/lit/ - Literature

>>11963137
Lolita. Pretentious drivel.

my diary desu
the plot

Never met a books I didn't like

gravitys rainbow. filth. overwritten. drug induced trash

>>11963184

>>11963166
t..this is me.

My first Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground. Couldn't finish it. Haven't read Dostoyevsky since.

Harry Potter. Absolutely the dullest franchise I've ever consumed.

Stranger in a Strange Land
Tedious prose, tedious predictable 'message', utterly valueless
I'd also say Atlas Shrugged for similar reasons but don't want to summon them

Handmaid’s Tale. Reads like a shitty draft

>>11963137
The Awakening.
A feminist's wet dream that I was forced to read in high school

>>11963137
I was forced to read “Tales of a Feminist Killjoy” for my uni writing class.

>>11963233

>>11963141
fpbp

Catcher in the Rye. Read it when I was a teenager and it just sounded like all the same retarded hogwash the emo retards around me would come out with every day.

>inb4 its supposed to be whiny
or some shit
if i wanted to hear whiny i'd just talk to one of my family members

>>11963259

Then stop attending shite universities, anon.

>>11963676
I’d love to, unfortunately my parents are making me go to uni and there aren’t any better unis in any remotely close area

Children of blood and bone
a boring plot that already been used before, magic (at all) and is manipulated just for plot reasons. Tediously repeating the characters angsty thoughts three times every chapter. A predictable plot. I was actually hoping the antagonist(s) would win because they're actually right, but the writer is a hack and just reverts too African culture to give the book the tin amount of uniqueness it didn't have. A film was put into production before the book was even published just because of the African style. It isn't even set in Africa which really pissed me off and the only non-black character is a shifty chink which ironically goes against the political message that the book tries to force. it also is trying to push the ideology of blacks being oppressed in America by using the society in the book as an analogy. but, hilariously, the society in the book is just rich blacks oppressing poor blacks which reflects reality more accurately than the writer intended

>>11963721

Let me guess, you’re a mut?

>>11963137
The Grapes of Wrath
communism, adult breast-feeding the list could go on

The Quran is the worst book I've ever read.
It stole the best parts of the Bible and then pads the rest of it with repeated sentences for persuasion.
Reading it made me realize how fucking retarded Muslims must be. At least the Bible has beautiful and meaningful verses. It isn't just don't fuck your mom or sisters but cousins are OK and you should marry your brothers widow because Allah is all knowing and all merciful.

The House on Mango Street

I cant begin to describe the pointlessness of being told to read this book in school.

>>11963223
Are you a woman who serious question? Notes touch the soul of every non NPC male.

>>11963223
Are you a woman, serious question? Notes touch the soul of every non NPC male

Dracula sucked

Nausea. I wish I could strangle that fish-eyed french fuck.

if i don't like a book, i don't bother finishing it. so i have finished very few books i dislike. the only exception is things i read for school many years ago, but they all had some worth. or things for my book group, the worse of which was probably the wife by meg wolitzer. i don't think it's a terrible book, it's just not good and i wouldn't have finished it if i hadn't had the obligation to read it

>>11963903
And if you haven't finished it, you don't know what you don't like?

The ones I read by John Katzenbach, Sophie's World, and other stuff I had to read for school a few years ago

Eragon. I have absolutely no fucking idea why I read it and to this day I regret wasting time on it.

What I didn't like about it is that it was complete shit.

>>11963937
it was a necessary step in your life. You might have turned to drogs otherwise

>>11963913
i don't think it's fair to assess a book if i haven't finished it

>>11963137

Hyperion from Hölderlin

It´s faggotry concentrated into a book.

By the way only faggots don´t like sweaty women

>>11963880
Aside from my crossdressing and dysphoria, I am a man who could absolutely empathise with what the narrator was saying. However, the prose was fucking impenetrable. It's a jumble of words on a page to me, and yet I normally get such a thrill from reading purple prose. Maybe it is supposed to resemble a feverish thought process but I grew tired of it very rapidly. It was dry, boring, antiquated. Maybe it was a bad translation, I dunno. I'd like to give Dostoyevsky another chance sometime, what book I don't know.

>>11963137
Interviews with Hideous Men was boring and the writing was like dragging your face over broken glass

>>11963827
Leaf

>>11963137
Frankenstein

I swear half the book must be Frankenstein bemoaning his existence

Metro 2033. Felt as though it was written in the journal of some high school kid while he wasn't paying attention in chemistry class.

>>11963137
fictions - I didnt get any of it

and reading threads about it makes me feel like a brainlet :/

>>11963937
>Eragon.
What a piece of derivative shit this was. A lot of the time people describe stuff as derivative they're just meming but this was truly that. Such paint by numbers shameless garbage. Only reason it got published was because his parents were publishers or in the book game themselves.

>>11963137
Cash Landing by James Grippando. It was immature, absurd and everything was stupid. The main bad guy is unironically identified by the FBI agent because he have a huge dick.

Fifty Years of Solitude. Some middle-aged Latino male's fantasy-wank about how he hates American economic imperialism and dictatorships turned into a 600 pg. novel that every single literary critic will praise the fuck out of because it's writtem by a based brown person.

Neuromancer. The style of writting was terrible.

>>11963309
Young people can't appreciate catcher. You're too caught up in your own shit

>>11963251
I'd second this.
I was expecting to not necessarily enjoy the feminist angle but assumed there would at least be decent characters/prose since it's considered a classic.
Absolutely unreadable. I remember I genuinely got mad while reading it, because of how bad the characters and writing were. The erotic sections were like something from a 99cent Kindle romance. Everything else was like some tumblr radfem caricature that's too stupid to even make fun of.
To paraphrase Sam Hyde, you can practically smell the boxed wine and cat shit.

>>11963309
It's like Fight Club- it's a great piece of work, but not for the reasons most people think.
Catcher is a snapshot of when your innocence is on its last fringes and dread and alienation are 90% kicked in, but you have no adult self-awareness to look at yourself subjectively. The "I know everything, everyone sucks but me" is annoying, but we all thought like that at one point. It's a bittersweet novel because that's the shittiest times in most peoples' lives, emotionally, but it portrays it so well.
People who love Holden may be missing something, same as those who think Tyler is an awesome badass prophet in Fight Club

>>11964006
damn, sorry to hear that. i just finished the book myself and really enjoyed it. i'll admit the first half is dry as fuck though. did you make it to the second "book?" it really picks up

>>11963137
I once asked /sffg/ for their rec on a sci-fi book. I wanted to be fair and do away with any prior prejudice I held towards genre fiction. They recommended Snow Crash. I stopped reading after three pages and burned the book. There was nothing redeemable about it.

