/lit/ - Literature

>>21343973
Respectable list
>Plutarch's Lives
Which biographies would you say you enjoyed the most here?

>>21343973
Respectable list
>Plutarch's Lives
Which biographies would you say you enjoyed the most here?

>>21344252
I'm pretty sure he expects you to already be familiar with every figure before you read that biography and the comparison biography. Because of that he doesn't hold your hand at all so that if it's a figure you are unfamiliar with I found it fairly tedious. That being said when you know the figure the lives are great.
I very much enjoy all of the biographies from the first century Rome. A lot of them overlap and it's nice to see some of the same stories from different perspectives and sometimes different sources. In his Scipio Africanus one he says that in his conversation with Hannibal the latter said Scipio was the greatest general followed by two others. In his one on Hannibal Scipio isn't mentioned in his list of top three generals.

The ones I have enjoyed the most have been Cicero: Caesar, Pompey, Sulla, Marius, Crassus, and the Gracchi brothers.

Have you read it?

>>21344365
Only Numa Pompilius, Scipio Africanus, and Cicero. Personally I enjoyed them greatly but I see what you mean when you say you have to be familiar with them first (I was).

I'm going to read Don Quixote soon which I'm quite looking forward to.

>>21343973
Respectable list
>Plutarch's Lives
Which biographies would you say you enjoyed the most here?

>>21343973
Damn, is the year over already?!

I've mostly read books by Stephen King this year, as I've set it as my goal to read all of his books.

Read: Danse Macabre, Cujo, The Gunslinger, different seasons, The Bachman Books and Laughter in the Dark (non-King).

Highlights: I really enjoyed the breathing method in Different Seasons. King's short and not well known stories do the most for me. I really liked Laughter in the Dark too as it reminded me of Lolita.

Interesting: Danse Macabre has led me to buy Frankenstein by Shelly. I really enjoyed the prose when I read the excerpts by King in his book. It had a really cute note to it.

Disappointments: The Gunslinger read like a really bad fanfic.

>>21343973
>Barthes
vapid poseur. sry

>>21343973
Be sure to read Gilgamesh the Steven Mitchell Translation is best. Also there is Myths from Mesopotamia by Stephanie Daily.

My reading year starts on September 16th, so this was what I read from 16.9.2021.-15.9.2022.

1. Dune
2. Dune Messiah
3. Children of Dune
4. God Emperor of Dune
5. Heretics of Dune
6. Chapterhouse Dune
7. Hyperion
8. Starship Troopers
9. The Fall of Hyperion
10. A Boy and his Dog
11. I Have no Mouth and I Must Scream
12. Shadow of the Torturer
13. Stranger in a Strange Land (dropped)
14. Claw of the Conciliator
15. The Hobbit
16. A Brave New World (dropped)
17. The Sword of the Lictor
18. Citadel of the Autarch
19. Temple of the Golden Pavillion
20. The Urth of the New Sun
21. Endymion
22. The Fifth Head of Cerberus
23. Heart of Darkness
24. Roadside Picnic
25. Ubik
26. Deus Irae
27. All Tomorrows
28. Tarnsman of Gor
29. The Godfather
30. Nightside of the Long Sun
31. The Sicilian
32. Lake of the Long Sun
33. Caldé of the Long Sun
34. A Confederacy of Dunces
35. The Dying Earth
36. Armor (dropped)
37. Forrest Gump
38. Exodus from the Long Sun
39. The Stainless Steel Rat
40. Flowers for Algernon
41. Call of the Crocodile
42. The Stars My Destination
43. Slaughterhouse Five

I only started taking notes after the downfall of Goodreads. The best book by far this year was Anton Reiser.

>>21344981
>the downfall of Goodreads
que?

>>21346374
They changed it so you had to wait around six weeks for someone to add missing books to the database.

