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I've never read the Bible.
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Sep 30, 2014 15:49
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Please don't listen to anyone's ideas fof what you should read so you know the Western canon and just read books that are good in no particular order.
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Sep 30, 2014 23:30
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A Rambling Vagrant posted:When you think about it, TS Eliot is p. much a K-Mart brand William Carlos Williams. Agreed.
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Oct 4, 2014 13:31
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poisonpill posted:Pynchon is just a knockoff DeLillo. Discuss. Agreed.
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Oct 4, 2014 13:39
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When you think about it Umberto Eco is just a poor man's G. K. Chesterton.
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Oct 4, 2014 13:40
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mallamp posted:Actually you do have to read whole western canon. In original languages. I'm going to read the Epic of Gilgamesh in its original Assyrian/SUmerian/possibly Hittite in places.
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Oct 5, 2014 22:58
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Don't read Lot 49 to get an idea of Pynchon's style because it's not very good. Read Gravity's Rainbow and if you don't like it stop reading it but you'll probably like it.
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Oct 6, 2014 11:59
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IMO you'll end up with a way more satisfying, enjoyable, and Pynchony book reading the first 150 pages of Gravity's Rainbow than reading the 150 pages of Lot 49.
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Oct 6, 2014 16:04
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Smoking Crow posted:you got the joke Please don't joke about books and reading.
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Oct 15, 2014 17:09
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Memorise Hamlet and constantly quote things from it even when they're not very relevant.
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Oct 24, 2014 16:34
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Basically do what I do for the Simpsons, but for Hamlet.
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Oct 24, 2014 16:35
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English is dead.
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Oct 24, 2014 16:48
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Alternatively: books about those things are for nerds and English is dead.
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Oct 24, 2014 17:49
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The last good English language literature was Beowulf.
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Oct 24, 2014 20:31
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JackKnight posted:Perhaps I should have clarified more. The degeneration of language is certainly debatable, and there are good points for both sides. I should probably have made the point that less and less people are using English to its full potential. Sure more and more people are literate, but literacy is just a metric for basic reading comprehension. You seem to have this weird thing where you think that memorising Hamlet or reading an encyclopaedia make you smart but they reallly don't. Reading broadly and thinking critically about what you read will improve your thinking probably, not rote learning crap or reading something that won't engage you and you almost certainly won't take in.
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Oct 24, 2014 20:47
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I was saying Boo-urns.
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Oct 24, 2014 21:00
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toanoradian posted:If I love Invisible Cities by Calvino, for its incredible descriptions of imaginary concepts and the sheer sense of awe it inspires, what other relatively thin book would I enjoy? I am currently chewing on the delicious buffet that is Calvino's Italian Folktales and by god, I love folktales from foreign countries. Dictionary of the Khazars by Milorad Pavic is wonderful and very folk tale-y and reminds me a lot of Borges who Earwicker suggested but I just realised you said thin so err not that I guess. Read Borges.
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Oct 25, 2014 14:52
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It's pretty groundbreaking.
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Oct 25, 2014 22:49
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Of course there's some point other than his final inference otherwise he woulldn't write the book. He didn't come up with the idea then write 100 pages of faff to make it seem good, he's trying to logically expound the point that there's a fundamental flaw in the way we think about language, and use it to talk about philosophy, while recognising the fact that in doing so he is using language to talk about philosophy.
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Oct 25, 2014 22:54
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I jus tfinished Mason & Dixon and it's pretty fantastic I'd recommend it for those of you that like books. I'm nowe reading The Palace of Dreams by Ismail Kadare which I have just discovered is an English translation of the French translation of the original Albanian and I think that's why it reads sort of weird but the ideas seem cool. Also the version I have has a quote from the book on the front and having read the first two chapters, then that quote, I think I now know exactly what is going to happen.
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Nov 9, 2014 21:19
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It's pretty good it's just stilted I guess? I probably wouldn't give it much thought if I hadn't realised I was reading a translation of a translation just before I started. I might see if I can pick up Broken April in French since it looks like Kadare was explicitly on board in the French translation process. Should I go for BRoken April or another, better one?
