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Tarranon posted:Since we are talkin' about beginner's literature, any of you get to do All the King's Men? Do it. That book is amazing. Like others have said, good books help you see more about yourself and about your world - while still telling a good story. All the King's Men is a gripping tale of dirty Louisiana politics, but it also addresses the idea of corruption, not just in politics but of the self. East of Eden (Steinbeck) is a family saga that sets the Cain and Abel conflict in an Eden-like early California, and it has a lot to say about sibling rivalry and love too - and has one of the best "villains" I've ever read. Personally I'm a big literature reader, but I started out in genre fiction. Swords and sorcerers are cool for the most part, but over the last few years I've decided that stuff set in the real world is FAR more interesting - I've read books about Italian motorcyclists in WWI, striking miners in 19th century France, a young boy traveling with abolitionist John Brown, logging clans in Oregon, etc., and they're vastly more engaging than another hero quest across the Kath'nar Mountains and through the Pikili Desert or whatever strange geography some guy made up. Even if a book doesn't have personal significance to me, I find it really interesting to learn more about the world we live in. I still enjoy reading fantasy and sci-fi (I'm rereading the Dark Tower now, read all of the Wheel of Time last year, and I enjoy Brandon Sanderson's books despite their stilted dialogue) but those books are good escapism. If you are curious about really, truly unique fantasy, I'd say try Walter Moers - someone else mentioned The City of Dreaming Books, but I love The Thirteen and a Half Lives of Captain Bluebear, which has giant spider demons, 2374 dimensions, a ship the size of an island, a predator that masquerades as an island, and Atlantis. For sci-fi, I've really come to love Ursula K. LeGuin - The Left Hand of Darkness is a sci-fi adventure that has a lot to say about gender roles and how we are conditioned to react to them. (The aliens in this book are somewhat hermaphroditic, meaning the Envoy to this planet has a lot to adjust to in dealing with this people.) In the end, books really help me expand my scope of what life is like, how people live it, and what our world is capable of. I feel like I'd really be missing out if I just stuck to genre fiction.
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Jun 20, 2014 18:34
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Invisible Cities is really awesome. Just don't go in looking for a narrative, just appreciate the writing and the ideas.
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Jun 21, 2014 04:31
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It was my first Calvino and actually the only one I've read. I'm planning on reading "If On A Winter's Night A Traveler..." sometime soon.
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Jun 21, 2014 04:55
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Hey, I brought up Ursula K. LeGuin. Margaret Atwood is pretty great too. And if we're talking 19th century literature, I think the best book of that century is Middlemarch. Which was written by a woman under a man's name: Mary Ann Evans, as George Eliot.
Chamberk fucked around with this message at 19:06 on Jun 21, 2014 |
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Jun 21, 2014 18:44
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Of course, how could I forget Woolf? Dalloway is definitely my favorite, but To the Lighthouse and Orlando are wonderful as well.
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Jun 21, 2014 19:06
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:He sounds fascinating, any suggestions of where to start / best translations? I've been reading Pow! which is pretty good so far - I found it at the library and picked it up mostly because the jacket sleeve looked interesting. From what I hear, his best-known works are Red Sorghum and Life and Death are Wearing Me Out.
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Jun 28, 2014 23:29
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Probably, but it's also a place where you can set up strawmen to knock down and look very cool. If anyone's looking into reading Mo Yan, Pow! is not a great place to start. It's singularly focused on meat, meat, meat. I understand that he's trying to show China's tremendously crooked slaughterhouse industry, but man. The word "meat" shows up at least 4 times per page, mostly about how the narrator loves meat and meat loves him and he's the only one who deserves to eat the best meat and such like that. I'm not going to give up on him - I've heard good things about Life and Death are Wearing Me Out and Big Breasts, Wide Hips. But this wouldn't be my first recommendation for anyone.
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Jul 5, 2014 23:28
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Mr. Squishy posted:You and everybody else last year, jesus it felt like every published author got a circular saying "btw we're plugging Stoner." I guess it's nice because it shows that they're friends Yeah, I definitely jumped on that bandwagon as well, but it is definitely an excellent book. It's such a quiet and subdued book on a somewhat dull subject, but Williams really brings Stoner to life. It's a book that will linger with me for a while, I think. He's got another book being reprinted by the NYRB line about Caesar Augustus, and I'm very interested in checking it out. I forget who recommended Giuseppe de Lampedusa's "The Leopard" in that last thread, but I'm almost done with it and it's really good as well. It follows a Sicilian noble during the time of Garibaldi, and how the unification of Italy eventually led to the downfall of his class. I'm not sure if it's an apologia for the noble class - the rustic priest is a more sympathetic character in my eyes - but it's very well written, regardless.
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Jul 12, 2014 16:48
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I could throw up a Dickens thread soon. Or maybe a 19th century novel thread, which might get more traffic...