>>21344252
Fpbp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91gT68xeDMM

>Grimms' Fairy Tales (1812/1815)
>Andersen's Fairy Tales
>Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
>Through the Looking-Glass
>A Dog of Flanders
>The Road by McCarthy
>Hell Screen
>Don Quixote (Lathrop)
>Stranger
>Metamorphosis
>Metamorphoses (Mandelbaum)
>Iliad (Fitzgerald)
>Odyssey (Fitzgerald)
>Aeneid (Fitzgerald)
>Comedy (Ciardi)
>Paradise Lost
>Paradise Regained
>Samson Agonistes
Currently reading Moby-Dick. Faust and Wuthering Heights are up next

>>21343973
I don’t keep track. When I’m done a book, I pick up another. Read everyday

>>21348206
>I don’t keep track
But why? It takes seconds to add a book to a record. Mine reading log goes back 11 years. Many of the books I would have forgotten about completely but seeing the name, author and year, has memories from not only the book, how I felt about it, and where I was physically and mentally while I read it. What advantage does not keeping track have?

didn't really get to read that much this year because I somehow fucking managed to get a gf so I've been having to spend time with her instead of just reading for hours on end. Also re-read a few of my favourites this year and I'd always not want to read anything for ages after finishing them.

>>21346392
What if you become a librarian?

>>21349004
I tried and passed the test. Never became a librarian though. It turns out they have a certain number of librarians and once that is reached they don't accept any more. That's when I left.

>>21348421
I have a physical library. I can just walk in there and do the same thing as you do looking at a spreadsheet

1. The Guns of August by B. Tuchman
2. X-files: Goblins by C. L. Grant
3. Digital Minimalism by C. Newport
4. To lose a battle by A. Horne
5. The Sleepwalkers by C. Clark
6. Casino Royale by I. Fleming
7. The Fourth Protocol by F. Forsyth
8. The soul of a new machine by T. Kidder
9. A History of Central Banking by S. M. Goodson
10. The War that ended Peace: the Road to 1914 by M. MacMillian
11. A small town in Germany by J. le Carre
12. How to do nothing by J. Odell
13. Postwar by T. Judt
14. The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R Tolkien
15. Crashed by A. Tooze
16. Lords of Finance by L. Ahamed
17. Stalingrad by A. Beevor
18. The rise and fall of the Third Reich by W. L. Shirer
19. Hitler's Private Library by T. Ryback
20. How much for just the planet by J. Ford
21. Paris 1919 by M. Macmillian
22. Coriolanus by Shakespeare
23. Hitler's War by D. Irving
24. Treasure Island by R.L. Stevenson
25. Amusing ourselves to Death by N. Postman
26. Arsense Lupin (1909) by M. Leblanc
27. Four arguments for the elimination of television by J. Mander
28. Hitler by I. Kershaw
29. Diamonds are forever by I. Fleming
30. Surveillance Valley by Y. Levine
31. Journey to the center of the Earth by J. Verne
32. Cat among the Pigeons by A. Christie
33. The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by A.C. Doyle
34. Exploits of Arsene Lupin by M. Leblanc
35. War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
36. The Mysterious Affair at Styles by A. Christie
37. The hollow needle by M. Leblanc
38. Farewell my lovely by R. Chandler
39. The long goodbye by R. Chandler
40. Woman in the lake by R. Chandler
41. Ubik by P.K. Dick
42. the anatomy of melancholy by R. Burton
43. The Swarm by F. Schatzing
44. Franciskus of Assisi by G. Granberg
45. The Crisis of the Modern World by R. Guenon
46. The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by P.K. Dick
47. Between Planets by R. Heinlein
48. A scanner darkly by P.K. Dick
49. The Kon-Tiki Expedition by T. Heyerdahl
50. The Campaigns of Napoleon by D. Chandler
51. Decline of the West Volume 1 by O. Spengler
52. Decline of the West Volume 2 by O. Spengler
53. A tale of two cities by C. Dickens
54. The penultimate truth by P.K. Dick
55. God and the state by M. Bakunin
56. Against nature by J. K. Huysmans
57. The Wages of Destruction by A. Tooze
58. The state and revolution by I. Lenin
59. Wasps and Peace by Aristophanes
60. Addicted by design by N.D. Schull
61. Superintelligence by N. Bostrom
62. The Castle by F. Kafka
63. Age of Revolution 1789-1848 by E. Hobsbawm
64. 1914 by P. Englund
65. The Case of Charles Dexter Ward by H.P. Lovecraft
66. Fause part 1 by Goethe
67. Age of Capital 1848-1875 by E. Hobsbawm
68. Age of Empire 1875-1914 by E. Hobsbawm
69. The Master and Margarita by M. Bulgakov
70. Faust part 2 by Goethe
71. Horus Rising by D. Abnett
72. False Gods by G. McNeil
73. The Galaxy in Flames by B. Counter

