What are you reading?

[Faust]

Speaking of both the Nobel Prize in Literature, and favorite books, I picked up One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez again, yesterday.

To say that this is the best work of the 20th Century is not an exaggeration. Marquez won the Nobel Prize for Literature for this book, alone, really, and proved he deserved it with every other book he wrote.

Others that you have to read are Love in the Time of Cholera and Strange Pilgrims, a collection of short stories. A professor gave me Strange Pilgrims when I graduated with my M.A. in British and American Literature. She inscribed it, "All I had you read are dead white men...I think you'll like this." It's unbelievable.

I was very sad when Marquez passed away. He's truly the best writer with whom we were lucky enough to share the planet for a time.

And, yes, I have read this florid, over-hyped book that college freshmen keep invoking when they want to sound intellectual. And you better delete that statement about Kafka before you embarrass yourself even more. What are you going to pronounce next, that Murakami is the best author of the 21st Century?

You know, most of the members who have left are emotionally unbalanced egotists. You sound like one of them. Let me satisfy your lust for self-victimization and self-importance - yes, we all sit around at night talking in private Facebook groups about how to make your life miserable. That's how important you are! Happy?!

If you want to leave, leave. No one is holding your hand. But keep trying to slam the door by throwing e-tantrums, and you will leave.

[Arkady]

Jesus Christ get over yourselves.

Aren't you the one who made a dozen posts in support of elitism for the sake of elitism? This shit almost writes itself. Didn't even know what century the book was written in which is why I say "almost."

[Defender]

Not everything needs to be a fight. You don't have to be right about everything. People can slip up and misspeak. That's how the world works.

You don't need to bore into every chink in the armor of what people say until they can't take it anymore.

When I post things here, I just do it on a whim, with very little forethought, on breaks in my office. If I exaggerate or make mistakes it's because it's just not a big deal...not because I'm a fucking moron and a bad lawyer and unintelligent and I should just leave if I don't want to write a well-prepared essay each time I make a remark.

There is an unbridgeable gap between myself and many of the posters on this forum, and I don't know the causes, but people here generally need to just chill the fuck out.

[Arkady]

Yeah but when you say someone is the unequivocal best author of the wrong century the gap widens by default -- people have a hard time taking anything you say seriously after shit like that.

[Defender]

The gap is the difference between recognizing that people make mistakes and slips of the "tongue"/keys, and thinking it means they're dumb. A reasonable person might point out that I accidentally typed the wrong century...an unreasonable person would think that I really didn't know what century it was in and bring it up twice as a justification for writing me off entirely.

That's literally the gap between a regular person having a conversation who jokes off slip ups, and an insufferable self-important twit who thinks everything should be perfect.

[Arkady]

Not gonna shit this lovely thread up further by indulging you asking strangers on the internet for the benefit of their doubt.

[GucciAmen]

Time to restore this place to its former glory...

The Stranger - Camus

- Illustrates the height of humanistic absurdity in so few words

The Crying of Lot 49 - Pynchon

- I think I'm going to have to read this one again...

The Centaur - Updike (found this novel in Norwegian Wood - Murakami)

- "It must be terrible to know so much."

A pause.

"It is," my father said. "It's hell."

Illuminations - Rimbaud (thanks Faust)

- Phantasmagorical musings that could only be conceived by an adolescent enamoured with the nonsensical; shame he stopped writing poetry at such a young age

Atrocity Exhibition - JG Ballard (found it through Ian Curtis' last album)

- Still reading

[nathaliew817]

@Jtothewhat I'm reading Kim Young-Ha's I have the right to destroy myself

It was exactly what I'm looking for. Thanks for this, I like this more than Murakami, and I feel it has been written more thoughtfully. This is the only the second time that I'm keeping quotes from a book.

I'm going to read his short stories after this. Thank you for this suggestion.


On another note, haven't read many books (haven't read little too), but it's very good to see book titles dropped. Even when it's a heated discussion, that means you're passionate about it, so I'm definitely picking up the books you all you mentioned.


Also, a friend mentioned a Japanese nobel prize winner that wrote in a very detached or vague way, in the sense that it's hard to image where and in what time the story is happening. Is it Kenzaburō Ōe? And has anyone read a book from him?

[Faust]

I am pretty sure it is, though I have not read anything by him. He's on the list, but pretty far down...

So far unimpressed with Purity, but only 150 pages in. Full verdict when I finish.

[Fuuma]

20th maybe?
sounds like a bold statement though. have you read all proust, faulkner, joyce, musil and kafka?

You forgot Alexandre Jardin.

Garcia Marquez is great for the small, surreal moments, like the passage in Chronicle of a Death Foretold where the main protagonist, who was just fatally stabbed, picks up his intestines from the floor and dusts them off.

[radio-aktivität]

@Jtothewhat
Also, a friend mentioned a Japanese nobel prize winner that wrote in a very detached or vague way, in the sense that it's hard to image where and in what time the story is happening. Is it Kenzaburō Ōe? And has anyone read a book from him?

His description sounds like Oe completely.

Yep, one or two short novels. I found him a bit hard to approach. Can’t tell precisely why, I don’t fear books usually. He describes very detailed, but in a somewhat intentional (and, imho, unnecessary) weird syntax. The books were very slow.

That might be different in the original version or other translations though.

[deltapie]

Trying to brush up on Eastern philosophy (haven't really been exposed to it much at all) anybody have some recommendations? Just finished reading the Tao Te Ching also.

[okayvin]

https://tent1000.stores.jp/items/50a4b19356ea702927000232

[limorr]

"The Informers" & "Less Than Zero" By Bret Easton Ellis

Trying to read as much work from Ellis as possible at the moment, my life has lacked literature and I think anything shall work at this point in trying to become more cultured in all the writing the world has to offer.

[t3hg0suazn]

I finally finished Proust vol. 3. I must say I enjoyed it significantly less than the first two. There were still some really great passages, but I felt I was not the audience for much of the anecdotes of high society (I also probably should have wikipedia'd Dreyfus much earlier). Less of his philosophical views came through, and snippets of bourgeois life are not super exciting.

Has anyone else had similar sentiments / does it change in vol. 4? I'll take a break and read some Houellebecq anyways, but I'm wondering if I should stay patient and start vol. 4 eventually.