ITT books written in the last 15 years that are worth reading

That was my introduction to him. I loved it and it led me to his doorstoppers, which are some of my all time favorites.

>won't read him because he's ugly

I've yet to see someone with actual criticisms of him. I doubt anyone talking shit has ever actually read any of his books. People here are hilariously afraid of anything challenging or long.

yeah that's for sure.

To be fair, he's pretty fucking ugly

I've yet to see praise of him that makes sense.

When I first downloaded this and read the first 20 pages, I thought my epub was corrupted. I went and took out a copy at the library. Turns out he has problems constructing narrative prose and covers it up with "experimental" ie, unreadable prose structure to hide his deficiencies and make his defenders claim that instead of being pretentious and flawed, he is challenging ala Joyce and Pynchon. Evidence: I could turn to any page in Dying Grass and screenshot pic related.

This is unfortunate because his choice in topic is fascinating.

Ishigoro's Buried Giant, Marlon James works (all of them), Eugene Vodolazkin's Laurus, Chirbes' On the Edge, Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels, Bartol, Coatzee etc. Lots of good stuff.

...

purposefully obfuscating your prose in order to crank out books at speed that require minimal editing since errors are intended does not a modern classic make

I could read it fine. you are just a pleb my man.

This.
Unreadable? Jesus dude, that's actually sad.

Seems completely pointless and bad to me but I can read it fine as well

pic related

now read 1100 pages of it and finish the book having gained something by it.

damn you are just as dumb as the people who won't read him because he's ugly.

waaaah I won't read the dying grass because I don't like how that pages look. kys.

Out of context, of course it seems ridiculous. Pick up the book and actually give it a try. Once you get into it, it flows amazingly well, and you stop noticing the weird style yet it still ads to the rhythm. There's a few extremely powerful scenes done masterfully using this style.

do I need to read the ice shirt and the other books in the series before the dying grass ?

Its structure is garbage and people who like it are pseuds. Structure something unconventionally and people assign value. Several here seem a bit riled over the obviousness of its shitness.

>just read hundreds of pages of this useless unreadable garbage

Exactly. Might as well read some John Green and just off your lonely virgin ass. I've never read a more pathetic comment, despite having spent an embarrassing amount of time on this shit board. Crying about a book being difficult on a lit board... Wew

my man there are 7 of us in here

No. They all stand alone and they are all written in different styles. There's references to the other works in each one, but you won't be confused or lost if you start with any one you want

Can you back this up with anything, or is this bait? He has more than a few novels and literally one is written this way.

>Unreadable
Veeky Forums

except most of his other work is not like that, he just wanted to have a laff and experiment a bit. You're a gigantic faggot.

I've been enjoying it so far, but he repeats himself constantly. He does this thing where he writes a paragraph where the character is internally analyzing whatever problem and they com to a conclusion in a neat writerly way, but he does it again and again for each chapter. He is also over descriptive, and repeats the descriptions as well. it gets a bit grating, but the content is good.

I've yet to see 1 (ONE) single description of what the fuck it is Vollman writes about.

Fact: Vollman fans can't tell you anything about Vollman's writing.

For the record I am the one who keeps saying that and find it properly thrilling that people are at least pretending to take it at face value

I've seen a rise in posts like this recently. Straight up attacking not only the author but their reader's as well. Now I know Veeky Forums hasnt been a stranger to that in the past, being part of Veeky Forums and all, but lately it's been more rampant and baseless. They're all written similarly too, maybe it's the same user?

WHAT THE FUCK DOES HE WRITE ABOUT

ITS NOT A CONSPIRACY

TELL ME WHAT THE FUCK HIS BOOKS ARE ABOUT OR FOREVER STFU

Loved it
I think the descriptions are him overcompensating for the narrative not being presented visually. He said in an interview he describes so much in the novel because he was used to giving all that information to the illustrator whereas now and in the future when he's writing he won't have the liberty of the image being right in front of you(obviously). Push through though my dood it's worth it in spades. Clouds Unfold is my favourite chapter and is one of my favourite things I've ever read

Oh I'm not struggling, and it has some beautiful writing in it. I dont mind descriptive purple prose, but he overdoes it, it's nice to know what the country side looks like but to describe it again and again is redundant. I have faith in the old Geezer to blow my mind in the later chapters, I'm still in the first book.

Seven Dreams is a historical fiction retelling of various scenes in American history, from the Vikings on.

He has written short stories on a variety of topics, my favorite collection being Last Stories, which are sort of ghost tales.

He also wrote a massive book on the border town of Imperial.

Fucking Google it dude. He's written a shit ton. Seven Dreams is historical fiction (though insanely well researched and sourced, to the point where he points out which parts are fictionalized) and each book takes place in a different area and time, each about the colonization of North America.

He's written nonfiction, shirt stories, and a lot of different articles. All of his books are researched to an almost comical degree, and you can tell he cares deeply for whichever subject he's writing about.

>because he was used to giving all that information to the illustrator
Yes and that's doubly obvious if you've ever read one of his scripts

Your faith is well placed. Book one is just random scenes some of which don't get explanation until book three. Book two actually has a solid narrative which is good compared to number one's vignettes. Clouds Unfold in book three was the best from that book for me. The Lucia chapter is always quite well done and provides a nice tie in for another part of it. If you're enjoying it now and not struggling you'll be grand

I haven't. I'd assume they're as if not more descriptive than Jerusalem. I like that though the man knows what he wants

Wait, so you haven't actually read anything from him other than a few pages? Are you fucking serious? You're the one who needs to post what you think is wrong with Vollmann as a writer. Saying something is shit and then admitting you don't know anything about it is some of the most blatant autism I've ever seen. Holy... I want more from this pseud

Have you finished it already? Would you say it's deserving of the praise?

>not thinking like this

54
2666
A Little Life
The Invisibility Cloak
What to Do
The Librarian
The Storyteller
The Nix
The Man Who Loved Dogs
Do Not Say We Have Nothing
The Sympathizer
The Underground Railroad

These are novels from the past 15 years which I think are good (some more than others)

2666 for sure. Don't know how I forgot that one.

haha, oh fuck

Vollman fans can't say ANYTHING about his work

> this one is about Murrica
> the rest is on a variety of topics
> JUS' GEWGLE IT, BRO

What exactly would you like? A synopsis? That's easily found by a simple search. Would you like a list of themes? Asking what a writer writes about, especially a writer with a large bibliography, is ridiculously vague. How about you say what it is you're looking for, and maybe someone will be able to help you out, since you seem so unbelievably incapable of doing any research. I assume you're a troll, but either way I have cancer now.

>1356 pages
Be honest: is it worth it?

Got it week after release finished it a month and a half after it came out. Yes changed my outlook on life a bit

Nice. Thanks. I picked it up the week it came out, but had some other big books on backlog

In my opinion, yes, it's more than worth it. In reality, there's much shorter works of his that you could start with. He does change styles pretty dramatically from book to book, but you might get burned out on a book that long if you're not into big books usually.

What's the best place to start with Vollmann?

I see Europe Central, You Bright and Risen Angels and Rainbow Stories most frequently mentioned. I've seen a flow chart with Rainbow Stories but I'm typically not a fan of short stories.

I started with Whores for Gloria. It's a novella about a veteran who spends all of his army checks on booze and hookers, trying to find some bitch named Gloria. I liked it a lot, and I went on to read The Royal Family, which is somewhat similar in that it's about a different degenerate fuck who's a shitty private detective trying to find a infamous slutbag whorepimp, and how he becomes increasingly degenerate and shitty. It goes into his family and the way it affects their lives. It's long. 800 pages with small print and large pages. Worth it, though, in my opinion.

After that I read The Dying Grass (Seven Dreams), which is about the Nez Perce tribe and the US military pursuing them for miles and miles. It follows, mostly, general Otis Howard and Chief Joseph, and covers, in depth, how each side handled the war. It's brutal, sad, and ambitious as fuck. It's probably my favorite of his.

I read Fathers and Crows (Seven Dreams) next, which blew me away almost as much as The Dying Grass. It's about the French colonization of Canada and the relationship between them and the surrounding tribes. This one seemed a bit more dense to me, and it took a while to get through. It reads like nonfiction in a lot of parts, since it basically is.

That's what I did, and I'm a fan. Honestly, though, just pick one up and fucking read it.

this book actually made me cry like three times oh my god.

