What is the best book you have read this year and why?

What is the best book you have read this year and why?

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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_language_regulators
slate.com/blogs/lexicon_valley/2016/09/08/merriam_webster_dictionary_tweeted_no_one_cares_about_how_you_feel.html
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Fucking savage pic.

Anyway for me it'd be Jumper by Steven Gould. The movie deserves the shit it gets, but this amazing novel doesn't deserve that shit movie adaptation. It's not the "L00L cool badass hurr" shit of the movie. It's about a lost, lonely, abandoned kid trying to find love and acceptance, living with a thing that makes him unique, and powerful, but also freakish and criminal--to himself and to some others. About a fucked up family and his struggle to be better, to not feel ashamed about everything. About surviving, and trying to thrive, and revenge, and so many things.

Fuck man it's just so good. The pages just turn and turn, the conversations and characters and moods are all completely natural. It's witty and funny in a lot of places, and the main character's a genius. I encourage anyone to pick it up, you'll be entertained by it. Fuck I might read it again just for gits and shiggles.

The Pale King, I guess. It was like a Linklater movie in book form -and with DFW's really great writing style

I'm reading it right now. The Waves by Virginia Woolf.

absolutely FUCKING destroyed

J R hands down. It was everything I hoped it'd be and more.

Catch 22. I can see why people don't like it, but I was super into it so the repetitive scenes and the lack of narrative direction didn't bother me. Loved the sense of humor and "mood". The ending (about the time Yossarian goes AWOL in Rome to the end) is surprisingly moving too.

I only read about a fourth of it so far, and it has its moments but it seems average all-around. Like a slightly more well thought out Vonnegut book without the scifi aspects.

Crime and Punishment, followed very closely by Mrs. Dalloway, which is followed very closely by To the Lighthouse. I loved Stoner very much, but it would seem odd to fit it in with those.

This guy wrote a thinkpiece about getting rekt shortly afterwards.

Cleopatra's biography by d.w roller.

regardless of what I think of the term genderqueer, Merriam-Webster's bants are insane

Unironically? Probably the Bible. It's a bit more simplistic than I'd imagined but still a nice read

I finally got around to reading 1Q84.

I loved it, but I feel like Murikami has this ever-present problem with having a lot of fat around the middle his books that needs to be trimmed, and it's really starting to bother me.

Serious question: Assuming you read it front to back without skipping around, which part did you consider most impactfull?

>impactfull
>>>/tumblrr/

this gets applied more and more randomly as time progresses

Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!

>Merriam-Webster's bants are insane
yep

...

its kind of true, there is now grammar police so merriam is stuck documenting whatever takes hold in the populaiton

>there is now grammar police

Are you pooping in designated pooping lanes too?

More like unlicensed grammar militia, calling them Nazis makes them look too important.

gotta scramble that list up, family

fucking CHRIST what did the general public do to Miriam Webster to deserve all those burns?

Jodorowsky's Tarot book. Because I haven't read much this year

So I guess this faggotpost means you didn't actually read it and are lying. Should've known

They use Ms Webster like a cheap whore for their gratification. Bringing her out like a trophy to impress people and win internet arguments then casting her aside whenever she says something they don't like. Calling her "The" dictionary and treating her special when she has something they want but ignoring her pretending her extensive education and erudition is simply mere trivia and going instead to that cheap whore Google when they don't want to bother with reliable references. They can't even spell her name right, it's Merriam you mumpsimus.

The Glass Bead Game. Because of its beautiful, saturated life descriptions, mostly. And because of lack of pontificating.

Hamsun's "Pan"
It is probably his best work. I have a feeling it's going to be the best book I'll have read this year.

Not the same guy, retard

>merriam shutting that pseud down
>pretending to be "hip" by talking about how its "cool" to get high
>he thinks dictionaries define use

its like DFW never killed himself and freed us of his horrible misconception of language!

assuming you mean "no"

then there has NEVER been a grammar police, and dictionaries have ALWAYS simply documented common use

how does it compare to Hesse's other work? Steppenwolf/Siddhartha in particular. I loved both of those, but couldn't imagine them being longer than a couple hundred pages. that's what prevents me from reading the Glass Bead Game; its commonly referred to as Hesse's best work, but is it of another class than his shorter novels? or the same ideas, but simply given more ground for expounding (i wanted to use expoundation, but thats 100p not a word, hopefully you understand my meaning)

Glass Bead Game is very much like Siddhartha in some respects, but much more (qualitatively) than it. I read Steppenwolf a long time ago and probably didn't understand shit, so I can't speak about it. You should read Glass Bead Game if you like other Hesse, anyway.

Moby Dick
Faust

theyre both the GOAT of their respective countries so...

DFW supported this misconception of language though, see his interview with the legal prose blog

That's what they said.

>dictionaries have ALWAYS simply documented common use
thats the english tradition. for a variety of reasons that i might expand on with demand, english has always been descriptivist about language, whereas i know french, german and italian (and i assume other languages too) are (traditionally) prescriptivist.

p.s.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_language_regulators

almost all languages have a language regulator - except english. most of these produce the authoritative dictionary.

i know the Académie Française are particularly autistic about anglicisms.

>they

I like it. I'm gonna do this too on Veeky Forums now.
s'gonna be fun

>Académie Française are particularly autistic
they're not the most particularly

True patrician opinion

>Homo faber
>Peer Gynt
Same reason

this is what i've read this year

i think my favourite is 2666
i love the scope of it and i love the tone of it
a vast brooding sprawling wasteland packed with stories of all kinds, a messy vital intensely readable (in the english translation anyway, i have no idea what the original is like) book that's bursting at the seams with interesting shit

kek didn't even think about it
usually use 'he' here

Patrician.

