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oliven posted:Next up is... I'm not really sure! Either Catch-22 by Joseph Heller or The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde. I haven't decided yet. Oscar Wilde owns
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Feb 28, 2015 10:31
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anilEhilated posted:Progress: 4/20  
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Feb 28, 2015 20:55
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oliven posted:I agree the book was bad, I even wrote as much in my post. Anyway, I know very little about literary genres, which is partly why I wanted to do the challenge in the first place. I saw the book mentioned a couple of places in reference to postmodern works and figured I'd give it a shot. I've removed it from my challenge list (unfortunately not from my general reading list, can't do much about that) and I'll find something else for the challenge. hit up some Pynchon for the postmodern challenge. or you could peep the postmodern thread for some additional inspiration
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Mar 5, 2015 19:08
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Argali posted:Almost done with The Blind Owl, and not quite understanding what all the hype is about. thje hype is that it;s a very good short story
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Mar 6, 2015 17:34
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I'm doing pretty good on my reading front, but I've got a lot of poo poo that needs to get sorted this calendar year, so just to make sure I don't end up neglecting my reading any, I think I'm going to jump on the challenge. I read somewhere around 50-55 books last year, so I'll start off slightly lower than that and set my goal to 40 books this year. But just a set number of books is dull, so let's see what I can do to make this interesting. I'll go with the following challenges: 1. The vanilla read a set number of books in a year. 2. Read a female author - (Susan Sontag, Gabriela Mistral) 3. The non-white author - I read a varied bunch of authors already, but I've been putting off Salman Rushdie for far too long. So, that. File me under "Basic Bitch" as I add The Satanic Verses to this one. 4. Philosophy - I've been wanting to give Derrida a go. So De la Grammatologie I guess. 5. History 6. An essay - Where the Stress Falls. Essays. by Susan Sontag. 7. A collection of poetry - A collection of Poems by Gabriela Mistral (includes poems from Desolación, Ternura, Tala, Lagar and Poema de Chile) 8. Something post-modern - Inherent Vice by Pynchon. 9. Something absurdist 11. Something on either hate or love 12. Something dealing with space - The Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem 13. Something dealing with the unreal 14. Wildcard (Some one else taking the challenge will tell you what to read) - The Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem 15. Something published this year or the past three months 16. That one book that has been sitting on your desk waiting for a long time - Feast of the Goat by Vargas Llosa 17. A play - Waiting for Godot (if someone has a better suggestion, just holler) 18. Biography - Ingar Sletten Kolloen's Hamsun biographies 19. The color red 20. Something banned or censored 21. Short story(s) 22. A mystery I've already gone through 9 books so far this year, two of which were poetry collections, but I'll keep the challenge up anyway, since I read far too little of that as is. 1. Hear the Wind Sing, Haruki Murakami 2. Pinball 1974, Haruki Murakami 3. On The Beach, Neil Shute 4. Collected Poems by Per Sivle 5. History of the Siege of Lisbon, José Saramago 6. Wayfarers, Knut Hamsun 7. The Seed, Tarjei Vesaas 8. Morning and Evening, Jon Fosse 9. The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro, Fernando Pessoa 9/40 I'll add more to the specific challenges later. In the mean time, eagerly awaiting the Wildcard suggestion. ulvir fucked around with this message at 18:29 on Mar 18, 2015 |
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Mar 15, 2015 23:09
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8one6 posted:Art of War by Sun Tzu as interesting as it might be, I think I'll wait and see if someone else has anything to suggest as well. ulvir posted:I'll add more to the specific challenges later. In the mean time, eagerly awaiting the Wildcard suggestion. Still up for grabs, folks.
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Mar 16, 2015 12:03
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Argali posted:3. The Blind Owl, Sadegh Hedayat. This is a horrendous work of pathetic, pointless depression, like the scribblings from a high school freshman's notebook disguised as literature. Travel along as an agoraphobic opium addict drones on and on about death and shadows and madness, gets mocked by his adulterous wife, and stumbles around random ruined landscapes in Iran thinking deep thoughts. Other authors have done this with far greater skill - in fact, I couldn't help but read this as a kind of "Maldoror For Dummies" in many sections. 0/5. Booklord Challenge 2 completed: Read this lovely book. provide a link next time you quote a goodreads review
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Mar 17, 2015 15:28
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8one6 posted:Art of War by Sun Tzu Groke posted:Blindsight by Peter Watts. Kopijeger posted:The Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem. Arguably counts as absurdist as well. I've been doing some thinking, and and landed on The Cyberiad. Thanks for the suggestions from all y'all
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Mar 18, 2015 14:30
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apophenium posted:5. The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker. Quite a sweet story of two magical beings enduing immigrant experience of early 1900s America. Eager for more from Wecker. A couple of suggestions, if you don't mind: Give Hunger by Knut Hamsun and/or Blindness by José Saramago a read. If you loved PSS by Miéville, you might want to check out The Scar too.
