Thank you.
Thank you.
Would you appreciate a story with faeries in it?
Last edited by Socionics Is A Cult; 09-30-2008 at 07:28 PM.
maybe a saint is just a dead prick with a good publicist
maybe tommorow's statues are insecure without their foes
go ask the frog what the scorpion knows
the psychogenesis of homosexuality, by a fag like yourself.
My favourite book of recent years is this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonatha...e_&_Mr_Norrell
But seeing as I can't get my brother to read it, I don't think you would. It's too long a book, apparently).
It won the Hugo Prize, which might suggest how good it is (I know Stranger In A Strange Land won it too, and I really liked that book).
Anything by Haruki Murakami. He is a genius. My favorite thus far is Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. Another I would recommend would be Narcissus and Goldmund by Herman Hesse. As far as older, more famous stuff goes, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley is one of my favorites.
But, for a certainty, back then,
We loved so many, yet hated so much,
We hurt others and were hurt ourselves...
Yet even then, we ran like the wind,
Whilst our laughter echoed,
Under cerulean skies...
My sister recommended Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell to me, but I got bored about 100 pages into it.
But, for a certainty, back then,
We loved so many, yet hated so much,
We hurt others and were hurt ourselves...
Yet even then, we ran like the wind,
Whilst our laughter echoed,
Under cerulean skies...
Don Quijote
atlas shrugged
Hamlet
Crime and punishment
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The stranger
One Thousand and One Nights
The Legion of the Damned
sas survival handbook: how to survive in the wild, in any climate, on land or at sea
A brief history of time
The bible
I will not aim for the head.
!!! (Identicals 4eva)
Haruki Murakami x 1000! - But my favourites are The Wind-up Bird Chronicles and Kafka on the Shore. Norweigan Wood is sweet though.
I'm currently reading the Glass Bead Game, which was the magnum opus of Herman Hesse.
For some amazing short stories, try Jorge Luis Borges. Labyrinths is a good anthology of his work. He's an Argentinian writer in the style of Franz Kafka (Murakami is quite Kafka-esque as well) - so if you haven't picked him up before, do read Kafka's The Trial.
Um, I would also recommend Albert Camus generally, Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, Gogol's Dead Souls and Ismail Kadare's Broken April.
And more! But that's a good start.
OH! And of course, Milan Kundera's Unbearable Lightness of Being which features in my signature.
Ack, I can't stop myself - some more: Paul Aster's New York Trilogy, (I know everyone says this, but you really ought to read it) James Joyce Ulysses, the real Homeric epics of Iliad and Odyssey (a Latin scholar might stab me for this, but): Robert Fagles did a recent translation in verse that is very beautiful to read, although if you want prose, there's always Samuel Butler. Eh, this isn't 'literature' per se, but you can't go past The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides for some good old fashioned real-politik diplomacy and killing, pillaging and burning.
Ok, I'm stopping...now.
Last edited by unefille; 10-01-2008 at 12:27 AM.
()
3w4-1w2-5w4 sx/sp
Gogol is great. I wonder what type he'd be?
“Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lust, like diamonds we are cut with our own dust.”
Originally Posted by Gilly
Last edited by Drommel; 10-01-2008 at 01:49 AM.
“Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lust, like diamonds we are cut with our own dust.”
Originally Posted by Gilly
Yeah, agreed. I think it was almost like he had these 'tricks' that were so perfectly deployed in Unbearable Lightness, because he married them with meaning and great characters. His other works, it just felt like 'tricks' (aesthetic hooks) and nothing else. I read The Book of Laughter and Forgetting thinking: Ok, seen this before, show me something new...
()
3w4-1w2-5w4 sx/sp
I'm readng Wind Up Bird right now. Kafka on the Shore was good, but IMO not as good as Wonderland.
I didn't know of any of Hesse's other books...I will have to check this out.I'm currently reading the Glass Bead Game, which was the magnum opus of Herman Hesse.
*vomit*James Joyce Ulysses
James Joyce is so boring, IMO.
But, for a certainty, back then,
We loved so many, yet hated so much,
We hurt others and were hurt ourselves...
