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I managed to live my entire life up to this point without reading The Great Gatsby and I have no intention to read it in the near future. Right now I'm reading"Consider Phlebas" and "The Dragonbone Chair."
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Jun 20, 2016 16:53
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ScrubLeague posted:I have the book of Fitzgerald's short stories and like most of those are excellent even if like 2/3 of them are just rewrites of the same story. It's weird that I don't like most of his novels. Have you read The Last Tycoon? It has an engaging sequence in that day in the life of the tycoon, and takes a much more ambitious look at the wider aspects of American culture and politics. It probably would have been his best if he didn't go and die when it was around halfway done, or a little less. Also according to Ernest Hemingway Fitzgerald had a small penis.
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Jun 20, 2016 16:53
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Applewhite posted:I managed to live my entire life up to this point without reading The Great Gatsby and I have no intention to read it in the near future. hey applewhite, haven't seen you for a while Great Gatsby's pretty good and is also short which really helps when it comes to books
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Jun 20, 2016 16:56
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I'm learning to play tennis, hopefully this will give me some insight into the DFW's mind so I may one day find the strength to kill myself
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Jun 20, 2016 16:56
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Applewhite posted:Right now I'm reading"Consider Phlebas" and "The Dragonbone Chair." Despite what the other poster said about book series the Culture novels are really great.
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Jun 20, 2016 17:22
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E1M1 posted:I'm learning to play tennis, hopefully this will give me some insight into the DFW's mind so I may one day find the strength to kill myself Godspeed.
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Jun 20, 2016 17:40
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Fitzgerald straight plagiarized from Zelda's diary. She was reading one of his stories and was like "huh that's loving familar lol"
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Jun 20, 2016 18:03
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Your Dead Gay Son posted:Fitzgerald straight plagiarized from Zelda's diary. She was reading one of his stories and was like "huh that's loving familar lol" Zelda like the video game? Huh? 
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Jun 20, 2016 18:48
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I'm reading Candide now and it's still funny and relevant today. Voltaire is just owning the religious hypocrites
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Jun 20, 2016 18:54
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Carmant posted:It’s been eighteen years since Infinite Jest was published and scholars have only begun to come to terms with its full implications. This is what you must understand. Wallace reverse-engineered not only the novel, but all of Western literature as well as language itself. Packed within Infinite Jest is Hamlet, The Brothers Karamazov, Gravity’s Rainbow, Ulysses, and everything else. Hell, it even serves as an overview of human history, from dawn to today. It’s a book you could spend a lifetime studying. A lifetime spent in bliss, no doubt. It would be more worthwhile to spend one’s life reading and rereading Infinite Jest than to achieve being “well-read” in the traditional sense. No. I've read it, it is enjoyable, but it is hopelessly kitschy, didactic, and deritivative (mainly of Thomas Pynchon) and doesn't measure up to any of the works you mention here. Wallace was a pretty smart guy and a tortured soul. His bipolar disorder made his life a living hell even after he obtained a measure of success, and people have a tendency to romanticize the mental illness that hampered and ultimately killed him. I think its better to evaluate his work honestly, which is difficult because it gets a lot of unearned praise from people due to the cult of personality that built up around him after his suicide. I think this cult is what Bret Easton Ellis was alluding to in the tweet he got so much poo poo for. I still think IJ is worth reading because it is a challenging, fun, humorous, and smart book, but artistically it leaves much to be desired. I'm reading NYRB classics this summer (they look sexy on your bookshelf and are cool and good), currently working on The Letter Killers Club by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky. I'm also reading Hesiod's Theogeny.
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Jun 20, 2016 19:17
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Your Dead Gay Son posted:Fitzgerald straight plagiarized from Zelda's diary. She was reading one of his stories and was like "huh that's loving familar lol" You can't plagiarize from loved ones.
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Jun 21, 2016 04:31
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Ellen DeGenerates posted:No. I've read it, it is enjoyable, but it is hopelessly kitschy, didactic, and deritivative (mainly of Thomas Pynchon) and doesn't measure up to any of the works you mention here. Wallace was a pretty smart guy and a tortured soul. His bipolar disorder made his life a living hell even after he obtained a measure of success, and people have a tendency to romanticize the mental illness that hampered and ultimately killed him. I think its better to evaluate his work honestly, which is difficult because it gets a lot of unearned praise from people due to the cult of personality that built up around him after his suicide. I think this cult is what Bret Easton Ellis was alluding to in the tweet he got so much poo poo for. That's the dumbest poo poo I've ever heard dude.
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Jun 21, 2016 04:33
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a cult for the personality of "verbose worked-up dork"
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Jun 21, 2016 06:09
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atm im reading books about sharp dick total mary sue, but entertaining
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Jun 21, 2016 06:11
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Lichy posted:controversial opinion: the winter of our discontent is steinbecks best novel I'll see that and raise you The Log from the Sea of Cortez. I am currently reading The 42nd Parallel. Dos Passos doesn't seem to get read in the UK, outside of universities anyway. Nothing in bookstores or libraries anywhere near me.
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Jun 21, 2016 06:29
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Ellen DeGenerates posted:currently working on The Letter Killers Club by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky.  Krzhizhanovsky is great. NYRB has two collections of short stories in addition to The Letter Killers Club which are both cool and good. Platonov and Olesha are some other Russian authors also worth reading if you haven't already.I am reading The Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz. No babies eaten yet.
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Jun 21, 2016 06:46
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The Pale King has a few chapters (Chris Fogle and Meredith Rand) that are better than anything in IJ. Overall it reads like the first half of a first season of a TV show and would have needed 3000-4000 pages to tie everything together, even in the DFW way where nothing is really tied together.
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Jun 21, 2016 07:49
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LOVE LOVE SKELETON posted:a cult for the personality of "verbose worked-up dork" I see you have read Don Delilo.
