Last thread was good, lads

Last thread was good, lads.

ITT: Your personal 10/10s. It might not be perfect in everyone's eyes, and that's fine, because it's perfect for you. Suggestions and recommendations based on people's personal 10/10s is cool too.

Here's mine.

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Started reading Bernhard last year and still wondering how it take me so long to discover his work. Hard to decide for a favourite though, as I found pretty much all his novels great and each one seems to be different but nonetheless brilliant.

> the trauma of Hector's death and the inevitable doom that Troy is to experience
> book ends before shit gets truly real

I don't think I've felt as shaken from reading something in such a long time.

i'm just going to bump

lol, who are you writing the spoiler for, everybody knows what happens

You'd be surprised, user.

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My most recent 10/10 was To The Islands by Randolph Stow. It's about an elderly priest on a mission in the Australian outback who loses his faith and goes full nihilist and starts lashing out at everyone. Eventually he gets into a fight and injures the other guy so badly that he thinks he's killed him, so he flees from the mission intending to kill himself. On his way to "The Islands", a mythic place of the dead in indigenous spirituality, he reflects on his past life and yeah it's really amazing guys you should read it.

Any young guy who has had an existential crisis will appreciate it,

I always loved the movie when I was younger but never had chance to read the book so I picked it up from Waterstone's last year and dove straight into it.

This book is wonderful, it's beautiful. The depth of research into actual rabbits' habits, warrens and English countryside/ecosystem hierarchy is impressive, but then to develop it into rabbit-based societies where they express faith, folklore, poetry, and develop dictatorships, defensive strategies, relationships, unconditional bonds, fears, hopes, etc. It's beautiful. I know it's a children's book but anybody could read this and gain something from its development of themes and ideas - or at the very least, a fun adventure story.

wtf I love rabbits now

> the final chapter

Thinking about it is just enough to break my fucking heart, user.

One chilly, blustery morning in March, I cannot tell exactly how many springs
later, Hazel was dozing and waking in his burrow. He had spent a good deal of
time there lately, for he felt the cold and could not seem to smell or run so well as
in days gone by. He had been dreaming in a confused way -- something about rain
and elder bloom -- when he woke to realize that there was a rabbit lying quietly
beside him -- no doubt some young buck who had come to ask his advice. The
sentry in the run outside should not really have let him in without asking first.
Never mind, thought Hazel. He raised his head and said, "Do you want to talk to
me?"
"Yes, that's what I've come for," replied the other. "You know me, don't you?"
"Yes, of course," said Hazel, hoping he would be able to remember his name in
a moment. Then he saw that in the darkness of the burrow the stranger's ears
were shining with a faint silver light. "Yes, my lord," he said, "Yes, I know you."
"You've been feeling tired," said the stranger, "but I can do something about
that. I've come to ask whether you'd care to join my Owsla. We shall be glad to
have you and you'll enjoy it. If you're ready, we might go along now."
They went out past the young sentry, who paid the visitor no attention. The
sun was shining and in spite of the cold there were a few bucks and does at silflay,
keeping out of the wind as they nibbled the shoots of spring grass. It seemed to
Hazel that he would not be needing his body any more, so he left it lying on the
edge of the ditch, but stopped for a moment to watch his rabbits and to try to get
used to the extraordinary feeling that strength and speed were flowing
inexhaustibly out of him into their sleek young bodies and healthy senses.
"You needn't worry about them," said his companion. "They'll be all right --
and thousands like them. If you'll come along, I'll show you what I mean."
He reached the top of the bank in a single, powerful leap. Hazel followed; and
together they slipped away, running easily down through the wood, where the
first primroses were beginning to bloom.

obvious choice

> genre fiction
> 10/10

lmao haha good one haha my dude

You've convinced me user. I know and love the film but never read the book, it's going on The List

damn...

for

i didn't ask for these feels, user

Hope you like it, user. The rabbits even have their own limited vocabulary for understanding things (silflay is to eat grass, hraka is to go to the toilet - bigwig tells a rabbit to "eat my hraka" at one point, there's one they use to describe predators but i can't quite remember that one).

Genuinely wish more people had read this book on Veeky Forums to be honest. Will definitely read it to my own kids when I have them.

People who meme that women can't write haven't read any of muh girl Virginia yet.

>Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass
>Hart Crane's White Buildings
>Ezra Pound's Personae
>Rainer Rilke's New Poems

I know Cormac McCarthy gets meme'd here a lot nowadays (it wasn't like this two years ago) but I genuinely think The Border Trilogy is a solid 10/10. I think Cormac manages to make the grotesque sound beautiful and it's clear he's researched well for the development of each of his books.

Genuinely hope he manages to finish The Passenger soon.

This is emotional, it resonates with me because it reminds me of when my dog needed to be put down (which is emotional anyway but when he's your first dog you had from the very beginning to his very end, that shit will stick with you for life).

