/lit/ - Literature

>>2045427
I enjoyed the book, but it's got more than a few too many aren't-I-clever moments. It really does nail a fair amount about tech-worker life, and it's entertaining. I remember even being moved a few times. So it's not Steinbeck...just skip the pi chapter and you'll be fine.

>>2045548
No, I cheated on you, with your friend Holly. Sorry about that.

> would fap again

Back to /lit/ after a few months away, and now Deep&Edgy is shitting up Gene Wolfe threads. At least he used to ignore them.

+1 for Gene Wolfe being an uncommonly good writer, and repaying the effort of re-reading his work and reading up on allusions. Perhaps it's not quite the rabbit hole of reading Umberto Eco, but there's a lot of rich material for the aspies among us to dig into. I think the real key is whether or not you can abide the style. I absolutely adore the prose and the playful pacing, but I know some others find it impenetrable and/or annoying.

>>1817793
That really is over the line. You should delete it.

This is the worst forced shit I have seen in some time. Trust me, I know what I'm talking about.

>>1767769

>>1767327
They never complain to me. Well, they cry, but they always cry.

>>1767062
Also, I think "Coming of Age in Second Life" touches on this topic.

I just asked an anthropologist friend of mine about this, and he said:
> yeah, language is often used as a mode of protecting boundaries, but its not always clear to me whether someone's use of jargon in an online forum is explicitly exclusionary: language is the only way one can perform authenticity/belonging in an online context. That is, other signals like fashion, bling, or the body aren't available to provide identity. Thus, people fall back on language

I thought that was a pretty good point.

>>1767038
It may partly those things, but doesn't it also act as a sort of ritual so that "members" feel like they really belong to the community they join? And doesn't the lingo also act as a watchword (shibboleth) to identify those that are really part of the community (i.e., not newfags)?

I don't know if this will be on point for you, but I think it's all interesting, at least:

You'll want to look up the Mr. Bungle incident. It's recounted in a book about MUDs (etc.) "My Tiny Life", which is available for free, I believe--but the Bungle story is easy enough to find online (oh, here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Rape_in_Cyberspace).).

If you're interested in virtual worlds at all, there are several books on Second Life that are pretty interesting--they're sort of ethnographies, I guess.
"Coming of Age in Second Life" by Boellstorff (IIRC).
"The Second Life Herald" by Peter Ludlow (it's also about The Sims Online). You might generally check out Ludlow: he's a philosopher who's really immersed himself in online culture and has had a lot to say about it.

>>1764863
That's not a terrible characterization. I found the Christian themes in Perelandra pretty evocative--as with Lewis' other writing, I think he really takes the themes of sin and redemption pretty personally, and I found them to resonate on an emotional level even when I read the book after I was no longer a believing Christian.

I'm no expert in poetry, but I found this to be pretty powerful, and it strikes me as well crafted. Well done, I say.

Undergrad degree, music/english. Currently finishing a master's degree in Information Systems (kind of a bullshit degree, but the credential will help with my career).

Be cool, stay in school, kids.

>>1753101
No, I really wasn't implying that. But a fair amount of lit targeted at children really is less enjoyable for adults.

Like every American GenXer I've seen the movie multiple times, but I haven't read the book. Is it worthwhile, and to what extent would you say it's children's lit?

>>1750680

This is the only one I've read, I think.

>>1746033
Yeah, I was just amusing myself, and probably being a dick. Sorry about that.

To make up for it, here's a bump with a cat.

>>1747696
The guilt was getting to be too much--I needed to at least be able to tell you I started it!

>>1747472
Wow, this sounds great. I had never heard of it before.

Others have already mentioned most of the books I would've mentioned for a medieval setting. Someone here has recommended Dorothy Dunnett's Game of Kings to me a few times, and although I haven't gotten far into it yet, I think it's pretty good.

Have you tried reading works from that period? (e.g., Geoffrey of Monmouth)

If you think you might also enjoy a classical setting, I could recommend:

John Gardner's The Wreckage of Agathon. It's written in a very modern style, but the setting was still very vivid for me. Lovely book, too.

Gene Wolfe's Latro books are set in Ancient Greece & Egypt, but with gods and other mythological beings apparently real. It's a pretty incredible series.

>>1746675
>>1746680
I'd recommend against relying on dual enrollment, unless you're quite sure that those credits will count wherever you go. I got screwed over a bit by that. Took dual credit with local community college (that's all that was available in my shit town), and my credits happily counted towards the college I had been planning to attend (high-tier libarts), so when I entered college I was one course shy of being a sophomore. Since I had never had to study for an AP exam, I was pretty pleased with myself.

Two years later, I transfer to an Ivy League school. Absolutely none of those credits transferred, so I ended up scrambling with 21-24 credits per semester to graduate on time. At that point, I was significantly less pleased.

>>1746369
Sure: http://amzn.com/w/2MGHEN41FNRV4

It's not really my "reading list", since I have a huge quantity of unread books, but it's stuff I've thought about buying in the last year or so.