For me its:
Suttree
Hamlet
Blood Meridian
The Stranger
The Epic of Gilgamesh
Bhagavad Gita
The Bible (KJV)
The Death of Ivan Illyitch
The Time Machine Did it
I no particular order and sticking to fiction because that is sort of how I am feeling right now.
So the Wind Won't Blow it All Away
Speedboat
The Sheltering Sky
Balcony in the Forest
Growth of the Soil
Pedro Paramo
Winesburg Ohio
Omensetter's Luck*
The Pale King*
George Mills
*These are primarily to acknowledge the authors and their influence on me as both a writer and a reader, neither really have a work which I could call a favorite (I could give a short story for each (The Pedersen Kid and Incarnations of Burned Children) but I can not ignore them in a favorites list and I think these two works best represent the idea of a favorite despite failing to be favorites.
Omensetter's Luck, possible some of his novellas (have not gotten into those yet) and sort of Middle C which kind of sits halfway between The Pedersen Kid and the stories in In The Heart of the Heart of The Country.
Give me something to go off of so I do not have to autistically list books, which do you love and why?
I have not, I’ll check them out thank you. How is speedboat? Ive been curious if I should read it.
It is one of my favorites, obviously. I group it and So the Wind Won't Blow it All Away together, they both exploit fractured narratives but Speed boat goes to an extreme. Adler says the only constant is that our perspective on our past will always evolve with our present, Brautigan says somethings in our pasts are constants and our relation to them will never change. Both are very interesting works dealing with how we relate to our pasts.
Damn I happen to be sort of in a mental crisis for some reason dealing with accepting some stuff from my past, they might be good for me. Thanks bro.
12 months ago
Anonymous
Speedboat and So the Wind Won't Blow it All Away should be very relevant. Brautigan deals with the effects of those events which we can not change, those events which define us; Adler with our past more as a whole, we can't change our past but we can change how our pasts influences our present. I would say both fail to give the entire picture but both offer a context which I could not imagine going on without. They address simple facts of life which are very difficult to see when you are in the thick of it.
12 months ago
Anonymous
Found a sample of so the wind might blow it all away, starting now thanks. Also if you haven’t read john fante, something tells me you might like him.
12 months ago
Anonymous
I know i messed the title up Im tired from work
12 months ago
Anonymous
I read Wait Until Spring, Bandini many years ago and loved it, eventually I will get around to reading more of him and the Bandini series.
I know i messed the title up Im tired from work
I did not even notice the "might," which is an interesting error and relevant, please let the kindness of forgetting set me free.
12 months ago
Anonymous
Aw dang ya thats my favorite one too. Sorry bro. Have you read poor white? Sherwoods only known for WO but theres so much more to him. Id say poor white is amazing.
12 months ago
Anonymous
The way in which Fante demonstrated the irrationality of fear left me with the feeling that he would never be great but he would always be relevant. Bandini fears that he would not make it to confession before he died, that the all powerful and all knowing creator would be a pedant with no understanding of context. Fante demonstrated this wonderfully, he shows us the childishness of our fears. I can not see Fante losing this relevance and the worth he provides, his failure was that he was not able to boil it down to the universal so will never cross over to the great but sometimes that is a good thing.
I have a weird aversion to reading more of Anderson, I really want to but I can not ignore what Fante so wonderfully demonstrated.
12 months ago
Anonymous
Damn honestly I never really understood it so directly as that but yes thats exactly what he does. I am more recently as I get older fighting between the christian idea of morality and the neitzschean onethat says make your own, because everyone forgives and condemns at will so Why even bother with opinions. Those fears are just personal.
12 months ago
Anonymous
What I got from Wait Until Spring, Bandini was that Fante is ultimately a Christian struggling with his Catholic upbringing, that he believes in the general teaching of Christianity but not the simplistic dogma of Catholicism which plays upon those base/childish fears. But for him that line between Christian and Catholic was impossible to draw so he was forced to the extreme of atheist. This gives us that universal struggle which everyone deals with but frames it in a way which atheists can use for anti-religion or Catholics can use as a lack of faith, he does not go generic enough that the truth he shows is universal. But maybe this is just my agnosticism keeping me removed from the whole fight. The battle he is personally fighting will remain relevant for the foreseeable future as in we all fight such battles in a generic sense but it is not universal, so he will not become a great.
But I have only read the one book so far, my view may change when I get around to reading more of him.
The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky
The Trial by Kafka
Ulysses by Joyce
Stoner by John Williams
Swann's Way by Proust
Five Dialogues by Plato
Atomised by Wellbeck
Cancer Ward by Solzhenitsyn
Herzog by Saul Bellow
Either/Or by Kierkegaard
1). Two Arms and a Head: The Death of Paraplegic Philosopher - Clayton Atreus;
2). Conspiracy Against the Human Race - Thomas Ligotti;
3). On the Heights of Despair - Emil Cioran;
4). The Trial - Franz Kafka;
5). The Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka;
6). The Denial of Death - Ernest Becker;
7). Escape from Evil - Ernest Becker;
8). Genealogy of Morality - Nietzsche;
9). Aphorisms on Love and Hate - Nietzsche;
10). Death Poems - Thomas Ligotti.