>>21344937
>41. Call of the Crocodile
Can you please tell us, what is the "twist" in this meme book?

>>21343973
>Due to a lapse in memory I thought that Raymond Carver and Raymond Chandler were the same person. I started The Big Sleep thinking of Carver whom I have some fondness for. Unfortunately I was wrong and Chandler's The Big Sleep is maybe the worst book I have any memory of having ever read in my life bar things from my childhood. Dreadful.
kek

Damn you guys read a lot, I just quit my jerb for a few months so I've finally some time to cozy up in a blanket with a cup of coffee. Was tough to read before because I was working nights and no matter how much sleep I had gotten it would always knock me out.

>>21349838
yeah, you don't need to be unemployeed to post here but it helps

>>21349768
The bad grammar and terrible prose is intentional. It's a story written from a kid's perspective. This intentionally messy first half of the book filters thousands of people, making them believe F Gardner has serious developmental issues.

>>21349838
I'm 23 and I've literally never had a job except 2 months in a hotdog and beer stand at a football stadium when I was 17

>>21350787
This is normal

>>21344981
It's very bizarre to see Thomas More and Stephanie Meyer in the same reading list. Why did you read the Twilight books? Is it a guilty pleasure? So bad it's good?


>>21349522
Fair enough.

>>21349838
I'm OP. Outside of the weekends I don't read that much in a sitting. I read 10ish pages before work, read about 30 at work, and then read 20/40 in the evening. I'll likely read close to 100 on Saturday and Sunday. At that pace even the longest books I've read at around 1400 pages will only take me 5 weeks. I also have audiobooks which I listen to at work sometimes. It's useful to experience something you are slightly dubious about and aren't sure it's worth the effort to actually read.

>>21351737
>Why did you read the Twilight books? Is it a guilty pleasure? So bad it's good?
I've read a ton of stuff in my live so far. I wanted to fill some gaps and get familiar with tons of popular genre lit. Part of a well rounded education involves getting your hands dirty sometimes and not exclusively reading the canon. So I got Tolkien, Narnia, Harry Potter, Twilight and the likes as audiobooks (because I don't actually want to read them in paper form). It's more of an academic interest really. Surprisingly, Twilight was actually kinda comfy. The second one was alright, too, but I'm now at the third one and I don't like it one bit.

The New Inn Hall Deception, John Gaskin
The Master of the House, John Gaskin
The Seret Vanguard, Michael Innes
The Loney, Andrew Michael Hurley
Stories of the Strange and Sinister, Frank Baker
Anglo-Saxon Attitudes, Angus Wilson
Some Tame Gazelle, Barbara Pym
A Bit Off The Map, Angus Wilson (reread?)
How To Eat Fried Worms, Thomas Rockwell (reread)
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, John Le Carre
The Book Of Three, Lloyd Alexander
Invaders of the Rokujouma vol 5, Takehaya
A Spy's London, Roy Berkeley
The Black Death, Philip Ziegler
The Dark Frontier, Eric Ambler
The Murder on the Links, Agatha Christie
No Bail for the Judge, Henry Cecil
In The Last Analysis, Amanda Cross
Murder in Moscow, Andrew Garve
The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick (reread)
The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger (reread)
A Reader's Companion to The Catcher in the Rye, Peter Beidler
The Fourth of June, David Benedictus
Consider Phlebas, Iain M. Banks
A Murder of Quality, John Le Carre
Ways and Means, Henry Cecil
Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and ..., Tom O'Neill
Decline and Fall, Evelyn Waugh
Consumed, David Cronenberg
Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx is Burning, Jonathan Mahler
Doctor in the House, Richard Gordon
Eating People is Wrong, Malcolm Bradbury
The Ceremonies, T.E.D. Klein (reread)
Death of Anton, Alan Melville
Kraken, China Mieville
Under the Crust, Terry Lamsley
The Trial of William Herbert Wallace, W.F. Wyndham-Brown
The Difference Engine, William Gibson & Bruce Sterling
The Jennifer Morgue, Charles Stross
The Secret War, Dennis Wheatley
Bleak House, Charles Dickens (reread)
Ancestral Vices, Tom Sharpe
Death Rites, Alicia Gimenez-Bartlett

