>READ
Started reading Mishima's Sea of Fertility tetralogy. Finished Spring Snow, I'm about midway through Runaway Horses. >THOUGHTS
Mishima's novels always feel like a punch in the stomach, Spring Snow made me feel like I needed to vomit. It's the first of his novels I've been able to read without his suicide staining the pages—it’ll be interesting to see if this changes as I get to The Decay of the Angel, closer to his coup.
I love the prose of these novels, beautifully vivid. Any clue to how much of this is due to the translation? I have yet to research the process of translating Japanese prose to English.
Any other Japanese literature recommendations? I've read through a good portion of Mishima and Dazai’s major works. I’m planning on reading Koroko at some point in the future. Is Murakami’s work worth reading?
>READ
Anathem by Neal Stephenson >THOUGHTS
I need to broaden my horizons. I've read like 8 of his books in the last 12 months. And they are all about the same things.
How do I break out of sci fi?
>READ
Meditations on the Tarot by an anonymous author. >THOUGHTS
I think it's interesting, although not quite what I was expecting. It's not the sort of book you expect to see endorsed by a Catholic cardinal.
>Peter Kemp - Mine were of trouble
A nice read after Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia" >Dictators without borders
Cool book about how Central Asian states did economic crime after the collapse of the Soviet Union
>READ
Friedrich Nietzsche - Genealogy of Morals >THOUGHTS
I'm halfway through. It's certainly interesting but doesn't resonate me on any particular level. His rhetorical skills are really good and the text is not that hard to read so it's easy to see why Nietzsche is popular. Also that is kind of a curse since Nietzsche was writing for only the selected few and it is why he is also misunderstood a lot I guess.
>READ
The Courage to be Disliked by Kishimi and Koga >THOUGHTS
Someone here mentioned it, it's kind of cringy self help but I finished it in 2 and a half hours. It's a nice intro to the thought of Alfred Adler that makes me read more of his works.
Also started The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
Is this your first Nietzsche book?
>Read
the crying of lot 49 by T Pynchon >Thoughts
Well it’s my first Pynchon novel and it’s interesting, his character naming is weird, and so is some of the progression and dialogue. It’s not unusual for me to have to read a passage a few times before I get what happened. It almost verges on campy at times and the fact/event dumps can be kind of cool sometimes. Hell just cut in the middle of the scene to explain some bullshit, it kind of works thematically. At times he’ll portray the unusual, unknown and intuition in a pretty cool way. The humor can be good and there’s a handful of small passages and scenes I like but I’m not sure what I think about the whole yet. I’m only on page 50ish because I’ve been going a bit slow.
I like the descriptions in this one but I feel like I didn't get the overall story
I liked V. a lot although it's also very uneven
https://i.imgur.com/A12xnPk.jpg
>READ
Started reading Mishima's Sea of Fertility tetralogy. Finished Spring Snow, I'm about midway through Runaway Horses. >THOUGHTS
Mishima's novels always feel like a punch in the stomach, Spring Snow made me feel like I needed to vomit. It's the first of his novels I've been able to read without his suicide staining the pages—it’ll be interesting to see if this changes as I get to The Decay of the Angel, closer to his coup.
I love the prose of these novels, beautifully vivid. Any clue to how much of this is due to the translation? I have yet to research the process of translating Japanese prose to English.
Any other Japanese literature recommendations? I've read through a good portion of Mishima and Dazai’s major works. I’m planning on reading Koroko at some point in the future. Is Murakami’s work worth reading?
Nice I love Mishima. I have read 5 of his books and 1 book by Dazai. Kokoro is also a nice and melancholy story. Haruki Murakami is more popular literature and people often say his books are all very similar and his prose is nothing special. He's kind of like Stephen King in that way. My experience of 20th century Japanese literature ends with those names ... I have read some premodern Japanese stuff though. I recommend you try Donald Keene's Anthology of Japanese Literature and see what you like from there if you're into pre-19th century literature at all.
>I recommend you try Donald Keene's Anthology of Japanese Literature and see what you like from there if you're into pre-19th century literature at all.
I'll give it a try, pre-19th century literature is extremely interesting. Thanks for the recommendation. >He's kind of like Stephen King in that way.
Interesting comparison, I had my own assumptions on his literature beforehand. I had a close-friend read most of his major works, when asked why he admitted that it was just because a girl he was interested in had been posting his work on her Instagram story.
Yeah, it can definitely be a confusing read. Is V more straightforward? I’ll be reading it later this year
>Is V. more straightforward?
I found it easier to grasp when I started reading Pynchon. His novels are dense and require re-reading lines to some extent. If you keep reading it'll eventually click.
