No.64932[Last 50 Posts]
Book discussion. Tell us what you're reading.
Previous threads:
>>60032>>54504 No.64933
>>64926Hey anon, nice to hear from you again. I finished the first 2 volumes of Proust's Recherche and moved on. For now. I must admit I pushed too hard with Proust and got a minor burnout as a result. I intend to go back soon. Aftwards I read a bunch of different things, a short novel and some tales by Luigi Pirandello: One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand and a selection from Stories for the Years. Then I read Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubaz and The Facetious Nights of Straparola, the latter I liked a lot. This period of literature when the authors were more willing to be elegantly lighthearted and suddenly turning to grotesque and/or farcical at the drop of a hat and back to palatial tastes and whims again is fascinating. There's a charm to it that is hard to find anywhere else. Makes me wonder how different life was for them in order for literature of this kind to be produced. It's funny how optimistic the text feels, especially when you know some of those writers actually saw the plague ravaging the cities they lived in. There's an odd joie de vivre in those stories, hard to describe.
By the way, I recently found out there's a book called The Arabian Nights Encyclopedia! A full 2 volumes work of scholarship dedicated to the Nights in the English language. I couldn't believe this was published almost 20 years ago and just recently I became aware of it. It begins with 14 essays by scholars talking about a lot of different topics relating to the book, from literary style, to oral traditions and its impact on the text, the poetry, the manuscript tradition and even goes on about movie adaptations and the impact it has in modern media. The bulk of the work is an entry for 551 stories contained in various manuscripts, along with a summary of the content of each tale, followed by a condensed survey of research relating to the tale concerned. I just skimmed through it but intend to go deeper sometime soon. It's quite the work. The set goes for over 200 usd at amazon but you can find it for the cheap price of free on libgen, you didn't hear from me.
Anyway, good luck with your move and your literary journey! I would never attempt to read The Canterbury Tales in Middle English, I feel like Escher when he said "It takes too much time and effort for someone who rightfully or wrongly believes he has no time to waste." Actually I don't think reading the book the way the author wrote it is a waste of time at all but you know what I mean. I'll be long dead before I'm able to read all the literature I want to read. The second part of this year I would like to focus on a book called Ocean of the Streams of Stories and other Hindu literature, it's untapped territory for me.
No.64938
>>64933I've done a decent amount of reading this year. I've read Beckett's three novels, Auerbach's Mimesis, some Cormac McCarthy, The Castle by Kafka (these are the big items). I think the Middle English has a beauty to it, and so I consider it worth the effort in of itself. Seeing the morphology of English, and connecting it to contemporary English is quite fun.
I know Proust is dense, but I hope to read all of Recherche before leaving. If I dedicate a certain amount of time to him, I hope it'll work out.
No.64939
Heyo. I'm an avid reader and taking time off the world to focus on myself. Meaning reading, writing, composition, study.
Anyway, I don't have anybody to talk books with. I have a big booklog on neocities, and I've interacted with exactly one person who reads reasonably in 2 years. I'd started a neighborhood reading club, but there's only one other member, and she's not too focus, and has been missing last month.
So, the question:
Would (You) consider participating in a mailing list? Emails chains would be threads: "What have you been reading this week (or month)?", "I read X by Y and thought Z. Has anybody read it, or anything similar or related to it?" and so on.
No.64940
Im reading elric the necromancer and kafkas novels
No.64941
>>64932How do I learn to enjoy reading, as a lot of wizards do, I have pretty bad anxiety and ADD so this makes engaging in non-immersive mediums like books quite difficult.
Also a big thing that bothers me is that I don't enjoy fiction really that much. I feel like fiction is a bit antiquated with the new types of emerging mediums. I know video games and VNs aren't the most "high culture" but If they to, they can be.
I'd appreciate any advice on this matter.
No.64946
>>64941If you haven't always had a way with language/been the type to plow through books then why bother? Stick with your video games.
No.64952
>>64932Reading this Thai novel at the moment. It’s interesting; about a bad boy who is sent away to a Buddhist monastery. Very good insight into Thai society.
No.64953
>>64952Whoops forgot to post that novel.
It is called the Brotherhood of Kaeng Khoi.
Nice book so far.
No.64954
>>64941Good question. Start with simple books. Even Harry Potter. See it like physical training like lifting a weight; you are training your attention, working memory and imagination just like someone in the gym gets stronger.
Set yourself a goal reading Harry Potter and the Philosophers stone in one day without stopping. Then increase the difficulty of the book. Just like working out, eventually it gets less difficult and even becomes fun like playing sports is fun to people who are fit enough.
No.64957
>>64939No takers? I'd write the majority of non-lurkers as disinterested and or unwilling to exert themselves, but they've enough bile to spit at an oddball.
https://godcock.neocities.org/lit.html hit me up if you you want
>>64946Bad advice. Nobody's born great at anything. If you practice anything (smartly, that is focusing on improving rather than rote, out of context memorization like all Anki users (spaced repetition is great, how you go about is it isn't trivial though)).
>>64941I'd recommend form your preferences by trying of everything and jotting down all you notice. Not strictly 'good' and 'bad' however you may define those, really anything you notice by itself (as a phrase, sentence, a paragraph, a chapter, a character, a motif, an idea, a notion, and so on) and through comparison with the rest of the sentence, paragraph, chapter, book; ante- and postceding works by same author; works of same genre; other works you've read; other works you've familiar with (in the sense of know roughly others' opinion of it and its place in the literary landscape).
You should also flesh out why exactly it is you are reading. For 'fun'? To get lost, be subsumed, immersed? For knowledge? And so on. With those answered, among other possible question, you can facilely sieve out what you should read next. Not every book is to be completed, and not every is the best choice for a given person with their set of goals.
Open up a file and write a bit. There's books that are tedium pagified and 1.6e5 word ones you can't and don't want to stop leaving through. (Leafing through sounds wrong!)
No.64958
>>64946I will probably still play video games, i enjoy them so why not?
>>64957You should also flesh out why exactly it is you are reading. For 'fun'? To get lost, be subsumed, immersed? For knowledge? And so on. With those answered, among other possible question, you can facilely sieve out what you should read next. Not every book is to be completed, and not every is the best choice for a given person with their set of goals.
Good question. Getting immersed and liking the world would be my biggest priority. I can't really tell apart how well written a book is(unless its horribly written) so if a book doesn't use the craziest most flowery language its ok for me.
Also I'm ESL and that's maybe why i can't really get into reading, fuck translations lol.
No.64959
>>64958Your proficiency plays a small role, sure. If you can only do Czech or Tamil, many translations will never even be considered, let alone be published and be able to with time trickle down to file-sharing.
Everything I said in the first post goes for all reading. Libraries exist too, if you prefer physical media and wouldn't rather not study/improve your English or would just be comfortable with your native tongue. Also, not all translations are bad. Some languages are hard to translate to others, like Japanese into English, without significant loses in nuance, density, tone. Whereas Chinese into English is easier, at least as a reader of works that are supposed to be 'good'. You won't be able to learn more than, say, 20 languages to a conversational level, so you'll always have to contend with translations if you're not content with the authorship of your own state.
Give it some thought, make a choice and read, assess your choice later, think again, and so on.
https://youtu.be/RRoP_u_1SpM?=9I'm reading:
Travels in Siberia. Ian Frazier.
The Tatami Galaxy. Morimi Tomihiko, Emily Balistrieri (tr.) (actually very good translation from JP for once, tonally accurate and precise to the anime and manga (read only some panels))
Popisho. Leone Ross.
Yesterday did
American Drug Addict. Brett Douglas.
Was real nice, others lives unraveling, burning and crashing, wholesome experience.
Today finished
Ancient Fables. Wu Min.
Chinese fables, kind of like Aesop's. Really really similar actually. The same morals are likely common throughout civilizations with written histories. Fables are sweet though, and very succinct.
And have much more I want to read.
No.64966
>>64939I'd be down to join. I didn't know you were godcock. I've been following your neocities for a while. In fact, when you said "neocities" I thought of the booklog you have.
No.64986
> Time Regained, Marcel Proust
Ok, this was the final volume of In Search of Lost Time. After five years since I picked Swann's Way I finally completed the whole thing. This final volume definetely left me a good sensation and served well to close the work and reward me.
In this volume we are following our narrator in the Paris of WWI. The life in the city somehow keeps going and some old characters like Charlus have fallen from grace and lead an even more degenerate life. Some narrator's friends succumb to war. The atmosphere of this volume is kind of nostalgic: France amid the war, the beloved things to our narrator are either begone or dying. Yet life keeps his course and new elements are appearing in the great world to the surprise of our already old narrator. He is not the novelty anymore, he is an old friend. Also to his own surprise, he has the somewhat uncomfortable realization of being old.
In certain routinary party the narrator attends, he and we experience the moment of ecstasy that closes this work. For a long time, Marcel, our narrator, has wanted to make a work of an art but he never really decided to do so and was finally considering that he lacks talent. However, a sudden and strong need to write strikes him. After having one of those involuntary memory moments, he realizes that all the material to write about is inside him and if he dies all those treasures will be lost. All those deared moments: the flowers he saw in the countryside, the succubi he met at the shore, the toys he had as child, the anguish he felt while awaiting from his mother's kiss, the mutiple characters of the great world, the love he experienced, etc; all of this will be lost after his death. He and only him is the only witness and treasurer of all these begone moments. They exist inside him. It is his duty to make art with them, to immortalize them but time is short,he is sick and death is looming. He frenzily begins to write…
Thus concludes this work. It was beautiful. Some of the volumes were really a drag but overall it was rewarding and the final message can be applied to the life of anyone. If you are the sensitive type, you can't be left untouched by the small details of your life and you dearly appreciate and remember them. They are not dead you treasure them
No.64992
>>64966Thank you for being forthright.
Onboarding would be the biggest challenge. I know of several reading 'communities' or groups: librarything.com has a similar population of non-lurkers, say 20–150, lonely, old(-er), cat-lady-likes who steadily read; 4chan's /lit/ is brimfilled with Marxist babies, ones going with majority opinion, ones going with the charts from 05–15 years ago; users of shit like bookwyrm are mostly a no-no; aaand so on.
I'll read up on what if anything simple can be set up.
Otherwise, it'd be just replying, which isn't necessarily bad, but mixing of plain text and HTML, and irrelvant with relevant replies, would quickly make it obtuse. Non-compliance (with agreed upon or by me set-out rules (of thumb)) and non-participation would also be unhelpful.
Starting _somewhere_ with a non-negative amount of members is key.
No.64994
>>64986Congratulations on being able to traverse Proust's web all the way to the other side anon. I'm currently at the beginning of vol 3. Did you ever read Walter Benjamin's essay on Proust called "The Image of Proust"? You can find a translation of it in a book called Illuminations: Essays and Reflections. Since you just finished reading the whole thing, would you be so kind as to make a comment on this passage Benjamin wrote about the work?
>What was it that Proust sought so frenetically? What was at the bottom of these infinite efforts? Can we say that all lives, works, and deeds that matter were never anything but the undisturbed unfolding of the most banal, most fleeting, most sentimental, weakest hour in the life of the one to whom they pertain? When Proust in a well-known passage described the hour that was most his own, he did it in such a way that everyone can find it in his own existence. We might almost call it an everyday hour; it comes with the night, a lost twittering of birds, or a breath drawn at the sill of an open vindow. And there is no telling what encounters would be in store for us if we were less inclined to give in to sleep. Proust did not give in to sleep. And yet, or, rather, precisely for this reason Jean Cocteau was able to say in a beautiful essay that the intonation of Proust's voice obeyed the laws of night and honey. By submitting to these laws he conquered the hopeless sadness within him ("the incurable imperfection in the very essence of the present moment."), and from the honeycombs of memory he built a house far the swarm of his thoughts. Cocteau recognized what really should have been the major concern of all readers of Proust and yet has served no one as the pivotal point of his reflections or his affection. He recognized Proust's blind, senseless, frenzied quest for happiness.It shone from his eyes; they were not happy, but in them there lay fortune as it lies in gambling or in love. Nor is it hard to say why this paralyzing, explosive will to happiness which pervades Proust's writings is so seldom comprehended by his readers.Did Proust's book strikes you as a quest for happiness? I always thought his "quest", if there is one, is the idea of holding onto a treasure that's about to be lost through literature. But then again, Walter Benjamin does warn this 'will to happiness' is seldom comprehended by the readers. I don't know what to make of it. I would very much like to hear your opinion on this.
No.64999
>>64994 > Walter Benjamin's essay on Proust called "The Image of Proust"Interesting, I will have to read this
> Did Proust's book strikes you as a quest for happiness?I don't know, I didn't exactly perceive it as a quest for hapiness. It is not there or I might not be as insightful as Benjamin and Cocteau.
Proust, certainly, was a very sensitive and prone to illness person. This special sensitivity of course took a major place in moving him to write. Was some malady tormenting him? Given his quirks and troublesome behaviour, that's highly probable. We can't also forget his privileged material conditions that allowed him to first live a life of leisure and finally to fully dedicate himself to write. Somebody like Tolstoy that regarded country side life as the best and deemed bourgeois life as empty and sick, would probably consider Proust as some spoiled bourgeois kid that did nothing of value with this life but dwell on useless feminine sensitivity.
That said, I don't know if Proust was searching for happiness of what he wanted to reach exactly but he was indeed troubled and sensitive and these qualities explain this massive work. When you are satisfied with your life or busy with the every day routine, you don't feel a need to write a monument like this.
> When Proust in a well-known passage described the hour that was most his own, he did it in such a way that everyone can find it in his own existenceThis is so true. I trash talked him a bit but he was undoubtedly a genius. He was a master of conveying the feelings of the small details. And those small details are everything we have and everything we were. Did he capture "soul" or he merely is playing with sensations to evoke nostalgia ? I think he was onto something and his art is akin to Schopenhauer's principles of art: extract the eternal (in this case our "soul") from the relentless and brutal flow of time and death
No.65026
>>64994>>64992When you say Marxist "babies," do you mean they're babies because they are Marxists, or that they are immature in their Marxism (and are undeveloped/under-read?)
I can join as long as I don't have to download a whole app or something. I try to keep my devices uncluttered and have been compressing/amputating/clearing out different things I have running so as to simplify life. My quality of living has improved drastically as a result.