>>21343973
>>21344937
>>21349614
>>21351910
How are you guys able to finish this many books in a year? It takes me months just to finish a single book

>>21343973
Everything I've read this year:
The four books of the Book of the New Sun, plus the Urth of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe. Also some of his short stories including the Fifth Head of Cerberus.
The Mad and the Bad & Crowded Day at the Morgue, Jean-Patrick Manchette.
The Count of Monte Cristo. Since it was an e-book and I didn't look at the cover page, I didn't realize it was abridged until about 60% of the way through it, though.
Flatland, Edwin Abbott.
The first four Ender books, Orson Scott Card.
Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut.
No Longer Human, Osamu Dazai.
Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse.
Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino.
The Dying Earth, Jack Vance.
Stoner, John Edward.
and The Devil in the White City, Erik Larson.
The Stranger, Camus.
Reread Dune, will get to my first reading of the next three books in the series soon.
Also a good number of the short stories of Kafka and Lovecraft.
So roughly 22 books and a number of short stories, although some of those books were pretty short too.
Not that many, but I typically read in bursts of five or six books at a time, then nothing for months, and I've only had three such bursts this year. I don't post on /lit/ when I'm not in a reading mood.

>>21344937
shit man we read a lot of the same books
if you're looking for more sci-fi and haven't already, read ender's game and speaker for the dead. the other sequels are more questionable but I remember liking ender's shadow when I first read it as a kid too and will probably reread it sometime too

>>21348168
oh hey I read lathrop's tl of don quixote too, I really liked it.
anyone who has read other translations, is lathrop's the best or not? I might do a reread sometime soon

>>21343973
i think you're supposed to do it the last week of the year anon. but heres my list so far frens

>The Hobbit
>LOTR
>Count of Monte Cristo
>Angels and Demons
>The Iliad
>Several Short Stories by Phillip K Dick and F Scott Fitzgerald. Idk about five or six >out of each book. Varied in Length
>Wise Blood
>Reading Blood Meridian


Its a pretty short list though bros. Angels and Demons fuckin sucked though. idk how dan brown got so famous for that fucking schlock. whatever and theres still a month left. i got two hundred pages left in blood meridian and then when thats done next week. I was thinking of reading the great gatsby

>>21343973
>>21351979
oh and i just started reading this year like this. i read books prior but it'd be like one book a year or something and usually something shitty like a true crime book about the mafia or a serial killer idk

>>21351855
>comparing tolkien to shit like twilight

>>21351944
read good books

>>21351989
>anon in charge of reading comprehension
There was no comparison. I said it's popular genre lit. There was some good shit in that audiobook list I worked through and there was also abysmal shit in that list. No need to compare.

>>21351995
I suppose it's the idea that you "didn't want to read it in paper form"
I mean I listened to lotr as an audiobook a while ago but I've read it on paper twice.
I couldn't imagine listening to something which I haven't read before. just seems like to truly appreciate something you need to set your own pace with it.

>>21351979
>>21351988
oh yeah and i read Gone with the Wind. forgot to add that to my list i guess.

