/lit/ - Literature

Hands down this.

>>9877503
Did you read the Denny version? Was it readable?

PARADISE L O S T

>>9877510
Yes, it's fine

>>9877527
I heard he dropped the sewer bits. Is this true? I kinda wanted to read them. I can only find Denny's version in the shop, so I will get him if he meets my sewer standards.

>>9877539
The only unabridged version I found was pic related. It's also the best translation and the cheapest.

>>9877500
I just finished The Iliad and now I don't think anything could be better. Hector's death and how his family are mourning/preparing for Troy to get fucked in the ass is genuinely upsetting.

>>9877667
yeah, even though the fall of troy is inevitable, when hector's wife is talking about their child never reaching manhood because he'll be executed and that achilles won't relent despite the sorrow that troy suffers, no longer able to fight, he still wants them fucking dead. this shit fucking broke me

boby dick is pretty nice

>>9877500
What is that painting called on the cover , I need this

>>9877500
The Brothers Karamazov, East of Eden, and Stoner are the three 10/10 fiction books I've read.

>>9878688
Don Quixote
(Don Quichotte)
1893
Adrien-Louis DEMONT

http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/explore/collection/work/3910/

I don't think I've read a personal 10/10 yet, but Anna Karenina was easily a 9/10 for me.

These two

>>9877550
What about the Modern Library Classics version? Is that abridged?

Stoner, JR, Eveningland (story collection)

>>9877500

>10/10
>episodic structure

>>9877500
>>9877503
>>9878693
>>9878715
>>9877667

Unoriginal as fuck. Waiting for someone to pontificate on IJ and Moby Dick.

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

>>9878872
>If it's well known then it can't be perfect
>pontificate

Go back to brooklyn

>>9878872
Nobody said they had to be original or obscure. I think you completely missed the point of the thread.

>>9878833
>>9878872
OP asked for personal 10 out of 10s. It doesn't matter shit if you disagree

Critique of pure reason is 10/10

>>9878792
Came to post J R

nearly made me believe in God again

I don't see enough about this book on this board. It had me laughing till I was crying and contemplating philosophy as a whole.

The Old Man and the Sea. It's the Pet Sounds of books.

East of Eden is a writer in his damn element

>>9879429
Don't know what is pet sounds but I loved the old man and the sea.

Once i was able to push through this book it made it alot easier for me to understand olde english and opened up alot of books and translations of older books written in that era.

>>9879429
Came to post this.

The conversation with the priest really does it all.

>>9879420
Hated this BS

>>9879474
Beach Boys album. Revolutionized pop music as an art form. very good.

>>9878715
you poor poor supressed man

>>9879420
Where specifically did you cry laughing?

>>9879429
What did you like so much about it?
I liked it, but it felt oddly dragged out and repetitive in diction.

And Moby-Dick. Halfway through For Whom the Bell tolls and it's 10/10 thus far.

>>9879496
Chaucer isn't Old English though

>>9877525
Seconding

>>9879659
No fucking way

The Book of the New Sun obviously

>By the use of the language of sorrow I had for the time being obliterated my sorrow—so powerful is the charm of words, which for us reduces to manageable entities all the passions that would otherwise madden and destroy us.

>>9879635
I thought the narrator was trying to emulate the old man's thoughts and since It's an old man, they repeat stuff a lot.

>>9879668
He said 'olde' so obviously he meant modern or middle

>>9879686
I get that, and it works with the situation he finds himself in (with the complete boredom and repetitiveness of the sealife), i still feel like it dragged too much.
I really liked it, though

>>9879678
Bready good

>>9879299
then Critique of Judgement is 11/10

>>9879671
What are your qualms with Franzen?

>>9879746
Terribly boring stories of the middle-class, and his prose is non-existent.

>>9879781
Those are contemporaneous arguments you could make about most social realist authors--especially while the trendy writers of the day are avant garde. Edith Wharton, for example. Boring stories about middle class people, prose nowhere near as exciting as to concurrent modernists.
It's funny--in my classes at university, everyone shits on Franzen for trying too hard to be, well, exciting and erudite. That's after a reading of The Corrections, though. Freedom and Purity are of a much more vanilla cut.

Pic related and Ada

>>9879807
It seems like you're proving my point.
Edith is trash compared to modernists.
And Franzen is a contemporary, so surely contemporaneous arguments would befit him?

i don't know i have felt like it is out there. the closest i ever felt to it was the divine comedy. some books feel too inactive but express a lot of interesting ideas. others have the opposite problems

Pic related is unparalleled in shaping the way in which we conceive of an entire category of objects.