Do you expect us all to read the same books (like a club) or more just discuss present reading? The latter gives me more flexibility, since I already have reading-obligations on top of my personal reading, and adding more "obligated" reading to my schedule would cut out my fun-reading.
>>64994Not that guy but I'm glad to see you discuss Illuminations. I am preparing to read the essays, but need to start/finish In Search of Lost Time before I engage with his writing. It appears very accessible and my friends highly recommend Illuminations. How do you feel about the work as a whole? I'm curious.
No.65032
>>65026Mostly the first since more important; also I'd argue it's correlation, not causation. The second is true of nearly all of them anecdotally at least (E.g., they can't trace each movement or ideology to its contributors; why and when they diverged from its parent or the main branch; can't distinguish between historically close or related ones.).
I wouldn't want to use a separate program either. Just about everybody has an email address, which is why I wanted a mailing list. I haven't a server, nor spare computer currently. You know, to manage subscriptions of and resend emails to less than 5 peeps. But the email protocol allow for arbitrarily long texts, whereas IM clients, whatever the client, incentivize rapid-fire, short ones. I'm open to ideas.
I have two email addresses on my neocities page. Either of you:
>>64966 >>65026 (if not same person) or whoever else is willing can send me something so I can at least have a list. It would be shared with all members, until a centralized solution steps in. Since most email (web-)clients don't support sending to groups, none that I use at least, likely to combat spam, one'd have to select all members for every new subject. Thankfully, that can be editted without recipients being removed.
It'd be like a reading or literature club in the everybody would discuss what they've read, opine upon others' shared thoughts (e.g., "well I didn't so because X, Y, Z", "you might prefer X by Y to that—it's more Z and less of Q", "how do you reconcile this with that?", "but what do you think about X?", and so). Because we're not 60-year-old grannies in a small flyover town, agreeing on 1 book would be harder than just on an author or a topic. The latter would be choisen either democratically (suboptimal to impossible with so few voters), or sequentially by all, a daisy-chain. And if you don't want to, fine, just talk about what you've read, if at all, or ask others about whatever they have. I'd be interested in hearing others thoughts so long as they be thorough, or incisive, or novel (to me facts or opinions). Two other book club type things failed for me already, maybe third time's the charm?
Example just came to mind, I've Proust's In Search of Lost Time in my log, was added even quite early, probably from here? He's not been mentioned more than 3–4 times in the books I've read so far, but I added it in. If one of you would be finishing it, if it not too-too long (like Ancient Evenings' 3e6 words, fuck me) I'd read it to join in on ensuing discussion.
It wouldn't be crowded nor shallow.
No.65033
>>65032I'd very much like to read Proust. I plan to start him next month, actually, once my schedule clears up.
No.65049
>>65032Finished Travels in Siberia. Apparaently the circuit's been done by at least 15 different Ohioans within some decades of the the its writing. As well as as far back as the 13 or 16 century from various other explorers and travelers. Dude did his research and included a bibliography, so muchos kudos for that. Too often long-winded. The Russophilic aspect grates me so obscenely that I'd attached an 'annoying' mark to my rating of 'above mediocre but not quite decent either'. The history of region, that is, the history of the politics of monarchical Russian from its establishment to dissolution was included. In more detail than needed, I'd say. Not much in the way of fun or whimsy or share-worthy-around-the-camp-fire. Plain observation from a guy in his 50s, rarely interspersed with profound or naïve or American. Eh. At 1.8e5, roughly 2 novels' length, could have been decocted into something more potent. The genre of travelog(ue) is—, or rather has been too commercialized in the past few 5-ish decade. This is from 2001, so 1 post-collapse. The ones done by George Kennan aroun 1870 should be much more interesting, both are to be found at archive.dot in not great scanned condition. The TTS output is gonna be garbage.
Gave up on Popisho. I'm fucking hating succubi or anything vaguely feminine, so judging over 4 characters, emotions, and shit being unrealistic, impossible even is inacceptable, and the Jamacian cant is fucking annoying me since the reader of the audiobook varies her speed from 1x to 3x. I'll give the other half a shot in a few weeks, but the flite-version rather that the reader. Fuck me.
Going to finish Ambrose Bierce's "The Devil's Dictionary" and start Chester Himes' "If He Hollers Let Him Go". Have the next to last of his better contributions to literature. After that Maria Adelmann's "succubi of a Certain Age" since it may be about rape, or something, and her other book "How to be Eaten" was very mature and surreal at times, where metaphor and mundane mingled and you didn't really know the exact facts. Only the results and feels. Hope she doesn't disappoint. Like they all eventually do. Fucking succubi. "All snakes!" like my one grandmother says.
No.65052
>>64999Thanks for the response anon. I think you would enjoy the essay, it's less than 20 pages long. You can find it on libgen as usual.
>>65026>How do you feel about the work as a whole? I'm curious.Walter Benjamin introduced me to Robert Walser and I always feel very inclined to praise him because of that, so take my opinion with more than a grain of salt. That said I think his essays are very good indeed. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction is a brilliant look at objects of art and what they are. To be honest though, his cultural criticism, valid as they are, don't appeal to me. Benjamin looked at art to remember about societies, their machinations and conflicts, I look at art to forget. We're opposites in that regard.
My very favorite essay in that book is the one called Theses on the Philosophy of History. There are so many beautiful thoughts in there. Many weird ones, even bizarre, where his critical theories, his romanticism, his German and Jewish roots make for a sublime and ghastly piece of text. I believe he's one of the great thinkers when it comes to analyse literature and art in the Western world. My absolute favorite piece in the book:
>A Klee painting named "Angelus Novus" shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.I think this paragraph is the exact moment where his artistic sensibilities, his religious compulsions, his fears and his talent as a writer culminate in a beautiful, frightening and fascinating image. To define human history that way and see it whole in a painting like that. I never looked at any paintings the same way ever again after knowing what he saw in Angelus Novus. In fact I began studying mathematics not long after reading that. Texts like these have a very chaotic nature, it feels like a religion in many ways. My brain began to fight intensively to keep some form of order and logic in itself. The solution was learning algebra.
No.65066
>>65049I officially got fired today finally. Woot. Now I have to dispute it and wait another month probably. Anywho
The Devil's Dicitonary
Ambrose Bierc
A compilation of his casual-remarks-turned-wittisms on imbued meanings of and connotations in everyday words during his years as a columnist for periodicals. It's short and sweet. A mild bitterness, bad-faith, despondency in humanity I notice. Cynicism perhaps? But uncalled for, too much of it. Up to the letter M, for example, there wasn't one "hey, people can be nice too". The exaggeration is neither subdued, nor cartoonishly overdone, it's half-way between snide and sarcasm.
The Third Generation
Chester Himes
I'm not sure what Chester Himes was attempting with this novel. He was a black American author born at the start of the 20. century, celebrated for his hard-boileds, and ones with commentary on the racial tensions and dynamics within and without his 'black' race. The Harlem Detective series didn't strike me as engaging, given the choice I have at hand, but his "Lonely Crusade" was, to repeat myself, poignant. Precise and accurate to what would happen. Fifth publication starts off describing a marriage, a family. The female is where the action stems from, thinking herself nobler, better, and than the rest of her race, because she is only some ratio black. An actual word from the novel 'octoroon' that was at the time of the novel, early 1900–1925, used reminds me of the miscegenation laws National Socialists drafted, accepted, issued about what—, that is, who exactly counts as a Jew. I wouldn't have waste a third the pages to say, slightly black succubus bitching about everything and unhappy with being back and having everything. Makes her appear to the reader as the ginormous, ingrateful cunt that she is. Sure, that sentence can be extended to a paragraph, a chapter, but it was meandering withtout the plot furthering. Sure, time passed, but what of it? I don't know where he was going with this. Maybe she becomes accepting of her race..? Maybe she helps others..? Maybe it's actually about the children who when I'd dropped it were illegally fleeing the state emotionally blackmailed and dragged by their mother to comfit her in that that'll be raised white(-r), or something like that. Requires severe editting by the author.
10 Books that Screwed Up the World: And 5 Others That Didn't Help
Benjamin Wiker
A bad-faith, bland, benefiting from present-day, first-world hindsight top 10 list by one of those American faggots that thinks having a Ph.D. next to one's name is a stamp of correctness. Offers nothing new, offers nothing really. A stupid, unread religidrone may like this? Misrepresents as a child would positively impactful, key to the human development scientists,philosophers, economists to pat himself on the back for reassuring himself about his close—, or rather absent-minded, dogmatic, and predictable to a T 'faith'. Can't see being his nose.
The Stainless Steel Rat
Harry Harrison
Found it in a scifi dir. Fuck me this is bad writing. Gary Stu in robotic form. Why would anybody read this? In 1963, the concept of robots wasn't new?
Finally got around to starting the first of the below two, it's pretty good for something round 2500 years in age, did about half. The latter is also starting out pretty swell. I'll finish the chink tomorrow and continue with some other lighter bullshit.
Tao Te Ching
Lao Tzu, Ursula K. LeGuin
The Crystal Child: A Story of the Buried Life
Theodore Roszak
No.65092
>>65091Yes, the scholar, not the sculptor. There are many .pdf's in libgen, and of those many are probably scans, but still stuff is missing. The Crystal Child is well-researched and a good novel, I'll do a write-up, but the first half at least mostly explores (male only?) sexuality and disease(-s). His other work's definitely interesting, one of the more intelligent and eloquent people that aren't just lel drugs.
No.65114
You're being exiled to a desert island and you can only bring 5 books. Which 5 would you take?
No.65137
>>65114-wikipedia in book form
-printouts of all the hentai and porn i like, bound into book form
-the bible
-world's largest hand-made book (physical size, not page count. it would become my house)
-something like the low-tech magazine book (ideally the no-tech book, but that doesn't exist yet)
No.65143
>>65114Silmarillion, Srimad Bhagavatam, Disquisitiones arithmeticae, Zhuangzi, Boruto next generation
No.65145
I'm reading Genesis 6 Giants by Quayle, very interesting read. I don't agree with everything he writes, but he makes some compelling points. We're clearly being lied to about history.
No.65152
>>651145 Bible books so if I spoil one, I'll have others
No.65153
>>651141001 Nights
Dream of the Red Chamber
Srednicki's Quantum Field Theory
Anatomy of Melancholy
Pali Canon
>>65137You really pushed the envelope there. How about 5 books you can order from Amazon or Barnes & Noble? There's a house there for you to live in. They airlift supplies once a month.
>>65143>Disquisitiones arithmeticae>Boruto next generationTeenage ninjas and number theory? Didn't see that coming.
>>65152If you lose or ruin your book they airlift another copy for you by the end of the month. You can pick 4 other titles without that particular concern. I know they do that because I'm the one who posed the question and just right now I came up with this airlift idea so you can add another 4 books to your collection.
No.65171
I was looking for science fiction that doesn't have any human characters. Turns out this is much harder to find than I thought. What you do have is a lot of thinly veiled humans: it doesn't have humans characters but the aliens behave pretty much like humans or the robots behave like humans, etc. Seems like no fiction really removes the human element, say, like a geometry book for example, or a book about noble gases, or a book about insect behavior. There are many non-fiction books out there where the human element is absent but fiction writers doesn't seem to find that interesting at all.
No.65174
>>65114In Search of Lost Time
The Man without Qualities
The Recognitions
The Tunnel
The Books of Jacob
No.65176
>What you do have is a lot of thinly veiled humans: it doesn't have humans characters but the aliens behave pretty much like humans or the robots behave like humans
You can only imagine what you already know. Beyond that is pure abstraction. When you imagine extraterrastrials, they are necessarily somewhat terrestrials, to some degree. When you imagine a thinking thing, it can only be human-like.
No.65177
>>65176Yes but we know about other animals besides humans. We know about things like chemistry and mathematics as well. I couldn't find a single novel where the author tries to make a story focusing on an alien based on ants or viruses, the main characters are always thinly veiled humans. How about making a story solely talking about an alien based on bacteria? I'm not saying it would be an exciting story but I'm very surprised to find out there's not a single novel out there that goes beyond placing humans in silly masks as the main focus of the plot.
No.65188
>>65177You should just read H.P. Lovecraft's stories, or even Thomas Ligotti. Lovecraft is really one of the few writers to captuere what you want
No.65208
>>65186I really enjoyed The succubus in A Swing, all of Adams' books are excellent
No.65209
>>64932I'm really liking T.S. Eliot, gonna memorize The Waste Land and some of his other poems
No.65234
>>301571you can download "otaku; japan's database animals" on here;
https://www.pdfdrive.com/otaku-japans-database-animals-e20915838.htmli would have gladly shared the pdf directly with all of you but for an unknown reason i can't seem to download anything from this site lately..
anyone else having this problem?
No.65236
> What is Art? Leo Tolstoy
Interesting work by Leo Tolstoy. While I agree with all of his main points, I found his heavy moralistic tone difficult to follow.
As the title says, this work is the inquiry of Tolstoy regarding art. He is concerned with all the movement,all the manpower, the studies, the education, the endless seas of ink, the countless critics, etc… all the massive effort that is put over the production of art in our society. While many consider this effort to be the pinnacle of civilization and the main objective of the noble and well-nurtured souls, Tolstoy believes that something is missing.
With his astounding clarity, Tolstoy examines what is considered as art in modern times. A thoroughly revision of the available literature concerning aesthetics of the time, bring him the conclusion that art and beauty are being seen as either some abstract or metaphysical thing or simple biological pleasure derived from something.
Both things are wrong to Tolstoy and he opts for a simpler but more powerful definition: art is the transmission of the common feelings of humanity and the more infectious this transmissions, the better is the art.
In the modern exercise of art, he mostly sees false attempts: imitation of common motifs, useless obscurity just for the sake of it, trying to exalt the feelings with shoc|king or corny scenes. Additionally, Tolstoy believes that the institutionalization of an art canon and the professionalization of the art world are detrimental. Art has to be sincere and spontaneous for it to produce any infectious feeling, otherwise it is just senseless drudgery, mere replication of common and accepted motifs.
How did art end in this state? Tolstoy argues that this is the result of the loss of meaning of life in the bourgeois elite. The religious conciousness of the time forms the basis of the art produced by any society. In the case of Europe, christianism and his doctrines (all men are equal, brotherhood of men, all encompassing god love) were the main material used to produce art. At some point, the elite of the society started to lose faith in the christian religion. With the new discoveries of science and the evidence that church was a corrupt institution, the elite was unable to keep believing in the old dogma. But what to make art from then? Believing in nothing, the elite decided that art are beautiful and curious things that produce us pleasure. This was a turning point, and as the elite were in power, it was not difficult for them to propagate this new definition of art throughout society
A colossal effort is being made in modern times to produce curious things to amuse bored people. That's preposterous to Tolstoy.
