college required reading thread
post about books you have/had to read for a class
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Not even joking.
>Have to read a book as a group assignment.
>Get lobbed in a group with four girls because back in college I was acting quite gay and effeminate.
>Let's all read twilight! three of the girls screamed in high pitched voices.
>I object, but unlike Ace Attorney in life it makes no difference.
>The girls main argument was that they all read it anyway so less work.
>After one class the one sullen girl hot but unwashed who had remained silent during class says she hasn't read it yet.
>Tells me she is dyslexic and loves to read but really struggles and ask if I can read it to here at home.
>Why not.jpg?
>Go to her home, giant fucking castle, I read the book to her for several hours.
>Eventually stop reading and talk about feelings, she thinks I am the largest poof in history.
>Tells me she never kissed and is quite unsure about herself. Tell her I'm a master at it (more like a soaking wet mop attached to a V8 engine) and lead her into 'training' with me. It wouldn't be her first time because I'm gay.
>Gobble her face off for the next half hour. She brought into the whole: "It's okay because I'm gay."
>Next day whilst reading the book for her I reach under her skirt whilst reading some passage about Edward driving his Volvo.
>Say she needs experience with this too. She agrees.
>I fingerblast her fanny to another dimension.
>This cycle continues daily with all steps off foreplay, still okay because I'm gay.
>Last day of reading, finish the book.
>She's really happy and all. Ask me if I want to fuck her, it's okay, just for practise because I'm gay!
>Go to her parents bed room.
>Skip foreplay, awkwardly rip of clothes, she notes that my skin is as sparkly as Edwards.
>Present the inner depths of her cunt with my fat lumpy sausage.
>Pound hard.
>Suddenly blood everywhere.
>She beckons me to stop.
>I continue moving inside of her.
>Burst apart.
>She lays there crying on her parents previously immaculate white sheets.
>Teenage brain is retarded so I quickly put on my clothes and start to run home.
>She isn't at school next day.
>English class a week later, she hasn't turned up in the meantime, I have to present the book with my group but no sign of Alice.
>Teacher tells us she suddenly dropped out.
>Never heard from her since.
And that is how Stephanie Meyer got me laid.
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>>8376106
>fucking a dyslexic
Have you no shame?
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Bede was pretty great
This is my first time on /lit/. I'm hoping that someone who has read Earth Abides could help me better understand this passage:
"Oh, it's not that! It's not that!" she cried out, still trembling. "I lied. Not what I said, what I didn't say! But it's all the same. You're just a nice boy. You looked at my hands, and said they were nice. You never even noticed the blue in the half-moons."
He felt the shock, and he knew that she felt the shock in him. Now everything came together in his mind - brunette complexion, dark liquid eyes, full lips, white teeth, rich voice, accepting temperament.
Then she spoke again, scarcely in more than a whisper, "It didn't matter at first, of course. No man cares then about that. But my mother's people never had much luck in the world. Maybe when things are starting out again, it shouldn't be with them. But mostly, I guess, I think it wasn't right with you."
Then suddenly he heard nothing more, for the whole vast farce of everything broke in upon him, and he laughed, and all he could do was to laugh and laugh more, and then he found that she, too, had relaxed and was laughing with him and holding him all the closer.
"Oh, darling," he said, "everything is smashed and New York lies empty from Spuyten Duyvil to the Battery, and there's no government in Washington. The senators and the judges and the governors are all dead and rotten, and the Jew-baiters and the Negro-baiters along with them. We're just two poor people, picking at the leavings of civilization for our lives, not knowing whether it's to be the ants or the rats or something else will get us. Maybe a thousand years from now people can afford the luxury of wondering and worrying about that kind of thing again. But I doubt it. And now there are just the two of us here, or maybe three, now."
He kissed her while she still was weeping quietly. And he knew that for once he had seen more clearly and more deeply, and been stronger than she. (pp. 110-111)
I'm assuming that Isherwood's lover is an African-American woman, although the author previously described her as having "ivory skin". But that is where my confusion lies. How could she possibly deceive him when her African heritage is apparent? Or is she not black at all, and I'm just misinterpreting the text? And what does she mean when she refers to the "blue in the half-moons?"
