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BOOK GENERAL Anonymous 3098
Subject says it all.
Discuss everything to do with books. Writing, reading, burning, etc. Ask for recommendations and stuff.
Anonymous 3099
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and i'll start us off, anyone got a good novel featuring a (female) loser protagonist? reading prequel adventure and katia is extremely relatable, seeing her struggles thus far make me feel a bit better lol
nothing too tragic! just a good book where the heroine's growth doesn't immediately stem from inheriting some great power (though if they do, they struggle with it immensely).
Anonymous 3100
>>3099I it doesn't have to be female and human i would suggest Silverwing from Kenneth Oppel. Not sure if it is enough loser protagonist for you. (Had read it long time ago)
I always wanted to write stories. Often made notes about characters and the world and thing about the adventures they do. I just have so problems to writing the actual story from my head to Paper. It seem like a block (blockage?) in my brain.
Had this problem in school too, i knew the answer but i could not write it in a way that made sence. Anonymous 3102
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Reading this now, I am super fascinated with cults and it's a great read. I was very interested to find out he was once a caregiver in a hospital who cared intimately for dying patients who smelled of rotting flesh and had to change their diapers and did so with a smile. I wonder what Jim Jones would have been like if he had chosen to be a doctor instead of a preacher when he was at that crossroads in his life, even with his narcissistic tendencies perhaps he could have been a great man…
Anonymous 3103
>>3098Lol at burning. When I was a teenager I once burnt all my yaoi manga in a bonfire after a bad breakup because I wanted to become a different person… Didn't really work lol.
Anonymous 3306
Reading of Rot and Roses right now. It's lovely.
Anonymous 3340
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I recently finished Sweet Bean Paste by Durian Sukegawa.
Thank you to >>2285 for recommending it in the favorite books thread. It was comfy but had an emotional impact. I could see what was going to happen, but still relished the reading experience.
Right now I'm reading Pink by Barbara Nemitz, a book about the artistic and cultural significance of the color pink.
Anonymous 4338
I'm reading the fingersmith right now, it's lovely.
Anonymous 4358
I’m finishing Atonement by Ian McEwan atm. I started reading it last year and by all means I thought (and still think) that it’s a good book but at some point I just completely lost any interest in reading and besides that for some reason I’ve always had a tendency to not finish reading books for some reason, leaving them unfinished at 4/5 of the way??? I recently started wanting to read again and read a pretty cosy book on the shorter side so 2019 may yet be a reading year for me!
Anonymous 4372
>>3098Reading City Come A-Walking by John Shirley. So far it's fun, I keep thinking it would be a good tech-noir movie. But it would have to be done in the 80's.
Anonymous 4373
How would miners feel about having a book club where we read a different book every month? We could have a poll to vote for one too.
Anonymous 4374
I read Crime and Punishment on Wednesday and spent Thursday-Friday reading Demons. I'll probably read The Brothers Karamazov today, unless I have to spend all day shoveling.
I read very quickly.
Anonymous 4375
>>4374Damn nibba what's your secret? The only book I managed to read in a day was Neuromancer when I moved into a new place that didn't have internet for a couple days.
Brothers K is great by the way 👌
Anonymous 4376
>>4374whoa, I read Crime and Punishment in 5 days and that was when I was trying my hardest to read as fast as I can. But I really liked that book, out of all the books I had to read for school that one was my favorite. Did you like it?
>>4373I would really like that, I don't read often so it would give me a purpose. We could have different groups for different genres if we had enough people.
Darn I just remembered I started reading catch 22 and liked it but I don't have time anymore
Anonymous 4402
I just bought a book I heavily dislike reading, has bad ratings and is really hard to understand. The characters get lost in each other but it was expensive af, so I am dedicated to read it now.
Tips for reading a groggy book that has it's good parts but is otherwise really hard to understand, to follow the plot to be more exact?
Said book:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/283138.The_Black_EnvelopeAnonymous 4405
>>4402Maybe try to focus on the wordplay? If it's written well, that is. There might be something to enjoy in the cadence of it.
Anonymous 4606
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I found out about an interesting book online one day and since then I've been reading a lot, I used to not read anything at all before. I read "Mission of Gravity" by Hal Clement a few days ago, and I just finished "Blood Music" by Greg Bear a few minutes ago. They are both science fiction stories.
Mission of Gravity is about a massive planet that rotates very rapidly so it's very oblate and the gravitational acceleration at the poles is 3g and at the equator is 700g. So humans send a rocket to study the planet but it gets stuck on the pole and they can't retrieve the information, so they cooperate with intelligent life on the planet that can survive under such high gravity. It's very interesting because it shows the problems the aliens have because of the planet's weirdness and how their way of thinking evolved because of it, and also it's fun. I really liked the little aliens, pic related is one artist's interpretation, although not totally accurate, it's cute; look he's waving.
Blood Music is a bit scary, it deals with genetics and the nature of the universe and reality, I cried at the end, although it was not sad. It's about a biotechnologist who programs his blood cells to work as little computers, giving them intelligence, but after he injects them back into himself, weird things start to happen… At first the changes on the scientist himself are described but as the book goes on the intelligent blood cells start changing things on a larger and larger scale.