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Jun 21, 2016 08:04
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darth_pizza posted:I see you have read Don Delilo. Jesus I nearly forgot about that rear end in a top hat. If you're looking for weird postmodern wankery try Douglas Coupland. Generation X or Shampoo Planet are ok.
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Jun 21, 2016 08:29
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Every time I see forums poster Skylark I think of the book by that name quote:This alternately hilarious and melancholy classic of Hungarian literature plumbs the psyches of a husband and wife burdened with a homely daughter. After Ákos Vajkay and his wife, Antónia, dispatch Skylark, their stifling, unattractive and overbearing daughter, to visit with relatives, they revitalize their lives in Szarszeg, their backwater village, and recapture their youth with the Panthers, a schnapps-swilling men's social club. During their daughterless week, Ákos and Antónia rekindle their joy in living, taking in a transformative production of The Geisha and engaging in a drinking binge and epic meals at the local tavern. With their health and happiness returned to them, the disquieting realization of Skylark's return sets in, leading to an inevitable confrontation. The author slyly depicts a smalltown life that remains curiously relevant today with his exploration of the tension between the politics of the left and the right, atheism and Christianity, and parents and their children. Though written 80 years ago, this remains a deftly executed, thoughtful meditation on mortality and the passage of time.
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Jun 21, 2016 08:47
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infinite jest was pretty good in that i wanted to read it more than once because i felt like i missed something the first time
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Jun 21, 2016 11:50
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hahahahaha you fuscking IDIOTR op, Infinite Jest sucked lmbo!!! There was no wizard or anythjing and you expect me to think he was GENIUS??? lmbo wingardium loserosa was cast on you when you werre born op you moran lmbo!!!!!!
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Jun 21, 2016 13:43
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Jukeboxblues posted:hahahahaha you fuscking IDIOTR op, Infinite Jest sucked lmbo!!! Relax buddy.
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Jun 21, 2016 17:14
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he's right about literature.
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Jun 21, 2016 17:16
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I started to read Infinite Jest on goon suggestion and I'm not saying I didn't like it necessarily but I did find it annoying to read and I didn't get very far before picking something else up. I might try again one day but then I see posts like the OPs and I dunno that sounds like some fart huffing to me. \/\/\/ I like that one. Roylicious fucked around with this message at 18:55 on Jun 21, 2016 |
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Jun 21, 2016 18:23
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i read confederacy of dunces again recently and it'sl still good thanks op for a lovely start
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Jun 21, 2016 18:26
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confederacy of dunces is good, but i feel like it becomes redundant if you spend enough time in gbs, it gives you no new insight.
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Jun 22, 2016 05:15
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H.H posted:confederacy of dunces is good, but i feel like it becomes redundant if you spend enough time in gbs, it gives you no new insight. That's how I felt about catcher in the rye while growing up in the livejournal era.
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Jun 22, 2016 05:42
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fine i gues read dracula or something
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Jun 22, 2016 05:46
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social vegan posted:fine i gues read dracula or something I did. It's pretty hot actually.
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Jun 22, 2016 05:49
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fine read some stephen leacock gad dang
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Jun 22, 2016 05:52
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darth_pizza posted:I see you have read Don Delilo. i read white noise 1.5 times and really enjoyed the scenes that would translate well to a movie
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Jun 22, 2016 05:52
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White Noise posted:The supermarket shelves have been rearranged. It happened one day without warning. There is agitation and panic in the aisles, dismay in the faces of older shoppers. They walk in a fragmented trance, stop and go, clusters of well-dressed figures frozen in the aisles, trying to figure out the pattern, discern the underlying logic, trying to remember where they'd seen the cream of wheat...smeared print, ghost images. In the altered shelves, the ambient roar, in the plain and heartless fact of their decline they try to work their way through confusion. But in the end it doesn't matter what they think they see. The terminals are equipped with holographic scanners, which decode the binary secret of every item, infallibly. This is the language of waves and radiation, or how the dead speak to the living. And this is where we wait together, regardless of age, our carts stocked with brightly colored goods. A slowly moving line, satisfying, giving us time to glance at the tabloids in the racks. Everything we need that is not food or love is in the tabloid racks. The tales of the supernatural and the extra-terrestrial. The miracle vitamins, the cures for cancer, the remedies for obesity, the cults of the famous and the dead. White Noise isn't just a posting style
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Jun 22, 2016 18:17
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Beige posted:Despite what the other poster said about book series the Culture novels are really great. \thats because the culture books aren't a series.
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Jun 22, 2016 19:26
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H.H posted:confederacy of dunces is good, but i feel like it becomes redundant if you spend enough time in gbs, it gives you no new insight. ignatius is so prescient a depiction of the modern goon. that book was written in the early 60s I think.
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Jun 22, 2016 20:35
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The Monster at the End of this Book has a really spooky surprise ending. I won't spoil it, but watch out!
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Jun 22, 2016 20:39
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i spent about a week one summer chainsmoking on a balcony all hopped up on amphetamines while i read infinite jest. if you cant do something similar, i wouldnt recommend it, but i really enjoyed it.
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Jun 22, 2016 20:47
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Kurt Vonnegut All goons that haven't read any of Vonnegut's works are doing their comedy a disservice. Slaughterhouse Five is masterpiece for dry delivery during dark times.
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Jun 22, 2016 20:52
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Dinosaurmageddon posted:Kurt Vonnegut  of Vonnegut, i've regrettably only read Slaughterhouse and Breakfast of Champions, but both were fantastic and i definitely recommend them
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Jun 22, 2016 21:20
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Dinosaurmageddon posted:Kurt Vonnegut first person to say the obvious thing in response to this loses
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Jun 22, 2016 21:23
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