Les Mis without the semantics on street/sewer layouts and battle formations would probably also fit(I read the Folio Society version, and it was a great translation imo).

>>9879823
'Sblood! I was going to post this.

I love how much I'm seeing The Sot-Weed Factor on /lit/ these days.

>>9879659
The Corrections is better

>>9879630
The entire earthquake scene.

>>9878872
>pontificate
Yeah, we all saw that DFW interview when we first came to /lit/ as well. Enjoy your stay.

>>9879823
>>9880577
I'Christ! I'm around page 500 right now and I'm absolutely loving it. It has blown me away over and over again. I can already tell it's gonna be one of those books that completely alters my perception of the world. Glad to see a couple other like-minded anons. Either of you read that 'Goat Boy' or whatever book Barth wrote? How does it compare to Sot-Weed?

>>9880727
I've read all his works except for the Fridays book. Giles is fun, Sot-Weed is better. You should still read it, but it is more conventional, and less acerbic. I would say you should definitely still read it, because it's wonderful, but before that check out Barth's second novel "The End of the Road." You can often find it packaged with "The Floating Opera," they're both great, and are absolute must reads for a Barth fan

Machiavelli's The Prince. It's short, to the point, has sound reasoning, and is full of helpful advice. Whereas others write about how to rule a nation "morally", he emonstrates how to rule successfully. Call me simple, but as a politics enthusiast, it's a 10/10 for me.

>>9878693
>Stoner
seconding this, Stoner is a perfect book but its not one of my favorites

>>9877500
This book was a solid 10. There was no part of it that wasn't absolutely genius. The buildup to the point where Stephen decides to pursue art rather than priesthood was absolutely sublime. It's one of those books where you have to go back and read pages multiple times because you cannot believe how great it is.

Moby Dick
Swann's Way
Within A Budding Grove
Guermantes Way
Anna Karenina
The Republic
A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man
Gravity's Rainbow

>>9880948
Fuck yes, I love this book.

>>9877500
book(s)

>>9877500
>Don Quixote
>10/10

This meme has to stop, Cervantes' tirade against chivalric novels is as subtle as a brick in your face and he bloats the length of the novel with turgid didacticisms.

>>9881729
Are these good to learn their respective subjects if one's a weeaboo?

>>9880888
Ahahahahahababhahaha, he wrote about how to rule ruthlessly and succeed in the short term not about how to rule successfully long term. That was his whole point to help people spot those that want to play them and that ruthlessness gives immediate rewards but costs you in the long term.

>>9881729
alright thats fucking it, im killing myself

this

divine comedy, portrait and moby dick 10/10

ulysses literal 15/10

>>9881761
I was memeing but I did have a look at some of them. No, not really, they're mostly good for children. They are slow moving and not very info dense, due to the fact that they're wrapped up in pseudonarratives and have accompanying artwork with minimal text.

1984
might be a entry level choice, but its a book i keep coming back to and loving it every time

This and The Master and Margarita

>>9881756
People enjoy having fun, believe it or not.

Agatha Christie's "And Then There Were None"

>>9879678
this
>How strange it is that the sky, which by day is a stationary ground on which the clouds are seen to move, by night becomes the backdrop for Urth's own motion, so that we feel her rolling beneath us as a sailor feels the running of the tide. That night the sense of this slow turning was so strong that I was almost giddy with its long, continued sweep.
>Strong too was the feeling that the sky was a bottomless pit into which the universe might drop forever. I had heard people say that when they looked at the stars too long they grew terrified by the sensation of being drawn away. My own fear--and I felt fear--was not centered on the remote suns, but rather on the yawning void; and at times I grew so frightened that I gripped the rock with my freezing fingers, for it seemed to me that I must fall off Urth.

>>9878833

This, Don Quixote is the best slice of life anime ever made.

>>9877500

It's not my favorite, but it's the best book I've read all year.

>>9878833
new to literature and a bit of brainlet. What do you mean by episodic structure and why is it a bad thing?

>>9882343
>Master and margarita
Yes my anon

Gulliver's Travels.

>>9882312
I see you have perfected your bait.
I literally cannot stop myself from responding to you

>>9879603
Lolita is a 10 tho despite being entry level

>>9879659
I feel sorry for people who skip parts of or don't finish Moby Dick. It's so close to perfection.

Crime and Punishment, for me.

But then again before I read it I didn't realise the ceiling for perfect could go so high - perhaps another book will result in a similar revelation.

>>9879678
At first i thought that was crap but I reread it four times and it's sincerely beautiful.

