Anybody read this ? Love the film but unsure about the book. Should I pick it up ? Moneys pretty tight at the moment so I don't want to buy a mediocre book.
For reference I enjoy , Girl with the Dragon , Tattoo, Jo Nesbos and Ian Rankin books.
Read the sticky
>>7593459
Read it and ? Not looking for " recommended books" just want to hear some opinions about this specific one
>>7593450
I read it when i was a teenager. I liked it back then but you can't trust my teenage judgement.
You could get a library card or download a pdf if you don't want to buy shit.
I've been wanting to read this book for a while
What's the best translation?
it's en english you doofus
>>7593186
I know the translation is in english, but which one should I pick?
I got a Brothers Karamazov version that fucking sucked.
>>7593178
Can't tell if troll or not, but to give you the benefit of the doubt, I'll go ahead and tell you that Lolita was originally written in English by Nabokov when he was living in the United States.
Or are you meaning translation into another language?
How do I stop subvocalizing?
Scream internally.
practice
scream externally
Which writer/philosopher had the worst life?
Which had the best?
>>7586104
Judging by his corpulence, Hume probably had a comfy life.
Kierkegaard had a pretty sad life.
worst: Kierkegaard
best: Cioran
Wait until I'm dead t b h
but for best I'd say Sartre
Speculative Fiction Edition
Recommendations:
>Fantasy
http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/4chanlit/images/a/a8/1307836551252.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20110612005642
>Sci-Fi
http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/4chanlit/images/a/a6/Scifilit.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20100710233344
http://imgur.com/r55ODlL
http://imgur.com/A96mTQX
>what are you currently reading?
>favorite speculative fiction author?
>favorite speculative fiction novel?
Old Thread >>7553481
>>7580399
>what are you currently reading?
Not a SFF novel so I refuse to answer.
>favorite speculative fiction author?
The fat man.
>favorite speculative fiction novel?
ASOIAF, The Silmarillion, The Gone-Away World, The Voice of the Fire, The Second Apocalypse
Thoughts on the Elric saga?
>>7580455
I liked the rape, gay and incest in Elric saga.
What is the best edition of 1984? Like Brave New World and Brave New World Revisted forwarded by Christopher Hichens…
Fuck off
>>7595385
How about no and die in fire?
Are you reading a translation or something? If not it doesn't matter which edition, senpai.
What books celebrate existence?
Most books on mythology and religion desu.
>>7591794
the dhamma
i twisted my ankle on my birthday today
fuck demiurge
Insightful or sophistry?
>>7595962
>implying there's a difference
>implying thought isn't an illusion
>>7595967
You have debased all knowledge
It is a defeatist perspective
It's not terribly insightful, but it's a powerful read.
How do I improve my prose, /lit/? Should I study English grammar? Are there books on the subject? Or should I just bee myself?
>>7595738
It's kind of a vague question. If you mean just "better prose" generally, there's really nothing more specific than read more to study how other authors use prose style to influence the story, and write more to naturally let yourself get accustumed to your own unique style. If you mean, how do I write more clearly and correctly, I guess you can get a book like The Elements of Style which is very helpful.
Where to start with Faulkner?
How accurate is this chart?
I just read The Sound and the Fury before Christmas. It's a great book if you're willing to just enjoy the ride on your first read-through and accept that it won't all make sense until you go back an re-read certain parts.
It's like putting together a puzzle. And it's only about 200 pages.
Might as well not mess around.
i have only read As I Lay Dying and The Sound and the Fury , i'd say I would read AILD first because it's a bit similar in structure yet more inteligible so it will be easier to get into TSatF later
As I Lay Dying -> The Sound and the Fury -> Absalom, Absalom!
Should I start the series? I have copies of the first three books but haven't read them. Is it any good? What should I expect? I liked the Wheel of Time, so I hear I'd enjoy this.
Pretty good series. A little preachy towards the middle and end. Why really gets me pissed in thi series is the Richard/Kahlan relationship. Yes, we know they love each other, dont make every other sentence about it.
Otherwise, good battles, good villains, magic seems to make sense for the most part.
>>7595083
It's very very entry level fantasy.
Not actually bad, but try to read Tolkien, Glenn Cook or Gene Wolfe instead.
Paul Virilio worth reading? I've never seen him mentioned on /lit/
I am becoming more interested in the very furthest over the edge social/cultural theory, way past foucault and frankfurtschool et al.
virilio isn't in the super radical foucaultian branch of social theory, more from marshall mcluhan "i don't know what the fuck im sayiing but it sound deep to dumb ppl" school of critical studies
>>7594240
yeah, that is why i described it as 'furthest over the edge'. What i meant I guess was most crazy/outthere/nonsensical/weird. I've read enough foucault and his ilk for awhile
>>7594270
foucault is very sensible though there really isn't anything "weird" in it...
What does /lit/ think about about the following books?
