/lit/ - Literature

>>8714620
Have a reason for reading a book, other than 'I want to see what the fuss is about.'

>>8714104
You'll most likely enjoy Siddhartha the most because it is a simply written book with a universal message. The others will probably be shelved until you feel ready for them.

For new readers who want something literary I would suggest something by Tolstoy or Dostoevsky. They are nowhere as forbidding as Ulysses, Blood Meridian and Gravity's rainbow, and you would be reading something that is widely read, universal, and edifying. It is like you deliberately chose the most stodgy and esoteric books to begin with - so much so that I am beginning to think this is another bait post.

>>8712410
I had a sense of Plotinus' ideas - of course, the physical world can be beautiful, and not everything in it should be shunned. For me it's a question of balance and moderation, rather than being an acetic.

His last words, as you relate them, speak of the return of a part of us (the soul, the divine spark, consciousness, the god/holy within us) to a commune with others.

It relates to an idea I have been thinking about, that the skull acts like a prison which isolates our souls and consciousness from others.

In any case, I'm convinced Plotinus is worth looking at. Hegel is another matter.

>>8712370
My understanding of the Greeks is limited to Plato and Socrates. From my reading I see an overlap in their values and of Gnostic Christianity, particularly in the emphasis of seeking knowledge and preparing the soul for death.

Doing good and selfless is deeds is part of looking after the soul, which is reason enough.

>>8711649
Gnosticism removes guilt from the equation of redemption, and offers an answer as to why evil exists. It is a seductive religion for these reasons. The early erasure of Gnostic sects (e.g. Valentinians) reflects badly on the then emerging institutional Christianity.

As I see it, the essential Gnostic principles, of redemption through knowledge, cultivating the soul for the next life, being aware of the transience of material things, and the more communal rather than clerical emphasis, offers us a universal Christian religion that coheres with modern values while still holding onto the essential sacraments and traditions (of marriage, baptism, anointing.)

This all predated Roman Catholism, which is a political and pagan construct.

Of course, I am willing to hear others out.

>>8712094
>appreciated anymore
appreciated 'all the more'

>>8711909
When you nearly eliminate TV, youtube, and pornography, reading fifty pages a day is trivial. What's more, the old pastimes are appreciated anymore, because they are no longer done to dull excess.

>>8709833
I hadn't see this copypasta before. We live and learn.

I looked up the book and it sounds good.

>>8709817
This is like telling a small child not to do something. I wasn't even interested in the book until I read this.

>>8709516
I like my coffee like I like my women.

In a cup.

>>8709743
Disregard the last part about the first omnibus edition because I'm wrong.

On another matter, what do I read next? Here is my stack.

Roger Zelazy - Lord Of Light
PKD - Maze Of Death
Arthur C Clarke - A Fall of Moondust
Alfred Bester- The Stars My Destination
Theodore Sturgeon - Selected Stories

>>8709491
If you want to read it just get one of the recent paperback prints from Fantasy Masterworks, or the very recent SF Masterworks editions. The FM paperbacks are good quality and the spines hold up well.

The cover is pretty bad, I guess it would put off many collectors.

>>8709652
I don't think it is strictly the first omnibus edition either because this exists http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?362657

What is surprising is it looks like 15 years since an omnibus print in hardcover, unless I'm missing something.

Fathers and Sons by Turgenev, a short 19thC Russian novel about nihilism, vanity, love, and communication across the generation gap - a family saga that is not overly sentimental. I read the Pete Carsson translation.

A young graduate returns to the provincial family home with a new friend, a nihilistic doctor who ruffles feathers by his forthright views on society. There is love, disease, death, a duel, and a lot of character observation of memorable figures from up and down society, within a relatively short space.

>>8702346
I don't read a lot of horror but I enjoyed Arthur Conan Doyle's paranormal and suspense short stories, e.g. Terror Of Blue John Gap.

Ray Bradbury, Gene Wolfe, Philip K Dick, Ursula Le Guin, Robert Silverberg, have all produced literary SF or fantasy stories.

Although being literary is a nebulous concept, each of these writers has a different and conscious style, where re-reading reveals new meanings and appreciations of things to the readers, like language, structure, allusions and subtexts. This is unlike authors like Isaac Asimov, and Clarke (and a lot of PKD outside of his best stuff), who are good but not as literary, because their prose is so functional. Still, they are good storytellers and imaginations.

One way I judge literary worth is - would I want to reread it? Much genre lit only deserves to be read once, but there are always authors who want to be more complex, subtle, or poetic.

You didn't put SFFG in the subject OP

>>8700258
You don't have to write dialogue at all

I don't know, try writing a classic book in a different tense/perspective or something

>>8700229
Just something I did to denote that it's not a continuous passage, but the sentences are closely related. I also corrected a mistype and some formatting and put it here >>8700223


Here's something from an author of science fiction:

>Current-borne, wave-flung, tugged hugely by the whole might of ocean, the jellyfish drifts in the tidal abyss. The light shines through it, and the dark enters it. Borne, flung, tugged from anywhere to anywhere, for in the deep sea there is no compass but nearer and farther, higher and lower, the jellyfish hangs and sways; pulses move slight and quick within it, as the vast diurnal pulses beat in the moondriven sea. Hanging, swaying, pulsing, the most vulnerable and insubstantial creature, it has for its defense the violence and power of the whole ocean, to which it has entrusted its being, its going, and its will.

>But here rise the stubborn continents. The shelves of gravel and the cliffs of rock break from water baldly into air, that dry, terrible outerspace of radiance and instability, where there is no support for life. And now, now the currents mislead and the waves betray, breaking their endless circle, to leap up in loud foam against rock and air, breaking …

>What will the creature made all of seadrift do on the dry sand of daylight; what will the mind do, each morning, waking?

>>8699252

>...no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is of the very essence of dreams.

[--]

>It is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any epoch of one's existence - that which makes its truth, its meaning - its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream - alone.

Joseph Conrad, Heart Of Darkness..

>>8699611
I recommend you read any collection of his short stories, any volume containing the likes of Three Deaths, Ivan Ilyich, The Woodfelling.

And then I recommend trying one of his shorter novels before approaching W&P and Karenina. I really enjoyed The Cossacks.

I have no experience with his essays and moral writing. But as a fiction writer he is a brilliant observer of people, and a poetic writer of landscapes, whose prose is pleasingly fluent even in translation.

I read Sandkings by George RR Martin which was an entertaining read about warring beetle-like pets who worship their owner. This is going to make me sound like a STEM-lord, but it reminded me of watching a videogame battle unfold between four AI armies.

I was wondering about his wider short fiction and whether if there were other stories worth seeking out. I've already read his Dunc and Egg stories, which I rate more than the later ASOIAF novels.

>>8694551
There's literature in some of these - also look at Kurt Vonnegut's early sci-fi.

>>8689768
>Three Deaths

I mean The Raid