What are you reading?

[Classique]

Regarding, Camus; The Stranger as a popular novel on existentialism has a similar fault, to countless other works misunderstood by novices, on the matter.

For example...

- Kobo Abe 'Woman In The Dunes' [Book / Film]

And to some extent...

- Antonioni 'Blow up'

The fault is, these works superficially or graphically illustrate the concept of existentialism through actions or scenarios as oppose to profound: Dialogue or philosophical discourse.

So you have to be acquainted with: Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre... As philosophical icons to understand why such a simple novel or film is so effective.

I suggest you watch Godards' "Breathless" which is more coherent as a quality narrative.

And, if the basic, dumbed-down, implication that life is pointless and everyone lives the same life; Where only the details change, does not appeal to you...

Existentialism is not for you.

[gone]

I just finished Kafka's The Trial in norwegian for the second time. I don't know german (hence reading the translation). It was a good translation, trying to keep the language "germanesque" despite the significant grammatical differences between german and norwegian.

Now I'm going to read The Castle.

[nadir]

Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged is life-changing.

Has anyone read a good english translation of Bernard Schlink's "Liebesfluchten" (flights of love)? I've read the German countless times but can't find a good English version for friends to read.

[Faust]

Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged is life-changing.

Has anyone read a good english translation of Bernard Schlink's "Liebesfluchten" (flights of love)? I've read the German countless times but can't find a good English version for friends to read.

Does it change you into a soulless Republican?

[Nemesis_4]

Has anyone read- Serious Pleasures: The Life of Stephen Tennant? Was recommended to me by a friend, she absolutley loved it

[Mail-Moth]

Fred Deux / Jean Douassot's La Gana.

Quite the crazy book. It is a novel, mainly autobiographical, written by Fred Deux - an autodidact painter - in his early thirties.

As a kid he grows up in the basement of a parisian building where his parents serve as caretakers. The boy's uncle lives under the roofs.

His grandmother pees standing on her legs.
His mother spits buckets of blood on a regular basis.
His father steals tools at the factory just to trow them in the Seine ; he drinks with the uncle, his younger brother, who does nothing special in his life except nailing the married woman of the 2nd floor, pretending to be a professional banjo player (which may or may not be a lie, since the boy loves to hear him play) and taking care of an heavily epileptic friend he's the only one able to communicate with.

The kid is as mad as needed when growing up in a small flat under the ground with a manhole in its middle and the soiled water plashing under the cast iron. He dreams of floods continuously, loves and hates almost everyone alternatively, witnesses the horror along with the comedy, in a neverending state of feverish amazement ; sometimes he bursts in obscenities, or tears, or roars of primitive joy. He's not a ten years old kid - he looks in fact much, much younger.

The whole thing is written in a clumsy, raw style I've never read anywhere else before. Definitely not the work of a professional writer. Rather like an hypersensitive being digging its way through layers and layers of unfamiliar words, hastily learning to speak the common tongue in an urge to say that the whole thing was true - his dreams, and the craziness he came from.

[rallen]

Tom McCarthy's Remainder. I am on page 94 of 284 and pleased that it has gotten off to a good start. I find it a solid, absorbing story and am interested in where it's going from here. Next on the list is Lars Iyer's Spurious.

[andrew]

Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged is life-changing.

I read this faily recently as it is a friend favourite book. I would describe it as among the worst things i have ever read, there was a program (vaguely) on her on the bbc recently and it just cemented my dislike.

I've read alot of books recently that i've been meaning to read for a while and have been getting dissappointed alot but i dont think i'm a very literary person so maybe that the problem: Slaughterhouse 5, American Psycho, Frankenstein, all books that i wouldn't recommend to anyone.
I did however enjoy Orlando which i read recently so its not all bad.

[Faust]

I read this faily recently as it is a friend favourite book. I would describe it as among the worst things i have ever read, there was a program (vaguely) on her on the bbc recently and it just cemented my dislike.
.

Thank you.

[Icarium]

China Mieville's Embassytown. Kinda fantasy, kinda sci-fi, but doesn't really tickle the same spots for me that either does. I think his genre is described as "New Weird." That fits. Much more weird than a lot of his other books. This is Jeff VanderMeer weird.

Explores some interesting concepts related to language/thought.

[trentk]

Has anyone read- Serious Pleasures: The Life of Stephen Tennant? Was recommended to me by a friend, she absolutley loved it

Rick Owens has.

[MJRH]

Mr. Palomar by Italo Calvino

Relevant to this thread:

A person's life consists of a collection of events, the last of which could also change the meaning of the whole, not because it counts more than the previous ones but because once they are included in a life, events are arranged in an order that is not chronological but, rather, corresponds to an inner architecture. A person, for example, reads in adulthood a book that is important for him, and it makes him say, "How could I have lived without having read it!," and also, "What a pity I did not read it in my youth!" Well, these statements do not have much meaning, especially the second, because after he has read that book, his whole life becomes the life of a person who has read that book, and it is of little importance whether he read it early or late, because now his life before that reading also assumes a form shaped by that reading.

[Philipppp]

You are like the mollusc in chilly ponds
where sunbeams never get.
She never creeps out from her shell,
her prison she cannot forget,
she can only hide
her deepest essence
and dream of exploits great
among the waterweed,
but never wholly
and undividedly
empty herself into word or deed.

With irony your speech full spills.
You try to cover
with pretended cold
life's warmth that inside dwells.
But your voice trembles,
is strangely weak,
A blush hovers
behind each pale cheek.
A sea of fire burns
in a secret place
that no one knows,
no one can trace.

You are too frail and too weak and tame
for all the discords that sever:
to wear armour you must endeavour
in life's hard-handed game.
You are like the mollusc in chilly ponds
that never creeps out of her shell,
so unattainable,
so incomprehensible,
that no one will near you, ever.

- Karin Boye

Apart from Boye which I recommend, I also read "Le passage de la nuit" by Murakami and "Wuthering Heights"...

[viv1984viv]

I read this faily recently as it is a friend favourite book. I would describe it as among the worst things i have ever read, there was a program (vaguely) on her on the bbc recently and it just cemented my dislike.

I've read alot of books recently that i've been meaning to read for a while and have been getting dissappointed alot but i dont think i'm a very literary person so maybe that the problem: Slaughterhouse 5, American Psycho, Frankenstein, all books that i wouldn't recommend to anyone.
I did however enjoy Orlando which i read recently so its not all bad.

Your talking about the Adam Curtis documentary 'all watched over by machines of love and grace' right? ....and how she influenced alan greenspans economic paradigm..... tenuous link if you ask me, bear in mind each Curtis doc starts with "this is a story about".... anyhow, can't I've ever read rand or even wish too.

anyone get through Pale King? I've sort of put if down.

[galia]

Currently reading Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation by Deleuze

It's really incredibly interesting, and not at all arid like I was afrait it would be. Recommended to all Bacon fans