Read Some Real Literature: Anyway hail satantango

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > Read Some Real Literature: Anyway hail satantango

Sir John Feelgood: Nov 18, 2009

I don't think it's that bad. I see people talk about literature all the time. I visit every day and I've never clicked on a genre thread.

Edit: Actually i guess it could be a lot better. There is a ton of genre threads, and I realize now that when i visit this forum I really only check for new replies in 2 or 3 threads I follow among everything there.

Sir John Feelgood fucked around with this message at 08:48 on Jun 18, 2014

# ¿ Jun 18, 2014 08:43

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 17:37

Sir John Feelgood: Nov 18, 2009

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.

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!

Yeah, it's good to read books that aren't rendered 100% worthless once you know what happens.

# ¿ Jun 19, 2014 08:30

Sir John Feelgood: Nov 18, 2009

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

# ¿ Jun 19, 2014 12:18

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.

# ¿ Jun 19, 2014 23:20

Sir John Feelgood: Nov 18, 2009

I know it's a joke that he gets mentioned a lot here, but the two biggest Steinbeck fans I know are also big Cormac McCarthy fans.

# ¿ Jun 20, 2014 03:10

Sir John Feelgood: Nov 18, 2009

Happy Hedonist posted:

Along with Amis I really enjoy Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan...

Christoper Hitchens, James Fenton...

# ¿ Jun 21, 2014 01:47

Sir John Feelgood: Nov 18, 2009

Happy Hedonist posted:

I was specifically thinking fiction so I didn't include Hitchens in my list, but in retrospect he should be in there. Letters to a Young Contrarian hosed my world up. I've been meaning to read Fenton for years now.

I was just completing the coterie. And I could've included Bellow since Hitchens and Amis admired him greatly and met him.

# ¿ Jun 21, 2014 03:28

Sir John Feelgood: Nov 18, 2009

A Rambling Vagrant posted:

RealTalk: Imo Martin Amis is one of our two or threw greatest living novelists & London Fields is a better book than Infinite Jest.

There's a handsome hardcover of London Fields coming out this November.

Sir John Feelgood fucked around with this message at 17:25 on Nov 17, 2017

# ¿ Jun 21, 2014 11:36

Sir John Feelgood: Nov 18, 2009

ShaqDiesel posted:

Yeah sorry I should have narrowed it down a bit. Thanks for the input everyone.

Homer, Plato, Virgil, The Bible, Dante, Chaucer, Cervantes, Shakespeare.

# ¿ Sep 30, 2014 20:44

Sir John Feelgood: Nov 18, 2009

I'd read everything Shakespeare wrote, but if someone doesn't want to I'd read

Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, Macbeth

Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, Merchant of Venice

Romeo & Juliet, The Tempest

The Henriad (Part 1: Richard II, Henry IV pts. 1 and 2, Henry V) (Part 2: Henry VI pts. 1, 2, and 3, Richard III)

edit: If you want to narrow it down even further... the four tragedies, Romeo & Juliet, Richard III. Those are the ones someone might expect you to be familiar with.

Sir John Feelgood fucked around with this message at 12:21 on Oct 2, 2014

# ¿ Oct 2, 2014 12:09

Sir John Feelgood: Nov 18, 2009

Peel posted:

Speaking of, is there an accepted best translation of Don Quixote?

Edith Grossman.

# ¿ Oct 6, 2014 14:21

Sir John Feelgood: Nov 18, 2009

Mescal posted:

Bought a beautiful hardback copy of Ulysses yesterday and started reading it today. It's pretty breezy so far but I expect it'll get pretty heavy. Wish me luck

Which edition? Modern Library? Everyman's?

Sir John Feelgood fucked around with this message at 17:25 on Nov 17, 2017

# ¿ Oct 9, 2014 19:16

Sir John Feelgood: Nov 18, 2009

JackKnight posted:

I read the unabridged Quo Vadis and Ben Hur books when I was like 13 years old, as well as stuff like Moby Dick, Pride and Prejudice, etc. Now all I read is fantasy or scifi stuff. I've read 50-60 books in the last three months or so. :-). Some of this stuff you are talking about sounds like really heavy reading. A lot of people nowadays would not be able to comprehend some of these books mentioned in this thread, lol.

