What books would /lit/ recommend for someone who is learning English?
I'm teaching a Japanese girl at my college English, and I want to give her something relatively simple, but not hogwash.
Highschool curriculum stuff
A celebrity memoir perhaps? Tina Fey maybe?
>>7593543
>bourgeois make-up and hairstyle
>big manga doe eyes
>passive pose
>not even running forward to stab capitalist-roaders through the guts with a giant fountain pen
0/10 would not make revolution with
Are there any books where the characters fart? Or shit? Brush their teeth? I feel like very often in books/movies the normal every day behavior stuff is skipped entirely. I realize it might be gratuitous but there's a lot of gratuitous stuff in books.
>inb4 diarrhea dany
There are plenty.
It often happens but I don't care if it doesn't. I prefer it does't. I want to read a thrilling book, not a transcription of someone's boring life.
on Ulysses you can find the most poignant accounts of people shaving, shitting, swallowing food, walking, and countless other minute daily activities
Where to start with Confucius? Ezra Pound translations?
start with the Greeks
Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy - Ivanhoe & Van Norden
>>7592922
Afaik Ezra Pound couldn't even read Chinese. So... no.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xYO-VMZUGo
This guy incarnates all that is wrong with high intelligence (as opposed to "normal" intelligence and as opposed to "very high" intelligence). He has the ability to accumulate knowledge, but he's so hyperactive and arrogant that he never pauses to think rationally and figure out that what he's saying is removed from reality to the point of being flat out false if not absurd.
Post-modernism is the negation of one reality that is the common source of our intersubjectivity. It is a speculative narrative that makes interesting tales and musings and which may inspire... but that never accomplishes anything real. In other words, post-modernism is just bullshit that any asshole can make up on the spot and pretend to be true as long as it's not been proven false by somebody else. It is embracing logical fallacies and making yourself appear smart to anyone who's smart enough to point out your bullshit. Anecdotes are fallacies. Argument from ignorance is a fallacy. Argument from popularity is a fallacy. Zizek is just full of shit. As is psychoanalysis, which has fallen into the trashbin of history in all countries except France. Especially Lacanian psychoanalysis. Lacan was making shit up all the goddam time. He was receiving 80 patients... I mean "clients" every day. That's 5-10 minutes per patient. And he just had to play on words. Pure outrageous bullshit!
As for the beginning of his talk, Zizek seems to forget that in real life, without dating websites, seduction and simply maintaining a relationship are commodifications too. Through our appearance, our culture, our personality, we present an array of characteristics that will be evaluated by potential partners who will decide whether we're a good product for them or not.
>he's wrong because i said so
>>7591067
His views are quite bland. I've read him argue that islamic terror comes from 'jealousy'.
He wrote a few interesting ideas on certain movies but beyond that, he's feels like the neil tyson of philosophy.
He is a cultural critic first psycho-analyst last.
Criticize this without buzzwords
Nigger
>>7589918
1 post and we're done. good thread everyone pack it up. same time tomorrow?
>>7589918
haha epic!! Can't wait to post this to /r/4chan
Is it worth learning a classical language for reading the earliest in Western canon?
Where does one start and with which texts?
Something like latin enriches the languages you already know and any further ones you'll learn.
>>7596778
Can you expand on this, please?
>>7596830
Not him but learning Latin is a bit of an intellectual rite of passage, or used to be, because aside from initiating you into the GREAT WORKS of Cicero and so on (which you may or may not value, and remember this was also inertia from an age where translations where much, much rarer, whereas nowadays you can build a career in academia by translating the obscurest shit you can find), learning a classical language teaches you rigorously and "cleanly" how to learn a language.
Living languages have a lot of distractions and infinite points at which you can go take your partial knowledge and apply it to more-or-less workable conversation with living people and living culture. Go talk to half the professors of foreign extraction in some university department, and their English will be quirky and shitty even after decades, because fundamentally it's fine to speak quirky and shitty English. Their reading is probably slightly more serviceable and they can get along.
But if you want to be able to read and enjoy Mallarme or fucking Heidegger or something, you need to know German to the same degree that people used to know Latin. Learning Latin will make you realize how vital and useful it is to apply the same strategy to a modern language, and so to avoid all those distractions.
