Archived threads in /lit/ - Literature - 525. page
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So I've almost finished reading "Looking for Alaska" by John Green.
This book actually disgusted me.
Brief synopsis:
>be a pale, gaunt, lanky, quiet beta kid who knows the last words of a bunch of famous people
>go to boarding school
>roommate is a poorfag Chad who also quotes poetry and spends his spare time learning the capitals of the world
>first night at boarding school go sit by the lake where there's an angry security guard swan
>qt from a nearby dorm room comes to talk to the beta
>talk about some le quirky shit
>she has "hundreds" of books in her tiny dorm room
>she quotes poetry at random
>learn about the "Weekend Warriors", a group of wealthy jocks who also attend the school
>first night the WWs try and drown the betafag thinking his roommate had two kids expelled
>roommate gets pissed and plans an epic prank on them in revenge
>le quirky Alaska tells betafag that her friend Lara from Eastern Europe likes him
>betafag goes on a group date to a basketball game
>basketball hits his face and he vomits on Lara
>le epic payback prank takes place
>betafag, poorchad, Lara, le quirky Alaska and an Asian guy who raps all the time go camp in a nearby barn
>Asian rapper and betafag light firecrackers to lure the dean from his home
>poorchad and Alaska "hack" the school database and send fake negative progress reports to the parents of the WWs
>Lara sneaks into the rooms of the WWs and puts blue hair dye in their hairgel and shampoo
>betafag gets bitten by the swan when escaping
>back at the barn they get drunk and have a rap battle
>Lara makes out with betafag
>soon after Lara asks betafag if she can give him a blowie joey
>she doesn't know what to do and asks if she should bite
>betafag says they should ask Alaska, who shows them using a tube of toothpaste
>they get drunk again soon after in Alaska's room
>they play truth and dare
>Alaska dares betafag to make out with her
>she goes insane and cries and crashes her car while drunk
>poorchad and betafag try and discover the "mystery" of how and why she died
It's absolute garbage-tier stuff. It's mostly quirky humour interrupted every couple of pages by some hyperactive out-of-place "profound" passage written in a style that is obviously borrowed from DFW with the long sentences and the "not-quite-nights" and the use of several adjectives in the same sentence (e.g. "I had never felt so sad and confused and really-not-that-good and weird at the same time....").
But the idea that we are supposed to pity or identify with the protagonist is just repulsive. He mocks everyone around him for being dull, or popular, or athletic etc, often in a faux-Holden voice. Lara, his Romanian gf, barely says anything and just exists as this shy childlike girl who crushes hard on him despite barely ever talking to him. Alaska also falls for him somehow and when she dies he wonders whether she an hero'd because she liked him too much and felt bad for her bf.
Also the humour is sometimes clever or witty but sometimes it's so jarring and pathetic that it really is offputting. In the week after Alaska dies betafag and poorchad go between dry heaving in the showers and lying on the floor crying and making meatloaf-related puns and cracking "your mom"-tier jokes as if nothing had happened. It's such a formulate book populated by 2D characters who all have their own "thing" (Asian guy raps, Alaska drinks and reads, betafag quotes last words, Lara talks like zees about her being so foreign, etc). It's a bad book. Absolutely disgusting.
>>8019816
This is why kids take depression meds nowadays. Hell, after reading your synopsis I want some
Anyone here read any Solzhenitsyn?
Anything in particular recommended by him?
>>8019810
M E M E S
E
M
E
S
>>8019810
Most of his work is a crock of solzhenit
https://discord.gg/01016TZPAPULU3VTh somebody here would like to discuss Solzhenitsyn with you
Rate/critique thread
You guys written anything new?
