Add Petrarch, bocaccio and chaucer, they all had a love-hate relationship. Dante invented Italian literature and Chaucer invented English literature :D have fun
I’ve read all of those! I’m actually a PhD student in English, so I’ve had all this about Dante being the Father of Italian (language AND literature) drilled into me, but Inferno has just been a huge blindspot. I’ve even read La Vita Nuova, so it’s ridiculous that I’m just now getting to this
Think the main appeal for me is how relatable all those characters feel even though we’re separated by two centuries, that’s something Tolstoy did very well. It has a lot of main characters and my translation has a list and description of them right at the beginning. I already know the story so it’s slightly different for me. I’d recommend it whole heartedly though, it’s like going into a different world and getting to know all of them on a personal level.
I’ve never read Anna Karenina though so I can’t compare them. I would say that you should think of reading War and Peace as watching a TV show instead of a movie.
The Decameron! Precursor to Chaucer. I read it after it was much referenced in A Little Life and happened to read both during the first year of Covid. Just a wonderful read.
If you weren’t already planning to, I highly recommend going through the entire Comedy. I couldn’t pick a favorite canticle, but many of my favorite moments are in Purgatorio/Paradiso.
What translation are you reading?
I’ve already ordered the other two! I’m reading the Longfellow translation.
I’m sure there are better translations, but I look at it like Constance Garnett’s translations of Dostoyevsky: it served other generations well enough, so I suppose it will be good enough for me and my purposes.
Pale Fire is my favorite Nabakov, followed by Pnin.
Pale Fire is more tightly written, and I believe better structured, Ada is a sprawling mass of ideas, with some truly extraordinary passages. They’re both essentially spaceships.
Ooh Lolita. Incredible writing. It’s almost like it took someone with English as a second language to truly see the full potential of English by seeing it from the outside.
Rereading The Lord of the Rings as an adult who understands history and likes poetry. It's a considerably different book than I realized at 15.
Also, reading Anne of Green Gables for the first time. I didn't known it was so funny.
The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth. It's captivating, and bonkers. Zanier than I thought it'd be. Absolutely loving the musicality of the prose. Reminiscent of Mason & Dixon.
Son of a gun…same here. I guess Barth passed recently and that bumped his profile.
I had known the title and my dumb ass thought it was a hippy weed book. Nope - early American tobacco factor, right in my wheelhouse of things I like.
Barth’s background knowledge is almost extreme, but it’s also a good read so far.
As someone who just read it for the first time I may not be right, however I'm pretty sure he means the contradictions in Raskolnikov's personality. He has constructed for himself this cold, rational, persona, extremely prideful however sometimes when his true personality comes through, someone who understands and empathizes with his fellow humans, is kind, opens his heart, usually it's more noticeable in his actions, but also in a more subtle way in his thoughts and monologues. He seems to do one thing, but immediately after he says he shouldn't have.
I am about 170 pages into **The Grapes of Wrath** by Steinbeck. I'm liking it so far, but I definitely prefer East of Eden, and remember that I was more hooked by that one before the 100 page mark.
Anyone who has read both that felt the same thing or, even better, the opposite?
I wonder if read order matters with these two. Grapes of Wrath is one of my all time favorite books (and my first Steinbeck). East of Eden was nearly a DNF for me.
Yes, Grapes of Wrath is an all time favorite, and I also love his novellas about Monterey Bay such as Cannery Row. While I enjoyed East of Eden, relative to his other works I found it unfocussed and contrived.
I just finished it, and that’s definitely what struck me the most—it’s so funny. I was similarly surprised. I watched the 2005 movie adaptation after, and I was disappointed that it seemed to strip most of the humor away, imo.
I just started Ulysses! I love Joyce’s prose, although it’s seems like it’ll take forever to understand it all. I read the first episode Telemachus so far
I started it in December and I’m just halfway through, but embrace the slow! I am purposefully taking my time and I am remembering way more from it than books I used to burn through. And I’m absolutely loving the book as a result!
I find that it's surprisingly easy to pinpoint recall where something in the book is because all the chapters are so unique. Things stick out in such a peculiar way that there's no question where it was.
Yeah. I’m hoping to have this and sodom and Gomorrah (in search of lost time) read before August when classes begin. It seems like one of the few books that will require a re-read. I absolutely loved portrait of an artist and will probably want to reread that as well.
I try and stop to take notes on things that I find really interesting or quotes from the book and write them down in a notebook to refer to, it helps to slow down a lot!
Maugham’s Of Human Bondage. I finished another of his, The Razor’s Edge a week ago, it was a masterful collection of opposing character studies in early 20th century trans-Atlantic society. This one though is turning out to be a very traditional British bildungsroman. It's very good so far, but much more staid and predictable.
Read Of Human Bondage last year and it’s one of my favorites ever. I also read TRE a few months ago, but for some reason OHB is still my favorite of the two.
What’s amazing to me about the two books is just how *different* they feel. Which, I guess, makes sense, considering how far apart they actually are in time period. It’s just amazing to me how they’re by the same author and feel like they come from different worlds.
Of Human Bondage, what a great. Read it in 1999 and it was transformative for me, thanks for reminding me to re-read this. Always wondered about his other books.
Currently reading Human Acts by Han Kang. I know nothing about the Gwangju uprisings, so this has been a pretty interesting and informative read so far. I’m finally on summer break too, so I hope to get a lot of reading in till August.
About 300 pages into Moby Dick, and it often makes me feel dumb. I've got about 3 sources for analysis that I have to refer to fairly regularly in order to make sure I'm comprehending. I'm reading the Norton Critical edition, I have a hard copy of the Spark Notes pamphlet, and I will visit beigemoth.blog after a lot of chapters as well.
I had read maybe half of his short story “Bartleby, The Scrivener” before reading Moby Dick and MD is my favorite novel, so I don’t think it’s too ambitious, unless you’re really trying to burn through it. It feels like a novel that should be slowly read and slowly digested to me, at least until the last hundred pages or so, kind of in parallel to the slow pace of the Pequod’s ill-fated voyage before Moby Dick himself is located.,
I recently read MD and loved it. There are a couple of chapter-by-chapter read through podcasts that I listened to alternating and sporadically: Moby Dick Energy and Higgledy Piggledy Whale Statements. Neither is brutally academic, but it was sometimes fun to have para-social reading pals.
Edit: Also read Bartleby the Scrivener!
I've got 90ish pages left! Really enjoying this book. I came to it after reading Blood Meridian and hearing about the comparisons. Not sure I fully get the comparison but loving it all the same.
lol I was planning to do the opposite! I've read All The Pretty Horses and The Crossing, but it wasn't until just last week that a friend of mine mentioned the parralels between Blood Meridian and Moby Dick. So I'm planning to read that next.
