/lit/ - Literature

How the FUCK this won a major literary prize, I will never know. Annoying style of story-telling, too complex in places, super-gay, plus it has little to nothing to say about life (despite ostensibly being a zeitgeist novel). I mean, does anyone on this board like this book? It does have SOME good stuff, some well-written sections, plus some enjoyable bits, but not much.

>very entertaining
>portable
>really cheap
>escapism
>long
>makes you smarter
>makes you look smart
>they do what film and tv won't
>look good on shelf

I can't actually think of anyone else. How can one form of entertainment have so many good qualities?

>>3184819

Really? I have a ton of 'deserted' pictures from /lit/ (and /b/).

Did you know it's been over 6 months since I list made a 2666 thread? This cannot be!

I was rereading a tiny bit of it today, and it's still very entertaining. The middle part of Part 5, where Achimboldi is getting published with Mr Bubis, and lots of funny and strange things are happening (like the rest of the novel).

http://home.nethere.net/morias/books/magus.html

This is hardly even literate. Read the first few lines.

Pic related, it's the inside of the reviewer's mind.

When writing, I think that writers go through three phases. Tell me what you think.

Phase One: when they visualise the entire story in their head, and it is great.

Phase Two: when they are in the process of writing it, and it seems good, just not as high quality as they thought it would be when visualising it. Hmm.

Phase Three: after waiting six months, they go back and read their short story / novella / novel, and it's horrible.

Seriously, I suspect this often happens.

It wasn't terrible by any stretch of the imagination, and it wasn't as lazily short as some of his other works, but it wasn't great either. Still glad I read it, because I'm a Bolanofag, but still. Thankfully it just came out in paperback, literally a week ago, so I got it a third the original price roughly.

Other than the obvious ones like Dan Brown, etc.

F Scott Fitzgerald
Alice Munro
Alastair Reynolds
Banana Yoshimoto
Ryu Murakami
Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Blind Faith - Ben Elton
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo - Steig Larsson
Dracula - Bram Stoker
Prelude to Foundation - Isaac Asimov
after the quake - Haruki Murakami
Good Bones - Margaret Atwood
The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon

All horrible books. I finished them all, but I don't know why. The authors should be shot. Most of them are popular books, too.

You don't expect much, then it turns out to be very entertaining? I'm reading a book like that at the moment, although I'm not going to spoil it and say which one, and it was completely unexpected how great it was.

Hmm. What other books were much better than expected, either because of fairly low expections, or no specific expectations?

For me...

Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood (I hated her)
Revolutionary Road - Richard Yates - just wasn't expecting much
Most stuff by DFW - didn't like him at first, then his other stuff was good
Daughter of Fortune - Isabel Allende - the author's name meant nothing to me then
Nine Stories - JD Salinger - didn't like Catcher at all, liked this and his other works

Please offer opinions on any and all of these books. I know most, although not all,of the authors, but still don't know if these books are good. Detailed opinions, without spoilers, would help this fag out.

Nemesis – Isaac Asimov
The Convent – Panos Karnezis
Little Infamies – Panos Karnezis
Cold Spring Harbor – Richard Yates
A Good School – Richard Yates
Disturbing The Peace – Richard Yates
The Metamorphosis – Franz Kakfa
Against The Day – Thomas Pynchon
The Stranger – Albert Camus
White Noise – Don DeLillo

I'm throwing some ideas around, i.e. the books listed below, tell me what you think. Overall thinking on them (good or bad), and more detailed comments are welcome. I don't really know what to get, to be honest with you.

The Convent – Panos Karnezis
Little Infamies – Panos Karnezis
The Metamorphis – Franz Kakfa
Nemesis – Isaac Asimov
Against The Day – Thomas Pynchon
A Good School – Richard Yates
Disturbing The Peace – Richard Yates
Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said – Philip K Dick
Lady Chatterly’s Lover – D H Lawrence
The Penelopoid – Margaret Atwood

Please tell me what you think of them. I think I also need to get some long and very long books, since some of the stuff I just read was 200 - 400 pages (although some was longer).

Dark Tower. I know it's also sci-fi, romance and Western, but it's good.