> clearly hasn't read it

Ironic shitposting is still shitposting.

Will look this up, sounds good. Don't think I've seen it mentioned here before to be honest.

I expected old-time spooks and thrills, but what I got was one of the more endearing portrayals of pure friendship, loyalty and one's own self-esteem. There's still the spooks in there too, but it really is more focus on Mina Harker rather than anything else.

Surprised Dracula is considered such an enduring horror novel when it really is less horror than you'd expect.

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Its a half truth
Normie women can't write.
If a gril gets raped by her half brother, has psychotic episodes, dislikes Jews but marries one, has lezzie affairs once married and ultimately decides to go for a swim with a lot of rocks in her pocket, she might be destined for greatness.
Normie women only have normie woman suffering. So they're boring.

memes aside, imagine being that 6 year old kid, writing a short poem that has some genuine profundity to it, and it's likely he won't realise it until he's in his 40s.

love this little poem. it's fun to just post yes YES at times, but it genuinely is a nice little poem. How excited he is for that tiger to be out is my favourite bit about it.

What is considered a normie woman though?

Is it a blanket term you use for traditional writers like Austen or is it a term you use to describe most women published nowadays (i dont know any examples desu)

When I try to explain what makes this book so incredible it never quite works. So occasionally I'll flip to any random page and read (the people I hang out w/ are pretentious as well)


>And the more substantial, the more solid the core of me became, the more
delicate and extravagant appeared the close, palpable reality out of which I
was being squeezed. In the measure that I became more and more metallic, in
the same measure the scene before my eyes became inflated. The state of
tension was so finely drawn now that the introduction of a single foreign
particle, even a microscopic particle, as I say, would have shattered
everything. For the fraction of a second perhaps I experienced that utter
clarity which the epileptic, it is said, is given to know. In that moment I
lost completely the illusion of time and space: the world unfurled its drama
simultaneously along a meridian which had no axis. In this sort of
hair-trigger eternity I felt that everything was justified, supremely
justified; I felt the wars inside me that had left behind this pulp and
wrack; I felt the crimes that were seething here to emerge tomorrow in
blatant screamers; I felt the misery that was grinding itself out with
pestle and mortar, the long dull misery that dribbles away in dirty
handkerchiefs. On the meridian of time there is no injustice: there
is only the poetry of motion creating the illusion of truth and
drama. If at any moment anywhere one comes face to face with the absolute
that great sympathy which makes men like Gautama and Jesus seem divine
freezes away; the monstrous thing is not that men have created roses out of
this dung-heap, but that, for some reason or other, they should want
roses. For some reason or other man looks for the miracle, and to accomplish
it he will wade through blood. He will debauch himself with ideas, he will
reduce himself to a shadow if for only one second of his life he can close
his eyes to the hideousness of reality. Everything is endured, disgrace,
humiliation, poverty, war, crime, ennui --in the belief that overnight
something will occur, a miracle, which will render life tolerable. And all
the while a meter is running inside and there is no hand that can reach in
there and shut it off. All the while someone is eating the bread of life and
drinking the wine, some dirty fat cockroach of a priest who hides away in the
cellar guzzling it, while up above in the light of the street a phantom host
touches the lips and the blood is pale as water. And out of the endless
torment and misery no miracle comes forth, no microscopic vestige even of
relief. Only ideas, pale, attenuated ideas which have to be fattened by
slaughter; ideas which come forth like bile, like the guts of a pig when the
carcass is ripped open.

I read this when I was probably at the lowest point in my life, the part with the river, his son and the chance meeting with a certain someone and the conversation they had left me mentally broken for a week.

It spurred me into action to seek help and I always think of this book when I'm out taking a walk and walk past a river. It makes me feel so melancholic that I have to read that part again just as a reminder.

Been meaning to dive into Herman Hesse for a while now. He seems like the author I need. Siddhartha, Glass Bead Game and Steppenwolfe are on my to-read list.

Happy and well adjusted = normie
Pathologically obsessive and you might be destined for greatness (but be a miserable square peg in a world of round holes)
I don't like Austen but no she wasn't a normie otherwise she would have said it's impossible to be a lit woman so there's no point in trying. She had no choice but to write. She had to say what she had to say even though she had to realize it was an exercise in futility.

Fair enough, user.

Couldn't this be applied to men too though? Don't the eccentrics in literature have more to offer than the well-adjusted dudes who are just writing to make a buck?

