What is the best book of the 2010's so far?
My vote goes to 1Q84
>>7944670
I think 3-6 of Knausgårds Struggle came in '11.
>>7944670
>Knausgårds Struggle
Also known as, Knausgårds Attention Whoring Sell Out.
That's one of the worst books ever written even by murakami standards
Literally Murakami's second worst novel. It's unfathomably bad and I say this as a huge, previously obsessive fan of everything he did up to Kafka on the Shore.
OP is indeed retarded
Leaving the Atocha Station
You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine
Taipei
Faces in the Crowd
My Documents
Speak
>people actually think this meme author is good
>>7944849
assuming this is an ironic post, you forgot to add My Twisted World
this lived up to the hype for me
>>7944696
Hey you're not completely wrong but it's still pretty good. He can write.
The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
Bleeding Edge by Thomas Pynchon
aaaaand that's about it for me.
>>7944670
Cannonball by Joseph McElroy
Middle C by William H. Gass
The Dying Grass by William T. Vollmann
His Wife Leaves Him by Stephen Dixon
The No World Concerto by A.G. Porta
In Partial Disgrace by Charles Newman
The Great Fire of London by Jacques Roubaud
>>7944670
Where do you guys find new books (apart from /lit/) I tried using goodreads but trash like gone girl is listed higher than 99% of anything talked about here
>>7945951
you seem neat, who are your favorite authors?
tlotiat is an avant-garde masterpiece
>>7945978
Well, William Gass is, by far, my favorite author, but I also enjoy many of his contemporaries, like John Hawkes, Joseph McElroy, and William Gaddis. A lot of my favorite authors I found on McCaffrey's list of "The 20th Century’s Greatest Hits" (link: http://spinelessbooks.com/mccaffery/100/index.html) and on Goodreads, which, if you know where to look, is a legitimately great place to find new stuff to read.
Any good Post-Postmodernism Books?
>>7944670
Just bought this recently and this is making me even more excited to read it
>>7945968
That's because you aren't looking in the right places. If you like strange, difficult, or obscure books, look at the bookshelves of Nathan "N.R" Gaddis.
Honestly not memeing
I think it's TAIPEI
sums up majority of 4chan users life
>>7946085
it's an okay book, but the ending is fairly annoying in how unsatisfying it is and how much it leaves open/unanswered
>>7944670
>2010's
>>7946035
All of my favorite authors right now besides McElroy who I have yet to read.
>>7946293
If you like to be confused and confuzzled, I recommend you do, and, if you do, I recommend not starting with Women and Men, since it might turn you away from McElroy forever; instead, start with The Lookout Cartridge, A Smuggler's Bible, or his newest novel, Cannonball, which, though fairly short, is ridiculously dense. Here's an excerpt from Cannonball: "I beside her shot on film or tried to his dive but she just as she'd been interrupted passing on to me a weird family yet neighborhood question Corona's Italian wife Bea had put to her as they had biked home the night before through rain divided and gathered and caressed by trees now tonight saw him pull off a two-and-a-half at a public pool under the lights that went out totally for a moment, a breaker fluke that went unexplained, as he left the board plunging us if not my camera into nowhere and came back to reveal him just passing the crest of the yet undisclosed dive now crunched into tuck – as I became aware of the old woman of a year ago with the spotted skin and the veins materialized now as if by the power glitch itself beside me seeming to say hello with a word: for Umo's dive was so busy a somersaulting that when he just came out of it he's someone unaware of you headed somewhere else gone forever, my sister said, or executed, it came to me she had murmured to herself or me, I thought if anything a sucked-downward tongue or perfect loss."
>>7946128
>drugs
>sex
>parties
>mc is a semi-famous writer
>lots of regrettable social relations he holds on to
You can praise it as a novel, but in no way does it reflect the majority of people here.
>>7946342
I've gone over this a few times now and I'm definitely a fan. Unfortunately, I doubt I'll get to McElroy this year. I've been back to binging on modernism and plan to read ISoLT, The Man Without Qualities, A Devil to Pay in the Backlands this summer (along with a few other things I haven't gotten to yet, The Canterbury Tales and Don Quixote) before I leave to India for half a year and New Zealand for half a year. Although I've been thinking of buying a kindle for the trip (I haven't been adamantly against them, just would rather spend money on books for my collection). If I can manage to find a DL for some of these though I probably will in a few months.
