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Seriously. Almost every thread in this place is for genre novels. As Stephen King said, his novels are the literary version of a Big Mac and fries. Is this all you people read? Do you eat only fast food and hate to talk about filet mignon as well? Seriously, try to read something good for a loving change. You're not in high school anymore, read some loving real works of art.
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# ¿ Jun 17, 2014 22:22 |
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# ¿ Mar 29, 2024 09:00 |
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Game of Thrones is drivel. It's another Tolkien rip-off except that the author tries to justify it by being "dark and edgy." Also, why is there so much underage loving? Smoking Crow fucked around with this message at 01:25 on Jun 18, 2014 |
# ¿ Jun 18, 2014 00:55 |
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Street Soldier posted:The fact that you know what /lit/ was tells me you're familiar with 4chan, so you must know that OP is acting exactly like the average /lit/ user. I have never been to /lit/, but if they have more discussion about actual writing and rhetoric instead of cursory analysis, I might have to check it out.
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# ¿ Jun 18, 2014 02:24 |
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Mister Kingdom posted:What is "art"? Look inside yourself. I genuinely feel this way, I was just checking to see if I'd get banned lol
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# ¿ Jun 18, 2014 02:45 |
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Mister Kingdom posted:Stephen King is miserable. Can I read him instead? I've read the Book Barn
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# ¿ Jun 18, 2014 02:53 |
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Mister Kingdom posted:That doesn't really answer my question. Maybe some of the BB crowd does read real literature, but just doesn't feel like talking about it. That makes no sense because that would mean that you read both good and bad and only choose to talk about the bad. That would be like drinking champagne from France and Milwaukee's Best and only choosing to talk about Milwaukee's Best.
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# ¿ Jun 18, 2014 02:58 |
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Zoq-Fot-Pik posted:Any suggestions OP? I recommend my favorite book, Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson. It's a beautiful look at the types of hosed up people that choose to live in small Midwestern towns. It's wonderful and dripping with subtext. Make sure to read every chapter twice to get the full meaning!
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# ¿ Jun 18, 2014 03:13 |
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Mister Kingdom posted:I would love to know the subtext for that. It's olive oil. Someone in GBS made it for me because I opened an olive oil appreciation thread and my old avatar was Katyusha.
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# ¿ Jun 18, 2014 03:39 |
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Mister Kingdom posted:But what does it really mean? Click it and find out!
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# ¿ Jun 18, 2014 03:40 |
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Effectronica posted:So where should I go in Native American literature after Momaday, Silko, and Alexie? I'm only vaguely knowledgeable about Japanese, Euro-American and Russian lit, sorry.
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# ¿ Jun 18, 2014 04:05 |
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Mister Kingdom posted:I think that's the biggest turn off for Shakespeare. You're constantly looking at the footnotes to know what's being said. Then you have to figure out what he means. I understand Shakespeare fine but that might be because I was forced to read Shakespeare every year of school after 5th grade.
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# ¿ Jun 18, 2014 17:26 |
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Big Mad Drongo posted:I'm currently reading and loving Candide, but it's fairly short so I'll be in the market for a new book pretty soon. A Confederacy of Dunces is pretty much my all-time favorite book, so I'm hoping there's other novels out there featuring terrible/naive people in horrible situations while the Just World Fallacy crumbles around them. If you want the opposite of that, read The Notebook by Agota Kristof. It's about good kids having to become terrible to survive in a WWII era Hungarian village.
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# ¿ Jun 18, 2014 18:45 |
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Street Soldier posted:So where does a big idiot begin on the road to real literature? Is there like, a list of books to start with? Thinking back on my high school life I'm woefully unprepared for this, the only book I remember having to read(in my A level english class, mind) was To Kill A Mockingbird and instead of reading Shakespeare we watched that Romeo and Juliet movie with Leonardo DiCaprio and analysed that. I recommend Hadji Murad by Leo Tolstoy, Citrus County by John Brandon, The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and Death of a Naturalist by Seamus Heaney. Edit: You can substitute Dracula by Bram Stoker for Frankenstein and The Art of War by Sun-Tzu for The Prince.
