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Honestly, the biggest issue I find with TBB is that everyone reads and talks about the same books, all the drat time. It doesn't matter if it's in a 'no genre' thread or in a thread like cosmic horror, there's like 50 books that TBB reads and talks about ad nauseam. If you look at the Cosmic Horror thread, 90% of the talk in there is about Laird Barron and Thomas Ligotti. Also, Cormac McCarthy!!!! Constantly. Right now, everyone talks about Dictionary of the Khazars. Yes, I read it. Yes, it was good. Yes, I've also read Cormac McCarthy. I wish we could talk about some new books. Also some female authors would be nice. I just finished reading The Accursed by Joyce Carol Oates and it was so bizarre and interesting. I would love to talk about it but I'm not sure where to post it and if there's anyone who would actually discuss it with me. Also, I like reading new fiction that's come out because I read a lot of classics when I was in my twenties and now, I just like to read new stuff. Doesn't mean I don't like to throw in a 'classic' here and there but that's just my preference now. It's even harder to get people to discuss new 'literary fiction' because it's even less likely anyone's read it. I think in general it's hard when you have a forum that doesn't really have a specific designation other than 'BOOKS!' Because there's so many books and people just end up talking 'at' each other rather than any real discussion happening since we aren't all reading the same things. The only books that get discussed are the ones that are so big, or so popular with this specific subset on the internet, that they get discussed constantly and forever. Unfortunately, that just happens to be mostly genre fiction. You can all feel free to flame me into oblivion now.
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Jun 18, 2014 22:22
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Walh Hara posted:I noticed this as well, but thought this was just the result of a vicious circle that you show yourself. Since everybody talks about a small group of books, it's difficult to talk about other books because it's unclear if anyone else has read it. In other words, people only discuss a few books here because there are only a few books that enough people have read to be able to discuss them. It's why I like the awful book of the month project. Hieronymous Alloy posted:Yes, this. I actually brought up the book a few times - In Cosmic Horror (it's a Gothic horror novel so I'd figure I'd mention it there), in What Did You Just Finish, and again in the Recommendations thread. No discussion to be had. I don't think that putting up a thread for every book that I've read would really be effective except to litter The Book Barn with dead threads. And yes, I have tried before to start other topics but it hasn't worked out that well. Low traffic threads get pushed to page 3 or 4 and usually never get picked up again. Looking back into the last 4 pages of the Book Barn, single book threads that aren't genre or about some 'classics' author have very low post counts, like 5-10 posts max. Even posting about 'non genre' books in the 'non genre' thread doesn't get much of a response because 'non genre' is such a broad term. CestMoi posted:Lmao I think the only person being all Dictionary of Khazars!! is me I haven't seen anyone else say anything about it. You're right actually I think most of the discussion is in the entertainment weakly book thread. Cormac McCarthy still stands though. So why aren't you talking about the book here if it's so great?
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Jun 18, 2014 23:46
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k-uno posted:Seconding The Accursed as a wonderful and bizarre book. Parts of it dragged a bit (and I could have done without CAPS LOCK IS CRUISE CONTROL FOR SORROW at the end), but I loved the way she developed a consistent set of details (Topaz eyes, the "Cannibal Sandwich," poisonous flowers, overt sexuality, and probably a few others I'm forgetting or missed) associated with the demonic and dispersed them through the characters, both historical and fictional. It gave a tremendous sense of atmosphere and really made me feel tense reading some of the interactions, since stumbling across a peculiar detail that you last saw associated with vampire murders in an otherwise mundane or harmless conversation completely changes how you read the scene and everything that preceded it. Writing a supernatural horror story where half of the characters were famous historical Americans made the question of the reality of the events a lot more fascinating and complex than it would have been if all the protagonists had been purely fictional. I'd love to see a thorough dissection of it on this forum or elsewhere since I felt like I was missing a lot when I read it a few months back. Though certainly not as much of a classic, it reminded me a lot of the Master and Margarita, where the devil himself shows up with a retinue of monsters in early 30s Moscow and everyone acts weirdly oblivious and unconcerned, since, even if it's never mentioned directly, Stalin's purges are going on and everyone is clearly far more afraid of that than they are of Satan, even when magic and murders are happening right in front of them. I felt like Oates was trying to achieve the same thing with the evils of the US in the early 20th century (primarily racism, lynchings, sexual violence and the general oppression of women) and at least somewhat succeeded. Wow, I'm so excited you popped up and have actually read this book! Totally agree with you on most of your touch points. I did find that it dragged a bit too, but I think that's kind of par for the course in the Gothic genre so I didn't sweat it overmuch. One thing I did wonder, if my lack of knowledge of American history affected my reading of the book at all, since I don't know much about Woodrow Wilson or Upton Sinclair. I also loved the unreliable narrator and his absolutely ill concealed misogyny and pompousness, relating this tale which is basically somewhat of a revenge tale about classism and racism in a small elitist community. It's a book that's so dense I think I could probably go back and read it and catch things that I missed on my first read through. I've read some Oates before but I don't think anything I've read by her has been so thought provoking as this book. I could see why it's so polarizing, so many people either love it or hate it. Have you read any of the other books in her Gothic Saga series? I've picked up Bellefleur but wanted to leave some time between the two books before I read it. Did you read Stephen King's review of The Accursed? What do you think of his statement about this book being 'the worlds first post-modern gothic novel'?
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Jun 19, 2014 01:17
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k-uno posted:I thought Stephen King's review (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/17/books/review/the-accursed-by-joyce-carol-oates.html?pagewanted=2&_r=0) was a pretty good assessment, though I didn't read it until after finishing the novel-- and I'm glad I didn't, because there are plenty of spoilers. I guess I'd agree with the label of postmodern but I think that it's doing a bit of a disservice to some of the great gothic novels like Frankenstein or Dracula, both of which have innovative story structures, unreliable narrators, and fairly complex relationships textural between the characters and the reader. Frankenstein after all is told as a series of letters by an arctic explorer who rescues Dr. Frankenstein from an ice floe while they're marooned near the north pole, which is a similar level of distance and abstraction between the reader and the action to Oates' Van Dyck describing the Slades through their diaries. I guess the mixture of historical and fictional characters and the dense "puzzle box" feel of the story are fairly postmodern elements though, and given how complex it is I'm really surprised by how little discussion there is of it on the internet. There are a *lot* of reviews of the book but not much discussion from laymen I think precisely for the reason of the 'puzzle box' feel mixed with the Gothic theme. It's a book that kind of defies categorization, and I think a lot of people don't really pick it up because they're not sure what to expect. People looking for postmodernism will pick up Don Delillo or Paul Auster but don't think about picking up what they're assuming will be a traditional Gothic novel which is unfortunate because they're missing out. Most of the people that *do* pick it up do so thinking it's going to be a traditional Gothic and end up hating it. Looking at the reviews on Amazon and on Goodreads you can see who did their research and knew what to expect and who picked it up looking at the cover and thinking they were going to get a dark historical fiction novel about vampires without any of the social commentary. I imagine to those people the narrative decision that Oates makes really throws them off. It's a hard sell to try to get people to read this book - I have a friend that has very similar tastes in reading material but I don't even think I'd recommend this to her. k-uno posted:Honestly, and this is something that only occurred to me now, months after reading it, Van Dyck is creepy as all gently caress. The fact that he (writing in the 80s I think) shares most of the retrograde and unpleasant views of the early 20th century cast is one thing, but if we accept at least some of the supernatural violence really happens then we should conclude that he is intimately connected to it and probably even complicit. This is obvious in retrospect from the opening passage ("They