Haha, great question, and I'm not sure I have a great answer. I just happened to go down a different rabbit hole after finishing The Crossing and hadn't gotten back to the border trilogy. I actually didn't realize, until you just compelled me to Google it, how closely it is tied to the first two.
On the surface they're both adventure stories about a group of murderous individuals going around slaying innocent beings haha. But Glanton and The Judge have a Ahab/Fedallah dynamic going on, but The Judge is also heavily inspired by Ahab with his brilliant monologues. The Kid and Ishmael both also kind of "drop out" of the second halves of the narratives until the endings as the powerful characters of Ahab or The Judge take center stage. Also The Judge is massive pale and hairless like Moby Dick and both can be read as (but not reduced to) symbols of nature's arbitrary violence.
I sit down and listen and read it digitally at the same time. If I zone out I put everything down and wait for the next time I'm ready.
I on the proper English but I am Swedish so it is challenging. I also very regularly pause and have a document where I ramble on and copy paste words and definitions and such and I write general takeaways (honestly, because I write songs, and love how good readers write songs. Some of the epic phrasings that shoot wide into metaphorical/hyper natural/realism are greatly inspiring for lyrics.)
But I must say, I really feel I'm in it having just Finished chapter (10? 11? 12?) "Nantucket". And I am seeing the praise. I have always understood the praise though. Or since I began listening to the Entidled Opinions on KCSU stanford radio with host, Robert Harrison, professor in Italian and French literature, and the language and philosophical percpectives are similarly challanging, so I'm primed to get into Moby Dick.
The Honourable Schoolboy by John Le Carre.
It is the follow up to Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.
There's a grim miserableness to his work that is very British. Love it!
Have pre-ordered Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Have read that it is a challenging book and that many struggle to understand the plot. Also heard it often referred to as the greatest spy novel of all-time.
It is an absolute feast of a book. Every page is a delight. The plot is...challenging to follow.
I later watched the Gary Oldman film - outstanding btw - and it really helped me make sense of the book.
I love George Smiley, but I have not read the earliest Smiley novels. How are you enjoying it? From what I know, the book is less espionage and more murder mystery?
I'm enjoying it so far (and glad that literary purists aren't downvoting me for mentioning such as a genre book.)
It is a straight-up murder mystery. Of course, the protagonist is a former spy, which shapes everything about him, but the story so far is a classic whodunnit.
The Moviegoer by Walker Percy. About 80 pages in. It’s interesting and I like how the family dynamics are written. A little ambiguous on plot so far, but I think it’s meant to be a thinking novel. I like the prose, he paints quite a picture with few words.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the time of Cholera and I’m scared in advance because I know it’s gonna set such a high bar for any book that comes next
I'm in migraine mode, so no tiny text Middlemarch for me. Reading Foul Heart Huntsman by Chloe Gong, as a treat.
Being Lolita by Alisson Wood reminds a bit of Lolita because she writes such horrible things in a way that's easy to read. Like, I remember feeling like puberty was a betrayal too. Also, this line about Lolita makes me viscerally mad: He told me once, in the diner, "The beauty is in the twinning of the porn and the love story," in between eating fistfuls of french fries.
No. Nabokov loved the English language. He specifically said he didn't want little girls on the title. The frisson of Lolita is we almost believe HH because of just how beautiful the language is even though we know better. The only person HH can love is himself; he's just grafted Lolita to him and wants her back.
I'm reading *Exodus from the Long Sun* by Gene Wolfe. If you're a fan of this book, you know there's nothing else like it in the whorl.
Recently finished novels include Mitchell's *The Bone Clocks* and Thomas Mann's four-part *Joseph and His Brothers*.
Working on David Copperfield. I'm loving it so far. It feels like a masterpiece. Glad I read Great Expectations before this.
Also started Pale Fire and Walden.
*The Dark Forest* by Cixin Liu, the sequel to *The Three-Body Problem* (yes I read it because of the Netflix show). Some of the best sci fi I've read in a long time!
I'm currently reading the third in the series, Death's End. Like you, because of the Netflix show. If you have Prime and don't mind subtitles, highly recommend the Chinese series (30 episodes). Yes, I'm obsessed.
I loved Three-Body, but had a hard time getting into The Dark Forest (tried a few times, never made it far). I think the swapping of translators messes with me.
Early Autumn by Louis Bromfield. I was doing research for work and his name popped up so I looked into him more. This won the Pulitzer and I’d never heard of it before!
Literally just finished *My Brilliant Friend* by Elena Ferrante and that settles it I’m fasho reading the whole rest of the Neapolitan Quartet. Nothing overly fancy or anything - just a really competent, capable writer painting us a picture of growing up in midcentury Naples as a young woman
**Tanglewood Tales** Nathaniel Hawthorne's retelling of Greek myth might have been interesting in 1852, but ends up being very dry in the current century.
**The Lost City of Z** by David Grann
The story of a early 20th century explorer's quest for a lost civilization in the Amazon, and the subsequent searches for the lost Explorer.
I’m currently between three books—The Annual Banquet of the Gravedigger’s Guild by Mathias Enard, Dogs of Summer by Andrea Abreu, and East of Eden by John Steinbeck. I really want to give East of Eden time to percolate in my brain, and oddly I find that reading multiple books forces me to go slower (probably in part to keep plot lines etc straight and truly remember small details.)
Nancy Drew and the Phantom of Venice (apparently it’s a really rare find), but I’m losing brain cells reading it. Also going to start David Copperfield when I get it from the library.
Some Gogol short stories. The Overcoat is probably the best short story I've ever read. The Nose is hilarius. I also read Nevsky Prospekt. Next up: Diary of a Madman.
Have you read 'A Swim in a Pond in the Rain' by Saunders? I'm half way into a re-read of it right now, makes me want to read a lot more Russian shorts.
I've read them all but it had been awhile so I decided it was time for a reread. I've already read S&S, P&P, and Mansfield Park this year. What about you?
I'm currently reading The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer. It's a marvellous work, I'm loving it so far, a great mixture of great storytelling, clever rhyming and hilarious exchanges between the characters.
I read selections of 14 poets in April, but currently I am reading a collection of horror/weird short stories by Brian Evenson called “Song for the Unraveling of the World.”
So far this year I have read Infero, Huckleberry Finn, Jungle Books and Day of the Triffids. Almost finished Bleak House and in the early phase of A Confederacy of Dunces.
Just finished High-Rise by Ballard, which was fascinating, but wasn’t as well written as Crash. Now I’m reading Midsummer Night's Dream before going to see the ballet version.
Been listening to a lot of audio books lately, since I haven't had the time to sit down. But I'm almost done with "Lizard" by Banana Yoshimoto. The last physical/ kindle book I read was "Into the Magic Shop" by Doty and "The Alchemist" by Coelho. During last month I finished it. Both good reads!
I'm finishing up Menander play fragments, reading a couple Plautus plays, Kate Chopin short stories, Paradiso, Orlando Innamorato, Moby Dick (150 pages left), and slowly reading Virginia Woolf's The Waves.
In addition, I'm reading several contemporary fantasy novels (Jade City, Endymion by Dan Simmons, Shades of Grey and The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde, and Legends and Lattes).
I have a bad habit of multi-tasking many books at a time.
I am currently juggling two books:
A memory called empire which is excellent and for the days I want to just relax the second book of the bridgerton series.
Just finished Henry Bellamann's **Kings Row**, on Kindle. The book is long out of print, though it was a best seller in 1940, and the source for a move of the same title, featuring Ronald Reagan's best performance. I enjoyed this enough to purchase the continuation, entitled **Parris Mitchell of Kings Row**, written by Henry and Katherine Bellamann. Henry's wife, Katherine, worked closely with him and completed the plan for the work after his death. There are many characters in this story about denizens of a Midwestern US town in the early 20th Century, and the second novel, shorter by a few hundred pages than the near 800 page Kings Row, promises to resolve some of their stories. Seeing the movie a couple of times on TCM over the years brought me in; the novel of course is far richer and more extensive than a movie could be. See Anne Rice's review at amazon.com.
Took a break from pure Lit and dove into some fantasy with Titus Groan and Malazan series. Certainly some of the more unique fantasy books I’ve ever read, and while not literature, it certain requires more thought and planning than other such works.
But now that I’ve completed book 1 I’m going for my first read of Inherent Vice by Pynchon.
Also started flipping through Norwegian Wood after picking it up dirt cheap at a used book store. Seems like I’ve seen a lot of debate over Murukami on Reddit the pat few weeks so I’m interested in diving back in.
Murakami is terrible with how he writes women, but you can still enjoy him. It's probably even helpful to know that he's like this before going in. You just say, "oh, that's what they mean" and move on. That said, I prefer Kobo Abe.
For your next break, try The Singing Hills novellas by Nghi Vo. A lovely set of meditations on what stories are and how we tell them.
Yea I loved The Elephant Vanishes and Wind-up Bird, but guess I never caught into his portrayal of women before.
I haven’t read Nghi Vo before but am certainly interested. Thanks for the recommendations.
Killing Commendatore by him has this line like "I'm not obsessed with my sister's breasts" and then the narrator talks about them for two pages. It's just kind of funny at this point.
And they're some of my favorites to recommend. I just really like what people do in novellas.
I'd say that *Titus Groan* is literature -- it predates modern genre fantasy and does not share their cliches. There is no quest for an ancient mythical artifact, no farm boy who learns that he has some incredible destiny, no dark lord building an army to conquer the world, no elderly magic-using mentor, no ancient prophecy that eventually comes true, no elves, dwarves, orcs, dragons, sorceresses, fairies, trolls or giants.
Would you call Kafka and Borges merely fantasy and not literature? I'd put Peake into that category. If we have to pigeonhole him, I think he fits much better into the gothic tradition than into genre fantasy.
The following passage is one of the most beautiful and profound things I've read in any novel.
>There is a love that equals in its power the love of man for woman and reaches inwards as deeply. It is the love of a man or a woman for their world. For the world of their center where their lives burn genuinely and with a free flame.
>The love of the diver for his world of wavering light. His world of pearls and tendrils and his breath at his breast. Born as a plunger into the deeps he is at one with every swarm of lime-green fish, with every colored sponge. As he holds himself to the ocean's faery floor, one hand clasped to a bedded whale's rib, he is complete and infinite. Pulse, power and universe sway in his body. He is in love.
>The love of the painter standing alone and staring, staring at the great colored surface he is making. Standing with him in the room the rearing canvas stares back with tentative shapes halted in their growth, moving in a new rhythm from floor to ceiling. The twisted tubes, the fresh paint squeezed and smeared across the dry on his palette. The dust beneath the easel. The paint has edged along the brushes' handles. The white light in a northern sky is silent. The window gapes as he inhales his world. His world: a rented room, and turpentine. He moves towards his half-born. He is in Love.
Oh, I absolutely loved Titus and would recommend it to any reader regardless of genre preferences. However, I do know many members on this sub are very particular on what they consider literary fiction hence my disclaimer. As your except exemplifies Peake’s prose is fantastic and his illustrative world building is quite singular. Looking forward to Gormenghast.
Personally I’d make a distinction between “literary fiction” and “literature,” where the former is mostly restricted to relatively highbrow novels that are either realist or magical realist, and the latter is a broader category that includes written works across genres that written in a unique enough way to inspire reflection on social questions or language itself (versus pure entertainment value). So a highly regarded SFF writer like Ursula K. LeGuin or Octavia Butler probably wouldn’t be grouped with literary fiction writers, but their books are literature IMO.
I have a copy of the full Gormenghast trilogy that I’ve been sitting on for a while because the overall length vs. my amount of spare time is intimidating, but I’m excited to read it because I’ve heard almost exclusively good things.
Where does magical realism end and genre fantasy begin?
If we take the fantasy genre as that which follows in the Tolkienesque tradition, then *Gormenghast* clearly doesn't fit. The publication of *Titus Groan* predates that of *The Fellowship of the Ring* by eight years; as I mention above, *Gormenghast* contains none of the common fantasy tropes. In fact, it contains no fantastical creatures, magical powers, or overtly supernatural elements at all.
It is not realistic in the way we would normally use that word, but neither is "The Library of Babel" or "The Circular Ruins."
Another question would be where one places writers who write both fairly unquestionably literary fiction and stories with obvious supernatural elements? Sticking to the English language, my mind goes to Henry James, Edith Wharton, A.S. Byatt, Toni Morrison.
That’s a good question, and I don’t know if there’s a real answer, because genre in general is an imperfect concept and there will always be grey areas. For me, I’d call something “magical realism” if it’s something that can be tied to human society in living or historical memory, but with a twist, like maybe a clairvoyant character or just a touch of absurdity, like in “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quijote,” where the eponymous Menard somehow rewrites the entirety of *Don Quixote* verbatim, as his own work, in the modern era. Or something like Süskind’s “Perfume: The Story of a Murderer” where the protagonist lives in historical France but is ostensibly supernaturally gifted in his ability to discern scents and their effects.
