The Literature Thread (Yes, some of us still reed)

[CaptainGinyu]

Over the summer I decided to kick my reading tastes up the arse and read top tier literature almost exclusively:

*Crime and Punishment *Fyodor Dostoevsky
*Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - *James Joyce, currently 150 pages into *Ulysses *
*Lolita - *Vladimir Nabakov
The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon
*A Farewell to Arms *- Ernest Hemmingway

I also read a bunch of short stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald and a ton of other short stories. Watched Hamlet and Waiting For Godot, both god tier. Favourite thing I’ve read this year is probably Dubliners.

Sir you are a trooper, I did not have the mental capacity for Crime and Punishment. I felt sometimes Dostoevsky would write just to write and the main character is Rodia is a Russian Holden Caulfield, a whiny brat whose ego is too big for his own good.

[Smoothjazz101]

Sir you are a trooper, I did not have the mental capacity for Crime and Punishment. I felt sometimes Dostoevsky would write just to write and the main character is Rodia is a Russian Holden Caulfield, a whiny brat whose ego is too big for his own good.

Looking back at it, I couldn’t say much happens in it, but I did really enjoy it. And yes, Rodia is a bit angsty, that’s part of the point.

[Fadedsun303]

I read a lot of Murakami this Summer. *Dance, Dance, Dance, Sputnik Sweetheart *and just finished *Kafka on the Shore. *All awesome books. I won’t have much time to read for pleasure since classes just started up again.

One of my favorite sci fi books is *Shadow and Claw:The Book of the New Sun. *

[goodm0urning]

Sir you are a trooper, I did not have the mental capacity for Crime and Punishment. I felt sometimes Dostoevsky would write just to write and the main character is Rodia is a Russian Holden Caulfield, a whiny brat whose ego is too big for his own good.

Crime & Punishment is a bit much, but it’s a huge influence on roughly 46% of my favorite movies, so I powered through it. JUST BECAUSE.

[Davidstar]

Anyone wanna make 50 bucks by writting an essay for me?

edit: its about a rose for emily

[Havatchu]

Anyone wanna make 50 bucks by writting an essay for me?

edit: its about a rose for emily

Nope…hahahah

[Davidstar]

Nope…hahahah

http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20090923000732/earthbound/images/d/d1/Negative_man.jpg

[DaDesiCanadian]

What does everyone think of the new Les Mis movie being based on the musical? Would anyone like to see a movie based off the actual literature? Maybe an HBO mini series?

[Manx]

Just finished Stephenson’s Reamde last week, I enjoyed it. I don’t really know how to break down and really critique books. Reamde was good though, so many characters all of them were good, some of them were archetypical. But the plot was what kept the book interesting to me, the way the main characters trotted the globe in the most interesting ways was really pretty cool, and the final confrontation just: :tup:

I had Neuromancer out from the library for a month but I couldn’t get to it because Reamde was so thick and I had school stuff goin on.

Thank you for not spoiling it. Totally reading that soon. :tup:
Ever since 1986’s Phantom, Musicals have taken on a life of their own on stage. at least this is what I tend to think. :tup:

[Havatchu]

Just finished Stephenson’s Reamde last week, I enjoyed it. I don’t really know how to break down and really critique books. Reamde was good though, so many characters all of them were good, some of them were archetypical. But the plot was what kept the book interesting to me, the way the main characters trotted the globe in the most interesting ways was really pretty cool, and the final confrontation just: :tup:

I had Neuromancer out from the library for a month but I couldn’t get to it because Reamde was so thick and I had school stuff goin on.

NEUROMANCER

READ IT

[Exodus_1]

Manx, lemme know what you think of it since you[S]r[/S]'re [S]a Stephenson whore [/S]more familiar with Stephenson’s classics. Neuromancer ordered from the library

[Reticently]

Neuromancer is Gibson’s least readable work-- which isn’t to say that it’s not a classic, just that stylistically almost everything else he wrote is smoother reading. (Also, the subgenre he helped define is called cyberpunk; the science fiction genre itself came in to being of course well before Gibson’s heyday.)

Here’s a Gibson short story from around the time of Neuromancer that’s pretty much a must read for any fan: Burning Chrome

Also, if you like William Gibson be sure to check out the work of Bruce Sterling. I’d particularly recommend the short story collections, but if you want a novel to dig into first I’d go with Distraction or Heavy Weather

Stephenson’s science fiction work is generally considered post-cyberpunk. He even gives a kind of back-handed nod to this fact in the beginning of his novel The Diamond Age where the travails of the guy with the gun implanted in his head read as a bit of a light-hearted pastiche of the cyberpunk genre. By the way, if anyone interested hasn’t read it I’d put forward The Diamond Age as Stephenson’s best work, just ahead of Cryptonomicon.

If anyone is looking for a good starting point to becoming more broadly read in science fiction generally, the best starting point I can think of is The Science Fiction Hall of Fame vol 1. Ridiculously good stuff, including the original short story versions of [S]Ender’s Game and[/S] Flowers for Algernon.

Edit- whoops, my bad, just went back through my collection and the Ender’s Game short story isn’t in that volume. THIS IN NO WAY DIMINISHES THE EPIC GOODNESS IN THAT BOOK. Thank you.