I really liked these stories, I would recommend them if you like science fiction, to others they would probably be boring.
Anonymous 4607
>>4606Also lol I wrote the acceleration at the poles is 3g and at the equator 700g, it's the other way around
Anonymous 4608
>>4606Is Blood Music similar to The Fly in a way, then?
Anonymous 4610
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>>3098Pic related.
Somewhat tedious on definitions, but otherwise kinda interesting if you're into math. I should've kept it for later, but still not too bad. I'm not a big fan of Russell, but this is one of his least… polarized books.
That said, I often question why I read so much philosophy. At times, I wonder if I'm too dumb to properly comprehend the content of what I'm reading.
Anonymous 4611
>>4610i think that's pretty much the feeling everyone gets when reading philosophy
Anonymous 4612
>>4608I haven't watched that movie, but from the summary on Wikipedia it's only similar because of the "mad scientist does weird experiment on himself and transforms" bit but Blood Music's story is deeper and goes far beyond that. I didn't want to spoil too much but now I remembered about the spoiler feature:
After the scientist injects his reprogrammed cells back into himself they start reshaping his body so it works better. The cells spread to other people as well but cause very different effects in them: they melt and turn into weird blobs… but they're still alive, living in the universe of the sentient cells, and they are happier than ever before. Soon all of North America is infected, and all the people dissolved and their bodies form alien landscapes all across the continent. There is a bit of storytelling from the point of the few people who were not transformed, travelling across this alien landscape, I liked that part a lot, I could really imagine how bizarre it looked and how scared the humans were. Later one scientist realizes that this massive increase in the number of sentient beings on Earth causes the Universe not being able to shift (because it can only shift while it is not being observed, it's some bogus theory but just accept it) and a bit of reality bending stuff happens, which culminates at the ending.
My favorite parts were conversations humans had with the sentient cells in them, also I liked the transition from a focus on genetics to life in a postapocalyptic world to a focus on the nature of the universe/reality.Wew that was long. One bit that is just subpar in this book are the characters, they are quite flat but I don't mind that much, they are just tools to drive the interesting story. There was one girl character who I liked, the rest were very forgettable.
Also I started reading "Rocheworld" (also sci fi), it's interesting but the introductions of characters had me feeling like I was reading an excerpt from some tutorial on how to write interesting characters, I mean not that it's bad it's just a bit uncanny.
Anonymous 4678
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>>4375It was definitely the right call to save Brothers K for last! I feel like it contains pieces of all his other novels in it, so having already read them made it a richer experience.
>my secretIdiot savant, probably. Apparently I taught myself to read when I was 3.
>>4376I liked Crime & Punishment a lot more than I thought I would at first - the first Dostoevsky I ever read was The Idiot, which has his most idealistic and sympathetic protagonist (to me, anyway). Raskolnikov is probably his 2nd most sympathetic protagonist - depends on where you put Alexei from Brothers K - but also, I think, the only one who manages to be endearing and pitiable in his evil.
Currently almost done with The Book of Disquiet, which has been a slow and meandering read, but very beautiful.
Anonymous 4713
Stuff I read in the last two weeks:
>Homage to Catalonia, Orwell
>V., Pynchon
>Turing's Cathedral, Dyson
>Gogol [collected short stories]
>Fathers and Sons, Turgenev
>One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich, Solzhenitsyn
Solzhenitsyn also wrote "The Gulag Archipelago", which I'm going to start reading tonight. His novel was really similar to Dostoevsky's Notes from a Dead House - two Russian authors, two ""fictional"" accounts of the convict labor camps, different era. The regimes come and go, but the gulag remains…
Anonymous 4714
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>>4713You read
all of that only in the past two weeks, anon? Makes me wish I still had the motivation to read. I used to be able to read novels in succession like that but now I can barely force myself to read a single chapter.
Anonymous 4715
>>4714no the anon you're replying to but i usually force myself to read at least 10 pages a day and sometimes i read more because i get into it. its not much but its at least 300 a month which isnt bad
Anonymous 4716
>>4714Don't feel bad, anon. I'm a NEET housekeeper with too much free time. Also, three of the books I got through are quite short - one day[…], fathers and sons, and homage to catalonia were all very easy to read.
Anonymous 5106
>>4610>That said, I often question why I read so much philosophy. At times, I wonder if I'm too dumb to properly comprehend the content of what I'm reading.You're not dumb, most philosophers are just terrible at putting their points across clearly. Russell is actually on the clearer end of the spectrum but his subject matter particularly the more mathematical stuff is itself just a pain to get your head around if you're not familiar with it. A lot of philosophers also like to overcomplicate things to seem smarter than they are and despite what they'll tell you this applies equally to analytical philosophers as it does continental ones.
I wouldn't endorse their arguments good examples of philosophers who write/wrote clearly are Jaegwon Kim or David Lewis (if you can handle his slightly weird writing style anyway). Also if you want a good reference for terminology and general grounding in a given subject then the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy is great
https://plato.stanford.edu/ just mind and check who wrote the current revision of the article if something seems a bit off.
Anonymous 5107
Recently finished reading Lord of Light by Zelazny.
An interesting mix of Hindu mythology and Sci-fi.
