My gf wants me to read this book by john green because she liked it. I heard he is shit but i dont want to deny her wish.
What should i excpect.
Cancer.
>>8421245
One Direction in book form
where do you buy your books from?
amazon
http://www.betterworldbooks.co.uk/bargain-bookshelf-H76761.aspx
http://www.alibris.co.uk/books
And Amazon.
Charity shops, always.
Here I go. Judge my new poem.
The lights are alive in San Francisco.
They ignite the city by the bay. They
Flicker and dance across the streets
Where millions have been and
Millions more will come.
Their cascade of colors,
From the red/yellow/green
Of the traffic lights,
To the flashing white and pink
Of a neon sign that advertises
The scantily clad women
With their own pulsating lights inside.
I followed the torrent of lights
Down Columbus avenue;
I waltzed with them
On a Wednesday night
As I navigated the sleepy street.
I saw them shine on other stragglers
Whose sunbaked faces rarely smile back
I saw how the well-groomed faces
Had developed habits of
Turning away,
And grimacing whenever an empty hand
Was extended.
As I was a foreigner to this bayside
Anthill,
I gazed with eyes widened and mouth
Agape,
And paid the price quickly with wallet
Or guilt.
As I quickly learned to look away
And grimace.
Instead I looked up and followed the lights as midnight turned to 4am.
The bayside wind was stiff and cool
As I found the darkened beach
Where I lay my head on my backpack
For the night,
Though the sun soon followed me.
Before the brightness and radiation
Could penetrate my skin and
Force my eyelids to half-mast,
I wondered at the eternal tidal mirror
As it played it's show,
Of the living lights that
Illuminated the streets
Of San Francisco.
>>8421188
I read the whole thing.
Life will never be the same.
Now I'm a homo.
I'm not going to say it's good, but I am proud of it.
>>8421221
Is that a judgment?
I am really fascinated by this guy and his books.
Any Infos, pics, storys, opinions from you?
Pynchons my fav writer for sure because my fav thing in books is goofs, gags, jokes and rambunctious behavior, and his books are full to the brim of it. Every novel is like one of those novelty snake cans, you open the book & POP you get a face fulla snakes and you fall back cackling. The mad mind, the crack genius, to do it! and then you think hmmm whats he gonna do next, this trickster, and you pick the book back up and BZZZZZZZZZZ you get a shock and Hahahahahah you've been pranked again by the old pynchmeister, that card. "Did that Pynch?" he says, laughing yukyukyukyuk. Watch him as he shoves a pair of plastic buck teeth right up into his mouth and displays em for you- left, right, center- "you like dese? Do i look handsome???" Pulls out a mirror. "Ah!" Hand to naughty mouth. And you're on your ass again laughing as he snaps his suspenders, exits stage right, and appears again hauling a huge golden gong.
>>8421153
My own Pynchon recommended reading order is:
IV - Vineland - CoL49 - GR - M&D
Read AtD, and V. at your leisure.
But really, if you want to just jump into GR, you'll be fine, don't take the people telling you that you must read V. before GR too seriously.
>>8421423
But methinks V. is a good intro to his style and its length makes it more accessible than GR
>only 50 pages in
>already better than the entirety of IJ
What happened?
your iq dropped significantly since you read infinite jest
>>8421079
You're gonna need patience with this one pal.
Its like DFW really just hated us at this point.
i cautiously concur with OP. in 140 pages myself into The Pale King. this book seems less pretentious than IJ.
>>8421079
>the IRS examiner found dead after 4 days at work
>childhood story of altruistic-obnoxious Stecyk
good shit
Just bought Gravity's Rainbow and Infinite Jest. What am I in for?
Favourite book is Catch-22, been looking a long time for anything else that gives me the same level of enjoyment.
Pretty much bananas
You're in for some good reading.
bananas, gay orgies, and DUDE WEED LMAO
these are the only three themes common to both novels.
Hi guys,
serious question about IJ here.
Why did DFW focus so much on bulging planes?
It pops up a lot throughout the book, most notacibly in the last gately part.
I have read the books twice and still have no clue as to what DFW wanted to convey with these numerous descriptions of shapes that go from concav to convex (oooooh, maybe its just a refernce to the concavity/convexity, man how did i not notice this until now, well i typed all of this up already so why not hear your opinions on this too)
>>8421037
I'm reading it for the first time, 300 pages in, so I can't answer your question, but you can answer mine
What was the intention or purpose of the technical, medical and obscure jargon throughout the book? It makes sense thematicaly when he writes about the MIT, or from Hal's perspective for example. But in the grand scheme of things?
>>8421318
>What was the intention or purpose of the technical, medical and obscure jargon throughout the book?
No intention, probably just precision combined with sweat.
>>8421318
Making undergrad humanities girls think he's a genius. Yes srsly
I love Poe and Lovecraft. I know they aren't the best writers ever but reading their works is super comfy and it is my secret pleasure. I read quite a lot of books but no other authors set a similar mood. Maybe Tolkien. What are some similar authors to pic related? I tried reading Algernon Blackwood's short stories and Ligotti but they are not quite the same.