are all dead now-- there is only me.") but what really drives it home is the fact that there is no way Van Dyck could accurately relate a lot of the tales and action through the evidence he actually has; how could he, for example, know what went through the mind of a serial murderer who was never caught? Even if we assume that some of what he describes is his own imaginary reconstruction, it still feels like he knows way too much, and combined with the fact that he is the child of an affair, probably with a demon (again, if the demons are real), I think you could easily read parts of his narrative as a kind of confession rather than just an account. We assume toward the end of the story that the demon is vanquished after losing the game of draughts, but he wasn't the only monster in the Bog Kingdom (where time works differently from the rest of the world anyway), and some of that evil could be surviving to the present day in Van Dyck himself. In other words, we naturally assume when we're starting out that we're reading a tale told from the side of the humans and modernity, but by the end I think a lot of it could equally well come from the monsters' point of view. That's a clever reading and I think there's a lot of evidence to support it. For instance, I always found it strange when Van Dyck talks about how he burned the Fleur de Lis notebook that contained Amanda Fitzrandolph's story about her seduction and subsequent abduction. It could have been as simple as his misogyny manifesting itself but it could be for a more sinister reason as well. What did you think of the ending with pretty much all the dead characters coming back to life except for Winslow Slade, the one who brought the curse down upon them in the first place? I know the main theory was that Axton Mayte and his devil's kingdom were the mirror world to Winslow Slade and the elitism at Princeton, I suppose the death of Mayte and Slade brings about restoration of the normal world order. I read that Oates actually started the manuscript for The Accursed 20 years ago and put it aside and has continued to work on it and rewrite it over the years, and knowing how prolific she can be, I wonder if that's part of the reason this novel was so successful -- that she actually took more time to hone this novel more so than her other works.
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Jun 19, 2014 16:08
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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. Actually, in my opinion the best introduction to 20th century poetry to newcomers is probably Alden Nowlan because he has a very simple style but the poems are beautiful and suffused with great themes and meaning. The first poem that I read to people that don`t know much about poetry is usually "The Word" because the love theme is the easiest for beginners to relate with and yet it's very moving. He's a Canadian poet though so I'm not sure if many people outside of Canada know his work. I like Heaney too though. Poetry is so subjective though and is really a dying art form, which is sad. It's such a hard sell to people, even people that are open to reading 'non genre' books flinch when I mention poetry. k-uno posted:
Thinking about it now, after discussing with you, I think Slade Children representing the purity and modernity is the very reason that they are the ones to suffer since Princeton is a cesspool of ignorance and hate. Removing them has made Princeton into a stagnant hell like Axton Mayte's kingdom and it isn't until Slade swallows the serpent and confesses then dies that the curse is lifted and purity and modernity can once again triumph and be restored. Will you be reading any of her other works in The Gothic Saga? I picked up Bellefleur but I'm getting the sense that they're much more straightforward and nowhere near as ambitious as The Accursed.
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Jun 20, 2014 03:17
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Wolpertinger posted:Is it really still English when even the OED doesn't know what the hell it is and it may have possibly been seen in a quote a couple hundred years ago one time on an obscure footnote, maybe? Gene Wolfe is an acquired taste. If you are willing to give him another shot, I would suggest you try his Solder of the Mist series. The first two books have been collected as Latro in the Mist. It's much more accessible - basically it's about a Roman mercenary who suffers from retrograde and anterograde amnesia kind of like the guy in memento so he has to write everything down in a journal. He's trying to make his way back home and along the way he runs into a bunch of weird people including gods and spirits that other people can't see. If you like Greek/Roman mythology and history, it's an added bonus.I liked TBOTNS but I enjoyed the Latro in the Mist series much more, though I do think TBOTNS is much more ambitious.
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Jun 20, 2014 04:19
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Pessimisten posted:I'll engage in this flawed thread in a more productive way from now on, since the line of discussion i was on seems to be about as dead as most of the authors discussed here. People are recommending some very weird things to you (Chaucer, really? Based on Steinbeck?). Pearl S. Buck is probably a good choice. Which of Steinbeck's books did you read, and what did you like about them? Was it the subject matter, or his writing style? Did you like the era that his work takes place in? If you give us a little more feedback on what you liked about them we could probably recommend something more tailored to your taste. 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. Honestly, joining goodreads really helped me read more stuff, and not just genre stuff. I follow some readers on there that tend to read more 'lit-fic' and are pretty big names so they get a lot of netgalley stuff. Then I kind of cross reference with New York Times etc to see what's worth reading and what appeals to me. I've got really varied tastes so it's helped me really keep up with what's coming out in the book world. Sorry for the double post. I quoted instead of edited.