Largely Sumerian poems but also picking up on some of the Greek, Chinese and medieval poetry I had been reading a while ago.
Mostly I’m just happy I managed to get back to those things eventually, I jump way too fast between interests and it’s nice to have at least a little bit of follow-through. The Sumerian stuff was a bit uneven but very interesting, since I was reading the mythological poems. Greek stuff ranges from very fragmentary (Simonides) to decent (Bacchylides) to great (Sappho). For Chinese I’m mostly just trying to finish up with Wang Wei, in addition to looking back at some of the pieces in the first volume and getting a little more out of them. I like the use of “negative space”, and the imagery is divine. Hard not to read him as insincere though.
Pre-19th century poetry will probably also be pretty similar to China so if you like it that’s something you could try.
>read
game of thrones. finished the first book in about a week >thoughts
wanna draw some scenes from it. much better than the TV series. makes alot more sense now that I know robb stark is supposed to be 15. so THATS why hes an idiot. doih
>Read
the crying of lot 49 by T Pynchon >Thoughts
Well it’s my first Pynchon novel and it’s interesting, his character naming is weird, and so is some of the progression and dialogue. It’s not unusual for me to have to read a passage a few times before I get what happened. It almost verges on campy at times and the fact/event dumps can be kind of cool sometimes. Hell just cut in the middle of the scene to explain some bullshit, it kind of works thematically. At times he’ll portray the unusual, unknown and intuition in a pretty cool way. The humor can be good and there’s a handful of small passages and scenes I like but I’m not sure what I think about the whole yet. I’m only on page 50ish because I’ve been going a bit slow.
Not the easiest read (partly because the writer is a bit all over the place and not a great story teller and leans hard on academic language) but fascinating highlands lore regardless. Also read Werner Herzog's new book and Masters of Doom
Finished Nightside of the Long Sun last night, going to start on Lake of the Long Sun today sometime. I really like Silk so far, curious to see where everything is going. Setting is maximum comfy so far, love it.
I finished Blood Meridian. I had started it because I had read that one of the best parts of Bakkers novels was inspired by it. What a ride. It manages to remain dark and brutal without descending into parody. Are the rest of Mcarthy’s novels as good? I confess I’ve only seen the adaptation of No Country.
Long sun is super comfy, yes. There are parts where it can drag a bit, but man, the payoff in short sun.
Finished American Psycho, very visual and good.
Currently reading "confederacy of dunces" because of the comedy thread. Half way through I really like it but I haven't laugh out loud like it supposed to be. Not disappointed though. I need to find another book asap or else I will have nothing next week
If you haven’t already read it, Catch-22 is quite funny.
>READ
Pizarnik's poetry. >THOUGHTS
A bit too cryptic for my taste at times. Much like Huidobro she tends to unravel into schizophrenic attacks that make no sense unless you read each and every word carefully.
Then she drops some of best verses you'll ever read, and they hit like a freight train. >I've had many loves, but the most beautiful was my love of mirrors. >When someone's dead, they're dead no matter how much they smile >I would've wished for more than this and also nothing >And you still have the face of a little girl. A couple more years, and not even the dogs will like you >I remember with all my lives why I forget
>Read
History of Sexuality by Foucault. Read beyond Vol. 1 and halfway through the rest of the book.
>Thoughts
The first volume is really brilliant. When he moves back to classical antiquity is where I'm skeptical. Foucualt seems to think the sex life of the Greeks and Romans was about maximizing pleasure through self-care. There was no sense of obligation based on authority and no overarching moral code imposed on people. Yeah, I don't believe this for a minute. I'm not an expert on classics but this just smells like bullshit to me. Foucault seems to want us to imagine a sexuality without externally imposed moral, scientific or religious rules. So basically a porn imageboard irl. No wonder he got the gay AIDS cancer and kicked the bucket. I guess there's some merit to where he's going, but he just fricks it up at the end.
Taking a break from The Hive by Camilo Jose Cela and starting Pnin. The Hive is an excellent experimental book with great prose and top tier book about societal decay. It's just exhausting keeping track of everything it's doing and saying. It's 261 pages but has more content than 400 pages+.
Pnin is pretty great so far. I'm glad anons recommended in one of my threads. It might make a lifelong Nabakov enjoyer
The Red Book. Up to Liber Secundus.
Left it off at where he eats the liver of the murdered Godchild as his soul commands and the snippets of truth he drops about evil are shit I wish I hadn't been forced to discover by myself. The way it only can look, the way it's in the hearts of men, the way it raves up in face of anything it deems divine, the way it wishes to conquer it, the way it cannot sacrifice, the way its own divine nature is cored in sheer emptiness of being. Its fragility.
Some footnotes mention way more expansive and frankly confusing images being described in his Black Books, so those are definitely on the list.
And while it's not a traditional narrative or anything, >HERE THE INCANTATIONS BEGIN
Chills. What a fricking genius.
Finished American Psycho, very visual and good.
Currently reading "confederacy of dunces" because of the comedy thread. Half way through I really like it but I haven't laugh out loud like it supposed to be. Not disappointed though. I need to find another book asap or else I will have nothing next week
>READ
Started reading Mishima's Sea of Fertility tetralogy. Finished Spring Snow, I'm about midway through Runaway Horses.
>THOUGHTS
Mishima's novels always feel like a punch in the stomach, Spring Snow made me feel like I needed to vomit. It's the first of his novels I've been able to read without his suicide staining the pages—it’ll be interesting to see if this changes as I get to The Decay of the Angel, closer to his coup.
I love the prose of these novels, beautifully vivid. Any clue to how much of this is due to the translation? I have yet to research the process of translating Japanese prose to English.
Any other Japanese literature recommendations? I've read through a good portion of Mishima and Dazai’s major works. I’m planning on reading Koroko at some point in the future. Is Murakami’s work worth reading?
>READ
Anathem by Neal Stephenson
>THOUGHTS
I need to broaden my horizons. I've read like 8 of his books in the last 12 months. And they are all about the same things.
How do I break out of sci fi?
>How do I break out of sci fi?
Read short stories
Reddit thread
>READ
Meditations on the Tarot by an anonymous author.
>THOUGHTS
I think it's interesting, although not quite what I was expecting. It's not the sort of book you expect to see endorsed by a Catholic cardinal.
>What did you read this week?
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Chapter 10.
>What did you think about it.
Injun Joe needs to be stopped.
>10
*9
>Peter Kemp - Mine were of trouble
A nice read after Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia"
>Dictators without borders
Cool book about how Central Asian states did economic crime after the collapse of the Soviet Union
>READ
Friedrich Nietzsche - Genealogy of Morals
>THOUGHTS
I'm halfway through. It's certainly interesting but doesn't resonate me on any particular level. His rhetorical skills are really good and the text is not that hard to read so it's easy to see why Nietzsche is popular. Also that is kind of a curse since Nietzsche was writing for only the selected few and it is why he is also misunderstood a lot I guess.
>READ
The Courage to be Disliked by Kishimi and Koga
>THOUGHTS
Someone here mentioned it, it's kind of cringy self help but I finished it in 2 and a half hours. It's a nice intro to the thought of Alfred Adler that makes me read more of his works.
Also started The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
Is this your first Nietzsche book?
I like the descriptions in this one but I feel like I didn't get the overall story
I liked V. a lot although it's also very uneven
Nice I love Mishima. I have read 5 of his books and 1 book by Dazai. Kokoro is also a nice and melancholy story. Haruki Murakami is more popular literature and people often say his books are all very similar and his prose is nothing special. He's kind of like Stephen King in that way. My experience of 20th century Japanese literature ends with those names ... I have read some premodern Japanese stuff though. I recommend you try Donald Keene's Anthology of Japanese Literature and see what you like from there if you're into pre-19th century literature at all.
Yeah, it can definitely be a confusing read. Is V more straightforward? I’ll be reading it later this year
>I recommend you try Donald Keene's Anthology of Japanese Literature and see what you like from there if you're into pre-19th century literature at all.
I'll give it a try, pre-19th century literature is extremely interesting. Thanks for the recommendation.
>He's kind of like Stephen King in that way.
Interesting comparison, I had my own assumptions on his literature beforehand. I had a close-friend read most of his major works, when asked why he admitted that it was just because a girl he was interested in had been posting his work on her Instagram story.
>Is V. more straightforward?
I found it easier to grasp when I started reading Pynchon. His novels are dense and require re-reading lines to some extent. If you keep reading it'll eventually click.
Largely Sumerian poems but also picking up on some of the Greek, Chinese and medieval poetry I had been reading a while ago.
Mostly I’m just happy I managed to get back to those things eventually, I jump way too fast between interests and it’s nice to have at least a little bit of follow-through. The Sumerian stuff was a bit uneven but very interesting, since I was reading the mythological poems. Greek stuff ranges from very fragmentary (Simonides) to decent (Bacchylides) to great (Sappho). For Chinese I’m mostly just trying to finish up with Wang Wei, in addition to looking back at some of the pieces in the first volume and getting a little more out of them. I like the use of “negative space”, and the imagery is divine. Hard not to read him as insincere though.
