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Ulysses is a really awesome experience, but Joyce assumes that you know everything someone living in Dublin in 1904 would have known, from the name of the drug store down the street to the political scandals of the time and everything in between. Since you don't, you need something like Gifford's Annotations to fill in the gaps. Gifford makes Ulysses a thrill rather than a chore.

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. Great and wise insight on life and common occurrences that remains surprisingly useful to this very day. This book has passages that apply to every person on earth and I guarantee it would help those who bothered to read it.

William Burroughs has an essay "On Writing" in his book Adding Machine where he talks about Hemmingway.

A couple parts Burroughs mentions : "The hole in his forehead where the bullet went in was about the size of a pencil. The hole in the back of his head where the bullet came out was big enough to put your fist in if it was a small fist and you wanted to put it there."

There was that atrocious letter he wrote about duck hunting. "I'd shoot my own mother if she was flying straight and clean and in formation. And I could lead her at fifty yards with my Wetherby."

On Writing that appears in Adding Machine was actually from a lecture Burroughs gave. It seems like the archive.org version is transcribed directly from the audio of the lecture, while the book version on Google Books seems more edited for publication with laughter and asides removed.

Adding Machine on Archive.org

Relevant Adding Machine section on Google Books

• The Bible
• The Koran
• The Odyssey
• The Iliad
• Ovid's Metamorphoses
• Joyce's Ulysses (got 150 pages in...)
• Proust's In Remembrance of Lost Time (got 150 pages in...)
• The Decameron
• Canterbury Tales
• Kant's Critique of Pure Reason
• Any Plato
• Any Aristotle
• The Art of Computer Programming
• The Interpretation of Dreams
• The U.S. Constitution
• The Wealth of Nations
• The Communist Manifesto
• .... So many more .....................!

I think this is reasonable only because asking for book recommendations is explicitly forbidden.

There are two extremes that need to be avoided for it to be worthwhile, though. The first is being ultra conservative, posting just 'classics' and helping nobody. These lists exist already in abundance. The second is including a bunch of work in a million subgenres and ending up with a list that's hardly been narrowed enough to be useful.

Obviously my taste is not universal, but I think Donald Barthelme's syllabus and Larry McCaffery's 20th Century list do the best job of choosing books which should be read by contemporary readers of serious literature.

The frustrating thing about reading Gravity's Rainbow is that, much like Ulysses is that people say you haven't really read it, until you read it a second time. Whether that's true or not, many things become clear on a close second read. There's even a companion book you can use alongside reading it.

I say wait a decade or so before revisiting it because I think you did appreciate it. It will be there. Other than that, maybe find a new book club before these sadists suggest the Discourses on Livy or something.

I agree with this article quite a bit. The article isn't primarily concerned by definition of terms, or their complexity, but rather how terms are used and defined (or not) by the writers who use them -- to favour clarity over opacity.

Though not explicitly stated, Robinson's article seems to be focused on Postmodernist writing, which is renowned for inflated, insestuous, untestable theorising. That's my less than favourable take on it, if you asked me what I think of it in academic terms. On the flipside, I like reading some of it, I concede, but I read it as I would poetry, rather than science. A sense of an idea, providing an emotional impression of existence.

I'll just leave these here...

Noam Chomsky on Postmodernism

Noam Chomsky Calls Postmodern Critiques of Science Over-Inflated “Polysyllabic Truisms”

Tolkien is the grandfather of modern fantasy, no doubt. But he builds upon a lot of great work that predates him.

For a great book that deals with some of this, look at Tales Before Tolkien or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimms%27_Fairy_Tales

For older fantasy, there's Beowulf, and other epic poems from that era. If you want "classic" fantasy there's plenty of greek and roman mythology to be found (The Illiad is a common read from that era).

In my opinion, the foundations of fantasy start in the western world with the epic of Gilgamesh, and to a lesser extent, the Mahabharata.

It's sort a mish-mash of stuff philosophy and Buddhism.

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, Letters from a Stoic by Seneca, and Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle will all help with affirming what actions are beneficial and worth taking, and will definitely help you get over 'wasting' time.

Mindfulness in Plain English by Henepola Gunaratana, The Way of Zen by Alan Watts, and perhaps Old Path White Clouds by Thich Naht Hanh will all help you be more cognizant of the sleep-like state you are in when you sit on your ass all day on Reddit and Netflix.

Hopefully these recommendations don't seem gauche (I'm sure you have read many of these), but they really did help me when studied as a way of life rather than just philosophical texts.

Man's Search for Meaning - Viktor Frankl A psychologist's encounter and survival of Nazi Germany and Auschowitz. Its a two part book of a tremendously objective narrative of his experience and the methods he developed to cope. It helped me through a recent lapse in sanity to help me solidify my values and start making actions more congruent with my desires.

He truly was an astounding writer of short fiction. If you're interested, there are some great recordings of some lectures he did at Harvard in the sixties that are incredible to listen to.

> Alan Moore has impacted my life way more than Milton has or ever will.

I am pretty skeptical of this claim. For one thing, a substantial portion of your average person's ideas about Christianity come from Milton originally, and I'm willing to bet that even if you're not personally a Christian you've been impacted by Christianity. For instance, the idea of hell as a fiery place of torture comes from Paradise Lost, as do most of our ideas about the archetypal figure of Satan. Ever been told you or somebody you care about was going to burn in hell? Thank Milton. Ever heard or used the saying "It Is Better To Reign In Hell Than To Serve In Heaven", read or watched Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, read Gaiman's The Sandman, played Fallout 3 or Mega Man X8 or Dota 2, watched Devil's Advocate (great movie) or Se7en (not as good) or Supernatural, read/watched anything with Frankenstein in it or dressed up as him on Halloween? Yup Milton again. Shit, even your boy Moore was influenced by Milton!

