10 favorite books

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10 favorite books Anonymous Sun Jun 18 03:59:21 2023 No.22162033 [Reply] [Original]

You all talk a big talk but I don’t see you all walking the walk. Show me your taste and I’ll rate it accordingly

>10 favorite books

>>	Anonymous Sun Jun 18 04:06:16 2023 No.22162055 >oh boy! a frog will rate me!

>>	Anonymous Sun Jun 18 04:08:25 2023 No.22162061 I haven't even read 10 books

>>	Anonymous Sun Jun 18 04:11:43 2023 No.22162074 The Bible The Bible this isn't fucking spam The Bible The Bible not spam The Bible The Bible The Bible The Bible desu The Bible The Bible

>>	Anonymous Sun Jun 18 04:12:26 2023 No.22162077 >>22162033 As I Lay Dying Blood Meridian The Idiot LOTR trilogy Absolom Absolom Flashman series Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Starship Troopers Child of God The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz

Anonymous Sun Jun 18 04:14:47 2023 No.22162082

I’ll switch it up a bit

>Gargantuan and Pantagruel-Rabelais
>The Histories -Herodotus
>Meditations -Marcus Aurelius
>The Colossus Of Maroussi-Henry Miller
>The Rainbow-Lawrence
>Whitman/Thoreau/Emerson
>Essays -Montaigne
>Paris Spleen -Baudelaire
>History of my Life -Casanova
>Letters -Vincent Van Gogh

>>	Anonymous Sun Jun 18 04:16:26 2023 No.22162088 File: 448 KB, 828x1203, IMG_9768.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] The Corrections American Psycho Suttree Infinite Jest Blood Meridian The Trial The Metamorphosis Pale Fire Peace of Soul Letters from a Stoic

Anonymous Sun Jun 18 04:16:32 2023 No.22162089

Walter Moers - The City of Dreaming Books
Jurij Brezan - Krabat or The Metamorphosis of the World
Michael Ende - Mirror in the Mirror
Virginia Woolf - The Waves
Arno Schmidt - Black Mirrors
Vladimir Nabokov - Lolita
Dino Buzzati - The Tartar Steppe
Christa Wolf - Unter den Linden
Gottfried Benn - Little Morgue
Akif Pirincci - Felidae

>>	Anonymous Sun Jun 18 04:17:14 2023 No.22162092 >>22162088 lol

Anonymous Sun Jun 18 04:19:07 2023 No.22162101

"God is Not Great" Christopher Hitchens
"Outgrowing God" Richard Dawkins
"Ascent of Man" Jacob Bronowski
"Pale Blue Dot" Carl Sagan
"Demon Haunted World" Carl Sagan
"The End of Faith" Sam Harris
Wordbearers Omnibus wh40k
Eisenhorn Omnibus wh40k1
"Cosmos" Carl Sagan
"Other Worlds" Ann Drunan

Sorry I just really like Carl Sagan

>>	Anonymous Sun Jun 18 04:24:11 2023 No.22162120 >>22162092 Thanks for the (you). Still getting acclimated to the layout of the land, lol. Tis so different from Reddit, ya know

Anonymous Sun Jun 18 04:24:13 2023 No.22162121

>>22162074
You’ve never read it. Be gone, tradcath larper
>>22162077
6/10. The Idiot is my favorite Dostoyevsky. I think of the Napoleon story often for some reason
>>22162082
8/10
>>22162088
7/10
>>22162089
8/10. Not my thing but you’ve found your niche so respect for that. The Tartar Steppe is widely considered depressing but I found it inspiring
>>22162101
Bait

>>	Anonymous Sun Jun 18 04:34:44 2023 No.22162144 >>22162121 there’s no way you’ve read every book posted yet you’ve earnestly ranked them so your rating is a 1/10 based on bullshit

Anonymous Sun Jun 18 04:38:22 2023 No.22162151

>>22162033
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Water Margin by Shi Nai'an
Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke
The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson
A Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
1984 by George Orwell
Silence by Shusaku Endo
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

>>	Anonymous Sun Jun 18 04:40:58 2023 No.22162158 >>22162144 >projection the post

>>	Anonymous Sun Jun 18 04:44:51 2023 No.22162165 >>22162033 Very cliche, but here it is: War and Peace Crime and Punishment Demons Anna Karenina The Master and Margarita Don Quixote The Idiot Stoner The Hobbit 1984

>>	Anonymous Sun Jun 18 04:45:17 2023 No.22162167 >>22162121 Why am I bait? Lulz

>>	Anonymous Sun Jun 18 04:47:49 2023 No.22162171 >>22162167 If you aren't baiting have you read Contact?

Anonymous Sun Jun 18 04:53:10 2023 No.22162182

Jenius - Dick King Smith
Critique of Pure Reason - Immannuel Kant
Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
Harry Potter and the Philosohper's Stone - JK Rowling
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
Naked Lunch - William S Burroughs
Waiting For Godot - Samuel Beckett
Hamlet - Shakespeare
Night Watch - Terry Pratchett

>>	Anonymous Sun Jun 18 05:05:41 2023 No.22162217 >>22162171 Have the physical versions that and Comet but haven't gotten to them yet. Most of what I listed are on my Kindle so I read them at work

>>	Anonymous Sun Jun 18 05:07:21 2023 No.22162219 File: 1.02 MB, 1080x2220, Screenshot_20230618-010628_Kindle.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>22162217 Pic related

>>	Anonymous Sun Jun 18 05:09:04 2023 No.22162223 >Job >Ecclesiastes >War and Peace >Crime and Punishment >Devils >House of the Dead >Brothers Karamazov >1984 >Brave New World >2666

>>	Anonymous Sun Jun 18 05:10:43 2023 No.22162229 >>22162033 The Misanthrope Tartuffe The School for Wives The Learned Ladies Don Juan School for Husbands Ridiculous Precieuses The Would-Be Gentleman The Miser The Imaginary Invalid

Anonymous Sun Jun 18 05:17:54 2023 No.22162247

The Complete Short Stories of Franz Kafka
The Government Inspector and Short Stories by Nikolai Gogol
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov.
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway.
The Plays of Plautus
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
The Theban Plays by Sophocles
The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert.

>>	Anonymous Sun Jun 18 05:20:03 2023 No.22162254 I keep seeing Brave New World listed, think I'll check it out too

>>	Anonymous Sun Jun 18 05:20:48 2023 No.22162258 >>22162254 Its a bit reddit to be honest

>>	Anonymous Sun Jun 18 05:22:04 2023 No.22162262 >>22162258 BNW is anti-consumerist, and Reddit is the epitome of consumerism.

>>	Anonymous Sun Jun 18 05:23:45 2023 No.22162265 >>22162074 Do you know there is more than one book in The Bible?

>>	Anonymous Sun Jun 18 05:27:03 2023 No.22162275 >>22162033 03 by Jean-Christophe Valtat 17 by Bill Drummond 32 by Sahar Mandour 69 by Murakami Ryu 334 by Thomas M. Disch 1914 by Jean Echenoz 1922 by Stephen King 1984 by George Orwell 1985 by Anthony Burgess 2666 by Roberto Bolaño

>>	Anonymous Sun Jun 18 05:28:31 2023 No.22162281 >>22162151 6/10 >>22162165 7/10. Good books but bland. >>22162182 4/10 >>22162223 6/10 >>22162229 8/10 >>22162247 8/10

>>	Anonymous Sun Jun 18 05:29:10 2023 No.22162282 >>22162275 So many numbers!

>>	Anonymous Sun Jun 18 05:29:14 2023 No.22162283 >>22162281 Will you give anyone higher than an 8? Whats yours anyway? t. >>22162247

>>	Anonymous Sun Jun 18 05:31:45 2023 No.22162297 >>22162281 You should explain your reasoning instead of just wordlessly throwing around arbitrary numbers.

>>	Anonymous Sun Jun 18 05:31:49 2023 No.22162298 >>22162283 It would have to be right in my wheelhouse and include many of my favorites. I gave myself an 8 as well. Let us be reality here, we are on /lit/, none of us has 10/10 taste

>>	Anonymous Sun Jun 18 05:38:21 2023 No.22162311 >>22162297 I feel like it

>>	Anonymous Sun Jun 18 05:41:25 2023 No.22162315 >>22162297 Which one you want elaboration on?

Anonymous Sun Jun 18 05:50:22 2023 No.22162342

The Bible
Synergetics (2 vols.) by R. B. Fuller
Nimrod: A Discourse on Certain Passages of History and Fable (4 vols.) by Algernon Herbert
Anacalypsis (2vols.) by Godfrey Higgins
Materials for the Study of Social Symbolism in Ancient and Tribal Art (3vols.) by Dr. Carl Schuster and Edmund Carpenter
The Life Divine by Sri Aurobindo
Plutarch’s Lives
Antiquity Explained, and Represented in Sculptures (10 vols.) by Bernard de Montfaucon
Æneid by Virgil
Metamorphoses by Ovid

>>	Anonymous Sun Jun 18 05:56:53 2023 No.22162357 >>22162315 Mine, >>22162223.

>>	Anonymous Sun Jun 18 05:57:37 2023 No.22162359 >>22162342 This is a strange list that I won’t rate. What are you like as a person? I’ve never seen Higgins mentioned here

>>	Anonymous Sun Jun 18 05:59:51 2023 No.22162361 >>22162357 None are bad books but it’s vanilla. At a glance 9/10 of the list is made up by the 2 Russian giants, the big dystopian novels, and the bible

Anonymous Sun Jun 18 06:02:10 2023 No.22162375

Would be interesting if each of you also estimated how many books in total you've read to get to your favorite selection.
It took me around 1k books to get to >>22162089 this, although most of them I read when I was younger. I still loved them on subsequent reads tho

>>	Anonymous Sun Jun 18 06:03:10 2023 No.22162378 >>22162361 Can I have elaboration upon mine? I'm >>22162247

Anonymous Sun Jun 18 06:05:41 2023 No.22162387

>>22162375
I’m always undecided on how to break up lists. Like choose a few old favorites, a few recent books I like, a few that inspired me, a few I like aesthetically, a few I read during a good time in my life, etc. I haven’t read 1000 yet probably but I’m probably 600; i don’t count though. It’s hard to narrow it down to 10 after a while

Anonymous Sun Jun 18 06:13:47 2023 No.22162403

>>22162378
Gogol, Hemingway, Kafka and Sophocles are some of my favorite writers. Flaubert is a tier below. I’ve only read fragments of Plautus I think. A section of a slave(?) trying to convince a home owner that there was a murder in the house and it’s haunted, and the slave trying to put off a money lender. I always get him mixed up with the other comedians. I’m admittedly not well versed in them. Joyce I’m an lukewarm on. I get an itch to reread him every so often but realize why I am lukewarm on him when I start. I never read Twelfth Night or Wilde. I gave to the highest score I usually give

>>	Anonymous Sun Jun 18 06:21:38 2023 No.22162422 >>22162403 >start You should read Twelfth Night, has great whimsical spirit (which I'm obviously fond of).

>>	Anonymous Sun Jun 18 06:24:57 2023 No.22162430 >>22162422 I plan to get around to it eventually. I find it hard to get into his comedies.

>>	Anonymous Sun Jun 18 06:26:47 2023 No.22162435 >>22162430 That's fair enough. You just have to read it on the surface at first, then after the plot is understood perhaps go deeper into the text. The wordplay is extraordinary.

Anonymous Sun Jun 18 06:31:24 2023 No.22162443

>>22162033
for whom the bell tolls - ernest hemingway
life: a user's manual - georges perec
unforgiving years - victor serge
malayan trilogy - anthony burgess
tartar steppe - dino buzzati
the plains - gerald murnane
diary of a bad year - jm coetzee
the moon and the bonfires - cesare pavese
'roman tales' - alberto moravia
and the collected rimbaud of which the precise title escapes me

>>	Anonymous Sun Jun 18 06:32:38 2023 No.22162450 >>22162033 The Outsider Moby Dick The Silmarillion Lonesome Dove Little Women Labyrinths by Borges Tao Te Ching A Song of Ice and Fire Realm of the Elderlings The Second Apocalypse

Anonymous Sun Jun 18 07:01:52 2023 No.22162508

the Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas - Machado de Assis
the Tartar Steppes - Dino Buzzati
Agota Kristof - the Notebook Trilogy
Louis-Ferdinand Celine - Journey to the End of the Night
Juan Rulfo - Pedro Paramo
Malcolm Lowry - Under the Volcano
Franz Kafka - the Trial
Roberto Bolano - the Savage Detectives
Cervantes - Don Quixote
Dostoyevsky - Crime & Punishment

Not my most obscure or cohesive list ever but these are the books that I remember ''blowing my mind'' when I first read them and have stuck with me since.

Anonymous Sun Jun 18 07:03:23 2023 No.22162511

>>22162033
The Red and the Black - Stendhal
The Charterhouse of Parma - Stendhal
The Passenger - McCarthy
Suttree - McCarthy
Breakfast of Champions - Vonnegut
Are You There God, It's Me Margaret - Blume
Catch-22 - Heller
Excession - Banks
The Catcher in the Rye - Salinger
Nine Stories - Salinger

Anonymous Sun Jun 18 07:05:42 2023 No.22162518

>>22162443
>diary of a bad year - jm coetzee
Had this in my hands in a used bookshop just yesterday but decided against taking it because the 'narrative through footnotes'-style has always irked me, even though I have liked other novels I've read from Coutzee. Is it really that good?