Yet even then, we ran like the wind,
Whilst our laughter echoed,
Under cerulean skies...
Maybe Marguerite Yourcenar's Memoirs of Hadrian.
, LIE, ENTj logical subtype, 8w9 sx/sp
Originally Posted by implied
As for exoteric, I would NOT recomment Paulo Coelho's books, who's a fraud and charlatan, besides being a ridiculously poor writer.
, LIE, ENTj logical subtype, 8w9 sx/sp
Originally Posted by implied
Stranger in a Strange Land is one of my favorites, although it's incredibly campy in some ways.
Samuel R. Delaney is an awesome writer. The longer his books are, the better they are. Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand is pretty good, but my favorite is Dhalgren.
Other SciFi books that I think will become classics include Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game and Phillip Jose Farmer's Image of the Beast (be careful of the latter one; it was originally banned because it's semipornographic). David Palmer's Emergence is a little-known book that I find extremely awesome - I just read it for the third time and finally its prose still didn't slow down my reading speed.
Classics:
Crime and Punishment I hated when I read for school, but for some reason went back on my own and loved it.
Dead Souls was darkly entertaining (I actually listened to this on audiobook instead of reading).
The Metamorphosis is overrated (IMO, of course).
The Unbearable Lightness of Being was OK, but I got that same feeling from trying to read a second book of his as unefille: more of the same ... and frankly, it kind of dimmed the experience of the first.
For some Joyce that isn't boring, try Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
Dylan Thomas's Under Milkwood or Quite Early One Morning are similar but a little more poetic than stream of consciousness.
I wish everyone would read Walden by Thoreau. It's practically a cliche, but it persists in the zeitgeist because it's actually that good.
Huxley's Brave New World was OK - kinda campy like Stranger ... in that the supposedly futuristic mindsets are by now outmoded, but still with a relevant message.
For something truly outrageous, read Walden Two by B.F. Skinner. I'm pretty sure he was serious about his ideas, but it reads more like satire (especially in this day and age, after several communes were formed around his ideas and all inevitably adapted away or failed miserably).
Oh, and Herman Hesse can get a little overbearing to me. I've tried Steppenwolfe and a couple others and couldn't maintain momentum. But his Siddhartha is a classic, and is quick and easy reading without feeling like it's "Hesse Lite."
Nonfic:
For something really esoteric, try The Web that Has No Weaver by Ted Kaptchuck. It's about Traditional Chinese Medicine, but I actually found it an engaging read.
SLIOriginally Posted by Charles Bukowski
*makes notes*
Thanks, everyone. Keep 'em coming. Thanks for the huge list, AnnAu.
Ahahaha, when I worked at a bookstore a hyper-Christian family came in going on and on about those books. The mother said he was better than C.S. Lewis, and the daughter (circa 10 years of age) said that the book The Alchemist made her cry for joy. A TEN YEAR OLD could not POSSIBLY have the emotional maturity or experience necessary to be touched that deeply or express it in that manner. The amount of psychological conditioning forced on fundamentalist Christian children makes me sick.
But, for a certainty, back then,
We loved so many, yet hated so much,
We hurt others and were hurt ourselves...
Yet even then, we ran like the wind,
Whilst our laughter echoed,
Under cerulean skies...
"With regard to adding annotations at the end of the book, you may safely
do it in this way. If you mention any giant in your book contrive that it
shall be the giant Goliath, and with this alone, which will cost you
almost nothing, you have a grand note, for you can put--The giant Golias
or Goliath was a Philistine whom the shepherd David slew by a mighty
stone-cast in the Terebinth valley, as is related in the Book of
Kings--in the chapter where you find it written.