>>9877500
Autumn of the patriarch

>>9880948
Saving this for when i reread dubliners

Stoner, The Road, 100 Years of Solitude, and As I Lay Dying are 10/10 for me

>>9881756
I never asked for subtlty when I read Don Quixote, just fun misadventures with wonderful characters and perfect comic timing. I'm sorry you didn't enjoy the digressions in it but I loved every moment and I can't think of another book that gave me more joy. Sorry to hear you didn't like it, anon.

>>9883449
Loved the part where he kicks the student's ass as he pretends to be a knight

>>9878715
Agreed. They might not be my absolute favorites, but as far as being cohesive, aesthetically pleasing, fun, and effective, not much can top these two, especially when it comes to modern literature.
I can't think of a thing I would change about them, because any change to either book would make them worse.

>>9879678

>>9883149

>Llibio had worn a fish carved from a tooth about his neck; and when I asked him what it was he had said it was Oannes, and covered it with his hand so that I my eyes could not profane it, for he knew that I did not believe in Oannes, who must surely be the fish-god of these people. I did not, yet I felt I knew everything about Oannes that mattered. I knew that he must live in the darkest deeps of the lake, but that he was seen leaping among the waves in storms. I knew he was the shepherd of the deep, who filled nets of the islanders, and that murderers could not go on the water without fear, lest Oannes appear alongside, with his eyes as big as moons, and overturn the boat. I did not believe in Oannes or fear him. But I knew, I thought, whence he came - I knew that there is an all-pervasive power in the universe of which every other is the shadow. I knew that in the last analysis my conception of that power was as laughable (and as serious) as Oannes.

>>9883449

Cardenio is that nibba. Fuck bitches climb trees.

>>9882350

That feel when ugly: the book.

the first time i cried because of a writing.

>>9878715
Is this bait?

>>9877500
I love Anton Chekhov

>>9884935

A Painful Case?

If I was the type to cry at books that story would have done it for me.

I'm not saying I'm tough or anything. I am selfish and only cry over my own misfortunes.

>>9877500
not trolling, not memeing, not shietieting ov de post-

>>9880948
spoilers nigger

>>9881756
>>>Reddit

I have a few: The Iliad, Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Brothers Karamazov, War and Peace, Fathers and Sons, and the Oresteia.

>>9885417
The Iliad fucking sucks fuck you you nigger

The rest are good choices tho

Moby Dick. No question about it.

>>9885420
>The Iliad fucking sucks
t. illiterate

>>9877500
I can't decide

>>9877500
Notes from Underground was short but amazing.

>>9877500
Best book I've ever read

>>9879823
yep

>>9877500
>Sancho and Don Quixote never got to be those shepherds.
way to spoil it OP

This book. It's so beautiful and the language Baker uses is fucking perfect. I love this book so much.

>>9885680
this

>>9885680
Forgot photo

>>9880888
>>9881783
According to scholars you're both right.

The Prince is an ideal ruler and as such is never attainable. If someone were to rule exactly as prescribed they would win longterm, but that's impossible and so their polity will crumble.

>>9879429
Pet Sounds is shit.

>>9885716
Fuck off scaruffi

>>9885680
>>9885706
Wow, had a look at a few pages of that on Amazon, you are right it is kind of beautiful. Added to my list of books to read.

>>9885397
The fuck is wrong with you? It's practically an autobiography, obviously he doesn't become a priest.

>>9879425
Absolutely this.

a truly 10/10 for me

>>9878715
You are so fucking on it
Well done

>>9885364
I want to believe you
I really don't

You have 5min to state ur case

>>9885287
My man, the night before easter almost made me cry like a bitch. Sublime.

>>9877500

>>9880481
Looks good. Where can I order a hardback?

>>9877500
The Tale of Genji
Both Alice books
Lolita
Story of the Stone

Madame Bovary is a good candidate. Also, Ficciones is excellent.

This was my first taste of "classic" literature

>>9878872
>pontificate

>>9879429

I didn;t enjoy a single second of reading that book (Read it in one sitting two days ago), but somehow never felt the need to put it down, and when it was over I was glad that I had read it (And not just so I could say that I had read it).

>>9881024
>>9880948
>>9880733
>>9877503
>>9877500

what's with all the penguin Covers? They look nice, but if they print quality is so shit why does everyone share them? I can't care how nice a book looks if it feels like shit in the hand.

>>9879823
>>9880577
>>9880727
>>9880826
You guys have piqued my interest with this one. I've ordered a copy.

>>9885420
> says The Iliad sucks
> he literally didn't get passed book 2

Look, I found the gay retard

>>9885706
Need to read it

>>9887815
I dont mind penguin editions

You have to be some careless spastic if you let them get into poor condition

>>9877500

>>9881798
W&P i great but not a 10/10 regarthless.