Too hard to narrow down so here’s a bunch >Vincent Van Gogh Letters >Henry Miller in general (especially The Colossus of Maroussi, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch, Tropic of Cancer, The Smile at the Foot of the Ladder, and The Cosmological Eye >DH Lawrence in general (The Rainbow, Sons and Lovers, Collected Stories) >Nietzsche in general >Essays from Emerson >Essays from Montaigne >Autobiography of Cellini >Autobiography of Casanova >Leaves of Grass by Whitman >Rilke in general (especially Letters to a Young Poet, The Book of Hours, Duino Elegies, and Sonnets to Orpheus) >The Chinese (The Tao Te Ching, Chuang Tzu, I-Ching, Classical poetry) >Paris Spleen by Baudelaire >Illuminations by Rimbaud >Decameron by Boccaccio >Plutarch >Hemingway in general >Siddhartha by Hesse >USA Trilogy by Dos Passos >Sometimes a Great Notion by Kesey >The Dharma Bums by Kerouac >Gargantuan and Pantagruel by Rabelais >Conversations with Goethe by Eckermann >Histories by Herodotus
The Epic of Gilgamesh
Brothers Karamazov - Dostoyevsky
Stoner - John Williams
Gore Vidal - Julian
Tao te Ching - Lao Tzu
Melancholy of Resistance - Krasznahorkai
Oedipus Rex - Sophocles
and Julian the Emperor's works in general
How were Van Gogh's Letters? I have been meaning to read it for a while now
>Van Gogh’s letters
I’m tired and about to go to sleep but I’ll make an effortpost tomorrow if the thread is still up. Probably my favorite book and I’ve taken a lot away from in it in different facets
I’d also like to add Lautreamont to my list. Forgot that one
>Van Gogh’s letters
I’m tired and about to go to sleep but I’ll make an effortpost tomorrow if the thread is still up. Probably my favorite book and I’ve taken a lot away from in it in different facets
I’d also like to add Lautreamont to my list. Forgot that one
>Van Gogh’s letters
My thoughts on them are scattered so I’m going to do my best to break down by section why I love them so much. The overarching reason though is because even though Vincent had a depressing life, and the letters are depressing, I’ve found them to be one of the most inspiring things ever written
It’s helps to know about Vincent’s life. I like the Penguin edition because it often gives background info in between letters which gives clear context. Vincent was a difficult person to get along with by all accounts. The relationship with his brother Theo is one of my favorite themes. Theo was his younger brother and the one real friend Vincent had. They had their clashes, but at a certain point it’s clear Theo believes in Vincent fully, despite Vincent having no success in almost every facet of his life. T was a patron of sorts to V and supported him financially, even when it was difficult. There was no V without T. T died shortly after V so neither of them would know the monstrous success they would achieve. It is very bittersweet
V is the poster boy for starving artist. He was uncompromising, and he struggled and suffered for his art. After a couple awkward relationships failed for V, one with his cousin, another with a prostitute, V dedicated himself solely to his art. He had his eye on the prize and even when breakdowns affected him, he told T that he must remain calm, he doesn’t have much time left ( he mentions multiple times he doesn’t think he’ll reach 40), and he must continue to paint.
V almost has a sage-like peasant wisdom at times. He often had profound insight despite the lack of education. The letters are probably the best insight into a great artist’s mind than anything we have. V wanted to see the beauty in everything, whether a potato or a peasant.
As for how I’ve gotten something from this book, I think V’s vision is inspiring and one I try to use in everyday life. He tried to see the poetry or beauty in everything, and what is life but perspective? The fact that V and T died before V’s work blew up is depressing, but it’s made me reevaluate what a successful life is, and what makes life worth living. V’s life was nothing but hardship and struggle with no rewards, but I believe he lived a life worth living and an inspiring one. Life goes on and you’ll never know who you touch and what kind of mark you’ll make so it’s best you give it your all. There is more to living than hoping for rewards. Whenever I’m going through a rough period I try to remain positive and influence others in a positive way
TLDR: I find Van Gogh inspiring, I try to view life as a poet, or a painter, finding the beauty or the positive in everything, and his letters made me reevaluate what it means to live, and what my life is in relationship to the whole, and what is worth living for. One day I need to sit down and formulate my thoughts better so I’m not as scattered
I’m not the person youre replying to I’m the pessoagay from another thread but I appreciate this insight. I don’t really understand what makes his art so great but I would probably appreciate his letters after reading this. I want to be an artist (writer obviously) but I struggle with bipolar or whatever so Im not consistent in writing at all and I cant judge anything objectively it seems cause the way I see the world or my life keeps fricking shifting on me. Anyway, Ill check this out thanks
Tao te Ching
In search of lost time (if counts as 1)
Borges collected fictions
Bukowski essential poetry
The road
Death of Ivan Ilyich
The Fun Habit
Forbidden Keys of Persuasion
Leaves of Grass
Dangling in the Tournafortia
The Sound and the Fury
Moby Dick
Blood Meridian
Tender is the Night
The Sun also Rises
The Grapes of Wrath
Lonesome Dove
All the King’s Men
The Adventures of Augie March
Look Homeward Angel
But you must use a small caliber like a 22 or if a shotgun, a 410. Too large a bullet will destroy the zucchini, rendering it uncollectable and unfetchable.
