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I'm a big believer that a lot of people cheat themselves out of reading cool books because they get caught up in the myth that lit is all boring and 'pretentious' promoted by people who never got over high school. It's all about finding books relevant to your interests, then branching out from there once you've got the taste. Cormac McCarthy is a goon favourite because a lot of his books deal with macho genre topics while also being thought-provoking and packed with fantastic prose. The Road (shortest) is post-apocalyptic, Blood Meridian (best) is a western, No Country for Old Men (most accessible) is a thriller. McCarthy's style is weird but beautiful, laden with symbols and philosophical excursions. Moby Dick is a crazy whaling adventure packed with memorable characters that will teach you how whaling worked. It's akin to a seaborne Blood Meridian in that it mixes intense, (literally) visceral description of the business at hand with a fog of symbols, ruminations and memorable characters. It has some long infodumps about whales and ships but if you can read SF&F that shouldn't put you off. Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose (mediaeval monastic mystery) and Foucault's Pendulum (hilarious adventure into fake Da Vinci Code-esque conspiracies) I haven't read recently enough to advertise in detail, but I really enjoyed both when I was a wee teen raised on Pratchett and Harry Potter. Peel fucked around with this message at 16:01 on Jun 20, 2014 |
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Jun 20, 2014 13:09
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Also jfc I assumed that gurm quote someone had in their custom title was a parody. I really can't get into poetry, it just bounces off, even though I like well-turned prose. I feel like this is a hole in my reading but I don't really know what I should do about it.
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Jun 20, 2014 16:49
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Poutling posted:LOL Cormac McCarthy!!! Seriously though he's good. But TBB should branch out and try new things, maybe some William Gay or late Joe R Lansdale (The Bottoms, The Thicket) He's overegged in this forum but that's precisely because he's a good fit for our demographics. So I think it's still worth pointing to him.
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Jun 21, 2014 01:46
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More people should read literary fiction but leading off with 'I did a literal university degree in this and I can't believe how low your power levels are???' is a bit daft.
Peel fucked around with this message at 10:46 on Jul 11, 2014 |
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Jul 11, 2014 10:41
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Speaking of, is there an accepted best translation of Don Quixote?
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Oct 5, 2014 21:06
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Smrtz posted:Ahh, sorry. I just made my account earlier yesterday, so I guess I'm still learning... You want the Terry Pratchett thread, or the general SFF thread. Borges is a solid recommendation anyway though.
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May 28, 2015 22:10
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CestMoi posted:I would like to read the book about sexy Maori girls living in a desert, please. Mad Max: Fury Road
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Jun 29, 2015 19:03
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What is The New Sincerity? Think of it as irony and sincerity combined like Voltron, to form a new movement of astonishing power.
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Jul 15, 2015 01:53
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Mel Mudkiper I was inspired by your posting in that thread to come here and ask after books by muslim authors, which I will now do: what are some good and/or cool books by muslim authors?
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Aug 22, 2016 22:45
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you have to be a dork to spend weeks indoors typing novels, and gnosticism was a cool thing to be into before the internet made it easy to get into anime
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Dec 20, 2016 19:50
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my vague understanding is that modern ultra-derivative 'epic fantasy' got going in the late 70s with really deliberate tolkien knockoffs like shannara that appealed to a mass market that wanted familiarity more than strangeness. there was a profusion and that combined with everyone playing d&d produced the stultifying cliches western 'fantasy' still labours under.Mel Mudkiper posted:your daily reminder that genre is a distinction of marketing not of content this is true but it's also the case that sam q. reader will, on seeking out more books in a genre that's marketed to him, confuse it for a self-subsisting thing and think that's how writing should be done when he starts writing books himself. the marketing produces the content.
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Dec 23, 2016 18:29
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The Old Man and the Sea.
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Dec 23, 2016 18:49
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ok who jacked mel's account and is playing a cruel prank
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May 2, 2017 20:53
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Capital: Critique of Political Economy
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May 21, 2017 14:11
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what are some good books prominently featuring hypocrites and/or narcissists
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Jun 6, 2017 22:41
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i dunno about novels but the cyberiad was real good
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Jun 7, 2017 22:01
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also thanks for the recs everyone, on this and the islam question from before
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Jun 8, 2017 03:06
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then you buy the book a second time? you wouldn't eat the same burger twice, that's disgusting.
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Jul 19, 2017 09:41
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lol if you haven't read the extant linear a inscriptions
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Sep 3, 2017 20:35
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now to understand kant, the people you need to read are
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Sep 28, 2017 12:41
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On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason is a shorter work I enjoyed that can introduce the philosophical angle and might be less dependent on Kant. You could also try a secondary introduction like The Philosophy of Schopenhauer by Magee before reading his philosophy itself or his SEP page. Or yeah just read his less high-philosophical essays. I had studied Kant before I got to Schopenhauer at all so I can't say what it's like without that background.
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Sep 28, 2017 15:09
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i actually haven't read his other essays much at all myself and probably should sometime
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Sep 28, 2017 15:12
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On this topic I'm gonna be reading Heidegger soon, did he write anything short and good to put on the list besides Being and Time? e: I'll note there's a dedicated philosophy thread for questions about these authors.
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Oct 1, 2017 09:51
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sff author wins the nobel, what's the world coming to
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Oct 5, 2017 12:32
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Harry Martinson i was thinking doris lessing but this is a way deeper cut
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Oct 5, 2017 13:09
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https://www.thecut.com/2017/10/profile-rupi-kaur-author-of-milk-and-honey.html solid profile
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Oct 6, 2017 14:18
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it's a fair point, i don't think bad male-oriented/friendly stuff tends to be made a big public joke in the same way. like dan brown didn't get the treatment twilight/fifty shades did.
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Oct 6, 2017 15:36
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you forgot the Bible (KJV)
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Oct 6, 2017 15:44
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Realtalk, he's a stereotypical goon-approaching-lit suggestion but the Road by Cormac McCarthy will expand your idea of how words can be used while also being a solid post-apocalypse story. If you like it, try Blood Meridian. Besides that uhhh, what do you actually like to see in books, what do you want to get out of reading ~real literature~?
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Oct 6, 2017 15:55
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Don Quixote
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Oct 6, 2017 16:12
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tbf a good book cover is really nice
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Oct 7, 2017 10:11
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ulvir posted:isn’t 1Q84 the one where the solution to some problem is to have psychic sex with a 14 year old it's the one where murakami makes it very very clear that his buff author protagonist definitely does not want to have sex with the beautiful 17yo with huge knockers he's banging
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Dec 29, 2017 14:32
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cyberiad is real good
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Jan 2, 2018 17:32
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just read 'invisible cities' and i've realised: it's good
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Feb 5, 2018 21:45
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will do found njal's saga in the charity bookshop for £2 though so going to read that first while the thread is still warm
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Feb 6, 2018 00:19
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just put the babyfucker thread in a dust jacket from crime and punishment or harry potter or something
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Apr 4, 2018 23:50
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Franchescanado posted:The RPO rewrite thread and a few other recent discussions around TBB have me curious: would anyone be interested in a thread about good prose vs. bad prose? Too many goons get up in arms or confused when a book's writing is criticized as "objectively bad". I thought it'd be nice if we had a place where everyone can argue about what makes prose good or bad. i like this and also Solitair posted:I would like to write better prose and I would appreciate an opportunity to learn how.
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Apr 14, 2018 20:30
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Both were correct.
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May 30, 2018 19:19
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one for murakami and one for kanye
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Mar 6, 2019 08:48
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in light of the other responses I would like to change my joke to 'they're going to give out more and more nobels every time until murakami dies still not having received one'
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Mar 6, 2019 09:53
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