OC I wrote last year during a pretty lonely period of my life, I was care taking at my grandmothers who lives on a steep hill overlooking the city in practical isolation
>>8019725
the mew of cats releases hurricane
the villages darkness mars the horizon
heat haze is eddying over dead lamps
and in the mid of day she doesn't smoke
guess reverting your poem i made it have just as much sense :^)
>>8019725
>dusk of night
Please fuck me anon so that I can conceive your babies and then abort them for the benefit of humanity.
damn this silly english stressings, the second line should be
the village darkness the horizon mars
Hey /lit/, was just wondering what people thought of the sequel to "Ender's Game", "The Speaker For the Dead". I've read it recently and I gotta say I thought it was damn good. I'm thinking I might even like it more than the original. Thoughts?
Yeah, it was way more interesting to read about human interstellar xenocolonialism than Ender's childhood.
literally /v/ - the book
Card wrote Sender's Game so that this book will be better able to understand. He actually had the idea for Speaker of the Dead first.
>jew: hey Semitic pagan remember that HISTORICAL EVENT that your pagan god made happen? yeah well it was my god yahweh that made it happen so you should totally join my updated form of worship for the same god
>>8019555
>People follow the phony sequel.
what's your sauce for this
I'm interested
>>8019555
that lookout giraffe is adorable, the foremost one, that one who checks the water for reefs
When is the warosu archive coming back? Please don't tell me it's gone forever. Six years of content going down the drain would be shitty as fuck.
make 4chan great again
let the archives die
I've been wanting this ever since this shit started
>frog posters
I thought it was back? Is it down again?
I have 35 days to kill.
Recommend something to read.
>>8019419
What do you have to kill and why do you need to do it within 35 days?
>>8019424
To kill something that lives or else I will be killed. "It's a game and as the great Bierce said 'nothing matters,' thus killing is okay" as master would say. "My name is master," said master.
>>8019424
It's a figure of speech?
I have 35 days of nothing to do and no money. Planning on reading my way through it.
does anybody have a simaler guide for the romans after one is finished wit the greeks?
I plan on starting with a general history of the republic, then one of the empire, then the aenid, and from there, I need your help.
Ive read meditations and encheridion, but I plan on re reading them in the correct order of other roman literature.
Thanks guys. Yove started me on a great journey here with the greeks, just did the guide and some Descartes, after rome I plan on reading medieval theology, then enlightenment literature, then nihilistic literature, then economic theory, then postmodernism.
if only there were sticky or something, huh?
>>8019362
I never actually looked at it.
Couldn't thank you enough
>>8019258
I definitely think an intro Greek mythology book is a nice place to start with the Greeks. Mythology is what brought me to the sacred Greeks in the first place. It looks like a solid list.
I read an interview in relation to the premiere of the sixth season of the show where some literature graybeard was talking about how the books were great fun, if not exemplars of high literature.
Now, there is an age-old debate underscoring this issue among literature students around the world. Why do adherents of literature as art scoff at the average bestseller? Now, I'm no liberal revolutionary when it comes to this subject. There are many excellent reasons for drawing lines of differentiation between the likes of Joyce and the RL James (Or whatever the 50 shades writer's name is).
However, getting to ASOIAF:
I've read all of the books twice, and still there are details that go completely over my head (I'm a literature student myself, whatever credibility that fact in and of itself might lend me). The prose is admittedly not the series's strong point, but isn't prose ultimately the mere trappings of a story?
The scope of the narrative and the amount of details that have been smushed into the work is often staggering.
Being an aspiring writer myself, (I am a far, far better critic than a writer, no delusions of grandeur here) I would consider it nearly as daunting to try and emulate Martin's asoiaf as I would Joyce's Ulysses. For wildly different reasons, of course, but still. Although Martin's prose is almost laughably riddled with cliche he has a fine eye for pacing and story structure.
Well, I'm short on time so I won't be able to flesh out my argument any more. If the subject turns out to be interesting I'm sure many of you will be able to offset that with reflections of your own.
I'll be interested to know what you think.
>>8019219
Scoffing at bestsellers is legit because quantity of books sold does not reflect on the quality of the writing or its contribution to humanity or any qualities of art outside of entertainment or self gratification. The second thing is, and this is something fantasy nerds obsess about, is that the quantity and detail of a story don't reflect anything but gratuitous quantity and detail. The idea of "world building" that aspiring fantasy writers fawn over is a non-factor in what traditionally makes good literature. World building is exactly what the tired axiom of "show don't tell" is telling writers to avoid. Gratuitous details and character descriptions, and descriptions of politics which may or may not be analogous to our own in the real world. It's all so trite.