Anonymous Sun Jun 18 07:31:49 2023 No.22162578

>>22162518
i found it enthralling; i couldn't put it down once i started reading it -- although i am Australian so maybe that helped
don't fret not picking it up though, text classics publish it -- not sure how much shipping from, them would be but a new copy was only around $10 at a bookshop

Anonymous Sun Jun 18 08:00:45 2023 No.22162627

>>22162033
Nausea by Sartre
Robinson Crusoe by defoe (I have fond childhood memories of this one)
Stoner by Williams
Dead souls by Gogol
Red and the black by Stendhal
Phantom of the opera by leroux
The sailor who fell from grace with the sea by Mishima
Rings of Saturn by sebald
Travelers of a hundred ages by Keene
Debt a 5000 year history by graeber

Anonymous Sun Jun 18 08:16:22 2023 No.22162648

My selections are all in English. Deciding upon favourites is difficult, so I'll post works that I've very much enjoyed in the past few years.

John Cowper Powys - Porius
Patrick Leigh Fermour - A Time of Gifts
AW Kinglake - Eothen
Gerald Murnane - Inland
Basil Bunting - Collected Poems
John Heath Stubbs - Artorius
Hope Mirrlees - Lud-in-the-Mist
Rose Macauley - The Towers of Trebizond
Walter Savage Landor - Imaginary Conversations
Robert Louis Stevenson - Treasure Island

>>	Anonymous Sun Jun 18 08:27:13 2023 No.22162674 The good soldier Svejk TBK W&P Journey to the end of the night Tropic of cancer Madame Bowary The book of disquiet Catch 22 V Ulysses

Anonymous Sun Jun 18 08:34:11 2023 No.22162691

>The idiot - Dostoevsky
>The demons - Dostoevsky
>Anna karenina - Tolstoi
>The red and the black - Stendhal
>Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship - Goethe
>The Master and Margarita - Bulgakov
>Anguish - Graciliano Ramos
>Jean Barois - Roger Martin du Gard
>Nausea - Sartre
>Brave New World - Huxley
Most of these books, but not all of them, are the best I've read. But those are the ones that marked me the most, for different reasons. The few books that I've read perhaps 15 years ago but still remember significant excerpts. Most prose I read I forget the names of the characters and even the plot in less than a few months. Oddly enough, I could recite 50 poems without reading a single page.

Anonymous Sun Jun 18 08:40:21 2023 No.22162701

Perfume by Patrick Suskind
Pale Fire by Nabokov
Metamorphosis by Kafka
The Trial by Kafka
Portrait of the Artist as Young Man by Joyce
Picture of Dorian Gray by Wilde
100 years of Solitude by Marquez
Bartleby the Scrivener by Melville
To the Lighthouse by Woolf
The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Carle

>>	Anonymous Sun Jun 18 08:55:37 2023 No.22162730 Epic of Gilgamesh Alice in Wonderland Lord of the Rings Hobbit Hamlet Tao Te Ching Gravity's Rainbow Industrial Society and its Future Mountains of Madness 100 Years of Solitude

>>	Anonymous Sun Jun 18 09:35:21 2023 No.22162807 Don Quixote Berserk L'aviateur Le rouge et le noir Ender's game The lord of the rings Lettres de Mme de Sévigné Quo vadis ? Les Thibault Jean Barois

>>	Anonymous Sun Jun 18 14:42:18 2023 No.22163617 >>22162033 Boomp

>>	Anonymous Sun Jun 18 14:45:20 2023 No.22163629 >>22162033 shit post asking for shit I can' t do 10

>>	Anonymous Sun Jun 18 14:45:42 2023 No.22163631 >>22162435 Yeah, I feel like Shakespeare is a writer you have to reread to really appreciate. First time through I usually just try to pick up the gist of the characters, themes and plot. Once knowing those, I can appreciate him more reading again

Anonymous Sun Jun 18 15:15:00 2023 No.22163768

>>22162648
>Porius
After reading A Glastonbury Romance, his autobiography, and his two books about writers, I’ve been debating what to read next from him. Have you read Owen Glendower by any chance? What did you like about Porius? As an aside I read Unclay by his brother TF recently and found it disturbing for some reason

Anonymous Sun Jun 18 16:01:28 2023 No.22163973

Since OP skidaddled, I'll take it upon myself to rate all of your lists.

>>22162443
6/10, some great stuff like Buzzati and Perec but also some mediocre like Pavese.

>>22162450
4/10, the good stuff in there is quite basic whereas the rest seems like fantasy, which I don't fuck with.

>>22162508
10/10, very based.

>>22162511
6/10, the Stendhal had me hoping this would be a based list but grew increasingly disappointed as the list went on.

>>22162627
7/10, pretty solid list, Graeber seems like an odd inclusion.

>>22162648
Cannot rate this list in good conscience because I haven't even heard of a lot of the authors, let alone read them. Not that well-versed in Anglo lit.

>>22162674
7/10, solid, based for including Hašek, but quite basic save for that.

>>22162691
9/10, based for reminding me of the Brazilian girl who recommended me Ramos, falls just short of a perfect score because of Huxley's inclusion.

>>22162701
9/10, again very based, falls just short of a perfect score because of Wilde's inclusion.

>>22162730
7/10, solid, not a fan of the fantasy/sci-fi included as well as Father Ted. Just read Ellul.

>>22162807
1/10, 5/10, 10/10, who knows? Started off very strong, then went downhill fast, then back up immediately, then back down again. This list was an emotional rollercoaster where the best of the best was immediately followed up by inane tripe. Cervantes, Saint-Exupery and Stendhal are highlights, manga, fantasy and space operas are low points.

>>	Anonymous Sun Jun 18 16:07:40 2023 No.22164001 >>22162074 Imagine engrossing yourself in Israel desert delusions.

>>	Anonymous Sun Jun 18 16:11:15 2023 No.22164014 >>22164001 Is it worse or better than frogposting?

>>	Anonymous Sun Jun 18 16:14:52 2023 No.22164025 File: 23 KB, 576x489, hagler war.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>22162033 Anna Karenina Moby-Dick Absalom, Absalom! Buddenbrooks The Waves King Lear The Bible Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Three Tales Eleven Kinds of Loneliness

Anonymous Sun Jun 18 16:20:31 2023 No.22164048

>Infinite Jest
>Les Miserables
>War and Peace
>Moby Dick
>Crime and Punishment
>Underworld
>Cannery Row
>Underworld
>"Noces" and "l'Été" (they were in the same book)
>Picture of Dorian Gray
I haven't read that many books to be honest but the ones I have read are all the memes

>>	Anonymous Sun Jun 18 16:22:15 2023 No.22164061 >>22164048 oops didnt mean to write Underworld twice, just goes to show how retard I am. Replace it with Harry Potter

>>	Anonymous Sun Jun 18 16:28:04 2023 No.22164088 >>22162033 Oblomov The Trial Stoner Silmarilion Witcher: Blood of Elves Musashi Crime and Punishment The Doll Don Quixote Solaris

>>	Anonymous Sun Jun 18 16:33:32 2023 No.22164105 File: 65 KB, 1212x244, (You).png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>22162074 Not literature

Anonymous Sun Jun 18 16:49:15 2023 No.22164182
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Reminding that favorite is different from best. I could choose lesser known books just to sound more well-read, but these are truly my favorite books.

Crime and Punishment (Dostoevsky)
The Death of Ivan Ilytch (Tolstoy)
The Kiss and other stories (Chekhov)
Jakob von Gunten (Walser)
The Metamorphosis (Kafka)
La Invencíon de Morel (Bioy Casares)
Ficciones (Borges)
The moon and the bonfires (Pavese)
Un homme qui dort (Perec)
The Loser (Bernhard)

>>	Anonymous Sun Jun 18 16:55:43 2023 No.22164214 Nausea Siddhartha Neuromancer Doctor Glas Ice The Brothers Karamazov Fear and Trembling Cancer Ward Spring Snow Metro 2033

>>	Anonymous Sun Jun 18 17:04:17 2023 No.22164258 10. Dune 9. Jefferson and The Rights of Man 8. The Darkness that Comes Before 7. Legion 6. Buddhism: Plain and Simple 5. The Story of Philosophy 4. The Conquest of Gaul 3. Small God's 2. Starship Troopers 1. The Osborne Book of Viking Raiders

>>	Anonymous Sun Jun 18 17:35:53 2023 No.22164365 Lanark Suttree Stoner The Magic Mountain Pale Fire Ficciones Duino Elegies Blood Meridian Ulysses The Sound of Waves

Anonymous Sun Jun 18 17:59:01 2023 No.22164427

>>22162359
Anon, I’m a nobody like everyone else. You wanted others to list their 10 favorite books, so I went with what I would take with me on a deserted island. I used to collect 16th thru 19th century books dealing with antiquarian history and still find it all fascinating. If what you were after was literary fiction, I can easily provide you with more than 10.

Nimrod, Anacalypsis, Montfaucon (these 3 available online as PDFs at the Internet Archive or books.google.com) deal with arcane antiquarian history, which is a favorite subject of mine, concerning the origin of languages, nations, and religions; relics found within the mists of antiquity.

Nimrod’s thesis is that “the Ilion of Homer is the Babel of Moses,” or one and the same story. (Nimrod came out as one volume in 1826, but was immediately withdrawn from the public. It appeared in 4 volumes from 1829-1830.)

Montfaucon (18th century) gives you Greek, Roman, Egyptian ancient history lessons through the study of sculpture, monuments, coins, etc., and I found his educated commentary upon the subject entertaining.

Higgins utilized Nimrod a lot when writing his Anacalypsis; he died in 1833, three years before the publication of his book., which was immediately suppressed.

Schuster’s abridged edition is available, titled Patterns that Connect. He discovered a genealogical iconography which is 30,000 years old. All his artifacts are in the Museum der Kulturen in Basel, Switzerland. His first and only book, The Sun Bird, is there also, still in the Harvard University Press galley sheets. It has never been published because Schuster thought it contained too many errors.

Sri Aurobindo was an Indian yogi who wrote many works dealing with metaphysical philosophy/transcendent spirituality. He is a fascinating figure in his own right. His books too are available online at www.sriaurobindoashram.org.

Fuller developed a geometry in which he states that the Universe utilizes a tetrahedral 60° coordination system instead of 90° that humanity is fixated upon. Both volumes of Synergetics (1975, 1979) were combined as one online at www.rwgrayprojects.com/synergetics/synergetics.html, available for downloading if you wish.

The Bible, Plutarch, Virgil, Ovid are self-explanatory.

Cheers.

Anonymous Sun Jun 18 18:03:54 2023 No.22164446

>>22162033
No KJV Bible mode:
>The Fate of Empires (Glubb)
>Bitter Glory (Watt)
>My Early Life (Churchill)
>Memoirs of the Second World War (Churchill)
>The Early History of Rome (Livy)
>The Screwtape Letters (Lewis)
>The History of the Church (Eusebius)
>Blacklisted by History (Evans)
>Of Plymouth Plantation (Bradford)
>Two Lives of Charlemagne (Einhard and Notker)

Anonymous Sun Jun 18 19:05:05 2023 No.22164685

>>22163973
Thank you anonymous poster. Next time I bake cookies I will give you one. I >>22162627 added graeber because I like history on random topics. I think I like this topic over so many others because my families professions are rubbing off on me.

Anonymous Sun Jun 18 19:15:01 2023 No.22164714

>>22164427
I wasn’t implying an insult. I just find it interesting. I remember reading some Henry Miller book and he was trying to find Anacalypsis and some other esoteric type book. The latter didn’t exist, or was only one page or something. I’m going to see if I can find it. Do you like figures like Paracelsus, Nostradamus, Rimbaud, John of the Cross, St Germain, etc?

Anonymous Sun Jun 18 19:18:57 2023 No.22164729
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Brothers Karamazovs
Crime and Punishment
Idiot
Devils
Adolescent
Notes form the dead house
Notes from the Underground
White Nights
Netochka Nezvanova
Insulted and Humiliated

Anonymous Sun Jun 18 19:47:18 2023 No.22164840

>>22163768
Porius beggars description desu. It was the book Powys thought his best, I believe, and feels more like an epic than a novel. It is in a twilight of the gods: the cult of Mithras, the old faith of the Druids, the fading power of Rome and the rising force of Christianity do battle; while Powys's characters drolly reflect on the past and feel the world could never be more modern (funny when you consider it's setting). Comedy, Miltonic sublimity... it has everything. If you loved A Glastonbury Romance, you will also enjoy Porius. Should be noted that I consider Powys the ignores genius of the 20th century.

>>	Anonymous Sun Jun 18 19:50:07 2023 No.22164847 >>22164840 Apologies for awkward post and spelling mistakes, I'm outside and on my phone.