>or if a shotgun, a 410.
67 1/2 gauge is for homosexuals from West Texas like Cormac.
I hunt the Cumber using a 144 gauge quadruple barrel with a pack of minks to flush them out.
12 months ago
Anonymous
Cucumber tree>cucumber>pickle>relish
Don’t be a fool
12 months ago
Anonymous
I've neck shanked a cumber in the face and barely survived with half my 17 minks. Have you ever seen a live half-mink? It hates itself for living. It is half a man.
12 months ago
Anonymous
I once throttled a goose in city limits. I noticed there was a loophole in the hunting laws and killing a goose with my bare hands was technically legal in city limits since it was in season and I had a license, the hunting laws only covered using firearms/bow/crossbow/traps. The state closed that loophole after that so I can not longer take advantage of the complacency of the geese in city limits.
12 months ago
Anonymous
>since it was in season and I had a license
Only for Geese. Human women come in season once a month I hear. You need to check their veganas for mucus.
12 months ago
Anonymous
You sound like a moron.
11 months ago
Anonymous
toasty roastie
chuddies would be nice to you if you just had sex with them, you know
best I can do: >Autobiography of Malcolm X >My War Gone By, I Miss It So by Anthony Lloyd >Technological Slavery by Ted Kaczynski >Dark Places by Gillian Flynn >Confessions of a Mask by Yukio Mishima
hard to choose a favorite Mishima book but I guess I'd go with that
Laura Warholic, or the Sexual Intelletual by Alexander Theroux
Solenoid by Mircea Cartarescu
Of Time and the River by Thomas Wolfe
Mile Zero by Thomas Sanchez
The Paper Dragon by Evan Hunter
Prejudices by H. L. Mencken
Synergetics by R. Buckminster Fuller
Lives by Plutarch
Essays by Montaigne
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
I have the two-volume boxed set from the Library of America, which I recommend. Let me quote from the dust jacket blurb to give you an idea: "The six volumes of Prejudices, published between 1919 and 1927, were both a slashing attack on what Mencken saw as American provincialism and hypocrisy and a resounding defense of the writers and thinkers he thought of as harbingers of a new frankness and maturity. Laced with savage humor and delighting in verbal play, Mencken's prose remains a one-of-a-kind roller-coaster ride through a staggering range of themes: literature and journalism, politics and religion, sex and marriage, food and drink."
I was 52 years old when I read Prejudices. My only regret about reading Mencken was that I wished I had read him when I was in my 20s. He’s an original American iconoclast. I hope this helps. Cheers.
Garden's of the Moon
Deadhouse Gates
Memories of Ice
House of Chains
Midnight Tides
The Bonehunters
Reaper's Gale
Toll the Hounds
Dust of Dreams
The Crippled God
The Book of Disquiet
Fathers and Sons
Count of Monte Cristo
Brothers Karamazov
The Magic Mountain
Imperium
Mein Kampf
anything by Sherwood Anderson
No Longer Human
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
Methamorphosis by Franz Kafka
The Trial by Franz Kafka
Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov
Stoner by John Williams
Witcher by Andrzej Sapkowski
The Doll by Bolesław Prus
The Deluge by Henryk Sienkiewicz
Silmarilion by Tolkien
Shadow over Innsmouth by Lovecraft
Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa
Aenied
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep
Starship Troopers
Blood Meridian
Outer Dark
Candid & Zadig
Notes from Underground
Catch-22
Return of the King
1st and 2nd Samuel
Learn to Read Activity Book
Cat in the hat
The very hungry caterpillar
Good night moon
Corduroy
Where the wild things are
If you give a mouse a cookie
Hello farm
The foot book
Animal ABC
The Bible
Dream of the Red Chamber
The Tale of Genji
The Neverending Story
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
e-girlta
The Divine Comedy
Hamlet
Winter's Tale (Mark Helprin)
The Iliad and the Odyssey
I'm not very well-read, most of the fiction I read is pretty light. My favorite book is Blood Meridian. If I just shamelessly list the books I've enjoyed the most, I think jt might be
Blood Meridian
The Idiot
The Brothers Karamazov
Notes From Underground
Dune 1-3
The Doomed City
Annihilation
Something Wicked This Way Comes
- Winnie-the-Pooh
- The House at Pooh Corner
- The Way of Zen, Alan Watts
- Tao: The Watercourse Way, Alan Watts
- The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell
- American Psycho
- In My Own Way, Alan Watts
- Zen Effects: The Life of Alan Watts (Also titled: *Genuine Fake*), Monica Furlong
- Joseph Campbell: A Fire in the Mind, Stephen & Robin Larsen
winnie the pooh and alan watts make me feel good, i like biographies, and i haven't read much overall so i don't have a 10th favorite (only started reading this year and have only read some 40 books)
Not going to put too much effort into this one, but in no particular order: >A Farewell to Arms >Fahrenheit 451 >My War Gone By, I Miss It So >Redwall (#1) >Storm of Steel >Nineteen Eighty-four >On the Road >Catch-22 >The Bell Jar >Perfume
Gilead
Sometimes a Great Notion
Mrs Dalloway
Light in August
Jerusalem
Watership Down
Mother Night
The Crossing
East of Eden
if on a winter's night a traveler
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell - William Blake
All Things Are Possible - Lev Shestov
Philosophy Before Socrates - Richard McKirahan
Dead Souls - Nikolai Gogol
Les Chants de Maldoror/Poesies - Comte de Lautreamont
The Histories - Herodotus
The Confessions - St. Augustine
Gorgias - Plato
Book of Ecclesiastes
The Aeneid - Vergil
Based Dead Souls and Eckhart
Gilead
Sometimes a Great Notion
Mrs Dalloway
Light in August
Jerusalem
Watership Down
Mother Night
The Crossing
East of Eden
if on a winter's night a traveler
>Jerusalem
By whom?