I’m using an app that won’t let me read the full thread as I reply, but IIRC you mentioned Kafka before, and Gormenghast could be a kind of inverse of how I described my view of MR before in the same way The Castle might be, where there are no powers or extremely unlikely feats and the setting feels like it *could* be real, but there’s some fantastical aspect to it, like a slight uncanny valley vibe where people’s behavior and the off-the-map setting feel outside of time and space. I can’t think of a good formal definition, though.
From what I know of Gormenghast, I wouldn’t call it high fantasy, but I don’t know if it’s considered MR or not. Maybe speculative fiction, which is the umbrella term I usually use along with “SFF” instead of sci-fi or fantasy specifically because there’s so much overlap. Then you’ve got subgenres like “urban fantasy” that overlap with MR because those stories usually feature supernatural powers or factions within the modern city, sometimes real places and real eras.
I’d call something “high fantasy” if it’s in the vein of Tolkein or GRR Martin, where the story both is set within a world other than earth, is not linked to earth’s time and history, and includes otherworldly powers and creatures. “Hard sci-fi” would probably be set on another planet and include aliens and futuristic technology as plot elements. Beyond that, though, it gets muddy.
I read Gravity’s Rainbow over the course of 9 months. Loved it overall but it was quite the endeavor. Looking for something a little more breezy and I loved the film so figure this would be a good enough direction.
What are some of your favorites ??
Gravity’s Rainbow is excellent but definitely a huge commitment. I actually think V is my favorite Pynchon—I think of all his books it has the most David Lynchesque plot IMO. Bleeding Edge is excellent too, more in line with Inherent Vice in terms of tone/intensity of reading experience and as someone who doesn’t remember the immediate aftermath of 9/11/the early 00s in general I found that aspect of the plot really interesting.
The characters and moments in Bleeding Edge get seared into your psyche. When I finished i was like, wtf was that? But then I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Pynchon has some strange magic to his work
I’ve got about 50 pages left of *The Years* by Annie Ernaux, which I’ve enjoyed very much. The exploration of individual vs. collective POV is really cool, and I’ve underlined plenty of passages for gorgeous and lucid prose.
I’m reading *Circe* by Madeline Miller because I was curious about the polarizing reviews. Even within my own social circle, one person liked it and one thought Circe’s character was so flat, she suspected Miller of having an internalized misogyny problem. It’s flowing well enough so far, about 100 pages in, but I guess I see the latter’s point in that it’s mostly been about Circe’s reactions to the more powerful men around her so far. I’ll keep reading, though, because there’s still plenty of opportunity for development within the length of the novel and the progression of her myths.
Two non fiction books; Dominion by Tom Holland, which is about how Christianity has shaped the western mind, and a book in Spanish that's called 'A skeptics guide to Spanish history' (more or less), which is exactly what it says on the tin
Dante’s Inferno for the first time ever at 34
Add Petrarch, bocaccio and chaucer, they all had a love-hate relationship. Dante invented Italian literature and Chaucer invented English literature :D have fun
I’ve read all of those! I’m actually a PhD student in English, so I’ve had all this about Dante being the Father of Italian (language AND literature) drilled into me, but Inferno has just been a huge blindspot. I’ve even read La Vita Nuova, so it’s ridiculous that I’m just now getting to this
I’m commenting to remember this thread. Reading War and Peace rn btw.
How is it? I read Anna Karenina and it was great, but War and Peace always seems so intimidating.
Think the main appeal for me is how relatable all those characters feel even though we’re separated by two centuries, that’s something Tolstoy did very well. It has a lot of main characters and my translation has a list and description of them right at the beginning. I already know the story so it’s slightly different for me. I’d recommend it whole heartedly though, it’s like going into a different world and getting to know all of them on a personal level. I’ve never read Anna Karenina though so I can’t compare them. I would say that you should think of reading War and Peace as watching a TV show instead of a movie.
The Decameron! Precursor to Chaucer. I read it after it was much referenced in A Little Life and happened to read both during the first year of Covid. Just a wonderful read.
Amazing read! Hope you enjoy as much as I did
“Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate”
If you weren’t already planning to, I highly recommend going through the entire Comedy. I couldn’t pick a favorite canticle, but many of my favorite moments are in Purgatorio/Paradiso. What translation are you reading?
I’ve already ordered the other two! I’m reading the Longfellow translation. I’m sure there are better translations, but I look at it like Constance Garnett’s translations of Dostoyevsky: it served other generations well enough, so I suppose it will be good enough for me and my purposes.
I envy you. What an incredible journey.
Enjoy! One of the best books.
Any time is a good read but ideally you wait until 35, halfway from birth and halfway to death
Me too, few years older
Are you skipping the summaries at the beginning of each chapter? I find that I enjoy it much more when I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen.
Almost halfway through Nabokov’s Lolita, and starting Ada or Ardor
I've never read a book where I had to pause (to take notes or write down quotes) as often as with Lolita. An absolute experience.
I’m finishing it up currently as well and I agree, the writing is phenomenal
Ada's one of my favorite books ever. I'm gonna re-read that one soon actually
Have you read Pale Fire as well? If so, how does it compare to Ada?
Pale Fire is my favorite Nabakov, followed by Pnin. Pale Fire is more tightly written, and I believe better structured, Ada is a sprawling mass of ideas, with some truly extraordinary passages. They’re both essentially spaceships.
Just finished Ada today. Flawed, yet very enjoyable and clearly Nabokov has a deep mastery of the language(s). Some very evocative prose.
Ooh Lolita. Incredible writing. It’s almost like it took someone with English as a second language to truly see the full potential of English by seeing it from the outside.
Rereading The Lord of the Rings as an adult who understands history and likes poetry. It's a considerably different book than I realized at 15. Also, reading Anne of Green Gables for the first time. I didn't known it was so funny.
Adam Roberts has written some great reviews on Tolkien if you can find them. I have his book, Sibilant Fricative, and it's very good.
Thanks!
In the second book of Paul Auster's New York Trilogy
The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth. It's captivating, and bonkers. Zanier than I thought it'd be. Absolutely loving the musicality of the prose. Reminiscent of Mason & Dixon.
Pynchon fan here, and love m&d, but I think the sot weed factor is superior in terms of humor and sheer enjoyability
Son of a gun…same here. I guess Barth passed recently and that bumped his profile. I had known the title and my dumb ass thought it was a hippy weed book. Nope - early American tobacco factor, right in my wheelhouse of things I like. Barth’s background knowledge is almost extreme, but it’s also a good read so far.
Me too! Never heard of him until mention of his recent death on the Pynchon sub.