Anonymous Sun Jun 18 20:37:32 2023 No.22165041

>>22162033
>Homer - Remaining pieces of the Greek epic cycle (i.e. Iliad and Odyssey)
>Chinese Classic of Poetry
>Shakespeare - Hamlet
>Shakespeare - Richard II
>Milton - Paradise Lost
>Swift - Gulliver’s Travels
>Tolstoy - War and Peace
>Kafka - Metamorphosis
>Beckett - Trilogy
>Celan - Breathturn into Timestead

Honorable mention to Dante, whose structure is just a bit too eccentric for my taste but who is obviously also a genius.

>>22162082
>>22162247
>>22162508
>>22162648
>>22164025
Really good lists.

>>22162089
>Walter Moers
Insanely based.

>>	Anonymous Sun Jun 18 20:49:55 2023 No.22165088 >>22164840 Thanks for the reply. Have you ever read his philosophy books? He is pretty clear about it in AGR and Autobiography but I’ve always wondered what it’s like laid out by itself

Anonymous Sun Jun 18 21:09:57 2023 No.22165150

>>22165088
I haven't yet, I've been putting them off for reasons I find somewhat inexplicable. The closest explanation I can attempt is that I feel they may detract from my experience of his fiction. That may be a silly reason, I don't know.
I've read his essays on literature though.

Anonymous Sun Jun 18 21:15:33 2023 No.22165167

>>22165150
>essays on literature
Like Visions Visions Visions, and Books and Sensations? Those are the ones I’ve read and they fill a niche that I like, not quite criticism that is masturbatory with a good insight or two, but a writer sperging out over writers he likes

>>	Anonymous Sun Jun 18 21:26:59 2023 No.22165215 A challenge to anons who posted lists: elaborate on one book you chose

Anonymous Sun Jun 18 22:09:23 2023 No.22165366

>>22164714
When I was in my twenties, I delved into the so-called “occultic,” alchemical, Rosicrucian-cabalistic subjects of the past, but the unframed answers I was looking for were not there. I am familiar with Paracelsus and Nostradamus (whose last words were, fittingly, “Tomorrow, at sunrise, I shall no longer be here”), Michael Maierus, John Valentin Andreae, Roger Bacon, Jacob Boehme, Robert Fludd, et al.; the saints of the Church; the theosophical H. P. Blavatsky (who blatantly ripped from Anacalypsis with no accreditation in her first two books) and others of that same mind-set. But, again, I found that type of philosophy lacking in my own search of the founding questions.

The people you have mentioned are fascinating in their own way—in the tumultuous time-periods in which they lived—but I have wandered off that reservation many years ago and now find myself delving into the antiquarian and literary past as much as I am able to do so, just for the sheer joy of it. And I am always reading good literature, past and present, in any subject.

And no insult taken. Cheers, anon.

Anonymous Sun Jun 18 22:11:03 2023 No.22165370

>>22165167
>Like Visions Visions Visions, and Books and Sensations?
Yes
>a writer sperging out over writers he likes
Agreed. I find this some of the most entertaining reading outside of novels and history books.

>>22165215 me (>>22162648)
It is a poem marked by formal inventness equal to any of the great modernists, with a simultaneous delight in the wonderfully mongrel music of the English language. It's a retelling of Arthurian legend, but rescued from Norman explorations and taken back to its rightful place in a Brythonic context. It is full of the author's obvious historical and theological erudition, but still drenched in myth and miracle. Stubbs was a faithful Anglican, but this poem makes room for wisdom that is Gnostic, Druidic, Pagan and Christian. An unfortunately neglected work.

Here is a link to the full poem: http://faculty.winthrop.edu/kosterj/engl622/Malory/Readings/HeathStubbs1974.pdf

>>	Anonymous Sun Jun 18 22:12:34 2023 No.22165378 >>22165370 Should have mentioned that this was my memory of reading John Heath-Stubbs' Artorius.

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 02:44:08 2023 No.22166325 >>22165370 Looks really interesting, one of the best recommendations I’ve seen on here in quite a while, thanks anon.

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 03:02:39 2023 No.22166376 File: 46 KB, 667x1000, 51F436AD-354C-40DF-9D9B-A960734F978C.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>22162033

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 03:11:26 2023 No.22166397 >>22165366 Even though I often don’t agree with these types of people, I find them fascinating. >>22165370 What country are you from?

Anonymous Mon Jun 19 03:34:03 2023 No.22166454

El Aleph and Dreamtigers by Borges
Collected fictions and diaries of Kafka
The Castle by Kafka
Petersburg by Bely
ill seen, ill said by Beckett
The Crossing by McCarthy
Inland by Murnane
The Plains by Murnane
Blood meridian
Ulysses

Honorable mentions: Outer Dark, Molloy, Pale fire, Ada, Impressions of Africa

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 03:49:39 2023 No.22166490 >>22166397 England.

Anonymous Mon Jun 19 03:52:32 2023 No.22166503

The Power Broker - Caro
Labyrinths - Borges
Infinite Jest - Wallace
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - Smith
Midnight's Children - Rushdie
Les Annes - Ernaux
Portnoy's Complaint - Roth
Catch-22 - Heller
A Confederacy of Dunces - Toole
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Marquez

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 04:03:48 2023 No.22166532 >>22166490 Figured. Did you get into those books because of interest in Arthurian legends, or the other way around? >>22166503 >Portnoy’s Complaint One of the funniest books I’ve ever read. It’s a shame modern day would never read it

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 04:07:47 2023 No.22166545 I haven't got around to making a top 10 list but when I do I think I'll put two of Tolkeins books on it, one or two Goethe's (actually, you can never have too many Goethe's so what the heck, I'll put eight Goethes on it.

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 04:38:30 2023 No.22166599 >>22162033 Brothers K - Dostoevsky Blood Meridian - McCarthy Stoner - Williams Kafka on the Shore - Murakami American Psycho - Ellis Out - Kirino The Trial - Kafka Naked Lunch - Burroughs The Book of Disquiet - Pessoa The Woman in the Dunes - Kobo

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 04:47:33 2023 No.22166616 >>22163973 >6/10, the Stendhal had me hoping this would be a based list but grew increasingly disappointed as the list went on. Based on the books in my list that you liked, is there anything you'd recommend for me?

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 05:07:31 2023 No.22166652 >>22166616 Nta but I recommend Niels Lyhne for no particular reason other than it’s short, great, and I think everyone should read it

Anonymous Mon Jun 19 05:21:44 2023 No.22166678

Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

The Book Of The New Sun by Gene Wolfe

The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

The Aleph and Other Stories by Jorge Luis Borges, trans. by Norman Thomas di Giovanni with collaboration by the author

The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, trans. by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Plato's Republic, trans. by Allan Bloom

Dubliners by James Joyce

Heretics by G.K. Chesterton

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare

Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach, trans. by Cyril Edwards

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 05:25:51 2023 No.22166682 Letters from Underground

Anonymous Mon Jun 19 05:46:27 2023 No.22166703

tom jones by fielding
decline and fall by waugh
take a girl like you by k amis
angel by elizabeth taylor
persuasion
a dance to the music of time
dubliners by joyce
swann's way
reflex by d francis
and, of course, don quixote

>>22162088
yanks yanks yanks

Anonymous Mon Jun 19 07:40:57 2023 No.22166918

>>22166703
>>22162648
Appreciate the variety here, whatever problems I have with your country's literature I do very much think it's underrepresented on /lit/. England's place in the literature of the 20th century has always been really interesting to me, seems like it was not really able to stay fully in the past or fully embrace the future. I get that you guys have a strong sense of literary identity but it seems like its expressions have become diluted, and the likes of Waugh and Amis don't really have the robust joie de vivre that you get from a Fielding or a Dickens, while also not finding something new and worthwhile in their contemporary circumstances; they're too bitter, and looking back even as recently as the 19th century you can see that isn't somehow built-in to the English spirit, whatever the modern pop-cultural conventional wisdom might say. Not even intentionally being offensive here, it's just the way I see it, I'd be happy to be proven wrong.

Anonymous Mon Jun 19 07:46:46 2023 No.22166926

>>22162033
Short Stories by Hemingway
Short Stories by Gogol
Sometimes a Great Notion by Kesey
The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini
Siddhartha by Hesse
USA Trilogy by Dos Passos
Mysteries by Hamsun
Les Chants de Maldoror by Lautreamont
Plutarch’s Lives and Moralia
Conversations with Goethe by Eckermann

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 08:06:00 2023 No.22166942 Infinite Jest Mason & Dixon War and Peace A Farewell to Arms The Idiot East of Eden I Æventyrland Stella Maris The Road to Reality The Book of the New Sun

Anonymous Mon Jun 19 08:09:42 2023 No.22166946

>>22166918
of course if you have no literary judgment, no ability to see a novel as it really is, you spend your time groping for guidelines like what reviewers have said or might say about it, what class it seems to fall into, where it seems to be aiming, whether its style strikes you as normal or not, above all whether it can be called important or not - which is far easier to decide than whether the thing is any good or not.

i'll give amis the final word:
'importance isn’t important. good writing is.'

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 08:30:44 2023 No.22166969 >>22162033 Why would I post that when nobody here will be able to have an interesting conversation about it? You're all dumber than me and less funny, you read less, and you don't write at all.

Anonymous Mon Jun 19 08:46:41 2023 No.22166992

>>22166946
I love plenty of books and authors of lesser “importance”, and I certainly don’t think novelty is an inherent good. I guess it’s just that doing more new things makes it harder to draw direct comparisons with the old, whereas trying to keep up the comic novel form ends up highlighting what the new model lacks in comparison to the originators - I would happily accept Austen/Fielding/Dickens transplanted to the 20th century with no major “innovations”, but to me Waugh and Amis seem to fall somewhat short in terms of humaneness. Whereas with more modernist works, there’s plenty of room for debate about their value, but there is not such an obvious standard by which to judge them. To be fair though, Don Quixote is also a bit inhumane for my taste, so it’s probably more a question of personal sensibility.

Anonymous Mon Jun 19 09:00:11 2023 No.22167016
File: 179 KB, 881x1094, D19C223A-D228-4D6A-B89B-A8838DEB2935.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>22162033
>The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini
>Notes from the Underground
>Crime and Punishment
>The Iliad
>Nostromo
>Three Theban Plays
>The Bible (especially wisdom literature)
>The Pocket Oracle
>Bel Ami
>The Campaigns of Alexander

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 09:06:37 2023 No.22167019 >>22162033 Why so many itt who prefer potrait to Ulysses?

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 09:06:51 2023 No.22167020 >>22162375 >1k books Damn anon you must be reading 2 books a week. How much could the average person read while retaining info and thoroughly enjoying the book?

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 09:28:02 2023 No.22167051 >>22166532 We read Michael Morpurgo's retelling of the myth for kids at junior school, and I've been captured by it ever since. My family is Welsh, and I have a romantic notion that I am an ancient Briton, even more ancient than the Anglo-Saxons.

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 09:32:58 2023 No.22167059 >>22167051 ugh

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 09:36:36 2023 No.22167062 >>22166992 why draw comparisons in the first place? we have to judge these things on their own merits.

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 09:37:44 2023 No.22167064 >>22167059 Be quiet.

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 09:47:38 2023 No.22167075 >>22162033 I don't know man I just read once in a while. Never take it that seriously.

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 09:52:36 2023 No.22167079 >>22167064 i'm annoyed now thinking about wales

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 10:01:06 2023 No.22167091 >>22162120 You need to go back.

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 10:02:13 2023 No.22167092 >>22162219 Which phone?

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 10:03:52 2023 No.22167093 kaputt - malaparte atonement - mcewan the corrections - franzen as i lay dying - faulkner perfume - suskind serotonin - houellebecq london fields - amis eumeswil - junger the lost weekend - jackson grendel - gardner

Anonymous Mon Jun 19 10:11:28 2023 No.22167099

>>22162033
The Magic Mountain - Mann
Mysteries - Hamsun
Pan - Hamsun
Hunger - Hamsun
The Red and Black - Stendhal
In Search of Lost Time (Vol. II, V, VI and VII in particular, whereas volume III and IV are on my most hated list) - Proust
The Crying of Lot 49 - Pynchon
Don Quixote - Cervantes
Dead Souls - Gogol
The Red Room - Strindberg

Anonymous Mon Jun 19 10:17:43 2023 No.22167105

I'll do more than ten

The Rings of Saturn, Sebald
The God of Small Things, Roy
Ulysses, Joyce
The Museum of Unconditional Surrender, Dubravka Ugrešić
Kokoro, Natsume Soseki
Austerlitz, Sebald
Tumbling in the Hay, Oliver Gogarty
Based on a True Story, Norm MacDonald
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Joyce
Theologus Autodidactus, Ibn Al-Nafis
The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 10:52:44 2023 No.22167146 >>22167079 Take yourself to /int/ if you want to needlessly whine. I do not care.

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 10:56:00 2023 No.22167150 >>22167146 no i know the welsh don't care. been subjugated by the english since 13th century and never once raised up to reclaim your stolen land

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 11:12:33 2023 No.22167169 >>22167105 I love Sebald more than life itself

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 11:14:32 2023 No.22167179 >>22167169 i love sebald and anyone who loves sebald.

