Guy A. Person posted:

I am about halfway through Dictionary of the Khazars (the neutral version I guess since I got it through the Kindle Library) and it is really good. Any tips on ways to keep track of different meta-plots or should I just let stuff wash over me? Right now I have just been reading and enjoying the writing then if I recognize some recurring character I am like "oh yeah I remember that dude!"

Stravinsky posted:

My favorite african writer is albert camus

Besson posted:

Vineland is probably his worst?

Mel Mudkiper posted:

It's so good. Kinda amazed you were able to put it down to post

Shibawanko posted:

Well again, she's an old fashioned character with no real skills other than peasant farming. What would she do in Holland? She'd be safer but she'd also be dependent on her family and her father which to her is possibly worse than being dependent on Petrus. If she marries him the threat of rape is probably gone. He doesn't marry her for sex after all, but to turn her into a kind of slave.The whole point of the book is that the white characters' apparent idealism (David's Wordsworth and Byron obsession, Lucy's dream of off the grid farming and simple living) was something that could only exist in a sheltered, privileged situation under apartheid. The world outside of this is brutal and utilitarian and the characters have to find some way to live in this world, so they wager that by accepting the loss of almost everything they previously had and subjecting themselves to this world, they can shed the guilt of apartheid.

What happens to Lucy is an ironic reversal of what happened earlier to David. David doesn't accept the school's overtures of a public confession and reinstatement, even though that would make his life easier, in the same way Lucy later refuses an escape to Holland. Both of them find themselves compelled to take the "hard way out" through some ethical impulse, with the difference that David doesn't really grasp what this actually means and thinks he can still live like some Byronic character, and Lucy understands that it means accepting that she will simply lose everything.

saphron posted:

I finished Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses a day ago and I still can't stop thinking about how great it was: as a retelling of Othello but exploring how someone can become an Iago, and identity crises wrt being an immigrant. As a chaser to The Blind Owl (for I guess last year's booklord challenge), that was some serious compare/contrast wrt portrayals of madness.

Are Rushdie's other books worth digging into? Any other books like Satanic Verses to recommend?

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

Please participate in this month's BOTM, its a real book and everything, not a single wizard in it any where!

Mortimer posted:

Do you ever find out what the name of the rose is?

Revenants Return posted:

I'm reading the last temptation of christ OP. is that real literature.

blue squares posted:

What are the best novels set on college campuses? I have read Secret History and White Noise. I own Lucky Jim and I Am Charlotte Simmons. Is Simmons good?

Mel Mudkiper posted:

What do a thousand falcons scream like? And how does one scream like them?

Does he mean the thing had a thousand vocal chords making distinct sounds? That the scream was dissonant? That the scream was loud? And if it was any of the latter why not use the infinite better similes that exist than "like a thousand falcons"

Mel Mudkiper posted:

This actually reads like one of the better parts of The Princess Bride

Nakar posted:

The difference being that your way is actually funny and a fantasy full of lovely metaphors the storyteller keeps hedging on and qualifying in ludicrous ways would be enjoyable in the "slightly senile old guy spins you some bullshit that may or may not be true" folk tale style.

Ras Het posted:

I'm reading Chekhov.

fridge corn posted:

I agree for the most part, but still find it strange to frame the narration as such when it doesn't seem to add anything to the story when taken at face value. Equally extraordinary are the actions of the main character in the face of the extreme events as described, surely beyond the capabilities of most 12 year olds to act with such singular determination that perhaps things have been embellished somewhat. I dont think it adds much to think of the narration as unreliable but still it was something I found slightly distracting and had stuck in my mind since reading it

CestMoi posted:

"The Assistant Commissioner walked along a short and narrow street like a wet, muddy trench"

It's this kind of imprecision of language that means The Secret Agent, and by extension Joseph Conrad, will forever be in the shadow of the great G. K. Chesterton

Burning Rain posted:

... ......

so, uh, I'm a bit surprised that people still bring up that Atwood's essay to say she hates sci-fi and has her head up her rear end, cuz afterwards she had a whole bloody book about science fiction published, in which she brought up several of her own novels when talking about the different subgenres of sci-fi/fantasy. And even in that essay that turned the internet against her, Atwood basically said that she sees science fiction as a subgenre of speculative fiction - space operas and hard sci-fi, basically. And I don't think anyone would disagree that she doesn't write either.

i saw the essay as more about definitions of the genre rather than "sci-fi is poo poo for loving children, i write Real Literature", which is how the ppl on internet took it, because they have a red light in their heads that goes off and clouds their mind as soon as somebody mentions either sci-fi or fantasy.

chernobyl kinsman posted:

aren't you the guy who recommended an edward lee book with a straight face

Shibawanko posted:

No I'm saying genre fiction makes no sense because it's a form of fiction that tends to rely on visual description, so why not just watch that rather than read it? It doesn't apply to literature, which can sometimes be adapted but is usually pretty resistant to it.

A human heart posted:

it sounds extremely bad.

Chamberk posted:

The Sot Weed Factor is great if you like all the females in the book you're reading to be repeatedly raped

derp posted:

Mel Mudkiper posted: