What are the best fiction books you read this year?

What are the best fiction books you read this year?

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V

On the Edge by Chirbes and My Beautiful Friend are up there as well.

The bible desu

Infinite Jest no meme

Infinite Jest

I've only been reading for a little under 2 years, so you might understand some of the selections here:

>Iliad, Odyssey.
The Iliad is by far what I've enjoyed reading most this year, and I intend to re-read it again soon after reading some more supplementary material on it. I've already gone through "The World of Odysseus" by Finley, and "Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey: A Biography" by Manguel. The former was very illuminating in regards to all the gift giving in the poems, and the latter wasn't quite as good but still provided some interesting context and historical information. I have the "Cambridge Companion to Homer" and another book called "Homeric Moments: Clues to Delight in Reading the Odyssey and the Iliad" by Eva Brann, which I'm looking forward to for some more analysis of the poems.
To be perfectly honest, and I wonder if anyone else can relate to this, but I felt pretty lukewarm towards both of these poems after finishing them, and it was only in hindsight, maybe a week or so after reading each (I read them one after the other, starting with the Iliad) that I began to really contemplate and appreciate the poems, and it is again only in hindsight that I've even begun to understand how much I missed in the poems. The translations I read for both were by Fitzgerald, and I intend to read Fagles' next, and then Lattimore after that at some point.

>Three Theban Plays, as well as the rest of Sophocles.
My favorites here are definitely Oedipus Rex, and Ajax. I re-read the Theban Plays a few months ago and enjoyed them even more, but I felt that I was still unable to really get to the heart of the plays. There is some dramatic perfection to Oedipus Rex that I can't quite put my finger on. It comes in during the lengthy revelation scene with Oedipus and Jocasta and the others that come in, where everything is finally revealed regarding those characters and the deceased King Laius, and I got the feeling that there was a kind of rhythmic like the beating of a heart throughout.
I intend to re-read Ajax in a couple months, and I can't really say I did a close reading of it the first time around. What blew me away was the lengthy debate between Ajax and Odysseus regarding who should get Achilles' armor; the poetry was just beautiful, and the arguments compelling. That translation was by John Moore, so I'll probably look into getting another one before re-reading it.

>The Oresteia, and the rest of Aeschylus.
I've read the Oresteia twice this year, and the first time I didn't really care for it. Not that I found it particularly distasteful or anything like that, but just that at that time I would regard it as more of a "book-that-I-read" than anything else. On my second reading, however, I was able to see a lot more, and it made me appreciate what a wonderful character Aeschylus' Clytemnaestra is, being, maybe, perfectly justified in her murder of Agamemnon. . . .

>Oresteia continued
Beyond that I was able to see how the plays form a natural sequence, from taking the "law" into your own hands with Clytemnaestra killing Agamemnon, to Orestes avenging him and being tormented, and finally to the actual law being established during the trial.

I'll post others if anyone is interested.

Cloud Atlas was pure comfy, but it wasn't literary excellence by any stretch of the imagination. I've been reading almost exclusively non-fiction for a change, so my selection is very narrow this year. Notes from Underground was quite interesting for me, as I read it directly after Stirner's Ego and his Own. The protagonist (I use the term loosely) at one point directly critiques his own ideological fixation on higher forms, chastising himself for pursuing "literary" ideals that he simultaneously acknowledges don't exist in reality.

Being spooked by such ideals, he becomes Stirner's involuntary egoist, hypocritically sacrificing his own happiness for the ideals that have spooked him. I've never seen the two books compared on Veeky Forums, but they are a great accompaniment to each other. For all the trash that's spoken about Notes being r9k: the book, I think it's a far more nuanced critique of an ideology that conflicts with egoism, and for that reason the best book I've read this year.

Ulysses, the Aeneid, The Kalevala, Swann's Way, The Waves, and Cannonball are my favorites this years

Thanks user, I just ordered the Chirbes one. I hate Anagrama editions but oh, well. Are you Spanish?

No i read it in translation. I found it enjoyable.

Interested.

>Clytemnaestra is, being, maybe, perfectly justified in her murder of Agamemnon


Why do you think this?

The Magic Mountain
I went into expecting a comfy read and got one of best novels I've ever read

There are two reasons why I think it's at least worth considering. The first is weak: he brings Cassandra home after being away for 10 years. Not a strong reason because it would have been expected of such a person (a king, warrior, leader of the armies) to do something like this, but you can understand why it might upset Clytemnestra that he's brought her with him. I believe this argument can be made alright if we take a look at some of Clytemnestra's words, where she tells Agamemnon how she felt when he was gone:
"First,
when a woman sits at home and the man is gone,
the loneliness is terrible,
unconscionable. . .
and the rumors spread and fester,
a runner comes with something dreadful,
close on his heels the next and his news worse,
and they shout it out and the whole house can hear;
and wounds -- if he took one wound for each report
to penetrate these walls, he's gashed like a dragnet,
more, if he had only died . . .
for each death that swelled his record, he could boast
like a triple-bodied Geryon risen from the grave,
'Three shrouds I dug from the earth, one for every body that went down!'
The rumours broke like fever,
broke and then rose higher. There were times
they cut me down and eased my throat from the noose.
I wavered between the living and the dead." (848-864, tr. Fagles)

Being sad that your husband went to war isn't much justification for killing him, I grant you, but maybe it can be approached from an angle of asking whether or not he really had to go in the first place. Much of the Iliad is about going to war for the sake of honor and spoils, so perhaps Agamemnon really didn't have an obligation to leave, but I think that Finley's "World of Odysseus" can be help here for me in a future reading, to see if there's any reason to think that Agamemnon owes Menelaus based upon some gift-giving.

The other reason, and the more obvious and major one even told by Clytemnestra, is that Agamemnon killed Iphigenia. Following the speech above:
"Our child is gone, not standing by our side,
the bond of our dearest pledges, mind and yours;
by all rights our child should be here . . .
Orestes." (865-8)
Obviously she is being sly here and is more precisely speaking of Iphigenia than Orestes. She goes on just a little while after, to say "Our child is gone. That is my self-defence/ and it is true." (875-6)
She's obviously been contemplating the murder for some time, at least since after she had received news that Iphigenia had been killed by Agamemnon, because the line here, if it isn't apparent enough, is her defending her future murder.

I believe part of the strength of this argument relies upon what I said for the first one, that is, that it will be made more or less strong based upon whether or not Agamemnon really had an obligation to 1) sail to Troy to begin with, 2) to kill Iphigenia. I can't recall if either of these things are made clear in Oresteia, so I suppose that's something for me to look out for in my next reading.

Here are some lines I'm looking at that involve Clytemnestra, at least in her own words, being justified for the murder:

"And now you sentence me? --
you banish me from the city, curses breathing
down my neck? But he --
name one charge you brought against him then. He thought no more of it [killing Iphigenia] than killing a beast,
and his flocks were rich, teeming in their fleece,
but he sacrificed his own child, our daughter,
the agony I laboured into love
to charm away the savage winds of Thrace.
Didn't the law demand you banish him? --
hunt him from the land for all his guilt?
But now you witness what I've done
and you are ruthless judges." (1436-1447)

"And here is spear-prize [(Cassandra)]. . .what wonders she beheld! --
the seer of Apollo shared my husband's bed,
his faithful mate who knelt at the rowing-benches,
worked by every hand." (1465-1469)

>V

Is V worth it? GR and Lot 49 were good enough but it's easy to see the same patterns over and over in Chinchon's work.

Why doesn't anyone keep on reading? Swann's way is only 1/7 of the story.

>fiction

>Sharpe's Company
>Sharpe's Enemy
>Sharpe's Regiment
>Book of Negroes
>Left to Die
>A Place Called Armageddon
>The First 500 of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment

How Patrician am I, Veeky Forums? I bet I'm Patrician as fug.

In the First Circle by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
I loved this shit. The irony about the soviet system, the ethics discussions, the comfyness despite being about prison life.

Sure, thanks for being interested.

