>410 pages deep
>kind of bored
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>>8177864
bummer! i wanted to check this one out soon. does it just lose steam, or what?
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>>8177870
Well, while the dialect Pynchon uses is very impressive, I don't really enjoy reading it. I'm also having a hard time understanding it. The basic plot I get, but I'm not entirely sure what the overarching themes are... Parts of it are extremely fun and fantastic, but the last chapter I read was boring and made me realize a lot of the chapters are pretty boring.
I also have no idea what's going on with the duck or what Dimdow's deal is.
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wot until the last transit. it comes together
Anonymous
/sffg/ - Science Fiction and Fantasy General 2016-06-18 19:23:58 Post No.8177490
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/sffg/ - Science Fiction and Fantasy General
Anonymous
2016-06-18 19:23:58
Post No. 8177490
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Essays, Criticism, History etc edition
What are your favorite non-fiction books *about* SFF?
Previous: >>8170521
Recommendations
>Fantasy
Selected: http://i.imgur.com/r688cPe.jpg/
General: http://i.imgur.com/igBYngL.jpg/
Flowchart: http://i.imgur.com/uykqKJn.jpg/
>Sci-Fi
Selected: http://i.imgur.com/A96mTQX.jpg/
General: http://i.imgur.com/r55ODlL.jpg/ / http://i.imgur.com/gNTrDmc.jpg/
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I decided to go with A Wizard at Earthsea for my next sff read. Didn't read Le Guin in a while and it seems like a good, fun read.
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>>8177503
>and it seems like a good, fun read.
It's neither of those things.
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What the fuck was his problem?
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This meme is dumb.
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WWI knocked a few of his screws loose. And all that psilocybin he took didn't help either.
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The fuck is his point anyway
Tantric sex and feudalism or something?
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How do they translate "old sport" in your language?
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>French
>"cher vieux"
>literally "dear old man"
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>>8176575
What a useless, inefficient language.
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>>8176578
>no direct equivalent of a colloquial expression in X foreign language
>must be because that language is shit ahahahah XDDDD
Literally retarded comment.
"Vieux" also means "mate", though.
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Sublime books that never get mentioned here. I'll start:
Middlemarch. Expansive, thought-provoking, moving, and terrifying in the depth of its suggestion that two people never really know each other.
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>>8176173
The frogfaggots will ruin this thread, but I wholeheartedly agree. Masterpiece
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Bleak House.
Like the rest of Dickens' oeuvre, severely overlooked by you fucks. Don't worry that it's long. It's in its length that there's pay-off.
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The Confidence Man.
Intention, scope, achievement, anything, this book holds measure for measure with Ulysses for greatest work in the English language.
ITT come up with terrible opening lines for a novel. I'll start.
Hemlock looked at the dead bodies pitifully, the horses of his mind galloping towards a suspect.
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It was dark in the city and raining, and a child's forgotten balloon floated by.
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An immense ass bobbed up and down inches from Bobby's face, but his mind was elsewhere; every waking second, his thoughts gravitated with utmost certainty towards cock.
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Henrietta vaulted out of the agency bird like a seasoned pro, not, of course, that she wasn't, and her encrypted sat phone chirped with an intel update: "Mom, don't forget about my parent teacher conference tonight!"
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>"My position in regard to Dostoevski is a curious and difficult one. In all my courses I approach literature from the only point of view that literature interests me —namely the point of view of enduring art and individual genius. From this point of view Dostoevski is not a great writer, but a rather mediocre one—with flashes of excellent humor, but, alas, with wastelands of literary platitudes in between. In Crime and Punishment Raskolnikov for some reason or other kills an old female pawnbroker and her sister. Justice in the shape of an inexorable police officer closes slowly in on him until in the end he is driven to a public confession, and through the love of a noble prostitute he is brought to a spiritual regeneration that did not seem as incredibly banal in 1866 when the book was written as it does now when noble prostitutes are apt to be received a little cynically by experienced readers. My difficulty, however, is that not all the readers to whom I talk in this or other classes are experienced. A good third, I should say, do not know the difference between real literature and pseudoliterature, and to such readers Dostoevski may seem more important and more artistic than such trash as our American historical novels or things called From Here to Eternity and such like balderdash."
Other than the established fact that he has absolutely no regard for human life, can we have a discussion about Nabokov's ideals with regards to art and literature, I suppose, in this case with reference to Dostoyevsky, being the ? Do you think his criticism is warranted? Why or why not? I've included a snippet from his lectures on Russian literature.
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>>8172386
His taste was actually pretty awful and he had a very narrow view of what a novel should be like, dismissing everything that didn't cater specifically to him personally.
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>Dostoevski's lack of taste, his monotonous dealings with persons suffering with pre-Freudian complexes, the way he has of wallowing in the tragic misadventures of human dignity—all this is difficult to admire. I do not like this trick his characters have of "sinning their way to Jesus" or, as a Russian author Ivan Bunin put it more bluntly, "spilling Jesus all over the place." Just as I have no ear for music, I have to my regret no ear for Dostoevski the Prophet.
