ITT: Name a book you're currently reading. Tell others how

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Leave this board and never return if any one of these applies to you:
>you read any form of genre fiction
>you barely know your classics
>you tend to believe that if you like a given work, it is justified on an artistic level
>you think everyone's opinion should be accepted and respected
>you speak a single language
>you read contemporary versions of Shakespeare or Milton
>you read for the plot
>you read for entertainment
>you rarely read nonfiction
>you don't have a solid grounding in philosophy
>you don't have at least have some understanding of the Three Tragedians and Homer
>you have little to no understanding of literature outside of your cultural horizon
>you have little to no understanding of literature within your own cultural horizon
>you mostly read contemporary literature
>you believe 'the author is dead'
>you make your literary analysis proceed from ideology
>you think intricate prose is 'pretentious' and that the author 'should just get to the point'
>your rarely read poetry
>you think Rhythm and Rhyme is just useless rules and laws restricting creativity
>you have a hard time explaining why you like a given work
>you have a hard time forming structured and relevant literary criticism
>you tend to refuse to judge works for yourself, rather relying on the opinions of literary authorities
>you rarely read for more than one or two hours straight

Currently reading The Tin Drum. Oskar is fucking wild.

mein kampf, I hate it because MC is literally trump

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goonan, the foundation for exploration

i'm only six pages in. i've already commandeered the guy at the gas station to help me begin rocket testing in my backyard and my dick has literally become a broadsword.

frankly i'm scared you guys. i didn't realize it was going to be this intense

>>9634529
Candide

>bad thing happens
>candide flees
>"best of all possible worlds"
>rinse and repeat

>>9634529
Love it so much, 40 pgs in, and canto 4 is my favorite part so far.

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>>9634626
shit, pic-related

Heart of Darkness, it's fine.

>>9634623
I know, it's great right?

Nibelunglied
King Lear
Japanese Death Poems

Loving all of them. Lear I am reading again, and the Nibelunglied has been fantastic. I really like epic poems.

>>9634636
what do you plan on reading after that?

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>>9634529
Ulysses, it's great
simultaneously -> Sons and Lovers, also great.

>>9634641
It's great. I flirted with Christianity earlier in the year, which was awful. Thankfully Voltaire's steering me back on the right course.

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the consolation of philosophy, loving it.

the prague cemetery by umberto eco, which i am nearly done

a clever book, would recommend. it helps knowing a bit of history of the era it is set it, but it is certainly not required

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>>9634529
Bodies and Souls, from Maxence van der Meersch.
I love how the characters are constructed and you get attached to them. Also the whole description of the medical procedures.
>mfw Géraudin botches a C-section and lets the patient bleed out to death.
He should have recognized how his age had taken its toll on his surgical skills up until then.

>>9634620
man, the goodreads review looks so good, shame it is not availible as a digital publication.

>>9634620
wtfis this?

>>9634620
omg nevermind with i said, its availible on their website: see http://www.thefoundationpress.com/fulltext.html

>>9634530
That should be a picture of Novalis you fucking pseud.

>>9634529
I'm reading The Red Book

it's intriguing and somewhat disagreeable though I and postponing my critical conclusions until if inish

1984

Not really interested in politics and history, but I see why people praise it so much.

I just finished Travels With Charley by Steinbeck. Easily one of the comfiest books I've read.

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pic related

Very much recommend for a bit of a "pulp" read. Fucking hilarious. It's not technically brilliant but it's clever as all hell and that's really all you need sometimes. Real scoundrel that Flashman, great rake.

The Lord of the Rings

Just started, I wonder what it's like

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>>9634530
>your rarely read poetry

Reading some Heine and Milton atm

Heine - He writes so witty it's hilarious, definitley deserves to be called one of the best german poets after Goethe - check him out If you're able to read german

Milton - I Like his epic style, although you can really see he borrowed heavly from Virgil et al. But If you get used to the style his verses really start flowing - check him out If you haven't already

>>9634530
>you speak a single language

Good thing I don't speak any languages, so I guess I can stay.

