|
Happy Hedonist posted:I was specifically thinking fiction so I didn't include Hitchens in my list, but in retrospect he should be in there. Letters to a Young Contrarian hosed my world up. I've been meaning to read Fenton for years now.
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2014 03:28
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 29, 2024 02:57 |
|
|
Iamblikhos posted:"If on a winter's night a traveler" or "The Baron in the Trees" perhaps? Cosmicomics might also be a good starting point; the short stories in there really capture his style.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2014 03:44
|
|
|
Invisible Cities is really awesome. Just don't go in looking for a narrative, just appreciate the writing and the ideas.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2014 04:31
|
|
Chamberk posted:Invisible Cities is really awesome. Just don't go in looking for a narrative, just appreciate the writing and the ideas. that's my favorite one of his. the only reason i didn't list it is that we were asked for a good place to begin and it strikes me as not everyone's cup of tea
|
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2014 04:35
|
|
|
It was my first Calvino and actually the only one I've read. I'm planning on reading "If On A Winter's Night A Traveler..." sometime soon.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2014 04:55
|
|
|
If people are looking for something modern and reminiscent of Calvino, you could do worse than read "The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards" by Kristopher Jansma.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2014 05:57
|
|
|
Happy Hedonist posted:Martin Amis is one of my favorites and I've yet to see him mentioned. I recommend Money, London Fields, and Time's Arrow: Or the Nature of the Offence. Time's Arrow is a fantastic read and could probably be considered sci-fi to some extent considering the narrator is traveling backwards through time. RealTalk: Imo Martin Amis is one of our two or threw greatest living novelists & London Fields is a better book than Infinite Jest. I don't know why goons aren't over Amis' dick: he's unbearably snobby, has terrible teeth, is a turbo-feminist-social-justice-nerd who is simultaneously obessed with machismo and male violence, writes about fat miserable sacks of poo poo coming to their inevitable tragic ends(like E/N), & passionately hates all popular things that aren't pub sports or board games. He's like the goon Moses.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2014 09:09
|
|
A Rambling Vagrant posted:RealTalk: Imo Martin Amis is one of our two or threw greatest living novelists & London Fields is a better book than Infinite Jest. I don't know why goons aren't over Amis' dick: he's unbearably snobby, has terrible teeth, is a turbo-feminist-social-justice-nerd who is simultaneously obessed with machismo and male violence, writes about fat miserable sacks of poo poo coming to their inevitable tragic ends(like E/N), & passionately hates all popular things that aren't pub sports or board games. He's like the goon Moses. If the anti-"literature" goons in this thread came up with a really mean-spirited parody of a "literary" author it would look exactly like Martin Amis. Also apart from being a massive pseud he likes to go off about Muslims so that's not going to fly with D&D.
|
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2014 11:05
|
|
|
A Rambling Vagrant posted:RealTalk: Imo Martin Amis is one of our two or threw greatest living novelists & London Fields is a better book than Infinite Jest. Sir John Feelgood fucked around with this message at 17:25 on Nov 17, 2017 |
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2014 11:36
|
|
|
A Rambling Vagrant posted:RealTalk: Imo Martin Amis is one of our two or threw greatest living novelists & London Fields is a better book than Infinite Jest. I don't know why goons aren't over Amis' dick: he's unbearably snobby, has terrible teeth, is a turbo-feminist-social-justice-nerd who is simultaneously obessed with machismo and male violence, writes about fat miserable sacks of poo poo coming to their inevitable tragic ends(like E/N), & passionately hates all popular things that aren't pub sports or board games. He's like the goon Moses. Read the first couple of pages and it looks awesome. Real talk: this thread has already added more books to my to-read list than any other one in TBB.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2014 12:55
|
|
|
Mike Gallego posted:What's everyone's thoughts on Beowulf? I personally enjoyed it in the various classes that had me read it, and think a lot of goons would too. The Seamus Heaney translation is quite good.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2014 17:20
|
|
Clipperton posted:If the anti-"literature" goons in this thread came up with a really mean-spirited parody of a "literary" author it would look exactly like Martin Amis. Also apart from being a massive pseud he likes to go off about Muslims so that's not going to fly with D&D. A few years ago a reviewer described one of Amis's novels as being "as bad as catching your favorite uncle on a kindergarten playground masturbating". Don't know how fair it is, but there you go.