> In a conversation on April 7, 1830 Goethe stated that pederasty is an "aberration" that easily leads to "animal, roughly material" behavior. He continued, "Pederasty is as old as humanity itself, and one can therefore say, that it resides in nature, even if it proceeds against nature....What culture has won from nature will not be surrendered or given up at any price." On another occasion he wrote, somewhat ambiguously: "I like boys a lot, but the girls are even nicer. If I tire of her as a girl, she'll play the boy for me as well".

The Wikipedia quote you are referring to cannot be interpreted as "raping children is one of the greatest things we can do" how did you jump to that conclusion? It is uncomfortable to know that respected figures had relations with much younger people but adult/adolescence relationships at that time were no considered child abuse, so calling them "rapist" is a bit of a stretch.

Another interesting link on this subject is this goodreads list which lays out clearly the current trend of designing book covers based solely on women's body parts.

I find the concept of the 'man trap' cover also particularly interesting. Anyone have any good examples?

Favorite fiction:

Cathedral- Raymond Carver

The Iliad and The Odyssey- Homer

Frankenstein- Mary Shelley

The Picture of Dorian Gray- Oscar Wilde

The Bell Jar- Sylvia Plath

Favorite nonfiction:

Delirious New York- Rem Koolhaas

The Architecture of Happiness- Alain de Botton

A People's History of the United States- Howard Zinn

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft- Stephen King

I'm a senior English major and I read maybe 5 books a week, sometimes much more, almost all non-fiction and much in the philosophy / psychology / social [science] areas

The Unbearable Lightness of Being is excellent fiction

The Montaigne suggestion I second fully

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is an excellent read because of its initial and sustained depth, overview of philosophical inquiry and the distinctions of quality, maybe you could follow up and read the second novel, Lila, which is an inquiry of ethics and morals; which may relate to the medical field moreso than the literature of those of a more liberal education.

The Stranger by Camus is a great primer into the wonderment of post-modern philosophy of the absurd and fiction classics in general.

My most recommended suggestion though, is this: go to your local Goodwill or thrift stores (support them, anyway!) and browse their bookshelves. You can easily take some great reads home for a fraction of the price and with significant ease compared to selection and purchase of books from other vendors. This should keep you reading for your interests, and follow into the classics based on what you actually enjoy in the things you read or are looking to learn more about.

Happy book hunting! My favorite part of the (day!/week/month/year!)

I highly recommend Vladimir Nabokov's lecture on Ulysses as a helpful guide for getting through Ulysses. It's part of his Lectures on Literature collection, which is such a wonderful book. I'm not sure I would've made it to the end of Ulysses with it.

​

He gets out of the abstract and focuses on the many, many layers of detail in the book. Also, he drew a map, which is the kind of thing that a smart and helpful teacher does.

he loved it. He loved plenty of non-highbrow stuff. King, Clancy, etc. There's a top ten he did which freaked a lot of people out because it was not what they'd expected.

1. The Screwtape Letters, by C.S. Lewis

2. The Stand, by Stephen King

3. Red Dragon, by Thomas Harris

4. The Thin Red Line, by James Jones

5. Fear of Flying, by Erica Jong

6. The Silence of the Lambs, by Thomas Harris

7. Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert A. Heinlein

8. Fuzz, by Ed McBain

9. Alligator, by Shelley Katz

10. The Sum of All Fears, by Tom Clancy

He was probably taking the piss a little bit in this particular instance, but you can be sure that he'd read (and read hard) everything in this list.

From another syllabus where he included Silence of the Lambs: >Don’t let any potential lightweightish-looking qualities of the texts delude you into thinking that this will be a blow-off-type class. These “popular” texts will end up being harder than more conventionally “literary” works to unpack and read critically. You’ll end up doing more work in here than in other sections of 102, probably.

From: http://www.openculture.com/2013/02/david_foster_wallaces_1994_syllabus.html. Also, UT-Austin's DFW Archive has his annotated copy of Silence of the Lambs: http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/press/releases/2010/dfw/teaching/.

From the OED: > < French brut , feminine brute < Latin brūtus heavy, dull, irrational (Spanish bruto , Italian bruto n.). Some of the senses are probably directly from, or at least influenced by, the Latin.

This website (and one other, but I closed the tab) states that the term did not begin to be applied to humans until the 17th century, so its modern significations (savage, fierce, or violent, although that last one is stretching it a bit) likely resulted as a natural development of the term, unrelated to Brutus. At it's core, it means "brute-like," i.e., "like an animal."

I think THEgrape is right.

While earning my Creative Writing degree at Uni, I was assigned to read "On Writing" by Stephen King: http://www.amazon.com/Writing-10th-Anniversary-Memoir-Craft/dp/1439156816/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1329605272&amp;sr=8-1

Remarkably good read and insight into the craft. Definitely check it out.

Lord of the Flies: Kids are assholes.

The Color Purple: Black men suck.

Roots: White people suck.

Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee: White people suck.

Dances with Wolves: White people suck.

Their Eyes Were Watching God: Blacks can't swim.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X: White people suck.

1984: Told you so.

Metamorphosis: Bugs suck.

The Last of the Mohicans: Indians are sneaky.

Little Big Man: White people suck.

My beef with S&W is that thousands of fiction writers who have read The Elements of Style over the years were held back in a way and essentially became poor, unwitting caricatures of Hemingway and Carver...not that I would know from personal experience or anything.

here are some more lectures by him in english, they're really good. It's amazing how he can quote at lenght so many different sources, it's as if he had the texts in front of him.

EDIT: Sorry about that. This link should work.

I think he has helped shape American literary culture distinctly. However, the fact of King The Writer vs the fact of his work are two widely different things. He will likely have over 100 published books by the time he is done his life and everything has been put out there, and almost none of it will reach the complexity of someone like Steinbeck, whose own star has faded over time.

On Writing may be the only thing that really lasts, with The Shining and The Stand as two of the less bad work. Or, The Gunslinger, but not the sequels.