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Mar 25, 2015 17:41
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End-of-March update. 1. The vanilla read a set number of books in a year. - 15/40 3. The non-white author - The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie 4. Philosophy - Either Derrida or Spinoza 5. History 6. An essay - Where the Stress Falls. Essays. by Susan Sontag. 9. Something absurdist 12. Something dealing with space - The Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem 14. Wildcard (Some one else taking the challenge will tell you what to read) - The Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem 15. Something published this year or the past three months 16. That one book that has been sitting on your desk waiting for a long time - Feast of the Goat by Vargas Llosa 17. A play - Waiting for Godot (if someone has a better suggestion, just holler) 18. Biography - Ingar Sletten Kolloen's Hamsun biographies 19. The color red 20. Something banned or censored - The Satanic Verses 21. Short story(s) 22. A mystery 1. Hear the Wind Sing, Haruki Murakami 2. Pinball 1974, Haruki Murakami 3. On The Beach, Neil Shute 4. Collected Poems by Per Sivle 5. History of the Siege of Lisbon, José Saramago 6. Wayfarers, Knut Hamsun 7. The Seed, Tarjei Vesaas 8. Morning and Evening, Jon Fosse 9. The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro, Fernando Pessoa 10. Doktor Faustus, Thomas Mann 11. Collection of poems, Gabriela Mistral 12. Doctor Glas, Hjalmar Söderberg 13. Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez 14. Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino 15. Inherent Vice, Thomas Pynchon 15/40 Doktor Faustus is a reimaging of the old German legend of Faust, written as a fictional biography about a composer and all-around genius named Adrian Leverkühn. It's told from the first-person perspective of a friend of his after his death. There's also a parallell story about Germany spanning from world war 1 up to around 1946, and in the latter half it describes both the cultural as well as the physical destruction of Germany. Mann utilized the direct address at the reader as a device for unreliable narration almost in perfection. A phenomenal book allround. Doctor Glas, on the other hand, is about a medical practitioner living in 1905's Stockholm. The entire novella is presented as a series of diary entries, and shows us how a young doctor deals with questions of right and wrong, existentialism and general melancholy. I got some strong Crime and Punishment-vibes coming off of this book, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if Dostoyevsky influenced Söderberg in a major way. Highly recommended. Love in the Time of Cholera is about a couple of teens, Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza who falls in love, and then ends up separating from eachother. Fermina marries a doctor who wishes to erradicate Cholera, while the Florentino ends up slamming a bunch of women on the reg in a secret room, all the while still pining for his former sweetheart. After Fermina's husband dies, Florentino tries to win her heart again by sending her verbose love letters. And in classic Gabo style, the Florentino ofcourse has to enter a sexual relationship with a teenager that's at least 30 years his junior at some point. It was pretty okay-ish, not as good as 100 yers of solitude, and about on par with the novella Memories of My Melancholy Whores. I can't say too much about Invisible Cities without spoling the experience too much, but it's a series of prose poems about impossible and unreal cities, with the main plot being that Marco Polo tells Kubali Khan a story about all the different cities he has explored. A brilliant book. And being a humongous pleb, I'm not really sure how to summarize Inherent Vice. It starts off as a story about a potheaded ex-cop turned private investigator joining in on a plot to kidnap a jewish nazi mobster, and turns into some drug-crazed trip all over California. I think "paranoia, sex and drugs" might be a proper description. I'll probably have to read this again at some point, to get a better grasp at what the heck I was reading. Not gonna say all that much about Gabriela Mistral's poetry. A lot of them deals with womanhood and nature and life in rural Chile. Not too bad really. Maybe there's better poetry out there? gently caress if I know. ulvir fucked around with this message at 16:14 on Mar 29, 2015 |
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Mar 29, 2015 16:11
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Chamberk posted:That's alright though - I've started on Ulysses. I'm thinking I'll probably finish that one in May... oh man, that's a wonderful loving book.
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Apr 2, 2015 18:36
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saphron posted:Also, someone wildcard me please! History of the Siege of Lisbon by José Saramago
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Apr 4, 2015 08:41
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Early end-of-April update 1. The vanilla read a set number of books in a year. - 20/40 3. The non-white author - The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie 4. Philosophy - Either Derrida or Spinoza 5. History 6. An essay - Where the Stress Falls. Essays. by Susan Sontag. 9. Something absurdist - Waiting for Godot 15. Something published this year or the past three months 16. That one book that has been sitting on your desk waiting for a long time - Feast of the Goat by Vargas Llosa 17. A play - Waiting for Godot 18. Biography - Ingar Sletten Kolloen's Hamsun biographies 19. The color red 20. Something banned or censored - The Satanic Verses 21. Short story(s) - The Lady with the Dog, and other stories by Anton Chekhov 22. A mystery 1. Hear the Wind Sing, Haruki Murakami 2. Pinball 1974, Haruki Murakami 3. On The Beach, Neil Shute 4. Collected Poems by Per Sivle 5. History of the Siege of Lisbon, José Saramago 6. Wayfarers, Knut Hamsun 7. The Seed, Tarjei Vesaas 8. Morning and Evening, Jon Fosse 9. The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro, Fernando Pessoa 10. Doktor Faustus, Thomas Mann 11. Collection of poems, Gabriela Mistral 12. Doctor Glas, Hjalmar Söderberg 13. Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez 14. Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino 15. Inherent Vice, Thomas Pynchon 16. Road to the Worl'd End, Sigurd Hoel 17. The Cyberiad, Stanislaw Lem 18. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad 19. The Clown, Heinrich Böll 20. The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Lev Tolstoy 20/40 I must admit, I haven't been as productive on my reading front as last month, for various reasons. But I went through some interesting stuff nonetheless. Road to the World's End by Sigurd Hoel is a very interesting book in many ways. It follows a child from a very early age up until his Lutheran Confirmation, which in the 19th century (and in the rural parts, early 20th century) Norwegian society was the most important ritual for any rural boy. This was considered the turningpoint to adulthood, and it was also a prerequisite for being able to get married, inherit or own a farmland, and so forth. So for all intents and purposes, we follow the character throughout his life, from toddler to adulthood. And everything is told from the child's point of view, too. So the prose of the book changes gradually as Anders, the main protagonist, gets older. So for example, in the very first chapters everything is described in a very childish and naive manner. This book has since been praised by critics for having such a sympathetic view of the child, which was a rarity at the time it was published (in 1933). Hoel also uses this book as a way to discuss psychological and even somewhat existential questions. At the end of the book, Anders recites what he allegedly heard one of the other charaters saying once, that "Everything new and important in life happens before you reach the age of 10. From that point on, life just repeats itself." Edit: There actually is an English translation out, and I've changed the titles to reflect that. The Cyberiad was quite the experience too. Stanislaw had a really vivid imagination. My favourite stories from these were the first few stories, and the one about the extremely childish king who loved hide-and-seek.I probably would never have read this had it not been suggested by someone else for the Wildcard challenge. Heart of Darkness felt like a very brutal and visceral description of colonialism. It follows a man named Marlow, as he travels the River Congo to meet up with a famous Ivory trader named Kurtz, who is rumored to be very ill. It's been a couple of weeks or so since I read it, so I don't have everything freshly in mind, but it seemed to thematically to comment on a sort of moral ambiguity, and to question the rhetoric used to justify colonial activities in Africa, by highlighting some very brutal scenes and situations. The Clown follows Hans Schnier. He grew up in a very wealthy protestant home, who in an act of opposition towards his family's expectations and become a clown. It starts off with describing him as extremely down on his luck, as he travels back home to Bonn, with a bum kneee, trying to get a hold of his girlfriend who ran away to marry a Catholic, on her family's behest. The vast majority of the book is Schnier's monologues as he recalls events and reflects on his life up to the moment his girlfriend leaves him. And through this Böll sheds a critical light on post-war (west) Germany as well as the social conflict/struggle between Catholics and Lutheran church. The Death of Ivan Ilyich is all about mortality, life and death, and what it truly means to live. Ivan seemingly lived a happy and just-so life, working his way up the bureocratical ladder as a jurist and doing everything society expected from him. But he starts reflecting on hiw own life, and struggles with coming to grips with his own mortality when he gets ill after falling and hurting his side while trying to hang up some curtains. ulvir fucked around with this message at 13:26 on Apr 26, 2015 |
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Apr 26, 2015 11:06
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CestMoi posted:please don't not expand your reading horizons because you didn't like this one book.
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Apr 29, 2015 14:13
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apophenium posted:2/5 non-fiction, 4/5 unique female authors. Reading Hunger next, on ulvir's suggestion. Could use a few non-fiction suggestions, if the thread obliges. hope you enjoy it!
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May 29, 2015 23:20
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May has been a lovely month for reading for a bunch of different reasons. In any case... 1. The vanilla read a set number of books in a year. - 24/40 3. The non-white author - The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie 4. Philosophy - Either Derrida or Spinoza 5. History 6. An essay - Where the Stress Falls. Essays. by Susan Sontag. 9. Something absurdist - Waiting for Godot 15. Something published this year or the past three months 16. That one book that has been sitting on your desk waiting for a long time - Feast of the Goat by Vargas Llosa 17. A play - Waiting for Godot 18. Biography - Ingar Sletten Kolloen's Hamsun biographies 19. The color red 21. Short story(s) - The Lady with the Dog, and other stories by Anton Chekhov 22. A mystery 1. Hear the Wind Sing, Haruki Murakami 2. Pinball 1974, Haruki Murakami 3. On The Beach, Neil Shute 4. Collected Poems by Per Sivle 5. History of the Siege of Lisbon, José Saramago 6. Wayfarers, Knut Hamsun 7. The Seed, Tarjei Vesaas 8. Morning and Evening, Jon Fosse 9. The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro, Fernando Pessoa 10. Doktor Faustus, Thomas Mann 11. Collection of poems, Gabriela Mistral 12. Doctor Glas, Hjalmar Söderberg 13. Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez 14. Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino 15. Inherent Vice, Thomas Pynchon 16. Road to the Worl'd End, Sigurd Hoel 17. The Cyberiad, Stanislaw Lem 18. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad 19. The Clown, Heinrich Böll 20. The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Lev Tolstoy 21. Fathers and Sons, Ivan Turgenev 22. A Theatrical Novel, Mikhail Bulgakov 23. Sleepless, Jon Fosse 24. Woodcutters, Thomas Bernhard 24/40 June will hopefully be a much better month.
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Jun 2, 2015 15:31
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ulvir posted:June will hopefully be a much better month. Hahaha.  Between cramming through over 2000 pages for finals and a summer job that left me exhausted after every day, there hasn't really been all that much time left for proper reading. I'm gonna rectify that soon-ish, though. 1. The vanilla read a set number of books in a year. - 26/40 3. The non-white author - The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie 4. Philosophy - Either Derrida or Spinoza 5. History 6. An essay - Where the Stress Falls. Essays. by Susan Sontag. 9. Something absurdist - Waiting for Godot 15. Something published this year or the past three months 16. That one book that has been sitting on your desk waiting for a long time - Feast of the Goat by Vargas Llosa 17. A play - Waiting for Godot 18. Biography - Ingar Sletten Kolloen's Hamsun biographies 19. The color red 21. Short story(s) - The Lady with the Dog, and other stories by Anton Chekhov 1. Hear the Wind Sing, Haruki Murakami 2. Pinball 1974, Haruki Murakami 3. On The Beach, Neil Shute 4. Collected Poems by Per Sivle 5. History of the Siege of Lisbon, José Saramago 6. Wayfarers, Knut Hamsun 7. The Seed, Tarjei Vesaas 8. Morning and Evening, Jon Fosse 9. The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro, Fernando Pessoa 10. Doktor Faustus, Thomas Mann 11. Collection of poems, Gabriela Mistral 12. Doctor Glas, Hjalmar Söderberg 13. Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez 14. Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino 15. Inherent Vice, Thomas Pynchon 16. Road to the Worl'd End, Sigurd Hoel 17. The Cyberiad, Stanislaw Lem 18. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad 19. The Clown, Heinrich Böll 20. The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Lev Tolstoy [21. Fathers and Sons, Ivan Turgenev 22. A Theatrical Novel, Mikhail Bulgakov 23. Sleepless, Jon Fosse 24. Woodcutters, Thomas Bernhard 25. Confusion of Feelings, Stefan Zweig 26. The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum, Heinrich Böll 26/40 Confusion of Feelings: After Thomas Bernhard I went on to the next Big Name in Austrian literature, Zweig. At the surface it's all about a kid who is completely disinterested in academia and just spends his time in Berlin getting drunk and hitting on women. After a visit from his father, he's forced to move to a quiet town in Austria and enroll in an English literature programme, where he becomes drawn in and nearly obsessed with this strange and enigmatic professor, and he also ends up being a really close friend with him and his wife. It's main theme is right there in the title, though. The professor as it turns out, is a closeted homosexual, and the protagonist himself doesn't really know what to make of what he feels for and about this older man. Highly recommend it. The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum: An interesting mix of who-dunnit and the sometimes scandalous practices of tabloid media. It was a good read, but if anyone would ask "yo, can you recommend anything by Heinrich Böll?" I would probably still say "Go with Ansichten eines Clowns". Sorry I can't offer any better insights into what I've read this time around. Truth be told, I read both of them between a month and three and a half weeks ago. loving pathetic.
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Jul 9, 2015 22:08
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I kinda just checked those two challenges as I went along. I never really planned ahead for them, but added a book I've read if I thought it fit the theme.
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Jul 29, 2015 09:20
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I'm thinking of going the incredibly obvious path and see if I can't find a book that has some sort of backdrop of communism in it, but not have the word "red" anywhere in the title.
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Jul 29, 2015 19:41
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Corrode posted:Read Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe. The Red Army is mentioned about every other page and that was good enough for me. interesting suggestion. That'll check my history challenge too. Though I'd probably seek out something less politically biased. ulvir fucked around with this message at 22:32 on Jul 29, 2015 |
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Jul 29, 2015 22:29
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July update. 1. The vanilla read a set number of books in a year. - 31/40 4. Philosophy - Either Derrida or Spinoza 5. History 6. An essay - 9. Something absurdist - Waiting for Godot 17. A play - Waiting for Godot 18. Biography - Ingar Sletten Kolloen's Hamsun biographies 19. The color red 21. Short story(s) - The Lady with the Dog, and other stories by Anton Chekhov 1. Hear the Wind Sing, Haruki Murakami 2. Pinball 1974, Haruki Murakami 3. On The Beach, Neil Shute 4. Collected Poems by Per Sivle 5. History of the Siege of Lisbon, José Saramago 6. Wayfarers, Knut Hamsun 7. The Seed, Tarjei Vesaas 8. Morning and Evening, Jon Fosse 9. The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro, Fernando Pessoa 10. Doktor Faustus, Thomas Mann 11. Collection of poems, Gabriela Mistral 12. Doctor Glas, Hjalmar Söderberg 13. Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez 14. Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino 15. Inherent Vice, Thomas Pynchon 16. Road to the Worl'd End, Sigurd Hoel 17. The Cyberiad, Stanislaw Lem 18. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad 19. The Clown, Heinrich Böll 20. The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Lev Tolstoy 21. Fathers and Sons, Ivan Turgenev 22. A Theatrical Novel, Mikhail Bulgakov 23. Sleepless, Jon Fosse 24. Woodcutters, Thomas Bernhard 25. Confusion of Feelings, Stefan Zweig 26. The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum, Heinrich Böll 27. The Elephant's Jurney, José Saramago 28. Shyness and Dignity, Dag Solstad 29. Krysantemum, Rune Christiansen 30. The Feast of the Goat, Mario Vargas Llosa 31. Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates 31/40 A new round of pretty introspective novels this time around as well. The two Norwegian novels, written 15 years apart, follows a kind of similar theme though with a different plot and setting. In Shyness and Dignity, we follow an upper secondary school teacher. After an incident in the school yard where he snaps and loses his temper, he begins to contemplate his life, his position vis-á-vis society, and both how and why he has the kind of relationship with his wife that he has. In Krysantemum the story is centred around Agnes Løv, who has moved to Basel to finish her doctorate thesis on Alfred de Vigny. Here, too, the protagonist spends a lot of time reflecting both on her own life, both past and present, and especially her relationship with her father. Between the World and Me was interesting in that it gave an incredibly personal and intimate view on racial relations in the US. A perspective that I as a white European had no prerequisites to actually understand on beforehand. What stuck with me most, I think, was the part about his very first trip to Paris, and how he was so taken aback by how different the "reality" was there versus back home in Baltimore. The Feast of the Goat centres around the assasination of Rafael Trujillo, former dictator of the Dominican republic. The novel constantly changes perspectives throughout the book, between the people conspiring to murder him, El Jefe himself, and the political game that arose after his death. It wasn't the most brilliant book, but it had some really interesting parts here and there. ulvir fucked around with this message at 10:43 on Jul 31, 2015 |
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Jul 31, 2015 10:37
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August update. Another slow-ish month again. 1. The vanilla read a set number of books in a year. - 34/40 4. Philosophy - Either Derrida or Spinoza 5. History 6. An essay - 9. Something absurdist - Waiting for Godot 17. A play - Waiting for Godot 18. Biography - Ingar Sletten Kolloen's Hamsun biographies 21. Short story(s) - The Lady with the Dog, and other stories by Anton Chekhov 1. Hear the Wind Sing, Haruki Murakami 2. Pinball 1974, Haruki Murakami 3. On The Beach, Neil Shute 4. Collected Poems by Per Sivle 5. History of the Siege of Lisbon, José Saramago 6. Wayfarers, Knut Hamsun 7. The Seed, Tarjei Vesaas 8. Morning and Evening, Jon Fosse 9. The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro, Fernando Pessoa 10. Doktor Faustus, Thomas Mann 11. Collection of poems, Gabriela Mistral 12. Doctor Glas, Hjalmar Söderberg 13. Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez 14. Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino 15. Inherent Vice, Thomas Pynchon 16. Road to the Worl'd End, Sigurd Hoel 17. The Cyberiad, Stanislaw Lem 18. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad 19. The Clown, Heinrich Böll 20. The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Lev Tolstoy 21. Fathers and Sons, Ivan Turgenev 22. A Theatrical Novel, Mikhail Bulgakov 23. Sleepless, Jon Fosse 24. Woodcutters, Thomas Bernhard 25. Confusion of Feelings, Stefan Zweig 26. The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum, Heinrich Böll 27. The Elephant's Jurney, José Saramago 28. Shyness and Dignity, Dag Solstad 29. Krysantemum, Rune Christiansen 30. The Feast of the Goat, Mario Vargas Llosa 31. Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates 32. The Comfort of Strangers, Ian McEwan 33. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera 34. Homo Faber, Max Frisch 34/40
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Sep 2, 2015 09:06
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Burning Rain posted:what did you think of Homo Faber? I quite liked it. the Surprise Twist was forshadowed pretty heavily, but everything from trip to the hospital onwards was pretty well written. It was an interesting take on the whole "man coming to grips with his own mortality" motif.
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Sep 2, 2015 14:22
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September update: Please suggest a biography to read, otherwise I'll land on something lulzy like Morrissey's autobiography or whatever 4. Philosophy - 5. History 6. An essay - 9. Something absurdist - Waiting for Godot 17. A play - Waiting for Godot 18. Biography - 1. Hear the Wind Sing, Haruki Murakami 2. Pinball 1974, Haruki Murakami 3. On The Beach, Neil Shute 4. Collected Poems by Per Sivle 5. History of the Siege of Lisbon, José Saramago 6. Wayfarers, Knut Hamsun 7. The Seed, Tarjei Vesaas 8. Morning and Evening, Jon Fosse 9. The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro, Fernando Pessoa 10. Doktor Faustus, Thomas Mann 11. Collection of poems, Gabriela Mistral 12. Doctor Glas, Hjalmar Söderberg 13. Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez 14. Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino 15. Inherent Vice, Thomas Pynchon 16. Road to the Worl'd End, Sigurd Hoel 17. The Cyberiad, Stanislaw Lem 18. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad 19. The Clown, Heinrich Böll 20. The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Lev Tolstoy 21. Fathers and Sons, Ivan Turgenev 22. A Theatrical Novel, Mikhail Bulgakov 23. Sleepless, Jon Fosse 24. Woodcutters, Thomas Bernhard 25. Confusion of Feelings, Stefan Zweig 26. The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum, Heinrich Böll 27. The Elephant's Jurney, José Saramago 28. Shyness and Dignity, Dag Solstad 29. Krysantemum, Rune Christiansen 30. The Feast of the Goat, Mario Vargas Llosa 31. Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates 32. The Comfort of Strangers, Ian McEwan 33. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera 34. Homo Faber, Max Frisch 35. Not Art, Péter Esterházy 36. Faust, Ivan Turgenev 37. Selected Poems, Percy Bysshe Shelley 38. The Russian Master and Other Stories, Anton Chekhov 39. Vinternoveller, Ingvild H. Rishøi 40. The Passion According to G.H., Clarice Lispector 41. Wise Blood, Flannery O'Connor 41/40 Getting back on track, and surprisingly meeting the goal too. I won't bother setting a new reading goal, but I'll keep reading just to see where I end up by new year's eve. I also have to figure out some of the last challenges (and get to reading the challenges I've already planned ahead). The Biography category is open for suggestions, because the one I originally planned is a massive two-volume biography. Not Art was ... well, it's hard to describe really. It kind of draws on the trend of blurring the line between reality and fiction. He draws a lot from his own life, and uses his dying mother to reflect on Hungary in the cold-war, musings about love and sexuality and football. Faust on the other hand, was an incredibly nice read. The books is a series of letters sent from the Narrator to an old friend of his, all about unrequited love, where he falls in love with a friend's wife while reading Goethe's Faust to her. The overall thematic is also typically Russian as it's all about a dude trying to accept that he's getting older. Vinternoveller (lit. translated Winter short stories) consists of three short stories, about different people pretty down on their luck. The first one is about a single mum who's broke having to buy a new pair of underpants to her daughter, the second is about a recent ex-con needing to get a pillow to his son, and the third is about three siblings running away to avoid the child welfare services. They all follow the same format, where in parallell to the story, the narrating character also reflects on their life, their choices and everything that lead up to the situation they're all in at the moment. Worth a read imo, if you can read Norwegian. Don't think there's any English translations of her work. The Passion According to G.H. was hella interesting, too. All it took to spark an almost spiritual and existensial crisis was a dirty room and a cockroach. I haven't actually finished Wise Blood yet, but I'm gonna read the remaining part of it before I go to sleep tonight, so I added it up nonetheless, since I'll finish it before October hits us. ulvir fucked around with this message at 17:47 on Sep 30, 2015 |
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Sep 30, 2015 17:23
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would In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities qualify as a philosophical text? Or is this strictly sociology.