How was the Vegetarian? I'm undecided as to whether I want to read it or not

i liked it a lot and would recommend it

I'm going to read this soon, is it better than Mrs. Dalloway? I really enjoyed that.
I'm not that user, but The Bible is on my list too. With that and some others this year it's actually been really enlightening. Most impactful for me was Job and The Gospels.

For me, it's been a really great year. I can't pick a best book, so here's five:

>The Bible
>Brothers K
>Ulysses
>Mrs. Dalloway
>Meditations

>Most impactful for me was Job and The Gospels.
agreed altho i add Abraham to that

i havent read the entirety of the bible however, particularly the new testament which was written after Jesus. its p. bad imo

Got "into" reading this summer so possibly Dostoevsky's The Idiot or Blood Meridian. I really enjoyed Omensetter's Luck (William H. Gass) but I finished it yesterday so maybe I'm biased because it's on my mind

Looks nice user, what can you tell me about A Brief History Of Seven Killings? How much stream of consciousness is there? Is it a difficult read? How good/bad is it?

a brief history was extremely readable. the level of stream of conscience varies from section to section and the most affecting sections are the most abstract, particularly the illiterate drug addict guy getting buried alive
it's a really visceral real and very enjoyable, perhaps a little pulpy if you're snobby that way but assuredly and well written enough to sway most people i think.

the book of night women was also very good and if you're still interested in the guy after a brief history i recommend it so strongly

That's nice to hear. Might pick it up once I've gotten sick of Gass. Will probably study abroad next semester and hoping to bring a bunch of longer books with me so that one will come in handy

Middlemarch closely followed by Woolf's Orlando

They do good work. But I'll never refer to cloud computing as "infonuagique".

I love merriam-webster

the hot dog is a sandwich

oh my god I am screaming in laughter. who is writing this

a cat apparently

American PSycho was some good shit

same fag
this is really good, with the cat post I know now that while they also know how to play the audience. I can really respect that

Blood Meridian to be quite honest.

I'd read the Road and No Country before and liked them. Then hearing about some of the wild shit in the book hooked me.

Spent a whole summers day under a gazebo drinking Rum and reading it. Was a nice, comfy day though the book did make me feel weird as well due to the nature of some of the things in it. A mixture of hopelessness and relief.

I seldom read fiction any way so it was a nice break.

post the article the guy wrote

This particular example is excellently applied.

Impactful = powerful = pseuds = tumblr.

slate.com/blogs/lexicon_valley/2016/09/08/merriam_webster_dictionary_tweeted_no_one_cares_about_how_you_feel.html

Thousands and thousands of people, delighted at the fact that no one cares how I feel. In my Twitter mentions, people calling me “an abjectly disgusting creature” compete for space with people earnestly setting me straight about descriptivism. And still they pour in, letting me know that I got burnt or told or owned. “Wow, lots of folks here looking for blood,” as one onlooker put it.

On the scale of Twitter eruptions, this was big but mild. And, hey, we learned something, right? This was a fun day. Some new followers (hi new followers!) plus thousands of strangers laughing at me. Lots of fun. No one cares how I feel! Good one. See, I can laugh at myself.

Although, since we’re here, can I ask: What was the nature of this "own"? Was it a clever put-down? I don’t think it was. Coming from some rando, “No one cares how you feel” would hardly merit an RT count in the five figures.

No, the tweet’s power comes from the way it jars with the identity of its author—just as “Delete your account” is a banality until one presidential candidate tweets it at another. It’s not the words, it’s the shock of seeing them attributed to a well-known brand with 118,000 followers that’s usually associated with school and spelling.

As I survey the wreckage of my mentions, I find myself wistfully remembering the days when tweeting at brands was a safe, innocuous pastime. The brand is so much bigger than you, after all, that you can’t imagine it will hear you. Even if the brand were to become aware of your zingers, like a horse irked by a gnat, you assume it won’t turn on you—because, you believe, the brand is prevented by commercial imperatives from acting like a dick in public.

Merriam-Webster’s epic pwnage of me this week has revealed that sense of security for the fabrication that it is. It turns out that an aggressive, forward-looking brand—a venerable-but-staid brand that has turned to social media to add a bit of edginess to its image, perhaps—can indeed act like a dick in public, and will be rewarded with thousands of retweets, with celebratory gifs, with a BuzzFeed post chronicling its “iconic drag.” (Half a million views and still trending.) I worry that some previously unrecognized equilibrium has been toppled, and we’re about to enter a late-late-capitalist dystopia in which brands roam the internet taking down civilians for fun. And when that day comes, we’ll look back on @MerriamWebster’s tweet and rue our LOLs, but it will be too late.

Not wrong but I'm cringing at the poor sod anyway

that's retarded

Life of Johnson

It's so expansive, lifelike, with new delights on every page. From the humorous quips and witty aphorisms to the pathos of depression, loss, failure...it has everything. Boswell's power of characterization is Shakespearean.

When a man is tired of Johnson, he is tired of life.

summa theologica

To the lighthouse was horrible to read in my opinion.
I really enjoyed Oscar Wilde's Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest.

is he serious at the end there? like wtf was the point of this post

jesus FUCKING christ i just read that entire dreck (including the intro you omitted) and not ONCE did he deliver a point that he seems willing to stand behind as "the argument"

just some moron mumbling out "well, actually I didn't lose..." after he gets laughed out of the playground

This is the most passionate book I have read all year.

What a faggot.

>Coming from some rando, “No one cares how you feel” would hardly merit an RT count in the five figures.
>No, the tweet’s power comes from the way it jars with the identity of its author—just as “Delete your account” is a banality until one presidential candidate tweets it at another. It’s not the words, it’s the shock of seeing them attributed to a well-known brand with 118,000 followers that’s usually associated with school and spelling.
This is right.
The rest is bs.

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