1) Dune
2) The Book of the New Sun
3) The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
4) The Thought Reader
5) The Dispossessed
6) Hyperion
7) Neuromancer
8) The Stars My Destination
9) The Man In High Castle
10) Use if Weapon
11) The Foundation Trilogy
12) 2001: A Space Odyssey
13) The Forever War
14) Red Mars
15) Brave New World
>>7593051
Please, stop the shiteposting.
>>7595211
Bitch, have you even read a book?
>>7595215
Yes, but all these "Ready Player One, Neil Gaiman XDD" threads are obvious bait and not even funny.
Is Paris Peasant a good introduction to Literary Surrealism?
Also, discuss all things surrealism:
>>7592406
I know nothing about Aragon, but I can vouch for Konrad Bayer and Julien Gracq being excellent
Nerval, Lautréamont and Roussel are nice starts tbqhf
Breton is shyte, avoid him
>>7592530
>vouches for gracq
op doesn't want a mediocre author to start with
So I was reading Braudel's The Mediterranean in the Ancient World and on p.273 he makes a (somewhat perplexing, because I actually think they agree more than Braudel realizes) reference to Jorge Luis Borges:
>In short, Athens was a privileged city which oppressed others. Enough at any rate to make us disagree entirely with J.-L. Borges when he writes that 'Athens was only a rudimentary version of Paradise'. Earthly paradises are always rudimentary, but their gates are not open to all comers.'
The quote comes from the fantastic essay "The Fearful Sphere of Pascal" (read it: http://www.filosofiaesoterica.com/ler.php?id=1355), but it's not actually by Borges! It is attributed to Robert South (1634-1716):
>In the seventeenth century, humanity was cowed by a feeling of senescence; in order to justify itself it exhumed the belief in a slow and fatal degeneration of all creatures consequent on Adam's sin. (We know - from the fifth chapter of Genesis - that "all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred sixty and nine years"; from the sixth chapter, that "there were giants in the earth in those days.") The First Anniversary of John Donne's elegy, Anatomy of the World, lamented the very brief life and limited stature of contemporary men, who are like pygmies and fairies; Milton, according to Johnson's biography, feared that the appearance on earth of a heroic species was no longer possible; Glanvill was of the opinion that Adam, "the medal of God," enjoyed both telescopic and microscopic vision; Robert South conspicuously wrote: "An Aristotle was but the fragment of an Adam, and Athens the rudiments of Paradise."
This idea of Pascal's Sphere was picked up by various of people, it shows up in Calvino, Eco, and even Jarmusch.
In any case, the quote is actually real (with B you never know), and comes from a short neo-Platonist x Christian sermon in the Augustan style, called The Happiness of Adam (http://www.bartleby.com/209/571.html) which was published in the collection "Sermons preached upon Several Occasions". It's philosophical and fiery, just the sort of thing you'd expect Borges to love:
>HE came into the world a philosopher, which sufficiently appeared by his writing the nature of things upon their names; he could view essences in themselves, and read forms without the comment of their respective properties [...] All those arts, rarities, and inventions, which vulgar minds gaze at, the ingenious pursue, and all admire, are but the reliques of an intellect defaced with sin and time. We admire it now, only as antiquaries do a piece of old coin, for the stamp it once bore, and not for those vanishing lineaments and disappearing draughts that remain upon it at present. And certainly that must needs have been very glorious, the decays of which are so admirable. He that is comely, when old and decrepid, surely was very beautiful when he was young. An Aristotle was but the rubbish of an Adam, and Athens but the rudiments of Paradise.
I found another instance of the idea of "fatal degeneration" in George Bull:
>I might here insist upon that admirable philosophy lecture which Adam (appointed by God Himself to that ollice) read on all the other animals. For although his theme here was a part of natural philosophy, yet his performance herein, if we look to its circum stances, cannot but be judged by every considering man to be the effect of a more than human sagacity. That, in the infinite variety of creatures, never before seen by Adam, he should be able on a sudden, without study or premeditation, to give names to each of them, so adapted and fitted to their natures, as that God Himself should approve the nomenclature, how astonishing a thing is it! What single man, among all the philosophers since the Fall, what Plato, what Aristotle etc. among the ancients, what Descartes or Gassendi among the moderns, nay, what Royal Society durst have undertaken this?
So, I was hoping to somehow circle around and connect it directly to Athens again, like Borges goes to Xenophanes for the sphere. Perhaps some Greek philosopher had a similar idea of degeneration that we could contrast against the perfect sphere... any ideas?
I tired and slightly drunk at the moment. Bumping this thread for tomorrow so I can give you a proper reply.
I love reading Braudel but deep down I agree with Charles Tilly's position on him:
"He approaches a problem by enumerating its elements, fondling its ironies, contradictions, and complexities, confronting the various theories scholars have proposed, and giving each theory its historical due. The sum of all theories, alas, is no theory."
http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/50993/219.pdf?sequence=1
If you want to read "Civilisation materielle et capitalisme", I suggest you read Giovanni Arrighi's "The Long Twentieth Century" as a companion work. He systematizes Braudel and puts him in conversation with political science sociology.
>>7587411
I've always struggled with Borges essays, but I do like some of his short stories. The former are way too erudite for my tastes.
