Archived threads in /lit/ - Literature - 13. page
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What do you think of the series Forgotten Books?
I've seen their books of amazon but I never bought any. It looks like they also make them available for download on their website.
Actually looks pretty interesting. Makes you wonder why they are forgotten.
>>8284920
It's probably because they suck.
>>8284920
Most old books are forgotten.
My favourite:
>Thus, as 'Morgoth', when Melkor was confronted by the existence of other inhabitants of Arda, with other wills and intelligences, he was enraged by the mere fact of their existence, and his only notion of dealing with them was by physical force, or the fear of it. His sole ultimate object was their destruction. Elves, and still more Men, he despised because of their 'weakness': that is their lack of physical force, or power over 'matter'; but he was also afraid of them. He was aware, at any rate originally when still capable of rational thought, that he could not 'annihilate' them: that is, destroy their being; but their physical 'life', and incarnate form became increasingly to his mind the only thing that was worth considering. Or he became so far advanced in Lying that he lied even to himself, and pretended that he could destroy them and rid Arda of them altogether. Hence his endeavour always to break wills and subordinate them to or absorb them into his own will and being, before destroying their bodies. This was sheer nihilism, and negation its one ultimate object: Morgoth would no doubt, if he had been victorious, have ultimately destroyed even his own 'creatures', such as the Orcs, when they had served his sole purpose in using them: the destruction of Elves and Men. Melkor's final impotence and despair lay in this: that whereas the Valar (and in their degree Elves and Men) could still love 'Arda Marred', that is Arda with a Melkor-ingredient, and could still heal this or that hurt, or produce from its very marring, from its state as it was, things beautiful and lovely, Melkor could do nothing with Arda, which was not from his own mind and was interwoven with the work and thoughts of others: even left alone he could only have gone raging on till all was levelled again into a formless chaos. And yet even so he would have been defeated, because it would still have 'existed', independent of his own mind, and a world in potential.
1/2
2/2
>Sauron had never reached this stage of nihilistic madness. He did not object to the existence of the world, so long as he could do what he liked with it. He still had the relics of positive purposes, that descended from the good of the nature in which he began: it had been his virtue (and therefore also the cause of his fall, and of his relapse) that he loved order and coordination, and disliked all confusion and wasteful friction. (It was the apparent will and power of Melkor to effect his designs quickly and masterfully that had first attracted Sauron to him.) Sauron had, in fact, been very like Saruman, and so still understood him quickly and could guess what he would be likely to think and do, even without the aid of palantiri or of spies; whereas Gandalf eluded and puzzled him. But like all minds of this cast, Sauron's love (originally) or (later) mere understanding of other individual intelligences was correspondingly weaker; and though the only real good in, or rational motive for, all this ordering and planning and organization was the good of all inhabitants of Arda (even admitting Sauron's right to be their supreme lord), his 'plans', the idea coming from his own isolated mind, became the sole object of his will, and an end, the End, in itself.
Faramir and Samwise have the best quotes.
>And Morgoth came.
ITT: we post the HONEST list of our top 10 favorite books. (so don't include obscure russian writers just because you think it makes you look smart, it doesn't).
Here's my top 10 in no particular order:
1. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince - J.K.Rowling
2. Stoner - John Williams
3. The Black Company - Glenn Cook
4. Assassin's Apprentice (the whole trilogy) - Robin Hobb
5. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
6. Game of Thrones - G.R.R.M
7. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - J.K.Rowling
8. The End of Faith - Sam Harris
9. Malazan Book of the Fallen - Steven Erikson
10. The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway
Nice bait.
>>8284173
Why is this bait? This is my honest top 10 books, i.e the top 10 books I enjoyed reading the most.
I don't fucking know
Also the problem with these lists is that it assumes the standpoint of the novel; most of my favourite writers are lyric poets who don't have a "book" to read per-se.
If you are looking for contemporary, Christian, literary fiction, look no further. This book was written by an academic scholar of the Medieval, and takes place in Medieval Russia (among other times). The author is right up there with McCarthy, Gass and Krasznahorkai.
It was written in 2013, but only translated in 2015. The book uses Church Slavonic for quotes of the Bible and Liturgy, and to convey that, the English translation uses Middle English (which standardized middle English spelling, as you see with contemporary editions of Chaucer in Middle English) for Church Slavonic passages.
This is truly a beautiful book, here is from a review by the American Conservative
>What kind of novel makes you want to enter into contemplative prayer after reading from its pages? I’ve never heard of one. But Laurus is that kind of novel. It induces an awareness of the radical enchantment of the world, and of the grandeur of the soul’s journey through this life toward God. It is so strange and mystical and … well, to call a novel “holy” is too much, but Laurus conjures on every page an awareness of holiness that is without precedence in my experience as a reader. Holiness illuminates this novel like an icon lamp.