Now I need to catch up with my Goodreads reading challenge.
Anonymous 5128
recently i’ve been thinking a lot about a short story i read in uni called “sultana’s dream”. has anyone else read it? i know this probably isn’t the place for political discussion but i used to hate radical feminism and consider myself a “gender equality advocate” but these past few months i’ve gotten more and more fed up and thinking about this story i dunno, i just kind of wish it was real haha. anyway if anyone has read the story and has any similar-type of story recommendations please share them. thank you!!
Anonymous 5162
Last book I really enjoyed was All The Bright Places, but it's teen fiction so I imagine not everyone would be into it. It was pretty bleak but also beautiful.
Anonymous 5163
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Has anyone else started collecting these Taschen Books that are seemingly sold everywhere now?
They're cheap and of good quality. I bought Keith Haring, H.R. Giger and Francis Bacon.
I'm quite happy about that HR Giger got a book dedicated to him,every other book prints are super expensive and/or from the 80s.
Anonymous 5353
Nearing the end of reading Queen of the Damned by Anne Rice. I had read interview first last year then found The Vampire Armand hardcover at value village and began reading that, and was enjoying it but decided its probably best to at least read the first three books first before continuing that one.
Waiting for Let the Right One in to come in the mail.
I guess can say I have been getting into vampire lit a little bit.
It would be cool to be Patchouli Knowledge and can sit for years and years and just be left alone to read most of the time in a gigantic library.
Anonymous 5860
>>5353I'm late to the thread but have you read any Laurell K. Hamilton? I think she writes more about vampire hunters than strictly vampires, but her stuff is worth checking out.
Anonymous 5879
>>5878>CélineExcellent pick for getting introduced to his works.
Anonymous 5881
>>5163I've got ones on Monet and Kirchner a few years ago.
Anonymous 6037
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right now I'm reading The Sun Also Rises and David Copperfield. I reread Hemingway's The Torrents of Spring last month, short but fun read.
With respect to writing, I haven't been keeping up with my journal during quarantine even though I have all the time to do it. I think I just don't want to reflect on how shitty life is right now. It would be good to have some primary sources though to look back at in the future.
Anonymous 6038
So far I've read The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath and I'm reading War and Peace bit by bit. War and Peace is easy reading in terms of its prose and the difficulty for me is more about the commitment involved, so I would encourage anyone to read it. My next "read" is Ways of Seeing by John Berger. It was originally a TV show, but it's still nice to experience the content in a book format.
I've also been reading this collection of American Poetry from the 70's. It's long, but reading poems is fast. I like it because for each author, I look them up online after I read their poetry so I feel like I'm getting a crash course in American poetry which I don't know too much about.
Anonymous 6242
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I'd been meaning to read The Coming Insurrection by The Invisible Committee for a few months, after I bought it as well as the books following it, To Our Friends and Now. I started reading it yesterday and finished it today, a speed which I can barely bring myself to finish anything. I had a productive day aside from that as well, listened to an album I'd been meaning to listen to (Tales of a Grasswidow by Cocorosie) and went for an hour-long jog. I'm going to try and read To Our Friends (which is twice as long) soon.
I'd recommend it to basically anyone, unequivocally.
Anonymous 18085
I just finished reading The Silent Patient. It's so good, miners - if you have the time and like psychological thrillers, you need to read it. I was just so dumbstruck by how good it is, I needed to talk about it.
I'm about to start reading Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto.
Anonymous 18102
>>3098Can someone recommend some good incel-lot? I read Elliot Rodgers manifesto, I want more stuff by fucked up men
Anonymous 18708
Before COVID ended it I used to go to my library's writing club. There were literally 0 men there. I'm not just talking about the regulars who always came but we didn't even have a one-time male visitor. Why aren't men interested in reading and writing anymore, did video games abduct them?
Anonymous 18709
>>18708Men just don't go out anon lol
Anonymous 18714
>>6283Prose is garbage and it's obviously written by a moid
Anonymous 18718
I've finally gotten out of my reading slump ladies. The solution is forcing yourself to read even at least 2 pages a day until it progresses. I'll be finishing my 3rd book this year and that's already an achievement for me because I only read one book last year. Whoever has a reading slump right now, good luck.
Anonymous 18719
>>18718Congrats anon!!! What did you read?
I wanna do the same thing but I can’t find a book that sparks my interest and I’m scared of pouring time into something disappointing. The last book I really enjoyed was Kafka on the shore.
Anonymous 18720
>>18719Bible is a Good Book, you should read it!
Anonymous 18721
>>18719Anon here. I read The First Men in the Moon and The Enchiridion. At the moment, I'm reading The Castle by Kafka-not the easiest thing to read but I adore Kafka. You should probably read another Murakami book if you liked Kafka on the Shore anon, I love his Norwegian Wood. You try to check it out. All the good wishes.
Anonymous 18722
>>18720Truthfully I think all the big religion books are 'good' books in that they are interesting to read. I read the bible young because Catholic upbringing, but I went through a phase of reading religious books and read the Koran, Book of Mormon, Tibetan Book of the Dead etc back-to-back and they're all very evocative even if you aren't buying into their belief systems.