But, just like Danielle Steele or Frank Slaughter before either of these writers, selling lots of books to people doesn't mean you will leave a lasting legacy in your work.

I just finished The Autobiography of Malcolm X. I didnt know much about Malcolm X going in, and was surprised to learn about his shady beginnings. The book then went into his Nation of Islam days, and also serves as an interesting history of that organization as well. The book actually started losing me near the middle, with some of his more extreme opinions about Islam and Black Rights, but it was great surprise to find out that [SPOILER ALERT] his opinions about many things changed later. The book is written in such a way as to preserve his earlier biases, without being revisionist about his past...and as it says in the afterword, this was done deliberately to make the story more interesting.

I just started Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham. I'm only a couple chapters in (there are 120+ chapters, so they are really short), but I'm hooked. It's a very emotional story from the beginning.

• Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl
• The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
• The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
• Rebecca by Daphne de Maurier
• The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman

This article is pretty fascinating. It features a dozen contemporary writers giving you their own personal Ten Rules for writing fiction. You'd probably love Stephen King's book, On Writing, and possibly Haruki Murakami's book What I Talk About When I Talk About Running...

I enjoyed this course which also serves as a historical lead-up, the 1A to the 1B, of the Yale theory course. Classical theory also feels less theoretical, more practical, to me. It isn't free, though.

I don't mean to patronize, but you might also try reading, or reading something like, The Norton Introduction to Literature. It'll help train you to approach literature with a more technical eye, which I think a "theory" course pre-supposes. You might also try an introduction to philosophy if you haven't had one, because, while it's not related, it'll help you build those atomized details, through their implications and relations, into a theory. There are several available here.

This summer I'm covering classic literature that I haven't had the chance to read yet, alternating with 'lighter' reads. So far this year I've finished The Histories by Herodotus, The Last Unicorn by Peter Beagle, Henry James' The Portrait of a Lady, Don Quixote de La Mancha by Cervantes, A Wizard of Earthsea by Le Guin, A Clockwork Orange, The Peloponessian War by Thucydides, Wuthering Heights by Bronte, The Martian, Republic by Plato, the Gate Thief series by Card (again), and some others that escape me at the moment. I also reread the Harry Potter series and Lord of the Rings again this year.

Here are some of my suggestions (although, not all of them will fit your request perfectly).

You might want to look into Adorno's Minima Moralia...it is fairly grim and the politics can be frustrating, but it is more accessible than his other work and broken into nice short aphorisms about culture in America (from an exile's point of view).

If you are looking for some straight up cultural criticism I would recommend Raymond Williams or Siegfried Kracauer. Definitely older than many suggestions and very marxist but interesting reads nonetheless.

For a more Derridean leaning, I would suggest The Politics of Friendship (very logic driven) and the Gift of Death. Both are book-length, but Margins of Philosophy may also interest you.

Finally, I would just give a plug for Jorge Luis Borges' "On Writing" and the other essays that appear in the Penguin collection with it.

I read my fair of low-brow fare this year (a Chelsea Handler book and some semi-respectable gay smut is involved) but, without a doubt, Mr. James Joyce owned 2012 for me. Having only read "The Dead" before devouring Dubliners, Portrait and Ulysses throughout the year, this was my baptism by fire and I'm nothing short of smitten. But the top 5, in alphabetical order, are:

• Howards End (E.M. Forster) / On Beauty (Zadie Smith) - Reading the latter immediately after the former is lit-geek heaven. Each book, a masterpiece in its own right, is enriched by the existence of the other.
• On Writing (Stephen King) - This one lives up to the hype and has brought me as close as ever to actually try to write fiction.
• Orlando (Virginia Woolf) - It's not as famous as Mrs. Dalloway nor as intricately woven as To the Lighthouse (which I also read this year), but it casts its author in a whole new light. It's also a blast.
• Ulysses (James Joyce) - Consider this a place-holder for all the Jimmy J. I read this year, but I have to pick my constant companion for nearly two months, one that humbled me, moved me and often frustrated me - a few times nearly to the point of giving up. Looking back on it, though, it's an experience I'll never forget and one I plan on revisiting. Getting beaten up for a bit in the middle of the book, after all, is more than worth the almost ethereal brilliance of its last few-hundred (and particularly its last few) pages.
• A Visit from the Goon Squad (Jennifer Egan) - Probably the only book I finished this year and almost turned back to page 1.

Honorable mentions: The Talented Mr. Ripley (Highsmith), White Noise (DeLillo), Cannery Row (Steinbeck), Never Mind (St. Aubyn), Gone Girl (Flynn).

The Disappointment File: NW (Zadie Smith), The Woman in White (Wilkie Collins)

The Trash Heap: Beautiful Ruins (Jess Walter)

An online friend annotated this on Genius, using the poem as an introduction to what literary deconstruction looks like in practice: http://genius.com/2934824/A-b-schmidt-an-exercise-in-deconstruction-william-blakes-the-little-black-boy/William-blakes-the-little-black-boy.

Pretty interesting.

Diaz and Franzen don't belong in the top five of any list. This reminds me of the essay William Gass wrote about the consistent mediocrity of the Pulitzer and other committee-awarded literary prizes.

In Ten windows, there is a chapter: "What is American in Modern American Poetry", and Koch is the first example -- Here is a version

It seems to me that of all the passages you cite and that Hirshfield gives, only your 'Bel Canto' strikes me as obviously "musical". Starting with Whitman, it seems obvious to me, serious American poetry appeals to the intellect and mind's eye, to nostalgia, to grief, to almost everything before it appeals to ear. There are probably a lot of people who emulated Hart Crane that write "pretty sounds" and overwhelm the intellect, I haven't read enough to know.

I love that line

> Sophistication, drums, a baby carriage,

Do you take it as a play on "first comes love, then comes marriage"?

Cow Country also got a small review in the New York Times, which isn't something that ever happens to obscure, self-published books.