|
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2014 17:24
|
|
|
That was Tibor Fischer's review of Yellow Dog. It ran on the Telegraph's leader pages, and it made fun of the title. I remembered there being a row about it, but I just looked on Wikipedia and apparently he was so upset with its reception he moved to Uruguay for two years. Good stuff.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2014 17:40
|
|
|
Smoking Crow posted:Yeah, but the new poo poo isn't narrative. Someone needs to get on writing a modern epic poem There's always Toby Barlow's brilliant Sharp Teeth, though really that's just a longform prose poem.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2014 17:50
|
|
|
Grant's autobiography is way more literary than anything all these poser writers ever wrote.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2014 17:54
|
|
|
A Rambling Vagrant posted:RealTalk: Imo Martin Amis is one of our two or threw greatest living novelists & London Fields is a better book than Infinite Jest. I don't know why goons aren't over Amis' dick: he's unbearably snobby, has terrible teeth, is a turbo-feminist-social-justice-nerd who is simultaneously obessed with machismo and male violence, writes about fat miserable sacks of poo poo coming to their inevitable tragic ends(like E/N), & passionately hates all popular things that aren't pub sports or board games. He's like the goon Moses. I like Martin Amis but you do speak the truth. Martin Amis is the prototype author for like every bad snobby literature stereotype. I like that we've somehow made it to page 8 of this thread and still no mention of any female authors besides Jane Austen and my own offering of The Accursed. Plus, Cormac McCarthy (and Italo Calvino), lol. Oh goons, you never change! Since everyone loves Po-Mo so much I'll bring up the inimitable A.S. Byatt and her Booker Prize winning novel Possession. Most of Byatt's stuff is amazing, but Possession is her crowning jewel and appears on a lot of top 100 novels lists, most famously the one from Time Magazine.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2014 18:01
|
|
|
Hey, I brought up Ursula K. LeGuin. Margaret Atwood is pretty great too. And if we're talking 19th century literature, I think the best book of that century is Middlemarch. Which was written by a woman under a man's name: Mary Ann Evans, as George Eliot.
Chamberk fucked around with this message at 19:06 on Jun 21, 2014 |
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2014 18:44
|
|
|
Everyone should read Virginia Woolf, probably starting with Mrs. Dalloway. It's more or less Woolf's attempt to beat James Joyce at his own game -- following her reaction to Ulysses, which depending on who you ask fell somewhere between grudging respect and outright loathing -- and arguably she succeeds. Plus literary feuds aside the language is beautiful and I can't name a single book that left me with a greater sense of well-being after I was finished.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2014 18:57
|
|
|
Of course, how could I forget Woolf? Dalloway is definitely my favorite, but To the Lighthouse and Orlando are wonderful as well.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2014 19:06
|
|
|
Chamberk posted:Hey, I brought up Ursula K. LeGuin. Margaret Atwood is pretty great too. And if we're talking 19th century literature, I think the best book of that century is Middlemarch. Which was written by a woman under a man's name: Mary Ann Evans, as George Eliot. Yes, Margaret Atwood is amazing and should blow up as huge as that Dragon lemoncake dude once Darren Aronofsky's adaptation of the MaddAddam trilogy makes it to HBO. I'm very excited about that. There's so many fantastic modern literary female authors that should be read and discussed more in TBB, like Doris Lessing (who unfortunately passed away last year), Jeanette Winterson, Francine Prose, Penelope Fitzgerald, Donna Tartt (who actually gets mentioned a lot since Goldfinch blew up last yr). I also love Marguerite Duras though she passed away some time ago. I did a count of the books I did last year and surprisingly I'm about even between male and female authors, I think that's pretty rare on peoples' reading lists though.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2014 19:16
|
|
|
Everyone, please read Gertrude Stein so you can learn what a rose is
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2014 19:25
|
|
|
For whatever it's worth, my go to recommendation for people who don't read a lot is Nineteen Eighty-Four. It's short, it's a classic, well written and the themes are very relevant despite that the book was written almost 70 years ago. I sometimes recommend "Three Men in a Boat" as well, even though I don't think it's very good.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2014 19:28
|
|
|
Walh Hara posted:For whatever it's worth, my go to recommendation for people who don't read a lot is Nineteen Eighty-Four. It's short, it's a classic, well written and the themes are very relevant despite that the book was written almost 70 years ago. I personally think that Orwell is a better essayist and short story writer than a novelist. I personally believe that Politics and the English Language is the best essay of the 20th century.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2014 19:31