"Next, to prove yourself a man of erudition in polite literature and
cosmography, manage that the river Tagus shall be named in your story,
and there you are at once with another famous annotation, setting
forth--The river Tagus was so called after a King of Spain: it has its
source in such and such a place and falls into the ocean, kissing the
walls of the famous city of Lisbon, and it is a common belief that it has
golden sands, etc. If you should have anything to do with robbers, I will
give you the story of Cacus, for I have it by heart; if with loose women,
there is the Bishop of Mondonedo, who will give you the loan of Lamia,
Laida, and Flora, any reference to whom will bring you great credit; if
with hard-hearted ones, Ovid will furnish you with Medea; if with witches
or enchantresses, Homer has Calypso, and Virgil Circe; if with valiant
captains, Julius Caesar himself will lend you himself in his own
'Commentaries,' and Plutarch will give you a thousand Alexanders. If you
should deal with love, with two ounces you may know of Tuscan you can go
to Leon the Hebrew, who will supply you to your heart's content; or if
you should not care to go to foreign countries you have at home Fonseca's
'Of the Love of God,' in which is condensed all that you or the most
imaginative mind can want on the subject. In short, all you have to do is
to manage to quote these names, or refer to these stories I have
mentioned, and leave it to me to insert the annotations and quotations,
and I swear by all that's good to fill your margins and use up four
sheets at the end of the book.
I will not aim for the head.
Perhaps, but I really, really doubt it, personally, especially in this case. The way she talked about it was just...not right somehow.
And they had that eye thing going on that I talked about in my thread about Pallie.
*shudder*
But, for a certainty, back then,
We loved so many, yet hated so much,
We hurt others and were hurt ourselves...
Yet even then, we ran like the wind,
Whilst our laughter echoed,
Under cerulean skies...
You really think so? A third/fourth grader?
But, for a certainty, back then,
We loved so many, yet hated so much,
We hurt others and were hurt ourselves...
Yet even then, we ran like the wind,
Whilst our laughter echoed,
Under cerulean skies...
Intellectual capacity and emotional maturity/experience are entirely different things.
But, for a certainty, back then,
We loved so many, yet hated so much,
We hurt others and were hurt ourselves...
Yet even then, we ran like the wind,
Whilst our laughter echoed,
Under cerulean skies...
ten year olds are more able then we give them credit for. I know kids at that age some 60-100 years ago they were sent out in to the forest and survived on their own. Once a week they would get food from their mothers
I will not aim for the head.
Again pretty much entirely unrelated to the point I'm trying to make...
But, for a certainty, back then,
We loved so many, yet hated so much,
We hurt others and were hurt ourselves...
Yet even then, we ran like the wind,
Whilst our laughter echoed,
Under cerulean skies...
same time post
But, for a certainty, back then,
We loved so many, yet hated so much,
We hurt others and were hurt ourselves...
Yet even then, we ran like the wind,
Whilst our laughter echoed,
Under cerulean skies...
I'm sure they're out there, but the odds that this was one of them appears to be rather slim. The fact that religious fundamentalists condition their children's emotional responses with regards to their religious beliefs beginning at an early age only strengthens my suspicion.
But, for a certainty, back then,
We loved so many, yet hated so much,
We hurt others and were hurt ourselves...
Yet even then, we ran like the wind,
Whilst our laughter echoed,
Under cerulean skies...
I have to agree with Gilly. The ability to read and comprehend is divorced, to a large extent, to the emotional and cultural understanding necessary to really get texts. This is not a question of 'brightness' in anyway. A bright kid might read Tolstoy at 10 and understand the *story*, again 14 and understand the *emotional landscape* and only at 17 really understand the philosophical argument being made. A lot of authors embed their meanings in opposition to previous floating modes of thinking, ideas and arguments. No matter how brilliant, you only grasp half of what they are trying to convey by reading the positive statements they are making, without knowledge of the implicit negative statements. You can still discuss the text intelligently, but your understanding is inevitably not as nuanced as it could be. And most children at 10 simply haven't got the broad range of intellectual, cultural, emotional etc exposure necessary.
BUT I have to disagree with Gilly on Joyce. Reading him isn't so much interesting, as his sense of plot only functions on the very microscopic level and then the very macro level, it's more...rewarding. It's...immersion within a text, an experience of dislocation and ineluctable flow. And then you go back and look at the INSANE schemes he came up with, including various organs, colours etc for each chapter and you laugh. And you say: wow, the modernists were some crazy kids. And then you open Finnegan's Wake and chuckle nervously...
()
3w4-1w2-5w4 sx/sp