Afternoon /lit/
I really need some terrifying, staying up at night, turn on the lights, horrific books that will/have scared you.
To make this thread a /lit/ thread, also talk about your favorite horror books and why they scared you so much?
Only thing that really scares me is how pathetic my life is, to be quite honest family
The first 1/3 of 11/22/63 is scary as fuck. Parts of V. were unnerving. So were parts of Lot 49. How The Mind Works is like paint thinner for your soul.
where do you start with the greeks?
>>7596472
abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss. abyss.
You start with Aristotle, then read everyone else in light of Aristotelian principles.
Jason and the Argonauts - Chaffey
Got this copy in a local charity shop, trying to find out when it was printed, seeing as it's not said anywhere inside the book.
>>7596441
>meem keyboard
>can't even find printing date
Please go back to you know where
This is the page showing the printing company "butler &Tanner Ltd.". It was published by "Ward, Lock and Co."
>>7596447
Senpai, I've looked everywhere in this book and there is no printing date to be seen.
I just read this. Is it good?
You read it. You tell me.
I read you. Tell me this.
Is that the new translation, directly from the Greek? Did you really read it? How was it?
The Sound and the Fury discussion thread
Now, we know Faulkner was big on syntactical metaphor, for instance using periods instead of comma-placement in dialogue for Benjy's perspective (representing he has to nail stuff down, because he's a retard and can't hold on to thing for shit, ie time). That's just for example.
The main thing I want to talk about, and I've researched this online but can't find, is Dilsey's diction. Ever notice it changes in the book? In all perspective but Benjy's, it's an obvious parody of a negro voice, and her accent is thick as hell; same with Luster.
But in Benjy's chapter, her accent/diction is no different from anyone else's. Same with Luster. The way I see it, and I'm no SJW, since Benjy is retarded, is essentially "colorblind" and sees no discernable difference in the black or white people speak.
Now this isn't me trying to look smart or just trying to wring out some more bullshit on Faulkner. I've flipped back and forth and back forth to make sure I wasn't crazy. It could be true that Faulkner only wrote a fist draft, in which midway through he wanted to parodize negro-speak. But I highly doubt that. There's definitely got to be a reason, as with most of Faulkner's syntactical choice (which to can't be as arbitrary as, say, e.e. cummings).
Thoughts? Opinions?
>>7596076
Fucking faggot, thanks for contributing.
>>7596076
You should probably die now and save everyone else the hassle.
>>7596076
Don't post here anymore you are utterly redundant on this website.
Is there any truth to this?
>Ahab is virtually a human monolith, a Promethean figure. He takes his multinational crew in maniacal pursuit of the white whale which took off his leg (and, Melville implies, more than that: as a friend of mine quipped, a better title for the book might be Moby-no-Dick).
http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2015/12/white-whale-big-smoke-how-geography-london-inspired-moby-dick
Currently reading Moby-Dick for the first time in English (not my native language, but I manage, the cetological and actual story portions are really enjoyable), just passed Ahab's first description and couldn't find any of those implications so far. Should I expect them to pop up eventually?
He really hated that fucking whale.
>>7596163
Oh I'm laffin.
Actually OP, I've read it twice and haven't thought of that before, but it does make some sense.
>>7596067
been a while since i read the book but as far as i can remember there is some mentioning of him losing his third leg
Daily reminder: Chekhov, although not being discussed in this vietnamese hieroglyphics forum (maybe his work ain't got no theoretical depth), is one of the best writers ever.
But who's the best translator?
overrated short story writer and a horrible playwright. he's not much to discuss, he doesn't have much to say in ideas, themes, etc.
Just make your claim without all the memeing, Jesus Christ.
Yes, Chekhov is a great writer. His story "Neighbors" is one of my favorites.
Are there any good sports fiction? Preferably soccer and baseball
Infinite Jest
I’ve heard good things about "Once A Runner".
Hemingway wrote about bull fighting, skiing, fishing, cycling, horse riding, boxing, big game hunting and probably some more. And Murakami wrote about running.
Do you know some good historical novel set in a alternate medieval age?
I'm reading the second book of the Hammer and the Cross saga and I must say I'm enjoying it thoroughly.
http://www.uchronia.net/bib.cgi/diverge.html
>>7595246
Interesting, thank you.
Is this a new copypasta?