So far I think this art definition is masterful and I agree with it but then Tolstoy proceeds to say that the main objective of the art of our times should be the propagation of the christian feeling and the brotherhood of all men. Anything deviating from this should not be considered as art today. Dark and hopeless feelings must be avoided.
I disagree here, with the loss of the christian conciousness, a ton of very interesting artists began to explore the human condition with a profoundity that was never tried before, Tolstoy being one of them
For example Tolstoy trashed Baudelaire for the degeneration of his thoughts and his lack of clarity. I love the darkness of Baudelaire and I think the ennui and nihilism he conveys in some of his poems is a common feeling of the modern citizen.
That being said, this was very interesting. I take Tolstoy art definition as mostly correct: art has to be spontaneous, sincere, contagious and has to convey common and profound human experiences
No.65239
>>65236I never read that but it sure sounds very interesting, I'm going to give it a try sometime. I'm not surprised that's what he thinks art should be, in Confession he talks about Christianity and how it was of all things in this world the thought that ultimately saved him. It's a very naive thought to believe the thing that saves us is the thing that must also ultimately save everyone, but then again for Christianity to work as intended it must be true to everybody.
I think it's undeniable that art and religion are very close, in fact I don't think they were a separate thing for most of human history. From the Lion-man sculpture to the pyramids and Michelangelo's David art seems to focus on the magical side of human experience. I think religion might be an organized form of our dreams and fears and is the one to solidify those feelings. It's funny going into a museum and realizing if you remove the things that can be considered "religious artefacts" there would be pretty much nothing left in the art sections all the way up to the 20th century. So when Tolstoi says art should be religion, he's not asking for anything weird.
I agree with you on Baudelaire. There's still beauty beyond the Gods, the works of M. C. Escher comes to mind, though neither Baudelaire or Escher will save you from the thought of death like a religion would, nor I don't think art will be able to have that assurance about life ever again, unless is becomes religious. I think that's where religion will always have the upper hand.
No.65241
>>65236Thought I thoroughly dislike most Russian literature, especially the so-called classics, greats, I will give this a shot, because of the subject. Reminds of Schopenhauer's "The Art of Literature", among quite a few other books about read, bibliophilia, libraries, and so on (I have a running list). So thank you.
My main two reads ast of last 2 weeks (very slow, because mentally convalescing (slowly, with repeated interruption)) are:
The Gates of Janus (Extended Edition)
Ian Brady
Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life
Adam Phillips
Both are great, both sub- and objectively. The former is a human being who perceives others similar to me, share thoughts and emotions, so I there is a connection, which for me is rather rare. Insightful if you never thought about the matter yourself in bredth and depth, and to me, connecting, or just soothing in a "hey, you're not really that alone"-kind of way. The latter is a heavy-hitter, the first part of the 6 I read 3 times before continuing, the the other parts warrant it another as well. The talk of frustration, frameworks of psychoanalysts and psychologists help define the problems many of us experience as people. I would recommend it any male in trouble, however defined in whatever domain. I'll revisit it again later again.
Otherwise have been reading small bullshit trash. The 'fun' one present is "Bad Motherfucker" by Gavin Edwards, about actor Samuel Jackson.
Anywho.
No.65242
>>65241Are you
>>65066,
>>65049?
You've been contributing a lot to this thread and I always want to make a comment on your reads but time and time again I never even heard of the stuff you're reading, it's a rather unusual taste you have. Anyway I just want to let anons posting itt that I appreciate it and I read every post even when I don't make a direct response.
No.65243
>>65242Oui. The unread part of my booklog is comprised of last 3 years' entries in audiobookbay; references in anything I've read; the compliment of work already enjoyed by authors, or just past or just future.
Plenty of great stuff exists, and some I've access to, I know authors' and titles' names. That would lead to some desensitization, which could like to a crash afterward, when (of if, if I, say, learn to appreciate beautify (or the like) in everything else) depleted. So I intersperse with weak or mediocre books, which also allow one to better contrast, to better define what it is about the others that one likes.
No.65262
>>65114Michel de Montaigne's Complete Essays
The Book of Disquiet by Pessoa
Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft
The Complete One Thousand and One Nights
The World as Will and Representation by Arthur Schopenhauer
No.65263
>>65241>Thought I thoroughly dislike most Russian literature, especially the so-called classicsSaying this in a literature thread should be considered a bannable offense.
No.65264
>>65263I agree with him. I find it too miserabilist and philosophical in the most grating, heavy-handed ways.
No.65266
>>65263Being somewhat to more than a bit familiar with, though no scholar of, Slavic culture and Eastern Orthodox Christianity, having watched, percevied, engaged with supposed classics or greats: plays, movies, series, games, music, etc. most artic media, most genres therein, I notice a vast repetition of the same themes, a predictability of the characters. They like how in majority of Japanese media—literature, movies, anime, manga that I've sampled or 'consumed'—, there are too many copy-pastes that bring nothing new, and that I find predictable, and hence unenjoyable. If you've had better luck, great for you, write about. I'm willing to give chances, less so secondary and subsequent, but I'm willing to be wrong and to find a gem, than to wholesale paint 'em all the same shade of shit.
It's not that there isn't good. There is not as much as some would like to have me believe, or would claim objectively as good.
Don't be absolute. 'Bout nuttin'.
No.65275
>>65264So true bro! Unlike my German philosophy which is full of composed words that made me feel intelligent!
>>65266You sound like one of those very obnoxious non-fictions readers from /lit/ that believe themselves smart because they waste their time reading essays from the 20th century onward.
Don't read fiction if you don't like it but don't present yourself as acknowledged about it.
No.65276
>>65275We try our best to keep this thread civil and free of personal attacks, anon.
No.65277
>>65275I dabbled in lit only for a few months after starting reading 2019.12.xx. >=95% of posts are middle-school-tier, try-hard attempts trying to pass off as witticism, convincing at best other similarly stupid (be it low IQ, or vastly unread, or just underage) users.
Slightly past 1000 titles in my booklog, I calculated the ratio of fiction to non-fiction, regardless of completion state (.05 or 1; though the average wasy .7–.8, don't recall) to be ~65:35. I don't believe myself especially 'smart'. Everybody else, all too often out of emotion, prefer to show their rather daft, dull colors.
Schürsenkel and Schornsteinfeger were some of my first memrorized German words. Why you'd attack German's capability to compound nouns is beyond me. It obviates need to import or coin new words, which is helpful for the natural sciences. Look to Arabic for a language that's mostly unchanged for 1.5e3 years. It and Japanese just use calques for all foreign concepts and ideas: laser in Arabic, kiss in Japanese; compare with Chinese 互联网 lit. mutual couplet net(work), which is used for (the) internet.
No.65278
>>65277/lit/ is some of the stupidest tryhards on 4, an urchin subcommunity of humanities undergrads who want to do the edgy left philosophy but can't stand pol
No.65286
This video
https://yewtu.be/g0nfnmO6nLY speaks on what I was getting at with stereotypical Japanese and Russian literature, the first 4' specifically, the rest is details. She coincidentally picked 4 books I know of, 3 of which I've read or tried reading. One ineluctable flaw is that she is half-Japanese, grew up there; she knows the culture, norms, the context, the milieu; and she read them in Japanese, which is the trivial solution to the problem. Linguistically, Russian and English are far closer than than Japanese and any European language. I should have said that I dislike the translations of Japanese that I've read, thought who many translators must one go through before concluding, the language is the issue not its recasting. From 9' to the end, she gives an example of these differences. I don't think these differences are reconcilable, a meaningful translation would necessitate changing the content, I think.
Anyway, reading. Lonely.
No.65451
> The Philosophy of Redemption by Philipp Mainländer
I was deeply impressed by this work. Although I couldn't read the original German version since I don't know the language, I managed to get a good sense of Mainländer's genius through an incomplete Spanish translation.
Mainländer follows in the footsteps of Kant and Schopenhauer, but he presents his own original ideas that lead to different and highly interesting conclusions. He likely had a profound impact on Nietzsche, who decided to diverge from Schopenhauer and pessimism after reading Mainländer's work.
In each section of this work, Mainländer tackles different topics and, in a way, constructs a system. The sections are as follows: Analytic of Cognition, Physics, Aesthetics, Ethics, Politics, and Metaphysics.
> Analytic of Cognition
Mainländer is a natural heir to the systems of Kant and Schopenhauer, and therefore, he doesn't deviate significantly from them. He agrees with Kant on various aspects such as the a priori/a posteriori division in relation to human experience, the establishment of limits to human experience, and the abandonment of transcendent knowledge beyond human experience in favor of immanent knowledge derived from immediate human experience. Additionally, Mainländer considers the introspective discovery of the will as the thing-in-itself as an essential advancement, following Schopenhauer's teachings. What Mainländer does is attempt to purify these systems further from any transcendental residue and bring them closer to realism and human experience. For example, while Mainländer acknowledges the existence of a priori structures within us necessary for constructing our experience, he abandons the notions of space, time, and causality as complete a priori elements. According to Mainländer, while our innate a priori concepts encompass "point-space" and "point-time," the complete ideas of space and time emerge as a posteriori constructs formed through the integration of diverse experiential snapshots. By doing so, Mainländer's effort is directed toward assigning more value to the external world as a source of knowledge, while also emphasizing that there is a "thing-in-itself" in the external world, although he never entirely discards a priori notions.
> Physics
In this section, Mainländer closely aligns with Schopenhauer. The essence of nature, according to Mainländer, is will and movement. Every element of nature, be it atoms, molecules, plants, or human beings, exhibits this inherent tendency. However, while Schopenhauer views the will as singular and eternal, Mainländer argues that we inhabit a world of multiple wills interconnected in a "dynamic connection." When it comes to animals and, more importantly, human beings, Mainländer emphasizes the division between will/body/blood/organs/demon and spirit/mind/consciousness. Spirit is not an entirely new element but rather a new manifestation of the will. Through this new element, we gain greater insight into time and can momentarily disconnect from the "demon."
No.65452
>>65451> AestheticsMainländer goes into explaining what constitutes beauty (proportions, impressions, harmony, etc) beauty in each art (painting, sculture, music, poetry, etc). The general idea is that beauty emerges when our spirit disconnects from the demon. When we manage to perceive the world while disconnected from the demon's desires, we enter an artistic state, a sublime state. Clearly, Mainländer is influenced by Schopenhauer's ideas in this regard.
> EthicsAccording to Mainländer, the ethical path involves renouncing the will, aligning with Schopenhauer's perspective. However, Mainländer posits that complete selfless acts are impossible and that such a definition is, in fact, contradictory. To be alive means to have motives, as this world is in continuous movement. The moment something ceases to have motives and stops moving, it is dead. Thus, Mainländer's pessimism begins to emerge: the most moral thing is death and nothingness. Christianity and Buddhism concur with this notion.
> PoliticsUp until now, Mainländer has mainly added comments and made adjustments to Kant and Schopenhauer's systems. However, his most original ideas appear in this section and in Metaphysics. As far as I know, Kant wasn't extensively involved with politics, while Schopenhauer held disdain for socialist movements and leaned toward a reactionary/conservative stance. He viewed the proletariat's struggle with contempt and deemed it pointless since the will and its demands are eternal (in a socialist utopia, people would kill themselves out of boredom). Mainländer, on the other hand, diverges from his mentor and appreciates the idea of socialism. In this section, he constructs his own "philosophy of history": the history of human civilization entails the gradual reduction of human vitality. This can be observed by studying how each civilization transitions through different forms of organization. The death of a civilization is marked by a loss of the will to live and an intensification of the spirit's activity. The process may appear cyclical since civilizations seem to die and grow throughout history, but Mainländer posits that the movement is akin to a spiral. Ultimately, all human civilizations are destined to die. The rise of a global human civilization serves as proof of this. With the expansion of European colonialism and the advent of mass production, the movement of civilization has reached unprecedented speed and all-encompassing nature. Civilization is now unstoppable and will reach every corner of the earth. To Mainländer, offering knowledge and education to all humans was the crucial step toward redemption. For this reason, he sympathized with socialism. Education brings the knowledge that life is suffering and not worth living, and that is redemption. In a profound sense, Mainländer states that "civilization kills." Mainländer also examines the progression of religion: humanity has transitioned from religions venerating nature due to fear of the unknown to religions exalting death and nothingness as the supreme state (Christianity, Buddhism).
> MetaphysicsIn the Politics section, Mainländer viewed the loss of the will to live caused by civilization as a positive development and considered it the path to redemption for all humans. However, does this principle apply to the entire universe? Will we be alive again somewhere, sometime? According to Mainländer, the entire universe follows the same principle of decay. In Physics, he stated that we exist in a universe of multiple interconnected wills, where continuous movement and inherent tendencies explain the causality governing the world. Everything that exists is interconnected, and causality can be understood through this "struggle" between multiple wills. While it is impossible to reach the beginning of time through our representations, which Kant has proven, Mainländer speculates using the interconnected nature of reality as an argument. Although we can never reach the beginning of time, if there was one, by following the traces offered by our perceptions, one could suggest that everything that exists is "one" in some way. Since speculation about the origin of time falls beyond experience, any attempt to describe it can only be done negatively: atemporal, non-spatial, yet unique, as everything that exists now is interconnected. Mainländer constructs his metaphysics in this manner: there was an atemporal, non-spatial, eternal unity in the past, but it no longer exists. We now inhabit a universe of multiple wills engaged in conflict. What happened? Once again, human reasoning cannot provide any insight into atemporal, non-spatial matters, but we can utilize our own will as a regulative tool. Why did this unity cease to exist? It was overwhelmed by its own existence and chose to disappear, i.e., committed suicide. Why didn't this unity vanished completely in one instant? This unity could desire to be anything except non-being, as that would contradict its own essence. The death of the unity marks the beginning of our time, and everything that exists in this time is consequently marked by the original desire for death. Mainländer argues that Schopenhauer's will to live is partially correct; at its core lies the will to die. The continuous movement of the universe implies a loss or reduction of "energy." Gases strive to expand endlessly, liquids seek dispersion, solids tend to fall towards the center of the Earth, and human civilization is a gradual loss of human vitality, among other examples. Everything yearns to crumble. Additionally, against Schopenhauer's will to live, Mainländer asserts that if things wither and die, it is because they are "programmed" to do so; it is inherent to their essence; otherwise, they wouldn't perish. Modern scientific theories such as the Big Bang and entropy align to some extent with Mainländer's cosmic vision. The universe itself will be redeemed.
