Big Mad Drongo posted:I'm currently reading and loving Candide, but it's fairly short so I'll be in the market for a new book pretty soon. A Confederacy of Dunces is pretty much my all-time favorite book, so I'm hoping there's other novels out there featuring terrible/naive people in horrible situations while the Just World Fallacy crumbles around them. Are you aware that Voltaire wrote a sequel to Candide? It's worth checking out if you're not reading it already.
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Jun 18, 2014 18:45
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Smoking Crow posted:I recommend Hadji Murad by Leo Tolstoy, Citrus County by John Brandon, The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and Death of a Naturalist by Seamus Heaney. Heaney? May I ask why? (Not why you like him, but why you'd recommend him in this context)
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Jun 19, 2014 19:13
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Talmonis posted:But really, you shouldn't be comparing Stephenson and Tolstoy, as they are nothing alike in subject matter. (1) why must two writers be "alike in subject matter" to be comparable? (2) what does subject matter have to do with quality, or talent, or historical significance, or...?
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Jun 19, 2014 23:59
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Smoking Crow posted:That's good because Tolstoy is a breezy writer that makes long passages seem shorter than they actually are. Most people don't read Tolstoy off of page count and reputation, which is unfortunate. Tolstoy is history's greatest writer of adventure novels. An I say that as one who is far from his greatest fan. Smoking Crow posted:Heaney is a fantastic writer, extremely easy to read (especially compared to his contemporaries), easy to understand and a great intro to late 20th century poetry. a tolstoy fan *would* say that  imo best possible intro to contemporary poetry is older poetry Iamblikhos fucked around with this message at 00:07 on Jun 20, 2014 |
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Jun 20, 2014 00:01
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:I agree with this. Maybe it's true of every artform in any cultural context but with American poetry there's a distinct "line of succession" where each generation of writers was clearly responding to the one that went before (usually with frustration and impatience. that's how it is with all literature pretty much
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Jun 20, 2014 00:29
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Smoking Crow posted:I'm not sure that he's the best, he's on the same tier as Dumas and Twain, though. this, pretty much - though he's definitely at the higher end of that tier (on the other hand, twain is definitely much more sensible in his judgments) Smoking Crow posted:What do you consider older poetry? I like Tennyson and Yeats as much as the next guy, but I think that Heaney is on a level all his own. He's my favorite poet and all. tbh i've read little heaney that i didn't think is annoying (station island is most agreeable to my taste), though he is a great translator if you like that kind of poetry, elizabeth bishop is probably the best immediate precursor... and if you like him then yeah, yeats and tennyson make sense, though both are significantly better than heaney imo i guess by "older poetry" i meant the standout (readable, understandable) works in the tradition familiarity with which really helps understand what a given contemporary poet is up to and where he's coming from (in every sense of the phrase). things like shakespeare's sonnets, milton, pope, lyrical ballads, keats, dickinson, eliot, stevens, etc...
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Jun 20, 2014 00:39
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Talmonis posted:Really, aside from TBB and other such gathering places of readers, it's hard to determine what's worth reading outside of "genre" fiction, as everything else in a bookstore or god forbid the supermarket is just "Fiction". From Nora Robets schlock to Tom Clancy's military fetishism and everything in between. At least with genre fiction, you have a somewhat decent idea of what sort of book topics you'll find in that area. That's to say nothing of the quality of said books, just the means of narrowing down the search. if you're saying that genre books are the craigslist personals of the book world...
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Jun 20, 2014 00:45
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Smoking Crow posted:You say Elizabeth Bishop? I'd say that Dylan Thomas is more of a direct precursor to Heaney than her. i said the best, not the most "direct" (not sure which of several possible senses you have in mind). Smoking Crow posted:And, I'm sorry, but I don't like Alexander Pope. He's a bit too clever for cleverness's sake, you know? you're saying it like it's a bad thing
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Jun 20, 2014 01:09
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Reveilled posted:
The Satyricon by Petronius is literally about the wacky adventures of two ex-gladiators, an elderly pedophile tutor and a hot twink-fatale. The Cyclops by Euripides culminates with a satyr getting his comeuppance through anal rape at the hands of a drunken cyclops.
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Jun 20, 2014 02:41
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:For the classics, my standard recommendation is Xenophon's Anabasis, basically the first nonfiction war story Herodotus would like to have a word with you
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Jun 20, 2014 03:11
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:The funny thing about Herodotus is that the more research people do the more it turns out there was (or at least may have been) some grain of truth to even his craziest stories. holy poo poo, gold-digging ants are my favorite part!
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Jun 20, 2014 03:29
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Hah! I say if you ever trust anyone with a name like Rustichello you basically deserve everything that happens as the result.
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Jun 20, 2014 05:26
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Smoking Crow posted:Yeah, but the new poo poo isn't narrative. Someone needs to get on writing a modern epic poem many 20th century poets tried, often with hilariously lovely results (see under 'murray, les' and 'olson, charles') in fact, "no modern epic poem is good" was the original "i liked them before they were mainstream", going all the way back at least to the late 18th century
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Jun 20, 2014 05:29
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ulvir posted:Since this thread has a lot more activity than the "Books that aren't awful megathread", could anyone hit me up with some contemporary American authors that are worth reading? I've already given Pynchon and DFW a go, and I've got DeLillo on my radar. why specifically american?
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Jun 20, 2014 09:17
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Smoking Crow posted:
speaking of, why is it going back and forth between infantilism and pedophilia?
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Jun 20, 2014 16:40
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ulvir posted:Guess I better add him to my list, this was a great quote "Makes misogyny seem literary the same way Limbaugh makes fascism seem funny." I hate it when people say poo poo like that. Anything can be literary if it's written well. That's not the same as advocating or even admiring it. Thomas Mann and Nabokov sure as hell made pedophilia "seem literary", so what? Also, "the same way" means wtf knows what - here it's a phrase used pretty much to make you form certain associations through Pavlovian conditioning. People who say poo poo like that are the same kind of people who were in favor of banning "Leaves of Grass" and "Ulysses" because "OBSCENITY!  "gently caress those people!
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Jun 20, 2014 18:06
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Oxxidation posted:David Foster Wallace was a poo poo dude, hell yes I said it, fight me i second that, actually (well, he's not the worst by any means, but he's 99% undeserved hype)
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Jun 20, 2014 18:10
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Clipperton posted:You don't know a whole lot about John Updike do you. them's some sick burns yo
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Jun 20, 2014 23:12
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Popular Human posted:Dave Foster Wallace was pretty awesome and if you enjoyed that review of Updike, you should pick up his essay collection Consider the Lobster - it's full of hilarious poo poo like that and was how I got into DFW years ago. Honestly, I think Wallace's essays are his best stuff, though only a handful are truly interesting. Popular Human posted:Since this has become the "give me recommendations for transitioning to capital-L literature" thread, I want to mention a book I just finished, I, Claudius. Fans of George R.R. Martin in particular will find a lot to like about it - the narrator, Claudius, is a lot like Tyrion Lannister; a cripple who everyone hates but keeps surviving through three generations of Caesars by being smarter than everyone else. There's lots of backstabbing and poisoning and witty banter. Also, there's the last 1/4th of the book featuring Caligula, who even if Robert Graves made up half of the poo poo he wrote about him out of whole cloth would still be the most crazy motherfucker to ever walk the Earth. He forced random people on the street to marry each other and got his horse elected as a Senator and led his troops into a massive attack against the loving ocean. Seriously, anyone who says that "literature" isn't fun as hell to read should pick this up and see how wrong they are. It's pretty much what Caligula actually was like according to ancient historians. Caligula is basically what'll happen if Kim Jong Un develops schizophrenia.
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Jun 20, 2014 23:23
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Happy Hedonist posted:Martin Amis is one of my favorites and I've yet to see him mentioned. I recommend Money, London Fields, and Time's Arrow: Or the Nature of the Offence. Time's Arrow is a fantastic read and could probably be considered sci-fi to some extent considering the narrator is traveling backwards through time. Have you read anything by Italo Calvino?
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Jun 21, 2014 01:38
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Happy Hedonist posted:No. His wiki looks interesting though. Have a tip on where to start? "If on a winter's night a traveler" or "The Baron in the Trees" perhaps?
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Jun 21, 2014 02:09
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Chamberk posted:Invisible Cities is really awesome. Just don't go in looking for a narrative, just appreciate the writing and the ideas. that's my favorite one of his. the only reason i didn't list it is that we were asked for a good place to begin and it strikes me as not everyone's cup of tea
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Jun 21, 2014 04:35
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Clipperton posted:If the anti-"literature" goons in this thread came up with a really mean-spirited parody of a "literary" author it would look exactly like Martin Amis. Also apart from being a massive pseud he likes to go off about Muslims so that's not going to fly with D&D. A few years ago a reviewer described one of Amis's novels as being "as bad as catching your favorite uncle on a kindergarten playground masturbating". Don't know how fair it is, but there you go.
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Jun 21, 2014 17:24
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Smoking Crow posted:I personally believe that Politics and the English Language is the best essay of the 20th century. really? how come?
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Jun 21, 2014 23:42
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