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7 y.o. bitch posted:That you have nothing but disdain for lit crit? Please explain. A little of all of those; closest with this, though I wouldn't go that far. It's difficult to explain, hence the comic detachment. The best summary of my view on lit-crit generally (and, yes, it's an enormous field) would probably be that I think it can provide a lot of useful analytical tools when considering artistic works, but that those tools are generally used as a substitute for original thought rather than a facilitator of it; that many of said tools exist primarily to push assorted socio-political agendas more than anything else; and that those socio-political agendas, in turn, often have more to do with the churning drive towards tenure than they do with actual individuals experiencing real problems in the world outside academia. In other words, Terry Eagleton's an extremely perceptive writer, and you can learn a lot by reading his books, but he's trying to sell you on Marxism, and more specifically, he's trying to sell you on Marxism so you'll buy his textbook. That said, two essays in particular in the Crews book -- "A Bourgeois Writer's Proletarian Fables" and "A. A. Milne's Honey-Balloon-Pit-Gun-Tail-Bathtubcomplex" really are wonderful send-ups of Marxist and Freudian literary analysis, respectively. The Crews book has value because it 1) presents decent examples of various schools of literary analysis, familiarizing the reader with those ideas, and 2) is also funny, a marked advantage. So it's hard to beat because it gives a good basic education while also having the wisdom to not take itself too seriously, which most literary critics avoid more assiduously than Dracula would avoid a cross made out of holy-water-grown hydroponic garlic. Of course, any general statement I make about "lit crit" is going to have at least one, if not a hundred, exceptions -- as you say, the field's enormous, and enormously varied. For every Eagleton there's an Eco. But still -- in my personal experience, at least, the weeds have overgrown the yard, and it's best to approach any lit-crit text carefully, with gloves on and trowel well in hand. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 21:51 on Jun 29, 2010 |
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Jun 29, 2010 21:36
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There used to be a thread about ebooks up in here, but I can't find it. Anyone got a link?
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Jun 30, 2010 22:08
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Rhymenoceros posted:There used to be a thread about ebooks up in here, but I can't find it. Anyone got a link? It got moved to the gadget forum: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3142969
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Jun 30, 2010 22:34
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SouthShoreSamurai posted:Searched all 5 pages, and I don't see any posts about the Sword of Truth series. There's a very large thread here about it, and there was one in the TV IV. The one here got pretty hilarious.
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Jun 30, 2010 23:33
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B&N having a 20% off a book sale for the weekend. Code is Y9K7J7X.
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Jul 1, 2010 17:35
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Has there ever been a Patrick O'Brian thread here? I was reading the Naomi Novik Temeraire series and I had to migrate over to Aubrey/Maturin just to get my head clear.
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Jul 1, 2010 19:16
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I'd like to track down a literary anthology book I read from during a 7th grade English class about 15 years ago. A lot of the short stories were real classics that stuck with me. I'd forgotten most of their names but over the years picked up that amongst them were Lennigan vs the Ants, Flowers for Algernon, and The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell. There was a forth story I recall but don't know the name of it. It involved an assassin traveling on a river boat (I think). He was to know his target by a particular habit of theirs, which was always pressing down the corners of matchbooks with his fingernails. The assassin has his own tell, though, which was rubbing his earlobe, a habit he's trying to break. Ultimately he gives himself away and ends up being the one killed. That's all I can remember. If anyone can tell me the name of that last story I'd appreciate it. Also, I'd like to have a copy of this anthology, or one just like it that contains these stories and others like them. But I'm not quite sure how to go about looking for an anthology book with specific short stories.
