Are they well written for children's/YA books?
I haven't read them since I was a baby
>>8426273
Why don't you read them and tell us?
They're not well written at all frankly. Even Roald Dahl and Dr. Seuss is way superior.
>>8426291
>even
What do you mean?
How can I be more like this guy?
narcissism and ecstasy
>>8426234
Can you unpack that for me?
>>8426230
start by convincing yourself that you're much more insightful than you really are, then convince several thousand other people and you're pretty much there.
Fuck my life.
What's your motivation, /lit/?
What makes you lose your fear of death?
>Pic unrelated
>>8426141
> fear of death
The plebbiest of existential problems.
I'm not afraid of dying
Anytime will do
yeah op death isnt that much of a big deal
is life what scares me
Any spooky books that read YOU?
>pic unrelated
Nietzsche - The Ego and his Own
>>8426131
If On A Winter's Night A Traveller
Why should we read this man? Aren't all his theories bunk?
Freud = fraud
>Aren't all his theories bunk?
Yes, but they are still influential in some circles.
>>8426130
Elaborate
Before anything let me say that english isn't my 1st language, so this will probably be filled with mistakes but I think this is the best place to talk about this subject so here we go
I want to know, in your opinion, what makes a decent discussion about books? I mean, what kind of points really matter when talking (or writting) about a work?
See, imho, talking about the story should be a small part of what makes a good digest, I like when the focus is more on personal views about certains aspects of the work, like character/world/atmosphere building and points of irony/contradiction that deserves attention, so is talking about the style/form of the writting. Quoting good/bad passages and talking about why you think they are good/bad is also a must but how important is to talk about how influential the author is, or how he was influenced? This seens like the kind of information that shouldn't really be the focus in most cases, because these, most of the time, will be just copy-paste of wikipedia or a teacher's class.
I hope I'm being clear, basically I want to know what makes you to like a review? Objective information or subjective analysis? What elements are a must so a review isn't considered inane/vapid?
I like it when it's a pop up book
I like it when the context of the book is included in discussion. I read Madame Bovary recently and apparently missed a lot of commentary on the French middle class of the time period. It's cool to find out what the author is making note of within the context of his or her own time period.
come on /lit/, lets talk about book for once
Apparently it's a common thing for readers to lie and say they've read books they haven't read, but does anyone lie and say they've never read books they have read?
I do this a lot because I'm pretty stupid and don't know how to get original ideas from books and stuff, so I always embarass myself when I talk about books because I don't know how to discuss them and sometimes I get things wrong and it seems like everyone is 10 times better at discussing books than me.
It's more preferable that I just say I haven't read a certain book and have them think me a simple pleb than if I say I have read the book, talk about it like an idiot, and then they think I'm a try-hard pseud.
>>8426077
>it seems like everyone is 10 times better at discussing books than me.
Where the fuck do you live? Because I want to move there.
>>8426371
Lol this
Either he lives in some bored Icelandic village with great education or is an honest guy surrounded by posturing pseuds
>>8426412
>honest guy surrounded by posturing pseuds
Could be a good sitcom if the guy doesn't have a clue everyone is a pseud and really tries to become an intellectual until he actually succeeds and realises
has anyone read this yet? I put it on my syllabus for my ind. study this fall.
>Whitehead
>is a nigger
>>8426049
Looks interesting, an instance of American magical realism it might be called
Whitehead seems like he could be the next coming of You-Know-Who, given his balance of fiction and non- along with his melancholy streak
Has anyone have read "The Complete Manual of Suicide" in english translation? I'm curious about this book but I can not find it anywhere.
Probably the most /lit/ book since Infinite Just
>>8425964
It's just a list of suicide methods with various ratings for things like pain and lethality.
>>8425982
I know it's nothing special but I find it intresting and I want to read it. Just looking for tranlated pdf version of it.
Why are there so few authors of note?
For postmodernism in America there was only Pynchon, Gaddis, Foster Wallace. Then lesser (crummy) ones like Delillo. If i'm being generous there are 9 postmodern American authors total, most of them shit. Why are there so few?
always report the frog
you are an absolute retard who only listens to what people on 4chan say. get out of your bubble and explore literature in a more complex way. many of the most interesting and idiosyncratic authors are those that almost nobody knows or talks about.
>>8425960
What about Gass? Cohen? Ashbery? You're missing quite a few buddy
Have you read any Calvino?
I've recently finished Invisible Cities and the Complete Cosmicomics. I'm reading some other stuff before reading If on a Winter's Night a Traveller because although I love his work so far his style is something which I need a break from.
Anyway, have you any particular favourite city from IC or a favourite story from Cosmicomics? Any views on some meanings or anything like that? I'm just interested in discussing this guy.
>>8425947
My absolute favorite part from IC isn't a city description, but rather when Kublai accosts Marco Polo for making up these cities because he knows that his own empire is diseased and crumbling. Something about those few lines just break my heart.