Not even gonna lie this is lit

>Radiant Companion by Matt Hart
>All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren
>The Plague by Albert Camus
>The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon
>Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell
>Marat/Sade by Peter Weiss
>Hank by Abraham Smith
>Smoke and Mirrors: The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure by Dan Baum
>One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
>The Little Prince by Atoine de Saint-Exupery
>Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72 by Hunter S. Thompson
>The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
>Pretty, Rooster by Clay Matthews
>To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
>The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell & Bill Moyers
>The First and Second Discourses by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
>Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkners
>Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
>The Children of Hurin by J.R.R. Tolkien

Most well adjusted men don't write. They have ghost writers do they crap. They just throw touchdowns or trade junk bonds or meme themselves to the Oval Office. Its grubby Irishmen with fart fetishes or Portuguese shutins with imaginary friends doing the interesting stuff

Under the Volcano. It's like Ulysses on easy mode but consistently more satisfying.

Hell yes son

fagles translation is shit desu

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Culture of Critique by based Kevin Macdonald.

Siddartha is considered the weakest of his works just a heads up.

Aesthetic>translation
Fagles editions of the og meme trilogy are perfect for shelf display

i keep reading that name and idk if its just me but i feel like im now seeing it everywhere? Shall i feed into my delusion and get it?

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>thw nael is a better poet than you

Just finished it yesterday, bawled my eyes out. First time I got so emotional

I've read it. Giving it a 10/10 indicates either ignorance, youth, or mental deficiency. It is 10/10 on the genre fiction scale, which means it can be at most a 6/10 on the literature scale.

Love the name of his collection too

Seconded

If we exclude things like influence/literary importance, this probably the greatest novel I've ever read.

Cornelius Suttree is one of the most compelling and interesting characters I've ever came across. And McCarthy's prose and description of Knoxville is superb.

Try East of Eden.

It will destroy you.

Recommend me something similar, anons.

I Malavoglia by Verga (although I don't know if it translates well into English)

Milton's "Lycidas"

This poetry book isn't much. It's for kids but its my favorite book. Not for the words in it but the meaning it has to my life. It will always be my favorite book. It's not bad, actually it's cute and a little sad.

Fuck i feel it

Well said, user

Good thing I read Fitzgerald

Rowling suffered too and she can't write.
99% of the great male writers have also suffered.
I just hope I didn't respond to another /pol/ crosspost.

Wise decision my friend

On second and further readings the cheesy thriller part of the story shines through. It makes me love it all the more.

Personally, Cannery Row or The Sea Wolf. Enjoy the characters of Cannery Row and enjoy how comfy the story makes me feel.
The Sea Wolf is an excellent adventure. While debating the morality of his and others actions, Humphrey Van Weyden is forced to deal with the harsh reality of what is. Some of Larsen's more impassioned speeches are certainly memorable.

I've posted about it many a time before, but this poem unironically moves me.

Who's the Portuguese shutin with imaginary friends? I get the Joyce reference

My only 10/10

Fernando Pessoa

LMFAO at Harrogate's bat trap in this

It somehow pulled me out of a years long depression.

This book
In my heart, it is everything.

How Green Was My Valley. It's music and music. Comfy and you'll cry. Probably the most underappreciated book in English.

Happy for you, user. I'll give it a read for you. It'll be my first by him.

>Dubliners by Joyce
>Company by Beckett
>Das Schloss by Kafka
>the complete poetry of Trakl
>the complete poetry of Camilo Pessanha

not him, but what's the strongest? i usually hear people gushing over siddharta

I hope you enjoy it, user. I'll check out How Green Was My Valley myself.
Steppenwolf, easily.

why this one in particular? I don't remember it standing out.
also +1 more for bunny aeneid

Under the Volcano. It's like Ulysses on easy mode but consistently more satisfying.

It's incredible.

Holy shit yes. I think this was better than the original Dune.

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Wow, what a load of insufferable crap. The parts about cunts are disgusting as well but somehow they seem more honest than this. I'd rather read Bukowski; at least he barfs raw bile instead of pissy philosophy.

If I'm not mistaken there's no english translation to this, is a genuine 10/10 and I'm learning Italian so I can translate it into english. (Read it in spanish originally)

definitely this, it's the only book of his worth reading though

>79 replies
>not pic related yet

lit is sure dying

also this

Favorite book as well user

What's it about? And why does it have the same picture as Capitalism and Schizophrenia?

For me.

Ulysses is 9/10 at best.

okay. make up your case, whats a 10?

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Shit i always brushed this off as a dumb kids book but now i need to read it

the movie adaptation is really good too

I really dig the cover art.

I don't care how much of a meme it's considered around here, this book is a personal 10/10. love the prose, the characters, the plot, the ideas... it's something i can keep coming back to, year after year and still find something new i missed before.

that's not even my favourite cover for it

currently reading it. page ~300

some great parts, some annoying parts, but I am liking it overall

Unironically my favorite book. I think the angsty bullshit is kind of a meme but I think a lot of pseuds can self-identify as they struggle to be a true intellectual in a world of Facebook and instagram and whatever else

jeez, i wonder what Nael has done since then

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reddit alert, sound the autism alarm

Narcissssss und goldstein

Yes, always go for the Dick.

All right. But the same could be said for men.