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Jul 16, 2014 04:40
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I posted that Dickens thread, here's the link: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3652121 It's probably not very good but if you guys wanna talk about Wackford Squeers that's the place!
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Jul 21, 2014 01:09
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There's David Mitchell the British comedian (of Peep Show fame) and there's David Mitchell the British author, who's written Cloud Atlas and Black Swan Green. I'm really excited for his new one, and its nomination just whets my appetite. He also just shared a related short story on twitter: http://www.themillions.com/2014/07/exclusive-david-mitchells-twitter-story-the-right-sort-collected.html
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Jul 24, 2014 18:15
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Yeah, something like 80% of the threads on TBB are about genre and pulp books. A little variety would be nice. That Arctic book thread for example, that's awesome.
Chamberk fucked around with this message at 05:43 on Aug 5, 2014 |
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Aug 5, 2014 05:41
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Moacher posted:Also, I enjoy his use of recurring characters and themes that tie all his works together into an encompassing "Mitchell-verse". You're apparently going to like The Bone Clocks, his book out next month. Early reviews I've read say at least a few of his other characters show up.
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Aug 23, 2014 03:03
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Control Volume posted:http://www.modernlibrary.com/top-100/100-best-novels/ from what i understand the Heritage Foundation or some group got Ayn Rand fans to mass-rush that vote so it's a bit skewed the rest of the list is actually quite good!
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Aug 31, 2014 21:26
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I did the same with Joyce Carol Oates's The Accursed, and it is also good.
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Sep 15, 2014 14:58
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The Tin Drum is pretty drat awesome, I thought. And it weirdly inspired two very different books, Midnight's Children and A Prayer for Owen Meany.
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Oct 29, 2014 04:02
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I just finished reading Little Women and I'd have to say the subtext is that you should be a good Christian woman. Good book though, despite the heavy moralizing.
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Nov 20, 2014 18:49
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While I don't think the book hung together very well, the section titled "The Obscure Object of Desire" is really, really good.
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Dec 25, 2014 16:18
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"The God of Small Things" was excellent, I read that a few months ago and flat out loved it. And yeah, I've been holding off on that Ferrante because 1) the covers and 2) when I looked up news stories about her, all I saw was stories about the release of the latest book and how bookstores were planning wine parties for women who said "THE CHARACTERS ARE JUST LIKE ME AND MY FRIENDS"
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Sep 21, 2015 16:49
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No, I just read For Whom the Bell Tolls and basically fascists are bad. But so are republicans/anarchists because sometimes they kill too many fascists.
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Oct 18, 2015 17:07
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Black Swan Green is my favorite David Mitchell, it's about a young British kid aging and coming to terms with puberty. No supernatural silliness, just a good book. Dresden Files is fun and sometimes you want to watch Jurassic Park instead of The Seventh Seal and That's Alright. Stoner and Wonder Boys are really good aging lit professor books but Humboldt's Gift was a really bad one (although it's a poet and instead of sleeping with a student he has an Exotic Woman From Another Country Who Uses His Foot To Get Herself Off and Also She's a Gold-Digging Vixen Who Doesn't Appreciate His Genius)
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Nov 2, 2015 19:53
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I'd say gently caress Bellow but before I read Humboldt, I read Augie March, which was actually really really good.
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Nov 3, 2015 01:16
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I think you're missing the point of Ishiguro books, which is that people are passive and just let poo poo happen to them until they suddenly have an epiphany that their life is awful. I finished The Red and the Black by Stendhal, and I'd recommend it to anyone who is considering a priesthood but is still open to the idea of seducing women with a series of 54 letters you got from your friend who is a Russian count.
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Nov 22, 2015 21:44
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I'm reading Beauty is a Wound by Eka Kurniawan. It's about this whore in Indonesia and her family (her forebears and her daughters, etc. etc), and covers stuff like the Japanese invasion during WWII, the fight for independence from the Dutch, etc. I've been enjoying it, kinda reminds me of an east/south Asian version of 100 Years of Solitude - though with less magic realism. (Yeah, the main character comes back to life after being dead for 21 years, but that's pretty much the only weird/supernatural thing that's happened so far.) Also City on Fire and Luminaries were both quite good I thought, but I have a lot of patience with really really long books.
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Dec 14, 2015 04:33
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That may be better for a January/February book - it's good, but good lord is it long. I got for Christmas an Everyman's Library collection of War and Peace (three smaller volumes with that sexy binding and the tassels for bookmarks) and The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth, which I am pretty sure I saw recommended in this thread.
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Dec 27, 2015 18:17
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I'm reading Moby Dick now for the first time since undergrad and it's really good, though I'm skimming those chapters where he talks about Who Draws a Whale the Best
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Jan 17, 2016 19:11
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Oh, some of the tangents are great. But some are just Melville telling you everything that was known about whales circa 1850, which can be amusing ("I tell you, the whale is a FISH, not a mammal!") but can get dull pretty quickly. However, the characters like Queequeg, Ahab, and Starbuck are great. Just don't expect too much from Ishmael after the first 100 pages.