LOTR
The Hobbit
Asoiaf
Early Carolingian Warfare
Ammianus
Ruling the Later Roman Empire
Beowulf
Gilgamesh
The Odyssey
Livy's books 20-30
The Leopard (Il Gattopardo)
Stoner (Williams)
The Birth of Tragedy
The Sun Also Rises
Iliad
Satyricon
Aeneid
Nice classics
The Epic of Gilgamesh
Brothers Karamazov - Dostoyevsky
Stoner - John Williams
Gore Vidal - Julian
Tao te Ching - Lao Tzu
Melancholy of Resistance - Krasznahorkai
Oedipus Rex - Sophocles
and Julian the Emperor's works in general
How were Van Gogh's Letters? I have been meaning to read it for a while now
Jerusalem by Alan Moore
the title is in reference to a Blake poem
it's fiction with alot of geographical and personal histories mixed in
really can't say if it's something you'll enjoy based on your top 10
>Dead Souls
I have a copy of this but can't find a motivation to place it in my to read pile
what can you say about it that will convince me to consider it?
Moby Dick
The Confidence Man
The Pickwick Papers
A King Alone
Posthumous Memoirs of Braz Cubas
The Sundays of Jean Dezert
The Brothers Karamazov
Ferdydurke
The Red and the Black
The Adventures of Augie March
Have you read Count of Monte Cristo? If so, could you briefly compare/contrast it to the red and the black? Loved count, have only considered reading TRATB
>mound of courgette, marrow, zucchini >cat >old man in a camo jacket with a side-by-side shotgun
Why can't I think of a pun to combine all of these elements into one pithy caption?
The Mill on the Floss
Iliad
Henry IV
A Midsummernight's Dream
Aeneid
Call of the Crocodile
Ellis Island and Other Stories
Voyager and Other Fictions: The Collected Stories of Jose Dalisay
I've only read thirty or so books so the list is pretty short. I'm just addicted to George Eliot's writing at this point, god I can't get enough
I haven't read 10 books. However, if I had, it would probably be: >The Holy Bible >Finnegan's Wake >Infinite Jest >Moby Dick >The Iliad >The Odyssey >The Divine Comedy >In Search of Lost Time >Artemis Fowl, the Opal Deception >Les Miserables
>Quran >Sahih Bukhari >Sahih Muslim >Sunan Abu Dawud >Jami Al-Tirmidhi >Sunan Al Nasa'i >Sunan ibn Majah >Tafsir Ibn Abbas >Tafsir Ibn Kathir >Muwatta Imam Malik >Musnad Imam Zaid
Mein Kampf
e-girlta
Harry Potter
Don't know any other books.
good selection
For me its:
Suttree
Hamlet
Blood Meridian
The Stranger
The Epic of Gilgamesh
Bhagavad Gita
The Bible (KJV)
The Death of Ivan Illyitch
The Time Machine Did it
Great choices anon, Blood Meridian and Hamlet are on my top ten as well.
This along with Turner Diaries, That Hideous Strength, Whatever, and The French Revolution
>Mein Kampf
>e-girlta
based
>Harry Potter
cringe
I no particular order and sticking to fiction because that is sort of how I am feeling right now.
So the Wind Won't Blow it All Away
Speedboat
The Sheltering Sky
Balcony in the Forest
Growth of the Soil
Pedro Paramo
Winesburg Ohio
Omensetter's Luck*
The Pale King*
George Mills
*These are primarily to acknowledge the authors and their influence on me as both a writer and a reader, neither really have a work which I could call a favorite (I could give a short story for each (The Pedersen Kid and Incarnations of Burned Children) but I can not ignore them in a favorites list and I think these two works best represent the idea of a favorite despite failing to be favorites.