Mainländer also tries to connect his system with Buddhism, Brahmanism, and Christianity. He sees a certain inclination in these religions towards valuing either the world or the individual (Buddhism: individualism; Brahmanism: the world, disregarding the individual; Christianity: a somewhat middle ground). Mainländer considers them all to be correct, but he believes his system resolves the contradictions between the world and the individual, the transcendental and the immanent: the transcendental lies before the dawn of time, it did exist, but it no longer does; we now reside in a world of multiple interconnected wills that we apprehend through our immanent human reasoning.
No.65540
>>65539Try Norman Mailer's Ancient Evenings, >3e6 words, about 4 novels' worth, if you want something too long. Not prosaic, but it does read like three loosely tied together pieces; only first was worth it, but that's subjective.
No.65547
>>65540I-read-much-have-a-neocities-page-and-wanted-to-start-a-mailing-list anon here. Framasoft offers software to manage small mailing lists. None of you less than 8 posters in this thread wrote me when I'd asked. Not even with a throw-away, single-use email address. So either y'all've different priorities than me, or y'all're real shy, anxious, etc. Right? This thread gets a weekly soliloquotious bump, but it's dead. Maybe I just have too much (free) time? I get that priorities differ, but this is, and what I've been doing in my remarks and reviews on books on my site, seems unfullfilling because of the lack of refinement borne of diffraction through others and reflection upon them.
I still want to talk to actual fucking people, in this case with regards to discussion and literature, books, (Tai Lopez voice) nahlej. If you'd like something similar rather than emphemeral unacknowledged writings on wizchan, where the context, I'd argue, isn't great, say so. If daily-ish mailing ain't your cuppa or you don't read and don't want to/can't make the time, then I'll not create the ml.
Excuse the desperation seeping thru the cracks.
No.65556
What happened to that mailing list idea? It would be nice, but it seems it went nowhere.
No.65557
>>65547>>65556I expected interested parties to mail my public, neocities email address (which now is deleted, though I did make a new one; it'ss just not on the page) to get the ball rolling. Nobody wrote. Two showed lukewarm excitement.
I'll create it using the aforementioned
https://framalistes.org/abc/en/ and write back
No.65558
>>65557Tried registering with a webkit2 and ungoogled chromium browsers. Either upon password request an actual french fuck has to issue it (long past working hours), or I'm failing somewhere, or their shit's fucked. I'll look again to see if other non-local solution exist. And if not, I may try with GNU mailman.
No.65559
>>65558"Framalistes is full! The service does not close, but is restricted: you can continue to manage your lists as usual, but it is no longer possible to create new ones.
We are opening Framagroupes, an equivalent ethical discussion list service, on a new server. If you want to create a new list, go to framagroupes.org!"
No.65560
>>65559Thank you.
(exaggerated) Oooh, they want at least 3. party cooties enabled…
some.readers@framagroupes.org now exists. I don't know if you can request submission by mailing to it
No.65561
>>65560I think one has to visit the page of the mailing to subscribe, because I'm not find sth like: 'send to this address with this subject to subscribe'
It's currently open to all and anybody can write it. The translation work on sympa or frama is roughshod, I'll look it over in daylight.
I'm currently writing reviews on shit books. Then finishing up Santa Steps Out.
No.65566
The mailing list works. Sign up and trash, fawn over, whine the written word! This is a reading thread, but it'd be more about discussion of art. I can't talk much about sculpture or leatherworking, but I'd gladly read of another's thoughts and possibly opine. Games and anime would fall in here too so long as it's good-faith discussion, deep and broad.
No.65567
>>65566I wanted to join because it's a book discussion, if you are going to talk about random topics, I already have wizchan for that. I dislike how people always need to talk about off-topic stuff, as if there was not enough places to do so.
No.65568
>>65567You dissuade yourself. To me, all art is connected. Philosophy is not literature. Should that be excluded? Nitpickery is missing the point: what exactly is a 'book', 'literature', and so on. Join or don't, it's only me in there. If there's no other subscriptors (subscribees?) I might as well just post to my site as I've done for the past 2 years.
No.65571
>>65568>Philosophy is not literatureBook discussion implies talking about book. If we are talking about some book that talks about anime or art, sure, but it's not talking about art itself. There are books wrote by philosophers. I have no idea why you went with literature when I said a book. If you are also unable to define a book, I have no idea what you even want to do. But consider me out, anyway.
No.65572
Completed reading all YA and adult novel of phase 2 of Star Wars High Republic, pretty fun reading, now reading all adults book of phase 1, for now is a fun reading too, rising storm is bit of drag right now.
No.65573
>All the demons and sorcerers came together in a great army, with the black demon as their leader, and their roars ascended to the heavens. But Tahmures suddenly confronted them, and the war did not last long; two-thirds of the demons he subdued by spells, and the other third by his heavy mace. He dragged them wounded and in chains in the dust, and they pleaded for their lives, saying, “Don’t kill us, we can teach you something new and highly profitable.” The king granted them their lives on condition that they reveal their secrets to him, and when he had freed them from their chains they had no choice but to obey him. They taught the king how to write, and his heart glowed like the sun with this knowledge.
I think it's the first time I see a mythical origin of the written word where instead of a benevolent god or entity teaching humans how to read and write it's actually malevolent demons. Pretty interesting. The book is called Shahnameh btw.
No.65581
I have finished reading the complete Brothers Grimm fairy tales. Dear God, it was a pain to get through, the stories were repetitive, the characters were unlikeable, the plots were nonsensical. It really makes you appreciate how far literature has advanced since the days of telling this crap around a campfire.
No.65582
>>65581You didn't like Pied Piper of Hamelin? What about Rumpelstiltskin?
No.65583
C# indepth
C++ primer
OpenGL Superbible
How to talk to anyone - 92 Little Tricks for Big Success in Relationships
No.65584
>>65583C# indepth is absolutely terrible, redditors recommended me this and it makes sense since the author sounds like he's a redditors himself. Retarded formulations and unclear unprecise descriptions. As if the guy learned how to write technical literature from reading reddit posts
No.65592
>>65588>The sultans are always wise and just [..] the princes are always strong and handsome […] Named characters are always so beautiful and skilled and virtuous […]>Do you think that’s a difference between the abridged and full version?I think it's more like the reviewer read a re-written version for children. One does not need to read more than the very first story to know that's not true. In fact, you don't need to know more than the basic premise to know that's not true. The entire plot of Arabian Nights hinges on the fact there's a murderous, unjust sultan (Shah Zaman) raping and killing succubi nightly, until Shahrazad is forced to intervene. An unwise, unjust sultan is the very reason the stories are being told in the first place and the main focus of the plot. Many stories have princes and other named characters being immoral and murderous and that's how they get in trouble in the first place. You have princes killing the favorite concubine of the sultan by accident and having to run from the palace, you have sultans throwing just men inside wells. There are so many instances of injustice and lack of wisdom perpetrated by the protagonists it's hard to go through more than a single story without finding an example that contradicts that statement. I can confidently say that reviewer, whatever book he may have read, it was not Arabian Nights.
>Also according to that guy medieval Arabs had a massive BBC fetish. Do you think that’s exaggerated?I think it is since it happens to just a couple of characters in the book. There are more instances of succubi cheating on their husbands with demons, Ifrits and Jinns than with other humans. There's also instances of succubi cheating on their husbands with monkeys. It felt obvious to me the goal was to describe a perceived female immoral behavior, not a fetish. In the context you can tell they're going for the lowest, most disgusting things they could could think of succubi doing. "Prostitute for black slaves" is a particularly injurious epithet to call a succubus in that society, it shows that you could not be in a lower societal position. Most black slaves were domestic servants, so they didn't even enjoy the good fame of the Mamluks, the warrior slave class (most of those guys were from Eastern Europe and Turkey I think).
No.65599
>>65582Was the pied Piper a Grimm's story? It isn't in my book, but either way, the mayor is an asshole. In Rumpelstiltskin, the father is an asshole for screwing over his daughter like that, the prince for being so unreasonable, and finally the daughter for not keeping her promise.
No.65600
>>65599Sorry, I just realized it's not on the more well known collection which is a pity, it's by far my favorite story they published. You can read their version of the story on a book called German Legends of the Brothers Grimm, you can find it on libgen if you want. It's called Children of Hamelin. This particular collection was published in English in the early 80s and there was never a reprint. They have a more scholarly approach in there and try to stay closer to the original tales and legends they collected, sometimes it's just a fragment of a story, I guess that's why it's not as popular but imo it's their best work.
No.65602
What are the books you have upcoming on your reading list? I think I can go through these before the year is over.
The Satyricon
The Republic (re-reading)
The Golden Ass
The Five-and-Twenty Tales of the Genie
The Epic of Gilgamesh (re-reading)
Thirty-Two Tales of the Throne of Vikramaditya
Le Morte D'Arthur
A Tale of Four Dervishes
I think I'll start with Le Morte D'Arthur, a book I've been planning to read for over a decade.
No.65603
>>65602> The Epic of Gilgameshdoes reading something from 2000 BC make you feel in touch with something primal from man's origins?
No.65604
>>65603Not at all. Gilgamesh feels very much the product of an advanced civilization. The story is well structured, there's character development, it's not that different of a modern novel and is in fact better than most modern novels. Conflicts are used to great dramatic effect and the feelings and troubles those characters go through are not alien at all to the modern readers.
I think the moment you have the written word and people are living in cities, you lose access to whatever primal nature man might have had. And the writers of Gilgamesh were urban dwellers of a very well established and advanced civilization. In fact that's a major theme in the story. Gilgamesh befriends a wild man called Enkidu. Enkidu is a primal man, a man before the raise of civilizations. He can talk to birds, trees and he can sleep out in the open without clothing.
I don't want to give any spoilers, but the process he goes through to be civilized will make you chuckle. It's a worthy read wiz, very short to, you can finish it in a single sitting. You can find the book on libgen if you're interested.
No.65605
>>65604A very wizardly process, to be sure.
No.65613
My reading list consists mainly of books on society:
* The collapse of complex societies
* The sources of social power
* The breakdown of nations
* Principles of dealing with the changing world order
No.65617
>>64932What is the meaning of the "MAster Words" in the Jungle Book? What was Kipling attempting to represent?
Mowgli says the Master Words, and they compel the Jungle-People to act in a certain manner, like a social contract.
No.65632
READING WITH BOOKWORMWIZHey wizards, I'm planning to read a monumentally important work from Western literature called Bibliotheca of Pseudo-Apollodorus. It's one of the most relevant primary sources for Greek Mythology that managed to survive from antiquity. It's long overdue for me to become familiar with this book and I want to invite all of you to read it with me. It's the perfect title to do so. It's short, straightforward, written in a very accessible language and is culturally significant.
I've perused the book ahead and divided it into chunks of 20 to 30 pages each. We'll be reading one portion daily. I believe 20 to 30 pages a day is a comfortable enough pace that anyone interested will be able to keep it up. A lot of wizards out there complain of wasting time, I think this is the perfect opportunity to do something interesting, or at least different. So please join me in this adventure through Greek Mythology.
The Bibliotheca is an ancient myth compendium. It begins with the birth of the Gods, their struggles, eventual secession and the Titan wars resulting from it. It covers Zeus' ascension to power and the transition to the heroic age. We'll be reading the tales of Hercules, Theseus, Perseus, the Argonauts, all the heroes from the Iliad, the Odyssey and many others, their own struggles and ultimate fates.
By the end of each day I'll make a post commenting on the parts I liked and/or found particularly interesting, thus inviting a very informal conversation about what we just read. I'l also be reading a couple of related texts on the side and might make comparisons or commentary about them related to the Bibliotheca. Of course you're free to post your own opinions before I post something myself. It's a very informal thing. You can choose to participate in the conversation or simply follow the reading schedule as a lurker. It works both ways.
Pic related is the reading chart. As you can see, it will take us 15 days to read the entire book. It will start slowly, with 2 days to go through the introductory portion of the volume. This is intended so that any latecomers can easily catch up if they're interested. Then, on the third day, we begin with the actual Bibliotheca. You start with the chapter indicated on the left column (Begin at) and continue to the one on the right (Stop at). Please notice you only stop after reading the chapter indicated on the right. Easy enough, I'm sure!
I don't have a starting date yet. I'll let this post simmer for a couple of days, see if anyone is interested. After a few days I'll post again setting a starting date, probably the day after, with or without participants. You're welcome to join at any point of the reading process. Once I begin I'll be following the schedule all the way to the end of the book.
We'll be reading the translation released in 2008 by Oxford University Press which has a long tradition of publishing classical texts. I found two formats available, PDF and EPUB.
The PDF format can be found on libgen here:
https://libgen.rocks/ads.php?md5=F9AB90EB79A20F29EE6CB6FEED4C8562The EPUB format I found on Z-Library, I think you need an account to access zlib now so I uploaded to anonfiles for easy access, here:
https://anonfiles.com/h7v211y6z5/The_Library_of_Greek_Mythology_Apollodorus_Robin_Hard_Z_Library_epubIf you have problems fetching any of those files let me know and I'll try to upload somewhere else for you.
And I think that's it for now. I hope I managed to make you interested in this undertaking. If you have any questions about it let me know and I'll try to respond to the best of my abilities. See you soon!
No.65633
>>65632This is dope, I wish I could join you. I'll be looking forward to your updates, who knows, maybe I give it a shot.
No.65634
>>65633You can if you wish. You can also drop at any time, it's all up to you really. Take a quick look on the book, you can download it through one of the links I posted. See if looks like the type of thing you would be interested in.
No.65635
>>65632this reminds me of the curriculum of schools in the early 20th century, basically just ancient and classical stuff. must have been awesome back in the day
No.65665
Picked up A Tale of Four Dervishes after ditching Le Morte d'Arthur. The Arthurian narrative is so ungainly and coarse I couldn't go on. Four Dervishes on the other hand I found it to have that quaint quality one usually finds in narratives from medieval India and the Near East. Beautiful gardens, wandering fools at the mercy of wondrous and mysterious powers, palaces, treasures and precious gems of all colors and shapes. I feel like Western fantasy never quite got at the level of delicacy and poetry of those stories, being so fixed in heroes as it usually is, it misses the more inebriating nature and savory aspects of fantasy altogether.
