Read Some Real Literature: Anyway hail satantango

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

mallamp: Nov 25, 2009

ManlyGrunting posted:

e: there is also a lot of stuff that is genre fiction that is legitimately good work, like a lot of Kurt Vonnegut's stuff

Murakami too, his books are very good bridge from genre to real literature. Then Jonathan Franzen or something. At least that path worked for me.
Maybe not the coolest stuff out there, but moving from GRRM to Pynchon, Wallace and stuff like that is quite a leap..

I don't think fantasy is only for teens though, one of the most elitist readers I can think of, Harold Bloom, reads fantasy and has even written crappy fantasy book himself.

# ¿ Jun 26, 2014 09:21

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# ¿ May 17, 2024 07:29

mallamp: Nov 25, 2009

If you want something like Shogun, but written by Japanese, Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa is also great one.

# ¿ Jun 30, 2014 07:23

mallamp: Nov 25, 2009

I love Roth, but in a world where you have to (at least pretend to) be feminist to be part of 'intelligentsia', it's quite a push to call him "objectively great/canon" author. Same with Updike.

# ¿ Jul 10, 2014 19:28

mallamp: Nov 25, 2009

Count Chocula posted:

I'm an English major, studied Joyce and Dante. It's hard for people here to even talk about that. I thought the Airport Fiction and formulaic sci-fi threads were mocking bad books, but they're serious.

I like fantasy - Lord Dunsany, Moorcock - when it's weird and surreal and strange. Most 'fantasy' post-Tolkien is masturbatory material for spreadsheet math nerds. People in those threads ironically praise 'consistent magic systems' like it's important. Anything fantastic like Flann O'Brian would break their brains.

Same with sci-fi. It's discussions of boring space opera and not New Wave weirdness.

SomethingAwful is full of geeks what do you expect? I mostly read "high" literature, but when I want something easy I read something like Terry Pratchett aswell. If this was more general forum then the lit board would be full of Grisham & Coelho threads and stuff like that. People like to read easy/generic genre stuff and it's a plus if that generic stuff is about things they can relate to (which isn't real life for geeks). China Mi�ville and Robert Jordan don't really compete..

mallamp fucked around with this message at 10:24 on Jul 11, 2014

# ¿ Jul 11, 2014 10:19

mallamp: Nov 25, 2009

At least 19th Century poets tried, modern poets are basically just trolls who wanted to be writers but failed, so they decided to start writing random poo poo.

# ¿ Jul 15, 2014 08:38

mallamp: Nov 25, 2009

I'd try Crime & Punishment again. It was one of the very first 'lit' books that I read after 10 years of steady fantasy diet.
First time I tried it I really hated it (I read something like 50 pages?), but then I tried it again, got past the boring beginning and really loved it.
I'd say it's one of the best 'beginner' books. Dostoyevsky in general is pretty good since he didn't deliberately try to make his books hard to read (like Faulkner, David Foster Wallace etc.), only hard part is that they're old. Murakami was my other 'beginner' author, but you'll probably have to read it in secret if you want to be 'cool'.

mallamp fucked around with this message at 07:55 on Sep 8, 2014

# ¿ Sep 8, 2014 07:52

mallamp: Nov 25, 2009

Barlow posted:

I never liked "Crime and Punishment," though that might be partly because I find Dostoyevsky's intense hatred of atheism hard to stomach.

Huh? You'd have to be pretty deep into Dawkins level aggressive atheism to feel that Dostoyevsky has 'intense hatred' of atheism.
Compared to other writers of the era Dostoyevsky explores both sides (atheism vs. theism) pretty well...
But in the end he did choose theism so if that bothers you then yeah, don't read him I guess.

mallamp fucked around with this message at 14:31 on Sep 8, 2014

# ¿ Sep 8, 2014 14:29

mallamp: Nov 25, 2009

Ras Het posted:

No, I'm pretty sure Dostoyevsky did indeed hate atheism pretty intensely. Like, read The Demons?

