So what are you folks reading this New Year's Eve?

Le Grand Meaulnes, likely to finish it today and I hope to start and finish another one too.

Great book, a bit too explicit for the sake of it, but easily one of the defining reads of my childhood.

...

Capitalism and Schizophrenia

The Human Factor by Graham Greene.

The Magic Mountain. I think Thomas Mann might just be the best writer of all time. There's no tricks, no mysteries, no experiments, he's never afraid to be explicit, but he's never excessive or overbearing, and yet it's so filled with non-malignant irony and has a depth that's flying over my head, all while retaining a sense of reality and down-to-earthness.

It's just... good. But how.

this reminds me, I don't believe Whitley's experiences to be true, but I unironically think Communion and Transformation are some of the best modern literature about the nature of Fear.

you're probably not even an /x/-er though, and the pic is at best a reference to the owls in Harry Potter, I know.

The movie made me get over my lifetime phobia of grey aliens. It really portrayed it well. Perhaps I should check the book.

that's a first, most of the time it's mentioned as the cause of a life-long grey-phobia.

Nearing the end of "The City and the Stars" by Arthur C. Clarke. Has been interesting so far but I really hope it has a satisfying ending and not some pseudo-intellectual "woah dude weed and space and shit" ending.

This caught my eye in the library and I couldn't resist.

Goblet is my least favorite but it's still really fun.

Gravitys Rainbow of course

ot od pőpobably my least favorite as well, could never aticualte why?

why is it your least fav?

love,
drunk as fuck OP

Nothing. Just finished Protagoras by Plato.

I've got stuff I could read, help me decide:
more HP Lovecraft (got that big tome of his complete works)
Harry Potter (just to see what it's all about)
The Hobbit/Lord of the Rings
Watership Down
Crash, the J.G. Ballard novel
or poems by Robert Lowell

I finished my last of 2017 yesterday, Submission by Michel Houllebecqe

Finished The Stranger in the last hours of 2017.

Watership Down is a comfy classic.

I get the same feeling reading Watership Down that I do reading Lord of the Rings.

Largely because of the lore/world building. Very good book.

Two thirds of the way into Moby Dick: just through with a block of at least a half dozen straight chapters each describing in minute biological and philosophical detail various features of whale anatomy

iktf
Every fucking page of that book makes me marvel at what must be the immense futility of being a novelist, given how impossible it would be to write something of that qualify

I'm editing my novelization of LWA

There are too many things going to keep the plot to nice and tight. There's so much world building and character development, and the dynamic of the trio shifts a lot. That's all well and good/important, but the Voldy plot falls aside and the tourney doesn't actually feel like a real threat to make up for it. In the end it's more of a teen drama than any of the others.

I also just can't stand the idea that he was entered into the tourney so Barry could rig it entire year in order to get Harry to a portkey. He could've just offered Harry a handshake with a portkey in his hand when Voldy was ready for him! She used the supposed plot itself as a plot device to world build. While book would've been better if Harry got himself into the tourney somehow, to prove himself or something, and he was being helped by Barty just so he didn't die before Voldy needed his blood for the ritual.

Didn't realize I was so tipsy until I reread this. Don't drink and drive my man

Two chapters into Infinite Jest.
I'm enjoying it so far, but compared to the merely sardonic comedy articles of Wallace's I've consumed before this reads downright Kafkaesque.

Siddhartha, I hated it at first, Siddhartha is such a little whiny shithead, but it's getting better now that he realizes that he wasted a good portion of his life.

Heart of Darkness
Having trouble getting into it. Been tired from working holiday hours and usually fall asleep after a page or two.

IS it good? Its hard to see past the memes when people who liek it call it the most emotionally loaded introspective work in history that perfectly depicts what people long for in life and people who dont call it useless garbage that even if you read it without translation is completely unreadable unless you're 60 year old, female and divorced.

Your cynicism sucks.

Thanks, very good point.

And yeah, I don't feel it that much, coming off of the high of Azkaban. I remember thinking the same even as a kid, reading it the first time.

It's fun noticing small details though, like how the Lovegoods are already namedropped when they're looking for the portkey to the Cup and meet up with Cedric and his dad.

Even in that, he has us beat.