>Paradise Lost
I liked this more for the poetry than anything else. It did feel like it was dragging on a little bit by maybe book eight or so. I'm puzzled by how many people view Satan as an anti-hero, when in my (admittedly poor) reading of it, he just seemed like a truly evil person, rebelling out of spite more than anything, against a perfectly good God. Again, not a close reading, and it was the first epic that I'd ever read, so if anyone has any information that either shows that God is/could-be-considered evil, or that Satan otherwise acted heroically or something like that, I'd appreciate it. I'll re-read it in a couple months, for sure.

>Fathers and Sons
Read it early in the year and have since re-read it. In my opinion, Bazarov is a wonderfully realized character, and I admire Turgenev's efforts to make him multifaceted by portraying his internal struggle between his artificial ideas of being against sentiment and in favor of nihilism, and his natural tendency towards goodness and nobility. Wonderful book carried by that character.

>Metamorphoses
I read this this year primarily as a primer to Shakespeare, as well as to understand references elsewhere, and less for the poem itself. I was very impressed though; it's great seeing where many of our myths have come from, and I learned many others that I've become fond of, especially the story of Phaethon (wholly new to me at the time), and Orpheus (only knew he was some musician). Great poetry in the translation by Humphries. Here's my absolute favorite part from the poem, coming from the story of Orpheus:

"They climbed the upward path, through absolute silence,
Up the steep murk, clouded in pitchy darkness,
They were near the margin, near the upper land,
When he, afraid that she might falter, eager to see her,
Looked back in love, and she was gone, in a moment.
Was it he, or she, reaching out arms and trying
To hold or to be held, and clasping nothing
But empty air? Dying the second time,
She had no reproach to bring against her husband,
What was there to complain of? One thing, only:
He loved her. He could hardly hear her calling
Farewell! when she was gone."

>Re-reads of Crime and Punishment, and The Idiot
Dostoevsky is probably my favorite author so far. Out of the four of his major novels, the only one that I didn't really care for was Demons, and the remaining three I loved quite a lot. Re-reading Crime and Punishment now that I knew how the story ended put it into a bit of a different light, and I found that I had grown even more sympathetic towards Raskolnikov. I think the characters in this book are stronger in general than those of The Idiot, which made it a more enjoyable read again. My favorite part of re-reading The Idiot was the same as Crime and Punishment: knowing how the story unfolds and picking up on more subtle details of the character's psychology.
Again, the characters are weaker than in Crime and Punishment, but only in general; Ippolit and Myshkin are both very well portrayed, and the conflicts they faced were even clearer this time. I couldn't help feeling even more sensitive towards Myshkin's character on this reading than the first, and in two completely distinct ways: the first, a loving sympathy for his character, being a truly good soul in the fullest sense of the expression, but also second, as being the cause of Nastasya's death and so much pain in other characters. Very interesting analyses of being "too good" a person in this novel. I've seen many people criticize it for being boring, but I liked it a lot, and it frequently shifts with The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment as my favorite of Dostoevsky's works.

>Julius Caesar (Shakespeare)
Great play, and the first play by Shakespeare in chronological order (excluding the history plays) that I've enjoyed a lot. Beautiful poetry, though I can't help but feel that the language used in Venus and Adonis was even better, but I couldn't give any criticism between the two more than that, I think it's just the Greek subject matter that I prefer.
Most people probably know from school that the play is about Brutus than Caesar, and I think that's perfectly accurate. To me, the best part was by far a brief argument that Brutus has with Cassius after they commit the murder and meet next, as it displays maybe not a terribly subtle, but subtle enough, psychological understanding, in my opinion:

shakespeare.mit.edu/julius_caesar/julius_caesar.4.3.html

CASSIUS
Hath Cassius lived
To be but mirth and laughter to his Brutus,
When grief, and blood ill-temper'd, vexeth him?
BRUTUS
When I spoke that, I was ill-temper'd too.
CASSIUS
Do you confess so much? Give me your hand.
BRUTUS
And my heart too.
CASSIUS
O Brutus!
BRUTUS
What's the matter?
CASSIUS
Have not you love enough to bear with me,
When that rash humour which my mother gave me
Makes me forgetful?

my diary desu

Moby-Dick
Paradise Lost
Faust

honorable mention: Portrait of a Lady

Infinite Jest and The Brothers Karamazov.