What was the best book you've read this year?

>>8764580
My diary, desu

How Governments Use Your Data, by Jean Suss Piceau

>>8764580
Atlas Shrugged

notes from underground

>>8764591
To the Lighthouse is so good. I always cry at the end of part one.

>>8764634
Calm down jimmy, you are killing the mood.

Flannery O'Connor: The Violent Bear It Away

>He knew that he was the stuff of which fanatics and madmen are made and that he had turned his destiny as if with his bare will. He kept himself upright on a very narrow line between madness and emptiness and when the time came for him to lose his balance he intended to lurch toward emptiness and fall on the side of his choice.

Goddamn, she is amazing.

>>8764580
Of Grammatology by Derrida

>>8764592
Not a real book.

>>8764651
Not a real book.

>>8764665
>not sure if retarded or clever joke

>>8764661
>>8764665
Not a real argument.

>>8764580
I've read close to 100 books this year and it's a hard choice. For fiction Book of the Short Sun, The Gulag Archipelago, Silence and Everything That Rises Must Converge take their places as the best.
For philosophy, Alasdair MacIntyre has been a discovery, After Virtue and Whose Justice Which Rationally were amazing, they became a turning point in my political outlook- I am actively trying to purge any and all liberalism from my thinking and arrange ideas according to the axiom of the universal highest good as conceived by Aquinas.
Fredrick Copleston History of Philosophy volumes I and II were also incredibly helpful.

>>8764674
What did you like about Everything That Rises Must Converge?

>>8764674
>fiction
>Gulag Archipelago
Nigga what?

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>>8764690

>>8764696
Im not saying communism is abd, im jsut saying that claiming gulag archipelago to be false is like saying the diary of ann frank to be false. I know this board is leftist but you ar ejust willinguflly denying reality here, he names everyone and everything he remembers and has surviving data about.

River God

Ulysses

>>8764700
>im jsut saying that claiming gulag archipelago to be false (...)
>denying reality

t. brainwashed Western faggot who never studied History

>hrr durr i know so much about the Soviet Union, I read Animal Farm, 1984 and Gulag Archipielago!

>>8764727
I never claimed to know more than you do but that book is 1000 pages long for a reason and that is because its absed on facts and real people. Its detailed to death, it speaks about the many different big raids and types fo raids that the USSR made and the many different people that got affected by. It also establishes how and why these things were allowed to happen. I just find it ennerving that you deny facts given to you because they dont allign with your worldview.

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i've read more highbrow /lit/ tier books, but this shit was the shit i enjoyed reading the most. just loads of incredibly taut well written stories that were fucking unbelievably enjoyable to read

also 2666 and brother karazamov

Gravity's Rainbow senpai

>>8764761
Was it a meme or is it actaully enjoyable to read. First Pinecone novel or you need an introduction first?

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>>8764700
>is like saying the diary of ann frank to be false

Hmm?

>>8764697
/lit/ doesn't have many liberals and no, I don't redpill, /pol/ is just as retarded. Assuming you didn't use the word redpill ironically.
>>8764683
Her incredible skill at crafting characters. There's only maybe 2-3 authors that I know who wrote characters that give air of perfectly complete and real personas. Her stories often moved me to tears, the way she induced physical sickness in me was amazing.
>>8764690
Wrong expression. More like novel, but Gulag Archipelago wouldn't fit it either. Story I guess? It's hard to categorize as it's history, legal theory, memoir, guide to his views on humans, a piece of existentialist philosophy, a religious work and probably a few more.

>>8764770
i'm not him but it's the first pynchon i ever read and i enjoyed it a lot

maybe you might need to ease yourself into it if you're a weak fucking pussy afraid of big books

Anna Karenina. Also the best novel I've read in my life. Dostoevsky was right when he called it flawless.

>>8764770
I read TCoL49 and V. beforehand. I had a great time reading it, as long as you can get past the fact that you won't understand a lot of it on a first go you'll love it unless you're a weak fucking pussy afraid of big books, like that other anon said.

>>8764781
I-it's jsut t-too big senpai W.W

Infinite Jest

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Who here /life-changing/ books?

>>8764787
>Dostoevsky was right when he called it flawless.

Damn.

>>8764580
The Robber by Robert Walser. Basically, its about an author and the self-insert protagonist of all his novels hide from all the real-life people that the author has "robbed" of ideas. But its not just meta-fiction wank. It also has a heart, the central plot being a love story

Read it immediately

>>8764923
The robber by Robber Walser. Its about a robber and the self-robbing protagonist of all his robbed novels hide from all the robbed-life robbers taht the robber has robbed of robs. But its not just meta-robbing robbings. It also has a robbing, the central robbing being a robbing story.
Rob it immediately.

Snake by Kate Jennings or Voss by Patrick White

>>8764638
Brian?

john william's augustus

>>8765036
is it good? i read stoner and loved it, i also read i,claudius recently and thought it was amazing.

The best book I read this year was Ideas have Consequences by Richard Weaver. The only fiction book I read was the Inferno but Ive started reading fiction again very recently.

>>8764674
I have After Virtue on my shelf but I have been putting off reading it due to not feeling adequately informed on ethics, particularly 20th century ethical theories like emotivism which as I understand it, MacIntyre spends a decent chunk of the book critiquing. Did you have prior knowledge of ethics and Aristotle or did you find it easy to follow along without much background knowledge?

Im in the process of converting to Catholicism (if that makes sense, former fedora here) and am reading the Bible as well as the Brothers Karamazov, the latter being recommended to me by someone who claimed it helped strengthen their faith.

It appears you are Catholic or at least Christian, do you have any recommendations for someone in my situation? Is Flannery O'Connor a good start?