I have a feeling this guy is someone famous, or at least well-connected.

someone cut up all his awkward ticks, ummms, and apologies from that interview into a pretty funny compilation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqmIAbHXr0Y

also, some people seem to get the idea that DFW was dismissing the state of modern literature, but by all accounts, he did enjoy pop fiction- http://www.openculture.com/2014/02/david-foster-wallaces-surprising-list-of-his-10-favorite-books.html

I'm not sure which novels you consider the "best", but BookFinder is finding plenty of cheap copies of Elric of Melnibone starting at $3.48 (which includes shipping.)

I have no clue why the prices on Amazon are so high, but Amazon is rarely the best place to look when buying used books.

Ive been reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It started off dry but as it snowballs it is turning into a great philisophical kind of thriller almost. Just read a chapter that reflects many relevant chapters in my life, so im enjoying it.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

I have read about 100 pages. I guess I am missing the American nature (I am Czech) to continue. The specific problem I have is the fact that the main character keeps complaining about the fact that the Sutherlands try to run away from technology, especially motorcycle maintenance. Some people go hunting, some tend to their gardens and some ride their BMWs, which never break.

The Art of War by Sun Tzu

I actually just begun it two days ago, and I'm about halfway through, since it's a rather short book, but it's a good primer into the thoughts and strategies of warfare. Perhaps a bit dated, but interesting nonetheless.

We were assigned to read Reading Like a Writer in a creative writing workshop I took last Spring. I found it incredibly stuffy and stilted. Prose is such a prescriptivist when it comes to writing. Her pompous and posh attitude really turned me off of any good advice she had in the book.

The Art of War saved me from being mugged once. I was a little tipsy. Not drunk, but with enough liquid courage to do something I probably wouldn't do completely sober. This kid grabs me from the back of the sweatshirt and tells me not to yell. Of course that pisses me right off, so I tear my shirt away from him, and then I remember this thread from that book that you don't want to ever be surprised in a fight (it's war in the book, of course) so I booked it across the street so that if they followed me I'd be more ready than they were and tilt the odds better in my favor, there were two of them. Didn't have to, as they ended up running away. They weren't expecting me to actually fight back.

Great question and great responses! I agree with a lot of the suggestions and am happy to see all the love that Steinbeck is getting. I would have gone with Huck Finn, if I had to pick one, but since we don't really have to, I get to list more:

The Autobiography of Malcolm X

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was a gateway to a million things for me. I loved the books so much I wanted to know about the author, Douglas Adams. Reading his nonfiction and interviews, as well as popular critics and comparisons led me to Monty Python, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, Macintosh computers, Stephen Fry, Terry Pratchett, David Attenborough, British rock bands, I could go on and on. That book guided me to my passions and obsessions, and could introduce someone with completely opposite interests to fractals, the science of time and space travel, tea biscuits, again, endless possibility.

The other book that's indelible to me is Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It changed how I've read every other book since. No matter what the book is or is about, I'm always a more present part of my reading it, if that makes sense. Zen made me consider what I'm thinking and how I feel throughout almost any read. If I find myself getting "lost" or "absorbed" in a story I go with that, but I do still take the time to process everything when there is a natural break in the narrative.

Here is my unwarranted opinion on The Art of War, nicely put by John Minford (great Chinese translator!)

>"basically a little facist handbook on how to use plausible ideas in order to totally destroy your fellow man"

I read it in Chinese, and it is not literature. It is an instruction manual full of truisms romanticized in Western translations.

/rant

Sorry.

Chinese is typically written top to bottom and right to left. Originally they were inscribed on bamboo like this with each stick being a stanza. Chinese 'sayings' are usually written in 4-word proverbs so a lot of information can be condensed into a few words and the reader is expected to know the associated proverb (e.g. 2-birds-with-one-stone). This is why Chinese literature is very difficult to translate and why the art of war has so many parallel commentaries.

edit: Hey cool I have the same Penguin Classics (deluxe edition) as you, with exactly that foreword by John Minford haha.

My favorite of his is The Sandman. I used to teach it in an introductory course to literature, which was admittedly a bit ambitious, but it really divided the class, so I've since retired the lesson. Which is a pity, because it really is a wonderful, strange story.

Alas while these are among my two favorites, the one that probably takes that honor is Frost's Two Tramps in Mud Time.

It's not as heroic or grand as either that I quoted above (Is Prufrock heroic? Mock-heroic, perhaps.), but Frost's subtle imagery is perfect and the theme is worthy of a life's ambition.

But yield who will to their separation, My object in living is to unite My avocation and my vocation As my two eyes make one in sight. Only where love and need are one, And the work is play for mortal stakes, Is the deed ever really done For Heaven and the future's sakes.

I'm currently reading Lovecraft from a collection of his works: <em>The Call of Cthulu and Other Weird Stories.</em> Sometime ago I read "At the Mountains of Madness" and a couple of other stories, but I'm not really a fan. A couple of friends of mine do like Lovecraft, however, so I thought I might give it another go.

What drives me crazy about his writing is the same thing you mention: namely, he seems to constantly go on with some variant of, "What happened was so horrible that I can't even begin to tell you about it." That's writing?

Anyway, last night I read a story of his which turned out to be the first one I've come across that I thought was a really good read: "The Picture in the House." Interestingly, of the seven stories of his I've read, it is the one most unlike the others. In particular, he avoids our mutual pet peeve. If you haven't read it, you must.

I'm going to continue on a little while longer at least, but I can't say yet if I'll finish the collection—or change my opinion of him.

If it's primarily the stories you're interested in, I highly recommend Funk &amp; Wagnall's Children's Bible.

My grandmother bought it for my cousins & I through one of those deals where you'd get the first book for free at the grocery store, then agree to buy the rest of the books in the set, usually one per month. (The Charlie Brown 'Cyclopedia set was even more awesome.)

I've since read a couple of different versions of The Bible but I suspect that the majority of what I remember stems from those thin hardcover books.

http://www.kongregate.com/games/TerryCavanagh/dont-look-back

Don't Look Back is a video game adaptation of the story of Orpheus and his attempt to bring his wife back from the under world. It's really good and has a nice retro style to it.

A very good read although I'm partial to Kindred.

It's on Google Books here. https://encrypted.google.com/books?id=89-2ZXYsuAQC&amp;printsec=frontcover

If you would like to continue the story one the go the audio book is here. https://archive.org/details/Kindred

Enjoy

I love Portrait. Ulysses is a bit much, but for your first read, just read through it, don't try to stress in understanding it all. Then read it again with the annotations. I've read it probably 5 times now, and every time is like the first. I like that. I have yet to make it through Finnegans Wake, but I have started it half a dozen times. One of these days! If you haven't yet, you should read his play Exiles, that may be one of my favorite works by him.

Thanks for sharing, more resources for things like this are always good as far as I'm concerned. Another website I'd recommend would be Manybooks.net, it and Project Gutenberg have been main resources for public domain works.

Two of his books are in the top 10 here

Right Ho, Jeeves

The Code of the Woosters

I haven't read any of them either, but I love these quotes.

You might enjoy hearing Faulkner read some selections from this great work, I found it to be very illuminating, and now when I read him I often "hear" his voice in my head.

>Secondly, are there any online literature bookclubs around? Most that I see are focused on non-literary books.

Brain Pain is on Goodreads, but the difficulty of the works chosen usually scares off people who aren't at least somewhat serious about actually discussing the work.

There's also a NYRB Classics discussion group on there.

> Vega’s productivity for the stage, however exaggerated by report, remains phenomenal. He claimed to have written an average of 20 sheets a day throughout his life and left untouched scarcely a vein of writing then current. Cervantes called him “the prodigy of nature.” Juan Pérez de Montalván, his first biographer, in his Fama póstuma (1636), attributed to Vega a total of 1,800 plays, as well as more than 400 autos sacramentales (short allegorical plays on sacramental subjects). The dramatist’s own first figure of 230 plays in 1603 rises to 1,500 in 1632; more than 100, he boasts, were composed and staged in 24 hours. The titles are known of 723 plays and 44 autos, and the texts survive of 426 and 42, respectively.

source

Just finished hero of the empire about Winston Churchill in the Boer war and found it a fascinating look at a conflict I knew nothing about before reading. Now I am working my way through Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow. Extremely intelligent read and highly recommended to anyone looking to learn about the inner workings of late colonial and early American history through the life of America's most influential founding father. After this I'll probably delve into some classic fiction because I just keep buying books faster than I can read them.

To me, King's problem is that he is a lazy writer. He could edit, but he admittedly does not do that much. His book On Writing is popular, but it doesn't really describe what he does when he writes. If he spent more time editing and published less, he might be something different. It's hard to say.

Your point about Goethe highlights something I think describes the difference between a literary and pulp writer: regardless of how you feel about the writer, it can be objectively seen that the writer is doing something special, different, interesting or valuable. Even if you hate it. So, whether or not you like the style of Sorrows, it can still be seen why it's an important enough book to keep reading it.

One of the two books i'm currently reading is The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon. The style seems to be mostly the same as in his other books, but i feel that this one is way more accessible than some others (Against the Day, Bleeding Edge). Even though it's his second novel, i would recommend this over his other works to anyone who wants to get started with Pynchon. For everyone who is already familiar with his work, it's "just" another good Pynchon novel.

The other book i'm reading is a non-fiction book by a german Philosopher that's also teaching at a University close to where i live. He's called Richard David Precht and the book is called Erkenne die Welt - Eine Geschichte der Philosphie I. It's the first out of three books which are about the History of Western Philosophy. I'm through 200/500 pages and it's great so far, giving you a good view on how philosophy started in the western world and who were the main characters back then. It's kinda close to "A History of Western Philosophy" by Bertrand Russell, but it fells easier to read and more accessible. If it get's translated i can highly recommend it to anyone who's interested in the history of western philosophy.

> The school’s principal told parents in a letter that “we have all come to the conclusion that the community costs of reading this book in 11th grade outweigh the literary benefits”, saying that some students had found the “use of the N-word” to be “challenging”, and that the school “was not being inclusive”.

Unfortunately the explanation given in the article is vague, but it's not hard to imagine what "community costs" were occurring, and Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is replacing it according to the Philadelphia Enquirer article. They're definitely not white-washing history by changing to a memoir of a former slave.

There is definitely a wide range of quality in graphic novels. Right now, I don't have much of a desire to read this graphic novel, as the original novel and movie were both awesome, and did a great job conveying everything.

I did really enjoy this adaptation of Don Quixote. The art was great, and the material was very true to the original. At the time I had only marginally wanted to read the original Don Quixote, so in this case it's a more accessible version of a very dense original work, and served as a gateway for me.

Not that you asked for it, but here are some graphic novels that I thought were really well done:

• Blankets by Craig Thompson
• Watchmen by Alan Moore
• Providence by Alan Moore (Currently ongoing. Many allusions to H.P. Lovecraft)
• Maus by Art Spiegelman
• Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
• Batman: The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller

This summer I decided to take a little break from the dense/classic stuff, so for the last few months I've been reading the Thrawn trilogy of the Star Wars books. It takes place five years after Return of the Jedi and focuses on the familiar characters from the movie, as well as some new faces, as they battle the new Grand Admiral of the Empire: Thrawn. It is enjoyable as far as light summer reading goes, and I am a huge Star Wars fan (obviously) so reading new adventures with these beloved characters is really all I need. I will say, though, that after years of nothing but the best that the literary canon has to offer, it's really hard not to be distracted by the subpar writing. That's generally the reason I avoid contemporary or pulp fiction, but yeah, I hadn't seen it up close and personal in a while.

