what have you read so far this year? tell me about it!

>>8923691
Naked Lunch,From Hell (isn't graphic novels literature?) and some academic books of history/architecture

>>8923696
how did you find naked lunch?

i tried to read it a long time ago, i remember finding certain images very arresting - but i didn't stick with it long enough to find anything in it except in fragments.

not sure if i want to spend the time giving burroughs another go just yet because there is so much else to read!

>>8923691
Any tips on how to read more each day? Usually, after 20 pages i'm exhausted... (except its low quality /lit/)

Do you guys take breaks? How it works?

>>8923691
Exodus, that's about it. It's pretty early to be finishing books; it's only been three days!

>>8923691
for whatever reason I had a habit last year of reading short story collections and dropping them before reading the last story.
Finished Winesburg, Ohio yesterday and it was great. I look forward to reading it again, it was maximum comfy.
Tonight I'm finishing The Aleph, also great.
Tomorrow I'll finish A Good Man is Hard to Find.
Day after that I'll finish After the Quake

>>8923716
When i start the read,just stop when chapters end.
>>8923710
A printer from my country released a new edition from the book last year.The book it's like a giant trip,but some stories from it are greats,like the first one and William Lee stories.

>>8923728
Christ,the Aleph.
That short story,The House of Asterion.
J U S T

>>8923716
you just need to get into the habit - to start with maybe tell yourself that you will sit down and read 50 pages (less, if that's too much) - and persevere when you get bored or restless.

>>8923727
the biblical book, or something else of the same name?

>>8923728
ahh, but the aleph is the best story in the collection! i read that collection just after finishing ficciones, which i enjoyed far more. it may have been a translation issue, because i feel like ficciones is full of thought experiments which borges kinda just sets up and follows to their absurdities, while the aleph had more stories which unfolded along with the prose (if that makes sense)

The book of Job

>>8923798
The biblical book.

>>8923813
ahh - i received an (annotated) bible for christmas but i'm not ready to really put the work in to go through it just yet. any reflections on it?

>>8923806
what did you think?

the first book i read this year was the theory of the leisure class by thorstein veblen, which was great when he would provide specific examples about the irrationalities of capitalist consumption. he looks at fashion for a few pages and theorises that it both has to be conspicuously expensive (which, yeah, of course) and that it has to be conspicuously inhibiting to the performance of manual labour so that not only does the fact that you are able to freely spend money on unnecessary items, but you are also free not to spend your time in productive labour. This may be all be very obvious, but he describes these things as if he was an anthropologist describing the habits of an alien race and is hilariously caustic while insisting he is simply being objective.

>>8923747
man, House of Asterion was unbelievably good. its just one page front and back and it's been stuck in my head ever since. I had to pace around a while after reading it.

>>8923798
>you just need to get into the habit - to start with maybe tell yourself that you will sit down and read 50 pages (less, if that's too much) - and persevere when you get bored or restless.
do you think i should alternate readings?

>>8923855
if you think that will help you then sure. i usually read from 2 or 3 books most days.

the main thing is to get into the habit of the act of reading, so whatever helps achieve that end is positive!

>>8923855
Start the read of the day early,OP.
Wake up,drink some coffe,take a shower,and go read.When you do this,your body gets the habit,and the morning reading flows natural.

>>8923843
Genesis has a lot of dry spells. I'm talking x descended from y and z and stuff like that, although the story is genuinely poetic and makes for a semi-interesting read.

Exodus was not quite how I imagined it to be, and it's more brutal. Defiantly not The Prince of Egypt if you ever watched that movie, but the movie helped to cheer me up after the unexpected chaos of the golden lamb incident.

Exodus also has a long list of ancient Hebrew laws, building plans, and decor descriptions for the tabernacle and ark of the covenant that you can skip too.

While there are some dry spells, I take rest in the fact that multiple people wrote the Bible, so some parts will defiantly have better stories or be better written than others.

I recommend starting when you have lots of patience and go from there.

>>8923843
i should note that the book is really a slog though, he get's mired in pretty obtuse social darwinist theories to explain class structure, and it's dry and unenlightening. i would have put it down if i wasn't so close to finishing it, i'm not sure it's worth the effort.

>>8923691
I haven't finished a single book this year, I'm about to knock out 2 tomorrow. I'm about 50 pages combined from both books (Modern Library's Writer's Workshop and in the Time of the Assassins)

>>8923870
yeah, i'll definitely try that, i have a hard time reading long descriptions that seems unnecessary (there are authors that describe the environment in terrible ways)

>>8923875
i usually read on the end of the day, like between 4pm and 7 pm because i'm having a problem of insomnia and i wake up 11am
when i fix this shit i might give a try

>>8923691
I read Jo Walton's Thessaly trilogy (Athena, Apollo, and time-traveling philosphers and classic majors try to set up Plato's Republic, plus robots). First three books of The Iliad. Half of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.

Started reading fanfiction again after a 8 year hiatus. Kinda surprised by how much I'm enjoying it, granted most of its garbage like every other medium. It's nice to read some random story and not have to have the early world building and character development chapters thrown at you because you're reading something with an established universe.

I've read The Stranger, Death of Ivan Illyech, and am balls deep in doestevesky. Brainlet btw

I've read the metaphysics and the republic first half of the year. Then the ramayana, and an essay called the mediocre man. Currently reading Wagners's Judenthum in der musik

I'm more than halfway through A Farewell to Arms, and I read Minority Report on the first. I've definitely been reading more since Christmas.

>>8923691
Slowly working my way through War and Peace, my book list is backed up to all hell so I figured starting with the biggest one first would work out in the long run.

Reading lolita, about to finish part one. I dont see how this is considered a comedy. Ive gotten hard at least twice. I have to check definitions every couple of pages, and his prose is beautiful.

>>8923691
I'm making my way through J R and a handful of books on WW1. I haven't had much time to make good headway, though.

Nearly done with The Brothers Karamazov, midway through No Longer Human, and just started Gravity's Rainbow

>Armor by John Steakley
Bar none my favorite genre fiction work, even the tonal shift of the frame narrative and largely unresolved plot don't dampen the incredibly rich world and pounding battle scenes. Movie when?
>Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein
Came for bugs, stayed for political discourse on military democracy in a post-need society and hearty chortles about on-Base shenanigans.

Have Player Piano up next and probably ditching the scifi romp to tackle Things Fall Apart after that.

Finished Fatelessness, I really liked the book. The prose was great (read it in original Hungarian), the mix of some kind of adult cold detachment from the events and experiencing the lager as a kid created a quite interesting atmosphere throughout the story and the ending was not like a usual holocaust story at all.
Right now I'm into 20 pages of Foucault's Pendulum, can't say anything about it yet.

I've been following the Short Story group >>8919723 and have read The Death of Ivan Ilyich with them.

Read In Cold Blood for the first time since I was 17 (24) to get through my NYE hangover.

8/10 bretty good.

>Tie Tampereelle
>Viipuri 1918
>Täällä pohjantähden alla

Kyllä tässä vielä tolkku saadaan asioihin.

creativity inc is a great book
snow crash is still hilarious the second time through