Good literature doesn't draw the reader in to be entertained, it draws the reader into be challenged. To challenge their worldviews, to challenge their ideas, to give voice to the dilemmas the reader faces everyday, to maybe make sense of world that can be confusing at times.
GoT on the other hand, works as well as a TV show as it does as a book. It tells a story to entertain viewers without them having to invest anything emotionally beyond their likes and dislikes for the characters.
>>8019262
>Good literature doesn't draw the reader in to be entertained
Except with the exception of one or two examples like Finnegans Wake, the entire history of good literature drew people in to be entertained.
>>8019276
>Finnegans Wake
>good literature
Hi, /lit/. I'm planning on reading IJ next month and I've been told by people here that if I wanted to read DFW's essays (which I do), I should read them before IJ. So, my question is: Which one should I read first? Supposedly Fun Thing or the Lobsters?
>>8019186
Thanks.
I'm hoping someone can help me remember the name of this book I read some years ago.
The most memorable things are:
>Set in a magic school
>MC is talented
>One kid suddenly gits gud at school and keeps antagonising MC
>MC and him end up fighting
>MC however is a sociopathic, murderous fuck who was planning on killing him anyway and set up a trap months in advance
>Turns out the other kid was able to time travel (either 24 hours or death I think?) and thus used it to get good at school; hated MC because he was naturally talented
>So now he's stuck in a endless time loop of getting trapped in his room and burning to death meanwhile MC goes on to have a successful life
Some of that might be made up, this was like 5 years ago. There were sequels coming that I never read because they weren't out yet and that is why I want to rediscover this series again. There was a lot of promising political background that wasn't expanded on and I'm sure it was coming soon in the next book.
Please help. Pic unrelated.
>>8019136
Your picture looks infinitely more enjoyable than whatever the fuck that book is.
>>8019154
Shogun 2: fall of the samurai.
It was pretty beast calling in naval artillery bombardments from a ship parked off the coast into your land battle.
You're thinking of infinite jest
Do you have any strange reading habits/rules?
For example, I only read authors whose names rhyme with "millionaire."
>>8019131
Your thread is uninteresting.
>>8019131
I only read jew authors
Maybe not strange but I only read paperbacks, I even have a paperback with 2300 pages. I don't like the feel of hardcovers.
I don't read translations, so I'm learning Ancient Greek, Latin, Spanish, and Italian (might learn Russian too).
I don't use bookmarks. I don't like it when something is inside my book.
What are your most enjoyable experiences with literary novels? I've been in a funk lately, looking to switch up my reading
Pic related was actually a really fun read (so many great sentences and instances of wordplay)
>wordplay
Fuckoff peasant
>>8019097
but he is right?
Read Nabokov
Just started reading this, and it's really fascinating. I know I'm late on the ball on this but I'd heard it was going to be a tv show soon and I wanted to get the jump on it beforehand
>whore swallows a man with her vagina
You have my attention.
Also this is the first time I've read anything by Neil Gaiman, which from what I understand is an absolute tragedy.
>>8019024
Not on this board, people tend to reserve his work to Reddit.
I actually did enjoy this book too, though.
People shit on gaiman here a lot, not entirely undeservedly, but I'll always like this book for name dropping Gravitys rainbow, causing me to go buy it while under the impression that it was a science fiction book of some sort.
His sandman comics are better than any books he's written. Stardust is the only book he's written that I really liked.
He's a good writer that /lit/ doesn't like because he's fairly accessible.
sup /lit/
here's a list of books i will never read
Ur so kool!
>>8018937
>being this triggered someone doesn't like his favorite meme novel
Here's a list of fucks I give:
![maxresdefault[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/OLAhl33.jpg "maxresdefault[1]")
