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Caustic Chimera posted:I loved Wind-up Bird Chronicle and didn't really care for Kafka on the Shore. If I want to read more Murakami, where do I go from here? I read The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle after 1Q84 and found it to be something like 1Q84 Lite. Or rather, 1Q84 is a whole lot like Wind-Up Bird without an editor. So once you get past the repetition, you'd probably like it. One big plus is that, while it includes the same extraordinarily lengthy side-stories as Wind-Up Bird, none of them are about World War II.
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Jan 5, 2016 00:34
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One of Vonnegut's rules of writing was "Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for." While I'm sure that's still not necessary for some people, I definitely agree with that more than thoroughly loving a character, which is pretty facile.
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Jan 7, 2016 00:25
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Cloks posted:The connections make more sense as the book goes on - some of them are a little too good to be true but the book switches to back stories that explain some of them and others are elucidated through the present story. If you mean the Jenny/Mercer/Pulaski scene, I agree. That whole section was kind of wack. It felt like Hallberg was getting bored with his own story. I'm not quite finished with the book yet, but in general I don't have a problem with the coincidences. I mean, if there's one thing that isn't a coincidence, it's the fact that the narrative is focusing on these specific characters. Why would we be reading about them all if they didn't have an extraordinary, story-worthy connection? Maybe the sheer amount of cross-POVs is overreaching, but that's just part of the sprawling, chaotic, infinitely connected style that helps evoke NYC.
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Jan 27, 2016 01:31
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iccyelf posted:It tends to get overshadowed by The Magic Mountain but Thomas Mann's Joseph and his Brothers is the best thing he ever wrote and it's historical. Thomas Mann's best work is Doctor Faustus. Joseph and His Brothers is a monstrosity.
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Feb 27, 2016 02:08
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Mel Mudkiper posted:The reason I like modern fiction is because classic literature has already been dissected and prepared. Its impossible to read Shakespeare, for example, without being influenced by 400 years of critical and cultural commentary. I find it hard to have a perspective on that kind of fiction I can call "my own" because I am not interacting directly with the text as much as I am interacting with other readings of the text.
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Apr 20, 2016 18:20
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Mel Mudkiper posted:ok but why bother hunting down 400 year old books no one gave a poo poo about
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Apr 20, 2016 20:11
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I think it's perfectly valid to want to make your own judgment and connections when reading something. I just don't think that goes hand in hand with sifting through a bunch of modern fiction, unless it really is nothing much more than "I want to know about a cool thing before you."
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Apr 20, 2016 21:03
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Swillkitsch posted:I'm reading Grapes of Wrath because I've never read it and my partner read a passage to me and it sounded cool. I'm about fifty pages in. I didn't think I'd enjoy it as much as I am. Stein-ecch
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Apr 27, 2016 18:23
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Marty Stu and the Deus Ex Machina Who cares if there are instances of cheap storytelling. Children deserve something that tackles moral issues while actually being fun.
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Apr 28, 2016 05:44
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CestMoi posted:That guy said Beckett dialogue and it reminded me I read Endgame recently and the exchange between Hamm and Nagg where Hamm's like "why did you engender me?" and Nagg says "sorry I didn't know it would be you" is soooo goooooood Every production in the Beckett On Film collection is good. Michael Gambon is fantastic in their version of Endgame.
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Jun 6, 2016 23:32
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What's the consensus on Flaubert's overall bibliography? I'm wondering where to go after finishing Madame Bovary.
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Jul 10, 2016 02:40
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Hey, somebody tell me about Flaubert instead of filling another page with this whiny poo poo. 
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Jul 10, 2016 05:57
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John E Woods is a great translator, he did those reasonable English versions of all the Thomas Mann. At the very least, I'm gonna DARE with a sizable paycheck and never read the thing.
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Jul 27, 2016 23:24
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Why are we talking about Neil Gaiman in the lit thread anyway, a man who exclusively writes Fantasy?
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Jul 31, 2016 23:06
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Mel Mudkiper posted:This was my problem, his misanthropy and depression came off as very trite and unfulfilling. It came off as C-rate existentialism and didn't really feel very authentic to me. 
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Aug 1, 2016 21:50
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Robot Pride posted:I recommend Crum by Lee Maynard if you like that kind of book. It's like the book you mentioned but West Virginia and won a bunch of awards and was profiled on NPR a while back. I'm not sure why this guy last week quoted a post from several years ago, but I'm glad he did, because I'm reading Winesburg Ohio now and it's great! 
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Aug 6, 2016 17:30
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This thread has mostly convinced me that GR is literary bizarro fiction, so its high-quality prose can cover up for the fact that a bunch of ultra-juvenile nerds just want to read about weed rockets and poop sex.
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Aug 22, 2016 05:09
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Wasn't taking down Christians at all? If you can't laugh at the fact Old Testament God is a prick, don't know what to tell you. Old Testament God isn't Christian God, duh.