Anonymous 18726
>>18718I'll try and use your method, been in a reading slump for a few years now (even though I've been going to book fairs and buying at least 2-3 books every single time). Thank you very much for the advice, I hope you've enjoyed all of the books you've read so far!
Anonymous 18728
>>18718Nice. I am getting back into reading too. Have finished two so far this year and am into a long one (The Stand)
Anonymous 18754
Do any of you ladies browse /lit/ on 4chan? I go there sometimes because, despite all the moids, there's lots of good literature discussion.
Anonymous 18756
>>18754Sometimes I do but I'm not sure if I'd say there is "lots" of good discussion. It's also probably one of the most misogynist boards on 4chan and that's saying something.
Anonymous 18762
>>18754There’s better literary discussion in my diary.
Anonymous 18764
>>18756>>18762Even though 95% of the board is crap, the fact that there's like 10000 posts per day means there's lots of good content. I think the 5% is worth sticking around for.
Anonymous 19006
>>18754I go there once a month mostly, they have good discussions at times but you have to nitpick through the heaps of nonsense threads. If you want to talk about literary, the best option is to go there. Just do not reveal you're female or they go monkey mode. This applies to everywhere on the chans really.
Anonymous 19348
Hey girls. I am on a quest to be more literate and get used to books. I usually can't focus and hate to read. But I want to try a bit more. I read some fiction but I want to read something fun that will teach me something or give me perspective. (non-fiction)
I wonder what psychology book would be interesting, so please recommend me something. Any other subject is good too, except politics or history, though anthropology is good. I just want another productive hobby. Thank you.
Anonymous 19357
>>19348How old are you? I think certain books require a minimum age. Regardless, pop psychology is always easy to read, and I recommend
Thinking Fast and Slow and
Games People Play.
Anonymous 19358
>>19357I'm 18. Not really looking for something easy to read, just something that is interesting, I have been reading in a foreign language, and it's not
easy but I keep up with it because it's very enjoyable. It's easier to pick when a person recommends something.
Anonymous 19381
>>19358You can probably try Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami anon, it's easy and fast.
Anonymous 19382
>>19381I'm reading fiction already.
Anonymous 19395
>>19358It depends on what you're interested in.
Wind, Sand and Stars is a really nice autobiography by the author of the Little Prince about his job flying air mail.
I like music and have read some fun music books. Heroes and Villains is a pretty wild book about The Beach Boys.
If you want /x/ shit read The Franklin Cover-Up which is about an American child sex ring that was swept under the rug.
The Family by Ed Sanders is a good one about the Manson murders and is a bit more even-handed than the most famous Manson book which was written by the prosecutor in Manson's case.
Bare-Faced Messiah is a good biography of L. Ron Hubbard, founder of scientology.
Anonymous 23749
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Just finished ''White Nights'' by Dostoevsky. I really liked it. He was only 27 years old when he wrote it and I recommend it for anyone who wants to read something short and intense.
Anonymous 23764
I've been in a reading slump lately too. I use to read at least 12-15 books a year, which isn't much I guess for the average /lit/ and many were pop novels with some new age drug texts, philosophy and classics mixed in. I'm into meta-mythology and folklore, symbols and all that stuff. I decided to read through Joseph Campell's Masks of the Gods, starting with Primitive Mythology. I read about 18 pages today and I think I'm gonna try to read by chapter. I'm horrible at retaining information though and taking notes, I was wondering if anyone had any tips for retaining information from what you've read?
Anonymous 23769
After years of memeing about Lovecraft I am finally reading his stories. They are really addictive and he had a great imagination.
Anonymous 23848
Can anyone recommend good history books?
Anonymous 23849
>>23848thats like such a huge question with so many different types of answers, but rn im reading "the anatomy of revolution" by Crane Brinton, "A Century of Dishonor" by Helen Hunt Jackson, and "Red Comet" which is the newest sylvia plath biography and loving them all
Anonymous 23850
>>23764Same I’m terrible at remembering , not just with books but with anime and manga too , I really enjoy reading reviews and watching youtube videos discussing them , usually that’s what’s helps me remember , also maybe writing down quotes that I like
Anonymous 23851
>>23848Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Cambridge Ancient, Medieval, and Modern History
Anonymous 23852
>>23849Oh I forgot to mention I'd prefer if they're about war, I forgot to add that.
Anonymous 23855
any books which feture an amazing/ heartwarming friendship? it doesn't matter what genre and the friendship doesn't have to necessarily be the main focus. I am interested in science fiction, but then again I'm open to any genre
Anonymous 23856
>>19395I know this comment is a whole 8 months old but could you please censor the grim books' descriptions next time? it triggers me due to past trauma to even read simple words that don't go into detail, sorry about being so weak but I precisely drown myself in books to forget
Anonymous 23864
>>23858Storm of Steel by Ernst Junger made me interested in World War 1 so I read The First World War by Hew Strachan because I found it at a thrift store and I liked it. I'm reading 1776 by David McCullough now which is about the American Revolution and it's not bad either but I'm not done with it.