Does Gass have anything similar to The Peterson Kid? I bought In The Heart Of The Heartland years ago and hated everything except for TPK
Omensetter's Luck, possible some of his novellas (have not gotten into those yet) and sort of Middle C which kind of sits halfway between The Pedersen Kid and the stories in In The Heart of the Heart of The Country.
Nice to see Sherwood get some attention on here. He’s my favorite american writer.
You will probably enjoy So the Wind Won't Blow it All Away and George mills, if you have not read them yet.
I have not, I’ll check them out thank you. How is speedboat? Ive been curious if I should read it.
more please
Give me something to go off of so I do not have to autistically list books, which do you love and why?
It is one of my favorites, obviously. I group it and So the Wind Won't Blow it All Away together, they both exploit fractured narratives but Speed boat goes to an extreme. Adler says the only constant is that our perspective on our past will always evolve with our present, Brautigan says somethings in our pasts are constants and our relation to them will never change. Both are very interesting works dealing with how we relate to our pasts.
Damn I happen to be sort of in a mental crisis for some reason dealing with accepting some stuff from my past, they might be good for me. Thanks bro.
Speedboat and So the Wind Won't Blow it All Away should be very relevant. Brautigan deals with the effects of those events which we can not change, those events which define us; Adler with our past more as a whole, we can't change our past but we can change how our pasts influences our present. I would say both fail to give the entire picture but both offer a context which I could not imagine going on without. They address simple facts of life which are very difficult to see when you are in the thick of it.
Found a sample of so the wind might blow it all away, starting now thanks. Also if you haven’t read john fante, something tells me you might like him.
I know i messed the title up Im tired from work
I read Wait Until Spring, Bandini many years ago and loved it, eventually I will get around to reading more of him and the Bandini series.
I did not even notice the "might," which is an interesting error and relevant, please let the kindness of forgetting set me free.
Aw dang ya thats my favorite one too. Sorry bro. Have you read poor white? Sherwoods only known for WO but theres so much more to him. Id say poor white is amazing.
The way in which Fante demonstrated the irrationality of fear left me with the feeling that he would never be great but he would always be relevant. Bandini fears that he would not make it to confession before he died, that the all powerful and all knowing creator would be a pedant with no understanding of context. Fante demonstrated this wonderfully, he shows us the childishness of our fears. I can not see Fante losing this relevance and the worth he provides, his failure was that he was not able to boil it down to the universal so will never cross over to the great but sometimes that is a good thing.
I have a weird aversion to reading more of Anderson, I really want to but I can not ignore what Fante so wonderfully demonstrated.
Damn honestly I never really understood it so directly as that but yes thats exactly what he does. I am more recently as I get older fighting between the christian idea of morality and the neitzschean onethat says make your own, because everyone forgives and condemns at will so Why even bother with opinions. Those fears are just personal.
What I got from Wait Until Spring, Bandini was that Fante is ultimately a Christian struggling with his Catholic upbringing, that he believes in the general teaching of Christianity but not the simplistic dogma of Catholicism which plays upon those base/childish fears. But for him that line between Christian and Catholic was impossible to draw so he was forced to the extreme of atheist. This gives us that universal struggle which everyone deals with but frames it in a way which atheists can use for anti-religion or Catholics can use as a lack of faith, he does not go generic enough that the truth he shows is universal. But maybe this is just my agnosticism keeping me removed from the whole fight. The battle he is personally fighting will remain relevant for the foreseeable future as in we all fight such battles in a generic sense but it is not universal, so he will not become a great.
But I have only read the one book so far, my view may change when I get around to reading more of him.
>sneaking the pale king in there thinking no one would notice
I appreciate the attempt, anon.
The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky
The Trial by Kafka
Ulysses by Joyce
Stoner by John Williams
Swann's Way by Proust
Five Dialogues by Plato
Atomised by Wellbeck
Cancer Ward by Solzhenitsyn
Herzog by Saul Bellow
Either/Or by Kierkegaard
>Ulysses by Joyce
My man!
1). Two Arms and a Head: The Death of Paraplegic Philosopher - Clayton Atreus;
2). Conspiracy Against the Human Race - Thomas Ligotti;
3). On the Heights of Despair - Emil Cioran;
4). The Trial - Franz Kafka;
5). The Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka;
6). The Denial of Death - Ernest Becker;
7). Escape from Evil - Ernest Becker;
8). Genealogy of Morality - Nietzsche;
9). Aphorisms on Love and Hate - Nietzsche;
10). Death Poems - Thomas Ligotti.
you must be fun at parties
An old classic but poorly used. A doomer meme would have been more apt.