I finished in two days, it's not a long book. It's in the frame narrative style of so many works of the medieval Orient. You have a king that fears old age and ends up secluding himself in deep melancholy. He leaves for a walk one night and sees four dervishes sitting in a graveyard, telling stories to each other. As the king hides behind a grave to hear the tales, the narrative takes us to all sorts of places, from gardens to subterranean palaces, to the high seas and ethereal kingdoms. The stories are usually short which helps to keep them fresh, light and entertaining. I loved it. Can't recommend it enough, specially for its brevity and colorful stories.
>>65632I guess I gave enough time for people to join. Since nobody is interested, I'll be reading it at my own pace. Maybe I'll try again with another book, we'll see.
No.65670
>>65665>I guess I gave enough time for people to join. Since nobody is interested, I'll be reading it at my own pace. I've been coming over expecting your first post on the subject. I did read the introduction.
I couldn't really join you at 30 pages a day because I already read about 30 pages a day of other books. But I was thinking maybe I'd get inspired enough to try and keep up.
No.65690
>>65689this is called culture and cultural influence and has been discussed to death already
No.65691
I'm reading Mark Twain "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" right now. Some wiz reviewed it and I figured I'd give it a try. This book is great and it's kinda trippy, I love it! Before this I read "The Sound and the Fury" by Faulkner
No.65692
>>65691i started reading that in between breaks at work last in 2021. cool to see others also reading it unexpectedly
having gotten used to isekai in anime, it was funny
No.65693
>>65691Ah yes, good, old Mark Twain, he had a heart in the right place.
No.65694
>>65692it makes me laugh and smile a lot. good book
>>65693this is the first book of his i've read
No.65695
>>65694interesting, are you american? i had to read huckleberry finn
No.65697
>>65696maybe it's an east coast thing to read twain in grade school. i remember the scenery from the book matching where i lived and all the adventures and so on being relatable
No.65698
>>65697I live on the west coast and I read huckleberry finn. I think they started phasing it out though cause it had nigger everywhere.
No.65702
>>65657I began the second part not too long ago.
Felt might be *stagnating* to have started another book in the process and read them simultaneously at first.
But the second part is 500+ pages, and this book is roughly 200, give or take.
No.65704
How bad is you eyesight?
Mine got really bad in the last couple of years. Nowadays I just download ebooks and have a TTS engine read them for me.
No.65715
>>65714
Any feminist who discovered /pol/ a week ago would write that. I want to know if there was any thinking behind it or if it just continues on like that for 400 pages. So no, that doesn't contain everything I need to know.
No.65717
>>65716idk who that is, but when i ask gpt to quote a random pessimistic writer, gpt seems to like him
No.65718
>>65716You've been reading Book of Disquiet and that's your concern? If the author fits an internet meme? I read the whole book and several of his poems and my bigger picture opinion for you is stop using the internet asap.
No.65719
>>65712https://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=085669E06A4BFDAD44E0BC2663784D5AIt's in .epub format. You can read it with software like calibre on your computer if you don't have an e-reader or whatever.
Go to libgen.rs if you're ever looking for more books.
No.65721
>>65716keep reading, it's a masterpiece
No.65747
Reading now the Star Wars the original trilogy, is 570ish pages in total, from episode IV to VI.
16/07/2023 - start reading
Let see when I'm gonna end the book.
No.65748
>>65712>I'm curious but there's no way I'm buying itbased. i haven't read it. however i bet it's some used up post wall roastie bitchin about men that don't simp; so called low value men (as if all succubi weren't low value); and a litany of sexist slurs for virgins
No.65749
>>65747is there a good link to pirate the old dark horse star wars comics. i think the eu is much better than the globohomo squels we got
No.65782
Finished Connecticut Yankee today, 10/10 book. Will take it easy for a few days then start a new book. I'm leaning towards Larry McMurtry's "Lonesome Dove"
No.65790
>>65670Sorry, just noticed you responded to my post. It's hard to bother with wizchan anymore and I gave up on this thread as well. I wish you good fun in your readings. Good bye.
No.65797
About halfway through The Lost Weekend by Charles Jackson and loving it, by far the most realistic and painfully relatable portrayal of alcoholism I've seen in any media.
No.65802
“They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” that they made a movie about in the 60s
No.65808
Good books about crabs and wizards?
No.65840
>>65613I am interested in this, can you give some recommendations/examples?
No.65855
Finished Reading Star Wars IV New Hope. Pretty cool and fun story, nothing mind blowing, but a well done sci fi story, could see why became so popular and why people hated the prequels and sequels, there story actually make sense and follow logical sequence and sense, reading Empire Strike Back next, after reading the Original Trilogy I wonder if I should read Legends books or the new Canon books.
No.65856
>>65855Shadows Of The Empire is a good side-story for Empire Strikes Back
No.65903
Tecically listening to the audiobooks but have been listening too/reading the Elric Saga by Michael Moorcock.
Up to The Weird of the White Wolf so far. It's really good. Multiverse and brooding angsty protagonist done right.
No.65904
>>65856Gonna read after finishing up the original trilogy.
No.65969
i fukin hate books. i prefer prank videos. check out smooth sanchez the modern day diogenes not these gay ass boring ass niggas in these dusty ass books
No.66000
>>65969I don't know much about the guy, but I aspire to care as little as he does. Being able to act that unhinged without caring what anyone thinks is true freedom.
No.66008
anyone read on an android device? any app you can recommend for .pdf .epub and so on?
No.66009
>>66008for epubs i use lithium
No.66010
>>65969>watch this zoomer crustacean insteadno, go away
No.66012
>>65719The book can be found as pdf on oceanofpdf, I won't link it here for reasons
No.66041
>>66011i've considered it but i am not sure i want to have another gizmo in my room
what would you recommend anyway? i might look into it in the future
No.66046
>>66011Seems I was part of some rangeban that some other fucking retarded wizard caught me into that expired March of next year.
Alright, here's my take on e-readers, now that I can post.
Definitely get either a Kobo or a Kindle Paperwhite. Even the basic Kindle does it. Get it used. Adjustable fonts and backlight that isn't hard on the eyes like a regular tablet's, along with the battery, makes it a great choice.
Just make sure you get one with a "sunken" screen for max comfy, flush screens look more aesthetic but they reflect a bit with the sun.
The cons? Depending on your choice you will be converting .epub to .mobi with each new ebook. Also, if you're planning to read mostly PDFs? Don't bother and buy a Walmart tablet or the cheapest Fire tablet.
No.66047
>>66011I miss this sunken screen
No.66165
https://www.collegexpress.com/lists/list/top-50-largest-college-libraries/747/After the world ends, and I'm the last man left alive, I will journey to one of these campuses. without the annoying humans to distract me from wizdom.
No.66168
What are some /essential/ readings for a wiz?
No.66170
>>66169I'm not a pedophile (they should be hanged on a public square), bro.
No.66171
>>66170Which is why you'll relate to the main character so well. Especially in Kodomo No Jikan.
No.66193
>>66170It's well written so even if you aren't a pedo/lolicon it's still decent.
No.66287
> Book of Disquiet, Fernando Pessoa
Due to the fragmentary nature of the work, reading this book can be tedious and monotonous but otherwise this is a painful yet beatiful reading.
A man with no convictions. All the philosophic, religious, scientific, whatever projects have been rebunked. No redemption in heaven, no material progress and improvement of mankind, nothing. Bernando Soares, whose diary we are reading, is man whose only conviction are his own sensations. And he is a master in tasting and analyzing his own sensations. He is capable of looking at them from behind, from beside, from everywhere, give them profundity and texture. A small stimulus can result in cascade of ideas. Bernando Soares, a scientist dissecting his own soul.
Being only aware of the own sensations, has, however, profound metaphysical implications. What is real? the city and all its movement? my own dreams and fantasies ? They hold the same value according to Bernando Soares. Any dream is a door to another vast and completely real universe. At the corner of some painting, at the drawings in some pot, lies the infinite. Yet the nature of our day-to-day word can't be ignored and is also source of amazement. Why is all of that here? Why are all these creatures here waking up every day, working hard, struggling, fighting? Is there any meaning in their lives ? What is Lisboa doing under the sky everyday ? Some God put everything here (a bored kid perhaps). We are just here, helpless and under the mercy of destiny. Just lying and rejoicing in our sensations, like cats under the sun, like maids weaving clothes out of boredom, that's Soares/Pessoa recommendation.
Despite that somewhat ascetic approach, there is a duality in how Soares values the world. There are fragments of utter desdain of the world affairs: wars, history, struggle, human suffering are just noise outside, insignificant details when compared with the only reality: our sensations. There are fragments of compassion and nostalgy: the worker passing by the street that Soares watched everyday and someday stopped watching; that's a source of profound sadness to Soares; where is he? what does he do? what does he think? aren't we all in the end that same man walking the streets and that some day dissapeared like a ghost?
Soares is also conscious of his own incompetence for life. Imagining how he is seen by others causes him great disgust. What does the others think of him? How can the others hold such confidence and vanity? Don't they realize the futility of everything ?
What else to do? look at the colors of the sky over Lisboa until destiny take us … but the horror doesn't go away, the horror of being here, here being whatever it is …
No.66288
>>66287
> The abstract intelligence produces a fatigue that's the worst of all fatigues. It doesn't weigh on us like bodily fatigue, nor disconcert like the fatigue of emotional experience. It's the weight of our consciousness of the world, a shortness of breath in our soul.
> Then, as if they were wind-blown clouds, all of the ideas in which we've felt life and all the ambitions and plans on which we've based our hopes for the future tear apart and scatter like ashes of fog, tatters of what wasn't nor could ever be. And behind this disastrous rout, the black and implacable solitude of the desolate starry sky appears.
> The mystery of life distresses and frightens us in many ways. Sometimes it comes upon us like a formless phantom, and the soul trembles with the worst of fears - that of the monstrous incarnation of non-being. At other times it's behind us, visible only as long as we don't turn around to look at it, and it's the truth in its profound horror of our never being able to know it.
> But the horror that's destroying me today is less noble and more corrosive. It's a longing to be free of wanting to have thoughts, a desire to never have been anything, a conscious despair in every cell of my body and soul. It's the sudden feeling of being imprisoned in an infinite cell. Where can one think of fleeing, if the cell is everything?
> And then I feel an overwhelming, absurd desire for a kind of Satanism before Satan, a desire that one day - a day without time or substance - an escape leading outside of God will be discovered, and our deepest selves will somehow cease participating in being and non-being. No.66294
>>66287That's a must-read book for all wizards. Many of us have read it already.
>>66288> And then I feel an overwhelming, absurd desire for a kind of Satanism before Satan, a desire that one day - a day without time or substance - an escape leading outside of God will be discovered, and our deepest selves will somehow cease participating in being and non-being.How does he even come up with such analogies? That guy was a genius.
No.66433
Finished reading Neuromancer today. I'm flabbergasted by this novel. Let me try to divide this thing into sections. This is a spoiler free review.
The characters are all silly, juvenile, ridiculous, shallow, uninteresting. Feels like you're reading a comic book. Motivation for some of them made me laugh out loud at points. There's an antagonist in there that basically says "I'm evil because, huh, I like it!". Even comic book villains at least have a motive like taking over the world bwah ha ha. Characters act like rpg characters. The thief does thief things, the hacker does hacking things, the assassin does assassin things and that's it, they never really become more than their primary function in the story. A Rastafarian character is only that; a Rastafarian with a funny accent. Couldn't bother to learn more than 3 or 4 characters' names they're so cardboard.
The plot is broken, confusing, disjointed, spasmodic, hard to follow and hard to find it. There are 3 or 4 very, very cool ideas in this but they're all buried under huge amounts overwrought, grating descriptions for mundane things. I'm tempted to say 80% of this book is composed of atmospheric passages, and atmosphere in Neuromancer means unending technobabble descriptions for acid rain, smoking a cigarette, a vending machine, drugging yourself… there must be about 30 paragraphs describing wet pants throughout this book.
You get a full page description for how depressing the sky in the sprawl looks like and how your pants are wet but then important information is given in a single, lost and short sentence. One thing that happens a lot is losing track if whatever is going on is happening inside the matrix or outside the matrix. The time and space the action happens are very poorly defined and jerky. Yet you get full pages about wet pants or how getting drunk feels like. The plot is put on hold constantly for these endless "atmosphere building" technobabble descriptions.
The language is very colorful but a lot of it turns to junk. There's so much invention here, it's not rare to lose track of what the hell the characters are talking about. And then, once you figure it out, you realize it didn't really matter. Because so much of the book is colorful, atmospheric paragraphs, the plot takes forever to get anywhere. Rather, it goes everywhere all the time. Just not anywhere that matters. Each chapter, sometimes each scene occurs in different places. It's quite jerky and hard to follow. It jumps a lot without any real progress, testing your patience all the way through the half of the book.
Yet I kept going. I crawled towards each new chapter ready to give up. I was cursing this book out loud at points while reading it. Then halfway through, the plot begins to move. I almost couldn't believe it, it felt like a miracle. Now, this book is famous for "predicting the internet". I completely disagree the matrix in this book has anything to do with the internet. In fact it doesn't have anything at all to do with the internet, apart from the fact you access from something they call it a computer, though the computers in Neuromancer are not really computers, it's way more fantasy than science here and I don't see many people talking about that. I don't blame them however, you need to actually read the book to know this and I don't think many people really read it. Like I said that first half requires quite a bit of patience. And I mean A LOT.
3/4 in and then Neuromancer finally gets really good. The neon smoke, the wet pants, the matrix, the degenerates, the high-tech, low life becomes wide enough for you to become immersed in the world of this novel. And that's it, when the ending is just around the corner, Neuromancer suddenly deserves all the hype it's been getting since its release. Not because it predicted the internet. It didn't. Not because it's smart or because it knows anything about technology. It really doesn't. Doesn't even know what a modem is, but the cyberpunk reaches its full charm; it becomes engrossing, engaging, beautiful even. It finally becomes so fucking cool. And then the ending is pretty good, too. And you get extra happy because Neuromancer is finally over, you did it. And you finally know what Neuromancer is, after enduring the entire novel wondering when you're going to find out why the book has that name. It's brilliant in its own confusion between scifi and fantasy, technology and magic. Like I said, it becomes really fucking cool.
