Smoking Crow posted:

Have you read Coin Locker Babies? It's crazy. Hope you like meth and gay model sex

Gay model meth

blue squares posted:

What question should I ask Hanya Yanagihara in a hour?

Caustic Chimera posted:

Guys, you should read The Shore by Sara Taylor. It's this book of interconnected stories (I'm beginning to think I like this type very much. Recommend me some) with this place as the setting. It jumps back and forth in time, and is centered around these two families. It's a pretty dark book, showing the uglier side of people, but it's a really compelling read. Read it.

blue squares posted:

I'm gonna write a My Struggle type of memoir and call it My poo poo. What I would really like is a My Struggle written by a black man or woman in the United States.

mallamp posted:

If you are reading something with pictures in it that isn't Playboy or WG Sebald book you're wasting your time though

Mel Mudkiper posted:

He's a tough knut to crack

End Of Worlds posted:

Apropos of nothing, but I have a new favourite bit of marginalia. In a book on Anglo-Saxons, in a section discussing language, the author makes a passing reference to the Scots and the Picts:

hog fat posted:

the best writing available to us (Westerners) is mostly written by dead white men. you can pretend that this is not the case if you want. you can respond with a bunch of truisms, you can quote all your favorite female authors but the point remains. why limit yourself?

the good news is that there is no such thing as a man and there is no such thing as a woman. the self is a construct and ego is suffering.

HookedOnChthonics posted:

Leslie Marmon Silko is a) not dead and b) not black. She is a very important figure to American Indian lit though, being among the loose class of authors following N. Scott Momaday that comprise the Native American Renaissance.

Ceremony is fantastic, and definitely worth reading even if you're the kind of person who feels the need to take to the internet to deride the idea of seeking out female authors. Don't worry, the main character is a boy so you won't get cooties or have to think about tampons or nothing~

Another good (and very alive) American Indian author is Louise Erdrich--I read The Round House and it was by far the most affecting thing I got through last year. If you liked Beloved even a little bit you'll probably get something from it.

Ras Het posted:

Well, yes and no: you can write about all kinds of garbage, conscious that its garbage, but that consciousness doesn't mean that it also isn't garbage to read. Autobiographical stories of drug use are the worst offenders in this regard, but there's plenty of upper class twittery that has the same effect

Zesty Mordant posted:

I've been liking a lot of the books I've read so far that have no conventional narrative, that are basically just a collection of scenes. "Inner Tube" was basically this. I just read elizabeth hardwick's "sleepless nights" and it was exactly that, really good too. What are some more books that are similar?

Mrenda posted:

Apart from a few short stories available for free on some decent websites and a few Irish lit journals (of which there is an abundance, with a resulting quality of writing) I've never read some real literature. My sole attempt in the past year was trying to get through The Castle, but the quality of the prose didn't whip me through it (apart from one early scene) so when I decided it was a bit of a shaggy dog story about a shaggy dog life/situation/pursuit I put it down (also, I was quite ill reading it, so that wouldn't have helped.)

I'm not looking for literature for the sake of appearance in reading high falutin' thinky books, I would actually like to read something with a degree of profundity. I'm particularly looking for something that deals with mental health and how that applies to isolation and relating to the world outside of the self (inspired by the illness I was in the depths of while reading Kafka.) Any recommendations would be appreciated.

Alvarez IV posted:

On the subject, I'm looking to read as many books as possible in the vein of Lolita, American Psycho, Junkie, The 120 Days of Sodom, et cetera. Stuff about unrepentant transgressors who society allows to practice their poison. Preferably with good language like Nabokov, de Sade, and Burroughs. I'm not that great a fan of the BEE house style. I heard Tampa by Alissa Nutting was supposed to be decent, but I can't confirm. The vice itself doesn't matter so much to me, just that it is severe.

Krankenstyle posted:

Eugene V. Dubstep posted:

Fix that. Northanger Abbey is awfully good, but it was my least favorite out of all of Austen's novels. (note: I haven't read Emma.)

Ccs posted:

Pale Fire by Nabokov is a really good book.

It's bonkers that he only switched over to English prose after writing his 9th novel.