One day I'll learn italian and read this in the original language.

>>9888171
Cream of the crop.

Huck Finn minus the part at the end at Tom's Aunt's house

>>9878706
Should i read AK if i know what happens

For me in recent memory it is this.

This novel is fucking flawless

Perfection, somehow even better than Lolita.

>>9888004

go away Jordan Peterson

When somebody says they haven't read this I feel sad for them.

>>9884935
His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

>>9878715
Strongly agree with Lolita, the only book I've reread multiple times. Couldn't get into Catcher though. The narrative style and general demeanor of the protagonist felt cunty beyond reason, like it didn't really add anything.

>>9878872
btfo

>>9883487

It means the structure of the book is episodic.
Have you ever watched a TV series?
It's like that.
The overall narrative is a just a loose connection of stand-alone adventures.
Some may consider it an inferior form of narrative because it perhaps indicates a lack of artistry or skill.

>>9888711
What does a expelled private school 17 year old and a veteran WWII soldier, who was part of the first to see the nazi concentration camps have in common? A whole fucking lot according to Salinger

>>9887878
You won't regret it.

>>9879823
One of the greatest novels I've ever read, and it was almost my post for this thread. Fucking incredible. One of the only novels I've read that was able to make me laugh out loud multiple times and also make me cry. Masterpiece.

>>9888004
Same fucking loved it.

>>9881024
Just finished it, it's a masterpiece

>>9888639
My nigga

>>9877525
This. I don't even know why

>>9884118
read Brothers K

>>9889654
no, it's shit and its christian message it's shit too.

>>9877500
Storm of Steel by Ernst Junger. It's under-read so I always get hipster kicks out of recommending it but it really is the perfect war memoir. No poetics or diatribes on the larger effects of the conflict. Just pure description of who Junger was, where he was and what he did. It does become sort of poetic naturally by relating that extreme of a human experience but it's so honest and well written that it transcends the typical "war memoir". A perfect book about war if I've ever read one.

>>9888171
Agreed

>>9877667
Did you read it in Greek?

>>9888683

I completely forgot how much I enjoyed this.

>>9888591
>>9890469
Someone on here recommended it to me after I mentioned I liked Perec's La Vie mode d'emploi. I can definitely see where they were coming from, so get on that if you haven't yet.

>>9888639
>>9888654
Need to read both of these

>>9888683
Alright anon, I shall read it

>>9879496
The part about mistaking a kiss on a lady's anus for a kiss with a bearded man made me throw up to be honest. I didn't realise how filthy Chaucer was.

No memes, but it's one of his best alongside Suttree and Border Trilogy imo.

>>9885480
Can you elaborate on why? I read it several years ago and remember being disappointed with it, but I feel like something must have went over my head when I hear people praise it so highly.

>>9888644
Looked this up on Goodreads, thanks anon, it does sound fantastic.

>his perfect book has an english translation

Honorable mention goes to Paradise Lost and Stoner.

>>9890993
tell me about the book and why i should read it pls

>>9877500
How about not dropping huge spoiler bombs next time?

>>9891033
it's basically finnish ulysses

>>9879823
is this a good book for an /lit/ autumn reading group?

ive had it on my shelf for so long and it was recommended to me by a guy who knew i liked mason & dixon

>>9881756
maul is posting again

>>9891101
>In one famous scene, a character's journey to the mantelpiece to fetch a pipe is told in over seventy pages.

Unironically considering whether to put this on my to-read list now

>>9891128
Nevermind, no translation

Thanks for nothing memeland

>>9891147
>2017
>doesn't study finnish to be able to read some volter kilpi
kys yourself

>>9891172
The Koreans should have finished you people off why they had the chance

>>9891088
OP didn't really say anything revealing to be honest. It's also most definitely about the journey to the destination and not the destination itself: a vague detail about the ending does not ruin the whole book (unless if it's some top secret twist but it most likely is not).

Not /lit/ as fuck litterateur but the best imho

>Hamlet
>The Iliad
>The Stand
>Arcadia
>Deadhouse Gates

>>9889243
When did you cry? When you learn all the stuff that happened to Joan Toast?

>>9891333
>detail about the ending
>not spoiler

>>9891848
A vague detail without the context isn't much of a spoiler

It tells you near to nothing about the book. Why even read when you're only interested in the ending?

>>9881798
i only made it through the first volume desu

>>9888827
>Some may consider it an inferior form of narrative because it perhaps indicates a lack of artistry or skill.
lol

>>9884157

>The Road

I've never been so bored in my life, literally nothing happens, and we all knew what would happen in the end.