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Jun 20, 2014 04:48
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Strategic Tea posted:To be fair, demanding genre fic readers 'stop being loving children' and telling them to go back to their bad book threads From that one statement I can tell you haven't read much 'modern literary fiction'. The last two lit-fic books I read were The Accursed (which I talked about further up the thread) and A Man Came Out of a Door in the Mountain which is about the BC Highway of Tears and unsolved murder of hundreds of First Nations women. Peel posted:I'm a big believer that a lot of people cheat themselves out of reading cool books because they get caught up in the myth that lit is all boring and 'pretentious' promoted by people who never got over high school. It's all about finding books relevant to your interests, then branching out from there once you've got the taste. LOL Cormac McCarthy!!! Seriously though he's good. But TBB should branch out and try new things, maybe some William Gay or late Joe R Lansdale (The Bottoms, The Thicket) Poutling fucked around with this message at 16:59 on Jun 20, 2014 |
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Jun 20, 2014 16:57
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doesn't help that.
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Strategic Tea posted:Don't get me wrong, I'm not claiming all or even most lit fic is bad. I'm saying that a lot of trash also gets published and marketed as 'literary' and that it can start putting people off - I admit, myself included - before we get to any real literature . Your whole philosophy is the example of why this thread was made. A lot of trash gets published and marketed as every genre - and there's a lot more 'halo video game novels' out there than trashy lit-fic. Just because you don't like it, or don't understand it, it doesn't mean that it isn't valid. I don't like po-mo because it doesn't appeal to me but it doesn't mean that it sucks. It just isn't my cup of tea. If you don't like Don DeLillo or Paul Auster or John Updike then read something else. It's like saying 'there's too many dragonball z books out there so all of fantasy sucks'. Make an effort to educate yourself.
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Jun 20, 2014 18:53
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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. I don't know why goons aren't over Amis' dick: he's unbearably snobby, has terrible teeth, is a turbo-feminist-social-justice-nerd who is simultaneously obessed with machismo and male violence, writes about fat miserable sacks of poo poo coming to their inevitable tragic ends(like E/N), & passionately hates all popular things that aren't pub sports or board games. He's like the goon Moses. I like Martin Amis but you do speak the truth. Martin Amis is the prototype author for like every bad snobby literature stereotype. I like that we've somehow made it to page 8 of this thread and still no mention of any female authors besides Jane Austen and my own offering of The Accursed. Plus, Cormac McCarthy (and Italo Calvino), lol. Oh goons, you never change! Since everyone loves Po-Mo so much I'll bring up the inimitable A.S. Byatt and her Booker Prize winning novel Possession. Most of Byatt's stuff is amazing, but Possession is her crowning jewel and appears on a lot of top 100 novels lists, most famously the one from Time Magazine.
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Jun 21, 2014 18:01
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Chamberk posted: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. Yes, Margaret Atwood is amazing and should blow up as huge as that Dragon lemoncake dude once Darren Aronofsky's adaptation of the MaddAddam trilogy makes it to HBO. I'm very excited about that. There's so many fantastic modern literary female authors that should be read and discussed more in TBB, like Doris Lessing (who unfortunately passed away last year), Jeanette Winterson, Francine Prose, Penelope Fitzgerald, Donna Tartt (who actually gets mentioned a lot since Goldfinch blew up last yr). I also love Marguerite Duras though she passed away some time ago. I did a count of the books I did last year and surprisingly I'm about even between male and female authors, I think that's pretty rare on peoples' reading lists though.