Then you realize you don't know exactly what the hell just happened. Feels like half the plot resolved itself in silence, between the scenes, but you don't even care, you managed to reach the ending, wet pants and everything. Never have I seen a novel save itself with so few pages left to the ending but Neuromancer does it. 3 or 4 very cool scenes, 3 or 4 very cool ideas, make all the technobabble and confusion worth it.
That said, I'm probably never reading William Gibson ever again.
No.66434
I finished IQ84 last Wednesday and have yet to recover enough to read any other book at the moment.
No really, think Deadpool if he was tasked to write his take on a Dan Brown novel whilst given mostly Takeshi Miike films and weed brownies (laced with viagra) for inspiration..
No.66435
I spoke with my mother today, she asked what I've been reading. I was ashamed to say that despite opening a huge number of books, I had barely completed any. Then I gave her a broad outline of topics and ideas I read in those books. But for some of them I didn't even get very far into them.
I find it really hard to concentrate enough to finish a book; I always jump to some other because I keep finding new ones all the fucking time! Even reading a single page I am reminded by the content of some other book or interesting topic a few times per page.
No.66473
>>66450Have you TRIED reading a longass book that seems to work not only as a source of inspiration but even inspire shit that people
seem to care about a hundred times over?
Believe me..
No.66475
>>66473Some people put so much emphasis on bulk reading (I guess a form of "virtue signalling" where virtue is one of intellectualism) that they actually practice speed-reading and esentially _skim_ those books you talk about.
No.66481
I'm finally done with Dune and thank Muad'Dib for that! And I thought Neuromancer was hard to go through, I had no idea what a slog Dune would be. Reading Rendezvous with Rama as your first sci-fi novel really is a detriment to one's ability to enjoy every other novel calling itself sci-fi. Like Neuromancer, Dune has NOTHING about science about it. Virtually nothing. I think this was the biggest problem for me. I wasn't looking to read a fantasy novel and fantasy is exactly what Dune is. Feudal politics, people fighting with daggers (despite having shields that can withstand shotguns to the head) endless talk about religion. The technology they have is never explained. The 'sci-fi' here is relegated to the most casual, boring flair. Fancy psychic magic powers is 'sci-fi' because it's the result of eugenics. Mmkay. They can't use guns because huuh, the giant worms can totally sense them, because reasons. Mmkay. And everybody fight with daggers made of monster teeth because they have super totally not magic super hightech shields that can easily protect you from firearms. But not from shit made from a sand whale tooth. Mmkay. There's no interest in technology here and there's no interest in scientific speculation and/or theories. It's straight up about medieval societies and religion but they have spaceships instead of regular ships. This story could easily take place in Arthurian England.
I know now there's a wide gap between what it's called hard science fiction and science fiction. I would have read Dune anyway because people praise this book highly. I can see why. It's nice enough for something from the 60s, though The Lord of the Rings came out 10 years before and Dune absolutely pales in comparison. There's not even a competition here in terms of fantasy. The main character is an insufferable teenager that can see into the future. Prophets are often insufferable with their delusions of grandeur in real life, but here the prophet is always right. And all the other characters pretty much just stand there saying "Look at Paul the Prophet, isn't he cool, reader? Isn't he!? He's so cool and right and smart all the time! Love him! Please!" I find a lot of American fantasy has that problem. The cool protagonist. Everything is there just to show how cool Paul is. It's odd and embarrassing how the author idolizes his own creation. Dune is in love with its own protagonist and the book is partially ruined because of this.
The cool part is Arrakis, the desert planet. I like deserts and here's a planet that is a desert. And the sand worms are a cool idea too, though they seldom appear and there's really 2 or 3 scenes where they're discussed a little more thoroughly. The structure of the novel is also odd because you get a briefing at the beginning of each chapter telling you what's going to happen. Thanks for the spoilers I guess?
As sci-fi, it's not. As a fantasy there's no sense of danger here, it never feels like the heroes might lose something. Not only the synopsis at the beginning of each chapter reminds you that Paul won and how cool and wise he is, but even without the synopsis you would know this. Flat fucking characters, the only one that was remotely interesting was the scheming Vladimir Harkonnen. He's a cartoony, fun villain to listen to. Of course, since he's going against our beloved Paul you might imagine what happens.
Endless babble about concubines, and odd self-help fantasy with mantras like 'fear is the mind killer'. You know, it wasn't particularly insightful the first time they said this and it certainly wasn't when they said it for the 100th time throughout this slog. That said, there are a few passages here and there that are pretty good, well written and almost fun. But those are short and far in between.
"Maybe this was really good in the 60s" I'm tempted to consider in order to redeem it, but then I remember The Lord of the Rings came out a decade before and it does everything better. The best part of Dune for me is this cover and the fact it's finally over. No way in hell I'll be reading Dune Messiah or any of the other novels. On to better things.
No.66515
Began reading Ringworld knowing pretty much nothing about it other than the title and a long look at the cover. I knew it is a hard sci-fi classic (it shows up a lot in sci-fi lists) and that the structure alluded to in the title is based on the hypothetical Dyson sphere structure. After learning my lesson with Dune I decided to only go for hard sci-fi from now on and Ringworld sounds fascinating.
Now that I’ve finished the novel, I feel like there’s a serious problem with Ringworld. There isn’t enough Ringworld in it. The first five chapters are something to be endured. Why are characters in sci-fi so damn awful? They’re easily the worst part of every novel I’ve read so far. They all should follow Arthur C. Clarke’s cue and basically just have characters be their jobs on whatever is going on. I quite liked Rendezvous with Rama. Unobstructive characters. Not in Ringworld though. The main character, Louis Wu, is rather pathetic because he’s a mary sue character. He’s 200 years old and a pilot of some sort. Why Nessus, an alien, part of a civilization infinitely more advanced than humanity needed him to explore Ringworld is a mystery. It says in the novel they need a human for an alien perspective but that still makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Nessus himself is alright as a character, but he’s a Star Trek level alien, meaning he’s just a representation of a single human characteristic, in his case cowardice. And that’s it. The characters are quite a joke here and I’m not sure if I want Larry Niven trying to be funny when we could be seriously exploring Ringworld but ok.
Then we have a Kzin, an alien that is basically a cat person. Whatever. And finally there’s Teela Brown, a human female picked by Nessus to go on this journey because she’s lucky. Yup. Characters and motivations in this novel are a joke, a saturday morning cartoon. Why have them at all? Just have a team of unnamed aliens to explore this thing, it would be a lot better.
Anyway, if you survive the first half a dozen chapters and the presentation of our solid cosmonauts, you’ll finally reach Ringworld. An enormous ring structure rotating around a star. It creates its own gravity and that’s pretty much where the hard science part of Ringworld ends. Sure there are a few bits here and there but that’s about it. The rest of the novel we have Wu having sex with Teela in zero gravity, silly aliens running around behaving like cavemen and that’s about it. What they find on Ringworld is rather anticlimactic because it takes the focus away from Ringworld itself to these other characters that are uninteresting and unappealing.
And yet it’s short enough that one can finish it without too much pain. The idea of Ringworld is a cool one, so there’s that. And there’s a vague appeal to the whole thing, like watching a cartoon you think it’s shitty but then you look back later and for some reason remember only the good parts of it. I’m not interested in reading any more of Larry Niven’s work though.
I read something way better afterwards. The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov.
No.66554
The Gods Themselves by Asimov. The best sci-fi novel I’ve read so far. It’s even better than Rendezvous with Rama. It’s about a scientist who finds an impossible new element called Plutonium 186. Impossible, but there it is. How is that possible? And the novel goes from there. I don’t want to give any spoilers so I’ll stop here.
There’s one thing about The Gods Themselves that is really hard to stomach though. It’s actually 3 novellas turned into a single novel. So you basically get 3 different perspectives about the discovery and implications of Plutonium 186's existence and that’s the problem. When you start to grow fond of the characters and situations. the section ends and you have to begin all over again with completely different characters and situations. Also the second part requires some patience to go through. Half the damn thing is about alien sex, basically. But it pays off in the end, which is something I could not believe possible when I was reading it.
The really cool thing about this novel are the ideas. It plays a lot with scientific speculation and it does so very well. I even learned a couple of things here and there, and had to check a couple of wiki articles on a couple of things they were talking about. It really gives you food for thought. Also the characters are really interesting. Especially if you compare them with characters from other sci-fi classics like Dune and Ringworld. These people are real enough. Their motivations and actions make sense and are very poignant at times. They’re definitely not crappy cartoons like in Dune for example.
Hard science-fiction that steps up to the “science” part of the genre’s name. And the ending is brilliant and satisfying, if only a little too convenient.
>>66553The first one is drug-fueled, too. They go on and on about spice in that novel. For you to say the second one is drug-fueled then they must be talking about it in literally every single page. I can see why so many people like this novel, it has its own mood and atmosphere. The main character really ruined it for me though, I could not give a shit about Paul. I'm happy to know the real main character of the series turns out to be Idaho, though I really didn't care that much about him either. I tend to prefer the more cerebral characters and there's none in Dune. They're all swordmasters, religious fanatics or cartoon network villains. Even the mentats are fucking idiots.
No.66558
>>66554I'm talking about chapters of described LSD trips, an assassination plot and then Paul goes in exile and that's it. 250 pages of maybe 100 plot-driven. The rest is just Paul said "hello" but he meant to change the future, how is tabu to drown or Paul is one with the Universe as he knows how everyone feels, past and future. The scale of the novel feels like a soap opera.
The best character in the series is the God Emperor of Dune - a human sandworm hybrid tyrant - which actually has a plan that affect the rest of the series.
No.66633
> Symbolic Exchange and Death, Jean Baudrillard
My opinions on this work are mixed. Some chapters are unnecessarily cryptic, resembling a complete jumble of nonsensical words (I was lost in translation) while others are almost poetic and convey a sense of mysticism.
Baudrillard is attempting to discover new horizons that transcend socio-economic explanations of value, which he finds to be incomplete or outdated. Both the "classic" theories of capitalism and Marxist critics establish production and value as the core tenets of any social organization and the main drivers of history. Marxism doesn't deviate fundamentally from this and merely seeks the "good use" of economic forces. However, Baudrillard argues that this approach is insufficient to analyze contemporary/post-modern society. The production and value relations in themselves are insufficient to explain the current world. Production has ended, and the order is now sustained by something else.
Baudrillard then delves into a multitude of analyses of various aspects of the modern Western world to support his bold claim.
Unions, strikes, workers' struggles, the socialist project are merely charades of an exhausted dream. Instead, the Western civilizatory project is now all-encompassing and absolute, and signs of its victory are present everywhere.
The factory has disappeared because the entire city itself is a factory. The city is omnipresent, and thus control and work are everywhere. Some form of resistance can be found in the ghetto and graffiti.
Baudrillard continued to speak, but I lost track: He discusses fashion and gender. The phallus is omnipresent, glorified, and all the sexualization behind succubi is the manifestation and longing for the phallus (I'm not sure what he was trying to say here).
He also discusses some sort of binary nature of the current system. The system is closed, with only one and zero as options. The two towers of the World Trade Center in New York reign supreme and are the perfect representation of the system's closeness and wholeness. There is no way out.
The most important chapter of this work, in my opinion, is the one dedicated to death. The all-encompassing nature of the system has even in a practical sense suppressed death. In ancient societies, the dead are always present, ritual communication with them is not cut off, they are a key part of the "economic" flow of the society. But the economic order of ancient societies is not necessarily the logic of production and value; ancient societies allowed expenditure and waste, optimization wasn't at their cores, and the exultation of death is a clear example of this. These forms of exchange that transcend production-value logic are the symbolic exchange lost in the modern world, I guess. In our modern society, death is forbidden. We die hidden in hospitals and nursing homes, we are quickly incinerated, and life continues on, the life of the dream of happiness and never-ending progress. Death? death is inconceivable, the current system is eternal and now finds its postponement in computers and cybernetic devices.
The last chapter was incredibly difficult for me to understand, as Baudrillard discusses very academic terms of linguistics, semiotics, etc. (I know nothing about these). He somewhat argues that the production-value relation also resides in language and meaning but through poetic ecstasy, this relation is undone. Poetic language left nothing to be added or said. This guy is as provocative as to even say that principles like materialism are also a trap: the beatification of things and matter are just words like everything else, another framework/simulacra to keep the system going.
Baudrillard's alternative is sublimation, violence, expenditure, ecstasy, poetry, those are the only ways out of the monolithic system.
No.66718
I was dreaming of create a chart, like those made by the /lit/ anon, of books that portray the life of typical NEET, outcast, hikkikomori or wizards, people like us in general. The only book I can remember is Mars by Fritz Zorn, a autobiography of a dying old friendless viring dude, pretty raw.
No.66721
>>66718A Confederacy of Dunces
The Idiot by Dostoyevsky
the Book of Disquiet
No.66723
>>66721Why the Idiot? Notes from the Underground sound close to us, I think.
No.66726
>>66723I found Prince Myshkin relatable at times. His shyness around succubi and his big monologues
No.66832
books about wizards?
No.66833
>>66832Harry Potter And The Sword In The Stone
No.66836
>>66832Wizard's First Rule
No.66837
>>66836>legend of the seekeri didn't like the tv series, is the book better?
No.66838
>>66837I think The Sword of Truth was the series.
If I am honest I didn't like the book very much.
It was just the first thing to come to mind since I read it like a couple of months ago and it has wizard in the title.
I know nothing about legend of the seeker as I didn't watch it and forgot it existed until you mentioned it.
No.66861
Fritz Zorn 'Mars' page 157
(Thank you to the anon who recommended this book either here or somewhere else on the board; it is fantastic.)
Of all the vices there are, there is one we cannot permit our
selves, and that is patience. I am thinking here of Job, the Old
Testament model of this particular character trait. Even in the
depths of his misery, Job never hits on the idea of taking a
stand. All he does is cringe, or, as the Bible expresses it: “In
all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly.” Job’s wife,
who was obviously the stronger character of the two, advised
him: “Curse God, and die.”
No.67016
>Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle
This work starts with a question for purpose. What is the goal of life? And more importantly, what is the goal of human life? Aristotle takes the question a step further in order to begin examining the topic: what is the goal of anything at all?