I also just read The Art of War in a single sitting. I had no idea it was so brief. It's not really literature, but I still recommend you check it out. I got it for free through the Books app on my iPhone and it was only 120 or so phone screens long, so in person it must be like 40 pages or something.

Then there's also Peter Gay, scholar of the Enlightenment, who just died recently at the ripe old age of 91.

Anyways, I recently finished Zinsser's book On Writing Well, and while I can't find myself in agreement with all of Zinsser's statements (particularly his grudge against Latinate English), I think it's one of the best and most beautiful works of nonfiction ever written, alongside On Writing and The Elements of Style.

Anne Carson's book of essays on love, Eros the Bittersweet - been causing me to rethink some things about how I view desire as operating.

Also, for a class, The Autobiography of Malcolm X. I'm still in the first half, and what surprised me most is all the lively stuff about the Jazz scene of the 40s, with Malcolm running around in a Zoot Suit throwing out hepcat slang:

>Shorty would take me to groovy, frantic scenes in different chicks' and cats' pads, where with the lights and the juke down mellow, everybody blew gage and juiced back and jumped. I met chicks who were fine as may wine, and cats who were hip to all happenings.

And I'm continuing to read Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and rereading the strangely lovely Pilgrim's Progress before bed.

Plenty of authors have reading lists at the back of their memoirs/how-to-write books. Michael Chabon in "Maps and Legends," Stephen King in "On Writing," Francine Prose in "Reading Like a Writer." I don't know if it'd be legal to rip those off, but they're all good jumping-off points.

Obviously the main problem with something like this is deciding what should and shouldn't qualify.

From this list I can recommend: Sarah Vowell - Assassination Vacation, and Stephen King - On Writing.

Some of Bryson's chapters are entertaining but I wouldn't call any whole book of his good all the way through. (That is usually the case with popular nonfiction books.)

Avoid Thomas Friedman, or at least take it with a grain of salt; don't read anything he says as factual.

I loved and have reread several times John Gardner's books on writing novels. He is so confident in what he has to say that even if I disagree it still seems right because of how he said it! I also really enjoyed Stephen king's On Writing. His prose styling is not my favorite but the book is still really interesting.

Honestly the only resources needed to get into writing are time and dedication. You can read as many books on the craft of writing as you want but they will not make you an effective writer of fiction if you don't practice every day. If you read interviews with writers they all say the same thing. That is because it is the only thing guaranteed to work. I can, without a shred of hesitation, assure you that the only thing all successful writers have in common is that they write every day.

That said, the most useful book on writing is 'Becoming a Writer' by Dorothea Brande. This is because it is focused on building strong writing habits and guides you towards thinking like a writer. It is not a guide to writing in the same sense that any other book is.

Please ignore the (extremely) ugly cover and just buy this book, read it, and do what it tells you to: http://www.bookdepository.com/book/9780874771640?redirected=true&amp;gclid=CLmamOrRnbsCFYdcpQod2moAmQ

Strunk and White's 'The Elements of Style' is very useful when you are unsure about grammar, usage, etc. I found Stephen King's book almost useless, but I have heard of people that didn't. You might find something useful in there.

What you describe about hating your own work is extremely common with all writers. Even people who have been writing for twenty years will write things they are unpleased with. This is almost the purpose of writing - to work towards the truth of what you are writing through numerous revisions, trimming and polishing and emphasising until you are saying what you want to say. So don't be disheartened, just keep doing it.

Dave Barry, Bill Bryson, and David Sedaris are really funny. They're good if you're looking for some light reading. 'Bird by Bird' is excellent if you have any desire to become a writer. 'Pilgrim at Tinker Creek' by Annie Dillard and 'Walden' by Thoreau changed my life. They're a little dry buy totally fantastic if you can get into them. Malcome Gladwell writes some really fascinating stuff about society, but it combines actual information with speculation, so it's hard to know what to believe.

Edit: Just saw someone mention 'Nickled and Dimed' in another comment. I forgot about that one. There's a book that every American should read. It's pretty depressing but show's a side of society that middle/upper class people don't really understand.

Definitely Huxley. Read Orwell too; 1984 is particularly poignant when juxtaposed with Brave New World. Most of those pretentious bastards that define "literature" will probably decry this, but I would suggest Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land to most intelligent high school kids. As far as "hard lit" goes (i.e., not sci-fi) Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig was a hugely influential piece in helping develop my own personal philosophy in high school. Ann Proulx's The Shipping News was instrumental in dealing with loss, disappointment and failure. Heller's Catch 22 convinced me of the insanity and absurdity that is war (at a crucial time for me). Hesse's Siddhartha is a decievingly easy read, but it is full of concepts that left me reeling for days. Unless you're feeling particularly prodigious or ambitious(or you are a particularly morose person), I'd probably save the Russian stuff for a little bit later. Shakespeare gave me respect for both the poetic and the dramatic (swear to gawd I cried during Hamlet my junior year). If you're looking for some sophomoric fun, I'd suggest Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions. Cheers and good reading.

Certainly. Here's the first chapter. If you like that, I'll get the whole shebang to you in a preferred format. It's based on The Princess de Cleves. It's about 85,000ish words, titled Rosalind. Thanks for taking a look at it. Feedback I've already gotten (and have been working on): POV switchs/head hopping; names/cast of characters confusing; some sections (ex: dialog) can get confusing.

Honestly, start with Smuggler's Bible or Cannonball first to get not only a feel, but a pulse for the things that are at stake in his books.

Second, there is a robust community on Goodreads dedicated to Women & Men (and McElroy in general), which is really helpful for elucidation when you find yourself totally lost--and you will. https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/79477-women-and-men

I worded that wrong, was referring to this etymonline entry:

>Main modern sense of "feign, put forward a false claim" is recorded from c.1400; the older sense of simply "to claim" is behind the string of royal pretenders (1690s) in English history. Meaning "to play, make believe" is recorded from 1865. In 17c. pretend also could mean "make a suit of marriage for," from a sense in French. Related: Pretended; pretending.