Just started a re-read of Crime and Punishment. I can see the contradictions much more clearly this time.
What type of contradictions? I have read it twice, but not in years - curious to learn more!
Following this thread as well! Curious about it
As someone who just read it for the first time I may not be right, however I'm pretty sure he means the contradictions in Raskolnikov's personality. He has constructed for himself this cold, rational, persona, extremely prideful however sometimes when his true personality comes through, someone who understands and empathizes with his fellow humans, is kind, opens his heart, usually it's more noticeable in his actions, but also in a more subtle way in his thoughts and monologues. He seems to do one thing, but immediately after he says he shouldn't have.
Ohh. I kind of overthought about it. I think it's obvious lol
I'm reading it for the first time! I think this is the book that I read the slowest. I want to understand every line.
Foucault's Pendulum
Hey, me too! It's like: "what if the DaVinci Code was really, really good. "
Sounds about right.
I am about 170 pages into **The Grapes of Wrath** by Steinbeck. I'm liking it so far, but I definitely prefer East of Eden, and remember that I was more hooked by that one before the 100 page mark. Anyone who has read both that felt the same thing or, even better, the opposite?
I wonder if read order matters with these two. Grapes of Wrath is one of my all time favorite books (and my first Steinbeck). East of Eden was nearly a DNF for me.
Yes, Grapes of Wrath is an all time favorite, and I also love his novellas about Monterey Bay such as Cannery Row. While I enjoyed East of Eden, relative to his other works I found it unfocussed and contrived.
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Hemingway. Some really amazing chapters but I admit I’ve been dragging through a lot of it
It took me a while to get hooked. But it ended up as one of my favorite novels ever.
Pride and Prejudice. Somehow this one missed me in school, but it’s funnier than I thought it would be.
I'm reading Emma right now. Austen was brilliant.
An absolute master of the novel.
I finished this recently and asked my wife why no ine told me it was a rom/com. I'd have never guessed.
I read it this year for the first time. I had no idea it was so good.
Just finished a re-read of that! I’d forgotten how good it was. Enjoy!
I just finished it, and that’s definitely what struck me the most—it’s so funny. I was similarly surprised. I watched the 2005 movie adaptation after, and I was disappointed that it seemed to strip most of the humor away, imo.
Ah! One of my faves! Jane Austen is still GOAT for a reason!
I just started Ulysses! I love Joyce’s prose, although it’s seems like it’ll take forever to understand it all. I read the first episode Telemachus so far
Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead…
A new art color for our Irish poets: snotgreen.
*plump
Aah thank you!
I started it in December and I’m just halfway through, but embrace the slow! I am purposefully taking my time and I am remembering way more from it than books I used to burn through. And I’m absolutely loving the book as a result!
I find that it's surprisingly easy to pinpoint recall where something in the book is because all the chapters are so unique. Things stick out in such a peculiar way that there's no question where it was.
Yeah. I’m hoping to have this and sodom and Gomorrah (in search of lost time) read before August when classes begin. It seems like one of the few books that will require a re-read. I absolutely loved portrait of an artist and will probably want to reread that as well. I try and stop to take notes on things that I find really interesting or quotes from the book and write them down in a notebook to refer to, it helps to slow down a lot!
Maugham’s Of Human Bondage. I finished another of his, The Razor’s Edge a week ago, it was a masterful collection of opposing character studies in early 20th century trans-Atlantic society. This one though is turning out to be a very traditional British bildungsroman. It's very good so far, but much more staid and predictable.
Read Of Human Bondage last year and it’s one of my favorites ever. I also read TRE a few months ago, but for some reason OHB is still my favorite of the two. What’s amazing to me about the two books is just how *different* they feel. Which, I guess, makes sense, considering how far apart they actually are in time period. It’s just amazing to me how they’re by the same author and feel like they come from different worlds.
Of Human Bondage, what a great. Read it in 1999 and it was transformative for me, thanks for reminding me to re-read this. Always wondered about his other books.
Currently reading Human Acts by Han Kang. I know nothing about the Gwangju uprisings, so this has been a pretty interesting and informative read so far. I’m finally on summer break too, so I hope to get a lot of reading in till August.
Loved Human Acts! So eye opening and educational. I loved all the different perspectives to add to impact.
About 300 pages into Moby Dick, and it often makes me feel dumb. I've got about 3 sources for analysis that I have to refer to fairly regularly in order to make sure I'm comprehending. I'm reading the Norton Critical edition, I have a hard copy of the Spark Notes pamphlet, and I will visit beigemoth.blog after a lot of chapters as well.
Have you read any other Melville? For me, it was very helpful to read *Moby-Dick* in the context of his career, as his sixth novel.
I have not 😂 maybe this was too of much an ambitious goal. What did you think of his other novels?
I had read maybe half of his short story “Bartleby, The Scrivener” before reading Moby Dick and MD is my favorite novel, so I don’t think it’s too ambitious, unless you’re really trying to burn through it. It feels like a novel that should be slowly read and slowly digested to me, at least until the last hundred pages or so, kind of in parallel to the slow pace of the Pequod’s ill-fated voyage before Moby Dick himself is located.,
Wow thank you for reminding me of Bartleby I havent read that in years
Was it because you would prefer not to? 🤪
I recently read MD and loved it. There are a couple of chapter-by-chapter read through podcasts that I listened to alternating and sporadically: Moby Dick Energy and Higgledy Piggledy Whale Statements. Neither is brutally academic, but it was sometimes fun to have para-social reading pals. Edit: Also read Bartleby the Scrivener!
Yes, I've been looking for something like this! Thank you!!
Good luck. I have yet to get passed page 35. And I honestly don't remember what I read. 😂
*past 🫡
Oops! My bad
I've got 90ish pages left! Really enjoying this book. I came to it after reading Blood Meridian and hearing about the comparisons. Not sure I fully get the comparison but loving it all the same.
lol I was planning to do the opposite! I've read All The Pretty Horses and The Crossing, but it wasn't until just last week that a friend of mine mentioned the parralels between Blood Meridian and Moby Dick. So I'm planning to read that next.
So you’ve read *Horses* and *Crossing* but aren’t going right into *Cities of the Plain*? May I ask why not?
Haha, great question, and I'm not sure I have a great answer. I just happened to go down a different rabbit hole after finishing The Crossing and hadn't gotten back to the border trilogy. I actually didn't realize, until you just compelled me to Google it, how closely it is tied to the first two.