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Jul 2, 2010 08:17
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It's weird how just plain uninterested in Romanticism people are, my poor thread.  Over the last 15 years there has been a renewal of interest among scholars, and there have been some good books published. I really cannot suggest Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship more, it's a great book, one of the greatest novels ever written and one of the most influential of the entire 18th century, really pick it up, you'd be doing yourself a huge favor. DarkCompanion fucked around with this message at 12:45 on Jul 2, 2010 |
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Jul 2, 2010 12:34
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Has there ever been a Patrick O'Brian thread here? I was reading the Naomi Novik Temeraire series and I had to migrate over to Aubrey/Maturin just to get my head clear. Not that I can recall, but there have definitely been O'Brian references and discussions in other threads. My minimal contribution: Thomas Pynchon name-checks O'Brian in Mason & Dixon with a joke about O'Brian who knows rigging better than any sailor on board. I love that little joke.
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Jul 2, 2010 12:45
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So the art thread popped up again on the games forums, 7 y.o. bitch you had a very compelling argument on the matter last time, but I never got the chance to ask about something you said. Usually one of the most thrown arguments on the matter is that games are a new media and that like cinema and radio before it will eventually be accepted in the advent of a new social order; in the old thread you rebuked this and said not every new medium suffered this, basically what I wanted to ask is for examples. I'm not trying to call you out or anything, I honestly just want to know.
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Jul 2, 2010 17:15
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Has there ever been a Patrick O'Brian thread here? I was reading the Naomi Novik Temeraire series and I had to migrate over to Aubrey/Maturin just to get my head clear. Are they any good? I've been meaning to read them. I couldn't loving stand Temeraire.
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Jul 3, 2010 08:46
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freebooter posted:Are they any good? I've been meaning to read them. I couldn't loving stand Temeraire. The Patrick O'Brian books are absolutely brilliant -- pretty much perfect. The characters and setting are *perfectly* drawn. O'Brian did his historical research and it shows -- not just getting the dates of his battles right, but all the characters speak in period voices, using period language, etc.; the sailors use period nautical terms, the ship's doctor uses period medical terminology, etc. Plus, on top of that, the series has immensely compelling characters. The basic "engine" is the relationship between Jack Aubrey, a ship captain in the Royal Navy, and his surgeon, Stephen Maturin. Aubrey's optimistic, brave, friendly -- sortof a golden retriever of a man, a drat-near genius of a fighting ship captain but absolutely hopeless at just about anything on land (career politics, economic/business decisions, etc.) Maturin, by contrast, is pretty much hopeless at sea, but an expert on land -- academic physician, secret agent, expert naturalist and scientist, etc. So the typical cycle of the books is 1. Aubrey and Maturin are both poor. 2. They go to sea and, through Aubrey's brilliance, take prizes in roaring sea battles. 3. They go back to land and Aubrey fucks up somehow and loses everything. 4. Maturin pulls off some machinations and gets Aubrey back into a boat where he can't get in any more trouble. 5. return to #2. As an example, my favorite scene in the whole series might be in the second book, when Aubrey's being chased by tipstaffs (bailiffs from the Debtor's Prison). To legally arrest him for debt, they have to touch him with their staffs, their symbol of office. SO he's been hiding out on his ship, where they can't get to him. It's docked in port, though, and he sneaks off to go to a party at a local inn, just a few hundred yards away from where his ship is docked. Halfway through the party, the bailiffs break into the inn, so his friends & crew brawl hold them off while Aubrey runs to the window - only to see that the bailiffs have stationed men below the window, too. So he shouts out to his crew, they send the press-gang ashore, impress the bailiffs, and sail away. It's an incredibly great scene, and one that could only be written by an author who'd researched Napoleonic era debtor's law *and* maritime/press gang law. Overall, I can't recommend them highly enough. It does help to buy the "Sea of Words" book from Amazon -- it's a dictionary of all the nautical terms, etc., so when Aubrey orders someone to "mouse the horses" you can figure out that he's ordering them to tie the footropes more securely in the rigging, etc. I think I'm on my third or fourth read-through of the series right now and there are long passages I'm only now beginning to understand, with the help of said dictionary. All the battles in the series are based on actual naval battles of the period -- basically, Aubrey is a heavy rewrite of Lord Cochrane -- so there's an incredible amount of realism in every word, with the added joy of reading something that you know is fairly close to actual historical battles. So much better than Temeraire. I mean, hell, I like dragons as much as the next guy, but if you're writing historical fiction, make your characters live in that era, don't just transpose modern individuals back 300 years >_<. (Susanna Clarke's Johnathan Strange and Mr. Norell is another example of a book that did historical napoleonic-era fiction right, with characters who speak and think as if they're from that era.) Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 15:41 on Jul 3, 2010 |