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 11:14:44 2023 No.22167180 >>22167150 based. The Welsh are great though, their literary tradition is ancient and extremely beautiful. The book of Taliesin can go toe to toe with Homer imo.

Anonymous Mon Jun 19 11:16:12 2023 No.22167185

>>22167150
You're speaking of an age when people still knew the names of the Lombards, Bretons and Huns. Ancient shifts of power that have little relevance today. I am an Englishmen of Welsh descent, any romantic notions are just that, notions. My concen is the amount of third world immigrants pouring into the isles, not Anglo-Saxons.
Stop writing in trannycase and name your own nationality with your chest out.

Anonymous Mon Jun 19 11:18:09 2023 No.22167189
File: 240 KB, 1500x2000, Compress_20230619_121539_9740.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>22167179
If you haven't read it already, I'd highly recommend this biography. Turns out he used to live about five minutes from me. I cycle past his old house quite often and the old lady who owned the property (a child in the emigrants) recently died.

Anonymous Mon Jun 19 11:30:33 2023 No.22167220

Ok, here goes, no particular order

1, Heart of Darkness, Conrad
2, Bible (esp. Genesis, Ecclesiastes and Job)
3, Paradise Lost, Milton
4, Hamlet, Shakespeare
5, Phantom of the opera, Leroux
6, Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
7, Moby Dick, Melville
8, Brothers Karamazov, Dostoievsky
9, Diary of a superfluous man, Turgenev
10, The Third Policeman, Flann O'Brien

Anonymous Mon Jun 19 11:34:35 2023 No.22167226

>>22162033
>Antony and Cleopatra by Shakespeare
>Juliette by the Marquis de Sade
>The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake (particularly Songs of Innocence and Experience and The Marriage of Heaven and Hell)
>The Major Works of Lord Byron (particularly Manfred and Cain)
>The Complete Tales and Poetry of Edgar Allan Poe (particularly Ligeia and The Fall of the House of Usher)
>Moby Dick by Melville
>Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky
>The Gay Science by Nietzsche
>The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (particularly The Happy Prince and Other Stories, A House of Pomegranates, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and Salome)
>In Search of Lost Time by Proust (particularly Swann's Way and Sodom and Gomorrah)

Anonymous Mon Jun 19 11:37:41 2023 No.22167232

Only 1 and 2 are my actual favorite books, the rest is in no particular order.

1) War and Peace
2) The Brothers Karamazov
3) Hamlet
4) Lolita
5) Orlando furioso
6) The World as Will and Representation
7) Macbeth
8) The Genealogy of Morals
9) Twilight of the Idols
10) Faust

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 11:39:58 2023 No.22167239 there is alot I haven't read East of Eden The Heart is a Lonely Hunter Mrs Dalloway Sometimes a Great notion Jerusalem The Brothers Karamazov Light in August Gilead if on a winter's night a traveler Watership Down

Anonymous Mon Jun 19 14:46:01 2023 No.22167636

I can't remember everything, but these are my favorites in no particular order...

The Divine Comedy - Dante Alighieri
Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky
Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa
Berserk - Kentaro Miura
Iliad and Odyssey - Homer
Dune - Frank Herbert
I'm counting Dune and Berserk in their entirety.

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 16:19:00 2023 No.22167900 >>22167189 awesome. i've been meaning to read this. thanks for the rec. do you have any other lit. recs? i trust your opinion. i don't find too many sebald appreciators on /lit/

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 16:41:19 2023 No.22167960 >>22167180 >The book of Taliesin can go toe to toe with Homer imo. christ

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 16:44:42 2023 No.22167968 >>22167960 Name your objections, with references to the original language of each poem.

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 16:44:50 2023 No.22167969 >>22167185 >Stop writing in trannycase and name your own nationality with your chest out. who else would say this besides an englishman >My concen is the amount of third world immigrants pouring into the isles, not Anglo-Saxons enough of this now

Anonymous Mon Jun 19 16:45:37 2023 No.22167971

>>22162033
Moby-Dick - Herman Melville
Paradise Lost - John Milton
The Temptation of Saint Anthony - Gustave Flaubert
The Faerie Queene - Edmund Spenser
Faust I and II - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Complete Poems - William Blake
Ulysses - James Joyce
Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes
Ficciones - Jorge Luis Borges
The Metamorphoses - Ovid

No Bible as counting the Word of God would feel like cheating and some would classify it as an anthology. In which case, if anthologies not established by the author don't count, then I would remove Blake's poetry and replace it with Les Chants de Maldoror by Lautreamont.

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 16:46:18 2023 No.22167973 >>22167969 Silence, Latin American.

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 16:50:10 2023 No.22167984 >>22167973 have a word with yourself

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 16:53:17 2023 No.22167991 >>22167984 You can stop replying to me anytime you want.

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 16:56:58 2023 No.22168000 >>22167991 mate your banter game is atrocious

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 16:57:10 2023 No.22168002 >>22167960 Defend your position without an appeal to authority

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 16:59:25 2023 No.22168008 >>22168000 This hasn't been banter, it is more akin to having to swat away a mosquito.

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 17:01:52 2023 No.22168016 >>22168008 argh your jibes are so weak it's hurting my stomach

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 17:02:52 2023 No.22168020 >>22168002 i'm all right thanks

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 17:06:23 2023 No.22168026 >>22168016 Not your doctor.

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 17:09:26 2023 No.22168040 >>22168026 2 2 2 2 funny

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 17:09:38 2023 No.22168044 >>22162443 Mediocre lol

Anonymous Mon Jun 19 17:38:26 2023 No.22168146

1. Spring Snow - Yukio Mishima
2. The Wings of the Dover - Henry James
3. Heart of Darkness
4. Moby Dick
5. Mans fate - Andre Malraux
6. The Revolt of the Angels - Anatole France
7. Confessions - Thomas De Quincey
8. - Strait is the Gate - Gide
9. Light in August - Faulkner
10. A Singular Man - J.P. Donleavy

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 17:41:40 2023 No.22168156 >>22168040 Honestly, how can I compete against such witticisms as... >ugh

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 17:49:22 2023 No.22168181 >>22168156 appropriate response to the unimaginably basic mawkishness of your first post

Anonymous Mon Jun 19 17:55:08 2023 No.22168200

>>22168181
The most appropriate response you could have made was nothing. In fact, that is probably the most appropriate response you could make in any situation. I admitted it was a romantic notion, and do not particularly care if some spiteful little Hispanic objects. I will not reply to you again.

Anonymous Mon Jun 19 17:58:58 2023 No.22168211

Lermontov - A hero of our time
Cervantes - Don Quijote
Dostojevski - The Idiot
Murakami - Almost transparent blue
Mishima - Runaway horses
Mann - The magic mountain
Hesse - Demian
Salinger - The catcher in the rye
Faulkner - The sound and the fury
Steinbeck - East of eden

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 17:59:05 2023 No.22168212 Ulysses A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man The Brothers Karamazov Demons Anna Karenina Hadji Murat Blood Meridian Gravity’s Rainbow The Sound and the Fury Absalom, Absalom!

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 17:59:09 2023 No.22168213 You two faggots really need to stop

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 18:05:53 2023 No.22168237 File: 3.98 MB, 3024x4032, image1.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>22168200 you've lost it >Hispanic where did that come from

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 18:19:43 2023 No.22168281 These lists all seem very cliche and cringe. Less like lists of your favorite books and more like 10 books you think other people might find impressive/acceptable.

Anonymous Mon Jun 19 18:48:30 2023 No.22168379

Crime & Punishment
The Glass Bead Game
Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
The Trial
Ulysses
Beckett Trilogy (Malone Dies was probably my favourite)
Notes From the Underground
Ficciones (Borges)
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
A Confederacy of Dunces

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 18:49:45 2023 No.22168382 >>22168281 People like good books, there are some obviously masterful works that tower over the last couple of centuries, it's not that unusual

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 18:51:00 2023 No.22168386 >>22167971 I refuse to believe Faust 2 is anyone's favourite book in 2023, it's got it's moments but it's aged extremely poorly

Anonymous Mon Jun 19 19:03:22 2023 No.22168425

>>22168382
i agree with him. why is there this absolute unanimity and certainty that everybody has about everything? people accept the whole edifice - the books, the paintings, the films, what’s in, what’s out - just because it’s already been accepted. that arouses my suspicion.

i also don’t believe, in literature, that anybody can have taste so catholic that he genuinely likes cervantes and milton - and faulkner. and yet, many people accept all of them. i say there’s a point where somebody can’t really rate that other writer if they rate this one. our eyes, our sensibilities, are only so wide.

Anonymous Mon Jun 19 19:07:21 2023 No.22168435

>>22162033
My son is almost two now, so I’m a bit of an expert on books now. Here are the ten best books:
1. Go Dog Go
2. Where the Wild Things Are
3. Little Excavator
4. The Big Red Barn
5. Dozer’s Big Day
6. Are You My Mother
7. Baby Faces
8. My First 100 Words
9. Curious George Flies a Kite
10. Little Blue Truck

Anonymous Mon Jun 19 19:07:48 2023 No.22168437

>>22168425

This is a bit of stupid question but I just started really getting into Faulkner after reading Light in August a year ago- what's do you think is so Catholic about him?

Anyway, being pretentious is certainly "bad," in a sense- but it's not dispositive, if that makes sense. Just because something is pretentious doesn't make it wrong.

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 19:08:33 2023 No.22168439 >>22168281 >>22168425 Obscure books aren’t necessarily good. That’s just hipster mentality. A lot of books have withstood the test of time for good reason

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 19:12:04 2023 No.22168450 File: 13 KB, 354x195, rrrrrrrrrr.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>22168437 catholic in this sense

Anonymous Mon Jun 19 19:15:36 2023 No.22168464

>>22168439
robert graves said
>The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he really is very good, in spite of all the people who say he is very good.
and we are admiring some works now that will disappear, like morillo in the last century. conversely, nobody took the sonnets seriously until 200 years ago. i don’t think it’s humanly possible for everybody to have the right opinion about something. therefore, some of it must be wrong.

Anonymous Mon Jun 19 19:16:10 2023 No.22168469

>>22168439
I dont see the point in putting TBK and Donkey Hote in their list, no matter how near and dear to the heart they may be. Most of these lists just seem like required high school reads and/or the only 10 books theyve ever read in their lives. Doesnt exactly encourage discussion when everyone is posting the exact same shit

Anonymous Mon Jun 19 19:22:54 2023 No.22168489

>>22168469
This board attracts a very specific demographic of readers so it is little surprise a handful of books reign here
>>22168464
But this isn’t about anons picking books they think are the best. It is those they like best. Whether or not these books continue to stand the test of time in the future is irrelevant. The post that started this whole thing was an appeal against authority, now you’re saying the authority is liable to change, which it is, but again, it is a moot point. These are anons favorite books. Many of them aren’t discussed often here, because let’s be honest, the same 10-15 books dominates 80% of the discussion

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 19:24:29 2023 No.22168494 >>22168469 quixote is an easy book to love. someone like milton is seldom read except as a solemn intellectual task

Anonymous Mon Jun 19 19:27:55 2023 No.22168501

>>22168425
>i also don’t believe, in literature, that anybody can have taste so catholic that he genuinely likes cervantes and milton - and faulkner.

I agree on this point, and I'm sure there are some additions that are here for e-points on the lists of certain individuals here (I called out one myself earlier).

Unfortunately I suspect many people stick to the classics (or at least what others on /lit/ tell them to read) and don't read terribly broadly, which is a shame as there are plenty of delightful and fascinating works which get passed over. That being said, I can honestly tell you as someone who has read thousands of books in the 30 years of my life that while I've read many excellent, enjoyable books and could list hundreds of them, There are maybe only a few dozen that I would regard as absolute masterworks, and they are nearly all *relatively* well known and celebrated.
I am sure there are some great masterworks out there wallowing in obscurity, but considering how difficult, time consuming, thankless and unprofitable writing a truly masterful novel is, I suspect the number is not terribly high.

Does this mean we should be uncritical of "the great works" and not try reading lesser known works, or even wholly obscure ones? Of course not, but at the same time it should not be surprising you see the same titles repeating here,even putting aside the obvious cultural incestuous reading patterns of a forum such as this one.

Anonymous Mon Jun 19 19:28:38 2023 No.22168502

>>22168489
>But this isn’t about anons picking books they think are the best. It is those they like best
exactly. my point is they're including works because they think it OUGHT TO BE there.
you missed by point. a favourite book, like a favourite human being, is attractive partly for reasons that are the stronger for being unfathomable. there has to be a personal element about such a work

Anonymous Mon Jun 19 19:34:34 2023 No.22168514

>>22168502
You don’t seem to be able to understand that many popular books are popular because they are good and people like them. People are entitled to like what they like. Enlighten us what a proper favorites list should look like, but make sure to avoid the hipster mentality, or the “people can only like fun books like Patterson and Harry Potter” mentality

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 19:35:54 2023 No.22168517 >>22168514 jesus christ, i'm not saying that!