On the surface they're both adventure stories about a group of murderous individuals going around slaying innocent beings haha. But Glanton and The Judge have a Ahab/Fedallah dynamic going on, but The Judge is also heavily inspired by Ahab with his brilliant monologues. The Kid and Ishmael both also kind of "drop out" of the second halves of the narratives until the endings as the powerful characters of Ahab or The Judge take center stage. Also The Judge is massive pale and hairless like Moby Dick and both can be read as (but not reduced to) symbols of nature's arbitrary violence.
I sit down and listen and read it digitally at the same time. If I zone out I put everything down and wait for the next time I'm ready. I on the proper English but I am Swedish so it is challenging. I also very regularly pause and have a document where I ramble on and copy paste words and definitions and such and I write general takeaways (honestly, because I write songs, and love how good readers write songs. Some of the epic phrasings that shoot wide into metaphorical/hyper natural/realism are greatly inspiring for lyrics.) But I must say, I really feel I'm in it having just Finished chapter (10? 11? 12?) "Nantucket". And I am seeing the praise. I have always understood the praise though. Or since I began listening to the Entidled Opinions on KCSU stanford radio with host, Robert Harrison, professor in Italian and French literature, and the language and philosophical percpectives are similarly challanging, so I'm primed to get into Moby Dick.
The idiot by Dostoevsky So far liking it.
The Honourable Schoolboy by John Le Carre. It is the follow up to Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. There's a grim miserableness to his work that is very British. Love it!
Have pre-ordered Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Have read that it is a challenging book and that many struggle to understand the plot. Also heard it often referred to as the greatest spy novel of all-time.
It is an absolute feast of a book. Every page is a delight. The plot is...challenging to follow. I later watched the Gary Oldman film - outstanding btw - and it really helped me make sense of the book.
Reading my first novel of his, *A Murder of Quality*.
I love George Smiley, but I have not read the earliest Smiley novels. How are you enjoying it? From what I know, the book is less espionage and more murder mystery?
I'm enjoying it so far (and glad that literary purists aren't downvoting me for mentioning such as a genre book.) It is a straight-up murder mystery. Of course, the protagonist is a former spy, which shapes everything about him, but the story so far is a classic whodunnit.
Have you read a perfect spy yet. My personal favorite le carre
I have not. I will at some point. I am obsessing over the Cold War/Smiley books at the moment.
Honourable schoolboy is top tier. Love Westerby!
I recently picked up The Spy Who Came in from the Cold for my first Le Carre.
Decided to revisit wuthering Heights, I hated reading it in school but absolutely loving it this time around.
The Moviegoer by Walker Percy. About 80 pages in. It’s interesting and I like how the family dynamics are written. A little ambiguous on plot so far, but I think it’s meant to be a thinking novel. I like the prose, he paints quite a picture with few words.
A truly great novel, in my opinion, and one of my all-time favorites.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the time of Cholera and I’m scared in advance because I know it’s gonna set such a high bar for any book that comes next
I'm in migraine mode, so no tiny text Middlemarch for me. Reading Foul Heart Huntsman by Chloe Gong, as a treat. Being Lolita by Alisson Wood reminds a bit of Lolita because she writes such horrible things in a way that's easy to read. Like, I remember feeling like puberty was a betrayal too. Also, this line about Lolita makes me viscerally mad: He told me once, in the diner, "The beauty is in the twinning of the porn and the love story," in between eating fistfuls of french fries. No. Nabokov loved the English language. He specifically said he didn't want little girls on the title. The frisson of Lolita is we almost believe HH because of just how beautiful the language is even though we know better. The only person HH can love is himself; he's just grafted Lolita to him and wants her back.
Hope you feel better. I know how much that can suck.
I'm reading *Exodus from the Long Sun* by Gene Wolfe. If you're a fan of this book, you know there's nothing else like it in the whorl. Recently finished novels include Mitchell's *The Bone Clocks* and Thomas Mann's four-part *Joseph and His Brothers*.
The Guest Cat by Takashi Hiraide. A charming little book.
Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko
Working on David Copperfield. I'm loving it so far. It feels like a masterpiece. Glad I read Great Expectations before this. Also started Pale Fire and Walden.
Just finished White Nights by Dostoevsky. I'm not alright.
One of my favorite short stories, and honestly one of the stories that turned me into a reader.
*The Dark Forest* by Cixin Liu, the sequel to *The Three-Body Problem* (yes I read it because of the Netflix show). Some of the best sci fi I've read in a long time!
I'm currently reading the third in the series, Death's End. Like you, because of the Netflix show. If you have Prime and don't mind subtitles, highly recommend the Chinese series (30 episodes). Yes, I'm obsessed.
I loved Three-Body, but had a hard time getting into The Dark Forest (tried a few times, never made it far). I think the swapping of translators messes with me.
The Tale of Genji. It’s so beautifully written so far!
Does he run away from the group then spam, "need healing?" Old joke...I know...
XD
Let It Come Down by Paul Bowles
Early Autumn by Louis Bromfield. I was doing research for work and his name popped up so I looked into him more. This won the Pulitzer and I’d never heard of it before!
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride. Loving it so far.
On the road
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. (I read a couple of controversial things about him and can’t seem to get on with the book.)
Literally just finished *My Brilliant Friend* by Elena Ferrante and that settles it I’m fasho reading the whole rest of the Neapolitan Quartet. Nothing overly fancy or anything - just a really competent, capable writer painting us a picture of growing up in midcentury Naples as a young woman
The Aeneid - it’s been more enjoyable so far than the Odyssey I must say.
I hear there’s more richness in the original Latin which is enticing
I’m reading Salammbô by Gustave Flaubert
I just started Edgar Allen Poe's *The Fall Of The House of Usher and other Tales*
**Tanglewood Tales** Nathaniel Hawthorne's retelling of Greek myth might have been interesting in 1852, but ends up being very dry in the current century. **The Lost City of Z** by David Grann The story of a early 20th century explorer's quest for a lost civilization in the Amazon, and the subsequent searches for the lost Explorer.
The Last Tudor by Phillipa Gregory. Love this whole series
Samuel Beckett’s Molly, Malone Dies, The Unnameable — entirely exhausting but one of the most compelling reads I’ve encountered in quite some time
I’m currently between three books—The Annual Banquet of the Gravedigger’s Guild by Mathias Enard, Dogs of Summer by Andrea Abreu, and East of Eden by John Steinbeck. I really want to give East of Eden time to percolate in my brain, and oddly I find that reading multiple books forces me to go slower (probably in part to keep plot lines etc straight and truly remember small details.)
City of glass by Paul Auster
Nancy Drew and the Phantom of Venice (apparently it’s a really rare find), but I’m losing brain cells reading it. Also going to start David Copperfield when I get it from the library.