>>9877500
Madame Bovary, hands down. I would not change a single comma of that book.

Dubliners, Pan and The Waves are also honorable mentions

Is Lolita worth reading even if I'm not a degenerate pedophile?

>>9892539

Agreed.

>The man looks at the boy
>"Go over there and wait for me, okay?"
>"Okay."
>"Okay."
>They grab their cart and continue walking along the road.
>Repeat above for 20 chapters.

>>9891716
“Thou’rt weary, Joan.”
She closed her eyes. “Beyond imagining.”
This got me for some reason

>>9884122
I'd say One Hundred Years of Solitude and maybe Chronicle of a Death Fortold

This.

>>9892539
>>9892577
I thought that the prose was wonderful. The final paragraph is one of the most beautiful and sad things I have ever read.
As fir knowing what was about to happen I genuinely didn't. I thought that the kid would die too and was surprised by the ending. Also some of the things that they encounter were to me at least unpredictable. The cannibal victims for instance, and the woman eating her own newborn child. To me none of these things could possibly be foreseeable.

>>9888683
My favorite book. I'm reading Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman right now.

>>9892573
for sure, it is about storytelling and the subtext of it as much as it is about pedophilia

madame bovary is 10/10

>>9892539
>>9892577
"Wrong"

>>9892573
Yes, the prose is beautiful, the narrative is fascinating. It's all about empathy and understanding that you're being misled rather than anything else.

>>9892773
Is this not just some meme-terry pratchett trilogy? Is it actually 10/10 good, is it actually a good time or would I need to be an InfoWars follower to enjoy it?

>>9892889
The part that got to me the most was when they come across the guy who steals their things from the beach so the father, at gunpoint tells the thief to strip and give everything to him and his son, leading the son to recognise that the world has no good or bad guys and nobody was really carrying the fire at all. Shit like that just made me feel hopeless and I nearly cried.

>>9880481
Foundation series is also a really interesting series.

>>9895016
> Tokuma Novels

What is this, anon? Looks neat

>>9895024
Oh sorry forgot to mention the name.

It's Legend of the Galactic Heroes the best sci-fi space opera.

Yukio Mishima is usually a solid 10/10 for me.

Soseki's I Am A Cat needs more love here too. Kobo Abe's The Women in the Dunes is great too.

Not exactly my favourite book but this exceeded my expectations in every way. I thought it would be tame by today's standards and kinda embellishing the war experience. In reality it's visceral, brutal and full of manly feels. 10/10 for sure.

It's "sequel", The Road Back, is also very good.

>>9894968
It's playful satire exploring oddball conspiracies. It's like Thomas Pynchon's looney tunes style but more accessible.

>>9881024
This is an 11/10 desu.

As satisfying as cumming inside the love of your life for the sole purpose of reproduction.

The entire ending sequence where the Count gimps Maximilien and puts him through the same agony as he went through during his imprisonment but finally reunites him with Valentine to teach him the lesson of Wait and Hope (also the fucking last lines in general)
The Count literally riding off into the sunset with a new qt 3.14 waifu
The scene where the Count encounters Mercédès in his father's house in Marseilles and they can barely speak to each other, I fucking wept
The entire string of back-to-back climaxes and the Count's epic revenge

Amazing book

>>9881798
A great book but most certainly not a 10/10, imo it was an 8-8.5/10 at most. As interesting as the historical asides were I really did feel they brought down the book and the Epilogue was nigh unreadable.

Anna Karenina is close to a 10/10 though

I learned Spanish after reading this for the sole purpose of being able to read this in Spanish

In Spanish it's quasi-orgasmic.

unironically this

>>9881729
Unpopular opinion: Manga Messiah is better than the bible desu

You guys should try venturing out of the /lit/core some time

>>9895630
Well, now that you know Spanish, go read Ficciones, 2666, Sobre héroes y tumbas and Las armas secretas.

>>9896565
Shut up bitch

My personal favorite book. It has to be the first published version though because Bely cut way too much in the latter, more widely read editions.

>>9895286
Soseki and Abe are two of my favorites.

>>9896565
Nah, there's the usual suspects, but also other insteresting recs ITT.

>>9896565
Yeah /lit/ is the reason all these critically and academically lauded novels are popular and liked... Jesus this is a fucking dumb statement, and I see it almost every day on here. Most of these novels were written before we were born, and were considered great by people who lived full lives and died before /lit/ was even a thing. A board of readers liking historically great novels has nothing to do with memes, it has nothing to do with you, and it sure as fuck wasn't a trend set by /lit/. Now, post yours.