Anonymous 23865
any short stories that you'd recommend, keep it R please, nothing nc-17, I'm 21 but get triggered easily with morbid themes, I almost walked out when watching hereditary and I stopped readong A Clockwork Orange when I knew it contained gang rape and The Time of The Hero because of the ambiguously written bestiality scene, it can feature crime just not have it uncomfortably described with specific details
Anonymous 23866
>>23865I was going to suggest a bunch of Lovecraft, but if you don't like spooky things then better not. Maybe you'd enjoy Neil Gaiman's short stories. He uses a lot of fantastical, fairytaley elements. "Chivalry" is a good one.
Anonymous 23868
>>23865Thomas Ligotti if you like horror. Particularly his compilation book, Songs of a Dead Dreamer & Grimscribe. Nothing particularly graphic as far as I can tell. His style of horror tends to be Lovecraftian, more cerebral and existential.
Etgar Keret's The Bus Driver Who Wanted to be God is good too, his short stories tend to be a bit humorous and surreal. I also recommend High Tide in Tucson by Barbara Kingslover. They're more like a collection of her essays, but for a change of pace she writes a lot about nature, environmentalism, her life and travels. It's really 180 from anything graphic and is a nice breezy read that also has a lot of depth.
Anonymous 27128
Can anyone recommend me something like Pretty Little Liars book series? What I loved about it was having 4 female protagonists who each had their own storyline, mystery and the writing that was very easy to read. I love Sara Shepard's writing style and the way she often writes short dynamic paragraphs and when she does write long paragraphs you're already intrigued by this point. Perfect for my short attention span.
Anonymous 27286
What is y'alls favourite book? Usually for me it's just whatever recent book I read that I liked, which is currently 100 Years of Solitude - I didn't expect it to be so funny. Still if I had to pick one it would probably be Me and Earl and the Dying Girl. I bought it as a kid because I liked the cover and then read it probably about ten times over. Maybe I should reread it.
Anonymous 27402
This thread is my reading progress watchthread from now on. Reading Crime and Punishment page 236. Should finish it 3 days from now. Cya ladies.
Anonymous 27406
>>27402How are you liking it? I remember listening to the youtube audiobook this when I was in school, I had the attention span of a grape and decided to practice chess online at the same time, for the whole book. Obviously, I am still shit at chess. I properly read Notes from the Underground and The Prince though, they were good, the Underground man was so literally sixteen-year-old me.
Has anyone here read Candide? I highly recommend it, it's funny. All philosophy should be communicated through fiction, honestly.
Anonymous 27410
>>27286I finished reading Ramona by Hellen Hunt Jackson. I kind of liked it because of the cowboy vibes, but it was kind of silly and unrealistic at some parts.
Anonymous 27413
i just got through the first two chapters of Picnic at Hanging Rock. its good so far, im curious to know how it's supposed to be eerie or psychedelic. also, it is really hard for me, a burger, to read in an australian accent.
Anonymous 27436
>>27286One of my favorites in Memoirs of a Geisha. It was one of the contributing factors to my descent into a Japanophile. Was disappointed to find out, years later, how unfactual it is though.
Anonymous 27443
>>27413I've only seen the movie, which is fantastic. It's been a while but it did have a hazy, dreamy feel to it.
Anonymous 27451
i just read a discovery of witches.
it's like twilight but for adult women in their 30s.
it's ridiculous how perfect and unique everyone is in that book.
makes me angry they made these unrelatable super smart, beautiful people as characters. how am i supposed to self insert as the main character who is a mary sue with ALL the witchcraft powers at her fingertips when most witches only have 1 or 2 unique powers. How am i supposed to self insert when she is a beautiful blond woman who went to university at a super young age and was a child prodigy with a photographic memory? i wish the author made her more relatable like bella swan. like i am okay with the male lead being impossibly amazing and perfect because it is a wish fulfillment to get a partner like that, but the main character being this perfect? idk, it just doesn't feel relatable to me personally and i get pissed off that stacy gets her chad.
the male lead, matthew clairmont, is super dreamy although a man like that would never look my way. he is 6'8 which is ridiculous because he turned into a vampire in the year ~500 when everyone was a midget because of lack of nutrition lol. and it is similar to twilight because every chapter there is a description about how cold his skin is, how perfectly pale and smooth his skin is, how smoky and grey-green or black his eyes are, how dark and polished and thick his hair is etc. personally really like the smut scenes though they are far and few between.
anyone else read this book? i am dying to talk about it with someone but i have no friends to do so with
Anonymous 27459
>>27436I remember enjoying the book, but because I didn't pay attention to the author's name, I thought it was translated from Japanese. After I found it was just some American guy I couldn't take it as seriously, especially its language.
Anonymous 27485
>>27459this was my problem with no 9 dream. also written by a white man, where he self inserts as a japanese young adult going on dream like adventures. combined with the weird john lennon obsession i couldnt get through it, despite dream fantasy novels being my favorites
Anonymous 27599
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I just read (most of) Misrule by Heather Walter and I'm really sad to say I was kind of disappointed. I really really loved Malice, and was really anticipating what would happen in the second book, but once I actually started it felt overwhelming and underwhelming at the same time. I thought some elements of it were cool at first, but there was such an overload of information and relationships and characters that I got whiplash, and I kind of feel like some of the plot points were clumsily done. The way the character's relationships developed pissed me off. I couldn't finish it because it frustrated me. Feels like she was trying to cram a trilogy's worth of conflict into just a sequel, and yet still couldn't hold my attention.