|
|
|
It is pretty sad how few women have been mentioned so far, so I'll throw in recommendations for Donna Tartt's The Secret History and Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace. The Secret History is even better than The Goldfinch (which was also pretty great), as it's no small feat to take a novel ostensibly about a weird ancient Greek study group at a small liberal arts college in Vermont and spin it into an insane murder/suspense/conspiracy thriller that's paced and plotted like any of Hitchcock's best films; seriously, it's a literary work as entertaining and suspenseful as watching North by Northwest for the first time. Alias Grace is taken from a historical incident in 19th century Toronto where a woman was tried for murdering a man she was serving and his housekeeper. She was convicted and sentenced to 30 years in jail, while her alleged lover (who was tried along with her, and may have been her kidnapper) was put to death, but the details of the case against her are bizarre and the novel is focused on her life and fundamental questions about her sanity and whether or not she was actually guilty. It's somewhat slow moving at first but if you take the time to really get drawn into it the book has endless layers of ambiguity and depth, where every chapter adds a new detail that makes you rethink everything that came before it.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2014 21:04
|
|
|
A good short story written by a woman is Flannery O'Connor's Good Country People, as well as, of course, Shirley Jackson's The Lottery and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper All fairly well known, but for a reason, as they're solid reads and not very time-consuming as they're short stories
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2014 21:26
|
|
Smoking Crow posted:I personally believe that Politics and the English Language is the best essay of the 20th century. really? how come?
|
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2014 23:42
|
|
|
k-uno posted:It is pretty sad how few women have been mentioned so far, so I'll throw in recommendations for Donna Tartt's The Secret History and Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace. The Secret History is even better than The Goldfinch (which was also pretty great), as it's no small feat to take a novel ostensibly about a weird ancient Greek study group at a small liberal arts college in Vermont and spin it into an insane murder/suspense/conspiracy thriller that's paced and plotted like any of Hitchcock's best films; seriously, it's a literary work as entertaining and suspenseful as watching North by Northwest for the first time. Alias Grace is taken from a historical incident in 19th century Toronto where a woman was tried for murdering a man she was serving and his housekeeper. She was convicted and sentenced to 30 years in jail, while her alleged lover (who was tried along with her, and may have been her kidnapper) was put to death, but the details of the case against her are bizarre and the novel is focused on her life and fundamental questions about her sanity and whether or not she was actually guilty. It's somewhat slow moving at first but if you take the time to really get drawn into it the book has endless layers of ambiguity and depth, where every chapter adds a new detail that makes you rethink everything that came before it. The Secret History is one of my favourite books although I haven't read anything else by Tartt. The university atmosphere is so vivid and very recognisable - even though the university I went to was nothing like that, there's a universality of student life to it, and the tragic aspect of the story is wonderful. I really like the Atwood I've read so far too, but that's just been Handmaid's Tale, Oryx and Crake, and Year of the Flood so far. I haven't tried her less sci-fi stuff yet; I should get on some of that once I've cleared my current backlog. For other female authors who haven't been mentioned yet, Ali Smith is fantastic. Both her novels and short stories are worth reading - she has a great grasp of understated human relationships playing out on the page with an economy of language and a lot of wit. The Accidental is a good starting point, or There But For The. Also AL Kennedy, of whose work I've only read some short stories so far but they're incredible. I saw her read out one of her stories at a literary festival recently and she had the entire audience in fits of laughter - she does stand-up comedy, apparently, or used to, and she certainly has the stage presence for it based on that reading. The most mundane story about an unsatisfactory first date (told in the second person, which is definitely out of the ordinary) turned out to be a hilarious (and poignant) bit of writing.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2014 01:55
|
|
|
Banana Yoshimoto is good, specifically Kitchen. Her pen name is motherfucking "Banana" how could you go wrong?