>>9881024
The patrician's choice

Also, >>9881024

>>9896565
Get a load of the cool kid who read Joseph Campbell once wow

>>9896565
> good reading
> it's /lit/core
> implying being lit isn't a good thing

>>9886507
It's so comfy

>>9890566
>La Vie mode d'emploi
I've read it last week, it's such an amazing book. What was your favorite story?

Call of the Wild

>>9879429
Pacific Ocean Blue is better.

>>9878693
I'm almost finished reading the brother's karamazov and I seriously don't understand why it's a classic. I admit I probably missed a shit ton because it almost put me to sleep multiple times. I'm definitely a pleb, I'm just curious as to how people can enjoy it so much.

242 posts.
Not a single correct answer.
I'm disappointed in you /lit/.

>>9877500

I will tell you, dubs OP. I will give you the only answer:

>my diary desu

>>9887321
Hmmm, I like your tastes. I just hope you aren't a weab.

>>9891336
I came.

>>9895286
Wagahai wa Neko de aru isn't even premium Soseki though, and I am highly skeptical the book of Suna no Onna can possibly surpass the 10/10 film.

>>9895630
I am just starting to learn Spanish now.

I AM EXCITE!

>>9896565
post taste or get out

>>9878715
This is really good bait because nobody with serious opinions about literature likes both of them

10/10s for me:

>The Garden of Forking Paths, J.L. Borges
>Republic, Plato
>The Collected Poems, W.B. Yeats
>Prometheus Bound, Sophocles
>The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
>The Bible

Several good choices already posted. Lord of the Flies is another I always circle back to.

>>9888711
The fact that it felt like useless bitching is the point. You aren't supposed to like Holden Caulfield.

>>9890462
>posting the shitty penguin edition
I sincerely hope you didn't read that one because it's completely neutered (all the passionate nationalist parts are gone because of muh nazis). You have to get the 1929 Howard Fertig edition for the actual book.

>“Now these [battles] too are over, and already we see once more in the dim light of the future the tumult of the fresh ones. We--by this I mean those youth of this land who are capable of enthusiasm for an ideal--will not shrink from them. We stand in the memory of the dead who are holy to us, and we believe ourselves entrusted with the true and spiritual welfare of our people. We stand for what will be and for what has been. Though force without and barbarity within conglomerate in sombre clouds, yet so long as the blade of a sword will strike a spark in the night may it be said: Germany lives and Germany shall never go under!”

>>9879420
Read more books Dave.

>>9898382
I agree with this. It is certainly a good book but I'm not sure why it is regarded as highly as it is. Most people I talk to about it cite the philosophical discussions as the reason for its quality but the content of which is pretty much on par with an ethics undergraduate seminar. Good book, very good even but certainly not a brilliant one.

>>9898492
cheeky meme post but i'll let it slide

>>9899254
he probably did mean that manga version of alice in wonderland to be honest family

>>9899294
The film really was superb. I do find it difficult to choose between the book and the film though.

>>9899354
> Prometheus Bound, Sophocles

That's Aeschylus, mate.

>>9895614
entirely agree, i had a smile on my face for 3 days after i finished reading. plus, its a page turner while not sacrificing quality or getting fatigued.

in my top 10 for sure.

>>9877500
thx for the spoiler retard

>>9900670
You know nothing.

>>9892223
that's not the point, now if i'm reading it, i'm gonna envision how they come to that point in the story, which ruins the experience

>>9900670
Sancho doesn't die

the shepherd remark is something Sancho suggests so he and Don Quixote can continue going on misadventures as two close friends

Also the book is about 1000 pages, OP has literally told you fuck all about what happens in the book and for you to dismiss the book solely because one slight detail was implied is being fucking pathetic. I will fucking hit you, you cunt.

Expected fantasy that I would've read in primary school

>>9885401
12/10

>>9900689
What did you like about this? Genuinely asking. I'm considering reading it.

>>9901047
I'm a different anon who nevertheless found it to be a 10/10 so I'll give you an answer too

>What did you like about this?
- the prose
- the vivid imagery
- the stories within stories (not forgetting the play, "Eschatology and Genesis")
- the complexity of the story and secrets underneath the surface which are "hidden" in plain sight
- Wolfe doesn't try and patronise me, the reader

I'm not a big re-reader even of books I like, because I'd rather use my time to discover new stuff, but I have re-read the Book of the New Sun several times precisely for that reason. Which is the biggest compliment I can give it.

Also where other novels can fade into memory as a vague haze of emotions I might have felt when reading it, scenes from the BotNS stay emblazoned in my memory they're just that vivid.