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Oct 4, 2015 10:41
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October update. And the month was kicked off with the most season-appropriate book 4. Philosophy - 5. History - 6. An essay - 1. Hear the Wind Sing, Haruki Murakami 2. Pinball 1974, Haruki Murakami 3. On The Beach, Neil Shute 4. Collected Poems by Per Sivle 5. History of the Siege of Lisbon, José Saramago 6. Wayfarers, Knut Hamsun 7. The Seed, Tarjei Vesaas 8. Morning and Evening, Jon Fosse 9. The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro, Fernando Pessoa 10. Doktor Faustus, Thomas Mann 11. Collection of poems, Gabriela Mistral 12. Doctor Glas, Hjalmar Söderberg 13. Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez 14. Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino 15. Inherent Vice, Thomas Pynchon 16. Road to the Worl'd End, Sigurd Hoel 17. The Cyberiad, Stanislaw Lem 18. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad 19. The Clown, Heinrich Böll 20. The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Lev Tolstoy 21. Fathers and Sons, Ivan Turgenev 22. A Theatrical Novel, Mikhail Bulgakov 23. Sleepless, Jon Fosse 24. Woodcutters, Thomas Bernhard 25. Confusion of Feelings, Stefan Zweig 26. The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum, Heinrich Böll 27. The Elephant's Jurney, José Saramago 28. Shyness and Dignity, Dag Solstad 29. Krysantemum, Rune Christiansen 30. The Feast of the Goat, Mario Vargas Llosa 31. Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates 32. The Comfort of Strangers, Ian McEwan 33. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera 34. Homo Faber, Max Frisch 35. Not Art, Péter Esterházy 36. Faust, Ivan Turgenev 37. Selected Poems, Percy Bysshe Shelley 38. The Russian Master and Other Stories, Anton Chekhov 39. Vinternoveller, Ingvild H. Rishøi 40. The Passion According to G.H., Clarice Lispector 41. Wise Blood, Flannery O'Connor 42. Om høsten, Karl Ove Knausgård 43. Three Women, Sylvia Plath 44. Furuset, Linn Strømsborg 45. Thomas F's Last Notes to the Public, Kjell Askildsen 46. Rue des Boutiques obscures, Patrick Modiano 47. Herztier, Herta Müller 48. On Overgrown Paths, Knut Hamsun 49. Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett 49/40 A really mixed bag this month, with a heavy bias towards literature from my own place of birth. Om høsten, lit. translated to In the Autumn or just Autumn or something, is the first in a new serial project by renowned the author Knausgård. There's gonna be one book per season, and the next one, Om vinteren (Winter), will be out within the next couple of weeks or so. The premise for these books is that he's writing a letter to his unborn daughter, and wanted to write about something in the material world. So he made a list of around 400 or so names of things, and tried to write something about all of them (not unlike part of Georges Perec's approach in Life a User's Manual (which I'm halfway through now)). What he writes about are the most mundane things around us, like tin cans, plastic bags, or the concept of pissing. He even has a chapter dedicated to the humble Labia majora. Even if he tries to look outward, the book still tends to get inside Knausgård's own life, as he often draws from his own memories and experiences with the different things he writes about. And in some cases he even draws upon philosophy and literary science. There's a chapter called Expreicenes where he starts to reflect on his own understanding of Heidegger, and in one of the "Letters to an unborn child" chapters, he even reflects on the definitions of poetry and what it's about. Definitely worth a read if/when it gets translated. And if you can read Norweigan, why aren't you already hauling rear end towards the book store? Three Women. I assume this one doesn't need an introduction, since most of you are yanks. I really liked the way the different voices appeared in the poems, and you just kind of slowly realise what these birthing women were going through, physically and mentally, and how their experiences differed. Furuset is named after a neighbourhood/borough in Oslo, and where most of it takes place. I read this one after someone suggested it, when I asked for contemporary Norwegian novels by female authors. I didn't really have a clue what I was going into, other than the summary which mentioned it was about a woman who had just finished her masters degree, and was struggling with the uncertainty of what to do next. It quickly became apparent that this was a YA novel though, both in style and conten, which really disappointed me. She gets back in touch with her childhood friends, and ofcourse they start hanging out in their old favourite spot from when they were 13. And ofcourse you get these heartfelt, clichéd platitudes about how friends "stick together god drat it!". And ofcourse everything turns out fine in the end, and ofcourse that one kid she starts talking to while working in the movie rental shop is in the gang that's creating mayhem in the parking lots, which she ofcourse manages to talk him out of just by acting like a archetype big sister. It's probably a good book if all you read is John Green or whatever, but I disliked this intensely. A "Verwirrung der Gefühle" or "Ansichten eines Clowns" this is not. Thomas F's Last Notes to the Public is a collection of two short stories. The first one is about a man who starts questioning not only his identity, but his very existence, when a policeman asks him a few questions regarding his investigation of a sexual assault. I won't go into any greater detail than that, because it would probably spoil some of the fun in reading it. The second short story, and the one the title of the book is about, is about a very old man who feels more and more distant and enstranged by society as his age starts catching up with him. It kind of reminded me of The Death of Ivan Illyich in some ways, at least with how the protagonist acts and thinks. Rue des Boutiques obscures (or Missing Person) is an interesting twist on the detective genre. Instead of trying to peice together a murder and who the real suspect is, it's about a bloke who had amnesia 10 or 20 years before the novel takes place. He worked as a private investigator, and when the agency he works for is about to close down due to retirement, he goes on to try to figure out who he, himself is. The first half of the book is really interesting, and probably even the strongest part, where interviews with different people raises various red herrings and dead-ends which becomes apparent after the story