>Leave this board and never return if any one of these applies to you:

>you are only conversant in European languages
>you don't have a degree in neuroscience
>you aren't physically fit
>you haven't achieved enlightenment/salvation per the definition of at least two religions with 10,000 or more adherents each
>you didn't lose your virginity while a minor
>you haven't smoked n-n-dmt
>you don't know what the word pococurante means

Bye /lit/.

>>9634529
Walden. I like it a lot.

>>9635215
What do you recommend by Heine?

>>9635306
Make sure to read Walking and Life without Principle too.

>>9635372
Is that an Emerson thing?

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
Just started, but liking it so far.

No More Mr. Nice Guy

>>9634529
"Politics", by Aristotle, Oxford World's Classics edition. I'm only about 80 pages in but I don't think I read the same version of Plato's "Laws" as Aristotle did. Feels like I got robbed out of really understanding the root of his criticisms of alternate ideals of governance

>>9634529
Grimscribe by Thomas Ligotti.
It's pretty great, and it has some timeless tales (The Last Feast Of Harlequin, his tribute to Lovecraft, is particularly good) but Songs Of A Dead Dreamer is such a masterpiece to my eyes that some of the stories seem rather weak sauce.


>>9634623
Candide remains one of the funniest books i've read. It's hilarious how intentionally contrived the story is. And fuck Rosseau, he's easily the biggest hack of the western philosophy canon

>>9635306
Read Civil Disobeadiance too, anon.

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>>9635238
>unironically being pococurante

>>9634877
fucking retard

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Pic related

Best long poem I've ever read, seriously

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>pic and cover related.

I love it but I've never been too fond on Tolkien's arguably bloated Party regarding the Dwarves meaning some have much less characterisation than others. I couldn't name all of them.

>>9634530
The Author Is Dead.

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>The Eternal Husband

Will probably finish reading it today.

I'm liking it a lot. Dostoyevsky is such an incredible writer.

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Started pic/cover related today. 40 pages in. Good to know women haven't changed in 200 years.

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Halfway through book 1 of life and fate by Vasilij Grossman

Really good and highly recommended humanist writer. Reminds me of Tolstoy which I haven't read alot of however.

So many fucking names though it's driving me crazy.

>>9636915
Mark Twain's favorite book

Finnegans Wake. I like it. When the wife is the personification of a river/a river is the personification of the wife there are some pretty vivid sex metaphors that come out of it.

>>9634529
I am reading Vom Kriege by Carl von Clausewitz. I just started second part of it, very interesting book so far.

>>9634530
>you communicate only in green arrows

you forgot one.

Weird because pic is the cover.

Reading Mythology by Edith Hamilton.

Also reading "How to read a book" by whoever, I forgot.

Mythologies is crystal clear, concise, and informative. Helping me understand the Greeks as opposed to merely recapping the Gods.

>>9634529
Notes from the Underground.

One of the very few books I adore. I'm not big on reading, but this book I love and tell everyone to read.

>>9634529
Currently reading The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight by Thom Hartmann.

It's interesting. He points out things that the oil companies have said themselves about how we are running out of fossil fuels and proposes steps we can take to prepare ourselves without going into foil hat territory.

If nothing else it's made me rethink a lot of my habits.

>>9636462
Why is Rosseau a hack? I was actually planning on reading his Reveries of a Solitary Walker soon.

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Pretty funny

The Tanners by Robert Walter, I'm 100 pages in. It's more romantic and cheery than I'm used to but it's refreshing. The translation is doing a good job of capturing the apparent airiness of Walser's prose. I really enjoy it.

I'm also reading a bunch of poetry; Ted Berrigan's Sonnets (I've read them all but continue to go back to it), Selected Poems of Charles Olson, and Collected Poems of Robert Creeley 1975-2005. The first two I love, the Creeley I enjoyed for the first 200 or so pages but it's going downhill.

>>9634540
other than that what do you think of grass as a writter?
I have that book sitting in my shelf for months and pospone the reading

>>9638088
>tanners

Oh man, that's my favourite novel. I'm glad to see someone else reading it. Hope you enjoy it, imo it only gets better as the story progresses

1Q84

Pretty much the definition of "okay, I guess"

>>9637778
>without going into foil hat territory.
you mean incentives to buy those shingles for your house that act as solar panels?