>The Hobbit
>Lotr
>Count of Monte Cristo
>Angels and Demons
>The iliad
>Short Stories Phillip K Dick, F Scott Fitzgerald
>Gone With the Wind
>Wise Blood
>Reading Blood Meridian

may or may not read the great gatsby

>>21351958
good list anon

>>21352007
I already tried once to get through LotR in paper form once but had to drop it. Listening to the audiobook while drawing worked for me. I didn't enjoy it though. For me it was such a big step down from The Hobbit which was fantastic.

>>21352027
well at least you tried
I'm a lover of tolkien myself. but I can understand not personally liking his work.

>>21352007
>I couldn't imagine listening to something which I haven't read before. just seems like to truly appreciate something you need to set your own pace with it.
I really don't understand this. I have zero problem retaining complete understanding while listening to an audiobook. I can listen for long periods of times without zoning out once. The only problem I have is with fairly difficult books that the mental tax becomes too much. Am I a weird freak of something?

>>21352136
You have a normal human attention span, congratulations on not letting it get ruined by modern technology

Sure hope this lump in my armpit goes away sometime soon it's been like a month now.

I, Claudius - Robert Graves
History of the Peloponnesian War - Thucydides
A Mencken Crestomathy (collection, I read maybe 20%)
Triggerfish Twist; Nuclear Jellyfish; Electric Barracuda - Tim Dorsey
House of Leaves - Mark Z. Danielewski (if you can call it reading)
Absalom, Absalom! - William Faulkner
Sensō: The Japanese Remember the Pacific War (Letters to the editor of Asahi Shimbun, ed. Frank Gibney)
Progress and Poverty - Henry George (literally cannot be refuted)
12 Rules for Life - Jordan B. Peterson
The Great Shark Hunt - Hunter S. Thompson
The Ruins of Kasch - Roberto Calasso (dropped, prohibitively dense unless you're ready to study it like a monk)
The Snow Leopard - Peter Mattiessen
Shadow Country - Peter Matthiessen (dropped, will pick up again later)
The Bubble and Beyond - Michael Hudson
The Reformation in Economics - Philip Pilkington
The Anomaly - Hervé Le Tellier (not that great ngl idk why it got the Prix Goncourt)
From Mission to Microchip: A History of the California Labor Movement - Fred Glass
A Struggle for Power: The American Revolution - Theodore Draper (academic text, I skipped parts of it and read the interesting bits)
The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements - Erich Hoffer (contains mind-warping incredible insights)
The Three-Body Problem - Liu Cixin
The Moviegoer - Walker Percy
The Magus - John Fowles
Currently reading:
Blindsight - Peter Watts
The Dark Forest - Liu Cixin
Ubik - Phillip K. Dick

It's not a huge list but a lot of those books are long as fuck. Do any anons have opinions about any of these?

>>21352460
How was The Snow Leopard? Interested in that and The Tree of Life

>>21352482
It's pretty short and easy to read in a few days. I personally found it therapeutic in the same way I found Zorba the Greek and The Man who Was Thursday or the ending to Kim by Kipling. It felt like a layer of the few grime coating my soul got burned away.

>>21351977
I heard great things about Grossman's. Lathrop criticises her for her scholarship, but I heard that the actual translation is even better than Lathrop's

>>21352460
>12 Rules for Life - Jordan B. Peterson
Juden Peterstein

>>21351970
Thank you. I was planning to read Ender's Game eventually because I oftentimes hear about it on /sffg/. Most of the books I've read last year came from there.
>>21351944
The more you read, the easier it becomes. Also, don't read impressive books, most of them are intentionally difficult to read. I stopped watching movies and tv shows, that opened my schedule for reading.

I read a bunch of horror this year. I can't recall them all but the 5 best, in no particular order, were
>Salem's Lot by Stephen King
>Carrion Comfort by Dan Simmons
>Blackwater: The Complete Saga by Michael McDowell
>The Auctioneer by Joan Samson
>Katie by Michael McDowell