Rabbit Hill posted:

*Then again, I'm reading Moby Dick now and finding it really funny and just an overall delight, so maybe my perception is off.

blue squares posted:

I think Shakespeare is overrated, and is so beloved on the internet because he takes basic genre plots and writes them pretentiously, which makes nerds feel super smart for reading them

quote:

The Crossing focuses on the course of life, sequential and linear, causative, perhaps fated and yet surprising, as narrative plot—as story. And McCarthy is concerned with the role or function of story in human experience of life, not only our own stories, our autobiographies, but our biographies of others, our witnessing. These concerns are manifested in the folk ballad or corrido (literally, the running or the flowing) associated with Boyd, and in the many stories told Billy by the people whose paths cross his on his journeys in Mexico...

The Crossing is indeed a matrix of intersecting stories, partial or complete, often competing, with varying relationships to truth, cutting across and interwoven with the apparently simple linearity of the road narrative of Billy's life. The novel suggests alternately that the events of his life flow in a continuous thread from the hands of the weaver god or that they come to him seemingly by chance in the course of the road he runs, or through some logic of the road itself.

Rabbit Hill posted:

quote:

He saw God's foot upon the treadle of the loom, and spoke it; and therefore his shipmates called him mad. So man's insanity is heaven's sense; and wandering from all mortal reason, man comes at last to that celestial thought, which, to reason, is absurd and frantic; and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised, indifferent as his God.

quote:

...from that hour the little negro went about the deck an idiot; such, at least, they said he was. The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body up, but drowned the infinite of his soul.

TheQat posted:

Are there other particularly excellent literature audiobooks are out there? Trying to find something by browsing through audible/iBooks is pretty fruitless so far

Chamberk posted:

Oh, some of the tangents are great. But some are just Melville telling you everything that was known about whales circa 1850, which can be amusing ("I tell you, the whale is a FISH, not a mammal!") but can get dull pretty quickly.

However, the characters like Queequeg, Ahab, and Starbuck are great. Just don't expect too much from Ishmael after the first 100 pages.

Chamberk posted:

ACTUALLY, i understand that they're important but it can be frustrating when the narrative and characters are put aside for 30 pages to talk about different parts of the whale. i'm not saying Melville did a bad job, it's just that reading this book requires a bit more work and some adjustment from my usual expectations for a story.

Ras Het posted:

Isn't Atwood some sub New Yorker level housewife trash

Smoking Crow posted:

In 1975, chinua achebe wrote an essay about how the novel Heart of Darkness is racist. He had textual evidence which others can see to support this. I disagree with him, but his reading is correct

Mel Mudkiper posted:

Why not? To suggest otherwise is to imply there is an objective universal.

Correctness is in itself an organic reflection of subjective experience. Something is only correct within the perspective of the one offering analysis, not an intangible outside factor equally understood by all readers.

Mel Mudkiper posted:

Not necessarily. For that to be true we would have to assert there is an objective core to a text that is incorruptible by the subjective experience of the reader. I do not really agree with that. It is quite possible, and also quite frequent, for their to be two equally valid interpretations of a text that are at direct and irreconciable difference with each other that both come from a place of legitimate subjectivity.

The question of racism in Huckleberry Finn is an example.

Ras Het posted:

I'm never going to read City of Fire. That's a really easy promise to make

Lunchmeat Larry posted:

I knew No Country For Old Men wasn’t meant to be McCarthy’s best book but I’m finding it even more thin than expected so far. It really is just a decent thriller. Oh well, it’s good for what it is!

Smoking Crow posted:

Big fan of Ha Jin I see

V. Illych L. posted:

i read it the first time around because i got it as a gift. then i read about it and was puzzled at the reaction people had on the internet, so i went to the library and borrowed the english version

Mel Mudkiper posted:

yeah but I wouldn't want to cede the authority of the reader for the sake of convenience

Mel Mudkiper posted:

plus it takes loving forever.

You can polish off a 250 page book in like 3-4 hours but as an audiobook its like a whole day

Mel Mudkiper posted:

listen to NPR then nerds

NERDS

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

Prairie hasn't been funny in two decades and Car Talk is a zombie show.


Wait Wait Don't Tell Me and Whaddya Know are both Good Shows, though.

blue squares posted:

What are some really good books about sex that aren't smut but are about exploring what sex means to the psyche, to society, etc. There's Lolita and the power of desire. What else?

The more boner inducing the better imo

I assume I should read Portnoy's Complaint. Also, Ada by Nabokov

tetrapyloctomy posted:

Stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus.

WAY TO GO WAMPA!! posted:

the only worthwhile poetry is rap lyrics

Mel Mudkiper posted:

The unfinished part reflects a lot on his own writing in a weird way


its very meta-Musil

CestMoi posted:

By far the best time for literature was 1874-1936.

HHammond posted:

Also, about to read a bunch of Virginia Woolf novels for university. Was wondering what the thoughts on her are around here? Personally, I think she's a genius.

CestMoi posted:

DoctorG0nzo posted:

I've been thinking about checking out O'Brien. His stuff is supposed to be pretty dense but if I read and mostly got Ulysses will I be fine? Also, what's a good spot to start with him? I've only heard much about At Swim-Two-Birds.

Haven't heard about Watching the English, but I'll check that out, thanks

Cloks posted:

Is that the place to talk about Margaret Atwood?

Smoking Crow posted:

everyone here should read Tibet: Through the Red Box by Peter Sis

A human heart posted:

what women have you read?

unao posted:

I feel the urgent need to message you (if you don't mind of course) but I'm not platinium, is there a way to talk about all the books without clogging this thread?

Ras Het posted:

Yes, yes, yes. If have a very high tolerance for Marxist historical fiction, Open Veins, if only a high tolerance for Marxist historical fiction, Book of Embraces and Days and Nights of Love and War. And then Memories of Fire of course.

unao posted:

Is't kool-aid man "drinking the kool aid" kind of cannibalistic?

but so is capitalist society, so it's appropiate?

CestMoi posted:

I should have mentioned I literally live in China atm so nothing too dissident pls these look cool tho

Solitair posted:

My favorite literary works that I can think of at the moment are Pale Fire, Gormenghast and Catch-22. I also really liked the Eschaton scene from Infinite Jest and parts of Gravity's Rainbow. You've actually managed to guess pretty well what I want right now: surreal tone and examples of high-tier prose. Out of all the aspects of writing you can consider about a book, prose quality is the one I have the loosest grasp of, and I feel the need to educate myself on how to distinguish it.