Pre-19th century poetry will probably also be pretty similar to China so if you like it that’s something you could try.
>read
game of thrones. finished the first book in about a week
>thoughts
wanna draw some scenes from it. much better than the TV series. makes alot more sense now that I know robb stark is supposed to be 15. so THATS why hes an idiot. doih
>Read
the crying of lot 49 by T Pynchon
>Thoughts
Well it’s my first Pynchon novel and it’s interesting, his character naming is weird, and so is some of the progression and dialogue. It’s not unusual for me to have to read a passage a few times before I get what happened. It almost verges on campy at times and the fact/event dumps can be kind of cool sometimes. Hell just cut in the middle of the scene to explain some bullshit, it kind of works thematically. At times he’ll portray the unusual, unknown and intuition in a pretty cool way. The humor can be good and there’s a handful of small passages and scenes I like but I’m not sure what I think about the whole yet. I’m only on page 50ish because I’ve been going a bit slow.
even pynchon disliked his book. id start with slow learner then V i guess. altho GR after slow learner is probably best
Not the easiest read (partly because the writer is a bit all over the place and not a great story teller and leans hard on academic language) but fascinating highlands lore regardless. Also read Werner Herzog's new book and Masters of Doom
Finished Nightside of the Long Sun last night, going to start on Lake of the Long Sun today sometime. I really like Silk so far, curious to see where everything is going. Setting is maximum comfy so far, love it.
I finished Blood Meridian. I had started it because I had read that one of the best parts of Bakkers novels was inspired by it. What a ride. It manages to remain dark and brutal without descending into parody. Are the rest of Mcarthy’s novels as good? I confess I’ve only seen the adaptation of No Country.
Long sun is super comfy, yes. There are parts where it can drag a bit, but man, the payoff in short sun.
If you haven’t already read it, Catch-22 is quite funny.
>READ
Pizarnik's poetry.
>THOUGHTS
A bit too cryptic for my taste at times. Much like Huidobro she tends to unravel into schizophrenic attacks that make no sense unless you read each and every word carefully.
Then she drops some of best verses you'll ever read, and they hit like a freight train.
>I've had many loves, but the most beautiful was my love of mirrors.
>When someone's dead, they're dead no matter how much they smile
>I would've wished for more than this and also nothing
>And you still have the face of a little girl. A couple more years, and not even the dogs will like you
>I remember with all my lives why I forget
Today I finished The Secret History. It was, to my surprise, thoroughly enjoyable.
>Read
History of Sexuality by Foucault. Read beyond Vol. 1 and halfway through the rest of the book.
>Thoughts
The first volume is really brilliant. When he moves back to classical antiquity is where I'm skeptical. Foucualt seems to think the sex life of the Greeks and Romans was about maximizing pleasure through self-care. There was no sense of obligation based on authority and no overarching moral code imposed on people. Yeah, I don't believe this for a minute. I'm not an expert on classics but this just smells like bullshit to me. Foucault seems to want us to imagine a sexuality without externally imposed moral, scientific or religious rules. So basically a porn imageboard irl. No wonder he got the gay AIDS cancer and kicked the bucket. I guess there's some merit to where he's going, but he just fricks it up at the end.
Taking a break from The Hive by Camilo Jose Cela and starting Pnin. The Hive is an excellent experimental book with great prose and top tier book about societal decay. It's just exhausting keeping track of everything it's doing and saying. It's 261 pages but has more content than 400 pages+.
Pnin is pretty great so far. I'm glad anons recommended in one of my threads. It might make a lifelong Nabakov enjoyer
Moby-Dick. Just 10 chapters in, though.
Beautiful prose. The Black person must be autistic to put/relate whaling to every fricking there.
The Red Book. Up to Liber Secundus.
Left it off at where he eats the liver of the murdered Godchild as his soul commands and the snippets of truth he drops about evil are shit I wish I hadn't been forced to discover by myself. The way it only can look, the way it's in the hearts of men, the way it raves up in face of anything it deems divine, the way it wishes to conquer it, the way it cannot sacrifice, the way its own divine nature is cored in sheer emptiness of being. Its fragility.
Some footnotes mention way more expansive and frankly confusing images being described in his Black Books, so those are definitely on the list.
And while it's not a traditional narrative or anything,
>HERE THE INCANTATIONS BEGIN
Chills. What a fricking genius.
Finished American Psycho, very visual and good.
Currently reading "confederacy of dunces" because of the comedy thread. Half way through I really like it but I haven't laugh out loud like it supposed to be. Not disappointed though. I need to find another book asap or else I will have nothing next week