Soumission

>>8764775
Who are the other authors?

>>8764648
Thank you so much for saying this. It nourishes my psyche to see people on this board praising a work written by a woman.

it is. its a crazy philological web of heresay and ego. didnt know i'd be getting into/back into virgil, ovid, horace, cicero, or any of that shit that went down in rome but he gives such potent historically conflicting perspective to each scrap of prose that its difficult not to.

i loved i, claudius as well. shit was hilarious. i liked the image of tiberius walking with his giant lizard and caligula dressing as venus and having a giant battle with water in effort to show the public he was stronger than poseidon lol

memoirs of hadrian is also dope if u haven't read it.

I've read 154 books this year, and I have to say Cities of the Red Night was the second best. The best was Negative Dialectics.

>>8764935
Dude its like your quoting the book

Moby Dick

Metaphysics

>>8765090
>I have After Virtue on my shelf but I have been putting off reading it due to not feeling adequately informed on ethics, particularly 20th century ethical theories like emotivism which as I understand it, MacIntyre spends a decent chunk of the book critiquing.
I think he certainly does not make for an easy read, but he does lead you through it. Usually it's recommend to read Dependant Rational Animals first for MacIntyre as it's half as long and is generally much simpler.
>Did you have prior knowledge of ethics and Aristotle or did you find it easy to follow along without much background knowledge?
I knew the basics on the three big ones, virtue ethics, kantian ethics and utilitarianism, but no extensive knowledge of either, maybe 1-2 books on each.
>It appears you are Catholic or at least Christian, do you have any recommendations for someone in my situation? Is Flannery O'Connor a good start?
Flannery O'Connor wasn't particularly focused on the aspects of conversion in what I've read. I'd just recommend what I usually do, Jesus of Nazareth by Joseph Ratzinger, his Introduction to Christianity, John Henry Newman, Thomas Merton, Thomas Kempen, St. Augustine, Gene Wolfe etc. I've never been irreligious, so I can't exactly say what I think would work, but these are some of the authors I found particularly moving.

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This is not only the best book I have read this year I think it may be the best book I have read ever.

Other Voices Other Rooms - Capote

>>8765166
Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekov. Russians do it generally much better than other nations.

Non fic: On Certainty by Wittgenstein
Fic: The Fall by Camus

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Symposium

Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo

Excellent read, would recommend

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>>8764830
fuck yes this is amazing so far

Game of thrones. Just finished it now onto clash of Kings.

>>8764583
strong first post

>>8765422
i love you

>>8764830
This sounds interesting. Is it actually sensible stuff and not just >muh mens rights?

>>8766258
Muh pederasty amirite?

For me it's either Silence or Ulysees

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>>8764580

Out of 842 books this year

>>8764580
Shake-speare's sonnet XVII

>>8766484
842 books? how?

>>8766484
> 842
Surely you must be joking.

>>8764580
Lanark.

>>8764580
The Brothers Karamazov is the one I have liked the most.

>>8764580
the leopard

>>8764665
Because the government hid it...

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Captain underpants (trust me on this one and go pick up a copy)

>>876654
heres how:
youtube.com/watch?v=9Okt8cXqbyo

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>>8764580
The little prince.
I shit you not
Fuck you, I did never read it, I wasn't expecting to cry with a fucking kids book, and i've been reading nihilistic shit since i'm 13

>>8765173
/lit/ seems to have a high opinion of O'Connor, though. At least as far as women are concerned.

The Ghost Finders series by Simon R. Greene. Dude can do no wrong, but Ghost Finders has been his most compelling since Deathstalker, IMO.

Do you guys think this place is shit because real readers are off reading?

The Grapes Of Wrath

>>8764580
who is this semen demon?

>>8767489
Welcome on board laddie.
Now draw me a sheep.

>>8765453
I guess you could say, I robbed from the book

>>8764580
How to win friends and influence people. It's all anecdotes and simple stuff, but it has already helped a lot.

>>8764580
>>8764580
I've a lot of trouble lately focussing on reading books, skipping lines and words, filling in the wrong words in my head when reading, etc. Anyone else ever had this problem?

>>8764580
The Stranger

>>8767633
When the plot is too trhilling and the author doesn't realize it so he jsut writes long paragraphs about a character feels when my mind is racing because of the action taking time in the book I fastread trough it. I've had what you described happened to me at the end of Atlas Shrugged tho, but I didnt' miss a bit of the story, just Ayn Rand telling me for the hundreth time how Reardens blonde hair represented humanities will to create or something.

>>8767683
but im reading Kafka's "the process" :( i feel like fastreading would be blasphemous

>>8767731
then Kafka should learn how to keep the pace of his story consistent wouldnt he?

>>8767738
but what if it's me, anon?

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Los Detectives Salvajes. Not even memeing.
>inb4 overrated
Might not be the greatest novel in the spanish language of the past 30 years, but it comfortably sits at the absolute top of my reads this year, and I could include the past few years too. A beautiful piece of heart warming fiction for lovers of literature

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Novels/Novellas I read this year
Fahrenheit 451
Stoner
Catcher in the Rye
Old Man and the sea
The sun also rises
A hero of our time
Of mice and men
The Pearl
Notes from underground

And my favorite two of the bunch
The Metamorphosis and The Dream of the Ridiculous man.

>>8765373
>memoirs of hadrian
man that was absolutely amazing from start to finish

>>8764580
Trainspotting
or
Cannery Row

>>8769309
marguerite yourcenar is a god.

giovanni's room

>>8764580
Decline and Fall by Waugh

>>8769454
Cannery Row was nice. Used to live a few minutes away from there.

The Ethics of Liberty - Murray N. Rothbard

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>>8764580

Also, The Underground Railroad