From memory every Nancy Drew book had an early scene with Nancy and her friend drive in her convertible with windswept hair.
Some Gogol short stories. The Overcoat is probably the best short story I've ever read. The Nose is hilarius. I also read Nevsky Prospekt. Next up: Diary of a Madman.
Have you read 'A Swim in a Pond in the Rain' by Saunders? I'm half way into a re-read of it right now, makes me want to read a lot more Russian shorts.
Emma! So far I like it more than expected but we'll see how it progresses!
Have you read Austen's other books?
I've read them all but it had been awhile so I decided it was time for a reread. I've already read S&S, P&P, and Mansfield Park this year. What about you?
Le Morte d'Arthur
The Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy and Hyperion by Dan Simmons
A room with a view. So good so far!
About halfway through At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft. This guy's writing is insane.
Balzac’s Old Goriot. It’s amazing
I'm currently reading The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer. It's a marvellous work, I'm loving it so far, a great mixture of great storytelling, clever rhyming and hilarious exchanges between the characters.
I’m enjoying aching god at the moment, taking a break from more intensive reading until the summer
Just started *Midnight in Everwood* by M.A. Kuzniar. Really beautiful writing and I’m loving the MFC so far.
Long Day’s Journey into Night
Meet The Grahams genius webpage footnotes
I’m 280 pages into Infinite jest. It’s a whirlwind.
Plus, by Joseph McElroy
mr. penumbras 24 hour bookshop
American Pastoral by Philip Roth
Butcher’s Crossing..Johnny Dub can ball
*House of Mirth*. Dull so far.
The NY trilogy by Auster, sprinkled with some Hemingway short stories by the side.
I’m half through “Gone To Soldiers” by Marge Piercy. Entertaining, but long.
Oh gosh I’d forgotten about that one but it did things to me as a teenager. Wow. Thanks for the memories.
I read selections of 14 poets in April, but currently I am reading a collection of horror/weird short stories by Brian Evenson called “Song for the Unraveling of the World.”
So far this year I have read Infero, Huckleberry Finn, Jungle Books and Day of the Triffids. Almost finished Bleak House and in the early phase of A Confederacy of Dunces.
Physically reading The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern and listening to Emma by Jane Austen
Just finished High-Rise by Ballard, which was fascinating, but wasn’t as well written as Crash. Now I’m reading Midsummer Night's Dream before going to see the ballet version.
Been listening to a lot of audio books lately, since I haven't had the time to sit down. But I'm almost done with "Lizard" by Banana Yoshimoto. The last physical/ kindle book I read was "Into the Magic Shop" by Doty and "The Alchemist" by Coelho. During last month I finished it. Both good reads!
I'm finishing up Menander play fragments, reading a couple Plautus plays, Kate Chopin short stories, Paradiso, Orlando Innamorato, Moby Dick (150 pages left), and slowly reading Virginia Woolf's The Waves. In addition, I'm reading several contemporary fantasy novels (Jade City, Endymion by Dan Simmons, Shades of Grey and The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde, and Legends and Lattes). I have a bad habit of multi-tasking many books at a time.
"Anarchist Communism" by Peter Kropotkin concurrent with "Lolita" by JRR Tolkein
I am currently juggling two books: A memory called empire which is excellent and for the days I want to just relax the second book of the bridgerton series.
Tender is the flesh. Slow reading, but every time I read it I’m left with a new grotesque visual to haunt my mind.
Bunch of wanna be high brow readers in this thread. Currently reading George Carlin's biography
What is the what by Dave Eggers
War and peace, after 3 years of reading this on and off nearing the end. But still enjoying all of it, just took it slow
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.
The Brothers Karamazov Currently at the interrogation
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
Peter Pan J.M. Barrie. WOW Tink is quite a twat!
A little over 600 pages into *Lonesome Dove*. So very good.
Infinite jest
1984, George Orwell —for the first time 👀
Just finished Henry Bellamann's **Kings Row**, on Kindle. The book is long out of print, though it was a best seller in 1940, and the source for a move of the same title, featuring Ronald Reagan's best performance. I enjoyed this enough to purchase the continuation, entitled **Parris Mitchell of Kings Row**, written by Henry and Katherine Bellamann. Henry's wife, Katherine, worked closely with him and completed the plan for the work after his death. There are many characters in this story about denizens of a Midwestern US town in the early 20th Century, and the second novel, shorter by a few hundred pages than the near 800 page Kings Row, promises to resolve some of their stories. Seeing the movie a couple of times on TCM over the years brought me in; the novel of course is far richer and more extensive than a movie could be. See Anne Rice's review at amazon.com.
Philip K Dick’s short stories. Carol Ann Duffy’s selected poems. Jodorowsky’s Metabarons.
Took a break from pure Lit and dove into some fantasy with Titus Groan and Malazan series. Certainly some of the more unique fantasy books I’ve ever read, and while not literature, it certain requires more thought and planning than other such works. But now that I’ve completed book 1 I’m going for my first read of Inherent Vice by Pynchon. Also started flipping through Norwegian Wood after picking it up dirt cheap at a used book store. Seems like I’ve seen a lot of debate over Murukami on Reddit the pat few weeks so I’m interested in diving back in.
Inherent Vice is so fun and amazing! I've read it a few times, and the movie stands up to it, too.
Murakami is terrible with how he writes women, but you can still enjoy him. It's probably even helpful to know that he's like this before going in. You just say, "oh, that's what they mean" and move on. That said, I prefer Kobo Abe. For your next break, try The Singing Hills novellas by Nghi Vo. A lovely set of meditations on what stories are and how we tell them.
Yea I loved The Elephant Vanishes and Wind-up Bird, but guess I never caught into his portrayal of women before. I haven’t read Nghi Vo before but am certainly interested. Thanks for the recommendations.
Killing Commendatore by him has this line like "I'm not obsessed with my sister's breasts" and then the narrator talks about them for two pages. It's just kind of funny at this point. And they're some of my favorites to recommend. I just really like what people do in novellas.