But in terms of the cities, the one where a few small events are repeated or the one that never changes because people go there to resemble certain trifles are both favorites
>>8425947
>favourite story from Cosmicomics
The spacesigns made me laugh out loud
Overdue for refresh of Invis Cities, but the mirror-dead city was the most striking
>>8425947
Baron in the Trees is fucking fantastic, one of my favorite books for sure, be sure to check it out.
John Green did not make a single appearance among the finalists for the /lit/ banner. I'm disappointed in you people.Pynchon's mouth should have won.
I almost bought a pass just for this. Honestly surprised there wasn't one of John Green eating breakfast
>>8425813
I wish I had the photoshop skills or I would have made something like that. Or maybe something simple like "I was drizzle and she was a hurricane" written out with this DFW on the side.
I have been living for over a month in a cabin on the outskirts of Haugesund passed down to my family by my now-deceased grandparents. At first I spent most of my time reading, and then I started to write a novel which I still plan to complete at some point. I have also, as some of you may know, fallen in love with a beautiful and intelligent girl who is at this very moment shopping for tennis rackets in town. Two nights ago, afflicted by a Dostoevskian sense of anomie and despair, I left my cabin late at night and walked through an intense rainstorm through the dark hills nearby, pleading with some powerful force to unburden me from the weight of my intellect and self-awareness, which has lately become so burdensome that I am struggling to appreciate anything in life as compensatory for the suffering and struggle that my sensitivity and heightened state of consciousness imposes.. Little did I expect that my pleading, my prayers even, would be answered. I had reached the summit of a craggy hill from which I could see the distant lights of Haugesund glowing faintly in the distance. I was wearing my long dark overcoat, which I had purchased in a charity store in Oslo before moving here as it appealed to me due to its association, in my mind, with the image of the poverty-stricken artistic genius. This coat was affording me little warmth or comfort however on account of the heavy rain making it damp and heavy. I was pale and shivering, on the verge of the kind of existential crises which served as a precursor no-doubt to the mental collapse of individuals such as Nietzsche and Van Gogh. But then, on my knees in the thick wet earth, my wet hair sticking to my face, tears pouring from my eyes as I contemplated just how much of a Zarathustra-esque figure I must have then appeared, a flash of lightning illuminated the peaks of some distant mountains, and in those few seconds before the thunder that followed, in a moment in which all sound and movement seemed to have ceased entirely, there entered into my mental landscape a vision so overpowering that when it faded away I was left gasping and open-mouthed. What this vision is will remain a secret to me until the work of art it has ushered into being is completed. But what a moment that was in my life. Never before and never again will the fundamental aspects of existence appear so lucid in my mind.
Has anybody else here experienced a sudden idea for a novel so overwhelming and so insistent that you have discarded everything else you were writing in order to dedicated yourself to it entirely?
>>8425771
first for legendary norwegger thread
>>8425771
>Dostoevskian
>Zarathustra-esque
>>8425742 needs to add these to his list.
>>8425771
this is satire right
Literature can show things film wouldn't dare. Books can get away with so much.
I was reading the first Seekers book and, dang, Tobi's death was awful. I don't know what he died of but he was obviously rotting from the inside out.
>>8425761
>Toklo shifted around and discovered that his brother was curled against his back, his paws tucked into his chest. When Toklo moved, Tobi pressed his paws to his face, scraped them down his muzzle once, and then lay still. His breathing became shallow and quick and smelled funny.
>Toklo nosed closer to him, smelling the same sharp sent he'd noticed on Tobi yesterday. His brother's fur was cold, colder than even Toklo had been the night before. He realized with a start that Tobi's eyes were wide open. Toklo put his face in front of Tobi's and waited for a reaction, but there was nothing. Tobi's eyes were foggy, as if he were seeing clouds instead of his brother.
>""Tobi", Toklo whispered. His brother's ears didn't even twitch. Toklo cautiously put out a paw and touched his brother's side. He could feel Tobi's breaths getting faster and then suddenly they went very slow.
>"Tobi," he tried again. "Tobi, are you going to the river? Are you going to be a water spirit?" There was no answer. Toklo was afraid but fascinated, too. How did a bear become a water spirit?
>Tobi took a long, shuddering breath, then went still. Toklo quickly drew back his paw. He sat up and sniffed along the length of Tobi's body. There was a sharp, rotten smell but now something was missing. Tobi's eyes were closed.
>He was dead,
Books about talking animals often get lumped in with other kinds of children's fiction.
I think though that talking animal books are usually either fables - where the animals are metaphors for types people, or else naturalistic stories which try to express some concept of the life of an animal in a way a human can understand - and these latter kind almost necessitate the touch of death to warrant completeness.
>>8425909
They're not talking animals, they're xenofiction. They don't speak with humans. Their language is "translated".
I'm not gonna lie. I hate exclamation points! Even in the Greeks. They're almost as necessary and cringey as adverbs.
Call the /lit/ police, I don't give a flying fuck!
They can funny when used LIKE THIS!!!!
ebin xdxd
Then you are AUTIST