[Havatchu]

Neuromancer is Gibson’s least readable work-- which isn’t to say that it’s not a classic, just that stylistically almost everything else he wrote is smoother reading. (Also, the subgenre he helped define is called cyberpunk; the science fiction genre itself came in to being of course well before Gibson’s heyday.)

Here’s a Gibson short story from around the time of Neuromancer that’s pretty much a must read for any fan: Burning Chrome

Also, if you like William Gibson be sure to check out the work of Bruce Sterling. I’d particularly recommend the short story collections, but if you want a novel to dig into first I’d go with Distraction or Heavy Weather

Stephenson’s science fiction work is generally considered post-cyberpunk. He even gives a kind of back-handed nod to this fact in the beginning of his novel The Diamond Age where the travails of the guy with the gun implanted in his head read as a bit of a light-hearted pastiche of the cyberpunk genre. By the way, if anyone interested hasn’t read it I’d put forward The Diamond Age as Stephenson’s best work, just ahead of Cryptonomicon.

If anyone is looking for a good starting point to becoming more broadly read in science fiction generally, the best starting point I can think of is The Science Fiction Hall of Fame vol 1. Ridiculously good stuff, including the original short story versions of [S]Ender’s Game and[/S] Flowers for Algernon.

Edit- whoops, my bad, just went back through my collection and the Ender’s Game short story isn’t in that volume. THIS IN NO WAY DIMINISHES THE EPIC GOODNESS IN THAT BOOK. Thank you.

Him and Sterling also co-oped a book called The Difference Engine, which apparently inspired alot of Steampunk?

Only got like halfway through that one.

[Reticently]

Him and Sterling also co-oped a book called The Difference Engine, which apparently inspired alot of Steampunk?

Only got like halfway through that one.

I read that back around when it first went to paperback in the mid-nineties. I don’t remember it terribly well, except I recall my impression that the story’s setting was rather more interesting than its plot.

I think the literary roots of what we’d consider steampunk were already established before The Difference Engine came out, but I do think the popularization of the term ‘steampunk’, which came about as a derivation of the term ‘cyberpunk’, owes a lot to that novel.

[HoneyBBQGrundle]

My new project is City of God by St. Augustine. I’m not religious but since it’s so influential I’m giving it a shot. So far it has been about 100 pages of begging the question (in the logical sense). He had some funny things to say about rape victims. Been raped? You might have been too proud and this will humble you. You weren’t proud? Well, maybe you would have become proud, and now you won’t. Besides-and this is the airtight, unbeatable argument-God works in mysterious ways. I’m not even misrepresenting this either…

As far as good books, I really like Studs Terkel’s oral histories. Hard Times, “The Good War”, and Working were all good reads. A good companion to any Western WWII history book is Japan at War: An Oral History. These particular Japanese people don’t hold anything back. Brutally honest.

[BEWD]

For those who are aiming to read Atlas Shrugged, ignore the guy who recommended that. It’s way longer than it needs to be, and you can get most of the point from reading the much shorter novella by her, Anthem

[Losha]

Currently reading The Island of Dr. Moreau, and some book on engineering.
Both are pretty cool I guess… I just sort of got the former 'cause I went to Wells in a library spontaneously.

[HeaT]

Crime & Punishment is a bit much, but it’s a huge influence on roughly 46% of my favorite movies, so I powered through it. JUST BECAUSE.

my issue with Dos (and other authors who do the same) is that he should just be writing essays about his beliefs/philosophy instead of passing it off as a…novel? literature? at times i just feel like i am reading your philosophical views out of my moral philosophy textbook which is a compilation of essays. truly great authors blend their ideas into the writing itself rather than have a character do a 5 page monologue on what’s good. NAW MEAN. just saying.

btw. i cant stand charles dickens. random thought.

im outi

Roberth

[Matriarch]

I think Lord of the Flies is a pretty good reflection of the internet.

[Manx]

Sucks to your ass-mar, Piggy!

my issue with Dos (and other authors who do the same) is that he should just be writing essays about his beliefs/philosophy instead of passing it off as a…novel? literature? at times i just feel like i am reading your philosophical views out of my moral philosophy textbook which is a compilation of essays. truly great authors blend their ideas into the writing itself rather than have a character do a 5 page monologue on what’s good. NAW MEAN. just saying.

btw. i cant stand charles dickens. random thought.

im outi

Different eras. Back then there wasn’t any venue to air your opinions like there is now. We have blogs and sites and forums and youtube and facebook and protests and the evening news and everything else. Back then, write a book. People actually expected you to have a ‘point’ when you wrote. Of course, that doesn’t mean that there wasn’t the usual drivel being produced just as there still is now.

Also, why the hate on Dickens? About 90% of the time I hear people hate on Dickens, they hate on him for some bullshit reasons such as him being too windy and descriptive. His descriptions were really well done. They tied character to scene really well, which is important to the period in which your audience hasn’t seen half of the shit you’re talking about and therefore can’t visualize it. He’s a master of making his descriptions highly relevant, even if they can honestly be a minor chore to read today, and then get right back to the point with real profoundness that drills home his theme. People try to call Dickens out on being off-topic with superfluously floral descriptions, when in fact the exact opposite could perhaps more easily be claimed. :tup: