What are you reading?

[k3mist]

C'est quoi ton travail? prof de littérature?

[bukka]

Ca l'était
Laclos, c'est que du bonheur. Même Sade était jaloux de la réussite des Liaisons dangereuses, au point d'avoir nommé un de ses personnages Valmont dans Les crimes de l'amour, que je te recommande au passage

[k3mist]

ah voila

Il est toujours jouissif de temps à autre de lire un classique car le style est bien différent des livres actuels et le maniement du français bien meilleur.

pas familier avec Sade, lira bientôt. J'ai entendu dire qu'il est tourmenté hahah ou tres libertine eh
je préfère Satre et Marivaux

[rider]

carsick.
john waters

funny, very funny.
if you've ever hitchhiked and even if not.

[zen dog]

While french is in the air, I'll speak up for two of my favorite and illuminating (in terms of what a novel can do) writers in any language- Raymond Queneau and the late Alain Robbe-Grillet.

Unfortunately I have to read them in english and I know just enough french to know I'm missing the richness of their wordplay. For Queneau, "Dogbark" and "Blue and Blue" or whatever variation the translator decides to call them. Some of his advances are common now, but his playfulness is timeless.

You can start anywhere with Robbe-Grillet but don't dismiss his essays "For a New Novel". Its been years since I've read it and a few things still bubble up into my thoughts. I think you can start with any of his work. "Repetition" is a later piece. It involves similar scenes over an over. I remember marveling at his construction. It was if he took about six different scenarios, put each one on a index card and kept shuffling the cards until a novel was formed. Amazing and inspiring for those who want to write and aren't that interested in traditional construction.

[gin soaked boy]

For the German-speaking members:

Just found this work from 1995, titled (translation:)
"Fin de millénaire without dandyism? - Blixa Bargeld as contemporary dandy"

http://www.verzetteln.de/Dandy.pdf

Enjoy!

[rider]

curious how many have switched to tablet reading?
I only buy hard cover when I cherish the book. I read so many that I find for basic "read throughs" its easier to download to my ipad.

[k3mist]

I hate reading anything more than a news article on a screen so I still always buy physical.

[Faust]

curious how many have switched to tablet reading?
I only buy hard cover when I cherish the book. I read so many that I find for basic "read throughs" its easier to download to my ipad.

I've downloaded a couple of books that I know I will only read once and that I had to have on the spot. But mostly physical books anyway.

[Ahimsa]

I've only read the Song of Ice and Fire books on tablet. It's annoying to carry around 1000+ page books. Otherwise almost always physical.
I also get motion sickness from reading in moving vehicles anyway so I usually only read at home, hence making a tablet less desirable.

[malaesthetique]

Reading it currently and its a bit shit. Don't get me wrong, his statistical work is impressive and will no doubt but useful but his conclusions he draws? fuck me.


And he really, really needs to read some Marx

Exactly. Piketty is to Marx as Aristotle is to Newton or Einstein.

[trentk]

This proto-surrealist novel:


And a technical monograph by an eccentric french logician (Jean-Yves Girard) called Locus Solum. (1000x too technical for people who aren't mathematicians/philosophers/computerScientists/physicists .... but the introduction is in plain english if anyone is curious. Some of the entries in the extremely lengthy "a pure waste of paper" appendix (pg87-172) are also in plain english ... and hilarious.)

http://iml.univ-mrs.fr/~girard/0.pdf

Surprisingly, the technical monograph might be the more surreal of the two works.

BSR - what is Girard's reputation like in France?

[gawkrodger]

Exactly. Piketty is to Marx as Aristotle is to Newton or Einstein.

[gawkrodger]

Just about to start on this

[pilgrim]

Foreign Affairs

I just purchased a print subscription (in addition to the digital subscription I had already) of Foreign Affairs. Foreign Affairs is a publication released every 2 months by the Council on Foreign Relations. As some of you may know already, the Council on Foreign Relations is a non-partisan think tank and publisher headquartered in New York.
As a student moving forward with an appreciation of public service, I'm hoping to sharpen and develop a focus and appreciation of a global perspective that is so important to someone who is starting out in their academic career.
The articles are well considered, thoughtful and intelligent and provide a thorough sense of perspective on international problems and goals.