Too hard to narrow down so here’s a bunch
>Vincent Van Gogh Letters
>Henry Miller in general (especially The Colossus of Maroussi, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch, Tropic of Cancer, The Smile at the Foot of the Ladder, and The Cosmological Eye
>DH Lawrence in general (The Rainbow, Sons and Lovers, Collected Stories)
>Nietzsche in general
>Essays from Emerson
>Essays from Montaigne
>Autobiography of Cellini
>Autobiography of Casanova
>Leaves of Grass by Whitman
>Rilke in general (especially Letters to a Young Poet, The Book of Hours, Duino Elegies, and Sonnets to Orpheus)
>The Chinese (The Tao Te Ching, Chuang Tzu, I-Ching, Classical poetry)
>Paris Spleen by Baudelaire
>Illuminations by Rimbaud
>Decameron by Boccaccio
>Plutarch
>Hemingway in general
>Siddhartha by Hesse
>USA Trilogy by Dos Passos
>Sometimes a Great Notion by Kesey
>The Dharma Bums by Kerouac
>Gargantuan and Pantagruel by Rabelais
>Conversations with Goethe by Eckermann
>Histories by Herodotus
The Epic of Gilgamesh
Brothers Karamazov - Dostoyevsky
Stoner - John Williams
Gore Vidal - Julian
Tao te Ching - Lao Tzu
Melancholy of Resistance - Krasznahorkai
Oedipus Rex - Sophocles
and Julian the Emperor's works in general
How were Van Gogh's Letters? I have been meaning to read it for a while now
Given that they were listed first on a favorites list, I’d reckon he likes them a lot and would recommend them
>Van Gogh’s letters
I’m tired and about to go to sleep but I’ll make an effortpost tomorrow if the thread is still up. Probably my favorite book and I’ve taken a lot away from in it in different facets
I’d also like to add Lautreamont to my list. Forgot that one
Youre the henry miller dude with all those bookshelfs, huh?
Yeah. I’ll post my feelings about Van Gogh’s letters shortly
>Van Gogh’s letters
My thoughts on them are scattered so I’m going to do my best to break down by section why I love them so much. The overarching reason though is because even though Vincent had a depressing life, and the letters are depressing, I’ve found them to be one of the most inspiring things ever written
It’s helps to know about Vincent’s life. I like the Penguin edition because it often gives background info in between letters which gives clear context. Vincent was a difficult person to get along with by all accounts. The relationship with his brother Theo is one of my favorite themes. Theo was his younger brother and the one real friend Vincent had. They had their clashes, but at a certain point it’s clear Theo believes in Vincent fully, despite Vincent having no success in almost every facet of his life. T was a patron of sorts to V and supported him financially, even when it was difficult. There was no V without T. T died shortly after V so neither of them would know the monstrous success they would achieve. It is very bittersweet
V is the poster boy for starving artist. He was uncompromising, and he struggled and suffered for his art. After a couple awkward relationships failed for V, one with his cousin, another with a prostitute, V dedicated himself solely to his art. He had his eye on the prize and even when breakdowns affected him, he told T that he must remain calm, he doesn’t have much time left ( he mentions multiple times he doesn’t think he’ll reach 40), and he must continue to paint.
V almost has a sage-like peasant wisdom at times. He often had profound insight despite the lack of education. The letters are probably the best insight into a great artist’s mind than anything we have. V wanted to see the beauty in everything, whether a potato or a peasant.
As for how I’ve gotten something from this book, I think V’s vision is inspiring and one I try to use in everyday life. He tried to see the poetry or beauty in everything, and what is life but perspective? The fact that V and T died before V’s work blew up is depressing, but it’s made me reevaluate what a successful life is, and what makes life worth living. V’s life was nothing but hardship and struggle with no rewards, but I believe he lived a life worth living and an inspiring one. Life goes on and you’ll never know who you touch and what kind of mark you’ll make so it’s best you give it your all. There is more to living than hoping for rewards. Whenever I’m going through a rough period I try to remain positive and influence others in a positive way
TLDR: I find Van Gogh inspiring, I try to view life as a poet, or a painter, finding the beauty or the positive in everything, and his letters made me reevaluate what it means to live, and what my life is in relationship to the whole, and what is worth living for. One day I need to sit down and formulate my thoughts better so I’m not as scattered
Thank you anon I really liked your input! I am going to put this on my reading list
I’m not the person youre replying to I’m the pessoagay from another thread but I appreciate this insight. I don’t really understand what makes his art so great but I would probably appreciate his letters after reading this. I want to be an artist (writer obviously) but I struggle with bipolar or whatever so Im not consistent in writing at all and I cant judge anything objectively it seems cause the way I see the world or my life keeps fricking shifting on me. Anyway, Ill check this out thanks
Anon did you unironically start with the Greeks? Most of this shit is hundreds of years old.