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 19:41:23 2023 No.22168530 >>22168501 yeah i don't really disagree with any of this at all except perhaps >unprofitable writing a truly masterful novel plenty of great writers wrote for profit (shakespeare, cervantes)

Anonymous Mon Jun 19 19:42:02 2023 No.22168532

>>22168517
Then what are you saying? You are saying anons are listing books they think OUGHT TO BE listed. Well, what books do you think SHOULD BE LISTED? You don’t seem to realize the culture here developed from anons who liked a certain selection of books, mainly “the classics” or more “literary” books. You might as well go on r/books and ask why Theocritus or Meister Eckhart aren’t popular there. People flock to the site that represents their interest. Has it ever dawned on you that it is perhaps you who is in the wrong place if you don’t like these types of books. You seem unable to comprehend that people may like different books than you

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 19:47:49 2023 No.22168551 >>22168532 there are no books that SHOULD be, that's what i'm driving at. do you see? what is incomprehensible is that everyone agrees (they don't), and that everyone likes authors whose sensibilities i'd argue are mutually exclusive

Anonymous Mon Jun 19 19:54:11 2023 No.22168569

>>22168551
So what is wrong with these lists?:

>>22162082
>>22162089
>>22162229
>>22162247
>>22162443
>>22162508
>>22162627
>>22162648
>>22162807
>>22164182
>>22164446
>>22166454
>>22166503
>>22166703
>>22166926
>>22166942
>>22167016

…just as an example

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 19:58:40 2023 No.22168588 >>22168569 too many americans since you ask

Anonymous Mon Jun 19 20:23:39 2023 No.22168657

>>22168530
Yes true for writers prior to the second half of the twentieth century, but we also have far fewer extant works which are widely available prior to the 20th century so we *mostly* just get the popular and commercially successful ones talked about today.

Arguably the early twentieth century though is a really rewarding and fascinating time to dig into the literature for though, since it was still a time where literary fiction had the potential to reach a lot of people *and* make money, and much of it is still in print so there's plenty of great work to be rediscovered. Junger is a great example of this, had some early critical success but basically fell off the map due to associations with Naziism and is only recently being critically reevaluated and discussed in a lot of online spaces.

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 20:33:53 2023 No.22168686 >>22168588 >ideological reasons Shoo shoo!!

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 20:41:09 2023 No.22168717 I have better taste than all of you just so you know.

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 20:43:55 2023 No.22168730 >>22168717 Mental how I could batter every single one of u

Anonymous Mon Jun 19 21:27:53 2023 No.22168913

I gotta say: I studied literature and I read a shitload of "the classics" and "the canon" but most of them I can appreciate only on an academic level of interest and for their historic value and influence. I'd never count them as my personal favorites though. I can say that these books are good and why they're good but they're certainly not MY books. There are other books I appreciate much more because they connect to me on a more personal level that most of the classics do not.

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 21:30:53 2023 No.22168927 >>22167020 I've been reading since I was a wee lad. In my childhood I already visited the library once a week and each time took with me a full stack of (really shitty) books. I always grabbed so many books that the librarians would always complain.

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 21:33:19 2023 No.22168942 >>22168913 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdGuXas1K_Y Seriously? This used to sound amazing even back when I didn't know any German, but it makes sense. Is that also the case with poetry?

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 21:37:07 2023 No.22168954 >>22168942 Your favorites should not be you trying to recreate an academic canon. Your favorites should be about you standing out as a singular individual in this endless cabinet of literary curiosities.

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 21:39:04 2023 No.22168963 >>22168954 Are you not even joking that this monologue doesn't sound amazing? The laments of an old scholar don't give you goosebumps?

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 21:39:33 2023 No.22168965 >>22168954 hard agree

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 21:39:49 2023 No.22168967 The Personal Heresy An Experiment in Criticism The Discarded Image On Stories: And Other Essays on Literature Of Other Worlds Out of the Silent Planet Perelandra That Hideous Strength The Dark Tower: And Other Stories Till We Have Faces

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 21:40:20 2023 No.22168970 >>22168913 Good, it's not just me. I just can't relate to people who go on about how much they love some classic.

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 21:40:32 2023 No.22168971 >>22168963 Don't get me wrong. I love Faust. I don't think it's overrated at all. Goethe wrote tons of self-indulgent trash but Faust stands the test of time. But it's not one of my personal favorites.

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 21:40:35 2023 No.22168972 >>22168963 not him but it would if i had novelettish ideas about greatness

Anonymous Mon Jun 19 21:45:20 2023 No.22168991

>>22168972
It doesn't scare you? That everything might end up in vain? And you will feel like nothing got you any wiser and you end up looking for answers in "magic"?
>>22168971
I see, I think that they are classics for a reason. I don't know, it is like songs, they get repeated over and over because they are fucking something else.

Anonymous Mon Jun 19 21:46:21 2023 No.22168996

>>22168963
It's performed beautifully, and it's one of the more striking moments in Faust but so much of that work is absolute self-indulgent wankery, literal classical fanfiction. Yes it makes sense and is technically virtuostic but who the hell reads the Masquerade or Classical Walpurgisnacht sequences and is genuinely struck by them today beyond their technical merits?

Anonymous Mon Jun 19 21:47:35 2023 No.22169003

>>22168991
>I think that they are classics for a reason
Of course. But as I said I don't think your personal favorites should reflect generally agreed upon great works. My personal favorites aren't necessarily books that are flawless on every level but books that make me question myself if they were written just for me personally.

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 21:50:19 2023 No.22169013 >>22168996 All genres have classics, you are thinking about classical music. Consider heavy metal, Black Sabbath is a classic band and it is one of my favorites, because it is really fucking good.

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 21:56:37 2023 No.22169044 >>22168913 To many though, classic just means book older than ~50 years. Literature hasn’t given us much in recent times. Should it be so surprising that many like books from older times?

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 21:57:46 2023 No.22169050 >>22169003 What do you consider a classic?

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 21:59:44 2023 No.22169060 >>22169044 You are crazy, The Name of the Rose isn't that old and it is definitely a classic.

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 22:00:50 2023 No.22169064 >>22169050 I'm not that anon, but whatever consolidates a genre or that belongs to one but it completely stands out from the rest of it.

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 22:04:58 2023 No.22169080 >>22169060 NTA, but it's 43 years old, pretty close to ~50 years...

Anonymous Mon Jun 19 22:05:12 2023 No.22169082

>>22169064
So are all of these authors classics?- Ken Kesey, John Cowper Powys, Henry Miller, Robert Walser, Blaise Cendrars, Thomas Wolfe, etc? If you are still published after years, are you automatically considered a classic? It seems completely ridiculous to me to put down anons with so called curated lists because the books aren’t new or they aren’t obscure.

Anonymous Mon Jun 19 22:09:21 2023 No.22169094

>>22169082
>all these authors
I don't know those, but do they fit
>whatever consolidates a genre or that belongs to one but it completely stands out from the rest of it.
Either or both? If they do, I would consider those classics. Some books are obviously really fucking good and you can tell that "they are going to make it", but yeah, it is basically that what I think that a classic is.

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 22:12:51 2023 No.22169102 >>22169094 Give us an example of a non curated list. No plebeian genre fic or hipster obscure shit either

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 22:15:45 2023 No.22169113 >>22169102 bloody hell this guys still chopping

Anonymous Mon Jun 19 22:17:08 2023 No.22169118

>>22169050
A classic is a book that gets cited or namedropped enough times. Also, it's not a label but a spectrum. There are many fields and not everything is a classic in every field or to everyone.
Fuck, you can tell I studied literature for way too long, right?

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 22:17:37 2023 No.22169121 >>22169102 Minecraft is a classic game, despite being turned into goyslop. I think it is pretty straightforward, but I don't go on "digging" books or anything.

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 22:22:48 2023 No.22169133 >>22169118 >Fuck, you can tell I studied literature for way too long, right? no

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 22:24:16 2023 No.22169139 >>22169133 Good. Because I got tired of academia's attitude.

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 22:25:53 2023 No.22169140 >>22169139 lucky for you it's coming off more akin the nonclassical public then

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 22:36:17 2023 No.22169175 >>22169118 No. It seems more like you’re projecting by thinking others can’t have great books as their favorite because you don’t. I’m almost wondering if this whole thing is bait

Anonymous Mon Jun 19 22:36:56 2023 No.22169177

In order for a book to be listed as my favorite I have to have read it at least twice:
Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy
Ulysses by James Joyce
The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien
Beowulf, A New Translation by Burton Raffel
Grendel by John Gardner
This is Water by David Foster Wallace
Gnomes by Will Huygen and Rien Poortvliet
The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian by Robert E. Howard
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Middlemarch by George Eliot

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 22:38:56 2023 No.22169179 >>22169175 I'm thinking it's more like anons trying to impress anons by having the greatest books as their favorites.

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 22:41:51 2023 No.22169189 >>22169179 >anon >trying to impress Why? If anything you can post whatever the fuck you want here and no one will give 2 shits about it.

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 22:42:00 2023 No.22169191 >>22169177 0/0

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 22:42:00 2023 No.22169192 It's a sign of great competence and personality if your favorites align with the best works ever written.

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 22:42:43 2023 No.22169193 The Holy Bible Don Quixote Kristin Lavransdatter The Master of Hestviken Recollections of Joan of Arc The Divine Comedy Paradise Lost War and Peace Pride and Prejudice The Swiss Family Robinson

Anonymous Mon Jun 19 22:46:11 2023 No.22169200

'Dear Ijeawele' by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
'The Beauty Myth' by Naomi Wolf
'Bad Feminist' by Roxane Gay
'Your Silence Will Not Protect You' by Audre Lorde
'My Life On The Road' by Gloria Steinem
'The Second Sex' by Simone de Beauvoir
'Invisible Women' by Caroline Criado Perez
'Fat is a Feminist Issue' by Susie Orbach
'Hood Feminism' by Mikki Kendall
'Men Explain Things to Me' by Rebecca Solnit

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 22:47:08 2023 No.22169204 >>22169192 lack of personality

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 22:48:40 2023 No.22169210 >>22169204 >you have to like some shit random books that no one else's like That would be my diary and the complete shitposts of <anon>

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 22:49:04 2023 No.22169211 >>22169179 It’s anonymous here. You don’t know what you are talking about. I guess your favorites wouldn’t impress anyone hence this whole derail

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 22:49:06 2023 No.22169212 >>22169193 characteristically dull cervantes unfairly included in your ghastly list

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 22:49:08 2023 No.22169213 >>22162258 What? No it isn’t. You need to go back.

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 22:51:15 2023 No.22169222 >>22169210 would be reassuring still to see you still know what truth is and where you are, with better things to say in your bold, unmarketable way

Anonymous Mon Jun 19 22:57:23 2023 No.22169242

>>22169212
None of these are dull to me--they were when I was a kid, but the older I get the more layers of nuance I discover and delight in. For example, I remember reading the Swiss Family Robinson in 6th grade and vaguely liking it, but when I re-read it as an adult it was just a delightful experience seeing how the moral lessons were taught on a liminal island. As for the others, I can't help but think you have just haven't given them a chance. For example, Cervantes would be considered dry and dull to the average normie, but Mark Twain is even more cheeky than Cervantes. How are the likes of Mark Twain "dull" to you, but Cervantes isn't?

I don't think you're too stupid to appreciate the works I've listed, since you like Don Quixote, but I'm convinced you haven't read them or studied them with any self-reflection. I suppose you're going to suggest that Sigrid Undset is too heavy and "dull" and then praise Dostoevsky in the next breath, huh? Sorry that I like Norwegian literary fiction and not only Russian literary fiction.

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 22:58:16 2023 No.22169246 >>22169212 Pseud gunna pseud

Anonymous Mon Jun 19 23:33:32 2023 No.22169357
File: 112 KB, 275x275, Big Brain.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>22162033
Unironically:
10. The Sandman: The Dream Hunters by Neil Gaimanand Illustrated by Yoshitaka Amano
9. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling
8. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J. K. Rowling
7. A Swiftly Tilting Planet byMadeleine L'Engle
6. Many WatersbyMadeleine L'Engle
5. Inheritance (The Inheritance Cycle, #4) by Christopher Paolini
4. Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
3. The Dream Cycle of H.P. Lovecraft:
Dreams of Terror and Death
2. 1984 by George Orwell
1. Brisingr (The Inheritance Cycle, #3) by Christopher Paolini
I am nearly 28 years old. You may think this is a joke, it isn't. With the exceptions of Lovecraft short stories, manga, and american comic books I haven't really read any new books since high school. This is a list based on nostalgia rather than 'objective quality'. This post was a fun time-waster.

Anonymous Mon Jun 19 23:45:35 2023 No.22169389

>>22169242
miguel de cervantes wrote for the normies, the groundlings, the unscholarly madrid patrons who walked in from the cockfight on the street. modern readers overlook the entertainment motive dominant in don quixote. i think you're doing cervantes a disservice treating him like a milton or dante. quixote is life--tragedy salted with humour, not a literary work of eloquence written for fame not profit. only folk whose blood courses hot through their veins can understand these tingling lines.

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 23:50:42 2023 No.22169405 Journey to the end of the night The demons (The possessed) Notes from Underground Count of Monte Cristo Don Quijotte The portrait of Dorian Grey The red and the black Frankenstein Atomized Brave new world

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 19 23:56:25 2023 No.22169426 >>22169357 at least it's an original list and not token dostoyevsky, token faulkmer, ulysses, token philosophy garbage, the bible and some gay shit you read in school like to kill a mockngbird or gay gatsby

Anonymous Tue Jun 20 00:11:01 2023 No.22169463

>>22169389
I think you're doing yourself a disservice by acting like such a faggot. The question was favorite books, not most literary books. I like Don Quixote--sue me.

Even that aside, Don Quixote has plenty of literary value. Simply put, the average person in the 1600s was more clever and well-read than the average person today, so your attempt to slander the work as not being worthy of being alongside Milton or Dante because it was written for the "common man" doesn't phase me. The common readers back then had more wit to them than most scholars today.

But, of course, Don Quixote has its fair share of low-brow humor. There was nothing literary about Sancho shitting himself. Nor did I claim that Don Q. was as deep as Milton or Dante.

But the most curious thing you present is that my favorite books are too dull, while simultaneously claiming that the least dull among them doesn't belong because it's not literary enough.

Why are (You) so faggy?

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 20 00:16:50 2023 No.22169483 >>22169463 >the average person in the 1600s was more clever and well-read than the average person today Absolutely not.

Anonymous Tue Jun 20 00:22:34 2023 No.22169501

>>22169483
The average person in the 1600s was able to enjoy and appreciate Don Quixote while the average person today only consumes goyslop, you've veen brainwashed into thinking everyone was stupid before the Industrial Revolution. Read letters written by common soldiers during the Revolutionary War; they're extremely poetic by today's standards, and these were uneducated country bumpkins during the 1700s.

Anonymous Tue Jun 20 00:29:27 2023 No.22169521

>>22169483
The average person today is more literate, but the literate people back then were more intelligent than the literate people of today. Just look up grammar school exams of centuries past, the average university student wouldn't be able to pass them.

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 20 00:30:49 2023 No.22169527 >>22169426 It’s the token Harry Potter, Lovecraft, Orwell, and company list though. You disparage high school core like TKAMB when this list has Orwell, the shining example of high school core

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 20 00:35:53 2023 No.22169553 >>22169521 Exactly. For example, this is the spelling book taught to 2nd graders in the 1800s. Many of the reading passages would be considered """college level""" today. https://archive.org/details/webstersspelling00libg/mode/1up

Anonymous Tue Jun 20 00:37:35 2023 No.22169558

>>22167062
I suppose so, and I'm sure the 20th century authors are important in that they address 20th century problems that are different from those of the 19th. They just lack a certain something for me, but the last thing I want to do is hurt someone's enjoyment of their favorite books, so let's put it down to difference of taste. I do think the sentiment of not focusing too much on "importance" is - ironically - important, so thank you for that.

>>22167051
This stuff is very cool, the differences between Germanic and Celtic societies is fascinating, mostly of course because it's so unrecoverable in any kind of complete form.

>>22167971
>Blake
>Spenser
>Milton
>Flaubert

You are based.

>>22168146
Great list.

>>22168425
>i also don’t believe, in literature, that anybody can have taste so catholic that he genuinely likes cervantes and milton - and faulkner.

Knee-jerk contrarianism. Yes of course people thoughtlessly accept lists of the "greats" without thinking about why they are great, or weighing the differences in their approaches - there are certainly people who *do* mix and match sensibilities like this because their taste is received rather than organically developed.

However, to say someone *cannot* enjoy variety is akin to saying "How can you like that ham and cheese sandwich? I saw you eating a piece of cake yesterday, so you must only like sweet foods!!" Different sorts of books, different styles of writing, can serve different purposes for the same person, and it is easy to feel constrained and suffocated by sameness. You are begging a very hard-to-answer question about what taste is or must be. If your taste operates that way, fair enough, but some people love variety, and to deny the possibility that such people exist merely reflects badly on your powers of imagination.

I'll reiterate though that in a lot of cases, especially here on /lit/, your point about received taste is unfortunately probably correct.

>>22168502
>>22168281
This is fair, e.g. I think in the case of my own list (>>22165041) I probably could have included more personal choices; but I also think that awe and admiration are valid reasons to consider something a "favorite". Idk, the question of how exactly to interpret that word is a very interesting one, and different interpretations of it illuminate the personality of the list-maker in different ways.

I could just as easily say that Guess How Much I Love You, Calvin and Hobbes, the Magic Tree House, Pendragon, Gregor the Overlander, and the Warriors books are all among my favorites, because those are the ones most likely to make me deeply emotional just thinking about them or looking at them again; or, equally, I could try to tailor the list to something more specific in my sensibility, and include T.S. Eliot, Baudelaire, Mallarme, Dickens, Keats, Donne, Henry James, George Eliot, Alberto Moravia - authors for whom I have more of a particular affinity relative to their "objective" assessment.

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 20 00:37:51 2023 No.22169559 >>22169463 i'm sorry, you're wrong. and actually i'm saying milton or dante are unworthy. i think you must be a little mixed up

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 20 00:38:11 2023 No.22169563 >>22162262 nah anon is right bnw is, along with 1984, one of the most reddit books ever written

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 20 00:45:40 2023 No.22169588 >>22169191 Niiice, that's 100%.

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 20 00:45:55 2023 No.22169590 >>22168237 >smoker >trannycase >likely a /brit/ frequenter End your life, please.

Anonymous Tue Jun 20 00:47:01 2023 No.22169596

>>22169558
>"How can you like that ham and cheese sandwich? I saw you eating a piece of cake yesterday, so you must only like sweet foods!!
can anyone who talks like this really have any feeling for literature?
> I also think that awe and admiration are valid reasons to consider something a "favorite"
the effect of (say) paradise lost on sensitive readers is, of course, over-powering. but is the function of poetry to overpower? to be over-powered is to accept spiritual defeat. shakespeare never overpowers: he raises up.

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 20 00:50:17 2023 No.22169608 >>22169558 >received taste A lot of these books you’ll eventually come across if you are into the type of literature that /lit/ is. Unfortunately we’ll never know how anons posture here, or how many anons lie or don’t read.

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 20 00:52:50 2023 No.22169613 >>22169608 why's that unfortunate? you can tell by your own rubric if someone's making sense or not (or can you?)

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 20 00:53:04 2023 No.22169616 >>22169192 Npc opinion and behaviour

Anonymous Tue Jun 20 00:55:31 2023 No.22169626
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>>22169559
That doesn't negate my first point, then. You think Milton is boring, fine. Like I said, I have the sneaking suspicion you haven't read the majority of the books I listed. You'd have to be daft to think that Twain is boring but Cervantes isn't, the two styles are equally witty and humorous. There's a wide range of books on my list, and Don Quixote hardly stands alone. For example, Idylls of the King is romantic and chivalrous with moments of humor, while Milton and Dante are very grave. But then again, they're also serious poetry, while most of my list is historical fiction, both serious and otherwise.

Theres nothing wrong with not having read these books, mind you. I'm only criticizing that you would accuse them of being "dull" and "ghastly" when you haven't read them. Tennyson, Twain, and Undset are marvelous at their ability to immerse you in another world, and they're far from dull. The Swiss Family Robison isnt even remotely comparible to Milton or Dante in terms of how "serious" or "highbrow" it is, it isnt highbrow at all. I suppose some might find War and Peace too long and meandering for their taste, but one could say the exact same thing about Don Quixote.

But none of this matters anyway, because the question was favorite books, and there's nothing wrong with liking both serious and romantic poetry.

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 20 00:57:54 2023 No.22169636 >>22169613 On a name drop? Like replying with a title of a book that is supposedly read? No I can’t

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 20 01:03:51 2023 No.22169660 >>22169626 i like twain, but an innocuous romancer on your top ten? unless you're american i can't wrap my head round it. it has to be said though i was mostly put off by the long poetry also, tennyson is dull.

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 20 01:05:28 2023 No.22169664 >>22162033 One Hundred Years of Solitude Anna Karenina The Name of the Rose Genesis A Confederacy of Dunces The Time of the Hero God Emperor of Dune The Call of the Wild Cuentos de la Selva On Heroes and Tombs

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 20 01:09:27 2023 No.22169688 >>22169660 I am American; you may wrap your head around me now. Too bad you can't wrap your head around Tennyson, though. The Idylls and Lady of Shallott are wonderful.

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 20 01:16:57 2023 No.22169711 >>22169688 in this country he's identified with much that was unpopular in victorianism

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 20 01:29:02 2023 No.22169736 File: 42 KB, 534x674, CQG2T4uljlVi.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>22162033 American Psycho Blood Meridian A Confederacy of Dunces Invisible Man Harry Potter Dune 11/22/63 Fight Club 1984 Dracula

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 20 01:38:51 2023 No.22169760 >>22162033 I have only ever read one book in my life the dialogues of plato all the other books I dropped before page 100 because they were boring

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 20 01:43:48 2023 No.22169773 >>22169760 Are you an intellectual?

Anonymous Tue Jun 20 01:50:17 2023 No.22169790
File: 1.92 MB, 2048x4728, 168691523006198007.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

The Republic- Plato
The Stranger- A. Camus
Don Quixote- Cervantes
Kitchen Confidential- A. Bourdain
Animal Farm- G. Orwell
Behold a Pale Horse- M.W. Cooper
Fringe Knowledge for Beginners- Montalk
Cosmic Trigger Volume I- R.A. Wilson
Prometheus Rising- R.A. Wilson
Kybalion- Three Initiates

Honorable mention is Kafka on the Shore- Murakami

The bottom half of the list is when I started getting into dabbing diamonds

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 20 02:10:11 2023 No.22169846 File: 1.88 MB, 1420x1200, chart(7).png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] This would be mine. It's in pretty loose order outside of 5-6

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 20 02:16:59 2023 No.22169872 File: 472 KB, 220x182, based-jesse-lee-peterson.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>22169846

Anonymous Tue Jun 20 03:29:41 2023 No.22170102

Blood Meridian
Stoner (almost tied)
As I Lay Dying
Outer Dark
Animal Money
The Operators
The Son
The Idiot
Fear and Loathing Las Vegas
Gulag Archipelago
Just picked up reading again this year and it’s been a blast. Excited for when my tastes change and I eventually change this list.

Anonymous Tue Jun 20 06:10:20 2023 No.22170377

>>22169558
But to finish up, I agree that people on here are more likely to take a more "serious" interpretation of the favorites-list question, which can definitely be less interesting.

>>22169389
The bristling Anglo chip-on-shoulderism really radiates from this post lol, I respect it though and unlike the guy you replied to I get what you mean. But this is your headcanon about Cervantes, I think the far and away most convincing interpretation is that he wrote DQ as a screed against the "low" taste for chivalry books (specifically as opposed to his own books), and venting that resentment was his primary motive, although he was always also trying to smuggle in examples of what he saw as his more serious work (e.g. the romance stories in part 1 and the more serious speeches by Quixote that start to appear in part 2).

>>22169596
>can anyone who talks like this really have any feeling for literature?

I was trying to make the analogy as simple as possible to get my point across, I know plenty of big fancy words anon, like "erudition" and "pomposity" and "indubitably". If I was trying to seduce you and taste the salty ambrosia of your lips and feel your shallow panting breaths upon my cheek, I would use them more aggressively, but I am just trying to reach clear definitions of foundational concepts with you here so I don't feel the need to lay it on quite so thick.

>the effect of (say) paradise lost on sensitive readers is, of course, over-powering. but is the function of poetry to overpower? to be over-powered is to accept spiritual defeat. shakespeare never overpowers: he raises up.

This is, again, begging the question, projecting a particular interpretive framework - an interesting and not necessarily invalid one, but ultimately one that is up for dispute. I understand the various gripes people have with Milton, maybe once I've read more he will be replaced on my list by someone else, but I and many others enjoy and seek out the feeling of awe and wonder in art. But based on your other posts about long poems and Tennyson I can tell that you and I are just very different people who care about different things, so we should definitely just go our separate ways. You are clearly well-read and smart though, I don't begrudge you and your country your willfully eccentric aesthetic philosophy, even if I am tempted to point out the somewhat "received" or at least blindly reactive nature of that comment about the Victorians. All in all I really do like seeing England represented more strongly here and I generally appreciate anything that adds to the diversity of taste and discussion on this board, so please take everything I say in the good-humored spirit in which it's meant. Thank you for the conversation; it's cathartic, when my real life is not going well, to have combative but relatively polite discussions with strangers about frivolous topics.

Anonymous Tue Jun 20 06:37:08 2023 No.22170424

>>22170377
>The bristling Anglo chip-on-shoulderism really radiates from this post
yeah and what?
it's true though cervantes started to write a novella sceptical of old romances - and ended up creating the most beautiful apology for them that can be found in literature. he ended up writing a story about a knight, a real one. when you finish up with quixote you know that he's the most perfect knight who ever rode out against a dragon.
under the scepticism, there was a man who loved the knights as much as don quixote himself. above all, he was spanish.