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Jul 3, 2010 14:24
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Honest Thief posted:So the art thread popped up again on the games forums, 7 y.o. bitch you had a very compelling argument on the matter last time, but I never got the chance to ask about something you said. I don't care about this anymore, so I'm not really going to discuss it much, plus this is the book thread, not the games thread. But briefly, it's not about being "accepted" so much as a medium not becoming a primary artistic medium. There are some media that were tied to their political/religious systems that are gone (the processionary canopy for autocratic countries in the 17th/18th centuries, reliques), there are some that were novelties (automatons, which I would say video games are close relatives of in a way; also tableau vivantes, which are still relatively popular, but mostly for amusement), some that are no longer artistic media (radio, to use your example), and some that were so tied to their technologies that they faded from use (pictures made from the camera obscura, then the daguerreotype). There are also plenty of things I would constitute as "visual culture," but wouldn't call "art," mostly graphic design, typography, advertising, mass-produced toys and furniture design and jewelry, comics (imho) etc., and video games. I think it's very interesting that the argument that I was getting at, that an art object must elicit "empathy" with an honest-to-god other human being or culture, is almost exactly the same conclusion that Ebert came to (same word, same kind of musings about what constitutes "empathy"), and I somehow doubt he read our little forum's thread.
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Jul 4, 2010 04:42
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ONE TWO THREE TIMES TWO TO THE SIX/JONESING FOR YOUR FIX OF THAT LIMP BIZKIT MIX
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Is there a thread that's an equivalent to GBS's post the film you can't remember the name of thread? There's a short story in a horror book I read a while ago and I can't remember where the hell I read it. EDIT: Cool. Thanks. Darth Ronson fucked around with this message at 00:02 on Jul 5, 2010 |
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Jul 4, 2010 23:53
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Darth Ronson posted:Is there a thread that's an equivalent to GBS's post the film you can't remember the name of thread? There's a short story in a horror book I read a while ago and I can't remember where the hell I read it. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2704537
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Jul 4, 2010 23:56
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:What he said 100%. I've dug up the Pynchon O'Brian quote, from the inestimable Mason & Dixon: quote:Excuse me, Captain, problem with the Euphroes again". If it's good enough for Thomas Pynchon it's good enough for me. I also thoroughly enjoy the lighter but equally accurate Flashman series.
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Jul 5, 2010 17:39
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Sorry for disrupting any on-going conversations: Does anyone recommend any Introduction to Philosophy books? I'm not looking for a college textbook, but maybe something less academic and more engaging.
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Jul 5, 2010 21:59
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If you're not reading this month's book, you're missing out.
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Jul 8, 2010 10:20
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Surprise surprise, Orson Scott Card is homophobic for religious reasons.quote:The hypocrites of homosexuality are, of course, already preparing to answer these statements by accusing me of homophobia, gay-bashing, bigotry, intolerance; but nothing that I have said here -- and nothing that has been said by any of the prophets or any of the Church leaders who have dealt with this issue -- can be construed as advocating, encouraging, or even allowing harsh personal treatment of individuals who are unable to resist the temptation to have sexual relations with persons of the same sex. On the contrary, the teachings of the Lord are clear in regard to the way we must deal with sinners. Christ treated them with compassion -- as long as they confessed that their sin was a sin. Only when they attempted to pretend that their sin was righteousness did he harshly name them for what they were: fools, hypocrites, sinners. Hypocrites because they were unwilling to change their behavior and instead attempted to change the law to fit it; fools because they thought that deceiving an easily deceivable society would achieve the impossible goal of also deceiving God.  Guys I'm not a homophobe, honest!