Could you post a list or a partial list of the 50-60 books you've read in the past 90 days? I'm just curious.

# ¿ Oct 20, 2014 21:51

Sir John Feelgood: Nov 18, 2009

The common wisdom is Fitzgerald for the Odyssey and Lattimore for the Iliad.

I also like Anthony Verity's recent Iliad.

# ¿ Nov 27, 2014 04:50

Sir John Feelgood: Nov 18, 2009

tatankatonk posted:

or that, somehow, 8 out of 10 of the best novels in human history were all written in the same 20 year period by people with remarkably homogenous social backgrounds

It's a list of the best English-language novels of the twentieth century.

# ¿ Dec 1, 2014 18:08

Sir John Feelgood: Nov 18, 2009

nvm

Sir John Feelgood fucked around with this message at 08:07 on May 30, 2015

# ¿ May 30, 2015 07:49

Sir John Feelgood: Nov 18, 2009

edit: nvm.

Sir John Feelgood fucked around with this message at 10:19 on Jun 6, 2015

# ¿ Jun 6, 2015 10:09

Sir John Feelgood: Nov 18, 2009

Cloks posted:

books by Updike - Garp, Owen Meany, Cider House and Hotel New Hampshire.

That's John Irving.

# ¿ Aug 31, 2015 12:24

Sir John Feelgood: Nov 18, 2009

Franzen and Updike, middle-class white American domestic dramas. Franzen and Tom Wolfe, the ambition to define the times.

# ¿ Aug 31, 2015 12:39

Sir John Feelgood: Nov 18, 2009

All these comparisons are superficial. Of course they fall apart when you focus the lens.

# ¿ Aug 31, 2015 13:31

Sir John Feelgood: Nov 18, 2009

I'm up to Book 3. Haven't started it.

Mira posted:

Starting the second book in the Struggle series really soon (Subtitled: A Man in Love). Oddly looking forward to the last two books being translated. Apparently in the final one, he goes off on this 400+ page screed about Hitler's life.

Good.

# ¿ Sep 2, 2015 20:49

Sir John Feelgood: Nov 18, 2009

I'm going to.

# ¿ Sep 3, 2015 04:07

Sir John Feelgood: Nov 18, 2009

Mel Mudkiper posted:

Old Man and the Sea was Hemingway's masterpiece though

Do you really think so?

# ¿ Sep 20, 2015 20:04

Sir John Feelgood: Nov 18, 2009

Mel Mudkiper posted:

Of course. Its the complete embodiment of his lifetime goal of creating literature that evoked complex human emotion in sparse and effective language and found honor in the futility of men struggling against the cruelty of the world around them.

I would say the only reason it gets a bad rep is because people had to read it in High School. It is absolutely his best book. Farewell to Arms and For Whom the Bell Tolls are excellent but I would hold up Old Man and the Sea as the closest there has ever been to a perfectly written novel in the English language.

I thought it was pretty weak.

# ¿ Sep 20, 2015 23:27

Sir John Feelgood: Nov 18, 2009

derp posted:

sorry i dont do extensive research on books before i open them, especially when they are 99c on kindle. if the first couple pages don't grab me i move on to the next one cause there are literally millions of books out there did you know? no reason to force yourself through one particular one

You're right. Read whatever you want.

# ¿ Aug 11, 2017 17:03

Sir John Feelgood: Nov 18, 2009

I started the Bible. English Standard Version. Almost finished with Deuteronomy. It is alternately powerful and tedious, fascinating and boring. I guess everybody knows that about the Bible, though.

Has anybody here read it? Did you read the books in order or did you jump around? Which books stood out to you?