But it's not simple as that with him... He also planted seeds for existentialism with Notes from Underground, and I'm especially thinking about Brothers Karamazov which explores both 'sides' pretty well.

# ¿ Sep 8, 2014 19:12

mallamp: Nov 25, 2009

CestMoi posted:

Existentialism and being really religious aren't mutually exclusive just look at Kierkegaard

I know but I'd say that 'intense hatred of atheism' and existentialism are...

# ¿ Sep 9, 2014 06:23

mallamp: Nov 25, 2009

There's actually quite a lot of good sci-fi. Maybe not discussed on SA too much, and usually among the shittier stuff, but there is. Good fantasy is what's hard to find, usually people mention authors that are good compared to other fantasy authors (like Hobb,Martin,Rothfuss) but as entertaining as they are that's like winning special olympics. Literary fantasy.... Le Guin and Mieville (+other New weird), and maybe Gene Wolfe are obvious ones (they're almost scifi though), but after that ... Yeah. Magical realists of course, but they have to call themselves that to avoid being lumped with the medieval bullshit.

mallamp fucked around with this message at 17:26 on Sep 12, 2014

# ¿ Sep 12, 2014 10:12

mallamp: Nov 25, 2009

I'd try Accursed but since I've disliked almost everything I've read by Oates, I'm pretty hesitant.. I don't understand the appeal of her books.
Blonde and them had interesting ideas, but they were way too long.

Boatswain posted:

Really, for which book? The Childhood of Jesus?

Waiting for the Barbarians

mallamp fucked around with this message at 15:15 on Sep 15, 2014

# ¿ Sep 15, 2014 15:12

mallamp: Nov 25, 2009

Poutling posted:

The Accursed is pretty different from anything else I've read from her but if you dislike her because she's too verbose then The Accursed is still not for you. It copies the style of an 19th century Gothic novel and they weren't exactly known for being succinct.

Ok yeah I think I'll pass, I recently tried reading Udolpho. Not for me...

# ¿ Sep 15, 2014 21:25

mallamp: Nov 25, 2009

Ras Het posted:

So what you're saying is that you wanted to read the book without even remotely understanding it? Significant parts of it are commentaries on medieval politics, both church and secular.

Most people read classics and high lit without even remotely understanding them (because of opinions such as this thread title), so nothing new under the sun there.

# ¿ Sep 22, 2014 15:54

mallamp: Nov 25, 2009

OldTennisCourt posted:

I love crime films and novels but I'd really like to read some of the best classics of the genre. I'm currently reading Hamett's Red Harvest, can anyone recommend some good classic Noir or any sort of crime/mystery novels that aren't airport fiction level garbage?

Most books by le Carr� are better than average (they aren't exactly crime stuff but same type of thing), but generally the gap between best crime novels and airport fiction isn't that big, genre is genre.

# ¿ Sep 26, 2014 13:06

mallamp: Nov 25, 2009

There are lots of very good ~200-300 page academic summaries of Bible that tell you main points of each book and also add some useful commentary (what's the point of the story, was it written all at once or combined from different sources, what's the context, how has it been interpreted etc.), I'd recommend that especially for non-Christians rather than trying to read it all. (I've read it all)

mallamp fucked around with this message at 16:53 on Sep 30, 2014

# ¿ Sep 30, 2014 16:51

mallamp: Nov 25, 2009

And you should also remember that there probably isn't any need to go to these extremes.
If you come from usual goon background (comics, lovely fantasy and/or thrillers) you could just move on to read good books, there's no need to go all academic and make reading a chore.
Classics are cool but unless you're literature student or have read most worthwhile contemporary stuff already, you shouldn't burden yourself with them too much.

mallamp fucked around with this message at 13:51 on Oct 2, 2014

# ¿ Oct 2, 2014 13:48

mallamp: Nov 25, 2009

Shibawanko posted:

Coetzee is probably the easiest entry level literary writer because of the way he writes, waiting for the barbarians in particular is basically a fantasy novel, only not poo poo.

I think we'll get more and more good books with fantasy elements (no Tolkien, no lovely action plot, no genre crap in general) anyway, because the biggest fantasy generations are now adults and some of them actually grew up instead of becoming goons. Sadly we'll also get loads of dumb poo poo from the goony ones, but at least they are easy to avoid by cover alone.

# ¿ Oct 3, 2014 07:31

mallamp: Nov 25, 2009

GATOS Y VATOS posted:

Read whatever you like, gently caress the police.

Actually you do have to read whole western canon. In original languages.

# ¿ Oct 5, 2014 19:04

mallamp: Nov 25, 2009

End Of Worlds posted:

I'm sorry if I've missed this elsewhere, but could you recommend some of these?

There are seriously so many that I'd just search nearby universe databases and see what's available to you.
But I've heard good things about Introduction to the Bible by Christina Hayes as especially good one for self-study purposes. It's a coursebook for some Yale online course.
It's also pretty critical one (well all university theology is relatively critical) so it should be good for atheists too.

# ¿ Oct 14, 2014 11:07

mallamp: Nov 25, 2009

I really miss the time when I read only one book at a time... Then I bought e-reader and now it's really hard to get anything finished (unless it's new book by my favorite author or something like that) because it's so easy to switch between books. I think I'm currently reading something like 12 different books.

# ¿ Oct 21, 2014 09:55

mallamp: Nov 25, 2009

CestMoi posted:

I choose to read this instead of that depressing poo poo like INvisible Cities by Italo Calvino, a series of descriptions of impossible and fantastic cities in which no one dies, not a single child is had sex with, and the writing is serenely beautiful at times.

The thing is that unlike Calvino, Game of Thrones is written for 12-year-old mental level so manchildren who spend 10 hours a day updating Facebook and killing poo poo in virtual worlds are able to read it

# ¿ Dec 22, 2014 15:02

mallamp: Nov 25, 2009

but it wouldn't be a 'bestseller' if it it was released today..

# ¿ Dec 22, 2014 15:14

mallamp: Nov 25, 2009

Dystram posted:

Anyone ever read any Stefan Zweig?

I read Chess Story when I was (briefly) into chess, back then I missed most of the allegory but still liked it

# ¿ Dec 23, 2014 11:14

mallamp: Nov 25, 2009

Wraith of J.O.I. posted:

Has anybody read any of the "My Struggle" series by Karl Ove Knausg�rd? Been reading a bit about them and it seems right up my alley.

First two books are pretty good, almost like modern Proust (not as beautifully written though), but after that it becomes crap. Like average young adult book with smug as gently caress main character. I've heard last book is good again but I haven't bothered with it because I don't want to finish book 5.

# ¿ Jan 11, 2015 18:44

mallamp: Nov 25, 2009

Wraith of J.O.I. posted:

I thought only the first three books were out in English... you read it in another language?

Yes, the ones that haven't been translated, I don't know Norwegian but I know little bit of Swedish and the books 3-5 are pretty easy prose, they were translated to Swedish pretty quickly

# ¿ Jan 13, 2015 18:39

mallamp: Nov 25, 2009

Ras Het posted:

I've never read Eco, is he even worthwhile if I think Borges is garbage and am not a 16yo deeply impressed by a book mentioning Shah Babur?

# ¿ Jan 19, 2015 18:09

mallamp: Nov 25, 2009

UnoriginalMind posted:

All this discussion of American literature has made me realize that every idea I've had for a story and never written is exactly "Man has epiphany about lonliness"

Welp. Saved myself some time then.

Make it "Spaceship has epiphany about loneliness" instead and you'll get goon support and ebook publishing deal within 2 weeks

# ¿ Jan 19, 2015 18:31

mallamp: Nov 25, 2009

corn in the bible posted:

you read the silmarillion and yet you're in charge of a thread on good books? what a world

dude,this is somethingawful dot com

# ¿ Feb 19, 2015 16:56

mallamp: Nov 25, 2009

wangvicous posted:

http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2014/07/03/thawing-out/

So I ran into this article on Soviet literature and I hadn't really heard of any of it besides Bulgakov. Are any of those Soviet authors worth tracking down or were they only red because the Soviet Union was the big bad? I read Master and the Margarita and enjoyed it but I think the most fascinating thing about it was that it was not published until after Stalin's death.