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Jul 9, 2010 17:36
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Y-Hat posted:Surprise surprise, Orson Scott Card is homophobic for religious reasons. Yeah that sort of stuff made me stop reading any of his stuff. Well that, and that the next book after Ender's Game kinda blew.
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Jul 9, 2010 22:54
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I was at the bookstore today and found that the book The Repossession Mambo has been renamed to Repo Men and the cover now shows Jude Law and Forest Whittaker. I mean, I can understand the movie tie in book cover (I don't like it but I can understand it) but did they really have to change the name of the book?
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Jul 11, 2010 07:02
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I had a rather odd encounter in Waterstones yesterday. I was browsing the fiction section when I saw a nice lady sitting alone at a tressle table surrounded by books. She called me over, said she was a writer of crime thrillers and then asked if I was interested in buying one of her books. I said I wasn't a huge fan of the genre and wished her good fortune with her work and her book. She started getting a little desperate and went for the hard sell, pushing plot elements and characters out to try convince me to buy her book, assuring me her crime fiction is better than the rest, that I should reallty give it a go, she might be up for an award etc. I still didn't buy one. I felt kinda bad after walking off. Sad that she had to sit there all alone and try convince complete strangers to like her work. Is it normal for writers to sit in bookshops and try drum up trade like a fruit seller on a market stall? I've never seen it before.
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Jul 11, 2010 10:04
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I remember one of the major chain bookstores on the main street sticking an author outside on a wooden folding table in the middle of all the foot traffic, like some sort of terribly lonely sausage sizzle. All through the middle of the day the guy just sat there quietly as thousands of people brushed past with complete indifference with nary a staff member in sight. Can only assume it was just too much bother to have him inside, cluttering up the merchandising floor-plan. Said bookstore closed about a year or so after that.
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Jul 11, 2010 11:51
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Dr Scoofles posted:Is it normal for writers to sit in bookshops and try drum up trade like a fruit seller on a market stall? I've never seen it before. I heard a story once where Harlen Ellison sat and wrote a short story in the window of a bookstore once to make a point about how writing is actually work (or something like that), but I've never heard of the writer actually pushing their own stuff.
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Jul 11, 2010 15:48
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I've seen it a couple times. Well, once really, because the other time was an actual "signing", but that was a local genre author. The other time was some nicely dressed young man handing me a flier for his book, power-sell style. Not too common I suppose, but it does happen.
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Jul 11, 2010 15:52
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inktvis posted:I remember one of the major chain bookstores on the main street sticking an author outside on a wooden folding table in the middle of all the foot traffic, like some sort of terribly lonely sausage sizzle. All through the middle of the day the guy just sat there quietly as thousands of people brushed past with complete indifference with nary a staff member in sight. Can only assume it was just too much bother to have him inside, cluttering up the merchandising floor-plan. It sounds like that gentleman needs better representation.
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Jul 11, 2010 15:55
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The last time I was at the bookstore, there was a couple of authors sitting at small desks in the middle of the main walkway from the front to the back of the store. It's a pretty crowded bookstore and aside from this path (which is clogged with new release / best seller / sales stands anyway) you're mostly walking between shelves. When I'm buying books, I like to grab a big pile from all over the bookstore and go to the cafe and choose which ones I want to purchase while I sip a coffee. This meant I had to squeeze by these two miserable men several times going back and forth. There was never anyone at their desks (and from the resigned, sitting way back in the chair looks of these guys, they had been there a long time and weren't looking very inviting), but the real problem here was that if anyone did decide to have a chat with either of them, they'd be directly in the walkpath of anyone trying to get through the store. Who plans this poo poo?
