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He has earned the benefit of the doubt from me though because the Yiddish Police Man's Union was good and I thought the description sounded terrible when I first heard that as well.
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Jun 27, 2014 01:38
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Stravinsky posted:He has earned the benefit of the doubt from me though because the Yiddish Police Man's Union was good and I thought the description sounded terrible when I first heard that as well.
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Jun 27, 2014 02:17
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Cloks posted: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. Thank you & others for this recommendation, I devoured this book in one sitting. In return, I'd recommend "People of Paper" by Salvador Plascencia for anyone who enjoyed it. It's similar in that it's a first novel about a writer with shades of Calvino but it plays with the relationship between truth and fiction, writers and their texts, in some different ways and is a real pleasure to read IMHO, if y'all haven't. I've also been enjoying "The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break" by Steven Sherrill, in which the Minotaur is a cook in a small-town diner.
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Jun 27, 2014 04:44
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Has anyone here heard of Cormac McCarthy? He may not be too well known around these parts, but he writes novels that are gritty and taciturn--stripped down novels with gut-a-village gore and heady philosophy: just what I love. If you can imagine Hemingway writing Red Dead Redemption with a shitassmegaton of philosophy (and theology, though he's not a Christian writer) I think you're on your way to "getting" Cormac. Real good stuff, totally inspirational for a writer like myself. A real "writer's writer" if ever there was one. Don't worry if he seems too hard: he is. One of the hardest, in my experience. Stick with it though, for the payoffs for such dense, lapidary prose are many--and, hell, at least he's anything but boring.
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Jun 27, 2014 06:37
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Heliotropic posted:Has anyone here heard of Cormac McCarthy? He may not be too well known around these parts, but he writes novels that are gritty and taciturn--stripped down novels with gut-a-village gore and heady philosophy: just what I love. If you can imagine Hemingway writing Red Dead Redemption with a shitassmegaton of philosophy (and theology, though he's not a Christian writer) I think you're on your way to "getting" Cormac. Real good stuff, totally inspirational for a writer like myself. A real "writer's writer" if ever there was one. Don't worry if he seems too hard: he is. One of the hardest, in my experience. Stick with it though, for the payoffs for such dense, lapidary prose are many--and, hell, at least he's anything but boring. This is my favorite TBB post.
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Jun 27, 2014 14:29
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Heliotropic posted:Has anyone here heard of Cormac McCarthy? He may not be too well known around these parts, but he writes novels that are gritty and taciturn--stripped down novels with gut-a-village gore and heady philosophy: just what I love. If you can imagine Hemingway writing Red Dead Redemption with a shitassmegaton of philosophy (and theology, though he's not a Christian writer) I think you're on your way to "getting" Cormac. Real good stuff, totally inspirational for a writer like myself. A real "writer's writer" if ever there was one. Don't worry if he seems too hard: he is. One of the hardest, in my experience. Stick with it though, for the payoffs for such dense, lapidary prose are many--and, hell, at least he's anything but boring. I will be sure to "check him out" alright... at my local library!
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Jun 27, 2014 16:24
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All goons should read The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, it's To Kill a Mockingbird but good.
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Jun 27, 2014 22:11
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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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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.
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Jun 27, 2014 22:55
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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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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. Off the top of my head: Kobo Abe Pynchon Mo Yan Dellilo Milorad Pavic Ryu Murakami Tao Lin (joke answer do not read)
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Jun 27, 2014 23:20
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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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I do not like Delillo though I have not read Mao 2.
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Jun 27, 2014 23:46
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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. Yukio Mishima
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Jun 28, 2014 01:34
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Nude Bog Lurker posted:Yukio Mishima Mishima is awesome but he asked for novelists from the new millenium and Mishima died in 1970. I read a lot of Japanese guys but I just realized that most of them are also old dead dudes. I really enjoyed Miyuki Miyabe's All She Was Worth but it was published in 1997 does that count? She's won a ton of lit prizes in Japan.
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Jun 28, 2014 02:02
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Smoking Crow posted:Ha Jin is also good He's indeed a very underappreciated author, never come across anyone else in real life that had read anything by him. I especially loved "War Trash," his novel about Chinese soldiers in the Korean War.
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Jun 28, 2014 09:41
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Stravinsky posted:Off the top of my head: Mo Yan is loving incredible. Everybody should read at least one novel by him.
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Jun 28, 2014 11:42
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Whalley posted:Mo Yan is loving incredible. Everybody should read at least one novel by him. He sounds fascinating, any suggestions of where to start / best translations?