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Jan 17, 2016 20:14
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ACTUALLY, i understand that they're important but it can be frustrating when the narrative and characters are put aside for 30 pages to talk about different parts of the whale. i'm not saying Melville did a bad job, it's just that reading this book requires a bit more work and some adjustment from my usual expectations for a story.
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Jan 18, 2016 17:47
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at the date posted:Quit Being a loving Child Blind Assassin is my favorite Atwood by far but the present-day "Iris is old" parts are wayyy less interesting than the sci-fi story or the story from the past. Still, it all comes together rather beautifully at the end there - while I like Atwood's sci-fi a good bit, I thought this was her masterpiece.
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Jan 19, 2016 04:50
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I'm having a frustrating discussion with some folks on facebook about that very article. They're like THIS IS A BAD BOOK THESE LINES PROVE IT IS VERY BAD and I'm trying to argue that some of those quotes might just be from the point of view of characters who themselves might not have the best attitudes or opinions, and not the author holding these points of view
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Jan 22, 2016 07:19
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Also once I finish Moby Dick I think I'll start those Ferrante books, apparently my library system is full of people who don't want to read them and I got the first book a little while back.
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Jan 22, 2016 07:23
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Well beyond that, I ended up getting the "your privilege is that you can read this kind of sentence without getting infuriated at the racism/sexism/white-male-dominant-ism, you ought to take a long hard look at yourself if you enjoy a book like this" spiel, and decided that this wasn't a fight worth having. I did finish Moby Dick, though! Those last few chapters are fantastic, although I have to laugh at how quickly Ahab is taken out - like, he has this whole badass speech and then whoops, rope caught him, he's gone now. Fedellah hanging dead from Moby Dick's side, though, that was wonderfully macabre.
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Jan 22, 2016 18:33
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Cloks posted:Ulysses is the Homestuck of the 20th century. The Mark and the Void was pretty good, though it's not nearly as funny or heartbreaking as Skippy Dies. The author self insert is pretty good but the protagonist is kind of dull, though that's by design.
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Jan 24, 2016 03:09
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blue squares posted:ok I'm sure Ulysses is great and maybe I'll read 10 pages a day or something, but I got a little drunk and went to the book store and came back with: Those are all pretty drat good books; Little, Big is one of my all time favorites. If I hadn't just started War and Peace I'd think about reading that one. Or A Little Life, or the first Neopolitan book... but no, I had to go and start one of the longest books known to man.
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Jan 24, 2016 14:50
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While it wasn't change-your-life-great-littrature, it was a pretty good read. I'd say the same for The Goldfinch, honestly. Except it had Boris, who was cool.
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Jan 25, 2016 18:16
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blue squares posted:Also it is so hard to read one book at a time, or even two or three. I want to be reading all of my unread books at the same time I feel the same way and at the same time also want to buy more books.
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Jan 27, 2016 23:34
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Earwicker posted:I recently finished Another Country by James Baldwin and I would say it is one of the best books I have read in a long time. Striking language, and a very honest and direct look at interracial relationships and bisexuality and people attempting to make a living through art in NYC in the 1950's which, for a novel published in 1962, is very rare. It's a very real feeling book and yet the city and its values has changed so much since that time that trying to superimpose it over the now is a very strange experience. Another Country was the first Baldwin I read, and it's still my favorite. But like others have said, Go Tell it On the Mountain is really good, and I also liked Just Above My Head and Giovanni's Room (which was pretty drat risque at the time). I've had mixed results with the rest of his stuff, but he's definitely an incredibly talented writer. I also read a biography of him last year, Talking at the Gates by James Campbell, which had some pretty interesting insights into his life and times and his writing.
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Jan 29, 2016 23:49
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Cloks posted:I read fifty more pages and I take this back, Skippy Dies is emotionally devastating, especially right before Skippy dies. It's somehow both really fun and incredibly heartbreaking. drat good book. Also, Gravity's Rainbow is difficult to read, not so much for the prose as for the lack of a clear plot - especially near the end, where it gets so much more scattered. That said it is a great book. I should reread it one of these days.
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Feb 10, 2016 16:25
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I thought Kavalier and Clay worked just fine - the overall theme being escape, it made sense for Joe to escape his sorrow, and his return allowed Sam to escape the life he was living that was a lie. Then again, I'm biased because that's one of my favorite books of all time. Just started A Little Life and it's really good so far. Also, 2666 is great and City on Fire is really rather good.
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Mar 7, 2016 16:53
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Get it, because Lindbergh is like Trump.
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Mar 16, 2016 15:49
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