>>11963137
Telegraph Avenue by Michael (((Chabon))).
The worst fucking drivel, containing the usual stock degenerates - homos, SJW yentas, ecumenical white guilt Berkeleyites. Worse than it sounds.

I dunno, probably one of the many trash romance novels I've picked up over the years. Maybe the one about the vampire girl who went to a special boarding school for vampires. It was written by a mother daughter duo

>>11964811
You made the right decision. The shit writing made a lot more sense when I learned that it was a failed comic script turned book.

>>11964360
>Fifty Years of Solitude
That book doesn't even exist.

>>11964153
Ficciones is great, I read it when I was like 16 and loved it. I read it in Spanish, though.

>>11964781
Which translation did you read?

Not necessarily the *worst* but the Kingkiller Chronicles (Name of the Wind,etc) was some completely cringeworthy faggot shit, man.

>>11963227
lol but you consumed the whole franchise though

>>11964360
>how he hates American economic imperialism and dictatorships turned into a 600 pg.
that's not even what it's about, that's like a single chapter with the banana company, an event which DID happen in real life... did you even finish it?

>that every single literary critic will praise the fuck out of because it's writtem by a based brown person.
It's praised for its literary qualities, not because of the colour of the person who wrote it. How do I know this? It was huge in the Spanish-speaking territories before being translated. Even Borges liked it. You're making it sound as if this is some book made in Burgerland by some minority to fill a quota, when in fact this is a foreign book.

>>11964006
Well it does get better. I like Crime and Punishment more than Brothers Karamazov. House of the Dead was a good one, read that in a day

>>11963852
cringe. dumb ChristLARPer.

native son, and i don’t even hate niggers

>>11965777
nice numbers, but how does he justify the use of the n-word???

Unironically White Fang

>>11965791
the protagonist’s name is literally “Bigger,” now just say it with me: niiiiiiiiiiiiiiggggggggggger.

>>11963852
I hope you realize Muhammed's scribe gave up half way when it was written.

>>11963880
Reading the Underground first is the worst advice ever. It only works for veteran pseuds.

Diary of a wimpy kid is responsible for making every 99 zoomer a malignant sociopath. Fuck that nigger book.

bible

>>11963137
Lovecraft Country. Legitimately couldn't continue for more than 20 pages. I'm not even white but the virtue signalling is so intrusive and constant that you it's a pain to read.

>>11963852
>cousins are okay
This is in the Bible as well. Retarded LARPer.

>>11964006
>the average /lit/ poster
State of this board

>>11966035
>Sociopath maymay

>>11964006
9/10 bait keep up the good work

I read "Bonjour, Tristesse" for a French Literature class. The title is literally "hello, sadness" and it foreshadows all this misery and sadness. Then the actual sad event is very underwhelming, is given little attention, and the main--and insufferable--character is hardly changed by the experience. I would say it tops Catcher in the Rye for annoying teenage whining; it was literally written by an 18 year old girl. imo, a study in how absolutely not to end a story, ever.

>>11963137
Brideshead Revisited. A cold book with no humour about nothing. Terrible stuff.

>>11964360
This, except the political allegory was the best part of that shit novel. All summary and no scene, that's not writing for me.

>>11963137
Either a Magic the Gathering tie-in or a Warhammer 40k tie-in. I didn't read either all the way through, but the bits I did read were almost certainly the worst published prose I've ever read.

It's literally just empty references with no meaning. Literally. It does not comment on, creatively alter or even adequately plagiarize the source material it is supposed to be a "love letter" to. It's just namedrops.

I am exaggerating. I was warned about this by /lit/ but I didn't believe them because they cry wolf about every single book that's not super patrician and inaccessible. RP1 is actually THAT bad, though. Pic related is how the entire book is like, in style and in substance.

The few "cringe" passages of the book about atheism or masturbation are actually its best part because at least they contain some kind of level of authorial voice or worldview. The rest of it is just nothing. You might as well copy a bunch of Wikipedia stub articles and call it a novel.

>>11966343
Yeah, I haven't read it but every extract I've seen makes it look like a very strong contender for Worst Novel.

Doesn't it also go out of its way to be excruciatingly obvious with its references? As in, not 'then I saw Gollum' but 'then I saw Gollum, from The Lord of the Rings'.

>>11964227
Allegedly it gets "better" but I couldn't be fucked to read anymore of it.

>>11963950
>half drug half dog

>>11966356
>tfw you huff a golden retriever

>>11966353
>Doesn't it also go out of its way to be excruciatingly obvious with its references? As in, not 'then I saw Gollum' but 'then I saw Gollum, from The Lord of the Rings'.

That's more or less correct. There are a few subtle ones (when the main character gets trapped in a hyperbureaucratic indentured service job, he creates a fake name based on the protagonist of Brazil) but those are the exception.

Pic related is how many times the novel uses the word "classic" (as in "the classic 80s sitcom Full House)

>>11963141
Gotta agree with this, or maybe I just don't like Nabokov

when i was a teenager i was in full edgy mode reading dystopian novels. I decided to read the island by huxley. Dreadful.

>>11963137
i want to rip off the few last pages, fuck
THE HAPPY ENDING WITH THAT DAMN DISGUSTING FUCKING PRETENTIOUS MAN ISNT COOL, I FUCKING HATE IT, IT WAS SO GOOD BUT LITERAL FECES-PUKE IN THE LAST FEW PAGES AAAAAAAAAAAA I FUCKING HATE THE ENDING, ITS SO UNNATURAL AND IT CAME FROM LITERAL NOTHING-VOID-PIECE-OF-SHIT

>>11966521
But the rest is damn good light literature, i recommend if you want something light and funny. The childhood-teenagehood is my favorite part.

>>11964360
Do you mean One Hundred Years?