What is the thought process behind a post like this?
game of thrones bro
Tao te Ching
In search of lost time (if counts as 1)
Borges collected fictions
Bukowski essential poetry
The road
Death of Ivan Ilyich
The Fun Habit
Forbidden Keys of Persuasion
Leaves of Grass
Dangling in the Tournafortia
The Sound and the Fury
Moby Dick
Blood Meridian
Tender is the Night
The Sun also Rises
The Grapes of Wrath
Lonesome Dove
All the King’s Men
The Adventures of Augie March
Look Homeward Angel
i wish i had a zucchini fetching cat
You have to shoot it square in its center of mass first, otherwise the cat won't be able to finish it off and might get injured trying.
But you must use a small caliber like a 22 or if a shotgun, a 410. Too large a bullet will destroy the zucchini, rendering it uncollectable and unfetchable.
>or if a shotgun, a 410.
67 1/2 gauge is for homosexuals from West Texas like Cormac.
I hunt the Cumber using a 144 gauge quadruple barrel with a pack of minks to flush them out.
Cucumber tree>cucumber>pickle>relish
Don’t be a fool
I've neck shanked a cumber in the face and barely survived with half my 17 minks. Have you ever seen a live half-mink? It hates itself for living. It is half a man.
I once throttled a goose in city limits. I noticed there was a loophole in the hunting laws and killing a goose with my bare hands was technically legal in city limits since it was in season and I had a license, the hunting laws only covered using firearms/bow/crossbow/traps. The state closed that loophole after that so I can not longer take advantage of the complacency of the geese in city limits.
>since it was in season and I had a license
Only for Geese. Human women come in season once a month I hear. You need to check their veganas for mucus.
You sound like a moron.
toasty roastie
chuddies would be nice to you if you just had sex with them, you know
best I can do:
>Autobiography of Malcolm X
>My War Gone By, I Miss It So by Anthony Lloyd
>Technological Slavery by Ted Kaczynski
>Dark Places by Gillian Flynn
>Confessions of a Mask by Yukio Mishima
hard to choose a favorite Mishima book but I guess I'd go with that
Laura Warholic, or the Sexual Intelletual by Alexander Theroux
Solenoid by Mircea Cartarescu
Of Time and the River by Thomas Wolfe
Mile Zero by Thomas Sanchez
The Paper Dragon by Evan Hunter
Prejudices by H. L. Mencken
Synergetics by R. Buckminster Fuller
Lives by Plutarch
Essays by Montaigne
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
>Prejudices
A book that’s intrigued me for some time. Can you elaborate?
I have the two-volume boxed set from the Library of America, which I recommend. Let me quote from the dust jacket blurb to give you an idea: "The six volumes of Prejudices, published between 1919 and 1927, were both a slashing attack on what Mencken saw as American provincialism and hypocrisy and a resounding defense of the writers and thinkers he thought of as harbingers of a new frankness and maturity. Laced with savage humor and delighting in verbal play, Mencken's prose remains a one-of-a-kind roller-coaster ride through a staggering range of themes: literature and journalism, politics and religion, sex and marriage, food and drink."
I was 52 years old when I read Prejudices. My only regret about reading Mencken was that I wished I had read him when I was in my 20s. He’s an original American iconoclast. I hope this helps. Cheers.
Yeah, that LoA set is what I had my eye on. One of my favorite writers liked it and I’ve gotten many good recommendations from him
Garden's of the Moon
Deadhouse Gates
Memories of Ice
House of Chains
Midnight Tides
The Bonehunters
Reaper's Gale
Toll the Hounds
Dust of Dreams
The Crippled God
The Book of Disquiet
Fathers and Sons
Count of Monte Cristo
Brothers Karamazov
The Magic Mountain
Imperium
Mein Kampf
anything by Sherwood Anderson
No Longer Human
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
Methamorphosis by Franz Kafka
The Trial by Franz Kafka
Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov
Stoner by John Williams
Witcher by Andrzej Sapkowski
The Doll by Bolesław Prus
The Deluge by Henryk Sienkiewicz
Silmarilion by Tolkien
Shadow over Innsmouth by Lovecraft
Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa
The Bibl for the soul
Clean up your room in by 12 rules of life to fit in on IQfy
Communist manifesto to fit in on reddit
Spectrum of experience encompassed.
Aenied
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep
Starship Troopers
Blood Meridian
Outer Dark
Candid & Zadig
Notes from Underground
Catch-22
Return of the King
1st and 2nd Samuel
Looking for suggestions 🙂
You might like The Wanting Seed. Its a pretty fun book (Burgess) and its pretty far out there (Burgess)
Learn to Read Activity Book
Cat in the hat
The very hungry caterpillar
Good night moon
Corduroy
Where the wild things are
If you give a mouse a cookie
Hello farm
The foot book
Animal ABC
In no particular order:
The Bible
Dream of the Red Chamber
The Tale of Genji
The Neverending Story
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
e-girlta
The Divine Comedy
Hamlet
Winter's Tale (Mark Helprin)
The Iliad and the Odyssey
I'm not very well-read, most of the fiction I read is pretty light. My favorite book is Blood Meridian. If I just shamelessly list the books I've enjoyed the most, I think jt might be
Blood Meridian
The Idiot
The Brothers Karamazov
Notes From Underground
Dune 1-3
The Doomed City
Annihilation
Something Wicked This Way Comes
Gotta read more McCarthy and Dostoevsky.