Has anyone else read it?
Anonymous 27727
Recently I read the epic of gilgamesh, the stephen mitchell version, and would recommend it to everyone, the bromance is so beautiful they are constantly holding hands for no reason, love between friends is just the superior form of love. The plot is actually great, it's an epic like homer but in about eleven chapters, and set in ancient mesopotamia, where the human civilisation first spawned. Also the whole time all I could see were jojo characters.
Anonymous 28920
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Right now I am re-reading The Hobbit (almost finished!), then I'm going to re-read the first Lord of the Rings book, then the last two LOTR which I havent read yet.
Also I'm reading The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion which is really nice but very very sad, its kind of a memoir but mostly focused on her husband's death and her daughter's illness
Anonymous 28921
>>23856Sorry, I tried to delete but it wouldn't let me. I have PTSD myself so I take your post seriously. If a mod can delete it please do.
Anonymous 28922
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>>4713Solzhenitsyn is the shit, anon, Gulag Archipelago is a great read. There really isn't a better portrait of the monstrosity of the 20th Century.
Anonymous 28925
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I finished "Let the Right One In" yesterday. It's a horror-romance novel about a vampire in Sweden. It was a good read, but I wasn't expecting to enjoy the romance as much as I did. Especially, considering the MC starts out as pretty creepy. By the end, I was all on board. It got me in an MM romance mood, so I picked up a copy of "The Song of Achilles" today. Partly due to online recommendations, and hugely due to not liking to buy books with embarrassing covers in person.
On the side, I'm reading a book of poetry called "Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam." It's nice, so far. A lot of the poems, despite being so old, feel really contemporary in how they cut to the bone of experience. I haven't read much literature from the Islamic world, let alone Persia, so I'm pretty excited.
Anonymous 28926
Do you guys like to buy your books, use ereaders, or go to the library? I find that librarians are really stoked for visitors and I like interacting with them. I'm visiting grandparents right now in a small town that's not even a .5 miles wide, and visited their public library. Their reaction made it seem like they hadn't seen anyone in months.
They didn't have a kiosk where I could search for books on my own, so I asked the librarian for help finding some Joan Didion. They didn't have any, so I tried McCullers and still no luck. They didn't even have any Virginia Woolf who was my hail mary. She asked me to give her one more try, and that she had to find me something. I actually have never read the Bell Jar before lmao, and I thought that would be my best bet. So I guess that's what I'm reading now.
Anonymous 28927
>>28925Is it the Edward Fitzgerald translation? It's a very good poem, though supposedly it's not very accurate.
Anonymous 28929
>>28920a rather odd but cute looking cover
Anonymous 28930
>>28927Mine is the Avery/Heath-Stubbs version. I'm not sure how they compare, but they claim to be literal in their translation choices as far as I can tell.
>>28926I should use my library more often. It's only a two block walk from my house. Granted, I just moved in a couple months ago.
After that, I prefer to buy books physically. Maybe I just haven't tried a good enough ereader, but they're always my last resort choice for when I need a copy fast of some text. I haven't tried any of the higher end ones, and they're not THAT expensive. I just have such bad experiences that I can't see how much difference they would make.
Anonymous 28934
>>28926awh that's sweet. my mother used to work in a library and she would talk about how appreciative she was to people who stopped by to talk
Anonymous 28937
>>28930You should look into what perks come with your library card. I think with mine I get free admission for 2/3 people to my city zoo, art museums, and state parks a year. I'm trying to collect library cards so the state still sees that they're being used and will continue to fund them.
>>28934I felt very appreciated! I told the librarian I usually only visit once a year, and she said she would request some Carson McCullers for the next time I'm in town.
Anonymous 29311
>>3099The Easter Parade and Convenience Store Woman
Anonymous 29776
has anyone here read any mikeo kawakami? shes my new favorite. Heaven is just so good
Anonymous 29839
Anybody know any good books about the craft of writing short stories?
Anonymous 29840
>>28926I usually go to the library, and then if I really really really like a book after reading it I'll buy myself a copy
>>29776no but i will check her out, thanks
Anonymous 30050
>>29776Same anon who replied before. Just finished Heaven. It's hard to describe but it felt…realistic in a very frustrating way. The prose was excellent, and there were lots of little phrases that made me stop and think. I didn't like Momose, he felt out of place. He didn't talk like a real person.
Overall it was very good and I will try to read more books by her in the future. Thanks anon
Anonymous 30248
nonas I'm feeling a little sad. looking to join online book clubs or something of that nature. I feel like I don't connect with anyone.
Anonymous 30252
>>3098Cormac McCarthy Blood Meridian. I really loved this book. It's surprisingly relevant, speaks to the kind of fascist shameless people who run this country even now.
Anonymous 30511
>>3099Not necessarily a loser because of her own actions, but Jane Eyre follows the life of a young orphan girl who's made into a social pariah due to the likes of her extended family
Anonymous 30512
anyone itt read any elena ferrante? I'm reading the second novel in the Neapolitan Quartet right now, I'm enjoying it but also a bit inpatient to get to the part where the characters are adults.