>>11964360
>Fifty Years of Solitude
lmao, think you forgot to read the last fifty years of solitude, maybe you'll find better with those last years

>>11966534
Anon only got halfway through

>>11966343
lol

>>11963137
2666, i finished the first part and very little of the second. its not that it doesnt have a few clever things to say, but it really didnt seem worth the length so i dropped it. bolano is overrated

Spread the message
" V for sejr"

V for sejr

>>11963137
House of Leaves, s'all bullshit n' shit

For Us, The Living: A Comedy of Customs by Robert Heinlein.
A man is transported through time and is cuckolded by a woman he's just met, and is forced to either be sent to a re-education center or leave society altogether.

>>11963137
Your diary desu

>>11963184
Yeah it's not great. The aspect that made it unreadable for me was that I couldn't empathize with any of the characters. They seemed less like people and more like vehicles to show off pynchon's big brain. I'm all for intellectual wankery but it must have an underlying humanity or what's the point?

>>11966343
>And, of course, Kevin Smith.

>>11966343
>I am exaggerating

I meant to say:
*I am NOT exaggerating

>>11964576
Yeah every self respecting guy in our class was fucking pissed that we had to read this bullshit, but it wasn't surprising considering our teacher was a rabid feminist. At one point we were having a Socratic circle and one mad lad said that women were "biologically speaking" supposed to raise children, which the main character was neglecting and thus she felt unsatisfied with life. Every girl in the class just started going off on the autist and the teacher had to go full damage control at the end. Fucking best part of the year.

>>11963137

>>11967338
I wish that was me, or that I was still me but looked like her.

>>11966278
no its not you dumbass fedora cuck

>>11966286
still a shite book, no one actually read it and every one saw the gay movie

Only Revolutions
It tries so hard to be different that it forgets why there's any homogeneity of form in the first place.

>>11963937
I managed to see a bit of the movie based on it not too long ago, it looked like a shite version of Lord of the rings.

>>11964385
Really ? I found it an easy read, it could just be because sci-fi and cyberpunk is my favorite genre though.
Now mona Lisa overdrive just gave me a headache with the three simultaneous stories.

The Quran. I read small parts of it bu it's very poorly written to the point you need to read the whole book to get one story about a prophet completed. The stories are scattered all over the place its boring af

>>11964811
I fell for the meme of that book. It's the worse books I've ever read in my life.

>>11970816
I forgot to mention that I actually really liked the part where the hologram librarian talks about history and the purposes of the gods and stuff, and how they programed humanity, and how Cuneiform related to the 1's and 0's in computers.

>>11963137
Suttree by Charles MemeCarthy

Almost every sentence is excruciatingly cringe. It's like a 14 year old year just discovered Joyce and bought a thesaurus and tried to write a novel.

>>11963137
Native Son
>shieeeeet
>communist
>nigger sympathizer book
>litterally the reason why people want to let black rapists murderers roam our streets

>>11963137
The worst? Well, that would defiantly be the Violinist of Venice. Good God, the writing was awful, with confusing grammar. I swear, the author just repeated the same thing more than plenty of times, or if she was trying to make a list, it usually didn't work. Also, the main character just waltzes in on the Violinist, Antonio Vivaldi, in the middle of the fucking night, so she's a bitch. The dialogue also feels forced and unnatural. I couldn't read after the first chapter, so take what I said with a grain of salt.

>>11964360
Fifty?

>>11963137
Pet Sematary. King constantly tells us that this is a scary scene because the character "felt a cold plop of terror like jelly" or "was hit by a hot jag of terror like acid" or "it was so intense he felt it in his toes" or "it was so intense it coursed to his scalp."

Why, lord? Because I decided to read some ol' horror hits for Halloween. They all make better movies than books.

>>11970874
imagine being this brainwashed

>>11970866
I haven't read that but
>>11963137
Blood Meridian. I'll be so fucking glad when the grimderp fad passes.

>>11970940
Imagine unironically having to be forced to read this by your high school teacher.

American Education at it's finest folks.

>>11970866
Lmao. The prologue to Suttree is some of the best English writing of the last fifty years. Literally epic. Biblical. When you grow up and read books for grown ups you'll understand this. S M F H at the insistent need to be so fuckin above certain things just because people consistently praise them. I bet you think Franzen is overrated too don't you?

A farewell to arms. It’s 300 pages of melodramatic bullshit. The worst part it’s poorly written, melodramatic driver.

>>11963137
Things Fall Apart and Night were just fucking awful books, however All Quiet on the Western Front was also quite a slog.

Delillo - White Noise

>>11963137
I can't remember. Some YA shit I read as a kid. Why isn't this everyone's answer?

>>11971077
>White Noise published in 1985
>DeLillo predicted school shooters

>>11966355
It doesn't.

>>11968597
The book is just the plot of Star Wars ripped out and haphazardly sewn in to a janky pseudo-Tolkien setting.

>>11964811
Snow Crash is really not something that someone who isn't into genre fiction should read since it's sort of a parody of the cyberpunk genre. I still think it's a bad book, but you were missing context as to why it was the way it was. If you want actually good sci-fi/fantasy, read Gene Wolfe. Start with The Fifth Head of Cerberus, which is a trio of novellas and then try out Book of the New Sun. There is some really great genre fiction stuff, but like anything you have to sift through a giant mountain of shit to find anything worth something.

>>11971077
its not that bad just dont take it too seriously

>>11970991
>Literally epic
FTW

>>11964006
> he didn't make it past the first half of the novel

lame


that first half is meant to be a meandering, contradictory mess because the underground man is so full of his own shit and he comes to realise it in the second half of the novel (albeit maybe reluctantly). it's a cautionary tale to not go down that road like the underground man because it's very difficult to turn back from it.

check out Crime & Punishment, that one's fascinating. If it's a little long, check out The Double.

>>11964360
100 Years of Solitude was a very painful read for me until the end. After that it kinda clicked for me drastically, and I re-read it within a week and enjoyed it a lot more. It's not that bad anon.

>>11964360
>Fifty Years

I would hate reading this book as part of some class and having to find symbolism and muh allegory. Reading it on your own time however it's not bad. I liked the style of prose and his descriptions but will say it is a book I would not have liked at a younger age.