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# ¿ Jun 19, 2014 00:53 |
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Pessimisten posted:Man i'm going to show these slow rear end fuckwits on TBB who's the boss. I will start this super awesome thread about being superior to people who don't read what i read, drawing a clear line in the sand where my side equals good and the other side equals bad. Then i'm going to tell these bitches that if they weren't on my side when i drew it they suck. Now that I've established my higher standing and good taste they should be be willing to pluck all my apples of wisdom for they shall see that i am the three of knowledge. Come brethren, embrace my ankles as you grovel at my feet licking the ground for the crumbles of intellectual salvation that i spill over you. Love me, for i am better! I did both things and this thread has 4 times the replies and actually has people changing their reading habits. I didn't make this thread because I want you guys to know how much better I am than you, I made this thread because I believe that this forum could be so much better than it currently is.0
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# ¿ Jun 19, 2014 14:04 |
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Iamblikhos posted:Heaney? May I ask why? (Not why you like him, but why you'd recommend him in this context) Heaney is a fantastic writer, extremely easy to read (especially compared to his contemporaries), easy to understand and a great intro to late 20th century poetry.
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# ¿ Jun 19, 2014 20:03 |
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Whalley posted:Okay but this is Joyce sooo Those are the 20s version of sexting and weren't meant to be published.
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# ¿ Jun 19, 2014 20:31 |
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Pessimisten posted:You people don't see how the whole premise of "mine is better the yours" is pretentious? Starting any discussion that way is loving stupid and childish. "Watching sports is for brain dead jocks, stop it immediately or you're classified a stupid man child... now let me present you with this selection of fine classic movies that I'm sure you're willing to welcome with an open mind after i insulted your tastes" I will die on the hill that says "Leo Tolstoy is a better writer than Neil Stephenson."
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# ¿ Jun 19, 2014 21:56 |
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Talmonis posted:I'd rather read Snow Crash than something I'm going to have to try really hard to enjoy enough to get through. That's good because Tolstoy is a breezy writer that makes long passages seem shorter than they actually are. Most people don't read Tolstoy off of page count and reputation, which is unfortunate.
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# ¿ Jun 19, 2014 22:15 |
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Pessimisten posted:If i enjoyed Steinbecks work, whats a natural follow up? Pearl S. Buck.
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# ¿ Jun 19, 2014 23:14 |
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Iamblikhos posted:Tolstoy is history's greatest writer of adventure novels. An I say that as one who is far from his greatest fan. I'm not sure that he's the best, he's on the same tier as Dumas and Twain, though. What do you consider older poetry? I like Tennyson and Yeats as much as the next guy, but I think that Heaney is on a level all his own. He's my favorite poet and all.
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# ¿ Jun 20, 2014 00:29 |
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Iamblikhos posted:tbh i've read little heaney that i didn't think is annoying (station island is most agreeable to my taste), though he is a great translator You say Elizabeth Bishop? I'd say that Dylan Thomas is more of a direct precursor to Heaney than her. And, I'm sorry, but I don't like Alexander Pope. He's a bit too clever for cleverness's sake, you know?
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# ¿ Jun 20, 2014 00:54 |
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tentative8e8op posted:Ive only read The Good Earth, what else from her would you recommend? That's the only thing anyone's ever read by Pearl S. Buck lol
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# ¿ Jun 20, 2014 01:07 |
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Poutling posted:Actually, in my opinion the best introduction to 20th century poetry to newcomers is probably Alden Nowlan because he has a very simple style but the poems are beautiful and suffused with great themes and meaning. The first poem that I read to people that don`t know much about poetry is usually "The Word" because the love theme is the easiest for beginners to relate with and yet it's very moving. He's a Canadian poet though so I'm not sure if many people outside of Canada know his work. I like Heaney too though. Poetry's not dead though! It's still a big thing in Russia and Russian poets are celebrities, like Dmitry Vodennikov.
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# ¿ Jun 20, 2014 03:18 |
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:I really don't understand why this is. Poetry has the best aspects of great literature -- the focus on form, on incredibly dense and interconnected meaning -- but in a small enough package that you can see the whole thing at once. You can exercise all the same mental muscles without committing to some behemoth of a novel. (And of course, if you want a behemoth, there are always verse epics.) The reason is that it's not story based. Some people can only relate to a narrative, which most poetry isn't.