Everything that is being executed, everything that exist, seems to have a particular goal. Each activity performed has a goal and its respective level of perfection. Be it harpists, cobblers, plants, animals, etc., the striving towards a particular goal and the perfection of an activity is present. But are some activities and goals more important than others? According to Aristotle, we could talk of a hierarchy of goals. In the case of human activities, though each human activity seems to has its own purpose, a careful examination would show that all human efforts are directed toward the same: that’s it, happiness.
This goal (or any goal at all) can’t be considered just as a something to reach once but as the continuous activity and expression of human life. So far then, using abstract reasoning, Aristotle has shown that everything that exists has a purpose, happiness in the case of human life, and that that purpose is a continuous activity and the best manifestation of the related existence.
How to achieve happiness? Aristotle forward approach is very pragmatic. The perfectioning of human life can’t be achieved with mere abstract reasoning but with practical efforts and what are these practical efforts is a question that can’t be asked just thinking but looking at real life examples.
Before that, Aristotle categorizes human soul in two parts: a rational part and an irrational part. The irrational part can be further divided into two parts: a vegetative part and a part that can listen reason and can be affected by it. In this irrational part influenceable by reason, lie the moral virtues. These virtues are related to the natural disposition of the person but through education and continuous practice it is possible to improve in this regard.
Aristotle’s approach is pure pragmatism: regarding moral virtues, the most beautiful disposition always lies between two unhealthy extremes and that’s like a golden rule for him. He then embarks in explaining each moral virtue and its associated extremes. As was already said, Aristotle puts great importance in practical experience and so, in his search for the healthy middle ground, he looks for real life cases, the tradition, the popular tales, etc.
And so, we have courage as the mean between cowardice and temerity, temperance as the mean between dissipation and insensibility, magnanimity as the mean between pusillanimity and vanity, etc.
After examining the moral virtues, Aristotle moves to the question regarding justice. We are now moving in the realm of human relationships and politics. What is justice? Justice is not a mere mean between two extremes. Following his practical approach, he identifies justice not as equality but proportionality. Moreover, justice is not a mystical state achieved by the hermit. Justice, the same as the moral virtues, is a continuous and practical act.
Aristotle continues by analyzing the intellectual virtues, those virtues related to the rational part of the soul. In this analysis, Aristotle puts emphasis over the difference between truth-absolute knowledge and practical knowledge-deliberation. Truth doesn’t need to be constantly validated by deliberation.
There are potential impediments that could thwart the flourishment of intellectual virtues: vice, incontinence, hedonism, bestiality. Those impediments are blindness towards what is truly good for the soul, deception of the soul and the chase of false and harmful goals, lack of reason or just plain wickedness. Above all, the faculty of reason reigns supreme as the beacon capable of riding the soul over such deviations.
Aristotle keeps talking about friendship and pleasure. There are utilitarian friendships but such friendships are lacking. They are over the moment the utility is gone. A true friendship is long lasting and merely looks for the welfare of the other without particular interests. That kind of friendship can only happen between equal, virtuous and reasonable men. About pleasure: pleasure is not necessarily bad, there are bad pleasures that can lead the soul astray but for instance, the continuous act of the virtuous man is pleasant itself.
So far, Aristotle has described in practical terms, the continuous exercise to which the virtuous man must aspire in order to fulfill his purpose and be loyal to his essence.
Through the whole study, the most important and distinctive element of human soul is the faculty of reason. Reason is the sailor capable of driving us over the most dangerous seas and such, the most excellent act that men can perform and that make us close to gods must be related with reason. That act is contemplation. Happiness is contemplation. A perfect, free of ulterior motives, pleasant activity. The gods, eternal and perfect, are just contemplating.
No.67017
>>67002It made me cry multiple times. His pain spoke to my soul. If life must be this way, I hope that at least we may all find peace in death
No.67018
>>66861>>67002I didn't know about this work. I am reading about the guy and it sounds completely crushing, holy fuck.
Added to my reading list
No.67019
>>67016Isn't there a dissonance between perfecting human life through pragmatism in order to achieve its purpose (happiness) and then suggesting that happiness is contemplation? It's like suggesting someone to go really fast in order to stand really still.
No.67022
>>67019As I understand it, Aristotle says that everything that exists has a particular purpose. We humans are social beings, our activity is unmistakingly related with the well being of the city and so we have motives, we must navigate through practical problems, etc. The act of human life is totally related with pragmatism.
Pure contemplation is something that only gods could do. However, as reason seems to be the distinctive element of human soul, the capacity to disentangle from irrational stimules and from mere practical goals, even if just for a moment, and being able to watch far away, grasps concepts, etc is the most beautiful human act and it makes us close to gods.
Everything has a particular purpose. Gods are perfect, eternal and they don't yearn for anything, in pure contemplation they rejoice. Humans must strive for their own well being and the well being of the city and that implies following some pragmatic recommendations. We have reason that allow us to contemplate but our "politic" and social nature can never be denied. Pure contemplation in the case of humans is more like an ideal that can never be reached, I guess
No.67023
>>67022I see, reading your post I became under the impression that the goal of human life is happiness and happiness is contemplation. So why strive socially at all if that's the case? Seems counterproductive if the goal of human life is happiness and hapiness is defined as contemplation. Something like a monk would make a lot more sense if those are the definition.
Why did you decide to read Aristotle?
No.67024
>>67023Contemplation is happiness in the sense that our contemplative faculty (reason) allows us to take the correct decisions and have great perspective about what is good and bad for our well being. Reason is the crown jewel of the human soul. Aristotle is man of the city, he would never suggest the path of ascetism.
> Why did you decide to read Aristotle?I don't know, sheer curiosity. One of the big name of western philosophy, I wanted to read something about him and various recommendations pointed this work as a good place to start
No.67025
>>67024I read parts of Physics but my interest shifted gradually for the more pragmatic aspects (hence why your post caught my eye) of the ancient world. The reason I ask why you began reading Aristotle is because if you're interested in history I found this fascinating tome called Engineering in the Ancient World by J. G. Landels. You can find it on libgen if the title rings interesting to you. Fascinating stuff and I had a lot more fun with it than I had with Aristotle, but that's me. No pondering about some god's intent or disposition or the nature of happiness, give me machines and clever ways to manipulate the physical elements or our world, I'll be happy then.
No.67026
>>67025>god's intentwell, I am fascinated by those totalizing abstract philosophical systems, from Aristotle to Schopenhauer. The will, the essence, god, etc, all of that is pretty interesting to me.
>Engineering in the Ancient World by J. G. LandelsInteresting. Not my thing really, I am more leaned towards philosophy, literature and poetry but I will give this a try, added to my reading list
No.67028
>>67026In that case I don't think you'll like it anon, I just wanted to mention it in case you were interested. I personally uploaded the book to zlib, they didn't have it before.
No.67029
>>67002Is this available online somewhere?
No.67039
>>66481I recently tried reading Dune myself and had to drop it after 50 pages, insufferably boring. I'm gonna try Starship Troopers next
No.67040
>>67039You didn't lose much. I only finished it because I had nothing better to do. I heard Starship Troopers is a nice book but if you watched the movie and is expecting something like it you're in for a huge disappointment, apparently there's a lot more sociologial/philosophical rumbling than there is bug killing. At least based on the reviews I read for it on goodreads.
No.67045
>>67039Dune was ok, bit slow, but it's as good story of a boy fighting against fate and destiny. You got filtered.
No.67046
>>67045I liked Dune, but this "filtered" crap is obnoxious. He's allowed to not like things.
No.67049
>>67039Starship Troopers is pretty good. At least I think so.
I would recommend it.
Dune never appealed to me so I haven't even tried to read it.
No.67050
>>67049B-b-but you just have to dude it's part of the sci-fi canon like how can you not
/s
No.67053
Ok, fellow readers, I need quick list of books that deal with: being a NEET, being a older virgin, being an overall wayside of mainstream society.
Some recommendations I get before:
Notes from the Underground - Dostoevsky
My friends - Bove
Suttree - McCarthy
Welcome to NHK - tatsuhiko
Mars- Fritz Zor
What others?
No.67054
>>67053JK Toole "A Confederacy of Dunces"
Fernando Pessoa "Book of Disquiet"
Not strictly NEET related but Thomas Ligotti is good
No.67057
i am going to read paradise lost and see if i can glean anything useful from it
tired of feeling like this
No.67058
>>67053Here some I don't think people ever mentioned in these threads:
-The Horla by Guy de Maupassant
-Diary of a Madman by Lu Xun
-The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton
-Essays by Montaigne
-A Journey Around My Room by Xavier de Maistre
-The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma translated by Red Pine
No.67059
>>67053The Temple of the Golden Pavilion - Mishima
No.67061
>>67060You are mistaking it with confession of a mask, there is nothing gay about this
No.67062
>>67053>>67058>>67059I know that everybody has already read them but you should include The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Bilbo and Frodo are both NEET bachelors who spend their days idling away until being pushed into an adventure.
No.67084
>A Season in Hell, Arthur Rimbaud
This little book was very interesting. Rimbaud clearly follows on the path of Baudelaire though he is more revolutionary and chaotic regarding his writing style while Baudelaire maintains the classical forms.
This little book is like the mystical reflection of Rimbaud own life so far. The young boy, the little genius born in the french countryside, bored to hell of the mediocrity of his village, embarks in a life of debauchery and excesses. He has a violent affair with another poet, Paul Verlaine and everything ends when Rimbaud is shot at the wrist by a furious Verlaine. This poem is the fruit of those turbulent years.
Rimbaud is exhausted of the conformity and mediocrity of the society of his time. Work is ignoble. Peasant or master: all the same, all ignoble. He yearns for a romantic past, the christian lineage of France. He would walk and live over the plains of Europe in his way to holy land…. but that past is gone, the age of reason has come: science, progress, the machine and the equality of all men. Utter trivialization to Rimbaud, ugliness. Christianism has died but what now ? Rimbaud is dislocated by the death of God. A heartbroken christian.
What is left? to play with the senses; the poet must have extreme experiences in order to prepare his spirit to write. And so, Rimbaud has his poison (drugs, alcohol, violence) and more importantly he follows his husband, Verlaine, his master in the path to hell.
At the end, there is redemption, Rimbaud leaves hell, he ceased to write at 20 years old. He left the ugly and suffocating modern France and became an arms merchant in Africa. During those years, the sole intellectual endeavor he did was talking about theology with priests. He died at the young age of 37 years old.
No.67124
>>67122He's a better literary critic than an author. Literature and Evil is pretty good. I particularly enjoyed his take on Kafka.
No.67213
>>67099Pretty sure Discworld's wizards in general are insanely relatable for wizards here, for one thing they're very well known within the setting for being reclusive volcels. I recc everything else where Rincewind appears, e.g. Sourcery and The Light Fantastic
Myself, trying to branch out more into philosophy/history shit that I thought might be interesting:
>Kant's Critique of Pure Reason>Kael Otto Paetel - The National Bolshevist Manifesto>Historian of antiquity/militaries Bret Devereaux at his blog, lots of stuff about phalanxes and/or Roman tech lately (https://acoup.blog/2024/01/05/collections-the-journey-of-the-roman-gladius-and-other-swords/) No.67216
>>67213Wait wtf, I meant Interesting Times instead of The Light Fantastic which you already mentioned, herpherpherp
No.67270
>>67269>Some dude's blog where he posts sypopsi of the most popular books in the USA>Site is dominated by video ads>(((Stephen "King" Pollock))) all over the listWhy even contribute in this manner?
What have you read recently yourself? Tell us about that.
No.67275
>>67270Lmao, confirmed for not entering or learn how to use the site, filtered hard.
No.67276
>>67213>Kael Otto Paetel - The National Bolshevist ManifestoI saw the non-Russian name, and I was like oh yeah I forgot about the original 1920s NazBols.
> In 1975, he died in Forest Hills, Queens, in New York City.[5]so random, isn't that where Spiderman is from?
No.67282
>>67281Why do I need a book to tell me that work sucks and that I should slack off and leech off the system?
No.67283
Some of my favorites:
H.P. Lovecraft
Clark Ashton Smith
Joris-Karl Huysmans
Leon Bloy
Valeri Bruiysov
Georges Rodenbach
August Derleth
William Blake
Frank Belknap Long
Robert Bloch
Joseph Beaumont
Thomas Heywood
Joshua Sylvester
Michael Drayton
George Chapman
Dan Simmons
David Hume
Kant
Schopenhauer
Fernando Pessoa
Greek Magical Papyri
Agrippa
Henry More
Ralph Cudworth
Henry Vaughan
Paracelsus
Mahabharata
Puranas
No.67284
>>67282I believe the point is to try and argue against people who push wageslave propaganda
No.67285
>>67281I've read none of these except the Bertrand Russell one, but this is a topic I should explore further. One other thing I did read years ago was David Graeber's "Bullshit Jobs", with some interesting-but-sometimes-sloppily-reasoned musing about the nature and future of work.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/david-graeber-bullshit-jobs No.67289
Any good poetry that is wiz-related?
No.67290
>>67289Leopardi appeals to the Cioran crowd
No.67298
https://www.bookcaps.com/chapter-summaries-war-and-peaceI'm thinking about reading Tolstoy's War N Peace, but I only want to read the historic philosophical chapters, not the drama.
It seems most of that is concentrated into the 2 epilogues.
But if there are any other chapters scattered throughout please recommend.
No.67305
>>67298Hell I tried taking that one head-on, only got thru the first 10 chapters and thought all the aristocrat wank was mad cringy.
>>67285But I also started re-reading this and it's considerably more antiwork-pilled in a general sense than I remembered, and probably WAY more than how I was describing it.
No.67306
>>67305I once read it at the library in a few days, just by skipping over the story and only reading the history. Its free on audible, but I cant just skim it in the same way on audio. i'd need to know what chapters to go for.
No.67307
>>67199I am against of following such lists to be honest. why? best answered by alberto manguel:
>“How are readers to be guided by these entrusted spirits to find their way in the ineffable reality of the wood?
>Systematic reading is of little help. Following an official book list (of classics, of literary history, of censored or recommended reading, of library catalogues) may, by chance, throw up a useful name, as long as we bear in mind the motives behind the lists. But the best guides, I believe, are the reader’s whims – trust in pleasure and faith in haphazardness – which sometimes lead us into a makeshift state of grace, allowing us to spin gold out of flax.”this quote has been proved right so many times in my life as my favorite books have been almost always products of fluke and many times I have been bored to death by many "classic" books and walked away with nothing.