All and all I probably misinterpreted a good portion of symbols and missed a few allegories but there were some parts that I still remember.

>>11963309
This post sounds like Holden lmao

>>11963137
Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance.

Boring, pseudophilosophical drivel. The only thing of the whole book that strikes me as good was that the author showed by accident that trying to disprove the truthfulness of the antique philosophers will bear no fruits exept turning you mad.

>>11965806
why

The sun also rises
I read the old man and the sea and liked it in high school so I decided to read his other works. However, I didn’t realize he wrote the most boring book on the planet.

>>11971499
lol no book is meant to be bad

>>11963137
Der Steppenwolf. god damn it, after reading charles bukowski, that book seemed like a joke.

>>11972106
I just didn't enjoy it. I read it as a kid and it all felt very pointless to me. Not that I think everything has to have a point, but White Fang just felt empty.

The Law of Attraction by Esther Hicks

Expected a self-help book centered around that topic but it turned out to be some retarded hippie shit about a ghost named Abraham

>>11972121
>Bukowski
I hope you mean his poetry and not novels

Time enough for love
It's just insest self insert smut without the smut and presenting it's something more. It's quite a dishonest book, and that why I hate it so much. If it was just insest smut then that is that , but no it's about "love", completely missing the point of family and love.

The Sirens of Titan

>>11963137
On Anarchism by Noam Chomsky

I can't read anything political by Chomsky, it's just propaganda and sanctimonious drivel. He takes no excuse for the US but makes every excuse for other mass murderers so long as they're leftist. It's so fucking obnoxious and transparent.

Eat, Pray, and Love.

I could not stand how cringe the dialogue sounded and the author whining about her life when she's another rich hipster/vegan middle aged white liberal.

The Scarlet Letter. Too much description; not enough story.

>>11972099
I just finished that book two minutes ago. Ratings implied this book "changed the lives of readers".
All I feel right now is confusion. The part about "gumption" (i.e. your morale when doing mechanical work) was helpful though.

The Alchemist. Very inconsistent.

>>11963937
It was my first introduction into fantasy novels years ago, so it holds a special place in my heart.

>>11972121
Why?

>>11963137
Ancillary Justice.

Panders to the whole gender-freedom-culture thing that's going on. I didn't like her writing style and didn't care for the gender pronoun gimmick. It upsets me that it won like every award that year.

>>11966537
haha

>>11963223
did you get through part 1? part 1 is tedious in order to make a point and build tension.

part 2 is the good part

its like a cringe comp from the mid 1800s

>>11963137
How about a non-meme answer? I hated this stupid fucking book I read once about some shitty ass girls fantasy of becoming a princess in a dystopian world. I read it out of sheer boredom in 8th grade.

>>11970991
I love Suttree, one of my favorite books actually, and I think Franzen is a massive hack.

I am usually not too critical on things but by the good Lord in heaven "The Argonauts" by Maggie Nelson might just be the worst in recent memory. Had to read it for a class but man it is just terrible. I am not even sure what it is about except the author and her lesbian lover and their life with their baby. I hate the stuff it gets into, but that isn't even the reason I dislike it. I got about 40-50 pages in and every subsequent page felt like I was never getting closer to the conclusion. It just reads like some dumb bitch talking about her thoughts on really trivial shit and trying to make it interesting when there are maybe 2 or 3 interesting paragraphs out of the entire book but even then they are still incredibly dull. Best way to describe it is that it is just words on a page and every page is worse than the last.

>>11969668
Did you read it in english? Maybe it's better in Arabic

War and Peace...fucking feminist faggot REEE

>>11963141
Philistine

>>11963827
L8 to the party but just wanna say america has some of the best unis in the world. Any ivy, any flagship in Ca, Va, Ny, TX, and dozens of research unis and colleges to boot. Beside maybe Wyoming, in this country you're never more than 3 hours away from a great school. Look at how many international students we have, even in the second and third tiers

>>11970938
King's early horror was garbage, the Richard Bachman books from that period are so much better because they're fun/weird thrillers instead of bad horror.

>>11963233
Atlas is gr8 u gei

>>11965806
Call of the wild was better than white fang imo. I'm a brainlet so I just read it as an adventure story about the Yukon and I like it a lot

>>11963309
No NPC could enjoy Catcher in the Rye

>>11963152
Upvoted

>>11964851
>I dunno, probably one of the many trash romance novels I've picked up over the years.
do people actually buy those? are they really as simplistic as they seem? I'm curious about them, you know the ones they sell at Safeway and Wal-Mart and shit. I'm too embarrassed to actually buy one to see what they are like

>>11975190
It's the normiest of normie books

>>11975208
Fuck you.

>>11970866
>>11970948
>>11970991
creosote

>>11970938
I read Pet Sematary in high school. I was glad when I finished but didn't really regret reading it. I could take it or leave it.

>>11963137

>>11970940
orange man bad

>>11970940

>>11963137
The handmaids tale
106,140 of the words

>>11975259
kek kek

Medea.Stimmen
Had to read it for my last year of high school and it was absolutely dreadful. Boring, yet pretentious diction, no tension, politicised by a basic bitch leftist cat lady. Completely squanders Euripides' Medea story. Literal fanfiction self-insert Mary-Sue type of shit.
God, that book blows.

La Bete Humaine. I usually like Zola books, but everyone in the book was such an annoying cunt that I was actually pleased when most of them died.

>>11963937
I completely forgot I attempted reading it once
Did 100 pages for some reason
Checks out that the dude who wrote it was 15 and his parents owned a publishing house

>>11963137
The Fault In Our Stars. Some girl in high school told me to read it.

I'm sure this will be considered a low-quality response since young adult romance is low-hanging fruit, but that book made me angry like no other book has. Even if you put aside how pretentious the writing style was (not a single teenager thinks or speaks like how he portrayed his characters), how unconvincing and cringeworthy the dialogue was, how fucking annoying and uppity the characters were, whatever. All of that aside. It's still an attempt at romanticizing something that is so, so ugly. While some authors and artists may be capable of capturing beauty in something tragic, in this case it was clearly just a hack of a romance writer horrifically exploiting cancer as a means of selling books to teenage girls, there was no sincerity at all in his writing.