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 20 06:41:49 2023 No.22170431 Odyssey Kalevala The Faerie Queene Heinrich von Ofterdingen Vathek Phantastes Worm Ouroboros Lord of the Rings Voyage to Arcturus Titus Groan

Anonymous Tue Jun 20 06:49:43 2023 No.22170440
File: 1.63 MB, 500x200, 56456474567.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

Moby-Dick
The Outsider
The Silmarillion
The Red Book
The Interior Castle
The Prince
Cain's Jawbone
Negative Space
Ham on Rye
House of Leaves

I'm sure my list will change in time and in life, but as it stands; these are my favorites that've meant more to me than anything for some reason. Also, lots of a good lists in this thread by the way.

Anonymous Tue Jun 20 07:46:35 2023 No.22170518

>>22170424
>yeah and what?

And it's cute, that's what, bitch! That's a very charming reading though, I'll accept it on the grounds that it helps me appreciate the book more and I prefer to appreciate things more rather than less where possible.

>>22170431
I haven't personally gotten into this particular niche but it seems extremely cool, based list.

>>22167226
Very solid list, beautiful stuff.

>>22166454
Pretty big fan of this one for Beckett, Kafka, Bely, and Borges, even though I'm a McCarthy hater.

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 20 11:56:13 2023 No.22170858 I was one of the anons who listed Ulysses as one of their favourite books. I want everyone to know that I meant it one hundred percent sincerely and that I'm not being pretentious.

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 20 17:00:27 2023 No.22171774 >>22170858 nice

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 20 17:21:22 2023 No.22171868 >>22162033 Dead Souls - Gogol Moby Dick - Melville Dubliners - Joyce Amerika - Kafka Growth of the Soil - Hamsun Oblomov - Goncharov Butchers Crossing - Williams Brothers Karamazov - Dostoyevsky Nine Stories - Salinger Skylark - kosztolanyi

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 20 17:30:54 2023 No.22171905 >>22170518 >Pretty big fan of this one for Beckett, Kafka, Bely, and Borges, even though I'm a McCarthy hater Thanks, but why the hate? I'd say either McCarthy or Borges is easily my favorite of the bunch.

Anonymous Tue Jun 20 17:59:16 2023 No.22172002

Dominique Venner - Un samouraï d'occident
Steven Erikson - House of Chains
H.P. Lovecraft & August Derleth - The Lurker at the Threshold
David Gemmel - The Legend of Deathwalker
Nietzsche - Also sprach Zarathustra
David McGowan - Programmed to Kill: The Politics of Serial Murder
Julius Evola - Il cammino del cinabro
Julius Cesar - Commentarii de Bello Gallico
François Villon - Compiled Works
Wu Chengen - Journey to the West
All read in original language

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 20 18:05:53 2023 No.22172030 >>22163973 >falls just short of a perfect score because of Wilde's inclusion and what's wrong with liking Wilde? guy was great

Anonymous Tue Jun 20 18:08:36 2023 No.22172039

>>22162033
Fragments by Heraclitus
The Egyptian Book of the Dead
The Tao Te Ching
The Golden Ass by Apuleius
Letters of Abelard and Heloise
The Deerslayer by James Fenimore Cooper
Decameron by Boccaccio
The Art of Happiness by Epicurus
Lonesome Dove by McMurtry
Illuminations by Rimbaud

Anonymous Tue Jun 20 19:29:17 2023 No.22172272

>>22162033
>unordered, favorites:
the inner game of tennis - gallwey
the stories of breece d'j pancake - pancake
heart of a dog - bulgakov
pilgrim at tinker creek - dillard
the summer book - jansson
the sound and the fury - faulkner
the owner-built home - kerr
the white deer - thurber
letters to a young poet - rilke
sirens of titan - vonnegut
>honorable mentions:
the complete calvin & hobbes - watterson
the complete peanuts - schulz
leviathan - hobbes
cyclonopedia - negarestani
the brothers karamazov - dostoevsky
the bible - god
>i hope my wife doesn't see this

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 20 19:31:00 2023 No.22172276 >>22172272 oh and forgot living in the woods in a tree - rosen

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 20 19:47:52 2023 No.22172318 >>22162033 I don't read books.

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 20 20:56:48 2023 No.22172571 >>22172318 Holy Based

Anonymous Tue Jun 20 21:01:41 2023 No.22172581

>>22171905
Had this argument too many times already, but the guy just comes across pretty phony to me. If you don't get that impression, good, I hope you are right, it's just the way I feel about him.

>>22172272
>Calvin & Hobbes
Based.

>>22172039
Very cool list.

Anonymous Tue Jun 20 22:48:03 2023 No.22172885

>>22162033
Limiting this to fiction, otherwise it would not be a useful list. Also limiting myself to one book per author.

Anna Karenina (Lev Tolstoy)
The Pilgrim's Progress (John Bunyan)
The Canterbury Tales (Geoffrey Chaucer)
Vanity Fair (William Makepeace Thackeray)
The Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel García Márquez)
Our Mutual Friend (Charles Dickens)
Jude the Obscure (Thomas Hardy)
Notre-Dame de Paris (Victor Hugo)
The Napoleon of Notting Hill (Gilbert Keith Chesterton)
Can You Forgive Her? (Anthony Trollope)

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 20 23:19:22 2023 No.22172993 >>22172581 >Based. : ) >>22172276 i forgot two more: closer to the light - morse & perry being mortal - gawande

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 20 23:20:31 2023 No.22172998 >>22172885 yes i was unsure whether or not to include reference books. the OED should be on my list(s) but it isn't

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 20 23:26:07 2023 No.22173008 File: 364 KB, 646x595, frog.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] i can't think of a single book

>>	Anonymous Wed Jun 21 03:26:38 2023 No.22173747 >>22172581 What have you read by him? Phony is the last thing McCarthy comes across as. If anything he comes across as too full of himself and his writing habits. I mean he was DFW's favorite for that reason: unflinching sincerity.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jun 21 03:30:36 2023 No.22173759 >>22172581 >Had this argument too many times already, but the guy just comes across pretty phony to me. Are you that falseflaggging tranny who hasn't even read him yet? You have the same servile cuntish energy. Which one is your list in this thread?

Anonymous Wed Jun 21 03:38:05 2023 No.22173779

>>22162033
>Master and Commander
>Post Captain
>HMS Surprise
>The Mauritius Command
>Desolation Island
>The Fortune of War
>The Surgeon's Mate
>The Ionian Mission
>Treason's Harbour
>The Far Side of the World

I can give you ten more, if you're interested.

Anonymous Wed Jun 21 03:51:46 2023 No.22173807
File: 259 KB, 863x1043, 1682181056621745.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

Ada, or Ardor - Nabokov
The Red and The Black - Stendhal
Master and Margarita - Bulgakov
Against the Day - Pynchon
Franny and Zooey - Salinger
Absalom, Absalom - Faulkner
Fear and Trembling - Kierkegaard
Confessions - Augustine
Spring Snow - Mishima
Wuthering Heights - Bronte

>>	Anonymous Wed Jun 21 03:56:32 2023 No.22173823 >>22173759 It's probably him. All of his posts here seem so conniving as if to validate himself to people but he hasn't said anything about any single book till time. A similar gyy is shitting up McCarthy threads these days.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jun 21 03:57:20 2023 No.22173827 >>22162033 Thread has gone pretty well besides a slight derailment. I’m coming to the conclusion that threads about individual books aren’t as successful, as general type threads

Anonymous Wed Jun 21 06:14:51 2023 No.22174144

>>22173747
>What have you read by him?

Only All the Pretty Horses, which corresponded pretty well with the idea of him I get from all the posts about him and quotes from him that I see here. He writes beautiful prose, of course, I just think his ideas tend to be subordinate to his aesthetic - which in the case of someone like, say, Lovecraft or Poe (maybe even Melville to some extent, really), is perfectly fine and even desirable, but I get the sense that McCarthy simultaneously wants his ideas to be taken seriously as ideas. Beyond that, I think gratuitous violence, while it *can* be used to make a point effectively, is in practice often used merely for the sake of penny-dreadful sensational shock value, and what I've seen from him appears to me to be more the latter than the former. Also his comments about Henry James and Proust struck me as indicative of a certain degree of small-mindedness and superficiality in his approach to art. Maybe I used the wrong word to encapsulate my impressions, but that's what I was referring to. I really have no desire to erode your enjoyment of an author you like though, I only mentioned it as an aside in the context of admiring your list. As I said to the Brit anon earlier, put it down to difference of taste. In lieu of further argument on this tired subject, I'd love to hear your thoughts on Petersburg and what you liked about it, since that was the most unique choice on your list and one that I finished somewhat recently.

>>22173823
>>22173759
>servile cuntish energy
>conniving as if to validate himself to people

I simply like being nice to people on 4chan. For example, I find your brazen straightforwardness very charming!

>Which one is your list in this thread?
>>22165041 is me, hit me with your best shot.

>Are you that falseflagging tranny who hasn't even read him yet?
>A similar gyy is shitting up McCarthy threads these days.

I have posted in exactly one (1) thread about McCarthy within the last few months, only because the OP happened to be agreeing with my perception of him. In that thread I was accused of being someone else whom I definitely was and am not, as I had not posted in the previous thread they were referring to (they also said he was an ESL, whereas my command of the English language is clearly nothing short of virtuosic). Similarly I only mentioned it here because I wanted to compliment the taste of the anon I replied to initially. I will not continue to engage with you in any serious manner but I am lonely and bored so I will probably reply anyway. My substantive thoughts are sufficiently summarized in my first reply in this post, make of them what you will. What I would be "falseflagging" about is beyond me, what group am I falsely representing? The opinion you are taking issue with is the one I'm directly expressing, are you saying I'm only pretending to not like McCarthy? What would I be intending to accomplish by way of such a devilishly clever plan? Very confusing post.

Anonymous Wed Jun 21 06:24:48 2023 No.22174166

>>22173807
Salinger, Faulkner, Kierkegaard and Bronte are all lovely picks.

>>22172885
Absolutely based, pure, wonderful taste steeped in unadulterated, soul-refreshing humanity.

>>22173827
Well, with a single book thread you're obviously aiming at a smaller demographic of people who have read that one book. This thread is nice and comfy but also not exactly full of in-depth discussion. The thread about Northrop Frye that's about to die has much more discussion in many fewer posts - but I guess it's also about criticism in general.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jun 21 07:19:34 2023 No.22174296 >>22174166 >Absolutely based, pure, wonderful taste steeped in unadulterated, soul-refreshing humanity. Thank you for your kindness!

Anonymous Wed Jun 21 07:21:49 2023 No.22174301

>>22174144
I assume your impression of the violence in his work is from second hand sources, because the book you read isn't really that violent, nor that philosophical either. That's not a very justifiable position for people who really care about art.

As for his philosophy, I would disagree again. While the aesthetic really matters in his works, the point always seems to be that aesthetic is the source of all meditation. All philosophical speculations finally come from the perceived world. And not everything in the perceived world is of equal importance. Before philosophy there needs to be a philosophical subject. Aesthetic births the philosophical subject. In some ways, this is what Blood Meridian is about. A metatext on all philosophy rather than a book with philosophy. It's a shame most readers are incapable of seeing it for themselves. I think McCarthy is one of those writers who would be lot more respected if he gave interviews about his writing. Maybe it's subjective disagreement but somethings I just can't agree with because they have some basis in objectivity. Where is the line? When is it the writer's inability to deliver his philosophy and when is it the reader's refusal to absorb it? One example I can give is the book you should have ideally followed up with: The Crossing, one of my favorites. There are very obvious sections in it that are meant to deliver the philosophy directly, but most readers treat them as tangential rambles.

As for Petersburg, I finished it recently. I am not much of a fan of The Russians besides Gogol, but I really enjoyed this one. Curiously, I was recommended this book by someone who said it was similar to Inland, another book in my list. Not quite, but I can see some similarities. I have always considered myself a reader with very modern sensibilities (might say post-modern sensibilities) and I put both Petersburg and Ulysses on the back burner because innovative as they were for their time, they still retain a lot of the classical elements from the 19th century novel which I don't like that much. However, both books surprised me.

I would recommend anybody reading the translation to only pick up the Elsworth trandlation. Nabokov said that Petersburg was one of the best prose works of 20th century and apart from the Elsworth translation, the 3 others don't even begin to do it justice. For that matter, Elsworth translation didn't knock my socks off either. Offhandedly, I think Petersburg would easily become my absolute favorite if it was written with a 1st person narrator. The Castle by Kafka too would benefit greatly from a 1st person narrator from the start, but I guess Beckett eventually filled that void.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jun 21 07:30:34 2023 No.22174322 >>22162033 War and Peace Demons David Copperfield In Search of Lost Time To the Lighthouse Sentimental Education The Makioka Sisters Sound of the Mountain Lost Illusions The Box Man

Anonymous Wed Jun 21 07:46:30 2023 No.22174354

>>22174144
>Also his comments about Henry James and Proust struck me as indicative of a certain degree of small-mindedness and superficiality in his approach to art.
Your comments about him are equally small-minded and superficial. No real appreciator of art bases his opinion on impressions by some people on a forum. Unless you are saying All the Pretty Horses has a lot of gratuitous violence, which is some opinion to have.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jun 21 07:54:10 2023 No.22174364 You guys are fucking boring let me see The Commitments or Confederacy of Dunces

Anonymous Wed Jun 21 08:14:57 2023 No.22174405

>>22174296
No problem. Those sorts of truly warm, human books are so indispensable to my experience of reading, I can't ever grow tired of them.