Brutal. Vollman fans are clinically retarded.

Say one (1) thing about a Vollman book.

FINALLY, Vollman shills have described a Vollman work.

First book to ever make me cry. Twice.

A Vollman book is written by an ugly man

It had been the only book I was excited for a long time so I had to plough through it asap. Hopefully you find it to be worth the wait its a shame it didn't get discussed more people seemed to enjoy memeing it rather than reading it

Vollmann books would be too difficult for you.

It's the first time on Veeky Forums EVER that someone has described a Vollman novel. Good work, guys.

So pretty much he cries about colonialization for a thousand pages in every novel and sucks dick while on crack dressed as a woman.

And he's ugly.

i had my dick sucked by a crackhead once... maybe... maybe it was...

>book is shit
>story is chaotic and has no direction
>obvious sentimentalist bent
>prose is shit
>character building is deeply flawed
>creates massive feels anyways

how did she do this?

It happened several times in this thread over legitimate criticism.

>author's writing style seems to be poorly constructed and doesnt lend towards a cohesive narrative
>examples
>FUCK YOU PSEUD

>Veeky Forums

my diary desu

It sucks that you have to wade through this bullshit to get to real discussion. I see people saying books they've never read are shit almost daily on here. It probably turns people away from reading legitimately good literature, because they can't tell if the meme is that it's good or that it's bad. Infinite Jest is a good example of this. Depending on what day you look at the board, it's either a masterpiece or total shit. I've yet to see any good criticism of any of the meme books, but people want to talk shit on them without ever giving it a chance. I'm all for shitposting, but someone has to point out the autists, in hope of saving a few aspiring patricians from never trying a book because someone who's never read a real novel says people only pretend to like it.

> but someone has to point out the autists, in hope of saving a few aspiring patricians
>says the autist complaining about another thread

I haven't either but Moore is famous for autistically describing everything on the page and construc his scenes with absolute detail.

I'm pointing out the fact that there's people here posting unsupported criticisms of works they've never even read. Infinite Jest is just the most common example. Basically, anything that's not short or relatively simple gets bashed by people who couldn't understand it or are too afraid to try. These same people cry that pseuds pretend to like difficult books just to seem smart. It's just strange, on a board about literature.

Never implied that I wasn't an autist myself, but at least I'm an autist that actually reads the books before posting about them.

It's odd that you have this conception that because people criticize these books in a way that does not meet your standards means that they have not read the books. It just shows that you're a bit closed minded to people's potential reactions to literature as a whole. Not everyone has a deep and meaningful reason for disliking a work, some is quite superficial, even. The key here is that typically an opinion is requested from the ever shifting group of people on Veeky Forums, and sometimes people offer a candid and simple response. It is obvious that this is not to your liking, but that's just fine. You should try not to let it bother you so much, people will constantly nip at your heels, trying to get to you. Also, I must say it's quite easy to pick you out of the crowd, so people are going to be even more likely to remember you and possibly attack you merely because you do not fade into the anonymous nature of this board.

this.

I'm fine with people not liking a book. Even if only for superficial reasons. I dislike a few books for reasons I could never articulate. I am referring more to the posts where people either state, or fail to hide the fact, that they haven't read it. The people who have read it will be able to ignore that, but if you haven't read the book yet, there's no way to tell if what they're saying is correct. Either way, it's not a big deal. I like recommending books that I enjoyed, and if someone has a legit criticism of the novel, or has read it and didn't like it, that's fine. It just seems more and more that nobody here actually reads, at least not the ones that post.

If you want real discussion, or at least lurker power, get on the Veeky Forums goodreads crew. Tons of real readers and recommendations, and you dont even have to talk to the faggots faggotets.

This is a good point, though. I understand what you're saying and it's valid. I may have worded previous posts poorly.

Thanks, I'll check it out. There are occasionally good discussions on here, and a few if the posters here are much better readers than I am, so when I ask for real criticisms, it's only because I'm curious about what other people thought about my favorites and am interested in discussing them.

I liked his descriptions in Jerusalem. I don't really visualize what I'm reading generally so I could see how I would get in the way of another type of reader

Are you saying it's okay for me not to like vollman due to the shape of his snout? Because that would be a relief. His books seem quite long.