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Aug 30, 2016 15:56
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Abalieno posted:Alan Moore. This looks embarrassing
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Sep 11, 2016 18:57
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"Literary" readers are all corporate hogs, and novels are capitalism, and long novels are trusts. IMHO.
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Sep 20, 2016 16:51
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It's fun because of the malapropisms and double meanings, not because of random wacky spellings for words.
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Sep 21, 2016 15:01
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Mel Mudkiper posted:No, malapropisms and double meanings is Joyce. It's a lot simpler than Joyce, so yes, you can easily understand its surface meaning when reading it. But there's definitely room for interpretation, in some self-evident words like "inudibelle", and considering the length of the novel I'm sure that's not all it consists of. It seems to me like a quaint homage to Joyce mixed into the work. I can also imagine the original German might be vastly different in effect.
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Sep 21, 2016 15:45
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Abalieno posted:This was Alan Moore, though. Not Bottom's Dream. In that case, I'm more impressed. Seems like there's some actual effort gone in.
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Sep 21, 2016 16:23
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Yeah, if that's all he could manage.
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Sep 21, 2016 17:29
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hog fat posted:You Know Me Al - Ring Lardner. The best novel discussed in the past five or so pages Are you my great-grandpa?
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Sep 23, 2016 14:50
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Mel Mudkiper posted:He falls too much into white exoticism of Africa and Latin America for my tastes But there is nothing more entertaining...
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Oct 8, 2016 03:16
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Shibawanko posted:Song lyrics aren't literature. 
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Oct 15, 2016 05:20
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Franchescanado posted:It is letters from a ship captain to his cousin telling stories he heard from a deranged man claiming to be Dr. Frankenstein they picked up in the artic, and I think also diary entries from the deranged man. It is a novel-size game of Telephone between several questionable narrators. The letters are to his sister, and there are very few of them, at the beginning and end of the novel. The bulk of it is just the story that Frankenstein tells him. It's a standard frame narrative for the time.
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Oct 31, 2016 21:00
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Lunchmeat Larry posted:I'm reading Malone Dies and it's good - the writing is lovely and witty af - but I'm struggling to get much out of it. Was this a bad Beckett to start with? You should have started with Molloy. The first half is a similar disjointed narrative by a decrepit old man, to prepare you for Malone Dies, but the second half is more straightforward and can help you tie the pieces together as someone new to the style.
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Nov 29, 2016 05:53
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Invicta{HOG}, M.D. posted:Maybe I should reread Winesburg or look a little deeper into it. I didn't much like it and thought I had a good handle on what it was about. It's not actually dripping with subtext.
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Dec 3, 2016 06:51
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The only thing worthwhile on that list is Elena Ferrante's picture book.
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Dec 6, 2016 21:59
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Franchescanado posted:Do you remember the translator you read? Pretty sure there's only the one translation. It's not too monumentally different either.
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Jan 13, 2017 00:25
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Heath posted:What is the best Kafka translation? I have read none of him but I would like to. For most of his short stories, which I think you should start with, the Muir translations are the only real option. They're decent, but never really preferable. Their translation of The Trial is good as revised by E.M. Butler. I personally love Mark Harman's translations of Amerika and especially The Castle.
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Jan 15, 2017 03:32
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Grimson posted:For the short works, I thought the edition translated by Joachim Neugroschel was a step up from the Muirs. I haven't read that translation, but it seems to only be the stories published in Kafka's lifetime, and I meant that I have only been able to find Muir translations for most of the short work.
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Jan 18, 2017 21:49
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Was Nietzsche a good poet?
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Jan 23, 2017 06:31
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CountFosco posted:Your decision to categorize brains as "bad" and "good" based on a persons use of a single word is indicative of something, surely. I sentence you to read and reread The Maimed until you come to grips with the extraordinary mundanity of the perverse, and extraordinary perversity of the mundane. Exhibit 1: idiots compensate for their sad tiny brains by using excessively proper wordage on the internet.
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Mar 4, 2017 20:56
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Grandmother of Five posted:Just curious about something that might be veering off-topic again, but how good is the US public library system? Like, is it state-based, or can you order home a book from wherever, and are there user-fees? I'll gently caress of to an appropriaye Ask/Tell thread if that's a better fit, but if the question goes well enough in here I'd be interested in how useful people from the US and elsewhere feel that their public library systems are, and to what degree you have to pay for services. Interlibrary loans can come from anywhere in the country, and the cost is never more than spare change. It's never done me wrong, but due dates are at the discretion of local libraries so they're very inconsistent. That's pretty much the same as I've heard from other countries.
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Mar 6, 2017 17:23
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Obviously choose the updated Moncrieff if you go that route. His original translation is dry as hell, you would never believe it was written in the 20th century.
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Mar 26, 2017 18:51
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Arglebargle III posted:Lately I've been reading exclusively nonfiction, recommend some Real Literature to me. Late 19th to early 20th century setting a bonus. Excuse me, real literature does not have "settings."
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Apr 23, 2017 03:55
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Camus and Beckett are always a go-to.
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Apr 30, 2017 06:28
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