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Jun 28, 2014 21:21
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Shouldn't be too snobby about other people's reading. Truth is, there are no bad books, except those that poison with hate (pop non-fiction about freedom and abortion, and such). Harry Potter isn't the enemy of Chekhov, it's the enemy of TMZ. Reading uses empathy and imagination, no matter if it's literary contemporary wank, golden oft-recommended classics, sparkling vampires, space men, or Civil War biographies. I've read "better" (and "worse") books since the latest Harry Dresden, but the thing I cared about most this month was how Harry's love interest is aging away from the story. To deny this is folly, nobody ever comes along at the end of your life to tally up and judge your media consumption. The right way to get people to read nice books is to show them something relatable and funny. Jonas Jonasson's Hundred-Year-Old Man, Mo Yan's Big Breasts, Martin Amis' Money are killers to get for people that do pick up books but find it difficult to pick out books, they're very funny and clever in an inclusive way.
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Jun 28, 2014 21:38
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Graves also wrote a sequel that's pretty good too, Claudius the God. I'm actually a little bummed out there aren't any further novels along those lines from Graves left to read. Maybe I should try to find King Jesus or The Islands of Unwisdom or The Golden Fleece or something. The funny thing about this thread is as a reader for the first 95% of my life I was the snobby "REAL LITERATURE" person (more or less reading the stuff that has been recommended in this thread, except for Dictionary of the Khazars which I guess I ought to read by now) who never even touched sci-fi or fantasy or any genre fiction aside from occasional Arthur C. Clarke and Tolkien early on, to the point where I was too snooty to even discover Philip K. Dick (I've enthusiastically corrected that by now, luckily). So the fact that TBB is full of genre fiction is actually really useful to me now that I try to go back and check out a lot of the stuff I was pretentiously holding my head high and ignoring as a younger man. I'm gonna check out some Stanislaw Lem and Michael Chabon. Punkin Spunkin fucked around with this message at 22:09 on Jun 28, 2014 |
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Jun 28, 2014 22:03
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TheFallenEvincar posted:I'd also recommend Robert Graves' Count Belisarius, not quite as recognized as his Claudius novels but I really enjoyed reading it after I, Claudius and Claudius the God. The history behind its historical fiction isn't quite as meticulously accurate from what I can tell but it's pretty thrilling well-written Byzantine historical action/adventure/intrigue and some of the descriptions of his battles against the Persians and Vandals and so on are really quite epic. If you like Robert Graves enough to read the Belisarius books, you should also check out Mary Renault's stuff (and this is, yes, a shameless plug for the Book of the Month poll going on right now!)
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Jun 28, 2014 22:05
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:If you like Robert Graves enough to read the Belisarius books, you should also check out Mary Renault's stuff (and this is, yes, a shameless plug for the Book of the Month poll going on right now!) I voted for the Renault. This is one BOTM I might participate in. I've read Renault's Alexander the Great series and really enjoyed it.
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Jun 28, 2014 22:08
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:If you like Robert Graves enough to read the Belisarius books, you should also check out Mary Renault's stuff (and this is, yes, a shameless plug for the Book of the Month poll going on right now!) Not sure if Gore Vidal was mentioned already but I'm reminded of him as we discuss Mary Renault and Robert Graves, I quite enjoyed what I read of his novels. Creation is epic historical fiction about an ancient Zoroastrian priest and buddy of Xerxes meeting Socrates, the Buddha, and many other famed ancient spiritual/philosophical names. And obviously there's Julian and his Narratives of Empire novels (though I could never get farther than Empire in that, for some reason). Gore Vidal's Messiah is also worthwhile, sort of about the rise of a frightening new religion that feels pretty eerily prophetic regarding a lot of stuff that would happen in the decades to come in terms of new age religions/cults/etc. (it was published in 1954). Punkin Spunkin fucked around with this message at 22:25 on Jun 28, 2014 |
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Jun 28, 2014 22:20
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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. David Peace is great. He gets out there with the stream of consciousness style but his subject matter's always interesting enough to keep reading. Madeline Miller's Song of Achilles is good for people who like Trojan War/Greek mythology stuff. Would Philip Meyer's The Son be considered litfic? That was good. Margaret Atwood's great.
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Jun 28, 2014 22:29
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i am paul newman posted:Shouldn't be too snobby about other people's reading. Truth is, there are no bad books, except those that poison with hate (pop non-fiction about freedom and abortion, and such). Harry Potter isn't the enemy of Chekhov, it's the enemy of TMZ. Please tell me more about the big breasts, pictures would help.
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Jun 28, 2014 22:59
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:He sounds fascinating, any suggestions of where to start / best translations? I've been reading Pow! which is pretty good so far - I found it at the library and picked it up mostly because the jacket sleeve looked interesting. From what I hear, his best-known works are Red Sorghum and Life and Death are Wearing Me Out.