Anonymous 30947
I would like a writing tip, I'm participating in a game of writing fanfics for friends and I'm writing an investigation, in that "people trapped in a certain place, someone dies and the detective has to find out which of these people is the murderer" style, although it's just a fanfic I would like it to be enjoyable. Does anyone have a genre writing tip to share with me?
Anonymous 30953
>>30512I've read all four books! When I finished them, I really felt as if I lived their whole life myself. Elena Ferante's writing is so real. The characters are so real that in my mind, I didn't read a fictional story but the real thing, if that makes sense.
Have you finished reading them all by now? Do you know there is also a series based on the books?
Anonymous 30955
>>30252I could barely tell what's going on in Blood Meridian. The punctuation is nonexistent, random time skips happen and entire events get glossed over completely. The ending is also anticlimactic and abrupt. Most of the story is just pointless gore and debauchery fumbling towards a nonexistent conclusion.
Anonymous 30957
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The sequel is way better than Charlie and The Chocolate Factory. It's also somehow weirder and more unhinged than the original.
The book contains:
>Aliens
>A Luxury Moon Hotel
>Immortality Pills
>A Portal To Purgatory
Anonymous 31001
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has anybody read this? It makes me think about the psychological implications of religions/philosophies on us as women. In the west we are probably swinging away from patriarchal consciousness and towards more matriarchal religions and philosophies (eg new ageism). Really great read overall!
any good book recs? I dont like non-fiction and I kinda want an intro to feminist literature but Im not sure where to start.
Anonymous 31072
>>30953i definitely agree about you with the writing! she's one of the authors that can make me feel so entranced in the world of the book, like i did when I was a kid.
I've read three of the books but right now I'm unable to find any website that ships the last book in the series to my country ;(. I'll probably just end up getting a pdf of it.
Also I'm curious about the TV show, have you watched it, what did you think?
Anonymous 31079
There's going to be a huge book sale on Friday where I'm from. Anyone got any interesting fantasy book recommendations? I recently read the first Earthsea book and am planning to get the edition with all 7 books in one. I've read most of the books that are currently popular (Grishaverse, Poppy War and so on) as well as older popular fantasy (LoTR, Narnia, The Witcher and so on). I don't really enjoy the romance fantasy genre but if it's a really good one I'm willing to give it a try as well.
Anonymous 31080
>>31079Percy Jackson and The Olympians
Anonymous 31081
>>31080Read those back in high-school, they were a blast! Also read the 1st book of the Egyptian mythology series but never got around to finishing the rest of it.
Anonymous 31087
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Reading pic related at the moment. It's pretty decent, I'm unfortunately swamped with life lately so the short chapters are great for quick downtime moments.
Anonymous 31096
>>30955It's meant to be a very visualizing and commentary driven story.
Not really a typical narrative driven thing.
Anonymous 31112
>>31072Oh, is it that difficult to get the book in your country? I hope you can manage to get it!
I totally agree with you! Ferrante's writing got me back into reading and enjoying it again like I did as a child. I'm still surprised at myself by how fast I was able to read them all.
Although Ferrante's writing is set in post-WWII life in Napels, it feels so universal. The growing up poor and trying to escape it, the female friendships where you feel a connection but also animosity, the mother-daughter relationship of love but also feeling trapped by it, the navigating the world dominated by men as a woman, … I could go on and on. I honestly always recommend these books to everyone. I'm surprised that it isn't more popular, especially in online feminist circles. I mean, here we have a female author writing about female protagonists encountering issues women everywhere can relate to.
As for the series, it's great! Absolutely recommend watching it. There are three seasons out now, each season corresponding with one book. It's always difficult to translate a book to a movie or TV series, but I think they did a great job with this. The only issue I had is that in the third season, when Lila and Lenu are basically adult women with children, they were still played by the actresses that played in season one and two. The actresses are amazing, but there were moments in season three that you could just see that they were too young and didn't fit in the timeline. I understand that it's difficult to change actresses in a way that it wouldn't disturb the flow of the series, but I think they should've done so around midway the third season. Still, love it and please do watch it!
Anonymous 31156
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Read Borges's Book of Imaginary Beings slowly over the course of a few months. Each entry was one or two pages on various mythical creatures or sometimes just fantasy creatures he liked, like the Oderek from Kafka. And in a few cases he just made up the creatures, so it was cool not knowing the "legitimacy" of an entry when you started to read. I love mythology so I knew nearly all the creatures beforehand, but several were new to me. And even for the ones I knew, it was interesting to see what sources Borges used to describe them.
Sadly, my edition didn't have as many entries as some others, so it didn't include things like banshees, gnomes, lemures, etc. But I still very much enjoyed it!
Anonymous 31399
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if the other anon who like Elena Ferrante is still here, I recommend 'The girl returned' (original name L'Arminuta) by Donatella Di Pietrantnio. Some similar themes to the Neapolitan Quartet. And they also remind me of eachother because the have the same English translator lol
Anonymous 31477
>>31399Still here! Thank you for the rec. I will definitely look for it and read it!
Anonymous 31529
Someone give us good reccs for philosophy books, preferably ones that aren't too moid-brained. I've read Beauvoir and plan to read Dworkin. There's things that I disagree with, but I found myself really liking the style and just the hyper-referentiality of it. I wanna feel smart, man.