>>9634529
i've finished crying of the lot 49 today, the whole book was a lovely surprise for me, i surely wasn't expecting anything like it and keked hard at some parts
i'm also reading storm of steel by ernst junger, but it feels hard to progress trough this book since its imagery is so dense, but thats because its an amazing book

>>9638377
is there any murakami book that doesn't fit exactly this definition?

>>9634529
>JR
It's really good when I get into it but I am often too tired from work to give it the attention it needs to be comprehended

>>9638454
Only if his name was Philip K. Dick...........

>>9638493
SHOTS FIRED

*dabs with static noise and shaking cam*

Beyond Good and Evil


I have no fucking clue whats going on, but it's rocking my world.

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>Franz Kafka's Complete Short Stories
I've recently finished the 3 that comprise his "Sons" selection, namely The Judgement, The Stoker, and The Metamorphosis, and holy fuck I have to admit the man is a mastermind. I don't know if it's the amount of both praise and criticism I've heard of him, but I never really expected myself to really "like" him as much as I do. Especially The Stoker, which I've never heard of unlike the other two stories, Herr Kafka is able to generate extreme empathy and detachment at once.

Odyssey, currently. Enjoying it MUCH more than Iliad.

Fagles translation for both, if that matters to y'all.

>>9638507
I've only read the trial, so I'm not sure I have the best input, but are his other works similar in that there really is no plot, nothing progresses, and the characters don't grow or have much depth? Is the true brilliance of Kafka that he writes something that is neither pulp nor literature, and because it is subversive to literature that it becomes literature? I wish for context simply to justify the use of the time, as I got almost nothing out of reading it.

>>9634529
>In Search of Lost Time

I love it. I try to think of my everyday moments the same way Proust thinks of them and it's pretty dope. Just beautiful writing too, even the translations.

>>9634530
>you used, or wrote, this pasta

Forgot one.

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>>9634529
Just got into Barthelme.

The Joker's Greatest Triumph is one of the funniest things I've read in a while, especially Batman's monologue at the end. Will You Tell Me? gives me feels for some reason. Hiding Man really got to me. Margins is very clever. The Piano Player is fun enough. The end of A Shower of Gold gets me a little emotional desu

Lovecraft, going through Joshi's "The Thing on the Doorstep" and other stories.

His shorter stories are SO much better it's unreal! Charles Dexter Ward and Mountains of Madness don't hold a candle to the Music of Erich Zahn, Pickman's Model, the White Ship, etc.

(remember this is one man's opinion don't skewer me /lit/)

Thanks to hollywood, The shack sparkled some interest. But it quickly faded out by the long zzzzzzzz "everything is perfect" zzzzzzzzz after the storm.

thank "god" i'm through it.

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>>9634814
Gonna try and pick this up tomorrow, thanks!

>>9634529
Chekhov's Collected Stories, Norton Critical Edition.

Fucking great, what the fuck else?

>>9634530
>mfw literary fiction is a genre
>mfw I have no face

>>9634530
Rhyme is fucking difficult to work organically.

>>9635219
Kek

>The Light is the Darkness by Laird Barron

It must be the densest pulp novel ever created. The author surely must have been on a week long cocaine binge with a desire to throw out every word he's ever learned and tip toe around Lovecraft's ouvre while every now and then slipping waist high into that muck all through the eyes of a noir detective that bashes his own stereotypes into a wall over and over with a cigarrette in his mouth and whatever liquor available in his hands.

>>9636979
So does it get more comprehensible as you continue, or is it still a pain to decipher?

hostages by oisin fagan

it's alright. short story collection by a young irish writer. i've posted before about other irish authors like tom morris, colin barrett etc and they're all pretty decent. there's a fair bit of competition here in ireland at the minute and i don't know if that's a good thing or not.

>Minima Moralia by Adorno

Beautiful prose but some of his observations are kind of wtf level. Not everything we do is fascist senpai.

>>9634530
phew, i'm allowed to stay

>The Problem of Democracy
It's just a list of references desu. Same with Beyond Human Rights.

Currently reading a Chinese novel so that I can improve my Chinese. Just started it though, so I can't say anything about its literary merits. I think the writer has a nice style, though.