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# ¿ Jun 20, 2014 03:21 |
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:I guess if you go by sheer volume that might be true but I would think that for the majority of human history most poetry actually has been narrative-based. Yeah, but the new poo poo isn't narrative. Someone needs to get on writing a modern epic poem
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# ¿ Jun 20, 2014 03:26 |
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Same thing happened to Marco Polo (who is similarly worth reading). For several hundred years after his death Marco Polo's name was a synonym for "colossal liar." Then of course it turned out he'd simply recorded the exact truth of what he saw. Paper money! That's just ridiculous! Dragons exist.
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# ¿ Jun 20, 2014 03:37 |
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ulvir posted:Since this thread has a lot more activity than the "Books that aren't awful megathread", could anyone hit me up with some contemporary American authors that are worth reading? I've already given Pynchon and DFW a go, and I've got DeLillo on my radar. I like John Brandon.
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# ¿ Jun 20, 2014 13:33 |
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Strategic Tea posted:To be fair, demanding genre fic readers 'stop being loving children' and telling them to go back to their bad book threads doesn't help that. What about The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach? That's a great literary novel that's about college baseball players. What about White Teeth by Zadie Smith? That's about regular people in London. You can't paint literature in one stroke. And face it, if I didn't title my thread this, you wouldn't have clicked on it. Smoking Crow fucked around with this message at 16:23 on Jun 20, 2014 |
# ¿ Jun 20, 2014 16:20 |
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Everyone, please read Gertrude Stein so you can learn what a rose is
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# ¿ Jun 21, 2014 19:25 |
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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.
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# ¿ Jun 21, 2014 19:31 |
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Officer Sandvich posted:All goons should read The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, it's To Kill a Mockingbird but good. sweatpea, to kill a mockingbird is good
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# ¿ Jun 27, 2014 22:12 |
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nutranurse posted:So I've read a ton of the 'classics' of non-genre lit, but I always find it hard to parse out the good modern/contemporary (like 00's onwards) litfic. Anyone have recommendations? If someone mentions Murakami I'll poo poo down your throat, not because he's bad (I actually really like Norwegian Wood, 1Q84's a loving slog though), but because that's the dude people tend to throw up to show how cool and non-Western they are in their litfic taste. Ryu Murakami
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# ¿ Jun 27, 2014 22:56 |
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Stravinsky posted:Off the top of my head: Ha Jin is also good
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# ¿ Jun 27, 2014 23:23 |
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TheFallenEvincar posted:What about the likes of Arthur C. Clarke? No because he beat Pynchon for the Nebula
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# ¿ Jul 1, 2014 18:18 |
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mango gay touchies posted:ASoIaF is definitely the current hotness around town but will people be talking about it the way they talk about Hemingway or Twain or Faulkner? I highly doubt it. That honor is reserved for the Magic: the Gathering Time Spiral block novelization.
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# ¿ Jul 12, 2014 16:28 |
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oxsnard posted:I think GRRM will be considered a legend in future generations, for example I think you meant to say Gene Wolfe there
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# ¿ Jul 12, 2014 16:57 |
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Farecoal posted:nope I'm happy you disagree with something i posted a month ago
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# ¿ Jul 15, 2014 05:11 |
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Blind Sally posted:I know, right? Why not just make more non-genre literature threads and not talk about genre books in them? There's a Whitman thread now. Sounds like we need a Shakespeare thread. I did but no one cares mate
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# ¿ Jul 15, 2014 05:26 |
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Farecoal posted:im glad you've completely changed your opinion since then, dont worry we all make mistakes when were younger I believe in the post, but at this point, we're all past it, m8
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# ¿ Jul 16, 2014 04:21 |
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# ¿ Mar 29, 2024 09:00 |
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Rime posted:OP, why are you such a hipster that you believe some "literature" has more merit than others just by virtue of being a couple hundred years old? I was too busy smoking clove cigarettes on my fixie and scheduling my tattoo appointment to care about it. IRONY
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# ¿ Jul 17, 2014 05:22 |