And with specific reference to his writing:
>In the light of the historical development of artistic vision, Dostoevski is a very fascinating phenomenon. If you examine closely any of his works, say The Brothers Karamazov, you will note that the natural background and all things relevant to the perception of the senses hardly exist. What landscape there is is a landscape of ideas, a moral landscape. The weather does not exist in his world, so it does not much matter how people dress. Dostoevski characterizes his people through situation, through ethical matters, their psychological reactions, their inside ripples. After describing the looks of a character, he uses the old-fashioned device of not referring to his specific physical appearance any more in the scenes with him. This is not the way of an artist, say Tolstoy, who sees his character in his mind all the time and knows exactly the specific gesture he will employ at this or that moment.
Can this be attributed to mere stylistic differences, or does it point to Dostoyevsky's failures as an artist?
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>>8172447
stylistic. dostoevsky was primarily concerned with the internal and how the characters themselves view the world and their own being.
Tolstoy preferred a more balanced approach that tilted towards the external and how characters interact with each other and project their selves to the society around them
What is the edgiest book you ever read?
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>>8172279
Your diary.
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Ham on Rye or No Longer Human.
Disliked both.
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By Steven Hall. The ideas in the book are really cool but the writing is just horrible and incomplete.
Spent a good portion of yesterday struggling over a page in one of Aristotle's books and after reading the page again for the tenth time, what he was trying to say finally hit me and I understood everything and it felt so good. Probably the most sublime experience I've ever had while reading philosophy. Is this what it's always like?
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Yes
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>>8181552
what book and page was it?
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>>8181552
This is cute
>Lev Tolstoj
"Death is more certain of tomorrow, the night that follows day, winter follows summer. Because then we get ready for the night and for the winter, but not to the death? We have to do it. But there's only one way to prepare for death: live well."
I need to find the original source!
It comes from a book?
Do you know it?
Thanks!
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Poccия являeтcя пeниc cocyт
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>>8181170
> dat translation
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Come on guys! Anyone can help me?? :(
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> and yet, due to his changes, all young people in Britain (regardless of gender, ethnicity, class, or individuality) are now expected to relate to the white, middle-aged, upper-middle class values which he decided were the right values. There is, apparently, no literary merit in any writer beyond these boundaries.
> This intellectual snobbery would have made my job not only impossible, but also soul destroying. I cannot stand at the front of a classroom and make children chant the works of Keats – instilling in them the belief that the only voices worth hearing in our society are those of a dead, white, English, male establishment figure.
http://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/aug/05/how-gove-reforms-drove-me-out-teaching
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>2014
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>>8180969
Who cares. Apart from Shakespeare and Chaucer, Americans did it better.
British schools should teach Pynchon and Delillo.
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>> 8180969
Implying good female writers exist
ITT: Let's write a story together. Continue from the previous poster. Use no more than three sentences. No responding to yourself. No comma splices allowed, but sentence fragments are okay. Change of POV is acceptable. I'll begin:
I had finally managed to get Carl, Carla and Carlos together in the same room. It was my birthday. I could hear the drunken banter of the other party guests through the door.
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>>8180929
The shrill and bassy voices fell in volumes and the crashing spiels came together in bits. I knew there was something being said next door.
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The voices started to vanish,all light escaped the room as the demonic voices screamed in my head.The last thing i saw before passing out was the bloody chainsaw that killed Carl.Carla and Carlos.
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I liked dicks. Everyday I would go to the nearest gay bar and get ass fucked. Then I got killed.
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Tfw they destroyed the texts of socrates. Fucking people never change. I am at a cottage right now, listening to audiobooks about socrates. I woke up last night an hour into sleep to the sound of people talking right outside my window. I endured it for an hour or two, trying to sleep, until I evenyually screamed at the people to shut the fuck up because I can't sleep, from my window. I was so angry, I laid awake for a couple hours more, then slept for about an hour before the sunrise woke me up. That has nothing to do with socrates, but I am sitting on my ass on my phone thinking about how much I despise people. Socrates. They killed him because he spoke up, they're savages. People haven't evolved. There's still people who's lives are so inspid, I hear their inane chatter for hours on end. I feel sickly and tired and it's very cold in this cottage, I neglected to even bring a coat, just my phone and extra clothes.
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how were people talking outside if you live in a cottage. aren't cottages in rural areas.
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>>8180872
No, this is a place on the coast filled with tiny cottages, next to a small neighborhood. It's a collectively owned part of my family.
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Sounds like your house is going to get egged tonight.
t. the unwashed masses
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I read American Gods and neverwhere and loved them, any recommendations for similar books? Going through the /lit/ recommended reading for urban fiction but would like more recommendations too
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/lit/ generally hates writers like Gaiman, Rowling, and Rothfuss.
Try r/books, people there cater more towards people like you.
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>>8180856
Why? He's on the lit wiki that's where I started
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>>8180862
Straight up twice listed in two different fantasy lit recommended reading pics under urban fantasy so don't be a cunt and talk down to me
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I know the whole "my diary desu" thing is just a meme, but do any of you actually keep a diary? I feel like it would be a good way to write every day and improve your skills. A personal memoir that doesn't have to be shared or critiqued. I'm thinking about starting one.
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start one if you want to, u do u girl
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Holy shit what is the point of this thread? What compelled you to ask this question, and what personality flaw is to blame? What made you sit down, type this post out, and then attach an image? Was there a grand plan? What type of responses are you expecting?
Because by the looks of this question, its sheer marginality in scope, it does not seem that you will get much at all, at least not enough to gratify your inanity.
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Then start one. Take a notebook and do it, you don't need /lit/'s seal of approval.