>>7946342
Also working on perfecting my German so I can get to Zettels Traum soon.
>>7946488
Luckily I'm still at college and will hopefully get credit by forming an independent study around reading Zettels Traum with the head of the German department and maybe another student, if not then I'll probably just wait for the translation and do that first.
>>7946392
It is
4chan users fantasy about becoming semi-famous
>>7946488
I also just saw he has a novella set in India thats apparently e-book only? Odd choice, but I'll be sure to at least read that there.
>>7946542
Escapism is not the same as representation.
I just finished reading this and I thought it was just gonna be pretentious wank but it was very good and very unique. Would recommend it.
>>7944918
Yeah? Was thinking of picking this up soon.
Pic for fiction, or Open City. Maybe Bleeding Edge, which is way underrated here.
If you're including nonfic Patti Smith's Just Kids is up there.
>>7945968
talk to people irl
look into authors your favorite authors mention
>>7946754
those fiction books are absolute trash. Bleeding Edge is the worst Pynchon of all time.
>>7945968
recommendations from college professors mostly desu familiar
>>7946792
It's far better than Vineland or his short story collection, and depending on how I feel I'd often rank it above Inherent Vice. It's middle of the road for Pynch, but I think he's the greatest author of the 20th and 21st centuries, so even that is incredible compared to almost anything else.
>>7946844
>but I think he's the greatest author of the 20th and 21st centuries, so even that is incredible compared to almost anything else.
You don't read much, do you?
>>7946085
do not read it for the ending, enjoy the journey
it won't give you any answers whatsoever
>>7946128
you don't know the "majority of 4chan users". basically it sums up an stereotype you have formed in your mind
>>7945951
Yeah this is the best post
The ego and its own. Time is a spook
>>7946035
Fucking Gassposter
You still can't hide from us
What about this one?
>>7946857
Depends, I read about 50-60 books a year, does that count as much to you?
That's a tough question. Off the top of my head:
Freedom
A Vist from the Goon Squad
Tenth of December
Soumission
Kind of a lean decade so far tbqh.
>>7947318
just wait till i get published
>>7947478
I can't wait, anon. I have to say, The Legacy of Totalitarianism in a Tundra came close to making my list.
>>7946754
>Open City
Read that for a class. It's just Diet Sebald
>>7947496
yes, thank you! an homage is one thing, but that motherfucker should go down for straight-up plagiarism ...
Soumission.
Only thing I have read this year that I couldn't put down, read it in one night.
The hell is Soumission? Do you guys mean Submission?
>>7947578
>translations
Memes aside, yes we do.
>>7947496
It's certainly Sebaldian, but the weird twist 3/4 of the way through feels closer to Nabokov to me than to Sebald. Sebald clearly the biggest influence though.
>>7946721
It's a incredible book anon, but it's essentially very literary genre fiction.
>>7947612
What weird twist? Therape? That's more like a whole 90% through the book, iirc
>>7944670
HAHAHA BUT BRAH MURAKAMI IS SHIT EVERYONE KNOWS THAT HAHAHAHA
On the shore by Rafael Chirbes - probably will become one of the best novels of the century. Don't know if there is an English translation yet, tho.
>>7946342
Honest question here, what's enjoyable about reading something so unreadable?
>>7944849
>Speak
>>>/tumblr/
>>7944900
He is good, just not entirely for the books he's famous for and that hipsters love.
Get over this false-elitism bullshit that popular things can't be good. You've probably never even read any of his books.
>>7948167
The small bit of valid criticism I've seen for Murukami from this board is that he's very samey if you read multiple of his books. Otherwise he's fun and writes creative scenarios.
What was good in the 2000s? The only book I know of that cane out was American Psycho.
>>7948182
Except that book came out in 1991.