Beyond doubt the worst book I've ever had the misfortune of opening up, to the point where all it did was convince me that the author was not a good person at all.

>>11964601
so much this.
the time span of the plot starts with the beginning of the end. the end of all innocence. the moment you have to realize you have to do something about the world around you. It ends when Holden has to choose. Fucking do it or not. Fucking do something!

>>11972278
>expects bullshit
>gets horse shit
What do you want? Aren't there enough sequels of The Secret for you?

David Copperfield. I was pretty young when I read it but holy shit I wanted to kill myself.

>>11977867
had it as an audiobook on CD. listened the shit out of it for years.

>>11964109
It probably was, anon.
Wasn't the author like, late teens when he wrote it?

>>11966731
Fuck you.

>>11971118
He should probably read Soldier of the Mist before Book of the New Sun

>>11973253
Noam is a pseud, and leftists suck his dick because he is the king of pseuds

naked lunch

>DUDE penises and cum and arbitrary violence!
>incoherent, directionless rambling for 10+ pages at a time!!
>dude HEROIN!!!

the shock wears off about 20 pages in and then you're stuck with like 150 more pages of that trash

>>11978786
How do you feel about Samuel Beckett's fiction

The first of the Iron Druid Chronicles, whatever the title. What utter shite

I've never finished a book I didn't like. I hardly finish any books at all.

>>11978881
Typical of this board.
You probably shit post in every thread, too

>>11978927
Well, I can see you've become quite upset by my behavior. I hope you don't take it personally.

>>11963141
It was well-written but I would not have bothered reading if I wasn't told at the beginning of it that everyone who deserved to die would die.
I wish I had a loli to raise normally, though.
>>11963137
The Hunger Games.

>>11978804
not the person you are replying to, but Beckett and Burroughs actually met in Paris (they were both published by John Calder). Beckett was thoroughly uninterested in what Burroughs was doing and thought his "cut-up" technique asinine.

I guess you're comparing the two because Beckett's books are also "directionless rambling". But I think this is a superficial characterization. Beckett's Three Novels are a sustained confrontation of the self -- an increasingly isolated decontextualized voice coming to terms with the utter solitude and pointlessness of its existence.

Burroughs was doing something completely different, and was much more heavily invested in "shocking" his readers and recording his experiences with drugs. He was interesting in some ways, and I guess you could compare his work to Beckett's early novel "Murphy" or even "Dream of Fair to Middling Women". But I don't think Burroughs ever did anything like Beckett's later masterpieces.

>>11978972
>Beckett was thoroughly uninterested in what Burroughs was doing and thought his "cut-up" technique asinine.
(not them either.) that's kind of a shame

>>11978972
Good post.
Yes, I was asking to see if he felt Beckett was also shit. Beckett's one of my favorite authors, I don't think Burroughs is comparable to him at all.
Murphy is Beckett at 10% of his power. The trilogy is Beckett with the Eternal Mangekyou Sharingan, the Rinnegan, a perfect Susano'o and the ability to control the juubi and the Gedou Mazou.

>>11970991
>Literally epic. Biblical.

I am willing to bet you haven't read the King James Bible. Polysyndeton + archaic words does not make something "biblical".

Writers who have integrated "biblical" style into their works: Tolstoy, Hemingway, Shakespeare, John Henry Newman

Fag with a thesaurus: Cormac MemeCarthy

And what the fuck does Franzen have to do with this?

>>11971077
God yes. Delillo fucking sucks

>>11979002
>The trilogy is Beckett with the Eternal Mangekyou Sharingan, the Rinnegan, a perfect Susano'o and the ability to control the juubi and the Gedou Mazou.
don't ever type and post nor quote this again

>>11979033
actually I loved this

>>11963852
It's repetitive and allusive and elliptical so that it's easy to remember. Quran means "recitation", it's meant to be memorized and recited from memory. That said, just because it shares some features with great epic poetry does not make it great epic poetry.

>>11973253
I haven't read much Chomsky but from the few essays I have seen he seems equally if not more critical of states like the USSR. Who does he try to exonerate?

>>11979033
t. jealous of my rinnegan

>>11963137
The Bible... It was too biblical

>>11979101
talk about a preachy book. Everybody's a sinner! Except this guy...

A neighbour of mine quit her job and published a 120 page novel about a battered woman who runs away to the south to find true love
It was as awful as it sounds.
I'm actively helping her with marketing/trailers and what not, but goddamn was that book awful.

The fact she got published does give me hope though.
>>11973253
wut? That'd be Michael Parenti, not based Noam.

>>11979127
Kek

>>11979159
>he likes Drone Chomsky

>>11979164
I feel like Chomsky is one of those things this board hates purely because it's somewhat popular among american 20-somethings.

>>11963137

>>11979170
We dislike Chomsky because he endorsed HRC, lied about Cambodia and the Leftist Authoritarians of the 20th century and shills for an insane and pernicious "libertarian socialism" which when practiced looked to be nothing more than the nascent stages of a totalitarian socialism not unlike the beginnings of the Bolshevik revolution. Ignores the behavior of the Catalan and Ukrainian anarchists, their slave labor, rapine, slaughter, torture camps etc. All of it is despicable, he has an absolutely insane theory of universal grammar and seems to pay lip service when it suits him but ignores genetics, neuroscience and anthropology when it would harm his belief system's credibility.

>>11979181
He didn't endorse clinton though, he just said to vote for her to avoid trump. Which I personally think is dumb but not as dumb as you're making it out to be. I don't know enough to discuss your other points, do you have an actual formal, referenced criticism of Chomsky you could link?

>>11979181
>>11979199
Particularly in reference to revolutionary Catalonia, as your claims seem much more like a description of the Francoist regime than the CNT

I know it's a ridiculous buzzword but this is the most cucked book I've ever read. It's well written but my god are all the characters despicable and the pseudo Christian undertones make me retch. I had a neutral opinion of South African before reading this, now my opinion is overwhelmingly negative.