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2014 05:08
|
|
|
Back to poetry, Anne Sexton is amazing. Check out Love Poems.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2014 12:59
|
|
|
k-uno posted:It is pretty sad how few women have been mentioned so far, so I'll throw in recommendations for Donna Tartt's The Secret History and Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace. The Secret History is even better than The Goldfinch (which was also pretty great), as it's no small feat to take a novel ostensibly about a weird ancient Greek study group at a small liberal arts college in Vermont and spin it into an insane murder/suspense/conspiracy thriller that's paced and plotted like any of Hitchcock's best films; seriously, it's a literary work as entertaining and suspenseful as watching North by Northwest for the first time. Alias Grace is taken from a historical incident in 19th century Toronto where a woman was tried for murdering a man she was serving and his housekeeper. She was convicted and sentenced to 30 years in jail, while her alleged lover (who was tried along with her, and may have been her kidnapper) was put to death, but the details of the case against her are bizarre and the novel is focused on her life and fundamental questions about her sanity and whether or not she was actually guilty. It's somewhat slow moving at first but if you take the time to really get drawn into it the book has endless layers of ambiguity and depth, where every chapter adds a new detail that makes you rethink everything that came before it. The Secret History is one of my favorite books of all time. There's a reason why, over 20 years later, books still come out with a blurb proclaiming that it's the next 'The Secret History'. Always chasing that high, never quite making it! I haven't read The Goldfinch yet, mostly because I know I'll compare it to The Secret History and I'm worried it'll disappoint. I remember when The Little Friend came out and I hated the ending. Interesting anecdote about Donna Tartt, when she was writing The Secret History, she was dating Bret Easton Ellis, who was writing Less Than Zero at the same time.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2014 16:40
|
|
|
By the way, to be fair to The Book Barn at large, during my lurking days it did convince me to read Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy and Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace (which are both seriously good books which should be read, even if they are kind of off the beaten path and hard to read at times). So the place isn't a complete quagmire of wizards and weird loving  That said, if you want a good gateway between comic book nerd poo poo and honest to God Literature, The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz is a fantastic place to start. I would pretty much reccomend this book to anyone who is eschewing the good stuff for genre fiction because it plays off a working knowledge of it to create a work that's legitimately profound and thought-provoking. e: there is also a lot of stuff that is genre fiction that is legitimately good work, like a lot of Kurt Vonnegut's stuff (Cat's Cradle is my reccomendation) and the original Dune book. But I'll hush on that front to minimize the risk of making GBS threads up a good thread. ManlyGrunting fucked around with this message at 20:39 on Jun 22, 2014 |
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2014 20:36
|
|
|
Poutling posted:The Secret History is one of my favorite books of all time. There's a reason why, over 20 years later, books still come out with a blurb proclaiming that it's the next 'The Secret History'. Always chasing that high, never quite making it! I haven't read The Goldfinch yet, mostly because I know I'll compare it to The Secret History and I'm worried it'll disappoint. I remember when The Little Friend came out and I hated the ending. The Goldfinch is worth it; I didn't love it as much as The Secret History-- though it would have been hard for me to, as I went to a weird liberal arts college where all the students took a year of greco-roman humanities, and "Hippocleides doesn't care" was and may still be an actual saying on campus-- but it was pretty great. A lot of people have described it as a modern day Dickens or Twain, following the exploits of an orphaned "artful dodger" as he schemes and flails his way through life, and that's not a totally unfair comparison. While it doesn't have the sort of atmosphere that The Secret History does, it's a pretty engaging story and the way Tartt walks a fine line between making you want the protagonist to win at all costs while finding him fundamentally repellant and disgraceful is masterful.