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Jun 21, 2014 19:16
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k-uno posted:It is pretty sad how few women have been mentioned so far, so I'll throw in recommendations for Donna Tartt's The Secret History and Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace. The Secret History is even better than The Goldfinch (which was also pretty great), as it's no small feat to take a novel ostensibly about a weird ancient Greek study group at a small liberal arts college in Vermont and spin it into an insane murder/suspense/conspiracy thriller that's paced and plotted like any of Hitchcock's best films; seriously, it's a literary work as entertaining and suspenseful as watching North by Northwest for the first time. Alias Grace is taken from a historical incident in 19th century Toronto where a woman was tried for murdering a man she was serving and his housekeeper. She was convicted and sentenced to 30 years in jail, while her alleged lover (who was tried along with her, and may have been her kidnapper) was put to death, but the details of the case against her are bizarre and the novel is focused on her life and fundamental questions about her sanity and whether or not she was actually guilty. It's somewhat slow moving at first but if you take the time to really get drawn into it the book has endless layers of ambiguity and depth, where every chapter adds a new detail that makes you rethink everything that came before it. The Secret History is one of my favorite books of all time. There's a reason why, over 20 years later, books still come out with a blurb proclaiming that it's the next 'The Secret History'. Always chasing that high, never quite making it! I haven't read The Goldfinch yet, mostly because I know I'll compare it to The Secret History and I'm worried it'll disappoint. I remember when The Little Friend came out and I hated the ending. Interesting anecdote about Donna Tartt, when she was writing The Secret History, she was dating Bret Easton Ellis, who was writing Less Than Zero at the same time.
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Jun 22, 2014 16:40
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Nude Bog Lurker posted:Yukio Mishima Mishima is awesome but he asked for novelists from the new millenium and Mishima died in 1970. I read a lot of Japanese guys but I just realized that most of them are also old dead dudes. I really enjoyed Miyuki Miyabe's All She Was Worth but it was published in 1997 does that count? She's won a ton of lit prizes in Japan.
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Jun 28, 2014 02:02
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:If you like Robert Graves enough to read the Belisarius books, you should also check out Mary Renault's stuff (and this is, yes, a shameless plug for the Book of the Month poll going on right now!) I voted for the Renault. This is one BOTM I might participate in. I've read Renault's Alexander the Great series and really enjoyed it.
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Jun 28, 2014 22:08
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Hate Fibration posted:Whoever recommended The Accursed, I want to thank them. I picked it up on their suggestion in this thread, and it's fantastic so far. I'm so glad you're enjoying it! I hope you pop back in and let me know what you think of it when you're finished - it's a book that's made to be discussed.
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Jul 1, 2014 18:59
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Furious Lobster posted:Ever since we had the Nobel winner thread, I've put her down on my to-read list but focused on her earlier stuff such as The Golden Notebook, since her work is quite distinct and she's better known for her non sci-fi work according to what little I've googled but it's just an assumption. A.S. Byatt (especially Possession) - a little outside your 20 years (published 1990) All of her stuff is amazing. I also really liked Angels and Insects. Jeanette Winterson - Gut Symetries, Written on the Body, Sexing the Cherry, Oranges are Not the Only Fruit (written Mid 1980's to late 1990's. Very GBLT. Donna Tartt - The Secret History (2004), The Goldfinch (2013) We've talked about her already in this thread. If you haven't read The Secret History you should. Zoe Heller - What Was She Thinking? Notes on a Scandal (2003) Francine Prose - The Blue Angel (2000) Maria McCann -As Meat Loves Salt (2001) - this is historical fiction but it's amazing and still worth a read Janette Turner Hospital - Oyster (1996)
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Jul 2, 2014 18:10
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Furious Lobster posted:Thank you as well! Someone mentioned Possession either in this thread or another one so I definitely have that waiting for me. I read the aformentioned Tartt novel and definitely enjoyed it and didn't realize that she had written another one, so more books to be consumed; I also adore all types of historical fiction so, thanks for the McCann suggestion. I have read Blue Angel and it's been a fairly long time but all I remember is that it wasn't really my cup of tea. Winterson is probably the most highly regarded so you should probably check her out, but I love Zoe Heller's What Was She Thinking? I totally have a thing for unreliable narrators though, and it's *very* much a book written by a woman, I think that puts some people off, so YMMV. If you like historical fiction you should read Mary Renault's The Last of the Wine with us for the next Book of the Month club. She is a fantastic historical fiction author.