This book is a start, easy to read and understand: 'How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines' https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39933.How_to_Read_Literature_Like_a_Professor

https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/40148-catching-up-on-classics-and-lots-more

Some books have more discussion (and participation) than others. I thought the discussion on Lolita was great, the others this month not so much. I've seen a response to just about every question or reflection so far, though.

> Beautiful prose

Wouldn't this in some way fit any prose fiction that could be recommended? Whatever the reader's concept of its beauty was, they probably wouldn't suggest it if it was repellingly ugly or awkward.

I think themes or moods are a better choice, like Allmusic does with albums. See the moods in the bottom left: Led Zeppelin's debut (brash, druggy, firery, swaggering, etc.) vs. Joni Mitchell's <em>Blue</em> (bittersweet, warm, literate, refined, sad, intimate, etc.).

It also made me feel hopeless when I read it (also as a student in CUNY). I would say while working with it take mental health breaks between such as using the Pomdoro technique which allows for 5 minutes breaks between every 25 minutes of working so that you can give yourself space to refocus your energy while working with it. Good luck 🍀

It may be helpful to read this New York Times interview McCarthy did back in 1992. McCarthy pretty much never gives interviews (this and his appearance on Oprah for The Road are the only two of which I'm aware), so it can be very illuminating. McCarthy is very enamored with the natural world, so his descriptions of plants and wildlife likely come from a deep knowledge of the subject. He also only sets his stories in locations that he himself has visited, so it would seem that the details he includes in his stories are ones that he has personally seen.

Besides his love for the subject, I like to think he includes these details to firmly stamp his influence on the way the setting is perceived by the reader. Obviously Blood Meridian is no typical western, but even invoking the genre will bring a certain set of images to a reader's mind and to me it seems McCarthy would like to replace those with images of his own choosing. The details also give the setting a terrestrial quality, constantly reinforcing that this story is indeed happening in the "real world."

It takes a long time to get used to the way he "argues", but after you do, everything seems to fall into place. If you're reading them in order, "A custom of the isle of Cea" and "Of cruelty should be coming pretty soon - both are fantastic. As for what exactly his project is, I won't try to do it, since it's pretty difficult to formulate clearly, but something that might be of interest is TS Eliot's introduction to Pascal's Pensees:

"Now the great adversary against whom Pascal set himself, from the time of his first conversations with M. de Saci at Port-Royal, was Montaigne. One cannot destroy Pascal, certainly; but of all authors Montaigne is one of the least destructible. You could as well dissipate a fog by flinging hand-grenades into it. For Montaigne is a fog, a gas, a fluid, insidious element. He does not reason, he insinuates, charms, and influences; or if he reasons, you must be prepared for his having some other design upon you than to convince you by[Pg xiv] his argument. It is hardly too much to say that Montaigne is the most essential author to know, if we would understand the course of French thought during the last three hundred years. In every way, the influence of Montaigne was repugnant to the men of Port-Royal. Pascal studied him with the intention of demolishing him. Yet, in the Pensées, at the very end of his life, we find passage after passage, and the slighter they are the more significant, almost "lifted" out of Montaigne, down to a figure of speech or a word. The parallels[A] are most often with the long essay of Montaigne called Apologie de Raymond Sébond—an astonishing piece of writing upon which Shakespeare also probably drew in Hamlet. Indeed, by the time a man knew Montaigne well enough to attack him, he would already be thoroughly infected by him."

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/18269/18269-h/18269-h.htm

I'm a little late, but the same website did some short films about Kafka. It was posted about a week ago.

http://www.openculture.com/2015/04/four-franz-kafka-animations.html

I haven't watched them myself, but I'm planning to do so.

Except when it is not. "Propaganda" is not the opposite of subversion, it is simply a type of subversion one does not like.

How the CIA Secretly Funded Abstract Expressionism

P. G. Wodehouse is as feel good as you're gonna get, a very good choice! Standard Ebooks have a bunch of his books for free, they're very well produced and typeset.

For anyone who's got a hankering to listen to a recording of "Our Old Home," Hawthorne's reminiscences of his time in England, I recorded it for Librivox after I found the book in a used bookstore in London. It was very insightful regarding the times and the relations between Americans and British. Our Old Home

Etymonline suggests that the word came to Latin from Oscan, which puts the usage to at least 4th century BCE.

So yeah, there is certainly a connection between brutal and Brutus, but it is in the opposite direction to that which the OP is describing.

I second this; I would google for reviews and then look for articles on JSTOR. You could also check worldcat and the MLA International Bibliography (if your library subscribes to it) for print and online articles. Sometimes Wikipedia articles on novels have pretty good bibliographies, too. Then just sort through for what looks interesting to you.

Edit: formatting

Yeah, I think that's an example of a good use of Genius. I'd say they definitely got the reference right, but if you go to the annotation of the original line it's more what I'm frustrated with whenever I try to annotate Dylan (which I do a lot of lol)

Sort of circumlocutorily but really poorly written, like a bad term paper, inhibiting clarity and devoid of precise meaning. Too many words because everyone's ideas are equally valuable, and a lot of them don't put forth a real idea.

I'm a big fan of librarything. It helps me inventory my book collection, and makes suggestions based on the books I've entered into the inventory. It's an incredibly powerful search engine, and not as driven by sales as the searches/suggestions you'll get from Amazon.

I'm currently reading a couple of books... I've most recently come to fall in love with Ray Bradbury down to his teeth. I'm fascinated not by just his works but his love for literature. Zen in the Art of Writing - Ray Bradbury coupled with Ray Bradbury Stories [100 of Bradbury's Most Celebrated Tales] I'm also reading a memoir; The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls ALSO... I've found out The Screwtape Letters - C.S. Lewis audio on YouTube and it's narrated by no one other than John Cleese himself whom I love with a fiery passion so I've been listening and reading along with that. Yep, that's about it for the next couple of days.

