Recent reads

So Veeky Forumswits, what book have you just finished?

Finished The Sun Also Rises last night. About a fifth of the way through Portrait now. Not liking it as much as Dubliners.

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I finished Lolita yesterday. Loved the writing, although I felt like I was reading an /a/ loli fantasy.
A few of the passages made me a bit sick, and Humbert's revenge towards the end (against a guy who didn't actually do anything to Lo?) forced to conclude that he is indeed fucking crazy.

All in all was a good read, a sick mind, poor Humbert Humbert.
Would recommend

I finished the collection of short stories + Metamorphoses and In the Penal Colony by Franz Kafka, the translations by that Neugroshnel guy.

I am still a bit new to non-pleb literature. Half a year in so far.

It was pretty good, I found the Metamorphoses to be pretty funny actually. It wasn't really depressing to me, it seemed more like a story about how everyone is self-centered and any sort of care for one another is more like a superficial costume one wears to keep their own egos in check. Something about the dead-pan way it's written makes it so funny, like when Gregor's dad keeps chasing him around the house throwing apples at him. If I ever turned that story into a film I would make it a dark comedy. There are still tinges of empathy through the whole thing though.

In the Penal Colony was great too, that seems more like a book about subjectivity when it comes to the sense of culture, beauty and virtue. Kafka is forcing the reader to feel a sense of empathy for this officer who see's his job and his passions through a whole different light than the outside world. I think it's commentary on how if you curb this "cultured" world ever so slightly there is potential for glorifying extremely inhumane acts of brutality and inhumanity (at least what we see as inhuman through our own perspective.)

The rest of the stories were just odd to me, they all definitely had some purpose which I think I could decipher but I wouldn't really put any strong words towards it. The rest of his short works seem like literary exercises, and all of them are very odd and dreamlike, there aren't enough details filled out to paint a full picture.

I'm reading too fast to keep track of what I read.

So much to get to!

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Infinite Jest
Meditations
Siddhartha
The Kojiki
Liber Kaos
Ulysses
Liber Samekh and Liber DCCC
The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon
Japanese Tales from Times Past (excerpts from the Konjaku Monogatari Shu)

Much Ado About Nothing. It was my first of Shakespeare's comedies and it was wonderful. I've heard people say his comedies aren't very good when read quietly but I thought it was great fun.

Finished Fahrenheit 451 yesterday. Thought it started off well but near the end Ray was bogging down the story with needless drivel. Loved Clarisse's character and Beatty. I believe Beatty was a coward who hated that the world he was living in as well but was too much of coward to kill himself until he saw Montag go through the same struggle he did and ended up committing suicide by fireman.

ps: are you happy anons?

>ps: are you happy anons?
I feel pleasure. Thus I cannot be unhappy.

Do you mean the escape sequence? Maybe it was needless, I don't know. Ray Bradbury isn't trying to be an intellectual, he just wants to entertain a large age group while also putting in some legitimate literary stuff.

Maybe Beatty was a coward, or he knew the world was going to end anyways and didn't care less if Montag killed him or not.

I thought the book was pretty cohesive through the whole thing, it's pretty fucked red-pilled too. Political correctness and vocal minorities gave way to a soulless ignorant society and made a government free to do whatever they liked.

Just finished Do Androids dream. It was really good I think I might have enjoyed it more than Blade runner which kinda surprised me because i love that movie. Also just finished my 3rd rereading of Huck Finn love it even more every time. Should i read Freud dream interpretations or the origin of species next?

going to be done crying lot by pynchon soon

its not really my taste

ya at one point he made it seem as if a car ran over Guy and his leg was decapitated and it was revealed that he has been an android all along when he started saying things like "now that all remains are silver threads dangling from him " I was just sitting there trying to make sense of it all but then it was revealed that he had a slight injury to his leg lol....

Finished Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me two days ago.

It was nice, trippy, but I expected something more Pynchon-like in substance rather than in style, which is what I got.

The Picture of Dorian Gray. Meh. 4/5.

The Big Short. I really like it. 5/5. >Genre Fiction.

Currently reading Infinite Jest, i'm on page 382.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold. Good, though as a third novel I've read Marquez is starting to get repetitive.

Make a goodreads to keep track of it. Add Veeky Forums folks.

I'm too busy reading!

Oblivion by DFW. The first story was tedious and really a chore, but the stories got progressively better. It was my first foray into his work, and there are parts of his style that I enjoyed and parts that I abhorred. I enjoyed his narrative style and enjoyed the constantly shifting settings and wasn't put off by them. His prose style has the slangy vibe that puts me off but he is also capable of writing beautifully as well, albeit in a technical way. His prose feels like I am reading the story of an intelligent robot with feelings and opinions sometimes. I'd give it a 7 or 8/10 if i had to give a numerical score.

>I felt like I was reading an /a/ loli fantasy.
I feel a tiny bit insulted having one of my favourite books being compared to some degenarate fan fiction desu.
>A few of the passages made me a bit sick
What did? It was all extremely subtle.
>against a guy who didn't actually do anything to Lo?
But he did. And it was more about what he did to Humbert, not to Lolita.

So much is lost through translation. I know it's a meme, but in Kafka's case it is true. His formal style, precision, references, and placement of verbs and nouns cannot be replicated in English. Even the Dutch language fails to capture his style and power. Kafka is an extraordinary writer, whose excellence is hidden in other languages.

The first chapter of the Metamorphosis is the funniest thing I have ever read. The way Kafka provides Gegor's and the officer's observations is masterful. I have never read an author who uses the third person narrative more effectively than Kafka. I highly recommend The Trial. If you're Dutch by any chance, read it in Dutch, not in English.