>the botanical gardens
>the huge library
>avern duel
>on the mountain with little severian and later looking at the stars
>the alzabo
>telling stories in the field hospital
>the terrifying antechamber of the house absolute

Could gush about this for ages so better stop now

>>9900689
i keep seeing this recommended but all the covers make it look like video game garbage

>>9901170
Yep the covers tend to be terrible

>>9884935
>>9888706
Araby is tears-worthy as well

yes

>>9888004
ew

>>9887355
I second this.

>>9901170

This passage from a one of the best sequences of chapters in the tetraology (namely the climbing of the mountain with little Severian) may convince you otherwise:

"...[T]he very existence of such powers argues a counterforce. We call powers of the first kind dark, though they may use a species of deadly light... and we call those of the second kind bright, though I think that they may at times employ darkness, as a good man nevertheless draws the curtains of his bed to sleep. Yet there is truth to the talk of darkness and light, because it shows plainly that one implies the other. The tale I read to little Severian said that the universe was but a long word of the Increate's. We, then, are syllables of that word. But the speaking of any word is futile unless there are other words, words that are not spoken. If a beast has but one cry, the cry tells nothing; and even the wind has a multitude of voices, so that those who sit indoors may hear it and know if the weather is tumultuous or mild. The powers we call dark seem to me to be the words the Increate did not speak... and these words must be maintained in a quasi-existence, if the other word, the word spoken is to be distinguished. What is not said can be important - but what is said is more important... And if the seekers after dark things find them, may not the seekers after bright find them as well? And are they not more apt to hand their wisdom on?"

>>9885716

>>9901135
Thank you for taking the time, Anon. You've convinced me.

>>9901428
That one's great. One of my favourites that I don't see quoted often is the description of Master Gurloes.

"Gurloes was one of the most complex men I have known, because he was a complex man trying to be simple. Not a simple, but a complex man's idea of simplicity. Just as a courtier forms himself into something brilliant and involved, midway between a dancing master and a diplomacist, with a touch of assassin if needed, so Master Gurloes had shaped himself to be the dull creature a pursuivant or bailiff expected to see when he summoned the head of our guild, and that is the only thing a real torturer cannot be.

"The strain showed; though every part of Gurloes was as it should have been, none of the parts fit. He drank heavily and suffered from nightmares, but he had the nightmares when he had been drinking, as if the wine, instead of bolting the doors of his mind, threw them open and left him staggering about in the last hours of the night, trying to catch a glimpse of a sun that had not yet appeared, a sun that would banish the phantoms from his big cabin and permit him to dress and send the journeymen to their business. Sometimes he went to the top of our tower, above the guns, and waited there talking to himself, peering through glass said to be harder than flint for the first beams. He was the only one in our guild - Master Palaemon not excepted - who was unafraid of the energies there and the unseen mouths that spoke sometimes to human beings and sometimes to other mouths in other towers and keeps.

"He loved music, but he thumped the arm of his chair to it and tapped his foot, and did so most vigorously to the kind he liked best, whose rhythms were too subtle for any regular cadence. He ate too much and too seldom, read when he thought no one knew of it, and visited certain of our clients, including one on the third level, to talk of things none of us eavesdropping in the corridor outside could understand. His eyes were refulgent, brighter than any woman's. He mispronounced quite common words: 'urticate', 'salpinx', 'bordereau'. I cannot well tell you how bad he looked when I returned to the Citadel recently, how bad he looks now."

Just brilliant.

>>9898831
ding ding ding

>>9878715
This is my first time on /lit/ and these happen to be the two I agree with. Do I have shit taste?

>>9902517
>This is my first time on /lit/
Welcome to /lit/

Can I interest you in some fresh, spicy memes

>>9877500
Fahrenheit 451

Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship

>>9902517
Memes aside, they're joked about here because many people read them in school or they're some of the first books people read when they start taking reading seriously. They're good books and it's fine if you enjoy them, but memes start arising as they're both seen as entry level books compared to other works you'll soon discover the more you read.

>>9901428
That part about the voices of wind is beautiful. Does the whole book have that aire of ancient mythological wisdom?

>>9897850
i believe in God because of this

>>9902764

Yes it does. Almost every chapter has some rumination from the narrator.

There is no category of human activity in which the dead do not outnumber the living many times over. Most beautiful children are dead. 'Most soldiers, most cowards. The fairest women and the most learned men—all are dead. Their bodies repose in caskets, in sarcophagi, beneath arches of rude stone, everywhere under the earth. Their spirits haunt our minds, ears pressed to the bones of our foreheads. Who can say how intently they listen as we speak, or for what word?"

"We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges. When soldiers take their oath they are given a coin, an asimi stamped with the profile of the Autarch. Their acceptance of that coin is their acceptance of the special duties and burdens of military life—they are soldiers from that moment, though they may know nothing of the management of arms. I did not know that then, but it is a profound mistake to believe that we must know of such things to be influenced by them, and in fact to believe so is to believe in the most debased and superstitious kind of magic. The would-be sorcerer alone has faith in the efficacy of pure knowledge; rational people know that things act of themselves or not at all."

“Sometimes driven aground by the photon storms, by the swirling of the galaxies, clockwise and counterclockwise, ticking with light down the dark sea-corridors lined with our silver sails, our demon-haunted sails, our hundred-league masts as fine as threads, as fine as silver needles sewing the threads of starlight, embroidering the stars on black velvet, wet with the winds of Time that go racing by. The bone in her teeth! The spume, the flying spume of Time, cast up on these beaches where old sailors can no longer keep their bones from the restless, the unwearied universe. Where has she gone? My lady, the mate of my soul? Gone across the running tides of Aquarius, of Pisces, of Aries. Gone. Gone in her little boat, her nipples pressed against the black velvet lid, gone, sailing away forever from the star-washed shores, the dry shoals of the habitable worlds. She is her own ship, she is the figurehead of her own ship, and the captain. Bosun, Bosun, put out the launch! Sailmaker, make a sail! She has left us behind. We have left her behind. She is in the past we never knew and the future we will not see. Put out more sail, Captain for the universe is leaving us behind…”

“Here is light. You will say that it is not a living entity, but you miss the point that it is more, not less. Without occupying space, it fills the universe. It nourishes everything, yet itself feeds upon destruction. We claim to control it, but does it not perhaps cultivate us as a source of food? May it not be that all wood grows so that it can be set ablaze, and that men and women are born to kindle them?”

etc.

>>9894966
>the narrative is fascinating
Yeah, I really love 200-page roadtrips

>>9881024
Spoilers ahead. I was really into it up until the whole cave on the island and it turned into a weird shroom trip and the main character was basically totally different. I shouldve kept going but classes got in the way and I forgot what was even going on. Oh well, might watch the movie.

>>9901135
>- the complexity of the story and secrets underneath the surface which are "hidden" in plain sight
The only thing I really "got" was the astronaut image. Shit blew me away. But I didn't notice anything else hidden, because I am stupid.

The cannibalism fucked me up a bit

>>9877500

Naked Lunch because as Whitman said in "So Long," "This is no book; // Who touches this, touches a man."

Reflection on Burrough's letters reveals the work as perhaps lacking in a few areas of overall structural foresight (the entire thing was essentially randomly composed), but revealing in its completeness a man completely given to the addiction of junk and of communicating that very addiction to whoever would listen. I don't think I've ever read a more honest portrayal of a person's psyche presented in such efficient and earnest albeit obscene prose. The most shining examples of Burroughs prose is enough to bring the work from perhaps an honest 9/10 to a still mystified and astounded 10/10.

Moby Dick and possibly Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.
Peter Levenda's Sinister Forces Trilogy for nonfic.

>>9900676
>You know nothing, John Snow.

FTFY

>>9877500
sincerely Infinite Jest

Hannibal, by Thomas Harris. Endowed pulp fiction, and he florishes by undoing his whole Feminist put-on which had sold Silence of the Lambs and created the whole whiny-girl takes down brutus ogres genre.

>>9877500
On the Road

Fight me faggots

Moby Dick

I honestly wouldn't mind someone making another of these threads once this one hits the bump limit. Some interesting "general recommendations" in here

>>9877500
Blue Moon Rising
A Tree Grows In Brooklyn
Lick My Ass

>>9877525
Milton GOAT

>>9899748
>posting another translation

>>9904414
Wtf man go back to /tv/

>>9904742
Surprised we haven't had a thread like this before. Some good discussion and reccs.

What's the bump limit on /lit/?

>>9906752
P&P is a good choice desu

>>9906612
310 I assume

>>9879420
agreed, it's a great read

bump limit yall, anybody wanna make a new thread and link it here? I would but I just made a thread and I think theres a waiting limit

>>9904677
On the Road
Moby Dick
The Sea Wolf
A'Rebours
Tropic of Cancer
Journey to the End of the Night
And some esoteric shit you've never heard of.

>>9907331

>>9900107
maybe its a taste thing but i'm rereading it right now and i cannot overstate how brilliant i consider it. the way he characterizes and can just describe mental agony keeps me so attached to what comes next. its one of those books i just cant put down

>>9907467
Yeah, the high regard comes from the quality, not the philosophical insight. At least for the people who truly know why they like it.