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Jul 2, 2014 20:30
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i am paul newman posted:Laura McHugh's The Weight of Blood. The Weight of Blood was okay but I don't think I'd classify it as 'amazing' and not sure I would suggest it to someone who was trying to read a 'best of lit-fic' by women. I actually enjoy Gillian Flynn's work more but I'd say that was very genre. If you like her though you should try Hannah Richell's The Shadow Year. It's also very Secret History-esque for Donna Tartt fans(though again, falls short of the mark).
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Jul 3, 2014 00:52
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pixelbaron posted:I like this thread more. Sorry. I also like this thread more, I think it's hilarious. I also think it's hilarious that the people that were complaining there weren't enough literature threads are now complaining that people are not following Strunk and White's Elements of Style and are bolding book titles instead of underlining or putting them in italics in aforementioned 'good literature' thread. Goony goons will never stop gooning! I purposely didn't bold, underline, or italicize my book title because I'm a rebel like that.
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Jul 11, 2014 20:58
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oxsnard posted:
Goodreads method: Pick a book you really like. Go to its page. Look at the highest rated reviews. Look at that guy's profile. Compare their books to yours. Do the books they read seem interesting to you? Follow them. That's how I find most of my books from goodreads. Their recommendations are poo poo. Some of the super popular reviewers actually read good stuff. I follow that Karen chick she has a good mix of modern lit-fic and other genre stuff. Plus I think she actually works in the industry and the popular ones get a lot of good stuff off net galley since they are big name reviewers.
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Jul 12, 2014 06:34
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All Nines posted:How modern are we talking? If there are any living poets who are actually good I haven't encountered them yet, so recommendations would be great. Derek Walcott is still kicking and he won a nobel prize. Plus, postmodern epic poem. Also extremely old but somehow still kicking is Yves Bonnefoy. I like Yiannis Ritsos a lot but he died in 1990. Alden Nowlan, also good, completely different from most people's expectations of modern poetry (T.S. Eliot and the PoMos I think is what most people rebel against) - very simple, but very lovely. He died 1983, unfortunately.
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Jul 15, 2014 23:33
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The Booker Prize long list is out. Now with American Authors! http://www.themillions.com/2014/07/here-come-the-americans-the-2014-booker-prize-longlist.html
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Jul 24, 2014 15:40
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Mr. Squishy posted:All literary long-lists make me depressed because not only have I read none of them, I've not heard of any of them either. I've surprised myself this year by having a copy of 4 of these books and actually having heard of a couple of others. I've heard especially good things about the Joshua Ferris book.
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Jul 24, 2014 16:56
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Mr.48 posted:I think you've misunderstood what posters like Raskolnikov and myself are saying in regard to this point. We are not saying "at least they're reading something" like we're pitying someone with a disability. Rather, we are saying that since they're at least reading something they have an opportunity to develop their taste further. By contrast, if they aren't reading anything at all, they may simply think that reading isn't for them. Likewise, if you throw them into the deep end too early, they may decide that they just aren't smart enough to appreciate it and never come back. Good literature is highly rewarding to read, but we should be more inviting to those who haven't gotten there yet, instead of deriding their current reading habits. I really don't care what other people read and I read a good mix of 'highbrow' lit and genre stuff so I don't throw stones in case someone hits my glass house with a catapult. However, I'd much rather we have a thread like this one than having people poo poo all over genre threads and the reading challenge thread. People should be able to talk about "good" books, and now they have a place to do so. Also: there have been people who have only read genre for a really long time who have actually wandered in here and said they picked up something a little heavier upon reading about it in this thread, so win/win. If they don't want to read anything heavier then they can stay in their genre threads, no one is forcing them to come in here and have their delicate sensibilities offended. Anyway this thread is pretty funny. It doesn't matter how highbrow you think your reading selections are, there's always someone who is going to come and criticize what you're reading and tell you it sucks. Also, when that guy wandered in here all butt-hurt and then said that he'd try something new based on his enjoyment of Steinbeck and someone said 'hey, read some Chaucer!'
