Anyone here read many sagas? General thoughts?
Theyre p cool yo
>>8298489
I read a shitload as a teenager. Saga of The Volsungs was my favorite.
Njall's was pretty boring with the exception of Rapp.
I read this short story by Alan E Nourse a couple days ago, and I cannot stop imagining how these "dusties" characters are. Can anyone help? Or at least direct me to a board where someone could try to depíct them?
The short story: http://web.archive.org/web/20150906170709/http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/63656/
Made another thread.
PLZ HALP.
>>>/wsr/158819
Talentless Hack
>>8298306
I disagree. Writing so ambiguously that you create several centuries of disagreement over whether you're a hack or not, is a real talent.
>>8298306
Greatest thinker of all time
>>8298311
So he's the progenitor of Pynchon?
Can I get some recomendations? I need a book that is explicit/crass/has drug use and has over the top violence. It can be about crime or action or whatever. Something like Clockwork Orange or a Tarantino movie in a book
Thanks
Blood Meridian.
/lit/, I was just mowing my lawn and I think I have solved my thanatophobia through Aristotle. It's pretty pathetic though.
All this fear is based on is induction,just believe that deduction is the only truly valid way of proof.
I mean you can't tell me that you can prove that I am going to die, I might not, right?
>>8298209
>proof
>valid
sorry but i only utilize abductive reasoning
>>8298209
Wouldn't Epicur be more effective, you know the thing that death is not a state of existence because when you're there death is not and when death is you're no longer there.
Was wondering what type of sites you all read, bar this one of course.
Realized I don't read that many aside from a few news sites and was looking to expand horizons.
not shitposting but tvtropes can be a bit of a black hole once every six months or so
a lot of literary journals, also. trying to submit these days so it's good to keep up with whatever's available online these days
ribbonfarm
here:
http://theanarchistlibrary.org/random
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
you can have fun for hours
Will reading this whole list make me a better writer and person in general?
http://sonic.net/~rteeter/grtbloom.html
The short answer is a resounding no.
I wrote a (very) short story and am looking for critique. Please advise.
Feeling a bit adventurous this particular day, David decided to get his pre-work coffee at Starbucks instead of Dunkin Donuts, where he usually went. Both were on the same block as the parking garage he frequented, and so it was really no inconvenience. He thought of it as his “pre-work” coffee because what he thought of as his “morning” coffee was consumed at home, but wasn’t enough to get him through his ninety-minute commute and the first half of the work day.
He walked into the air-conditioned shop and got on line. Music played quietly in the background: “I’m high as a kite / I just might / Stop to check you out…”.
“I hate Mumford and Sons,” David said to nobody in particular.
The guy in front of him, who was older but had more hair, turned around and looked at him without saying anything. David looked at nothing in particular on his phone until he was at the register, when he looked up and gasped. He started to stutter.
“Uh, h-hi, c-could I have a uh, uh…”
“Hey David! Didn’t expect to see you here. How have you been?”
David stared, mouth wide. He was unprepared for this. He was unsure what tone to take.
“I’m fine. Doing great. In a bit of hurry. Large coffee please.”
“Well, uh, fine…”
While his coffee was being prepared, he looked back at his phone. She looked at him once, and then didn’t bother looking at him again. When it was ready, he took it and walked out the door without looking back.
Once he got up to his office, however, his thoughts returned to her.
‘So she’s working at Starbucks. Makes sense. And that haircut. Wow. Not going anywhere, I see.’
After a few hours of work, David had his lunch break, where he had another coffee. He worked for a few more hours, and then left the office and walked back to his car. Two hours later, he walked into his large and rather quiet house, sat on the couch, watched a few hours of television , and went to bed. Five and a half hours later, he would wake from a fitful sleep and, with a cup of coffee and a pop-tart, get back into his car.
After David left, she turn to help the next customer, and then the next. During her lunch break, she walked to the deli around the corner, where she had a conversation with the old man who lived across the hall from her. She clocked out at 4:15, walked home (stopping to pet the dog who lived next door) and read a novel until he got home at 6:30 -- he’d had the 10-6 today -- and then they went to dinner and a movie. It wasn’t great, but when they got back they kissed in the elevator on the way up, brushed their teeth, and went to bed. Approximately 9 hours later, they would wake up and have sex, then fall back asleep.
CRAAAAAWWWWLING IN MY SKINNNNN
>>8299295
THESE WOUNDS THEY WILL NOT HEAL
>>8297848
absolute shit me next:
Fresh cut grass enticed the gleeful sparrows, who in the wake of the large machine bore witness to a sea of delicacies. Beetles, mites, spiders and worms scurried amongst the chaos of a reclaimed habitat; the once tall grass cut to inches or matted low by the wheels’ weight. Eager and hungry, the host of sparrows soared high and low, swooping down to the earth to claim their sustenance manifest.
Frank looked back as his trail of small scale destruction provoked a ballet of flight and laughed. His laugh went unheard under the thundering tractor.
When the field had been entirely cut, Frank stepped out of the craft and gazed upon his work with priggish satisfaction. In a matter of minutes he had quelled nature’s inevitable urge to grow and fulfill. The aftermath had laid a feast before the mooning birds whom he knew were forever in his debt.