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2014 00:00
|
|
|
ManlyGrunting posted:e: there is also a lot of stuff that is genre fiction that is legitimately good work, like a lot of Kurt Vonnegut's stuff Maybe not the coolest stuff out there, but moving from GRRM to Pynchon, Wallace and stuff like that is quite a leap.. I don't think fantasy is only for teens though, one of the most elitist readers I can think of, Harold Bloom, reads fantasy and has even written crappy fantasy book himself.
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2014 09:21
|
|
|
Wait, Harold Bloom wrote a fantasy novel? I have to see this. 
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2014 18:34
|
|
|
Tuxedo Catfish posted:Wait, Harold Bloom wrote a fantasy novel? Michael Chabon wrote a barbarian-sword-buddies novel that's kindof interesting, Gentlemen of the Road. Apparently the working title was "Jews with Swords."
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2014 19:34
|
|
|
In my high school English classes we read stuff like Of Mice and Men and The Crucible etc. Basically stuff about how loving lovely it is to live in America. It was all pretty cool but I was one of a very small group of people who wasn't bored to tears. Then in college we read Emma which was great - it was pretty cool reading something actually written during a period of history that is associated with proper manners and class being about how everyone is a terrible person and just as big a load of assholes as everyone today, they just used more flowery language to show their disdain of each other. Tolkien also loving sucks, even more so given that he's inflicted the world with more lovely knockoffs than a Chinese sweatshop.
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2014 20:43
|
|
|
Hieronymous Alloy posted:Michael Chabon wrote a barbarian-sword-buddies novel that's kindof interesting, Gentlemen of the Road. Apparently the working title was "Jews with Swords." I'd just skip Gentlemen and send everyone in the forum directly to The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Chabon is a big proponent of the intersection between genre and literary fiction, and even in what is probably his most high-minded novel he still manages a breezy pace and plot. Everyone here probably already has a copy of Infinite Jest on their shelf (everyone I know owns the book but has never read it), you'd think a 1,079 page book with a multi-month read time would appeal to the hardcore fantasy crowd
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2014 23:10
|
|
|
ManlyGrunting posted:That said, if you want a good gateway between comic book nerd poo poo and honest to God Literature, The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz is a fantastic place to start. I would pretty much reccomend this book to anyone who is eschewing the good stuff for genre fiction because it plays off a working knowledge of it to create a work that's legitimately profound and thought-provoking. Seconding this. Fairly short, the magical realism stuff isn't intimidating for newcomers to that sort of thing, and it also features a protagonist that enjoys D&D, sci-fi & fantasy books, and anime. Plus it's not a difficult read at all so while you can get a lot of depth out of it, if all you want to do is engage it on the surface level then that's fine too because it's still an enjoyable read. It's good.
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2014 23:51
|
|
|
E1M1 posted:I'd just skip Gentlemen and send everyone in the forum directly to The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Chabon is a big proponent of the intersection between genre and literary fiction, and even in what is probably his most high-minded novel he still manages a breezy pace and plot. Yeah, all of Chabon is good, I just thought it funny that even when he's writing a sword and adventure novel, it's still all about gay Jews.
|
|
#
?
Jun 27, 2014 01:11
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 29, 2024 02:57 |
|
|
Every time I hear someone describe any of chabons works it sounds terrible.
|
|
#
?
Jun 27, 2014 01:36
|
|