Doctor Zhivago,Day in Life of Ivan Denishovic, and some Akhmatova collection should be good enough unless you have deeper soviet interest.
(This is not spaceship thread but maybe you're interested in We,Solaris,Roadside Picnic - big 3 of soviet scifi)
Next step: Mayakovsky, Isaac Babel,Moscow to the End of Line

# ¿ May 26, 2015 21:23

mallamp: Nov 25, 2009

Nanomashoes posted:

The Bible (KJV).

Hebrew version actually, translations are for plebs

# ¿ May 27, 2015 17:57

mallamp: Nov 25, 2009

Classic lists* actually do work as a good first step for people with autism (=most people who read fantasy). When I realized I was an adult and still only reading books about wizards, I immersed myself in "literature" by going through books on some random "top100 best classics!!11" list and found it exciting. You can turn it into a game, "now I've read that, and that, and that, oh this was actually good, and that, and that..."
*yeah, of course I don't mean the "start with Bible and Aeneid" kind of troll classic lists we like to joke about.

mallamp fucked around with this message at 21:16 on May 30, 2015

# ¿ May 30, 2015 21:13

mallamp: Nov 25, 2009

Remembrance of Things Past MMORPG where combat is resolved with rhythm game based on Finnegans Wake

# ¿ Jun 1, 2015 16:25

mallamp: Nov 25, 2009

Smoking Crow posted:

I want to get into that old Chinese literature, but all of those novels are really really really long. Like makes Tolstoy look like Dr. Seuss long

Chinese characters contain whole words so if you learn Chinese the books will be like 5x shorter plus you'll find a job when Chinese overlords come to enslave the west. Also, Romance of Three Kingdoms kicks rear end and if others are half as good it'd probably be worth it for real

mallamp fucked around with this message at 11:51 on Jun 2, 2015

# ¿ Jun 2, 2015 11:48

mallamp: Nov 25, 2009

Reading Rabbit series as freshman taught me so much about sex

# ¿ Jun 6, 2015 06:56

mallamp: Nov 25, 2009

blue squares posted:

I'm on page 400 of War and Peace and I'm starting to find it tiresome. I enjoy it well enough when I sit down to read it, but I find I have no real desire to grab it off my shelf and keep going, unlike most novels I read. The idea that I'm going to be reading about these same characters and events for another 800 pages isn't that appealing.

Quit and watch the movie if you want to see the story, there's decent 3,5 hour version with classic Hollywood actors or more faithful and revered 6 hour version with Russian actors. I think it's a great book but I wouldn't waste time on huge book I don't like

# ¿ Jun 6, 2015 15:46

mallamp: Nov 25, 2009

It's faster to just read Dawkins Delusion (75 pages vs. 375) which summarizes the main points, plus that way you won't accidentally take Dawkins seriously

# ¿ Jun 9, 2015 17:51

mallamp: Nov 25, 2009

It is important because if you want to be true harold bloom high lit bro you can't accidentally read sff that's not approved by academia..

# ¿ Jun 24, 2015 16:15

mallamp: Nov 25, 2009

I think of Murakami as YA author for people with standards

# ¿ Jul 10, 2015 08:35

mallamp: Nov 25, 2009

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

Ok, new BotM thread is up. It's not as literary as in past months but I tried to include some non-terrible options. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3732757

There are some obvious true lit gems though, that I'd vote if I'd have time for bookclubs, like Dinosaur Lords, story of two men with Aspergers who think Jurassic World is real and go on roadtrip to Costa Rica and Traitors Blades - poignant character study of icehockey turncoat Marian Hossa

# ¿ Jul 24, 2015 10:04

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# ¿ May 17, 2024 07:29

mallamp: Nov 25, 2009

Room felt like Readers Digest story in book form, I read it when it came out and still haven't decided if that's a good or bad thing..

# ¿ Aug 12, 2015 15:20

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