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Nov 10, 2014 20:28
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I thought the Metamorphosis was dull and every other story was great in the collection I read
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Nov 20, 2014 22:33
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I'm reading The collected Father Brown mysteries by G K CHesterton and they're really cool because if there's ever an atheist in the story you know he did the crimes because he has no morals to stop him from murdering wantonly. Also they're a lot better than Sherlock Holmes and Arthur COnan Doyle drools, while Gilbert Keith Chesterton, rules.
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Nov 20, 2014 22:37
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A Rambling Vagrant posted:If you ignore the fact that he was an antisemite & hated pretty much everything that both existed & wasn't also beer, England, or Catholicism(ex: Germans, Continental Philosophy, Voltaire, Marx, Protestantism, cats, the Japanese, people who opposed toll roads, Socialists, Spiritualists, Baptists, Darwin, Queen Elizabeth, Anarchists, Capitalists, Atheists, Pacifists, heretics, boring people) then GK Chesterton's oeuvre becomes a bottomless well of some of the finest prose that the English language has to offer. The best Father Brown stories are the ones where someone is explicitly one of these things, and it is later revealed they secretly are another as well and that is why they did the murder. Eg when the guy tricks a woman into falling down a lift shaft and it is because he has invented his own sun worship religion and also because he is secretly AMerican. Also the murdered person's sister tried to steal all her money because she's a woman.
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Nov 21, 2014 19:49
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The best Kafka story is the one where the orangutan can talk and it uses this skill to do nothing of interest.
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Nov 23, 2014 22:05
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YOu're fundamentally broken if you don't love it with all your heart, soul and mind I'm afraid. You might as well be dead. Heller reaches almost Chestertonian levels of cool prose.
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Nov 25, 2014 23:30
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Please only conform to the established literary hierarchy in this thread.
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Nov 26, 2014 01:02
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Maybe if George Ar Ar Martin had wanted to write a good book about the horrors of war he shou;ldn't have written such a lovely book.
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Dec 8, 2014 20:14
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It's a piece of poo.
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Dec 8, 2014 20:17
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Falstaff Infection posted:In order to qualify as a conscientious objector in the U.S., you have to object to war in general, not just a specific war. They probably make sure to check that you object to all wars and not just the current one by getting you to write a short story and if it seems like you don't like war from that, then you can sit it out.
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Dec 8, 2014 20:42
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It's okay.
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Dec 18, 2014 02:06
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I'm reading Catcher in the Rye and it is also okay.
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Dec 18, 2014 02:06
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I'm a strong vegetarian and cannot handle books with meat based themes, any recommendations? I tried reading Life of Pi and when he said something about how the tiger might eat him I had to put it down in disgust.
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Dec 19, 2014 19:47
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Reported.
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Dec 20, 2014 02:55
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YOu're only allowed to talk about books I approve of in this thread, being good literature has nothing to do with it.
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Dec 20, 2014 17:05
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Dystram posted:No, my friend, it is not capital L literature according to some arbitrary standard, hence, it is a bad book, for the pretension of the thread must be maintained. People with anime avatars always have good, and correct opinions. The people with anime avatars don't make the decisions about what is and isn't literature, I do.
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Dec 22, 2014 00:24
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I just want to escape from my lovely life and that's why I read about the Game of THrones universe, where everyone dies for minor things that happen to them, people are constantly having sex with children, and the writing is really really bad.
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Dec 22, 2014 14:07
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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.
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Dec 22, 2014 14:13
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I'm reading The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Stern and the fact that this book was written in the mid 1700s is incredible. 40 pages in and he keeps getting distracted from narrating his birth, he almost started writing about his baptism then remembered that he'd need to be born before he was baptised, then in the next chapter berated the reader for not reading closely enough to realise that his mother couldn't possibly be Catholic, because Catholics have devised a method for baptising in the womb by squirting water on the foetus. All this 150 years before Joyce!!!!!!
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Jan 11, 2015 16:33
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O cool it was actually popular at the time? I just assumed it was one of those things that was very ahead of the curve and it got rediscovered in the 20th century or something.
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Jan 11, 2015 17:55
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