Fuck this de-spiriting trash

>>11963309
I read Schopenhauer before catcher so all holdens ranting just seemed like the most shallow juvenile horseshit. Lousy book regardless

Anything by Faulkner, I just can't bring myself to care about the south's self-imposed issues

>>11979199
>He didn't endorse clinton though, he just said to vote for her to avoid trump
this is an endorsement, he could have told people to vehemently protest her stealing the midterms from Bernie Sanders. That this doesn't bother you, coming from an anarchist who has many times explained that the current state of the Senate, constitution and federal bureaucracies is a sham and illegitimate form of democracy is telling. Means you're a spineless rat like him.
>Which I personally think is dumb but not as dumb as you're making it out to be
Its insidious, and incompetent, weak more than anything.
> I don't know enough to discuss your other points, do you have an actual formal, referenced criticism of Chomsky you could link
Kill yourself faggot
>Particularly in reference to revolutionary Catalonia, as your claims seem much more like a description of the Francoist regime than the CNT
yup kys pseud

>>11979258
lmao,
>telling people to kill themselves for showing interest in your assertions
I think you're the pseud here buddy

>>11979181
>lied about Cambodia
Common misconception. The paper he published at the time was critical of the media response to the Cambodian genocide vis-a-vis the Indonesian invasion of East Timor, and wasn't meant as denial at all.

The same happen with the Yugoslav war in the 90s. He criticised the fact that Croat war crimes received considerably less attention than those of the Serbs, and immediately got called a "denialist".
>Catalan anarchists
There may be some truth to this. He rails endlessly against the Comintern shenanigans in Spain, but never against the CNT.
>UG
That's another topic entirely.

>>11979235
>It's well written
onto the backlog it goes

>>11979022
Whether or not you personally enjoy it, McCarthy's style is very deliberate. In Blood Meridian he's cranked it up to 11 because that book is just absolute brutality. Endless violence, completely blunt tone, exhausting stretches of nothing but misery and beauty. BM's magic comes from the unique grandiosity of it. It's not stuffy purple prose, and it's not stylish minimalism. Every word has a purpose in the grand scheme of the novel's themes of violence and nature, he never just vomits unnecessary shit into a passage. There's a reason describing a caldera takes a full three pages of hyper-specific words while a man getting his skull caved in may only get one line.

In all seriousness, how would you improve it? Is he supposed to write "The kid signed up for the army and went into the wilderness and killed everybody, the end", or dress it up with prim Victorian language?

>>11979308
PS: Thought this was talking about Blood Meridian for some reason, but I guess it applies to the whole border trilogy

>>11979243
it's not a work of philosophy you retard

Holden Caulfield is an expression of adolescent arrogance and his aggressive cynicism masks his genuine fear of the responsibilities of adulthood

cf. Hamlet

>>11979308
>>11979314
PSS: I see that this is re. Suttree, which isn't border trilogy
I'm drunk, man

>>11979308
>Every word has a purpose
>he never just vomits unnecessary shit into a passage
I disagree.

Let's take a look at a representative passage:

"They passed through a highland meadow carpeted with wild-flowers, acres of golden groundsel and zinnia and deep purple gentian and wild vines of blue morninglory and a vast plain of varied small blooms reaching onward like a gingham print to the farthest serried rimlands blue with haze and the adamantine ranges rising out of nothing like the backs of seabeasts in a devonian dawn."

The sentence begins OK. When he lists the types of wildflowers it's very evocative. We have the image of the field of small flowers looking like a gingham print.

But MemeCarthy keeps going. He doesn't just describe the fucking field. He has to describe the vast scenery in the distance and of course he has to use the compound word "rimlands" because it sounds Joycean and he is, fundamentally, a James Joyce impersonator. And he has to use the word "adamantine" because it thinks it's a pretty word and then of course he has to end everything with an image of "seabeasts" (another compound word) from prehistoric times, specifically the "Devonian" period, which is another pretty little obscure word that makes him sound very intelligent and Joycean.

This is McCarthy's formula. Start with a clear, simple description ("they passed through a highland meadow"), and by the end of the long sentence, rapidly widen to perspective to reference either "the world", "the universe", the cosmos, or, as he does here, an ancient prehistoric time.

He doesn't just do this once or twice. You can find examples of this on every other page of the novel. The same formula. The ridiculous overblown language. The complete lack of subtlety. The total absence of precision. It's all about linguistic obscurity and a cumulative sense of grandeur. When he does it page after page, it ceases to be impressive, and becomes a cheap literary trick.

For me, the effect wore off after about two chapters. They'd go riding again, or they'd look at a campfire, and there'd be another long sentence talking about the fathomless ages of history or the grand cold sweep of the indifferent wind of the universe, and so on. The same formula, over and over again.

Not to mention the shallowness of the characters and the ridiculous half-baked adolescent philosophy they carry on with. They are just mouthpieces for "edgy" ideas about the universe.

>In all seriousness, how would you improve it?

I think it would make an OK short story. So I would reduce it to a few pages. But to carry on that self-important, luxuriating tone for an entire novel, just becomes trashy. If you see past the fact that it's about tough guys killing each other, you will realize that it's written like a bad, tawdry romance novel. It's full of this flashy, decadent language, and it has no real purpose for doing that. It's saccharine, sentimental writing.

>>11979417
>>11979314

I do agree with you, however, that Blood Meridian is not as bad as Suttree

>>11979319
Hamlet for retarded burgerlets maybe

>>11979417
A major attribute of the book is its relentlessness. I'll give it to you that the middle section drags on a bit, but the pervasiveness of the universal/cosmic themes is completely intentional. It's not a book about cowboys and indians, it's a proof of the Judge's claim that war is God, tied together with a cowboys and indians plot. Every page contains brutality, and every page ties that brutality to the eternal. McCarthy beats you over the head with it because as soon as you lose focus of the weight of what he's trying to connect, you have just another adventure novel.
>cumulative sense of grandeur
Blood Meridian is a monolith of grandeur and a monolith of everything else. I can understand that someone would feel that it's unnecessary, but that's what I love about it. It's affecting and massive in the same sense that Moby Dick is. It feels like a passionate sermon from someone who truly knows what they're talking about, and exactly what they're trying to say.
>the characters and the ridiculous half-baked adolescent philosophy
I don't think this is a fair criticism. They're illiterate grunts faced with making sense of their excursion into unimaginable violence; you can't expect for them to casually start reciting Descartes when they sit down after a day of murdering villagers.
The Judge is quite eloquent in comparison, and his periodic lectures reflect various religious concepts in fleshed-out detail. It's not like McCarthy is trying to put his shower thoughts onto the page.

