Deluoode's very own /lit/

[alix]

We already have various currently [x] threads so I guess that it would be good to have one for non-manga reading.

I've had a good reading streak these last years myself (finishing Gravity's Rainbow is probably one of the biggest achievements of my life) and soon I'll try to get my own novel going after several failed attempts. Right now I've just finished Hesse's Siddharta (really good book), and a reread of Cyberia is coming soon alongside a rewatch of Serial Experiments Lain. I'd also like to find some iyashikei-like novels but so far the closest I've got to it was some Hemmingway.


Current 3x3:

[Maypews]

I've got a bit of an odd relationship with traditional literature. I like reading quite a bit, part of why I like forums so much in fact is cause it gives me a chance to read other people's longform thoughts. In my younger years I always very much enjoyed reading books, but I kind of fell out of it later on and pretty much haven't touched anything since outside of visual novels.

Interested in getting back into it, I did get an e-reader recently but I haven't read much on it yet. Just the Welcome to the NHK novel and two non-fiction American history books. Got any fiction recs for someone who hasn't read a proper Western novel since high school?

[alix]

I've got a bit of an odd relationship with traditional literature. I like reading quite a bit, part of why I like forums so much in fact is cause it gives me a chance to read other people's longform thoughts. In my younger years I always very much enjoyed reading books, but I kind of fell out of it later on and pretty much haven't touched anything since outside of visual novels.

Interested in getting back into it, I did get an e-reader recently but I haven't read much on it yet. Just the Welcome to the NHK novel and two non-fiction American history books. Got any fiction recs for someone who hasn't read a proper Western novel since high school?

I'm not the best person to give starting book recs, since the first "classic/acclaimed" novel I read was none other than Crime & Punishment, having no idea it was far from a starter novel (except in Russia). But it helped a lot in growing my literary acumen, so if you have the time and the motivation to do so it could be a great read. Plus, people who only read AO3 before are also reading it (thanks to Bungo Stray Dogs), so if they can do it you also can.

If not Dostoyevsky then I guess Hemmingway is probably the closest to the category of "accesible" literature. If not, some of Murakami's works also fit the bill (Kafka On The Shore is obviously my personal favorite, Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Norwegian Wood are also good). Huxley and Lovecraft also fit the bill.

Though now that I think of it, a really good choice would be A Confederacy of Dunces. It's both very well-written and funny, and the setting and message of the book are pretty close to home and important on today's world (philosophically-involved proto-lolcow who has tons of surface knowledge about intellectual topics yet no idea about living his life, and the New Orleans citizens surrounding him who are actually just as or even more stupid). The descriptions of New Orleans on the city are also some of the best city depictions out there, it's no mystery that the city loves the book so much.

[rancher]

I'm taking a break from reading while I play Metal Gear Solid 3 but can I recommend William Faulkner to anyone and everyone? Experimental writing styles and he takes a look at the (American) South post-confederacy. His prose is brilliant, comedic, and tragic. Not easy reading but it would probably make some Yanks more sympathetic to what the South went through.

@alix so I've read every book in your 3x3 and liked most of them. And I have a funny anecdote to share about Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience." During COVID-19 lock down I changed cities to a suburb of Seattle WA USA and found myself joining an "anarchist" reading group in my new city. I proposed we read C.D. and was shot down by the group because it was a book written by a white man. (interestingly the group was 100% white people in their 20s and 30s). It's a work relevant now as ever, but that incident simply shocked me. lol

My most recent reads were Don Quixote, an abridged version of the Mahabharata, and Wealth of Nations. They were books I picked up before my vacation to Thailand in February and they were all good reads. Don Quixote was the most fun and has definitely held up. Now that I am running a new reading group in rural Indonesia, they have elected we read 1984 together next. I probably last read 1984 when I was a teenager in between middle school and high school so I wonder how it'll be revisiting it.

Our reading group worked through Dostoevsky, Camus, and Kafka last, and they loved it all; if you're in the mood for a somewhat bleak but powerful work I strongly recommend Kobo Abe's "Suna no Onna" / "Woman in the Dunes" (1962, 240pp) which was also successfully turned into one of the greatest films of all time, and you can find the film on archive.org (1964, 146 minutes):

[Amlux]

Our reading group worked through Dostoevsky, Camus, and Kafka last, and they loved it all; if you're in the mood for a somewhat bleak but powerful work I strongly recommend Kobo Abe's "Suna no Onna" / "Woman in the Dunes" (1962, 240pp) which was also successfully turned into one of the greatest films of all time, and you can find the film on archive.org (1964, 146 minutes):

Woman in the Dunes is one of the best films ever. But you shouldn't sleep on Teshigahara's other adaptation of Abe, The Face of Another. Along with it is Pitfall, which is very underrated and had a screenplay written by Abe. I find these films so connected with Abe Koubou that it is hard to disentangle the two styles. I saw the films first but Abe went on to become one of my favorite novelists ever. I think his later novel Secret Rendezvous would have been an excellent Teshigahara film that never was. Its hospital setting would suit that clinical, high-contrast monochrome cinematography so well. But my two favorite Abe books are The Box Man and Kangaroo Notebook, neither of which I can ever imagine adapting to a movie because they are so strange.

[rancher]

Just read Pale Fire last week.

Oh man, it's a great book. You should just start reading it with zero spoilers:

https://freebeerextremist.com/notice/B6zPaZraj67QrUCTB2

read it blind and in order : fictional "forward", fictional "poem", fictional "footnotes"
then, optionally, read it again

I was not a huge fan of the poem to begin with but this is an actual 5/5 work. Sneaky but easy.

[rancher]

It came up during our chat on Giko in the context of Southern Pride but I recommend reading works by William Faulkner, especially

The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying

[RadioHades]

What is /lit/, though? What defines it? Currently reading Moby Dick, I guess it counts? Likewise for Hermann Hesse's stuff.

Otherwise, I've always been more partial to "pop" authors like Verne or Wells. Can the least cheesy SF or fantasy be /lit/?


PS: good of you to mention Standard Ebooks, an heroic endeavour that deserves our money; I've donated to it and I'm quite stingy, only Gentoo/OpenBSD get my money otherwise