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Jun 28, 2014 23:29
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TheFallenEvincar posted:Thanks for the recommendation, I'll give her a vote in the monthly poll and start reading The Last of the Wine and some of her other stuff, for some reason Colleen McCullough hasn't quite caught on with me yet so maybe this'll be something I dive into. Glancing over her work, Renault's Alexander the Great trilogy also looks really intriguing so maybe I'll get started on that as well. I'd also highly recommend her first Theseus book, The King Must Die.
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Jun 28, 2014 23:35
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:He sounds fascinating, any suggestions of where to start / best translations? Life And Death Are Wearing Me Out, though, is loving amazing. It's hilarious and depressing, about a landholder who is murdered and cannot accept his place in hell, so he is sent back in a series of reincarnations, to come to terms with his life - he lives as a bull, a donkey, a pig, a dog, all sorts of typical Chinese animals. It's a tale of modern Chinese history, told from the inside. It's the story of a family and a town and a country and a culture, just like 100 Years Of Solitude, only it's hilarious. I can't talk that book up enough, it's just loving phenomenal and modern and unique, and he somehow wrote the drat thing in 42 days. Dude's incredible.
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Jun 29, 2014 00:26
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Mr. Squishy posted:I do not like Delillo though I have not read Mao 2. I respect him, though I do not necessarily really like him. i am paul newman posted:Shouldn't be too snobby about other people's reading. Truth is, there are no bad books, except those that poison with hate (pop non-fiction about freedom and abortion, and such). Harry Potter isn't the enemy of Chekhov, it's the enemy of TMZ. Actually there are bad books. Just like there are bad movies, bad music, and bad drawings.
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Jun 29, 2014 00:31
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As Camus teaches us it is not the quality but the quantity of experiences that matters.
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Jun 29, 2014 13:57
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Bad books are actually much more dangerous than bad films, records or football games or whatever. You've got 300 pages of complete poo poo, that's 10 hours, a seriously loving long time. You focus totally on some terrible magic space ship book for 10+ hours, in terms of intellectual development and mental health that's roughly equivalent to getting black out drunk, I'd say. The fight against bad books is much more important than the fight against TV or britpop.
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Jun 29, 2014 14:02
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Ras Het posted:Bad books are actually much more dangerous than bad films, records or football games or whatever. You've got 300 pages of complete poo poo, that's 10 hours, a seriously loving long time. You focus totally on some terrible magic space ship book for 10+ hours, in terms of intellectual development and mental health that's roughly equivalent to getting black out drunk, I'd say. The fight against bad books is much more important than the fight against TV or britpop. The best part is I can't even tell if you're being serious.
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Jun 29, 2014 14:05
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Stravinsky posted:Actually there are bad books. Just like there are bad movies, bad music, and bad drawings. Old discussion, this. Bad art doesn't create glee or wonder or unity or reflection. Bad books are tricky. When they're dangerous to your mind's breadth they're bad, other failings only make them "bad" in the sense of unsuccessful or not worth it or technically incompetent. Genre fiction old and young usually hits fewer of the typical criticisms for badness (ludicrous, schmaltzy, hasty, dated or gone bad with age, hornless unicorns or trying not to be just a horse, cynically commercial, only effective by manipulation) as it is honest about what it wants to be and for whom. So, Updike or Revolutionary Road or Dollanganger are Literature 101 "bad", but they're not unhealthy dangerous bad like The Secret or Rush Limbaugh. I wouldn't grump if this thread had a friendly title and OP or actually mentioned books the other threads don't. When goons mostly talk about Harry Dresden or Ann Leckie here, they're not uncultured children, they're just not insecure about books. So, let's recommend some awesome books. My favorite authors from my country are Zweig, Sebald, and Moers. Moers is like Pratchett, childrens fantasy for adults. definitely start with Captain Bluebear, not the recent Dreaming Books as they're loosely connected, it's the true or not so true but probably totally true crazy sea stories of an old bear. Oddly enough there was a Captain Bluebear musical but I don't even dare to google it. Zweig's short and crunchy, his Chess Story is never out of style, and there were 2 recent good movies kinda about (or, spoilers, with) him (The Grand Budapest Hotel, A Promise). I'd probably recommend the posthumous Post-Office Girl first as it's available in a current good translation, but any collected novellas are great great great. Sebald's.. well, Sebald. Some is autobiographical criticism, some is travel, looks daunting but is easy to read. Goes together in my head with Vollmann or, maybe, Coover. The Emigrants made him super famous in the US (it was crazy for a while, an intellectual hoopla as big as when Murakami got translated first), Austerlitz is his masterwork. The translations are very good. Best books I read recently were by David Grossman and Krzhizhanovsky. Grossman ranges from experimental to childrens, from current Israel life to highest-brow SF like Doris Lessing or The Tin Drum. Falling Out of Time is a short drama stunner. Krzhiz is recently rediscovered autobiographical SF shorts. They're spergy and meditative and old and fresh. Best to just quote from "Autobiography of a Corpse": "I am - adsum. And I namely am because I belong to the great Nation of Ises. I cannot not be. I think that’s fairly clear and commonsense." Loved this. To talk about Mo Yan again: Big Breasts is successfully humorous from the first moment. You chuckle when you see the dramatis personae. It has kung fu. It has the biycycle company with german guns. It manages to be a romp through history in one life, but it also manages to talk about novels. It shows a novel missing for the nation's well-being and then it is that novel. Good Nobel prize from a normal reader's point of view.