goes on. Herztier (or The Land of Green Plums) is set under the Ceauşescu regime in cold-war Romania. It follows a group of German-Romanian friends under the totalitarian regime, but the characterization is neither the point nor the strength of the novel. I believe it was more about coping with the oppression and constant surveilance. The novel conveys this by blurring the lines between reality and dreams/fantasies. Very often it shifts between a typically narrative paragraph with longer poetic, almost stream-of-conciousness-like passages. It was quite good indeed. On Overgrown Paths, Knut Hamsun's autobiographical and final work, consists of a series of thoughts and dated letters as he awaits his trial for treason right after the war. It's written very much like his regular fiction, but with a more deliberate and direct tone. One thing that's very noticeably absent, and for which it's been criticised, is that he doesn't really reflect too much over his sympathies with Nazi-Germany, other than very adamantly trying to press the point that it was a concious decision, and that he's not insane nor demented. It also includes a letter he sent to the chief of police, and an excerpt from his trial documents. It might not be his best work by any means, but I'd say it's just as important, as it at least gives you a bit of an insight, albeit a deliberately vague one, into who he was. ulvir fucked around with this message at 18:02 on Oct 31, 2015 |
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Oct 30, 2015 13:04
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Grizzled Patriarch posted:I still need a wild card too, actually. Preferably one that I can find online for free / cheap, since I'm going to be traveling. le père goriot https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/b/balzac/b19fg/
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Nov 7, 2015 22:04
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elbow posted:E: I'll take a wildcard as well, please! Blindness by José Saramago
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Nov 8, 2015 12:07
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I liked the challenges, but I wouldn't mind swapping some of them out for next year (absurdist, dealing with space, etc) for something equally challenging and creative. I had a really fun time trying to pin down the unreal one
ulvir fucked around with this message at 14:56 on Nov 26, 2015 |
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Nov 26, 2015 14:54
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screenwritersblues posted:I'll fix some of the vagueness and see if I can tweak them or replace them. please keep some vagueness to them, figuring out what book would fit/constitute as what was really enjoyable and practically half the fun (apart from reading good books). I only meant I'd love for something similar, but with newer categories, to keep it fresh seconding to keep the wildcard too
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Nov 27, 2015 12:25
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November update, and a slow progress wrt booklord challenges. I do ahve a history book ready, but I really need to start finding an essay of sorts to read during December. 5. History - Finn Olstad (a book about the norwegian working class) 6. An essay - 1. Hear the Wind Sing, Haruki Murakami 2. Pinball 1974, Haruki Murakami 3. On The Beach, Neil Shute 4. Collected Poems by Per Sivle 5. History of the Siege of Lisbon, José Saramago 6. Wayfarers, Knut Hamsun 7. The Seed, Tarjei Vesaas 8. Morning and Evening, Jon Fosse 9. The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro, Fernando Pessoa 10. Doktor Faustus, Thomas Mann 11. Collection of poems, Gabriela Mistral 12. Doctor Glas, Hjalmar Söderberg 13. Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez 14. Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino 15. Inherent Vice, Thomas Pynchon 16. Road to the Worl'd End, Sigurd Hoel 17. The Cyberiad, Stanislaw Lem 18. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad 19. The Clown, Heinrich Böll 20. The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Lev Tolstoy 21. Fathers and Sons, Ivan Turgenev 22. A Theatrical Novel, Mikhail Bulgakov 23. Sleepless, Jon Fosse 24. Woodcutters, Thomas Bernhard 25. Confusion of Feelings, Stefan Zweig 26. The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum, Heinrich Böll 27. The Elephant's Jurney, José Saramago 28. Shyness and Dignity, Dag Solstad 29. Krysantemum, Rune Christiansen 30. The Feast of the Goat, Mario Vargas Llosa 31. Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates 32. The Comfort of Strangers, Ian McEwan 33. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera 34. Homo Faber, Max Frisch 35. Not Art, Péter Esterházy 36. Faust, Ivan Turgenev 37. Selected Poems, Percy Bysshe Shelley 38. The Russian Master and Other Stories, Anton Chekhov 39. Vinternoveller, Ingvild H. Rishøi 40. The Passion According to G.H., Clarice Lispector 41. Wise Blood, Flannery O'Connor 42. Om høsten, Karl Ove Knausgård 43. Three Women, Sylvia Plath 44. Furuset, Linn Strømsborg 45. Thomas F's Last Notes to the Public, Kjell Askildsen 46. Rue des Boutiques obscures, Patrick Modiano 47. Herztier, Herta Müller 48. On Overgrown Paths, Knut Hamsun 49. Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett 50. Rambuku, Skuggar: Two plays, Jon Fosse 51. Submission, Michel Houellebecq 52. Alone, August Strindberg 53. Life a User's Manual, Georges Perec 54. Fear and Trembling, Søren Kierkegaard 54/40 I'll edit in my thoughts about the books later tonight. Kierkegaard in particular is a rather tough nut to crack right now. Right. The books. Rambuku, Skuggar (Rambuku and Shadows) are two plays by Jon Fosse, with a common theme of uncertainty and possibly death. They both take place in a nondescribed place, and the important aspect of the plays are the common relations between the characters. Emotional, in a very dead-pan way, and also strongly existensial at certain points. Well worth a read (and maybe even a watch should anyone get a chance). Submission was a book that has gotten a, if not bad, then at least undeserved rap. I went into it nearly expecting a very anti-islamist story, akin to France in a sort of greater Eurabia. Instead what I got was a book dealing with hedonism, sex, a bit of critique of Academia and a protagonist reflecting himself through Joris-Karl Huysmans. Within it there were of course some commentary on Islam, but it was mostly innocent, and mostly very superficial and shallow. It seemed to me that the title was more