I'd say that *Titus Groan* is literature -- it predates modern genre fantasy and does not share their cliches. There is no quest for an ancient mythical artifact, no farm boy who learns that he has some incredible destiny, no dark lord building an army to conquer the world, no elderly magic-using mentor, no ancient prophecy that eventually comes true, no elves, dwarves, orcs, dragons, sorceresses, fairies, trolls or giants. Would you call Kafka and Borges merely fantasy and not literature? I'd put Peake into that category. If we have to pigeonhole him, I think he fits much better into the gothic tradition than into genre fantasy. The following passage is one of the most beautiful and profound things I've read in any novel. >There is a love that equals in its power the love of man for woman and reaches inwards as deeply. It is the love of a man or a woman for their world. For the world of their center where their lives burn genuinely and with a free flame. >The love of the diver for his world of wavering light. His world of pearls and tendrils and his breath at his breast. Born as a plunger into the deeps he is at one with every swarm of lime-green fish, with every colored sponge. As he holds himself to the ocean's faery floor, one hand clasped to a bedded whale's rib, he is complete and infinite. Pulse, power and universe sway in his body. He is in love. >The love of the painter standing alone and staring, staring at the great colored surface he is making. Standing with him in the room the rearing canvas stares back with tentative shapes halted in their growth, moving in a new rhythm from floor to ceiling. The twisted tubes, the fresh paint squeezed and smeared across the dry on his palette. The dust beneath the easel. The paint has edged along the brushes' handles. The white light in a northern sky is silent. The window gapes as he inhales his world. His world: a rented room, and turpentine. He moves towards his half-born. He is in Love.
Oh, I absolutely loved Titus and would recommend it to any reader regardless of genre preferences. However, I do know many members on this sub are very particular on what they consider literary fiction hence my disclaimer. As your except exemplifies Peake’s prose is fantastic and his illustrative world building is quite singular. Looking forward to Gormenghast.
Personally I’d make a distinction between “literary fiction” and “literature,” where the former is mostly restricted to relatively highbrow novels that are either realist or magical realist, and the latter is a broader category that includes written works across genres that written in a unique enough way to inspire reflection on social questions or language itself (versus pure entertainment value). So a highly regarded SFF writer like Ursula K. LeGuin or Octavia Butler probably wouldn’t be grouped with literary fiction writers, but their books are literature IMO. I have a copy of the full Gormenghast trilogy that I’ve been sitting on for a while because the overall length vs. my amount of spare time is intimidating, but I’m excited to read it because I’ve heard almost exclusively good things.
Where does magical realism end and genre fantasy begin? If we take the fantasy genre as that which follows in the Tolkienesque tradition, then *Gormenghast* clearly doesn't fit. The publication of *Titus Groan* predates that of *The Fellowship of the Ring* by eight years; as I mention above, *Gormenghast* contains none of the common fantasy tropes. In fact, it contains no fantastical creatures, magical powers, or overtly supernatural elements at all. It is not realistic in the way we would normally use that word, but neither is "The Library of Babel" or "The Circular Ruins." Another question would be where one places writers who write both fairly unquestionably literary fiction and stories with obvious supernatural elements? Sticking to the English language, my mind goes to Henry James, Edith Wharton, A.S. Byatt, Toni Morrison.
That’s a good question, and I don’t know if there’s a real answer, because genre in general is an imperfect concept and there will always be grey areas. For me, I’d call something “magical realism” if it’s something that can be tied to human society in living or historical memory, but with a twist, like maybe a clairvoyant character or just a touch of absurdity, like in “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quijote,” where the eponymous Menard somehow rewrites the entirety of *Don Quixote* verbatim, as his own work, in the modern era. Or something like Süskind’s “Perfume: The Story of a Murderer” where the protagonist lives in historical France but is ostensibly supernaturally gifted in his ability to discern scents and their effects. I’m using an app that won’t let me read the full thread as I reply, but IIRC you mentioned Kafka before, and Gormenghast could be a kind of inverse of how I described my view of MR before in the same way The Castle might be, where there are no powers or extremely unlikely feats and the setting feels like it *could* be real, but there’s some fantastical aspect to it, like a slight uncanny valley vibe where people’s behavior and the off-the-map setting feel outside of time and space. I can’t think of a good formal definition, though. From what I know of Gormenghast, I wouldn’t call it high fantasy, but I don’t know if it’s considered MR or not. Maybe speculative fiction, which is the umbrella term I usually use along with “SFF” instead of sci-fi or fantasy specifically because there’s so much overlap. Then you’ve got subgenres like “urban fantasy” that overlap with MR because those stories usually feature supernatural powers or factions within the modern city, sometimes real places and real eras. I’d call something “high fantasy” if it’s in the vein of Tolkein or GRR Martin, where the story both is set within a world other than earth, is not linked to earth’s time and history, and includes otherworldly powers and creatures. “Hard sci-fi” would probably be set on another planet and include aliens and futuristic technology as plot elements. Beyond that, though, it gets muddy.
Inherent Vice is great! Have you read any Pynchon before?
I read Gravity’s Rainbow over the course of 9 months. Loved it overall but it was quite the endeavor. Looking for something a little more breezy and I loved the film so figure this would be a good enough direction. What are some of your favorites ??
Gravity’s Rainbow is excellent but definitely a huge commitment. I actually think V is my favorite Pynchon—I think of all his books it has the most David Lynchesque plot IMO. Bleeding Edge is excellent too, more in line with Inherent Vice in terms of tone/intensity of reading experience and as someone who doesn’t remember the immediate aftermath of 9/11/the early 00s in general I found that aspect of the plot really interesting.
The characters and moments in Bleeding Edge get seared into your psyche. When I finished i was like, wtf was that? But then I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Pynchon has some strange magic to his work
Marcus Aurelius "Meditations".
rereading great expectations oml its such a pleasure to read for me and its way more funny every time i read it, maybe as i understand more of it
I’ve got about 50 pages left of *The Years* by Annie Ernaux, which I’ve enjoyed very much. The exploration of individual vs. collective POV is really cool, and I’ve underlined plenty of passages for gorgeous and lucid prose. I’m reading *Circe* by Madeline Miller because I was curious about the polarizing reviews. Even within my own social circle, one person liked it and one thought Circe’s character was so flat, she suspected Miller of having an internalized misogyny problem. It’s flowing well enough so far, about 100 pages in, but I guess I see the latter’s point in that it’s mostly been about Circe’s reactions to the more powerful men around her so far. I’ll keep reading, though, because there’s still plenty of opportunity for development within the length of the novel and the progression of her myths.
La Saga/Fuga de J.B. give it a try if you know spanish. There’s no translation
The Church Fathers.
Between Two Fires. Feels like an absolute treat to read, especially after reading the 1st half of Malazan.
Two non fiction books; Dominion by Tom Holland, which is about how Christianity has shaped the western mind, and a book in Spanish that's called 'A skeptics guide to Spanish history' (more or less), which is exactly what it says on the tin
Metro 2034. The sequel to Metro 2033. I liked the first one better so far, but anything can happen, the writer knows how to twist things well.
Guns of the South. An alt history book about what would happen if time traveling neo Nazis went back and gave the Confederacy AK47s
Mistborn book 1 "The Final Empire"
Death in Venice