Wow.
Holy fuck, that was dark.
>>8406863
WHY AREN'T THERE MORE OF HIS BOOKS TRANSLATED REEEEEEEEE
>>8406863
never heard of this
looked it up
added to wishlist
thx anon
>>8406863
I'll wait for the movie instead
How difficult is Under the Volcano?
What about Dubliners?
I'm looking to read one more book before school starts up later this month, but I also want something relatively easy.
My attention span has been shit lately and it took me like 2 months (most of summer break) to read Lolita. It was really great, but my poor motivation gimped my enjoyment of it to some degree.
Not difficult but lowry's prose style takes some getting used to. I found it kinda irritating with his gratuitous use of run on sentences but to each their own.
>>8406761
The main thing that's difficult about Dubliners is that it's really focused on the region and time period. Also it's just over 100 years old which makes the language take a bit of parsing out to read.
It's still not that hard if you have an annotated edition (I know penguin's 100th anniversary edition has endnotes).
>>8406761
If you really pay attention to Lowry's sources and allusions, you can just kill yourself, my man. Although, that's true of Joyce, too.
Hey /lit/, today's my 18th birthday and I haven't really read that many books in my life so far. Will I never be well-read/patrician?
If you're asking this on /lit/ then no.
Today is my 22nd. Happy birthday to us.
If you wanna read then read anon, you're responsible for your own life.
After sending a query letter to a publisher, how long should I wait for a response before assuming they aren't going to be giving me one? Like two weeks?
>implying there is someone browsing lit that has gotten their work read by a publisher
I hope you mean agent because practically no respectable or legitimate publisher will take unsolicited queries
As for agents, the standard is six months before you can enquire again. Most agents will specify the reading time though.
>>8406724
If you really sent it to a publisher, odds are they won't even read the query. If they do, you may not hear from them for over a year, if at all. You pretty much need an agent or some inside connection to get most publishers to even consider your book.
Lets talk about Translations. What are the worst ones? Best ones? Are some languages naturally better for translation? Which books would be the hardest to translate? Which books have inspired you to learn a language? General translation thread
>>8406663
do people here genuinely fall for the '>reads translations' meme and go out and learn an entire new language only to fall short of the original work because it is not their mother tongue?
>>8406680
I've read books both in translation and in the original language, and 90% of time the original is better.
>>8406690
Of course, but you cannot learn all languages (I say this as someone who knows 4 at a decent enough level to read), and by not reading translations you're limiting your horizon.
Reminder that after the publication of Ulysses, Joyce enjoyed worldwide fame.
Reminder that Hemingway and Faulkner both won the Nobel Prize.
Reminder that Borges, though obscure for the first 50 years of his life, spent the remaining 30+ in a state of international stardom.
Reminder that, more often than not, if you have genuine literary talent it does get recognized in your own lifetime. There are exceptions, of course--Kafka, Melville--but they are just that, and not the rule.
>>8406638
If you have genuine literary talent AND get published AND there is a demographic for what youre writing making it worth the publishers time to invest resources into spreading your work
I'm sure many, many great authors have lived, written, and died without ever being widely read.
>>8406638
Very true. Getting published, enduring fame and notoriety as well as writing objectively good literature will make you one of the best writers of all time, I'm sure a lot of people here are good, but not great
Print media is dead, the only things getting published are trash. It's all about money, and in an ever shrinking market the reigns are really getting tightened. A lot of you lads are going to write decent stuff, but it will never see the light of day
James Joyce wrote Dubliners and got rejected for publish by 15 people
>>8406675
>Print media is dead
>James Joyce wrote Dubliners and got rejected for publish by 15 people
Wouldn't this rather imply that it was never really alive?
Is Love unity, or the striving for unity?
>>8406579
Unity will never fully exist, and the striving for unity will only be relevant when it means the survival of the species.
>>8406587
Satisfactory reply
>>8406587
And then what?
I sure do hate acrylic.
The Everyman's Library series is very nice for its price range; it's a shame they're encumbered by this flaw. Maybe I just have sweaty hands or something but this seems unavoidable.
Related, I would strongly recommend no one buy the hardback penguin classics, for reasons hopefully obvious from the image.
Are there any nice book series without silly avoidable flaws like this? Am I the only one with this very first world problem?
Thats from hand sweat? The penguin looks like it was sitting in a puddle. I think maybe you should have your sweating looked it by a doctor.
Usually they're not too bad but occasionally the gold border on them literally looks like it's covered in glitter.
Use the dust cover?
How can one website collectively have such terrible taste and opinions?
>>8406517
How can one anon continuously go out of his way to find things he can get worked up about?
>>8406517
>24 points
>>8406517
the opinion there doesn't even bother me so much as the stupidity of the first point he makes.
Are there any unnerving books about a sociopath? A man who is like a wolf in sheep's skin?
'my diary desu.'
>>8406507
My diary desu.
But American Psycho or the book by that Virgin that killed those sorority girls in Santa Barbara
Anyone else think their values and opinions are stupid memes? fairness was something i believed in, i would get extremely angry if i thought a certain situation wasn't fair, then i realized fairness in an inherently unfair world is unfair, most of my beliefs and values are memes that could easily be shattered.
>>8406492
I think people like you should be physically restrained and barred from any sort of internet use.
>>8406492
>>8406520
>I think people like you should be physically restrained and barred from any sort of internet use.
why?
I'll be honest I don't read much.
But I want to read/listen to some books before I die.
I listened to The Catcher in the Rye and really liked it, loved it in fact, I didnt know reading could be this fun.
So I decided to read/listen to some more books/audibooks.
>search must read books before you die
>get shit like, Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, Lord of The Rings, I can understand why Alice in Wonderland and The Bible are on there but I don't want to waste my time reading Harry Potter or Game of Thrones.
This is from the BBC 100 books to read before you die.
1. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
can I get some recommendations of books to read before I die?
Yes I checked the Sticky, waay too many recommendations I dont know whats good.
thanks.
also please tell me what the book is about in a short sentence thanks ;)
Old Man and the Sea.
It's about an old man and the sea.
try Kafka on the Shore.
>>8406485
What are your interests anon? That would give us some leads into what you might like
>maman died today
woah....how kafkaesque
Camus
You can roughly date when people read The Stranger based on which translation is most common. Currently it's "Maman died today," which seems to make the most sense. It flows pretty well in English, and directly translating, "Aujord'hui, maman est morte" would be, 'today, mother has died,' which seems awkward and doesn't flow extremely well.
But awkward is a good descriptor of Meursault's personality. He doesn't think about the past, or think ahead to the future. He is a dispassionate, passive observer. His mother didn't die today, today was occurring and then his mother died.
All of which is to say that anyone reading The Stranger is an utter pleb and should have waited until the day when a half-decent translation is available.
>>8406525
Keeping the Maman in French makes no sense, it should be 'Mother died today'.
ITT: books that predicted the future
My English prof read out a section of one of those to use. It was amazing.
>>8406447
>Wikipedia "Guy N Smith"
>"Guy Newman Smith (born 1939, Hopwas, Staffordshire) is a prolific English writer best known for his pulp fiction-style horror fiction, though he has also written non-fiction, soft-porn, and children's literature."
Why isn't this guy as loved as Pynchon?
>>8406747
>soft-porn
I'm gonna need a link.
Heads up, faggots. If you think of philosophy in terms of "refute" or "discredit" or "disprove," you're irredeemably useless and should read John Green.
aw shoot, you're right
>>8406432
where do i find more pictures like this desu
>>8406490
literally all over tumblr. they're everywhere