Arthur Machen, maybe Ambrose Bierce, George MacDonald.
>>8421039
Oh thanks, I recall reading Great God Pan and enjoying it quite a bit so I believe the other two are good as well.
Algernon blackwood proto English Lovecraft.
You can find all his shit on line for free you're welcome
>"..and when he gets back home he finds.... TWO JUMPING BALLS! AHHAHAH, people will eat this shit up..."
4chan is so kafkaesque
>>8420935
two jumping balls? what's that from?
>people will eat this shit up
>Few of Kafka's works were published during his lifetime: the story collections Betrachtung (Contemplation) and Ein Landarzt (A Country Doctor), and individual stories (such as "Die Verwandlung") were published in literary magazines but received little public attention. Kafka's unfinished works, including his novels Der Process, Das Schloss and Amerika (also known as Der Verschollene, The Man Who Disappeared), were ordered by Kafka to be destroyed by his friend Max Brod, who nonetheless ignored his friend's direction and published them after Kafka's death.
Just finished this. Was pretty decent. One question. Was Bandini supposed to be an unlikable cuntstain? Half the book just seems to be him grandstanding himself when in reality he's a loser that no one cares about. Even when he publishes his book no one seems to give a damn about him.
In some ways Sammy was a better version of himself.
>>8420883
I agree. I just find it funny that Ask The Dust is trying to get you the sympathize with the dream of being a writer and how hard that goal is. Yet it portrays it through someone like Bandini, making the whole thing seem more like I'm throwing him pity candy than rooting for a cause.
basically he realizes the truth about loving women aka the death of innocence.
They like to be treated bad sometimes (read: most), and if you really want to love them, just give them something (like a dog or "thing") to love. The dog he leaves her with at the beach house is a metaphor for the book itself which he tosses into the desert after her.
His story was called "the little dog laughed".
Remember the part where he goes to the prostitute and is totally grossed out by her vagina? Yeah its kinda misogynistic in general but still true. i like it.
Besides DFW, whom I love, what are some good books about millennial problems?
>>8420880
You'd probably get a more apt picture from your average greentext story thread. I'm not even sure if I'm joking here.
>whom
>>8420880
>about millennial problems
you can't be serious
Write in the best way you can the experience that is getting a (You)
Post a Reply. Update. Update. Catalog.
...
Backspace. Update. Update. Update...
(You)
Pure bliss.
>>8420849
Here's your (You)
>>8420849
Eh.
MODS
Sam Delany, wrote Dhalgren and other books
he was better than David Foster Wallace and is on the level of Joyce
Hogg is his masterpiece
>>8420842
maybe on the same level as DFW
but Joyce...ha
Never read him
Is this book worth reading or is it just a meme?
I'm not sure if it's one of those books you should read from start to finish, it's nice to have around, but it's really only meant to be used for ancient warfare, people who study business have told me that it has some valuable insight, but even this is debatable.
I have one myself, but I rarely use it now that I'm not in the military anymore.
It's not very long, and has some insights that seem obvious nowadays because they've completely been merged with our culture.
If you like advice like 'always leave a space to escape for your enemy, because a cornered enemy will fight with ten times the might' then go for it - I can see where stuff like this could be useful in the management world (competing companies etc.), but for the general schlomo it might not be so interesting.
I gave this book a read when I was in high school. It was recommended to me by my history teacher and I found it to be a very interesting read.
So to answer your question.. I would give it a read if you're interested in history obviously, but for the overall thought process that was taken to make this book.
What are John Updike's best books? What does /lit think about him in general?
Also,
>Is it just me or does it smell like Updike in here?
>>8420768
Rabbit Tetralogy.
Of these, the middle two are the best, and my personal favorite is the latter one of the middle two, Rabbit is Rich.
He'a a great stylist, his books can actually sometimes have engrossing plots, other times be boring as fuck and he's complete shit in everything else. Doesn't care about deep philosophical themes, about creating interesting characters that aren't juvenile cardboard figures who never develop. Doesn't care about or is incapable of seriously tackling age-old themes of honor, death, love, friendship, etc. His works read like extraordinarily well-written soap operas and sometimes sitcoms meant to represent modern America (for the most part).
His style can be very inconsistent, with pages of heavenly godtier stuff and then stuff that tries to be poetic on the same level but just seems like a lot of shit next to it. Odd, really. He claimed that he wrote spontaneously and eschewed meticulous self-editing and perfectionism after writing for long enough, so I guess that partly explains why not everything in his books is cut to the same standard as the best parts of it.
All in all, worth reading for the fun of the style alone, which is so fucking great it's hard to exaggerate how great it is. If you've never read him yet, I envy the joy you're about to feel at reading the best of his style for the first time.
What's Updike?
>>8420768
I like his Shakespeare fan fiction. I imagine he would post it on fanfiction.net if he were born in a different time.