about an individual himself submitting to a higher power, than, say, society submitting itself before militant extremism. I still have no idea why Knausgård went so far as to call Houellebecq a genius though. Alone, a Novella about a unnamed protag who feels sort of complacent with being alone. He spends a great deal talking about the difference between being alone and loneliness. Life a User's Manual was probably the most interesting book I read (completed) this month. The premise is that a painter wants to paint a portrait of a fictious block in Paris. The story, or rather, the book, leaps between the different flats (including the stairway, cellar and loft) according to the movement pattern of the knight in chess. Within it there's also a few parallell stories that centres around some of the people living in that block. The most captivating are the one about Bartlebooth, another about a down-on-his-luck doctor who tried his luck as an academic, and a judge and his wife who uses petty thefts as a way to spice up their sexlife. The novel constantly blurs the line between fiction and reality, as well. Everyone should read this at least once. Well, on to the most difficult bit so far, Fear and Trembling. This is probably the longest I spent reading a 140 page long book, but I couldn't imagine reading this in one go either. What I think Kierkegaard attempts to do here is to first try to define what faith, to the degree that Abraham exhibited, really is. Then whether or not Abraham's actions could ever be judged by "common" or "ordinary" concepts like ethics, and whehter or not there's a "duty to God". What it seemed like he was going for, is that religious faith is kind of a paradox, or something absurd in a way, in that the Self gets elevated to something higher than the ordinary, but at the same time remains absolutely ordinary. He creates (or discusses) a concept called Knight of Faith, which he puts in a dialectic contrast to the tragic hero (both of which are explained at length and in depth). Where the individual becomes this Knight by the movement of eternity, where they first resign completely and wholly from something (or someone) they love, but at the same time places absolute faith that, because God wills it, they will not lose it. And this absurdity, in itself, makes it impossible to understand the story of Abraham through concepts like ethics and right/wrong, because it presupposes that what drives him is his own volition and lust (for lack of a better word on my part). Where the tragic hero can choose to abort in order to save Isaac, or tell him what is about to happen, Abraham, as the Knight of Faith, cannot. Because he has already performed this resignation of Eternity, and have already both accepted that this is what he has to do unto God, but at the same time has complete faith in that, if God wills it, he will be with Isaac (in one form or another) later on. This also makes it impossible for someone to really understand his story, due to the paradoxical nature of it. I might have to read this book a few times more later on, I admit. But it was quite an interesting, albeit challenging, read nevertheless. ulvir fucked around with this message at 19:15 on Dec 1, 2015 |
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Dec 1, 2015 16:04
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December is, as always, one hella busy month. But I managed to get all the challenges done this year. I have a few days to spare, too, so I might re-read the blind owl just because anyway, final update 1. Hear the Wind Sing, Haruki Murakami 2. Pinball 1974, Haruki Murakami 3. On The Beach, Neil Shute 4. Collected Poems by Per Sivle 5. History of the Siege of Lisbon, José Saramago 6. Wayfarers, Knut Hamsun 7. The Seed, Tarjei Vesaas 8. Morning and Evening, Jon Fosse 9. The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro, Fernando Pessoa 10. Doktor Faustus, Thomas Mann 11. Collection of poems, Gabriela Mistral 12. Doctor Glas, Hjalmar Söderberg 13. Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez 14. Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino 15. Inherent Vice, Thomas Pynchon 16. Road to the Worl'd End, Sigurd Hoel 17. The Cyberiad, Stanislaw Lem 18. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad 19. The Clown, Heinrich Böll 20. The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Lev Tolstoy 21. Fathers and Sons, Ivan Turgenev 22. A Theatrical Novel, Mikhail Bulgakov 23. Sleepless, Jon Fosse 24. Woodcutters, Thomas Bernhard 25. Confusion of Feelings, Stefan Zweig 26. The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum, Heinrich Böll 27. The Elephant's Jurney, José Saramago 28. Shyness and Dignity, Dag Solstad 29. Krysantemum, Rune Christiansen 30. The Feast of the Goat, Mario Vargas Llosa 31. Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates 32. The Comfort of Strangers, Ian McEwan 33. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera 34. Homo Faber, Max Frisch 35. Not Art, Péter Esterházy 36. Faust, Ivan Turgenev 37. Selected Poems, Percy Bysshe Shelley 38. The Russian Master and Other Stories, Anton Chekhov 39. Vinternoveller, Ingvild H. Rishøi 40. The Passion According to G.H., Clarice Lispector 41. Wise Blood, Flannery O'Connor 42. Om høsten, Karl Ove Knausgård 43. Three Women, Sylvia Plath 44. Furuset, Linn Strømsborg 45. Thomas F's Last Notes to the Public, Kjell Askildsen 46. Rue des Boutiques obscures, Patrick Modiano 47. Herztier, Herta Müller 48. On Overgrown Paths, Knut Hamsun 49. Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett 50. Rambuku, Skuggar: Two plays, Jon Fosse 51. Submission, Michel Houellebecq 52. Alone, August Strindberg 53. Life a User's Manual, Georges Perec 54. Fear and Trembling, Søren Kierkegaard 55. À rebours, Joris-Karl Huysmans 56. Love's Knowledge, Martha Nussbaum 57. (roughly translated) The rise and fall of the Norwegian working class, Finn Olstad 57/40 Plotting some numbers for the heck of it, one third of all the books read this year were by Scandinavian authors, approx. 14% of all the authors were women, and a total of 44 all the books I read were from various cultures and places in Europe. 13 of the books were released in the 2000's, three of which published this year. And only 5 poetry collections this year. So I guess for next year, I'm gonna try getting more into poetry, in addition to reading War and Peace and a few other massive tomes, and I'll see if I can't up my percentage of women as well.
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Dec 27, 2015 14:36
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