“They’re so happy,” said a passing young woman. “I wish it was that easy for all of us.”
She smiled at Frank and Frank smiled back, irked that no clever response entered his mind in time to impress the girl. He knew this field and these birds better than most, yet when at hand, his thoughts went blank. All he could do was smile.
As she walked away he could see the sun beat down on her bare legs, drawing sweat from her soft skin that clung to the dust kicked up by her feet.
Frank slowly became engrossed in the young woman’s delicacy and beauty, his desire to stare becoming ever more insatiate. In reluctance he returned to his motor and with a simple flick it bellowed in glorious power.
On his way to the Southern field he couldn’t stop thinking of the woman. Her face. Her voice. How he had nothing to say.
“I could, uh, I’m sure I could make it that easy,” he uttered to himself in a whisper, imagining the suave tone in which he could have responded. He quickly laughed at himself for such an unlikelihood as he pulled up to the field of tall grass, sparrows lazing in the cool dirt of the main road.
“Me too,” is what he should have said, Frank thought to himself. He agreed with her; if only it was this easy. For him to change the lives of these sparrows so quickly and simply was nothing short of a miracle in his mind. “She probably wouldn’t think so. I sound crazy.” He laughed again at himself to reassure his normality.
How come when I'm reading a book I find it very easy to over analyze the sentences and get stuck and distracted and feel so tired I want to fall asleep, but when I listen to an audiobook it's an effortless exercise and it's actually sort of relaxing to do? Is it normal that people would get mentally exhausted having to read a lot, but not feel that way when they listen to audiobooks? I just want to make sure there's not something wrong with me because of this or something.
yeah
>>8297600
That's a common thing, and it doesn't necessarily go away over time. The difference between when you're reading the text and when you're listening to it is you're given the chance to pick such sentences apart without being forced to continue. There are pros and cons to this.
>>8297600
Read out loud if you find yourself getting stuck. I have to do that with Faulkner.
Any other fans of Li Young Lee? Reading this now, the only Lee I've read. Just finished Always A Rose. I'm extremely impressed by Lee's simplicity of language and beauty. Anyone else ever read him?
Here is one I especially like. I enjoy how it is both specific and universal.
She begins, and my grandmother joins her.
Mother and daughter sing like young girls.
If my father were alive, he would play
his accordion and sway like a boat.
I’ve never been in Peking, or the Summer Palace,
nor stood on the great Stone Boat to watch
the rain begin on Kuen Ming Lake, the picnickers
running away in the grass.
But I love to hear it sung;
how the waterlilies fill with rain until
they overturn, spilling water into water,
then rock back, and fill with more.
Both women have begun to cry.
But neither stops her song.
Hey you're all fags
How does your writing reflect the world we live in?
>inb4 my writing only reflects upon "patrician" institutions and all the rich, smart, upper class people will understand me
The front page also talks about a member of the royal family being due to marry a hedge fund manager with a reality tv star brother
I think about this a lot, how to accurately depict the hell we all wait in and how literature written in oir life times will be perceived by future generations. Then I stop thinking about it because it's just too much.
Good luck anon
>>8297116
>the year 2016
>"royal family"
>anything near patrician culture
>not just yet another celebrity-type farce
But as for your original question, I don't directly concern myself with the world around me, but rather with (my subjective experience of) the human condition. Of course, the person I am is shaped by my environment, and thus the world is reflected in my writing, whether I want it to be or not.
Is it worth reading?
>>8297034
Depends, do you have at least 10 years before you're expected to overtake your Father's position?
Because that's how long you need to really master the Five Rings.
>>8297051
>that's how long you need to really master the Five Rings.
>Discussion is about Hagakure
Wat?
>>8297034
Not really. The whole Samurai code shit is an invention of the Tokugawa period by samurai trying to justify their privileged position in society where they did sweet fuck all and it shows. It's not a very interesting or coherent position that they take. It seems like some nonsensical blend of deontology and virtue ethics.
Did anyone else find it funny when people on /tv/ said that the Batman and Superman films are good because they have Christian inspired imagery and when asked why this is supposed to be good they couldn't give any reasons? Reminds me of /lit/'s pretentiousness, except /lit/ just points to "m-muh deep philosophical themes" or any number of other reasons the academia-media-publishing industrial complex has created to excuse an artist's inability to create anything remotely entertaining.
Fuck me. How come writing isn't cool. There's no money in it, nobody wants to suck a writer's dick. You can't party as a writer. All my friends that make electronic music get to perform and dance and everybody loves them and it's so sick.
How can a writer be cool
>>8296948
>be writer
>do.readings with other writers (usually in college towns/big cities)
>get wasted.and drink with fellow writers/young uni kids
>get invited to.other readings and get to crash at peoples houses
Leave the house and make connections bro.
>>8296948
You aren't funny
>>8296948
2/10
Is religious philosophy worth reading? I've had to study some of Thomas Aquinas's shit for Theology in highschool but it was mostly just common sense. The Ontological Argument is pretty neato.
Sense is rarely common these days.
Kierkegaard is certainly worth reading.
>>8296905
Yes.