My Twisted World by Elliot Rodger
>Captures the young generation perfectly
>Best ever use of unreliable narration by a book. (Was Elliot ever lying? Was he telling what he considered to be truth but was actually his crazy perception?)
>Dat feelsworthy friendship with James - from kicking dust in a playground to long hours of vidya to different ways of coping with early adulthood virginity to the end of the friendship, a brief spark once more, then nothing
>Perfectly captures modern parents treating their kids like crap (his dad and step mom)
And unlike all those other works of fiction by Scorsese and BEE where they're writing about the "degeneracy" from the inside while both glorifying it and moralising about it being bad, we finally get a novel that's written from the outside of the fun and hedonism looking in, ironically almost completely taking place in attractive fun people central.
It's from the author who wrote Metro 2023 but its infinitely better than the metro series. Go on www.futu.re to read the first five chapters, trust me, its worth it.
>>7948216
I read it in danish. They're practically the same.
>>7944696
You're so pissed off about it.
Still among the greatest literature of 2010-onward.
>>7947756
Profound commentary on banal situations. His conversations with Geir are pure gold.
>>7948040
I don't know. I guess I appreciate its complexity and the amount of thought that went in to making it, but I understand, though, why most people would dislike it.
>>7944696
You rambled at length as to why it was attention-whoring. Care to do the same as to why it's a sell-out?
He doesn't compromise his integrity or authenticity. In fact, it's the exact opposite.
>>7947255
Considering the fact that you think Pynchon is the best writer of the 20th century, I bet few of those books count for much.
>>7946035
where to look in Goodreads?
>>7947758
Yes, you're right it is very close to the end. But that is what I was referring to. It really recontextualized the entire rest of the book for me.
>>7949056
The bookshelves of Nathan "N.R" Gaddis, the "readers also enjoyed" section, The BURIED Book Club.
>>7948911
I've read Joyce, Nabokov, Faulkner, Woolf, Kafka, Gaddis and probably most of the other names people would be more likely to rank above Pynchon. Whom am I leaving out? You're free to disagree (and it's certainly a minority opinion) but I'm confused by what leads you to think someone who considers Pynchon the greatest novelist of the last ~120 years must be an illiterate moron.
>>7949086
Not him, but it is kind of a strange opinion to have. Pynchon is great, but calling him the greatest writer of the 20th and 21st centuries--calling anyone the greatest writer of any time period, for that matter--is, well, odd, especially when you look the authors you just listed, who are, in my opinion, much more interesting.
>>7949119
My original comment was just an attempt to contextualize a claim that Bleeding Edge is one of the best novels of the last ~7 years, which I'll stand by. I'm outing myself as a Pynchon superfan, that was the whole point. Of course any "greatest ___ of the ____ time period" is silly.
>>7948849
it's influenced by kafka, among other things, although much of Murakami's work is --- perhaps most obviously hardboiled wonderland & the end of the world. I don't know if you could say that it 'says' anything about him, though. I mean characters discuss kafka, at least.
>>7946342
>unreadable
>i-its dense!
>>7948178
this to be honest family
1Q84 or IQ84. LOL
>>7944829
I really enjoyed Kafka on the shore. what about it didn't you like? the only other murakami I've read is the elephant vanishes, and I loved that also.
>>7949159
But is the book good as a step along a Pynchon journey, or is it the kind of thing that would be ignored with a different name under the title?
>>7951079
Thank you for taking the time to answer, I'll give his books a shot.
>>7951259
i hope you enjoy them. i was a huge fan a few years ago.
>>7944748
What is this, and where can I get a translation?
>>7944670
Anne Carson - Nox
>>7953122
the format of this is atrocious. cant take it anywhere and it's super uncomfortable to hold. good writing though.
>>7951229
I seriously think it's great - the best sci-fi novel of the last 20 years and certainly the best under the broad heading of "cyberpunk." But it's also Pynchon playing up the genre influences I like the best, so as with all things, ymmv.
I tried to read that McBride book once and it wasn't bad or anything but man it hurt my head. I should try again sometime soon, I just don't think I was nearly ready for the mental effort it would take.
>>7951100
>I don't understand it; therefore, no one does
Lol okay, anon.