>>22174322
>Sentimental Education

I've gone back and forth on how I feel about this one over the years a bit but it's undeniably really fucking good and heavily underread.

>In Search of Lost Time

Reading it right now, volume 1 at least is living up to the hype. I've heard it drags quite a bit in the middle volumes though, do you agree with that or no?

>>22174301
Well, yes I could be wrong about the violence, that's my impression though and one has to use such impressions in deciding to how to allocate reading time - I never claimed to be an authoritative critic, merely a humble hater. And I think that the treatment of violence (or, more accurately, of murder) in AtPH was intended as an important part of what the book had to say, and that it was handled in a vague and unconvincing manner given its intended importance.

I think you are taking "aesthetic" more rigorously than I meant it. I just meant that, given that I myself am a person who has at times been prone to pretentiousness, I tend to be sensitive to any hint of it in a writer, and McCarthy happens to set off my radar. I read something by him and I think "This strikes me as being crafted, on the level of ideas as well as that of style, with an intent moreso to create an impression of seriousness and profundity than to convey something actually profound". It's very possible I am projecting, but that's how he comes across to me. And of course, just because something is trying to appear to be more than it is doesn't mean that it can't still actually be something worthwhile. Just something that gets on my nerves, that's all.

Yeah, Petersburg definitely has an interesting mix of simple comic/dramatic narrative with intense direct philosophical speculation. Tbh I think I would have been really lost - and even now there are many things about it that I'm not totally clear on - if I hadn't had the background knowledge of his connection to Steinerism. But precise understanding aside, the ideas and images are intoxicating. And yes, Beckett did so, so much to actualize the latent potential for what could be accomplished with narrative, he is really an absolutely titanic figure and unites a lot of the best qualities of the old ways and the new ways of writing.

What would you say you liked most about Ulysses? That's another one I could never really get excited about for various reasons.

>>22174354
You may well be right, as I said above though I don't claim to speak authoritatively, just talking vibes here.

Anonymous Wed Jun 21 09:28:06 2023 No.22174491

>>22174405
>"This strikes me as being crafted, on the level of ideas as well as that of style, with an intent moreso to create an impression of seriousness and profundity than to convey something actually profound".
That's what I pointed out. It seems a good portion of the criticism levied at McCarthy on this board comes from an inability to discern, and striking back against the work. Very anti-intellectual and anti-art imo. Not because you should be able to discern it, but you should realize that the effect is as important as whatever purpose you discover (or invent, as in most cases). That's pure aesthetic. The one that engenders the philosophical subject which I mentioned above. It is a philosophy unto itself.

As for the violence in Atph, the larger importance of murder is lost on John Grady too, that's what keeps irking him for the last 10th of the book. It doesn't align with his moral compass, but was the right thing to do, as the Judge says. In any case, the book's treatment of violence wouldn't be gratuitous or for shock value by any metric you measure, so your original comment still doesn't make much sense in that regard. And I would say, Atph is generally considered lighter, slighter McCarthy-lite, so a fair assessment cannot be made just from this novel imo. As I said before, having a pre made mind on a certain book without reading it won't foster a mind conducive to art. In that vein, you said that his comments on Proust bothered you, but in this post you claim that you have only begun to read Proust. I think this is equally bad, both blind hate and blind love.

>And yes, Beckett did so, so much to actualize the latent potential for what could be accomplished with narrative, he is really an absolutely titanic figure and unites a lot of the best qualities of the old ways and the new ways of writing.
In all honesty, I am getting a bit tired of him. I used to have the trilogy in my top 10 too, but as my aesthetic considerations have evolved I find more and more of his work dating himself in the same way that was my original response to Ulysses or Petersburg or really any modernist novel that was too close to the 19th century. He was a product of his time, of the 50s transition into postmodernism. His real innovation in narration didn't happen until the 80s, practically his last works. Unfortunately, that's the work that gets the lowest attention of all that he has written. His trilogy is a great case study in a rigorously unified, incestous aesthetic that keeps generating new perspectives by just slight variations. But I think your comment about him is a bit hyperbolic. He became a poster child for a lot of things that began in the 19th century and kept evolving in the period between.

1/2

Anonymous Wed Jun 21 09:32:05 2023 No.22174497

>>22174491
Now that I think about it, my aesthetic preferences seem to be going into the extreme. Maybe that's the answer to your question. The part that I most loved in Ulysses was either Sirens or the second half of Proteus. In these chapters, the language leaves its narrative setting and emphasizes itself. Narrative is slowed to a crawl and the only impression on the reader's mind rests on how language renders the narrated object. I don't care for Bloom or Stephen or Molly or any character or whatevers animates their lives. At the end, only the words remain. That's why I took such a liking to ill seen, ill said. It is Beckett's language at its most poetic without any concern for any narrative or character. Without any concern against the self aware satire of those elements in his earlier novels, which never sat well with me. His last work feels more transcendent to me for that reason I suppose. And the absolutely amazing last paragraph. Esslin says that this piece in his last trilogy was meant to be an eulogy to his mother and you can definitely see those elements, but I think it is at its best when it is unmediated by any message or point behind appearances.

Anonymous Wed Jun 21 09:37:55 2023 No.22174507

atlas shrugged - ayn rand
die welt als wille und vorstellung - arthur schopenhauer
voyage au bout de la nuit - louis-ferdinand céline
war & peace - leo tolstoy
kritik der reinen vernunft - immanuel kant
the cantos - ezra pound
l'oblat - joris-karl huysmans
the faerie queene - edmund spenser
memoirs d'outre tombe - francois-rené de chateaubriand
Πολιτεία - Πλάτων

>>	Anonymous Wed Jun 21 09:39:08 2023 No.22174510 >>22174322 Why do you like both Dostoyevsky AND Tolstoy?

>>	Anonymous Wed Jun 21 11:32:29 2023 No.22174721 >>22162033 Thus Spoke Zarathustra Silmarillion CCRU Writings Blood Meridian The Worm Ouroboros Richard III (Shakespeare) Julius Caesar (Shakespeare) The Iliad History of the Peloponnesian War The Prince of Nothing

Anonymous Wed Jun 21 11:54:42 2023 No.22174765

>>22162033
And Don Flows Quietly
Definitely Maybe
His Master's Voice
The Invincible
The Brothers Karamazov
Tales of Pirx the Pilot
A Scanner Darkly
Rocannon's World
The Iliad
Sevastopol Sketches

There are many books which I consider "better written" or "more insightful" when I think about them and analyze them, but these ones I just keep coming back to and reading them makes me feel great, I truly love them.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jun 21 14:35:48 2023 No.22175111 >>22162033 I don't remember any books that I've read, sorry.

Anonymous Wed Jun 21 16:08:57 2023 No.22175403

>>22174405
I think most would consider the middle to drag a bit, but I was personally fascinated by his descriptions of inversion, and the relationship with Albertine hit very close to home for me. There are plenty of insightful "restful" moments in the middle half, too, especially the etymology bit on the train that gets memed - I've learned so much about English because that chapter got me interested in etymology.I do think the book peaks in Volume 2 at Balbec, but I loved the entire series and can't wait to read it again.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jun 21 16:10:04 2023 No.22175408 >>22175403 Retard

Anonymous Wed Jun 21 16:18:19 2023 No.22175445

>>22162033
Just for kicks, off the top of my head, and in no particular order:

The Trivium by Sister Mary Joseph
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Usury by Calvin Elliott
Watership Down by Richard Adams
The Culture of Critique by Kevin MacDonald
No Treason by Lysander Spooner
The End of All Evil by Jeremy Locke
The Twelfth Planet by Zachariah Sitchin

>**I reserve the right to alter or revoke this list at any time for any reason.

Anonymous Wed Jun 21 16:19:29 2023 No.22175450

"The Art of Trolling" by Anonymous
"Meme Magic: How to Harness the Power of the Internet" by Pepe the Frog
"The Tao of Neckbeardism" by M'Lady Lao Tzu
"The God Delusion 2: Electric Boogaloo" by Richard Dawkins
"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Friendzone" by Douglas Adams
"Atlas Shrugged Off" by Ayn Rand
"The Communist Manifesto for Dummies" by Karl Marx
"Fifty Shades of Fedora" by E.L. James
"How to Win Friends and Influence People on Reddit" by Dale Carnegie
"The Necronomicon: A Neckbeard's Guide to the Occult" by H.P. Lovecraft

>>	Anonymous Wed Jun 21 16:21:44 2023 No.22175457 >>22162275 kek. add 1491 by that one guy (probably a jew.....)

>>	Anonymous Wed Jun 21 16:23:46 2023 No.22175461 >>22162511 BOC was an absolute LOL book! Could have put it in my list. Love KV.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jun 21 16:25:02 2023 No.22175464 >>22163973 >>>22162648 >Cannot rate this list in good conscience because I haven't even heard of a lot of the authors, let alone read them. Not that well-versed in Anglo lit. respect

Anonymous Wed Jun 21 16:31:51 2023 No.22175479

>>22162033
As a devout follower of the Lord, I believe that the only books worth reading are the Bible and my own diary. That way, I can keep track of all the sins I've committed and repent for them later. Plus, if anyone ever steals my diary, they're in for a real treat - they'll get to read all about my daily struggles with temptation and my deep, abiding love for the Almighty.

I know some folks like to read other books, but I just can't bring myself to trust anything that wasn't written by one of the great prophets or by myself. After all, who needs Shakespeare when you've got Leviticus? Who needs Jane Austen when you've got Ecclesiastes? And who needs Harry Potter when you've got the Book of Revelation? (Okay, maybe that last one is a bit of a stretch, but you get the idea.)

So if you ever see me sitting quietly in a corner with my nose buried in a book, don't be fooled - it's not some fancy novel or self-help guide. It's just me, communing with the divine and scribbling down my deepest, darkest secrets for all eternity.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jun 21 16:34:05 2023 No.22175483 >>22172272 >the complete calvin & hobbes - watterson >leviathan - hobbes I am extremely disappointed that you did not include anything from John Calvin.

Anonymous Wed Jun 21 16:37:49 2023 No.22175493

>>22162033
Hey guys, I'm a video game addicted zoomer, and I gotta be real with you - I don't have any favorite books. I mean, who needs books when you can just play video games all day, am I right?

I know some people say that reading is important for expanding your knowledge and imagination, but come on, have you seen the graphics in some of these games? They're practically like living in another world!

And let's be real, books don't have cheat codes. When I'm struggling to get past a tough level, I can just Google the answer or watch a walkthrough on YouTube. Can't do that with a book, can you?

Plus, books don't have loot boxes or microtransactions. What's the point of reading if you can't collect rare items or buy cool skins for your character? Where is le fucking epic dopamine rush of le heckin based droperinos? I can't even stream my screen while reading a book.

So yeah, sorry to disappoint all you book lovers out there, but I'm gonna stick with my video games. Who needs books when you can have epic battles, immersive storylines, and endless hours of entertainment?

>>	Anonymous Wed Jun 21 21:30:10 2023 No.22176499 Man I don't think I have ten favorites. Here's just a couple Heart of Darkness Grapes of Wrath A Confederacy of Dunces The Perfect Run Ulysses After that I might be stretching. I don't even understand Ulysses (who does?) but I still appreciate it.

Anonymous Wed Jun 21 21:58:24 2023 No.22176601

>>22174491
If you want to expand on what you mean about pure aesthetic I would be interested, I don't have the energy to try and parse that whole discussion though. You know much more on the subject than I, I was simply expressing a naive preference or prejudice - which is perhaps what McCarthy was doing when talking about Proust as well. But I don't take issue with his comments out of love for Proust necessarily, it has more to do with the basis upon which he makes them - that "literature" must "deal with issues of life and death". For me this just smacks of dogmatism born of ignorance about what literature can be, where it comes from, what it has been over the course of human history - and of a narrow understanding of how "life and death" can be dealt with.

The rest of your post deserves more engagement than I can give it at the moment, but I guess I will say I am maybe not as sold on the pure language thing as you are, and in most cases I'm not interested in leaving all convention and meaning behind. But what you say about the later work being more transcendent and poetic does capture my interest, I'll bump it up on my list based on that. If you want to discuss further you should definitely go ahead and post a thread about McCarthy, Beckett, and the aesthetic philosophy of pure language, since this thread is on its way out; it's all very interesting to me and you clearly have a well-thought-out perspective on it, much more so than mine, it's a good exercise for me to discuss these things with someone who can keep me honest and provide a rigorous standard of judgment. I'd love to go into it a little more deeply when I have the time/energy to do so. Or I can post the thread myself, might be interesting even if you don't end up replying.

A few last questions that come to mind: What do you think of Krasznahorkai, Bernhard, and other such vaguely "Beckett-esque" writers? Krasznahorkai is one I've really liked in the past but some of his choices do strike me as being a bit excessive and manipulative in the same vein as my feelings on McCarthy. And also, how much poetry have you read? Seems like that's a venue where might be more likely to find the aesthetic purity you're looking for, anywhere from the fin-de-siecle onward.

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/lit/ - Literature