The book was written in 1949, so I'm assuming that the author was using this passage to challenge the absurd social norms barring interracial couples at the time (I'm hoping this board isn't as racist as /pol/)
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Sounds like she's half black
>my mother's people
The "blue in the half-moon" is reference to a supposed indicator (a blue coloration under the fingernail) of the sickle-cell anemia gene, which many erroneously attribute solely to those of African descent.
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>>8375722
She is mixed race, with paler skin. The blue half moons refer to the colour of the crescents of her finger nails.
This book is among the best I've read. The real meat of the book is after this part.
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I'm looking for a weird fiction, two-fisted noir. Not something where the weird fiction elements are suggested, but not present like in True Detective, but more along the lines of them being overt and present in the narrative. Anything like that out there aside from Falling Angel by Hjortsberg?
Seems like there ought to be, since the two genres (weird fiction and noir) would go together really well.
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City of glass
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Austers New York Trilogy was bretty good.
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https://www.amazon.co.uk/Trafficking-Sexual-December-Dav-Crabes-ebook/dp/B01JKQ1QU2
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did lit ever have its cantos reading gfroup?
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Yea, the patricians that finished it made a new chat and we barely come here now
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>>8375491
l-let me in
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>>8375420
No, it died shortly after I started it, mostly because only two or three of us actively tried to keep it going, while the rest--between 20 to 30 people--never contributed and never responded.
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Well, that was weird
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Why
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>>8375381
Fishing for attention and desperately seeking validation most likely
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>>8375453
OP or the books?
Anonymous
Japanese Patrician Literature 2016-08-08 18:48:45 Post No.8375198
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Japanese Patrician Literature 2016-08-08 18:48:45 Post No.8375198
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Japanese Patrician Literature
Anonymous
2016-08-08 18:48:45
Post No. 8375198
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I'm sick of being a Murakami pleb.
How do I into serious Japanese literature?
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Start with Genji and work your way chronologically.
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>>8375198
>Japanese
There's your problem right there.
We can fix 'er, but it's gonna cost ya.
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>>8375198
If you want to read more modern nip shit, check out Mishima, Kawabata, Oe, Tanizaki, Abe, and Dazai
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Hi. I have problems understanding what genre fiction is and why is bad. Please enlight me
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Quality science fiction and fantasy
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>>8375160
Anne Frank? Why
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>>8375178
The holocaust is a fantasy mate
Anonymous
Μοῦσαι τεθνήkασι 2016-08-08 18:33:38 Post No.8375139
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Μοῦσαι τεθνήkασι 2016-08-08 18:33:38 Post No.8375139
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Μοῦσαι τεθνήkασι
Anonymous
2016-08-08 18:33:38
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1. Copy a poem into a word processor
2. Remove the line breaks so it looks like prose
3. Read it
If you can still tell it's a poem, it's a poem. If it turns into prose, it's not a poem.
Compare a stanza from Lord Byron's Don Juan:
>Most epic poets plunge 'in medias res' (Horace makes this the heroic turnpike road), and then your hero tells, whene'er you please, what went before—by way of episode, while seated after dinner at his ease, beside his mistress in some soft abode, palace, or garden, paradise, or cavern, which serves the happy couple for a tavern.
With Whitman's As I Ponder'd In Silence:
>As I ponder'd in silence, returning upon my poems, considering, lingering long, a Phantom arose before me with distrustful aspect, terrible in beauty, age, and power, the genius of poets of old lands, as to me directing like flame its eyes, with finger pointing to many immortal songs, and menacing voice, "What singest thou?" it said, "Know'st thou not there is but one theme for ever-enduring bards? And that is the theme of War, the fortune of battles, the making of perfect soldiers."
Is poetry dead?
Because I can do
that
for virtually any modern
"poet" you care
to name.
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bump
Compare Pope's Essay on Man:
>Know then thyself, presume not God to scan. The proper study of Mankind is Man. Placed on this isthmus of a middle state, a Being darkly wise, and rudely great: with too much knowledge for the Sceptic side, with too much weakness for the Stoic's pride, he hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest; in doubt to deem himself a God, or Beast; in doubt his mind or body to prefer; born but to die, and reas'ning but to err; alike in ignorance, his reason such, whether he thinks too little, or too much; chaos of Thought and Passion, all confus'd; still by himself, abus'd or disabus'd; created half to rise and half to fall; great Lord of all things, yet a prey to all, sole judge of truth, in endless error hurl'd; the glory, jest and riddle of the world.