No.67317
>>67307great books of the western world the list done by mortimer j adler, he did release that in a series encyclopaedia you can download the reader versions. there you dont need to read a specific book rather you can look up the subject of interest and read everything on that subject that all those important authors and works have to offer.
that is the reasonable and useful way to use a reading list, but its only useful when the reading list is composed and done up with a lot of work and effort like that mortimer j adler collection.
also much better way for a lot of wizards because you dont need to read a 'whole book' its just ok i can read a bit about this particular topic today and i might read a bit about what one particular author had to say on that one topic then go onto others.
No.67327
> Journey to the End of the Night, Louis-Ferdinand Céline
What is the night? What night is Céline talking about? The night is this current world we live on, this zeitgeist.
In this work, Céline takes the reader through all the horrors of the XX century. At not little important moment in history he was placed: he fought at WW1 at the french side; the final collapse of the old european world, the end of the colonial empires, the triumph of America and the "americanization" of the globe.
In this semi biographical work, Ferdinand Céline through his alter ego Ferdinand Bardamu, narrates in first person his own life and his experiences across the world.
Without thinking much about it, Bardamu ends in the trenches at WW1. Obviously it is not needed to remark that this was hell and war did a number on Bardamu's mind. In Bardamu own words: he was deflowered by war. The experience left him with an immense hate for anything bellicose. There are various scenes that I would like to highlight here:
- A conversation that Bardamu has with a man in a war hospital. This man tells it clearly: when the State kindly whisper to you ear inviting you to join war, that's because they are going to turn you into cannon fodder
- In a conversation Bardamu has with Lola, an american succubus he is dating, he confesses to her that he is utterly afraid of coming back to the front, he is a coward. After that moment, Lola is disgusted with him. All her affection was founded on Bardamu's supposed manliness and will to die fighting. Once he reveals the true, he is worthless for Lola.
- Something that Bardamu or another soldier says: The succubi and the children will keep on living while them will just be buried and forgotten like poor wretches. But he wants to live no matter what.
What's Céline moral of the fable? Sure, the sacrifice of men was needed in order for humanity to advance. But what did the sacrificed men get ? nothing, they are expendable. Céline himself does not want to follow the same path willinglly and finds the sacrifice of war as utter madness
After the turmoil of the war, Bardamu goes to colonial Africa, hoping to "make it" there. What did he find there? An immense jungle devouring the little sprouts of civilization and the poor native people. The colonial empire is filled with corruption and is composed of degenerates and thieves. There is nothing there. The civilizational enterprises of the West are only ready to be devoured by the jungle.
Bardamu next stop point is the shinny New York. Will he make it there perhaps? No. The big metropolis is alienating and suffocating. He is alone among the crowds, dazzled by the neon lights, torturated by the never ending bustle. Besides, Bardamu is poor and unemployed, it doesn't work for him and he moves to Detroit.
At Detroit he found a Ford industrial plant and the atmosphere is bleak again. The factory is ugly and sordid. Céline depiction of the ugliness of the factory is brilliant. At there, man is reduced to a tool and of course that slowly kills human spirit. The workers find some confort in mindless consumption and prostitutes. At Detroit or at New York, I don't remember exactly, Bardamu rants this:
>The worst part is wondering how you’ll find the strength tomorrow to go on doing what you did today and have been doing for much too long, where you’ll find the strength for all that stupid running around, those projects that come to nothing, those attempts to escape from crushing necessity, which always founder and serve only to convince you one more time that destiny is implacable, that every night will find you down and out, crushed by the dread of more and more sordid and insecure tomorrows. And maybe it’s treacherous old age coming on, threatening the worst. Not much music left inside us for life to dance to. Our youth has gone to the ends of the earth to die in the silence of the truth. And where, I ask you, can a man escape to, when he hasn’t enough madness left inside him? The truth is an endless death agony. The truth is death. You have to choose: death or lies. I’ve never been able to kill myself
The whole order of things for the lumpenproletariat is soul crushing.
At the end, Bardamu returns to parisian suburbs to work at there as a doctor. Paris is no longer the "City of Light". The suburbs are ugly and decadent. They stink, they are always noisy. His work as a doctor, exposes him to the pettiness of the suburbs dwellers. Of particular interest in the section of the book are the case of abortions Bardamu has to take care of. The descriptions are visceral and gruesome. Céline writes without qualm about "bloody vaginas". Why does Céline talk about abortions in modern suburbs and write descriptions so visceral ? My guess is that he is trying to say that all this mess we are all into, this excruciating path to death, to night, all the lofty ideals and dreams are just the product of a stinky bloody piece of flesh. At some cementery is Paris, Bardamu has an Epiphany. He laments the dead, he sees them flying over Paris with all his lofty goals and ideals but where are they now?
Céline/Bardamu travel is one of disenchament. He can't find anything truer than death and he laments that. From war to the decandence of the poor neighborhoods, he can only taste different flavors of the futility of existance, the devaluation of men and the failure of all human projects and ideals.
I can't end this without mentioning the great style of Céline. Even If you find this work so depressing, you can find value in its literary merits. He uses a casual language, the slang of the parisian prole and he achieves a very pleasant to read cadence in his prose. The work is also teeming with beautiful and thought provoking quotes, you could literally quote the whole book.
No.67329
>>67327We ain't in the XX century anymore, outdated book.
No.67331
>>67329Obvious bad joke/troll post but anyway, Céline is more relevant now than ever. I will also read his "spiritual successor" in the near future: Houellebecq
No.67389
>>67388
The problem with the Bible is passages such as the counting in Numbers, and the same thing is done in some latter books as well. Also, did you read a Protestant/Jewish Bible? 1 and 2 Maccabees are books that rival any epic, even modern, but they are used only by Catholics and the Orthodox, I recommend you check them if you haven't already. Some of the Orthodox also use 3 Maccabees which is not really a Maccabees book, but it's nice as well, and to me it feels quite Lovecraftian.
No.67391
>>67390
Nice, I think the Deuterocanonical are some of the best. There's a compilation called "The Grand Bible", you can find it in archive.org if you are interested, has probably all such ancient religious books ever translated.
No.67397
>>67390
The Book of Enoch is good I read it, my interpretation is they predicted Jesus and our times in it.
No.67437
>>67435Damn, I bailed on 1984. It was too slow and too long.
Check After Dark also by Murakami if you haven't read it yet. It was a short and decent read.
No.67439
>>65114If graphic novels count:
1. The Lord of The Rings
2. The Name of the Rose
3. The Invisibles Omnibus by Grant Morrison
4. Watchmen by Alan Moore
5. History of Rome by Indro Montanelli
If graphic novels don't count:
1. The Lord of The Rings
2. The Name of the Rose
3. History of Rome by Indro Montanelli
4. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
5. Diplomacy by Henry Kissinger (1200 pages brick about the history of the XX century told in an interesting way)
No.67440
>>67439>If graphic novels countPlease talk about them in the comics thread if you're feeling like it.
No.67447
>>67437>1984>too longare you retarded?
No.67455
>>67447theyre talking about 1Q84 which is 3 volumes. i found it tedious too and stopped in the 2nd part
No.67466
>>67437It was certainly not for all tastes (there was even a part with a dead goat that reminded me of a reverse beautiful darkness by Vehlmann and Pommepuy) but the dude does leave a few memorable things here and there.
I'll consider After Dark. If nothing else there are bits and pieces in both of his books that are the closest thing to inspiring these past few years.
No.67468
>>67467An extract from the Keeper of Sheep:
There’s metaphysics enough in not thinking about anything.
What do I think about the world? I don’t know what I think about the world!
If I became sick I would think about it.
What is my opinion of causes and effects?
What have I meditated in regards to God and the soul
And about the creation of the world?
I don’t know. For me, thinking about it is closing my eyes
And not think. Drawing the shades
Of my window (that has no shades)
The mystery of things? I don’t know what a mystery is!
The only mystery is having people who think about it.
Whoever is in the sun and closes his eyes,
Begins ignoring what the sun is
And thinking many things filled with heat.
But opens his eyes and sees the sun,
And cannot think about anything,
Because the sunlight is worth more than the thoughts
Of all philosophers and poets.
The sunlight doesn’t know what it does
And because of that it doesn’t make mistakes and is common and good.
Metaphysics? What metaphysics do those trees have?
The one that makes them green and bodied with branches
Giving fruit when its time, which doesn’t makes us think,
Us, that don’t know they’re there.
But what better metaphysics that the one they have,
Which is not knowing for what they live
Nor knowing that they do not know it?
“Intimate constitution of things”…
“Intimate meaning of the Universe”…
All this is false, all of this doesn’t mean anything.
It’s incredible that we can think about these things.
It’s like thinking about reasons and ends
When the morning rises, and on the side of the trees
A vague and lustrous gold loses itself to the darkness
Thinking about the intimate meaning of things
Is added, like thinking about health
Or taking a glass to the water of springs
The only intimate meaning of things
Is that they don’t have any intimate meaning.
I don’t believe in God because I never saw him.
If he wanted me to believe in him,
I have no doubt he would come talk to me
And would walk through my door
Telling me, Here I am!
(This is maybe ridiculous to the ears
Of someone, for not knowing what it is looking at things,
Does not understand one who talks about them
With the way of talking that noticing them teaches.)
But if God is the flowers and the trees
And the hills and the sun and the moonlight,
Then I believe in him,
Then I believe him all the time,
And my life is all of it but a prayer and a mass,
And a communion with the eyes and by the ears.
But if God is the trees and the flowers
And the hills and the moonlight and the sun,
Why do I call it God?
I call it flowers and trees and hills and sun and moonlight;
Because, if he made himself, for me to see him
Sun and moonlight and flowers and hills,
If he appears to me as being trees and hills
And moonlight and sun and flowers,
It’s because he wants me to know him
As trees and hills and flowers and moonlight and sun.
And for that I obey him,
(What do I know more about God than God itself?),
I obey him by living, spontaneously,
Like someone who opens its eyes and sees,
And I call it moonlight and sun and flowers and trees and hills,
And I love him without thinking about him,
And think about him by seeing him and hearing him,
And I walk with him all the time
No.67514
>>67513https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic_fictionyou can start by reading the wikipedia first
and here's a chart with gothic books
No.67521
Going to start reading philosophy. Are Plato's dialogues a good start? I watched a summary of the pre-socratichs
No.67522
>>67521>>67521Why read some irrelevent, outdated philosophies from some uptight aristocrat when you can instead experience the world for yourself, ponder it, come to conclusions about why things are what they are and how they ought to be, and then record these ideas? Reading philosophy is just entertainment for those who can't reflect. Philosophize for yourself instead.
No.67524
>>67522Plato was a virgin
No.67525
>>67524So was Elliot Roger but it doesn't change the fact that his rich boy delusions and status-related butthurt is all a crock of whiny horse manure
No.67526
>>67525Yeah but Elliot Rodger would hate being platonic friends, but Plato founded it
No.67527
Ive been reading what the unwashed masses call fine literature. Stormlight Archive book 4 Rhythm of War
No.67530
>>67527I've tried many times to read Rythm of War but I couldn't finished the first couple or chapters, even tougu I read all the tree before, but this one is slog to read, 20 pages of Kaladin trying to fight the Parshendin or Shallan having a personality disorder. The first book was kino as fuck.
No.67549
Just discovered him, while looking for books similar to Cioran
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Disquiet No.67550
>>67549I'm surprised you found him through wikipedia instead of wizchan, we've been talking about this guy for 6 or 7 years in these threads at this point.
No.67551
>>67550well tbh I'm mostly into nonfiction philosophy not literary novels, so I mostly ignored all fiction books. But this book seems more like a stream of consciousness like Cioran
I had no idea
No.67552
>>67551I hope you enjoy the book, it's one of my favorites.
No.67560
>>67549“Freedom is the possibility of isolation. You are free if you can withdraw from people, not having to seek them out for the sake of money, company, love, glory or curiosity, none of which can thrive in silence and solitude. If you can't live alone, you were born a slave. You may have all the splendours of the mind and the soul, in which case you're a noble slave, or an intelligent servant, but you're not free. And you can't hold this up as your own tragedy, for your birth is a tragedy of Fate alone. Hapless you are, however, if life itself so oppresses you that you're forced to become a slave. Hapless you are if, having been born free, with the capacity to be isolated and self-sufficient, poverty should force you to live with others.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet
No.67677
I have recently finished "King Solomon's Mines". This is an old book, one of the first to popularise the lost world/adventure genre in the english language. I thought it was okay, by today's standards it is quite average, but at the time I can see how it was quite ground breaking.
It is a proper boys adventure novel, just pure fun and adventure, no sex or excessive swearing that I've come to loathe in modern novels, and it is kind of a product of its time though I'm not bothered by that. You can see how it could have influenced future adventure writers, including Tolkien.
My biggest gripe about it is how little the characters prepare. For example, they knew they were going to cross a vast desert and the supplies they packed were a huge amount of guns and ammo and two days worth of water. How the hell was that a good idea to the leader who has spent most of his life hunting in the wilderness? Is this another product of its time thing when the Victorians believed in Divine Providence, or is it a lesson the reader is meant to pick up on themselves or what? Either way, I enjoyed it, a fun and easy read, a simple story but plenty of action packed into 250ish pages.
No.67710
I'm reading Star Trek Vanguard, for now it's a ok reading, liking so far.
No.67748
I have The trouble with Canada… Still on my stack right now and am leafing through it. Boomer junk from the 90's rewritten for a new audience as if there's some stable continuity. I really have to stop picking up whatever book I see in the thrifter without deeply researching the authors or spending a few minutes seeing the quality of arguments. This guy wrote a 400 page book that reads like a boomer talking about whatever daily happenings hit his newspaper diet while codifying it in worthless, abstract philosophy. And of course… small government is the essence of conservatism! There's so much junk nonfiction in the world these days, like podcasters who really don't know much about a subject talking to a video with maybe a few hundred views.
No.67810
What's the essential /wiz/ fiction and non fiction books?
No.67811
>>67810we need a chart about it. I suggest the metamorphosis by kafka. the main protagonist get in trouble and became a burdden for the family. sounds like wizards that turn into neets/hiki who become a burdden for the family