What do you think of Jack McDevitt?
I've only read A Talent for War, which was a passably good adventure mystery in an SF milieu. The resolution of the mystery was disappointing, though.
>>8139945
Yeah, I remember that.
I thought thenew enginewas cool, and I saw how he was leading up to it, but there could've been a few more details.
I was thinking of picking up these bad boys.
>>8139709
Keep thinking.
>>8139709
thanks for letting us know
>>8139709
Come back when you get some taste buddy.
Can we have a thread of recent purchases?
(Pic related.)
Not gonna bother taking a photo, but on the weekend I bought The Portable Jack Kerouac and Buddhist Texts Through the Ages.
The Waves
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Butcher's Crossing
Pale Fire
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Little House in the Big Woods
All used, only costing a few cents.
>>8139735
ACTUALLY, The Waves and Pale Fire are new, because those books were important to me.
Does anyone know anything similar to the book of disquiet by Fernando pessoa?
>>8139683
Les Chants de Maldoror
>>8139683
Read his poetry
bump. Really, what else has this sort of absolutely genius writing style? It doesn't have to be like this, but I am just looking for something that's this genius.
How it is even possible to reconcile reading while working full time job?
>he isn't NEET
>>8139647
I work 2 jobs, ~65 hours a week in total, and still I find plentiful time for reading (mostly a few hours a day after I wake up.)
Of course I have no friends nor family, but it's certainly possible. Internet usage has to go way down though.
Working full-time ishell. I leave my room at 7:30 and get home at 6:30. That leaves me like 4 - 5 hours to eat, defecate, wash dishes, perform house chores and then read etc. But in that time I am just restless and exhausted and get like 10 pages read before feeling sleepy. I wish I had put more thought into what I wanted to be when I was 18, or at least tried to get a job in the literature world rather than some irrelevant mundane shit that makes me depressed every single day.
Help me /lit/. I can hardly read anymore. I can barely focus on anything, even YA books are so difficult to finish. I tried to go steady with a few pages a day but I'm not improving. What should I do?
Did you actually read 'well' once? I don't want to sound offensive, i just want to know the situation
>>8139613
>even YA books are so difficult to finish
this can only be a good thing
>what should i do?
meth probably
So, this is my first thread since i posted the memequads almost a week ago.
Since then there have been almost daily threads by other anons about one of the meme books, the memequads themselves or asking what books they were.
I'm glad to see they are catching on, i hope you start accepting them.
Time for some discussion of them? Which ones have you read?
I've read 2666 and The Recognitions and i'm now reading The Tunnel. I haven't been able to get my hands on Women and Men.
P.s. of the original trilogy i haven't read...
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>>8139603
The Tunnel is shit. Not Gass' best. Academics don't write masterpieces.
Gaddis great.
Women and Men is shit, even by McElroy's own admission, who says its his worst novel and actively prevents its republication.
2666 is very poorly translated into English. Wimmer doesn't know Spanish. What a shame.
>>8139617
Have you read all four of them? Or are you one of them 'i don't need to read them to know they are shit' type of people?
>>8139622
I've read all except Women and Men, which the author personally told me and every other fan of his, to not fucking read it.
Do you think he's a recluse because he's ugly af?
>>8139596
it's probably because he has no talent
>>8139596
> recluse
Except he was literally partying with 20 year olds on Manhattan Beach while writing Gravity's Rainbow.
He's not a recluse
What's the epitome of "comfy lit"? My vote goes to Redwall (the book + the series).
Can this book be read as a standalone novel? I don't wanna read a million other books in the series, but this one seems interesting.
>>8139488
Yes you can. It even has a slightly different lore than the rest of the series.
Walter Moers' Zamonien novels
Super-comfy, highly original, sometimes meta fantasy that starts as YA and gets more mature with each novel.
Aristotle says a virtuous man can't befriend a vicious man. Nor could a rich man befriend a poor man. I think this is kinda true.
Do you think writers with a upper middle class background with good educations can portray anything distant from their realities? Will they be able to successfully talk about poverty?
>>8139397
well sure the homeless look biblical do they not
I think Aristotle is a dumbass if he actually he thought that, but I havent read anything by him yet. (My impression though is that he's what would happen if Plato was an alt-right Machiavellian edgelord)
I dont see why any writer couldnt "live it", "for study" (as bad as that sounds) if they wanted to write about poverty.
>>8139397
Aristotle for how smart he is was wrong.
>"You are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise."
I am not to take because I did not already, so it is only possible to take in a succeeding time frame after being told to take.
Who is this semen demon?
>>8139960
Underage.
So I just finished this tonight and I have to say I was underwhelmed. The philosophical conversations were easily the highlights but I wasn't terribly invested in the plot (which progressed at an incredibly slow pace). Also, I found every character in the book to be incredibly annoying (not saying this as a criticism of the book itself, but it definitely made it difficult for me to care about the narrative).
Only other Dostoevsky I've read is Notes, and I preferred that one by a good margin. What are his other books like? What did you guys think of The Idiot,...
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>>8139342
Forgot to add, the style of storytelling bugged me as well-
e.g.
>We now find our hero back in x
>We must now take a moment to recount what happened two weeks before
etc.
>>8139342
C&P is the best one to read after Notes. The Idiot is also a critique of the wrong less do-gooder hero, so some of the underwhelmingness you're feeling is on-purpose
You weren't ready to read this book if the way you write about it is anything to go by.
I'm not saying this because you didn't like it, but rather because of how and why you say you didn't like it. You sound actually retarded, and you also apparently read the meme P&V version to boot, so there's pretty strong evidence that you should find another hobby.
There's a small line in my favorite novel that I'd like to use as the title of a short story collection that I'm currently working on. Could I just use it as is and credit the novels's author somewhere in the collection? Would I need their express permission? Or could I just use it without any worries? It's a little-know novel that came out almost twenty years ago, but I don't want to offend the author or get into any legal hot water. I have my heart set on this title and I'd really appreciate some advice.
Thanks in advace, lads.
>>8139193
What? Of course you can use it. It's a sentence.
You can credit it if you want or you can just use it. You can't get in trouble for that.
Besides, if you're self-publishing, no one is going to read it anyway.
>>8139212
No, I've got a few stories published in lit mags and journals that I plan to include in the collection and I'm working on writing the last few and hopefully getting some of those published as well--the rest will be new, original, unpublished work. What kind of a trap am I walking into, here? Do you need an actual fan following to be able to put out a collection or it it just the quality and published pieces that matter? Thanks again for the help.
>>8139193
find the author on twitter and ask them
don't forget to tell them you'r a massive fan of their book
does anyone know if there are any projects to edit and release the body of work he wrote?
>>8139136
I'm sure it could sell well if properly marketed, even if it's hundreds of pages of word salad.
Wasn't it divvied out between museums/collectors? If so I doubt it would be possible to compile it again.
No it's unpublishable because of its length. A decent one-volume abridgement would take years and years of work editing down. And there were hundreds of colourful illustrations that are essential to the work. It'd be very costly to print them. The prose and plot isn't accessible enough to keep average readers interested over a multi-volume series.
i want to be able to get more out of what i read and get past surface level interpretation. Where should I start?
narratology
hermeneutics
literary theory
now google
that just comes with reading a lot of literature. eventually you'll be able to intuit themes and such without willfully "interpreting"
>>8139113
Educate yurself.
OpenYale has a few literary courses on youtube. Buy those books and read along with the courses.
Pirate some of the teaching company courses too