/lit/ - literature

Finished: Negative Space, maybe too slow and repetitive at times but overall pretty cool, some very wonkers imagery towards the end.
Next: Gravity's Rainbow, meme book but 70 pages in and so far I'm really liking it.

Very interesting dive into aristocratic French culture and African ethnology. Also, it's a biography of Talleyrand … and we get some glimpses of Bolshevik Russia.
It's all over the place, but it never feels out of place. Calasso is a brilliant essayist able to tie these threads into a compelling meta narrative. There is a narrative of sorts and it indirectly involves the author's studies. The prose is interesting from page to page and if you give the book some time and don't mind the varying topics, then this is a great read for the more experimental and culturally bougie reader.

Christian Kracht’s new novel Air. Kind of disappointed, though—mostly because I expected a different book. But the cover is cool, and maybe that’s part of the reason I was misled into thinking it would be a story with a totally different atmosphere.
Now mostly reading non-fiction: an introduction to ancient political philosophy, and a (at least in the Western hemisphere) obscure book on the history and theory of Russian monarchism. Seems to be a gem.

>>9
Thanks for the insight! It has been on my 'to read' for a while

Wow! Was /lit/ really a whopping total of 11 people? I'm not surprised.
The last book I finished was Faulkner's Flags in the Dust. I have read Sartoris, but that was probably 7 years ago, so I can't say how different they are from each other. It felt about the same to me. But man, did I forget how funny Faulkner is! The housenigger character of Simon is hilarious! Every time Simon appeared he'd make me laugh with his ornery ways and his pompous view of himself being the lead housenigger. The funniest Simon moments are when Bayard takes him on a wild ride in his roadster and Simon starts moaning "OH LAWD!" and clutchcing his lucky rabbit's paw. The other one is when the church Simon is the treasurer wants the money entrusted to him for the building of the Second Baptist Church, but he gave it to a nigger woman he wanted to screw, so gets Old Bayard mixed up paying back the money.
I'm now reading the Roman de Renart. I'm enjoying it so far, but the first few branches are really just variations on the same basic story without adding anything new. It's only after the first few that you start getting functionally new tales.

>>9
Forgot to post what I am reading next. I'm pretty swamped with work and I have no idea what to read. I thinking that I've read everything I could be interested in at this time, and that now *I* have to start writing-which never happens-but I would probably want to finish In Search of Lost Time. That's the book I always come back to, and the book I leave once I find something better to read.

>>7
last: No Longer Human
next: The Very Hungry Caterpillar
regressing for my mental health

>>25
No Longer Human was rough dude. Have you read Mars? It's the same genre

>>7
When does it get better?

>>27
Previously finished

>>27
Chapter 42: The Whiteness of the Whale

>>27
I think it already starts out pretty well. I don't have my copy with me, but whenever that niggardly nagger Ishmael is mentioned, the autism–which has left me with the mental faculties of a twelve-year-old–makes me start laughing.

I got memed into reading Paglia by that post on old /lit/. She is a bit mad, too freudian for my taste, and I disagree with a lot of it but she is intelligent and novel enough that I'm enjoying it even when I disageee

>>28
What did you think about this? I have been looking to learn more about Puyi. I read this recently and thought it was good.

>>62
The beginning dragged but it picked up at around the halfway mark.

It goes through a series of anecdotes that loosely assemble into a general picture of his life story. What stood out to me was how much of the emperor's power actually came down to internal politics.

Unlike a lot of Western-written biographies, this one didn't try to spin the main character as a certain type of person to appeal to public taste (though the part about his communist reform was whitewashed).

Whatever, by Michel Houellebecq. Its honestly not very good, I was disappointed because the movie was hillarious.

Seems like Atomized was really when he got his voice as a writer. I had a hard time even seeing it as the same guy who wrote his later work.

Dark Matter by Blake Crouch.
Took ages to get going and pissed me off. But in saying that, the twists and turns in the story were ok.

Next im going to try Robert Anton Wilson's Prometheus Rising.

Currently reading the Art Forger's handbook. Lots of information on different kinds of paper used in different periods of western art, basic DIY art restoration techniques using stuff you'd find in your kitchen, and wonderful anecdotes about how Eric Hebborn, the super-intelligent and catty gay author who's brilliance was criminally ignored by his teachers, peers, parents, and society at large, showed them all by swindling various professionals and art dealers out of millions of dollars.
Its a really fun book. Lots of rambling about the history of art and the philosophy of forgery.

Finished picrel. Even being what it is, I enjoyed it quite a bit and can see why it is considered a classic. My appetite for childlike whimsy will probably stay sated for the rest of the year.

Next: Warrior Prophet

Just finished picrel, up next the sonnets and love poems of WS.

>>127
What is this book even about? Is this a meme book?

>>130
Its a bunch of short stories which are semi-biographical, either about Honor or people she knows or about her interactions with modern life and culture. Its truly the new era of Beat Generation writing, and in many ways superior to a lot of the takes by some of the Old Beats. You can get a lot of free samples from it online, but the content shocked me for how worth it it was to buy a hardcover of for cheap off the river. I kept hearing mixed or negative reviews of it which is why I did not buy it till quite recently, but I see clearly now that the mixed/negative reviews are not a reflection of the content itself and the quality of it, but a reflection of peoples distaste or ignorance for the subjects included. It addresses very niche subjects which would be more relevant to litizens or people culturally adjacent to that than to any other group.

>>136
Nta, but could you specify what subjects the book covers overall?

>>125
Read Anne of Green Gables a long time ago. Can't remember much of it but remember it being a comfy read.

>>7
The autobiography of Donovan.

>>142
its so short and easy to read i gave a relege the other day and was glad i did since I took some low dose clonazepam the first time i read most of it. Definitely some extremely hard hitting subjects and tons of stuff painted either from Honors various perspectives at different stages of her life and how they molded her, mixed with the same kinda wrap about people she knew. The books main focus is the "culture war" and how it goes on within us just as much as it does without us. Its a very naked lunch style book in the sense that every chapter its own separate short story with some overlapping characters. I know for a fact that WSB and JK were influences on her writting style, and Kerouac was discussed briefly as having been a huge influence on the dimes square literary scene over all in the episode where Honor was featured on the RedScare podcast (for all intents and purposes a new favorite, although im not much of a podcast man, this one is a diamond in the rough)

>>228
after looking at the book even more for a reread it dawned on me that its actually written in the exact same format and writing style as Naked Lunch and even the content is similar.