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Jun 29, 2014 18:15
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Mo Yan was an interesting recommendation, thanks guys, I'm one of those dudes who hasn't read any Asian literature outside of Yukio Mishima, Haruki Murakami, and Battle Royale (which isn't exactly high literature I reckon). I take it Mo Yan hasn't written any downright bad novels? I'm just going to dive into all of them in some order. And that Mary Renault was really a hot pick, I'm steaming through her Alexander the Great trilogy with the same fluid ease and enjoyment I experienced reading the novels of Robert Graves.
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Jun 29, 2014 18:49
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TheFallenEvincar posted:Mo Yan was an interesting recommendation, thanks guys, I'm one of those dudes who hasn't read any Asian literature outside of Yukio Mishima, Haruki Murakami, and Battle Royale (which isn't exactly high literature I reckon). I take it Mo Yan hasn't written any downright bad novels? I'm just going to dive into all of them in some order. Mo Yan's Red Sorghum has a film adaptation by Zhang Yimou, start with that. From China I'd recommend the early novel Water Margin first (the ~1973 jdrama was a school holiday staple for me), then Yu Hua, Ha Jin, Dai Sijie, Yiyun Li. Also Anchee Min. Good recent releases are Wu Ming-Yi and Qiu Miaojin's 1999 crazy unfinished diary novel. If it counts, Amy Tan's The Bonesetter's Daughter. From Japan it's tricky to recommend stuff, it's this block of (deserved) giants and then not much else that leaves the islands. The big dogs are all worth it, read the incredibly funny Natsume Soseki's whole oeuvre, then Kobo Abe's Woman in the Dunes. The Tale of Genji is Japan's biggest "early novel", there's a current translation. Yasunari Kawabata is among the giants, but always mentioned later than he should be. Ryu Murakami is great, he's mostly known for the film adaptation of Audition by Takashi Miike and all available releases will point that out on their covers. Natsuo Kirino's crime novels encouraged the worst feminist interpretations. Keigo Higashino's detective stories got 2 jdramas and a great film adaptation, Suspect X has a very memorable white knight alibi story, it is detective fiction but pretty high up. Banana Yoshimoto, mentioned in this thread before, is like Chbosky or John Green and makes the young girl in us squee and become a lifelong reader. Ogai Mori is goofy weird kinky in exactly the way only Japan manages to be. The Autobiography of Barefoot Gen is great. If you remember the really popular but awkward and exploitative Memoirs of a Geisha, read Sayu Masuda or Ishiguro's An Artist of the Floating World for the same stories of post-war change done well (Ishiguro shouldn't count but that one book should). For historical adventure James Clavell's Shogun can't be beaten (the mini series got BluRays recently), also maybe Cloud of Sparrows. You might just exhaust India with Naipaul, Arundhati Roy, Gita Mehta, Thrity Umrigar, Amitav Ghosh, Rushdie. Vish Puri, India's Most Private Investigator is a fun detective series. Rest of that part of the world I have no idea. Edit: The First Man in Rome is a series similar to Mary Renault's historical Alexander novels. For LGBT and Mythology I loved Madeline Miller's The Song of Achilles. Dorothy Dunnett might also be worth checking out. i am paul newman fucked around with this message at 23:13 on Jun 29, 2014 |
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Jun 29, 2014 22:47
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If you want something like Shogun, but written by Japanese, Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa is also great one.
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Jun 30, 2014 07:23
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Sunshine, lollipops and rainbows.
inktvis fucked around with this message at 14:54 on Jun 30, 2014 |
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Jun 30, 2014 13:55
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If anyone is looking for a solid list of classic literature I edited an old 2009 thread's OP into my post at the beginning of this thread. Lots of books from different eras and across different cultures. Big post but worth reading I think.
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Jul 1, 2014 04:37
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Whoever recommended The Accursed, I want to thank them. I picked it up on their suggestion in this thread, and it's fantastic so far.
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Jul 1, 2014 09:19
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I read John Cheever's short story "The Swimmer" a while back and it's really stuck with me. I'd recommend it to anyone looking for a quick, accessible read about wealth, happiness and suburban life. Any other authors/stories that combine a deconstruction of suburbia with surrealism?
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