Last 3 books you have read

I don't have a reading pattern, I buy books in bulk every month when I get paid, and then choose from my unread pile at random whenever I finish the last book. I generally buy books that I've heard about or which have been recommended to me, regardless of their pedigree. The last three were:
>The Book Of Strange New Things (Michel Faber)
>Vile Bodies (Evelyn Waugh)
>The Prague Cemetery (Umberto Eco)
And I recommend all three.

Augustine's Confessions
Huck Finn
Tom Sawyer

I start a lot of books but I only finish a select few

Nostromo
At Swim-Two-Birds
Against the Day

Spiral (Koji Suzuki)
American Psycho (Brett Easton Ellis)
The Metamorphosis (Franz Kafka)

Im Westen nichts Neues
Das Kalkwerk
Holzfällen

>english language board
>providing the non-english titles of books

why

>not speaking german
The only excuse is that you have learnt another language instead, but even then, why isn't german your third language?

autism

I'm pretty sure the first one is "Na Západní Frontě Klid" not sure about the others though.

The Cannibal
Invitation to a Beheading
Carpenter’s Gothic

The Bible
Man and His Symbols
Letters from a Stoic

My spirit can spirit away your spirit

Did you really read the whole bible? If so, in what order/ with what method?

Snow country
The trial
The myth of sisyphus

League of Dragons
Introduction to Magic by the UR Group
Storm of Steel

Actually, wait, it's

League of Dragons
World as Will and Representation Volume I
Siddhartha

Yeah I read the whole thing, barring some skimming through books like Leviticus and Numbers and Deuteronomy where several concurrent passages were basically the exact same barring a change in names, or places, or other subject. It was a first read so I literally just went front to back. The chronology and genealogy from 1 Kings through 2 Chronicles really fucked me up but I'm okay with that because I will assimilate the material better over time through rereads as I have less and less details to remember. I'm not sure what you mean by method. If it matters at all I only read one book at a time, for 2-3 hours guaranteed, sometimes 4-5 on a day off of work when I'm really engaged and it took me about a full month to finish.

Favorite books were Genesis, first half of Exodus, 1-2 Samuel, Isaiah, Daniel, the gospels, and Revelations. Seems a bit much to call that many my favorite but those were the ones where I was really engaged.

Different Seasons
The Dead (including the title story, Araby and the monologue of Molly Bloom in Ulysses)
The Metamorphosis (including The Judgement)

Hmm I tried to do the same thing, just start from the front, when I was about 16 or so.
I lost interest when Exodus started getting worse (I think you share that opinion somewhat). Lately I've been looking into reading at least the 'best' books of the bible, and I'm actually quite surprised by your list.
I usually hear Proverbs and Ecclesiastes mentioned, especially by Veeky Forums minded people, followed by Job, Acts, and only then some of your mentions come into play.

For someone who has only a cursory interest in religion, would you recommend me to try again now I am a little more mature, or could I get by with a summary of each book, and spend maybe ~10-15 hours studying the bible to get to know the main characters and events.

Keep in mind that I am not really interested in religion, but I am interested in history, philosophy, and literature, and I know I cannot really master those subjects without knowing at least a little bit about religion, especially Christianity.

What about Ecclesiastes my man?

You know a lot of people read the whole Bible? Even non-Christians. It's probably the most important literary/linguistic influence in Western/Anglo culture. Get a good study Bible and read it in the presented order. Use a schedule or something -- there's plenty available on Christian sites. I recommend the Oxford World's Classics KJV or the Harper-Collins Study Bible (NRSV), depending on whether you want poetry and literary/linguistic influence (KJV) or accuracy and readability (NRSV).

Honestly I think as long as your ability to concentrate on reading is there, that you should be able to read at least some large part of it fairly easily. I only decided to start reading this year at the beginning of June, so this was my biggest step yet but I just committed to it.

The second half of Exodus, the building of the tabernacle, yeah that was a fairly skimmed part. I would say for a light(er) reading, 1-2 Chronicles does an okay job of reiterating what was featured in 1 Samuel through 2 Kings so you could trim some fat there, but it's not hardly as entertaining. As I recall, my favorite story from Samuel, the story of Samson, is completely glossed over in Chronicles. I didn't like Psalms through Song of Solomon [as much] because it was less focused on the story (since I was reading for a developmental account of the religion/God), I'm sure I'll come more to appreciate them in time.

But anyways as far as the OT goes, if you can finish Genesis through Ruth (you could even skim Leviticus), go straight to Chronicles if that's your style, and from Chronicles through Daniel, I'd say that you're easily home free, as all the books following it are so much shorter than those proceeding it which helped me because it was a more frequent sense of accomplishment which invigorated me to keep going. After that the NT is actually comparatively short, only about 1/4 of the book.

But I'm just a pleb so who knows. I'm sure someone who is an actual scholar of the Bible will hate everything I've said and view it as an injustice.

The Prince
The Virgin Warrior by Larissa Taylor
Selected Writings from Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws

A Confederacy of Dunces
Dubliners
Catch-22

The republic, the seducer diary, the 48 laws of power

The Lord of the Flies
A Hundred Years of Solitude
and
The Cipher, by Kathe Koja.

While I loved Golding's writing, and got sort of interested in Garcia's prose before the ending depressed me, I fucking hated The Cipher. Guess you shouldn't expect a good conclusion to a story if nothing new happened for three hundred pages. Fuck whoever recommended this to me.

Thanks for the info, I've been meaning to get into the Bible a bit more, because it's often references in literature and is one of the fundamental texts of Western Civilization.
This and
is quite helpful for a beginner like me.

>Flann O' Brien
My nigger

The Screw Tape Letters (but I don't count it since I didn't actually read it, I listened to the audio book)
Read part of Lolita, didn't finish it
Idk Heart of Darkness or something
I'm really fucking loving the Screwtape Letters though. Can't wait to get a hard copy.

Oh boy, those three are all notorious for not getting finished.

Good luck.

Moby Dick
If this is a man
Blood Meridian

The posthumous memoirs of Bras Cubas by Machado de Assis, The city and the mountains by Eça de Queiroz and Lolita by Nabokov

Hyperion
Crime and punishment
Colorless tsukuru and his ....