What are you reading?

[Mandieta6]

I don't really read Wilde for his depth but for his wit.

 

[Chacarita Juniors]

So I picked up Mary Shelly's The Last Man thinking it would be a good read considering I really liked Frankenstein...I was wrong. I had to put it down, I was falling asleep.

I felt the same way about War and Peace. Ugh.

I read Don Quixote in English (I had read it in Spanish first) and I think I enjoyed it more.

Gonna start reading Bram Stoker's Dracula.

 

[Back Door Skip]

The Importance of Being Earnest? Really? It's legitimately funny. Perhaps you'd enjoy it id you watched it?

Well I read it for school, so I think that might have influenced my opinion...

 

[Mandieta6]

19th century English literature was shit, the only exception being poetry and the turn of the century authors like Conrad, Wilde, Shaw and Wells.

Frankenstein is pretty boring in terms of general fiction. In comparison with the rest of what was being produced there at the time it's probably among the best.

I've said it before in this thread: Charles Dickens is shit.

 

[ShiftyPowers]

Thomas Hardy is alright, but it's hard to disagree with any of that. 20s-30s American lit is the golden age of literary golden ages.

 

[Sir Didier Drogba]

Thomas Hardy was a good poet but a poor novelist. I reread Mayor of Casterbridge not so long ago because I was in Mauritania and it was the only English language book I could find and yeah, I was entertained, but it was written so clunkily. Mandieta6 is completely right about 19th century English literature, for the most part I cant stand it, though I think I have mentioned before the noble exception of George Gissing.

Also as good as the themes are of many Conrad works reading them is such a fucking chore, when I finally finish them (they seem to take me twice as long as other books the same length) I feel like I have just finished a marathon workout, and I didnt get any pleasure along the way. A perfect example of this is Lord Jim, the moral questions and themes of failure and (possible) redemption in this are seminal, and the story should be riveting given the plot, but my God reading it is like trying to walk through the jungle.

 

[Sepak]

I've been reading Uncle Fester, he's really hard to read and understand but really interesting at the same time. I really liked his approach over Nietzsche's genealogy works.

 

[Sepak]

Has anyone here read Agatha Christie's books? I bought Murder on the Orient Express but I read that it's the 10th book in the Hercules Poirot series(Didn't know there were 41 of them), should I read the other nine first?

 

[Sir Didier Drogba]

Absolutely no need, but Murder on the Orient Express is pretty shit. Death on the Nile is a slightly better Poirot novel, however the best Agatha Christie is Ten Little Niggers, which was tragically renamed to And Then There Were None by the PC brigade. It's really good though.

 

[Sepak]

Haha, thanks. That other novel was there as well. I'll buy it when I can then.

 

[newbie original]

Charles Dickens is shit.

So is William ******* Shakespeare. And his damn escapism.

 

[Mandieta6]

Shakespeare's plad canbbe enjoyed by anyone and stuided at depth. Dickens is just a bore.

 

[Filipower]

gingerhorse

 

[Zlatan]

Hey guys, any Kafka fans here? I want to get started on his oevre but I don't really know where to start...

 

[Sepak]

Me. Well, everyone starts with The Metamorphosis, it's the easiest to read and understand of the ones I've read and I highly recommend it, it enters you in his philosophy and belief. Later you can read his deeper works like the castle, the trial and my personal favourite Parables and Paradoxes.

 

[Mandieta6]

I read Metamorphosis this summer and thought it was overrated. Hardly any recollection of it.

 

[ShiftyPowers]

I read The Trial and thought it was the worst piece of shit I'd ever read and then it just ends with absolutely no plot resolution because he just neglected to finish any books in his lifetime.

 

[Sir Didier Drogba]

I read The Trial and thought it was the worst piece of shit I'd ever read and then it just ends with absolutely no plot resolution because he just neglected to finish any books in his lifetime.

I am not a big Kafka fan either, people always read so much into him and hipsters are so impressed, yet I think it is all rather basic - heavyhanded allegories, lazily finished (or unfinished) and deliberately underdeveloped ideas, crude literary devices and tedious repetition. He's not all bad, he creates good atmosphere and certain sections of his work are engrossing (I really enjoyed the entire first half of America when he tried to be a little more ambitious, before disappointingly retiring back to classic Kafka and then not finishing the thing) and some ideas and themes have merit, even if you wish he would push them further, but all in all he is my no means the literary behemoth that so many present him to be.

EDIT: remember in The Squid and the Whale when he is trying to be pretentious to impress a girl?

Sophie: Yeah. I mean, it's gross when he turns into the bug, but I love how matter of fact everything is.
Walt: Yeah, it's very Kafkaesque.
Sophie: Cause it's written by Kafka.
Walt: Right. I mean, clearly.

 

[Mandieta6]

Anyone read Fitzgerald's other works (not Gatsby)? I'm doing my dissertation on Gatsby and some other works and I'm looking for other American novels that deal with people having their aspirations unfulfilled and/or the failure of the American Dream. I think maybe Of Mice and Men could work but I was hoping maybe Fitzgerald dealt with the same themes in his other works so I could read those and maybe contrast them.

Any suggestions? Doesn't have to be Fitzgerald, though, so long as it's American.

 

[ShiftyPowers]

Yeah, I just recently read Tender is the Night and also read This Side of Paradise as a college student. Dick, the main character of Tender is the Night, I guess you can say leads a very unfulfilling life. This Side of Paradise is more of an autobiographical work and I don't remember it so well.

If you're looking for an American Dream work, I would actually suggest the Snopes Trilogy by Faulkner. The whole point is essentially that Flem Snopes rises from being basically a farm hand to one of the richest people in town. But hell, you can just google "American Dream Books" and find all the "correct" classics on the topic. Grapes of Wrath, Invisible Man, the Horatio Alger books (essentially established the archetype). Hell, even The Jungle by Upton Sinclair is an American Dream book.