>By saying that, I fear that I will make the novel sound pious and devotional. It very much is not. This is an earthy novel, filled with the sounds, smells, violence, superstition, and fanaticism of the Middle Ages. The achievement of Vodolazkin, who is a medieval historian by vocation, is to make this faraway world come vividly to life, and to saturate it with mystical Orthodox Christianity, such that even the leaves of the trees are enchanted. Most Americans who read Laurus will take it as a work with a strong current of magical realism; the handful of us American readers who worship in the Eastern Christian tradition will recognize it as simply Orthodoxy, where the border between wonder-working and everyday life is porous.
I don't want to spoil the book for those who haven't read it, I'll only say it is the journey of a man from a grave sinner to becoming holy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XP0J2eDPIjU
Prose sample
>>8283524
>up there with YeCarthy
Go suck on a pirozhok, tovarish.
>>8283538
I'm not Russian
Anyone know any good youtube philosophy channels?
Only shit I could find is either
>people recording themselves with 240p webcams,
>john green's faggot brother,
>that 'pop' philosophy crap (School of Life & 8-bit Philosophy - though not excluding John Green) and the only redeeming youtuber;
>Eric Dodson https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCr8ziBzqZlGAvv4krfAAORQ
any other good video resources to get en/lit/ened?
>>8283354
read an actual book you mong
>>8283357
Currently doing a thorough read of TBK
just want something to watch while I masturbate anon
If fun is allowed look up 3 minute philosophy, it's an aussie guy summaries philosophers with MS paint. Better than it sounds like.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwOCmJevigw (on Kant)
Previously: >>8278045
Recommendations:
>Fantasy
Selected: http://i.imgur.com/r688cPe.jpg/
General: http://i.imgur.com/igBYngL.jpg/
Flowchart: http://i.imgur.com/uykqKJn.jpg/
>Sci-Fi
Selected: http://i.imgur.com/A96mTQX.jpg/
General: http://i.imgur.com/r55ODlL.jpg/ http://i.imgur.com/gNTrDmc.jpg/
Who #TeamConsult here?
>>8283017
Someone needs to make an inchoroi smug pepe
>>8283010
Is Childhood's End any good?
What is some genuine tumblr-core literature that you guys have read?
I'm trying to get a feel for the mindset so that I may hopefully court one of these girls.
>>8282725
Don't you think it's rather shallow to want to court an arbitrary girl from a very specific demographic that you know absolutely nothing about?
>>8282743
Do you really think I give a shit
I read taipei and I guess infinite jest would impress most of those girls. Be yourself though, act like you're casually and subtly smarter than that type of fiction. You read pynchon and joyce and faulkner and mccarthy, but you also read spiotta and didion and oates and joy williams-why?-because you're smart and open minded and well read, a real smooth modern intellectual.
It's that time again.
>>8282891
'Fraid so.
So is this the new Stoner?
I find it incredible that some book no one outside of hungry and quality literary circles have hear of for 30 something years suddenly becomes "one of the best reads of 2015"
I have seen it in the library once.
I don't know why it's significant.
How is the english translation btw?
I read it and it was pretty good
I always scroll past this and see the Trystero horn on the cover. Too bad it's not a Lot 49 spinoff.
Maybe I'll write one.
Discuss
it good
A purely Orwellian novel. Eerily similar to the world we live in. A must have in any free thinker's arsenal.
The most awful book that comes to your mind.
Kapow! by Adam Thirwell
>lol you're MEANT to find it physically uncomfortable and distracting, it relates to my setting of the arab spring!
Catching fire
Just awful, even as YA novel. I couldn't bring myself to finish it even despite its short length.
the weird frontier between post irony and new sincerity are these drug addicts the saviors of literature?
>are
DFW is dead tho
stop posting these threads you fucking faggot
>>8289433
answer me and i'll stop
Should I experiment with hard drugs and battle with addiction and substance abuse for many years before being pulled off the streets by a charity worker, where I later spend a year in a halfway house beating my addiction and picking up the pieces of my broken life/relationships with family and friends in order to develop my character that can be portrayed in my masterpiece?
Do you hate yourself enough to actually do that?
No, just live more.
do it
make sure you experiment with psychedelics too
i went nuts because of them
now i always feel that the walls are breathing
What does /lit/ think of him? Is his fiction worth reading?
>>8289185
I liked that series he did for BBC on art.
Someone link me please
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pDE4VX_9Kk
>>8289210
thank you
Can philosophy have an actual, quantifiable effect upon one's mental health? Take Nietzsche, for example: Did his philosophy drive him, at least in part, mad? Or was his madness completely unrelated? That is, nothing more than a likelihood as a consequence of his father's own madness, that sadly came to fruition.
Or can it even a physical impact on the brain, for example?
>>8289180
>Or can it even a physical impact on the brain, for example?
Yeah, if you're any kind of Marxist/SJW, then chances are a blunt object will make a very impact on your brain, and by mine own hand no less.
>>8289180
>Did his philosophy drive him, at least in part, mad? Or was his madness completely unrelated?
Probably the latter, though I do find it interesting how unexplored the relationship is between philosophy and mental health.