# ¿ Aug 11, 2017 17:48

Sir John Feelgood: Nov 18, 2009

CestMoi posted:

Why would you not read the King James

The ESV is a descendant of the KJV. If you compare them, the language is remarkably similar, but the ESV has the benefit of modern scholarship.

Franchescanado posted:

You should probably read Psalms, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes in KJV though

But this sounds like a good idea anyway.

# ¿ Aug 11, 2017 18:12

Sir John Feelgood: Nov 18, 2009

Sir John Feelgood fucked around with this message at 17:26 on Nov 17, 2017

# ¿ Aug 11, 2017 18:33

Sir John Feelgood: Nov 18, 2009

I'll just say it plainly. I was turned off the KJV because in the course of researching translations something that should have been obvious was pointed out to me: Biblical scholarship has made a lot of progress since the seventeenth century. I wanted a translation that was beautiful, faithful to the style of the original, and informed by modern scholarship, and I think I made a good choice with the ESV. As I said before, it is a translation in the tradition of the KJV, so if you compare the two, they're remarkably similar, and I've enjoyed the ESV so far on an aesthetic level. If you're min-maxing for literary beauty, you might go with the KJV, and if you're min-maxing for accuracy you might go with Robert Alter. But I was looking for a compromise between a few virtues, and the ESV provided that.

# ¿ Aug 12, 2017 02:12

Sir John Feelgood: Nov 18, 2009

Nothing for me beats when Levin meets Anna in Anna Karenina.

# ¿ Aug 18, 2017 23:00

Sir John Feelgood: Nov 18, 2009

Orhan Pamuk. Started reading the new one (The Red-Haired Woman) in a book store, seemed good. Anyone read him? Where to start?

# ¿ Aug 22, 2017 19:33

Sir John Feelgood: Nov 18, 2009

Mel Mudkiper posted:

She's also a very good writer and basically writes like she looks

Interesting. Can you elaborate on this?

# ¿ Sep 1, 2017 18:24

Sir John Feelgood: Nov 18, 2009

I'm reading Karl Ove Knausgaard's Autumn, which just came out in English. He wrote a book for each season with short entries on different parts of life: "Teeth," "Wasps," "Apples." I loved the My Struggle books, but I don't recommend this. My Struggle is famous for its details, but what made it great was its epic scope and its characters. This is just the details.

# ¿ Sep 1, 2017 21:54

Sir John Feelgood: Nov 18, 2009

chernobyl kinsman posted:

my grandma hated the goldfinch and that's about the only review of it i need

What'd she think of the cover?

# ¿ Sep 2, 2017 06:00

Sir John Feelgood: Nov 18, 2009

ulvir posted:

how can you not love a book that has a chapter dedicated to pissing your pants

You like the book?

# ¿ Sep 2, 2017 15:55

Sir John Feelgood: Nov 18, 2009

The Chad Polyglot.

# ¿ Sep 3, 2017 18:33

Sir John Feelgood: Nov 18, 2009

Officer Sandvich posted:

nice more dumb translation arguments

I agree, it's not that interesting a topic.

# ¿ Sep 3, 2017 19:01

Sir John Feelgood: Nov 18, 2009

Actually, translation is really interesting, but not the questions of how much meaning is lost in translations or whether we should bother reading them.

# ¿ Sep 3, 2017 19:04

Sir John Feelgood: Nov 18, 2009

Heath posted:

I think it's very interesting

For me, the answer to whether translation is worthwhile is yes, so I'm more interested in how we should translate than dwelling on what's lost.

# ¿ Sep 3, 2017 19:28

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 17:37

Sir John Feelgood: Nov 18, 2009

Wow. They're going to translate the remaining six volumes of Solzhenitsyn's The Red Wheel. We got the first three volumes in the 70s and 80s, and it didn't look like we were going to get the rest. But apparently an anonymous donor is making it possible, and the next book comes out in November. Great news.

Source: https://amp.theguardian.com/books/2017/aug/22/solzhenitsyn-russian-revolution-epic-novel-the-red-wheel-complete-english-translation

# ¿ Sep 5, 2017 05:38

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