Books I've decided to pick by the end of this month:
1) Brothers Karamazov
2) Crime and Punishment
3) Lolita
4) Don Quixote
5) Anna Karenina
6) The Trial
7) The Search of Lost Time
8) The Devine Comedy
9) War and Peace
10) Les Miserable
Is my taste good? What should I expect from each book in the list? Which books in the list should I avoid? Also, suggest good translations.
>>7609042
What do you mean by pick by the end of this month?
>>7609042
STFU and stop posting. Lurk for a year. Come back.
>>7609042
How could we tell if your taste is good, that is a list of books you have never read.
No Goodreads thread? Let's get 'er goin', shall we?
I'll start:
>https://www.goodreads.com/kringaz
Come hit me up senpai.
https://www.goodreads.com/sebastian
https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/7281407-jessica-evans
goodreads plebcrew hoooooo!
https://www.goodreads.com/fugitivo
whats so bad about april t b h
It's springtime, everything is alive and blooming in nature, which is the exact opposite of what the spiritual and emotional side of people, which is dry and infertile.
He's tormented by this because he longs for a spiritual rain that would make our souls healthy and fertile.
Sinuses.
>>7608362
Because of April fool's day, a day where it's a feasible excuse to be the immature person you truly are, because you absolutely know you're living a lie.
Be honest, which one had the better legacy.
Not talking about comparing the works of these two, but comparing the works that were inspired (or otherwise rehashed or ripped-off) from these two.
>>7608007
Lovecraft, no doubt.
I dunno man, if you count everything that ripped off dungeons and dragons as having ripped off Tolkien then we're looking at a whole different kind of game.
>>7608007
Be honest which one had the better legacy, Justin Bieber or Miley Cyrus?
Not talking about comparing the works of these two, but comparing the works that were inspired (or otherwise rehashed or ripped-off) from these two.
What's so great about this book /lit/? Jake's just wandering around doing nothing, and complaining about his penis. It's boring. What am I missing?
I guess you have to like that kind shit OP. I liked it for the bullfighting bits, the sense of adventure and how it perfectly details what it's like to be at the mercy of a wishy washy white bitch.
>>7607487
>at the mercy of a wishy washy white bitch
This and
>muh alcoholism
Alcoholics are like Christians. Bunch of bullshit camaraderie just because we fall under the same title.
>What's so great about this book
Absolutely nothing. You got meme'd.
I'll go first, setting the format:
I fucked my uncles wife while drunk
She claimed rape
I claimed inebriation
She played victim
I stayed adjacent
I loved my uncles wife while drunk
He's working late
I came wasted
He never knew
Until she had to face him
I see her walk through my decrepit life
Smiling and singing about something
I wish I could hear what she's singing
I wish I could see what she's seeing
Because without her voice I'm nothing
Without her breath still breathing
Without her step still crushing my ego
I would be the next an hero
is meaning in the prose or
in the author's writ
is the truth just a pose
or is it god's sweet wit?
I close the tome and ask for peace
but thirst for more blood ink
flay my flesh then fry in grease
may i never sleep a wink
library walls loom over me
my tomb this has become
dusty are the pages, see?
my ghost gives all welcome.
Once amidst my mundane day
I catch a waft of truth or something other than what I have become
And while I twinge, in that spark of a moment
I leave it behind and instead watch the frost cover my soul in apathetic understanding
And it's easier to be
So I don't care
I read McDuff's translation of C&P some months ago and I really enjoyed it.
>The Brothers Karamazov
Should I stick with McDuff?
>War and Peace
>Anna Karenina
Recommended translations?
>>7604787
>mfw I'm russian
>>7604787
>translations
What are some good booktubers out there?
>>7589860
Obviously not pic related
A friend of mine but he's not English so.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_aXWgpxjTs
Only worthwhile booktube channel.
From my experience, it appears that modern works on old philosophical ideas are easier to understand, have updated/modern language and examples and add relevant objections/support from modern science. The original works seem to suffer from redundancy and, in the case of the ancients, awkward ways of going about a philosophical investigation.
In saying that, there are philosophers that no one appears to agree upon what they actually meant. Everyone still argues about Nietzsche and there are dozens, if not hundreds of ways of interpreting Marx. Reading abridged copies and modern textbooks on these guys seems like an easy way to set yourself wrong.
what are you hoping to achieve in your reading?
Is he the Tarantino of literature? Great aesthetics, but completely devoid of ethical, spiritual or philosophical worth?
The OP of this thread is devoid of worth, given the worthlessness of his thread.
All in favor?
What Thomas Pynchon do I read first?
Only image I have in my phone currently.
>>7610784
>reading meme authors
He's a hack
>>7610784
Mason and Dixon and Gravity's Rainbow are his masterpieces, but I recommend starting with V. or the Crying of Lot 49; 49 is easier and more linear than most of this works, yet still quite good, while V. is ambitious and more in the vein of his other books.
Which works regarding the philosophy of technology are (directly or indirectly) related to surveillance?
>>7610758
It would be an extraordinary novel if done correctly. People who like technological answers to historic problems can argue that the stirrup providing knights with the ability to seriously dominate peasants/infantry. The invention of the crossbow and the first military revolution (1300-1350), allowed the weakening of the knight and cavalry which enable peasants more rights from the state. The further military revolutions decentralized the power of the state over individual citizens and by the measure of some military/state security apparatus orientated historians, allowed for greater degrees of freedom to individuals.
But the industrial revolution gave increasing power to people with capital to ensure their power. Consider chemical weapons which allow a single man to murder thousands in a cloud of gas if he chooses.
Surveillance though is primarily about deterring actions against the status quo in politico-military action, or against the society at hand in the case of crime.
Either way, the police state only exists so long as it compels people to act by the threat of force and not by the enactment of force.
What are some books that explore our fascination with fantasy, /lit/? Why do I feel the need to detatch myself from the real world and delve into one full of nonsense?
>>7610672
Because it's fun, doofus
Post your favorite Dickens novel also general Dickens discussion.
Pic related
David Copperfield.
bleak house
>Oliver Twist for the characters
>A Tale of Two Cities for the plot and pacing
>Great Expectations for the writing and themes
>Bleak House and David Copperfield are great too but you could tell Dickens was just filling pages to meet his monthly quota.
Who's the best translator of the Greek tragedies? Is Lattimore as good with them as he is with Homer?
Lattimore didn't translate all the tragedies in his U of Chicago project, in fact, he only translated a few plays with Grene, while including other modern translations for the rest; he served as a chief editor with Grene on all of them during it's commission.
They're pretty great and is the best corpus translation out there in English. There's a bunch of older translations of some plays which are more elegiac in style though. Keep in-mind UoC probably made him keep the style more simplistic, as the whole concept of translating all of the plays was pretty new at it's time seeing some (like of them weren't considered interesting enough to bother translating, and that the whole goal of it was to do a modern / updated translation for then- classical and drama students and other readers to relate to while being published and consistently editted by the same team to make for easy commercial access.
>Not reading them in greek
Come on dude
I'm afraid there is no Rodney Merrill or Richard Lattimore of Greek tragedy. Lattimore's translations are pretty good, but no as good as his Homer, and I really, really wish Rodney Merrill would do some tragedy translations.
They're still worth reading, very fine literature, but if you compare them to the original Greek, all translations of tragedy fall very short. The same goes for the Greek poets. Some philosophers also just don't have translations nearly as good as the originals, such as Heraclitus and Paremenides. I think top notch translation could be done for all these, they just haven't been done yet.