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Jul 11, 2010 18:02
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I'm trying to find a book I read in 6th grade- I just finished my 4th year of college so this was in 1999 or 2000. Everyone in my class hated it (even those of us who loved reading), enough that our teacher actually gave up making us do assignments on it. I want to read the stories again now that I'm older. I've tried googling and searching on Amazon but I just can't find it I'm pretty sure the title was Great American Short Stories or some variation but on amazon there are 905 results so uh.. yeah. It was a collection of short stories, maybe 5 or 6. One was definitely the Gift of the Magi, but that's the only title I know. There was one authored by a well known guy whose name is on the tip of my tongue. I know I hated it because I love animals and the guy had a dog, but when they got lost, he killed the dog and climbed inside of it for warmth, but then he died anyway so it made me mad. I also probably cried, but anyway. The only other story I remember was about a guy who escaped being executed, but then it turns out it was a dream and actually the execution went through just fine. If anyone somehow knows what book/collection/whatever this is... I will be so incredibly grateful, I've been trying to find this thing for years and it's bothering me so much.
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Jul 12, 2010 01:05
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ABFA00 posted:The only other story I remember was about a guy who escaped being executed, but then it turns out it was a dream and actually the execution went through just fine. An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
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Jul 12, 2010 01:10
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Really quick question. There was a thread somewhere on the forums, and I can't remember where, recommending odd books to people. One of them (in the OP in fact) about a world built into a wall made of memories, or the cities were made of memories. Anyone know what I'm talking about?
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Jul 12, 2010 06:52
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fritz posted:An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge Here's a nice little article about Bierce: http://www.thenation.com/article/36576/bierced
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Jul 12, 2010 10:34
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Snowman_McK posted:Really quick question. There was a thread somewhere on the forums, and I can't remember where, recommending odd books to people. One of them (in the OP in fact) about a world built into a wall made of memories, or the cities were made of memories. Anyone know what I'm talking about? That's the obscure/underrated Sci-Fi/Fantasy thread.
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Jul 12, 2010 14:07
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Haplo26 posted:Sorry for disrupting any on-going conversations: Sophie's World
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Jul 12, 2010 15:32
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Fire In The Disco posted:That's the obscure/underrated Sci-Fi/Fantasy thread. Embarassingly, i found it moments ago, just before clicking here. I'm trying to find a sheepish emoticon. There was also a series about a alternate future past/alternate history semi tech china, mostly about empires and conquering and stuff. It was very long, and ended up involving time travel and meeting alternate versions of the main character. The covers had a gnarly Ghengis Khan looking dude on the cover striking a pose, usually with space ships in the background. I'm sorry for the impossibly vague description. It was frenziedly described to me by a friend years ago, and I promptly forgot the title.
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Jul 13, 2010 05:14
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I just finished Anathem, which I quiiite enjoyed, but I was REALLY pissed off that pages started falling out. I took it out of the house once, and only cracked the spine lightly as I went (i.e., not a big, bringing-the-covers-together crack), which is what I do with all books that I read - none of which have suffered the same fate. Cheap crap. I shall write a strong letter to the publisher. (The cover design is also pretty poor).
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Jul 13, 2010 12:41
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I'm not sure if this is the right thread, but I have a question about Stephen King's It. Is there any reason It claims It's name is Robert Grey? It just seems such a random, normal name.
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Jul 13, 2010 14:33
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Holy Cow posted:I'm not sure if this is the right thread, but I have a question about Stephen King's It. Is there any reason It claims It's name is Robert Grey? It just seems such a random, normal name. I always thought of it similar to Randall Flagg. IT is just a personal moniker for something that should have no name, or at least no name that we would understand. (i do understand that it is different for RF, I was just liking it to him)
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Jul 13, 2010 15:51
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Need some book of the month suggestions. So far I've got Ragged Dick and Super Fetus, so weird titles I guess.
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Jul 15, 2010 16:01
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LooseChanj posted:Need some book of the month suggestions. So far I've got Ragged Dick and Super Fetus, so weird titles I guess. Jurgen by James Branch Cabell Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold Sunnyside by Glen David Gold Lick around the Outside of my Anus and also on the Inside of my Anus by Nietzsche
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Jul 15, 2010 16:28
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maxnmona posted:Lick around the Outside of my Anus and also on the Inside of my Anus by Nietzsche Oh come on, that's Wittgenstein.
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Jul 15, 2010 16:37
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