>>11967338
I DEMAND A SAUCE!

Second book of Stephen King's fantasy Tower series. only thing I've ever given one star. the first book was alright but the 2nd killed all interest in ever continuing.

Half the novel seriously deals with a multiple personality black lady in a wheelchair who speaks the most exaggerated ebonics you'll ever see and thinks everyone wants to rape her and the other time is a sweet mild mannered librarian or something. and the plot is the MC pushing her wheelchair along a beach as he goes through time traveling portals that are just wooden doors that randomly appear on the beach and going between some grimdark low tech cowboy inspired fantasy world and 1980s new york city. I honestly had to check if my kindle file was tampered with or something because I could not believe it was not only real but something people weren't making a giant shitstorm about

Honest to god answer, this shit book called the Bean Trees.
I took an AP English class in high school and had a choice of reading that book or some Maya Angelou "feel bad for me I'm black" masturbation book so I took the former.
God was that a mistake. I swear this shit was popular in airports in the 90s. Its just a dumbass teenage girl who decides to raise a baby someone dumps in her backseat at a gas station. Every time there's some conflict or a problem its resolved in the same scene a few pages later.
There was also a sequel which should tell you how worthwhile it was to read.

>>11979879
This so fucking hard.
I read Dark Tower expecting a fun popcorn adventure with some esoteric weird stuff thrown in, instead I got lazy story ideas that don't mesh together or get dropped entirely and was bored by it all.

>>11963137
O Filho de Odin, or The Son of Odin. I'm cheating, because it's a fantasy novel written by a 16 year old, but:
A 16 year old has no business getting published; I suspect his rich parents decided Precious Child was a genius and got a bunch of famous people to vouch for the book (without reading it, I assume).
In the 13 years since the book's publishing the author has shown no remorse or willingness to atone. Two or more sequels exist, the first of which I read. Amazingly, it's a worse book than the first, which in itself is a considerable feat.

I cannot overstate how fascinated I was when I first read this piece of fiction. I was 12, and yet I knew, with absolute clarity, that this was the Worst Book, and no book could ever come close. Many anons in this thread shared books with merit that they disagree with, either philosophically or in terms of style, but this hot mess has no redeamable qualities. It's like if you took a teenage gamer's wildest self-insert fantasies, slathered them on paper, and sent away for printing. Jonathan Strongheart (a teenager), the protagonist, is at the same time the son of Odin, the legendary werewolf Silverbolt, the chosen of Zeus, wielder of a time-stopping ring, a deck of cards from whence he can summon monsters, and Dracula's sworn enemy. He has a diverse cast of friends that includes the slutty asian vampire (she's good, though!) qt, the anime copy paste rival, and more. They're all blessed by the gods. They're all the most special people that ever existed. There's a comic-relief griffon that shoots lasers from its eyes. I will say nothing of the prose because, as far as I could tell, there wasn't any. The author is unencumbered by such notions to the point where he might not even be human, might have reinvented writing devoid of any sort of literary context or history.
This could all have been amazing had it been tempered by even a hint of self-awareness. I assure you that there isn't any. The author unironically thanks WoW for inspiration, and Oreo (the cookies) for being his 'snack of choice' while writing. He calls himself 'a writer of a new age, free and unpredictable'. The book is so foul, so clearly the product of a mind incapable of original thought, that for 13 years it's been my personal definition of literary rock-bottom. There have been books I've hated, and books I never finished, and honest-to-God terrible books. As I said, even the sequel was worse. But there has never been a book so evidently, unexcusably, innocently bad. I sincerely believe that, if not for having been written in Portuguese, it would live forever in boards such as this, eternally mocked and occasionally defended as some sort of post-post-truth tour-de-force.
It's the best worst book, and no other has ever come close.

>>11980476
You know what you must do
Translate and post
Make it your sacred project, you keeper of knowledge

>>11980500
Anon, I will do this thing. Expect the first chapter this weekend.

>>11968619
>e because sci-fi and cyberpunk is my favorite genre though
Some sci-fi and cyberpunk writers are very descriptive and thats where i get bored. but i'll give it another try since im getting more used to it now

Everything by Modiano


Simply trite, like a bad journal

>>11963152
spbp

>>11963137
I made a start on Ramses: Under the Western Acacia, because "hey cool, ancient egypt". I found it in a stack whilst working behind an op shop counter.
I never ended up finishing it. What did me in was the lengthy descriptions of characters' appearances upon being introduced. The writing just seemed so amateurish.

>>11964811
>>11965552
>>11970816
>>11971118
now I'm curious.
Quick rundown?

>>11980536
And that's more than enough for every female reader to fall in love with him. Girls were such a mistake.

>>11980476
fuck you that books sounds like pure gold

>>11979670
>masturbating to women
You absolute faggot. Get the fuck out.

>>11980928
I know, anon. It sounds like a gonzo extravaganza and a comentary on wish fulfilment YA media to boot. It's hard to separate a mad genius from a rambling moron, but I promise you: this is the real deal. There's nothing post about it, nothing aware. And it's stupid how close the book gets to being a spit-in-the-eye to every hack trying to cash in on the young people market, but there's no irony, anon.

And nothing I can say about the book can make you believe me. For example, all this is present in the book:
>protagonist does a 'teleports behind you'
>the Christian God descends from the heavens to gift the protag with a sword. The Lord Himself describes it saying "...and it's sharper than a box-cutter. Oh wait, you guys don't have that yet."
>protag reveals he's cursed with lycanthropy, but he's a super special case that can control his transformation, shoot 'silver bolts' from his hands, and knows 'every martial art ever invented'
>the Big Bad (Dracula) is brought back to life through, translated verbatim, "some sort of satanic ceremony"
>protag and friends reach Dracula's castle and see it's surrounded with monsters. They say, 'how will we ever get through that??!?!?!?' and hear 'Not so fast!' They turn to find the protag's father at the head of a several-thousand strong army, ready to wage battle against the monsters. There's no explanation of how the army got there, and several oher armies appear during the conversation
>the slutty vampire sleeps naked and snuggles with the protag one night
Anon, this written anime. Braindead and innocent as virgin rain.