Check out fathers and sons, oblomov, and a hero of our time. Great russian lit and pretty short, especially the latter two
thank you, I will!
- Winnie-the-Pooh
- The House at Pooh Corner
- The Way of Zen, Alan Watts
- Tao: The Watercourse Way, Alan Watts
- The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell
- American Psycho
- In My Own Way, Alan Watts
- Zen Effects: The Life of Alan Watts (Also titled: *Genuine Fake*), Monica Furlong
- Joseph Campbell: A Fire in the Mind, Stephen & Robin Larsen
winnie the pooh and alan watts make me feel good, i like biographies, and i haven't read much overall so i don't have a 10th favorite (only started reading this year and have only read some 40 books)
Have you read The Tao of Pooh?
Not going to put too much effort into this one, but in no particular order:
>A Farewell to Arms
>Fahrenheit 451
>My War Gone By, I Miss It So
>Redwall (#1)
>Storm of Steel
>Nineteen Eighty-four
>On the Road
>Catch-22
>The Bell Jar
>Perfume
The King James Bible
I guess that's cheating a little bit since it's really 66 books.
What version of the kjv did you read has 66 books? Or is this a weird new meme?
LOTR
The Hobbit
Asoiaf
Early Carolingian Warfare
Ammianus
Ruling the Later Roman Empire
Beowulf
Gilgamesh
The Odyssey
Livy's books 20-30
The Leopard (Il Gattopardo)
Stoner (Williams)
The Birth of Tragedy
The Sun Also Rises
Iliad
Satyricon
Aeneid
Gilead
Sometimes a Great Notion
Mrs Dalloway
Light in August
Jerusalem
Watership Down
Mother Night
The Crossing
East of Eden
if on a winter's night a traveler
The Dispossessed
Gideon the Ninth
Too Like the Lightning
The Left Hand of Darkness
Close to the Knives
The Dark Forest
Till Night Falls
Hyperion
Oh. Solaris and Confessions of a Mask, too.
Bible
Zhuangzi
Linji
Shobogenzo
Diogenes
Meister Eckhart
Also Sprach Zarathustra
MacBeth
Dead Souls
Brothers Karamazov
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell - William Blake
All Things Are Possible - Lev Shestov
Philosophy Before Socrates - Richard McKirahan
Dead Souls - Nikolai Gogol
Les Chants de Maldoror/Poesies - Comte de Lautreamont
The Histories - Herodotus
The Confessions - St. Augustine
Gorgias - Plato
Book of Ecclesiastes
The Aeneid - Vergil
Based Dead Souls and Eckhart
>Jerusalem
By whom?
Nice classics
>Julian
Any highlights you'd like to mention?
>Gogol, Lautreamont, Herodotus
Nice
Jerusalem by Alan Moore
the title is in reference to a Blake poem
it's fiction with alot of geographical and personal histories mixed in
really can't say if it's something you'll enjoy based on your top 10
>Dead Souls
I have a copy of this but can't find a motivation to place it in my to read pile
what can you say about it that will convince me to consider it?
Moby Dick
The Confidence Man
The Pickwick Papers
A King Alone
Posthumous Memoirs of Braz Cubas
The Sundays of Jean Dezert
The Brothers Karamazov
Ferdydurke
The Red and the Black
The Adventures of Augie March
Have you read Count of Monte Cristo? If so, could you briefly compare/contrast it to the red and the black? Loved count, have only considered reading TRATB
>mound of courgette, marrow, zucchini
>cat
>old man in a camo jacket with a side-by-side shotgun
Why can't I think of a pun to combine all of these elements into one pithy caption?
The Mill on the Floss
Iliad
Henry IV
A Midsummernight's Dream
Aeneid
Call of the Crocodile
Ellis Island and Other Stories
Voyager and Other Fictions: The Collected Stories of Jose Dalisay
I've only read thirty or so books so the list is pretty short. I'm just addicted to George Eliot's writing at this point, god I can't get enough
I started silas marner and it was some cringe feminist bs from the very start. Made it about 10 pages
I haven't read 10 books. However, if I had, it would probably be:
>The Holy Bible
>Finnegan's Wake
>Infinite Jest
>Moby Dick
>The Iliad
>The Odyssey
>The Divine Comedy
>In Search of Lost Time
>Artemis Fowl, the Opal Deception
>Les Miserables
>Quran
>Sahih Bukhari
>Sahih Muslim
>Sunan Abu Dawud
>Jami Al-Tirmidhi
>Sunan Al Nasa'i
>Sunan ibn Majah
>Tafsir Ibn Abbas
>Tafsir Ibn Kathir
>Muwatta Imam Malik
>Musnad Imam Zaid
I spent 9 months fighting you frickers in Afghanistan only to realize afterward you were the good guys the whole time.
1