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Aug 5, 2014 01:05
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Srice posted:Not gonna pick on you here (or anyone in particular), but I just wanna make an observation that I hear the line about only reading pulp and genre due to having a busy workload so often that it feels like a second cousin to the nerd line about liking all music genres "except rap and country". Sometimes when I've had a lovely 12 hour day listening to people bitch and whine at me because of their half million dollar project going sideways because of Acts of God that are beyond my control, all I want to read is escapist fiction about wizards saving Chicago. It happens, I believe it. I balance this by reading heavier stuff when things are going smoothly, but not everyone gets a break.
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Aug 5, 2014 01:24
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Doulos posted:I've seen other people ask for recommendations in this thread, so hopefully I won't get my throat slit. I've wanted to try and read more good books for a long time, since I actually enjoyed some of the books I read in high school, but then I went to school for engineering and never took an English class again. I've read and really like Catch-22, Faust, Frankenstein (this book is so utterly unlike every single reference to it I have no idea how it happened) and Heart of Darkness, read some others that don't stick out (hated Bronte but probably because it was high school), and I'm really well read on plays at least. My wife's favorite book is 1984, but I didn't make much headway when I tried to read that a few months ago. I adore absurfist theatre and Catch 22 is probably my absolute favorite novel, do any suggestion in that vein would be great, but I'm also considering some detective stories because I listen to old detective radio shows all the time. A lot of people are huge Raymond Chandler fans but I love James M Cain (Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice) and more recently, James Ellroy's novels especially the L.A. Quartet. For absurdist fiction, try Julian Barnes' A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters, or Will Self. Will Self is pretty polarizing so you will either love him or hate him, but can you resist a book (Great Apes) with this synopsis: Simon Dykes is a London painter whose life suddenly becomes Kafkaesque. After an evening of routine debauchery, traipsing from toilet to toilet and partaking in a host of narcotics, the middle-aged painter wakes to discover that his girlfriend, Sarah, has turned into a chimpanzee. Simon is also a chimp, but he does not accept this fact—he is convinced that he is still human. He is then confined to an emergency psychiatric ward and placed under the care of alpha-psychiatrist Dr. Zack Busner. Simon finds chimp behavior a bit unnatural; he can't bring himself to use gestures rather than speech to communicate. He also finds it difficult to mate publicly or accept social grooming. Dr. Zack Busner—also a medical doctor, radical psychoanalyst, maverick axiolytic drug researcher, and former television personality—is prepared to help Simon get used to "chimpunity". It is during Simon's gradual simianization that Self's true satirical genius shines, as he examines anthropology, the trendy art world, animal rights, and much more.
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Aug 8, 2014 18:30
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mallamp posted: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. 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. Chamberk posted:I did the same with Joyce Carol Oates's The Accursed, and it is also good. I'm pretty excited that people are reading it though. It's pretty unique and totally worth a read. Can't wait to hear what you think about it once you're done.
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Sep 15, 2014 21:20
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Blurred posted:
Not sure that I buy this or else your explanation is off. There are a lot of characters in literature that are strongly sympathetic - Tess of the D'Urbervilles, for instance, or Romeo and Juliet since you're using Shakespeare as an example. Kellanved posted:
I hate when people say that literature should be difficult to read and hard to understand. Yes, there are books like Ulysses but there's also stuff out there like To Kill A Mockingbird. Just because a book is experimental it doesn't make it highbrow or else we'd be reading a lot of bizarro fiction about boogers and calling it high literature.
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Sep 17, 2014 02:47
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Ben Nevis posted:So I finished this the other day. I thought it was pretty good, but not to the degree that a lot of people have expressed. It's not bad at all, and I can appreciate some of what she's done there, but on the whole I was hoping for more. Not more pages, to be clear. Is there something I'm missing? It's a pretty polarizing book, people loved it or hated it so I don't think that there's anything you're 'missing' per se, maybe it just wasn't your cup of tea. I had a pretty good discussion with k-uno about the reasons we liked the book back on page 4 of the thread. I liked it for its originality - just such a weird, bombastic idea for a book and I think it's pretty amazing Oates was able to pull it off as well as she did without it coming across as ludicrous.
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Sep 21, 2014 04:30
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