Anonymous 31530
>>31529sorry idk any non-moid brained philosophy. I really like neitzche, plato, and camus. Also the corpus hermeticum was very interesting.
Anonymous 31543
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looking for sad stuff that isn't moid shit
or something feelgood
Anonymous 31549
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Starting pic related. Does anyone want to form a book club to critically discuss?
Anonymous 31684
>>31529Nicomachean Ethics is my favorite I've read
Anonymous 31691
>>31529>simone weil>edith stein>hannah arendt>lisa bortolotti>sandrine bergès>pamela hieronymi>jennifer lackey>luce irigaray Anonymous 31694
>>3099I read T. H. White's Sword in the Stone recently. It's the book that the Disney animated film Sword in the Stone (1963) is based off of.
There is a literally mentally ill male falcon that says the N-word in it out of his own instinctual impulse and I can't recommend the book to other people I don't know because of that, but it is a delightful book. Rewatching the Sword in the Stone from Disney made me realize how much Walt (when he was alive) wanted to animate the book and its importance, but probably realized the production costs were too high for the times. There are many scenes that are missing but as I was reading, I could hear Walt screaming in my head "ANIMATE IT. ANIMATE IT." I highly recommend the book to crestfallen Disney fans who despise the direction the now soulless corporation has taken.
Anonymous 31710
>>31549I suspect the biggest problem wiht conscious superintelligence will be preventing it from offing itself.
Anonymous 31936
>>31691>luce irigaray have you or anyone itt read her books? did you like them and if so, what would you recommend i start with? i've heard good things about her and i'm interested.
>simone weilsame with her please
Anonymous 33177
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I keep trying to read contemporary literary success and everything is mediocre. I suspect when you have read too many classics, everything else taste bland.
I am not ready to give up though. Do you have recommendations for excellent contemporary prose?
Anonymous 33182
>>33177You have to read Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. It changed my life. She was incredibly ahead of her time. She stands out because she creates a dystopia whilst also offering a solution through her fictional religion, Earthseed, whose primary tenet is that God is Change, and that God exists to shape you AND to be shaped by you. It challenges the Bible and creates its own religion.
The Earthseed verses are scarily relevant, beautiful and the world she builds is vivid. I'm about to read it a second time, I just finished the sequel Parable of the Talents. It's a shame she died before getting to finish the series.
Anonymous 33191
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>>33182I've read it. The writing is meh, the story is interesting.
If you're into post-apocalyptic with an ecofeminism vibe, you can read Marlen Haushofer's The Wall. It's contemplative and beautiful, with some f profound truths.
Anonymous 33192
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>>3098Currently reading Ernst Junger's "Storm of Steel". I want to read more books to increase my vocabulary since I am writing a book of my own.
Any recommendations that are short and interesting would be cool
Anonymous 33195
>>33193Can I get a little bit of a word on all of these?
Anonymous 33197
>>33195If you tell me what you like and what you look for in literature, I can personalize the reading advice. (also your age, or a general idea)
Anonymous 33198
>>33197More novels about war, love and anything related to japanese mythology
Anonymous 33199
Japanese Classical…
>>33198>WarKenzaburo Oe (1994 Nobel Prize) write a lot of good short fiction about war.
Heart of Darkness, by J. Conrad inspired Apocalypse Now.
>LoveHenry James, Daisy Miller. Imagine James as an American Austen in the early 20th century. Very good psychological portraits of American and European youth clashing.
Edith Warthon, The Letters. This should be mandatory CC reading. Can't really talk about it without spoiling.
Tolstoi, The Devil: a man with morals is trying to not cheat on his wife
Goethe, The Sorrow of young Werther: a classic which introduced desperate, romantic love. Beware: it's old.
>japanese mythologyCan't help you there. Maybe pic related.
Anonymous 33200
>>33199Thankyuu, Nonya! I will check them out after In Stahlgewitter
Anonymous 35200
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Currently reading picrel. It deals with the topic of wartime sexual violence by telling the stories of the women who have experienced it and their struggles to get justice against their rapists. The subject matter can be difficult to read about, but doing so is nearly, especially since this topic is often swept under the rug.
Anonymous 36085
I re-read His Dark Materials again after seeing the 2007 movie as a joke, and I’m surprised that they kind of suck now that I’m not a 3edgy teenager in a repressed religious household. I think Pullman hit the mark with the first book and then sort of worked in the “kill god” and “Lyra is Eve” stuff in the second ones. It just seems a little post hoc, idk how to describe it. And Scoresby’s daemon was totally forgotten about in the first book so he had to make her super obvious in the second. I also don’t like that Lyra got turned into an idiot the second she met Will. There’s literally no romantic tension between Will and Lyra. Everyone’s characterizations are all fucky wucky. The wheel aliens are just… not that interesting and don’t play a role at all. The so-called amber spyglass in the last book doesn’t do shit. And the last part of the two characters not being able to be together because the subtle knife makes specters is so hackney’d and dumb, just to add tragedy to an otherwise jumbled story. It just kinda sucked. I’m sort of stuck on stuff to read right now.
