinds of poop, whether or not you're willing to admit to that.


I'm sure my imperfect English will come across in this post too.

Pessimisten posted:

My god, the irony of this loving thread. You'd think people talking about the virtues of lit discussions and analysis would be a bit more open to actually reading posts and discussing them. Who the gently caress really has a prosecution complex in here? I don't identify with TBB or so called "genre fiction" and i could give a rats rear end about anyones opinion in either. I simply wanted to point out how this thread proclaims to serve some kind of purpose of broadening this forum while doing the exact opposite and alienating anyone who identified with the things you state so clearly to be bad and childish.

Grow up and stop hiding behind lovely excuses. This thread was started on a bad premise, whether or not you still find value in it and you enjoy talking about classic literature has nothing to do with it. And by all means, keep it going for as long as you please. Noone's here to ruin your fun. But you can't be behaving high and mighty one second and then going "Chill bro, we just be hangin, talkin books an poo poo in here! why ya'll gotta beef?". Before i just felt like making fun of such a childish thread proclaiming others to be juvenile, but this is seriously infuriating 5th grade bullshit. Try for a second, not to act like this is some silly flame war where you can win by going "pfft, whateva scrub!"

Excuse my profanity and bad language... But poo poo, would you act like adults.

Pessimisten
Mar 24, 2008
I THINK TERRORISM IS OK, BECAUSE IT'S NOT REALLY THE TERRORIST THAT SHOULD BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE, IT'S THE CAPITALIST SOCIETY PIGS. ALLAH AHKBAR!

CestMoi posted:

This Noone guy sounds pretty scary :D hahahaha I'm just kidding man you have a good day

That's Swedish grammar finding it's way in to my English writing. Where English splits almost all words Swedish tends to write a lot of words connected as single word. In my head "no one" is spoken as single word and therefore i make mistakes like that. Although my writing is generally bad and sloppy.


Edit

I'll engage in this flawed thread in a more productive way from now on, since the line of discussion i was on seems to be about as dead as most of the authors discussed here.

If i enjoyed Steinbecks work, whats a natural follow up?

Pessimisten fucked around with this message at 22:54 on Jun 19, 2014

FartRomancer.EXE
Jun 26, 2012

Pessimisten posted:

Excuse my profanity and bad language... But poo poo, would you act like adults.

You are not excused. This is a family friendly forum.

Smoking Crow
Feb 14, 2012

*laughs at u*

Pessimisten posted:

If i enjoyed Steinbecks work, whats a natural follow up?

Pearl S. Buck.

Sir John Feelgood
Nov 18, 2009

If you want to start reading literature, I'd say go to the bookstore and just browse. Pick up a book, read a few pages, and buy it if you want to read more. You may find yourself enjoying a book that normally wouldn't be recommended for lit-beginners. No one knows what sort of book's going to draw you in, and if what draws you in is an ingredient you're aware of and can tell people about then it's probably stupid. Just try books out. My guess would be that if you're not used to reading literature, recent stuff is going to appeal to you more than older stuff because the language and the setting is more familiar. So if you want to go into a bookstore with more of a plan, I'd say Google a list of twentieth-century authors, use it as a guide in the store, and then buy whatever holds your attention.

You can also browse on Amazon, and it's probably even better to do it there because they're constantly showing you what books are associated with the one you're looking at, so that when you're looking at Hemingway, Amazon shows you Fitzgerald too, and when you're looking at Dostoevsky, you're also seeing Gogol and Tolstoy. I think it's a good way to get an idea of what's out there.

Wolpertinger
Feb 16, 2011

A Rambling Vagrant posted:



"Gotta have spacemen and pew-pew lazzers"

Gene Wolfe writes recursive, Nabakovian weirdo-SF that is Actually Good Literature. Gorgeous prose, fascinating mindfuck narrative structures, displays of tremendous erudition, actual thought put into worldbuilding. Start with Book of the New Sun.


I'm sorry, but I read through the entirety Shadow of the Torturer once and holy poo poo that was the most nonsensical, ridiculous book I have ever read in my entire life. It starts off making at least some sense and then just increasingly loses it's grasp on anything remotely comprehensible until by the end you have no idea what happened. He puts the words together in the proper order with proper grammar, but no matter how many times you reread them it still doesn't actually make any sense, like he might as well be speaking another language. Plus, If I recall correctly, he literally made up his own long, complicated-sounding words, as well as pulling out words that have been dead for hundreds of years, to throw around with little to no context to help make them understandable. The whole thing felt like an acid trip more than a story half the time. Subtext is nice and all but Gene Wolf forgot to have something actually readable for the subtext to hide under. Like, it literally personified nonsensical 'bad literature' for me, I just wasn't sure if it 'counted' so I didn't bring it up here. It's probably what scared me off literature more than high school :v:.

Wolpertinger fucked around with this message at 23:42 on Jun 19, 2014

Tarranon
Oct 10, 2007

Diggity Dog
Since we are talkin' about beginner's literature, any of you get to do All the King's Men?

I read that my sophomore year in high school and really liked the story and characters, but ended up revisiting it as a young adult and it completely blew me away. The prose is absolute poetry, the setting is great, the characters just keep getting more fleshed out the older and more experienced I become, the themes more relatable. It is not a very thematically complicated book and it doesn't really gently caress around with any post modern shenanigans, but as a work of art to communicate ideas and emotions I think it is really good.

In fact I want to start a thread on it this summer because it's time to pick it up again, and this thread has inspired me, to do so, to talk about the book in the book barn. It will get five posts but that is okay.

Iamblikhos
Jun 9, 2013

IRONKNUCKLE PERMA-BANNED! CHALLENGES LIBERALS TO 10-TOPIC POLITICAL DEBATE! READ HERE

Talmonis posted:

But really, you shouldn't be comparing Stephenson and Tolstoy, as they are nothing alike in subject matter.

(1) why must two writers be "alike in subject matter" to be comparable?

(2) what does subject matter have to do with quality, or talent, or historical significance, or...?

Iamblikhos
Jun 9, 2013

IRONKNUCKLE PERMA-BANNED! CHALLENGES LIBERALS TO 10-TOPIC POLITICAL DEBATE! READ HERE

Smoking Crow posted:

That's good because Tolstoy is a breezy writer that makes long passages seem shorter than they actually are. Most people don't read Tolstoy off of page count and reputation, which is unfortunate.

Tolstoy is history's greatest writer of adventure novels. An I say that as one who is far from his greatest fan.

Smoking Crow posted:

Heaney is a fantastic writer, extremely easy to read (especially compared to his contemporaries), easy to understand and a great intro to late 20th century poetry.

a tolstoy fan *would* say that :)

imo best possible intro to contemporary poetry is older poetry

Iamblikhos fucked around with this message at 00:07 on Jun 20, 2014

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Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.

Wolpertinger posted:

Plus, If I recall correctly, he literally made up his own long, complicated-sounding words,

You remember incorrectly, everything in BotNS is English, however obscure.

Also it functions perfectly well as an adventure/travel story even if you don't dig into the real substance of it so I'm really not sure what your problem was.

Iamblikhos posted:

imo best possible intro to contemporary poetry is older poetry

I agree with this. Maybe it's true of every artform in any cultural context but with American poetry there's a distinct "line of succession" where each generation of writers was clearly responding to the one that went before (usually with frustration and impatience. :v: )

edit: Which means that as much as I love the man's own writing, William Carlos Williams is indirectly responsible for beat poetry and I may never forgive him for that.

Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 00:28 on Jun 20, 2014

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