It's a short one but 'When Breath Becomes Air' is really beautiful and made me think a lot deeply seemingly simple things. I'm older than you but also just read 'East of Eden' for the first time and can't recommend it enough. Good luck to you in the next chapter!

It depends on the book. "Book" sounds like it could be any book. Currently I'm reading Code Complete, Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, and Thomas' Calculus, Early Transcendentals. Obviously that's an extreme example, but things considered "English lit" or even something like ASoIaF could be considered a heavy read to many.

I'll also chime in and agree with /u/theorymeltfool as someone who graduated high school a little over 4 years ago, it took me about a year to start reading again after high school. Most of my friends haven't read books since they graduated.

I am comfortable asserting that I am a reader, and that Prose puts Angelou and LotF in the same category. Which she does do explicitly, in finding them both unfit for educational purposes. Unlike Prose, and perhaps like you, I like LotF and would defend its presence in the classroom. You seem to be distracted by Prose's particular focus on Angelou. LotF quite obviously falls into the category of "competent middlebrow entertainments" that she derides in the middle column of page 78.

As for whether Angelou is trash, or comfortably on the level of middlebrow entertainment, Prose is unfairly cherry-picking. Angelou has some great metaphors that I still recall to this day, despite having read I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings well over a decade ago now.

Personally, I find Prose to be very difficult to take seriously. Her most famous work, Reading Like a Writer, promises a great deal of close literary analysis of what she considers to be real literary masterpieces, but the one time she offered up her interpretation of a work that I knew well, she was completely wrong. She pointed to an early passage in Pride and Prejudice as a sign that Mr. and Mrs. Bennet were happily married, when in fact, Austen says explicitly near the end that Mr. Bennett regrets marrying someone so obviously unsuited to him. Anyone who wants to diss other authors so badly had better have sterling literary credentials herself.

Prose is silly for the same reason armchair quarterbacking is silly. You look like a fucking idiot when you criticize people who are more successful than you will ever be in their field. They clearly know what they are doing far better than you do. Nobody will be teaching Prose in high school twenty years from now, especially likely since they aren't doing so right now, while I daresay Lord of the Flies will still be going strong.

I'd say you have two routes here: Herman Hesse is now included in the existentialist canon, though I'm not sure if he intended Siddhartha be a statement of that philosophy. Other existentialist works that follow the "peasant's may have it right" and "we can only be our own teachers" may be found in the bibliography of Sarte and Camus.

As far as Western works that draw on Eastern inspiration to make observations within our own framework, you might find Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance to be of interest, though admittedly the book does not do much to represent the orthodox Zen practice. It does, however, explain the Dao in a way that makes a lot of sense and may be a window into further reading of that fantastically ineffable work.

I just finished Norman Mailer's "The Executioner's Song" and am currently reading Edmund Morris' "The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt," to offer two titles somewhat outside the "reddit canon."

I read Capote's "In Cold Blood" in 2013 and thought that although Capote's prose was much better, Mailer created a much more complete portrait of his subjects (primarily murderer Gary Gilmore and his girlfriend, Nicole Barrett). One thing that bothered me about Capote's work is that he favored one of his subjects over the other, and I'd go as far as to say he treated that subject like a martyr. Mailer, while clearly not a proponent of the death penalty, is not as partial or "nice" to Gilmore's image. Overall, I think that I'm finished with the "nonfiction novel." Neither author offered any indication as to which ideas were fact and which were invented. I do appreciate that both authors used the medium to raise serious questions about the nature of violence in America (both criminal and judiciary).

I'm only a few hundred pages into "The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt," which is my first biography. It's extremely readable and Roosevelt's early life is dynamic enough that Morris does not need to be repetitive to stay true to the facts.

Defining it that way, there's only a few works of literature that fit that - On The Road, and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance are all that I can think of. I'm sure there are more pop lit ones out there, but judging society by them is like drawing broad conclusions about humanity from The Simple Life.

King had a strongly negative reaction to his formal education in writing. His autobiography "On Writing" gets into it, but as a storyteller first and a world-builder second, he was criticized for not playing with language for its own sake and embracing reactionary politics.

I just recommended this to someone else but it fits even better for this question. If you want to study/analyze existing literature to improve your writing go buy the book Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose. It teaches you to do EXACTLY what you are asking. It is one of my favorite books of all time. I'm also in a book group of Writers who Read that specifically uses this book to analyze our literary selections in order to become better writers. Go buy it, you won't regret it.

As others have said, Stephen King's On Writing is essential and amazing. Even if you're not a fan of King, I am not by any means, it's an immensely helpful read and a pretty interesting look into the life of one of the most successful writer's of all time.

I would say that the best resource any young writer can have, though, is a group of people to write and read each other's work with. This is easiest if you are in school, but there should be creative writing courses (outside of a full-time university setting) available to you regardless. Most creative writing courses consist of a small group of people who bring in work, either weekly or bi-weekly, distribute it to each other, go home read and critique them and then, on the next class, critique. Some will alternate (one week you critique, the next you get critiqued) but I think they all basically follow the same general format.

Why this is so important is simple: it gets people reading your work almost immediately after finishing it. Feedback and criticism and suggestion often fuels creativity and your ability to work. I know that when I finish a piece I'm excited about (let's say, over the summer, when I'm not in the workshop), the only thing I want to happen next is for people to read it and tell me what they think so I can make it better. There is simply no better setting for this than the creative writing workshop. Friends and family are great, but frankly, most will just say "it was good" or "I liked it." People in a workshop will be better trained to critique and offer helpful criticism. It might take some getting used too (I find most people start off a little thin-skinned; i.e., concentrating on the negative comments, rather than how they can improve their work — and this is understandable for showing other people your work is a very scary thing. But once you do it a few times it becomes immensely enjoyable and above all, it makes you a much better writer.