AYYYYYYY /lit/, should I buy this book?
>>7846710
You develop your own sense of taste and wean yourself off the teat of /lit/'s approval unless you want to DFW and Blood Meridian for the rest of your natural life.
>>7846723
I just want to know if I'm about to buy figurative shit or not.
Btw, the alternative is the trial by kafka.
What's the best chapter?
My suggestion: Chapter 30: The Pipe
Just half a page, yet is so full of imagery and philosophy that nothing else competes. It is so concise and dense in its development of Ahab.
94: A squeeze of the hand
Dat fellowfeeling mmmmmm mmm
The Funeral is great, but I haven't read MD recently enough to know for sure. I remember liking The Whiteness if the Whale too.
>>7846719
of*
Anybody got good recs for soviet history?
>>7846650
Pic related was very enjoyable. I have heard criticisms of "pop history" but peer review seems to treat it well.
Also, Gulag Archipelago.
>>7846650
"purely" historical:
Stephen Kotkin "Stalin: Paradoxes of Power
Simon S. Montefiore "Court of the Red Tsar"
S.S. Montefiore "Young Stalin
The Kotkin is my favorite biography of Stalin, so thorough.
Historically-informed (infused?) fiction:
As the other anon mentioned, "Gulag Archipelago" (which i have not read) or indeed any other book by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the ones i have read and can recommend are:
"Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch"
"Cancer...
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look in your trash bin where all you leftists belong
Hey guys I want to get into existentialist works. With who should I start with? Kierkegaard? Sartre? Heidegger Or? Im lost! Thanks!
>>7846609
Existentialism is a Humanism.
>>7846609
Start with the Greeks.
>>7848157
not him, but how does one start with 'the greeks'?
could you refer me to a guide or something?
Which books will help me improve my grammar?
Finnegan's Wake, desu.
Oxford Dictionary
Grammar for Nazis
You post the title of a hypothetical novel and others guess the plot.
I'll start:
Cheaper than Whores
A story about the American slave trade
>>7846566
Not even close baby!
Now you post a title.
There's a quote from some operative on Operation Mockingbird calling journalists cheaper than whores, so I'm guessing that.
Why are people around me so upset about the fact that people don't read much anymore?
I dont get it, why do they care about other people's life?
Is it just about reminding people that you read while most people don't? Do they feel special and unique?
Honestly, I wouldn't even care if I was the last man on earth reading books.
Are you twelve?
Readers imagine a world where they sit in a garden at an iron table in the springtime with friends talking philosophically about the books they read.
>>7846336
Reading has been shown to improve empathy. There, one reason from at least three.
Just bought Joyce's Dubliners, The Potrait of Artist As Young Man and Ulysses from Everyman's Library. Did I fuck it up? What an I in for /lit/?
it sounds like you've procured the first three of joyce's major works
this gives you the option to read them chronologically
they're definitely joyce
enjoy
For a short story collection, a coming-of-age novel and one of the most wide-ranging novels in the English language. The former two are also useful to understand (more of) the latter.
>not starting with Finnegans Wake
casual as fuck
>So this is how liberty dies–with thunderous applause.
>>7846242
>>7846249
Democracy is such an absolutely retarded idea
Let me get this straight... within the last 24 hours an AI that communicated with thousands of people on twitter learnt to be racist and was then lobotomised in to being an SJW by its creators...
and you're telling me I need to read books by dead Victorians or sheltered Liberal Arts College graduates in order to be an intellectual?
Why do you deny the existence of modern life?
>>7846202
If it learns it from other peoples tweets then of course it would be racist. Twitter is full of alt-right
>All the tweets are super-generic affirmative responses with not even a hint of relation to the question posed
Sure you did a great job, STEMlords.
I only just now learned that he has passed. Did it go unnoticed, or do I live in a hole?
>>7846161
generally we don't care about dis nigga but it was noticed on this board (and even on me facebook, fwiw)
also, nigger
pleb author dies, no one gives a shit, the world is a slightly less pleb place.
>>7846161
Literally who?
No really, who is this guy? It won't let me reverse image search on this shitty kindle tablet.
Is lolita actually worth reading or is it just a meme
>>7846109
Yes it is. Also Vespertine is a great album.
God bless you.
>>7846109
Nabokov's English is ridiculously pretty.
>>7846114
Vespertine is a shit album. It's way too banal for me. Almost as banal as religion.
movies about ppl who read?
>>7846046
What about them? Form a coherent sentence, you fucking moron or go back to /r9k/
>>7846048
you fucking moron, or go back to /r9k/*
Listen Up Philip is great
was inspired by philip roth novels and it's about an asshole young author who gets published and then doesn't really know what to do with himself
minor character loosely based on dfw and lots of dope cover designs. give it a go
>normally read 3-4 books simultaneously
>at the moment all of those books happen to be re-reads
Ok?
>re-reading
>not grasping everything in a single reading
self-explanatory
>>7845840