>>11981457
Pure kino. Please translate. I will monitor this thread in anticipation.

>>11980903
The story was a convoluted mess, read like a poor written comic book, and the ending felt like it wasn't for anything too meaningful (this point is weak because it also seems like their was an emphasis of the zoomer nihilist culture imbued into the tone, but it's something that does not cater to my interests.) The world was cool though.

>>11981115
That’s the only way to do it. If you’re going to masturbate you should do it to real women you know in real life, otherwise you lose part of your soul.

The Painted Bird
What the FUCK was this guy's problem. Dumb Jew

Prince of Thorns. I honestly can't remember enough of it to tell you why though.

>>11981457
Come on anon, you've sold me on wanting to read this book.

>>11981979
reads steps you fucking cuck

>>11981979
its a hoax anyways
>>11982870
steps is good

I could not for the life of me get through the first Harry Potter book, and I don't think I'm going to give it another chance. I did try to read dune, but I lost my spot in it and gave up, kinda want to try again.

>>11963137
Pic related
>>11963223
I tried reading Karamazov in high school and dropped it after about 100 pages. I remember it being somewhat preachy and poorly paced after the first section. Should I try reading it again?

In high school grade 9 we read a book called king of shadows, which, in reading the first 10 or so pages, I had to close and proceeded to fall asleep in the rest of the English lessons. The book is pretentious and stupid. The plot is original, interesting I suppose but otherwise it's so unspecial and annoying to read. It's like a disappointing handjob, but the girl/guy attaches razor blades to their finger half way through.

>>11980476
>>11981457
I'm not as patient as these people, Anônimo, give me an author name so I can see this shit for myself

>>11982963
>>>/r/books
That sounds more your speed.

>>11980509
You're not gonna actually do it, calling it right now. You're going to start, get tired, and quit.

>>11984414
How does one get over that pattern?

>>11979247
most pleb opinion itt

I have never hated a book outright, but Paper Towns by John Green was godawful

>>11979498
>It's not like McCarthy is trying to put his shower thoughts onto the page.
This is exactly what he does in every single book and screenplay he has ever written.

>>11964006
yikes jesus christ

>>11982963
Don't ever judge a book by what you thought of it as a teenager.

>>11984418

On their own? No idea.

For me it was working for food and rent in a job that gave me independence to explore and create my own projects, while at the same time keeping the yoke of deadlines and duties over me.

I had little spare time and money, so I just sort of got used to working all the time, and now I can't go back.

So I have no idea how to independently change a lifestyle, but I'll bet it's easiest if you physically change something in your daily life - i.e. your location, your place of work, &c., and developing new habits with the change.

You're not going to become and ubermensch overnight, but incrementally you can become more active and productive.

>>11984490
Damn, forgot to turn off my trip

>>11984490
I have a problem with incremental change and have a fear of failure, now how do I get over THAT?

>>11980903
Neal Stephenson is a clever man with a ton of technical knowledge who writes a sort of parody of cyberpunk. It's extremely cringey on the surface but the more you read [into it] the more it becomes aware that he's self-aware and writing it that way on purpose. For example at one point the main character finds himself on a boat in possession of an experimental minigun so powerful that it's powered by a mini-nuclear reactor that needs to be kept hung over the side of the boat cooling in the water to keep from melting down; it's ridiculous and over the top, but his very technical description of how the gun works is articulate and engaging, and his description of it lighting shit up is fucking rad. The whole book is him having mastered the cyberpunk anesthetic and headspace, so he's like OK we've been there and done that and my heart wouldn't be in it to just write it straight because it'd just be another one of those and it would be more of the same and therefore robbed of the vitality that made this headspace and a esthetic fun in the first place since I'm not doing anything new, so he takes it to this silly, comical extreme which is jarring and cringey at first but which ultimately enables you to feel that cool cyberpunk magic more successfully than he'd just been the umpteenth person to write a Neuromancer fanfiction

>>11963137
On the Road by Kerouac was the most pretentious fucking drivel I've ever read, and it's worse because that archetype still exists and is still exactly the same insufferable person and now they have even more cultural cachet and visibility and it's unbearable

>>11984498
Like I said, brother, I have no idea. I can only speak for my experience, and most of the changes in my lifestyle were due to how I responded to changes in my surroundings and situation.

I was a loner growing up, too scared to go outside meet people, had violent and suicidal thoughts, but never went full agoraphobe because I was pushed out of the nest. Back then I was lazy and unproductive mostly because I fell into a cycle of avoiding working to avoid making difficult decisions about what to do with my life, and that meant falling into a sedentary routine of scrolling, shitposting, sharing dark humor and my delusions on the internet.

Eventually I entered a romantic relationship which started embarassingly cringy because of how nervous I was, and then after years of growing and talking and opening myself up, just sort of got better. I really started dealing with myself honestly, stopping thinking of myself not in black and white terms ("I'm a loser," "I'm a failure," "I'm just no good at this"), and learned how to recognize my emotions and call them what they were ("I'm stressed and overwhelmed," instead of "My life is falling apart and I can't make it"). Now I'm well adjusted and productive. Still working for peanuts, but climbing.

Idk if any of that resonates. People are unproductive for all sorts of reasons. But there's no switch that can be flipped to change your habits and lifestyle - anybody who tells you there is is selling you something. You just have to keep trying, and find things that work for you. Incremental rather than radical change is one piece of advice that I think is universal, and changing location really helps as well I think.

>>11980518
My eyes definitely glaze over when Gibson gets into one of his multi-page descriptions of the abstract rainbow geometry of notepad.exe as seen by the guy living in the computer, but you can skim and get back to the readable parts.

Prince and the Pauper
I dont give 2 fucks what the banners look like twain, get on with the show!

>>11978786
Holy shit I thought that was another person and he was looking at him and realized what it was and that he was looking at ME and lost it

>>11979417
heartily kek'd

>>11984385
I guess I should clarify. The Stranger is a perfectly decent novel, but it's also the worst one I've willingly read to the end not counting stuff from when I was younger. /r/books is a masturbatory cesspool filled with high fantasy and young adult garbage

>>11985714
The Stranger is French bunk, all symbols and aloofness and no character

>>11985720
>>11985714
The Stranger is two acts of a three act play. That is its problem.