With Anne Carson's "The Glass Essay"
>My face in the bathroom mirror has white streaks down it. I rinse the face and return to bed. Tomorrow I am going to visit my mother.
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Someone mistakenly took that reader response Wikipedia article to heart
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>>8375500
I have no idea what you're referring to. That's a characteristic of autists, making obscure statements that are more or less meaningless to everybody around them, because their theory of mind is warped and they aren't very good at predicting what they have in common with other people and what they don't.
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So what's the deal /lit/?
This book came highly recommended to me from a friend.
Worth a read?
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>>8375116
Its somewhat trying but i really enjoyed it.
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>>8375116
10/10 great book (also good entry level material). Genre done right. Also, it gives you the right to say you read black authors.
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I read a Barnes and Noble version of this which was about 650 pages, and realized later it was an expurgated and abridged 19th century translation that omitted the good stuff, like implied lesbianism and infanticide. Good page-turning genre stuff but not much more.
Anonymous
How to tell if someone is a liar. 2016-08-08 17:52:11 Post No.8375003
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How to tell if someone is a liar. 2016-08-08 17:52:11 Post No.8375003
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How to tell if someone is a liar.
Anonymous
2016-08-08 17:52:11
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>Did you enjoy reading that Shakespeare play?
>Yes, I loved it! So entertaining! Absolutely amazing stuff!
Kys.
No one actually enjoys reading Shakespeare. You were probably bored out of your mind when reading his plays.
If you say that you found them entertaining, you're a pretentious fedora-tipping LIAR. People only read his plays because they were so influential and almost essential reading for the patrician if he wants to understand their impact in current arts and literature.
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>>8375003
There dick jokes and sword fights, All you have to do is learn a bit of Shakespearean English.
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Apart from the obvious shitpost, what's the reason for this influx of demented frogposting in the last few days? Is it a lonely, sad anon or is it a whole posse of dedicated sadbois?
Sage as always, though.
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>>8375003
>It's a 'pleb reveals himself' episode.
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I am having trouble finding information about this set of LoTR books. I found the Hobbit in the local bookstore, but there weren't any matching books to go with it. When I got home, I searched and discovered this photograph, but I can't see to find these specific books anywhere. When I search the ISBNs, I keep seeing the same books, but with different art on the front.
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>>8374767
It's probably a conspiracy.
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I found this specific set on eBay but it's $200. The single book I bought was $6.
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This is the set I keep seeming to find whenever I search for the ISBN or "centenary edition".
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Can anyone recommend me a book like Yourcenar's Memoirs of Hadrian? I'm looking for that mix of melancholic introspection and nostalgia, especially one set in the ancient or classical eras. I think someone recommended me The Death of Virgil, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.
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I, Claudius
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Augustus
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>>8374717
Definitely this should be your first stop.
Also check out Lavinia by Ursula le Guin. It's definitely melancholy.
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What does /lit/ think about the Book of Ruth?
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>>8374644
good shit
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>>8374644
bad shit
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>>8374644
the book of what
Anonymous
struggling with categories 2016-08-08 14:18:18 Post No.8374303
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struggling with categories 2016-08-08 14:18:18 Post No.8374303
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struggling with categories
Anonymous
2016-08-08 14:18:18
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chapter 2 - what the fuck he talking about? predicable? what? understand sep article, but having lots of trouble getting through the actual text. plz help.
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>bigaristotle.jpg
for you
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>actually reading the Categories
>actually reading Aristotle
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>>8374338
Some people fall for the MEEMS...
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Why should I 'start with the Greeks'?
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>>8374021
Some things in life are just axiomatic, nigger
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You don't have to bother if you don't want to. You can still enjoy literature without having read the Greeks. The point is that it allows you to have a deeper understanding of what people are writing about, particularly in classic literature and philosophy. Most of the great authors were educated in the classics and the Greek texts influenced their work. Without understanding how the Greek writers told stories, you lose some of the meaning behind the literature you actually want to read and understand. It's more important on the philosophy side, because any philosopher worth his beard is familiar with Plato and Aristotle, so whatever they write will be some sort of response to what they were saying.
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>>8374021
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1y8_RRaZW5X3xwztjZ4p0XeRplqebYwpmuNNpaN_TkgM/pub