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how do you guys feel about this one
1 reply omitted. Click here to view.
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i'm a fan. had me in stitches. i enjoyed this audiobook.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4Q3UsA3F-k
>>
Had it sitting on my shelf for years but always had something more interesting to read first
>>
Perhaps I didn't get far enough into it but it gets so repetitive for me. I get it's the catch-22 but every page is filled with catch-22s that it gets tiresome to read for me. I've tried reading it three times and I can still never get past the first ~150 pages.
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>>24686973
Fun desu.
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>>24686973
very funny book written by a jew.

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>>24687061
Bukowski's Post Office is not believable. He only takes 6 months of unauthorised sick leave off due to alcoholism and does not drink nearly enough.

1/10: not realistic, insufficient alcoholism.

_t. postal delivery officer.
>>
The Ginger Man.
>>
My stepdad's diary desu. It's not really a diary. It's a collection of .txt files in a folder marked "secret" on his 2004 desktop PC. He caught me looking once and he beat my ass with a fire poker. Just about shook my bones like a christmas tree. Then he went into my sisters room and
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>>24687038
Steppenwolf
>>
IJ

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>allegory fucking sucks
>read a real book, better a historical one
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Tolkien preferred 'applicability' to 'allegory' precisely because allegory limited the meaning of a metaphor to a very specific object
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>>24687920
Tolkien doesn't understand what allegory means
>>
“History is a set of lies agreed upon.” — Napoleon
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>>24687923
What does it mean?
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>>24687942
allegories were used by commentators to reinterpret homer to defend him from the critics. it has nothing to do with the author

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>Aristotle considered fiction to be superior to history in cultivation of the self
>Alexander the Great considered sports a boring waste of time and preferred to stage theatre and poetry readings rather than sports contests

When did you realize that the “greatest” Greeks were just eggheads?
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>>24687759
>all history is biased therefore when a close friend of Alexander who was one of his generals and made a king by him conflicts with other contemporary accounts in a quite blatant way, like claims Alexander wasn't alcoholic like everyone says and his reputation for drinking a lot was exaggerated because he just socialized a lot and so always had a cup of wine in his hand, it doesn't matter, even though we know Alexander did things got so drunk he murdered an important friend over an argument
>but an historian from antiquity who used multiple primary sources about Alexander and took the trouble to examine and compare discrepancies is just headcanon even though there is not a single academic book about Alexander that doesn't draw immensely from said ancient historian

You aren't just stupid, you prefer to be stupid
>>
Sports are just peacetime simulations of conflict and Alexander could always go to war to satisfy the same urge.
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>>24687794
Keep seething, I guess.
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>>24687160
are you retarded? sports then and until like the 20th century are primarily forms of martial training and thoroughly aristocratic
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>>24687636
Plutarch being "used as a source" doesn't say anything about his knowledge of Alexander's own personal opinions and he's certainly not infallible. Arrian makes a stronger effort of not mixing headcanon in with his account of events and he says nothing about Alexander's interest in sports or lack thereof. There is a number of obvious origin myths mixed in with Plutarch's work and if he said something about Alexander's personal thoughts and opinions without a source then it should be disregarded as headcanon since those are the most easily bastardized, thanks to gullible readers like (You)

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I keep seeing people talk about Postmodernism in relation to literary analysis, especially Pynchon, but I don't get it. Is it just a pretentious way of saying "words can mean anything you want"? It seems like a total meme. Help a brainlet out.
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literally just means the story doesn't follow the conventional style, it has almost nothing to do with the philosophical "post-modernism". Oedipa doesn't find out if the conspiracy is actually real vs a more traditional story where it all gets tied up with a bow and she solves the case
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>>24687795
Bateman. Batman isn't nearly psychotic enough.
>>
>>24686201
Or are you frustratingly expressing your latent homosexuality?
>>
>>24687823
Which stems from what Lyotard called the loss of faith in grand narratives. Life doesn't have all the answers, and there isn't necessarily one correct way to act or observe or live, so this reflects in the writing as questioning the premises of storytelling and the moral frameworks that were in place still in modernist writing.
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>>24686170
Fiction that serves primarily as commentary

Who was the most gifted sister?
>>
>>24686617
Emily, obviously. Her single work overshadows both of her sisters' entire careers.
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>>24686617
idk man, but according to my mum Anne Bronte is the worst

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>be me
>struggle to read consistently
>spend ~8 hours a day staring at screens in a bright-lit room
>too tired to read at home
>ordered a couple of books from Amazon recently
>turns out one of them was the braille version
>start learning braille to get an idea how difficult it is
>it's actually pretty simple
>slowly read the book in braille
>amazing experience
>sitting in a very dimly lit room with my eyes closed reading a story with my fingertips
>feelsgoodman
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>>24686645
I wouldn't because i'm high on caffeine 24/7
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>>24683713
the rare based frogposter. proud of you, anon.
>>
The absolute state of this board. The fact any of you are even pretending to believe a massive faggot like OP is just tragic.
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>>24687027
I kneel
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>>24683713
Where do you get your braille books from?

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I discovered him in late 2023, read The Poetics of Space and loved it, read The Flame of the Candle earlier this year and loved that too. He has a book or two for every element I plan on going through. Definitely my favorite phenomenologist to read.
>>
I love Bachelard but I've only read The Poetics of Space and The Psychoanalysis of Fire. I've heard that his philosophy of science is very interesting but I've never properly looked into it. He was my introduction to a lot of poetry as a teen.
>>
>>24686885
Bachelard is awesome, man. His stuff about the imagination is tremendous. Poétique de la rêverie is well worth reading. And if you can understand french, do yourself a favor and listen to the small yet precious clips of his voice that are available. He's so jovial, and his way of speaking explains the how and the why of his philosophy better than secondary literature ever could.
>>
Yep, this humble bearded guy from the east region of France is one of my favorite.

I have read a lot of his book of imagination and it is really pleasant.

What did I just read?

Are all 20th century novels this meandering and nonsensical?
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>>24685083
The end is worth the slog that precedes it. I can't say the same for Demian. Currently reading narcissus and goldmund
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>>24685083
You are on the wrong board, fren.
>>
>>24685083
Ghastly

>>24685570
>empowered pro edition
that sounds really gay
>>
Why were so many 20th century authors obsessed with drugs and whores? I understand It's supposed to be a 'counter culture' since religion and tradition had been grinded to dust at that point. But is that really what you do with your new bought freedom? Oh and of course vague eastern mysticism, we can't forget that.
>>
>>24686305
all metaphorical wolves are gay. anyway, the wolf now does a kickflip as well as the usual stepping.

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Has anyone read this novel?
Thoughts?

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Recommended reading charts. (Look here before asking for vague recs)
https://mega.nz/folder/kj5hWI6J#0cyw0-ZdvZKOJW3fPI6RfQ/folder/4rAmSZxb

>Archive:
https://warosu.org/lit/?task=search2&search_subject=sffg

>Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1029811-sffg

>Previous:
>>24668507

>Thread Question:
Are there any worthwhile novel novel to comic adaptations or vice versa?
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>>24687907
How about pseudo-fantasy science fiction?
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>>24687907
Try something smaller as those are big series. What sort of things/themes do you like or maybe what sci-fi do you like so anons can see if there is a fantasy equivalent.
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>>24687909
I like exploration of weird novel ideas or profound realization about something or thought experiments.

I don't care about power fantasies or characters too much.
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>>24687779
>>24687915
same
>>
>>24687915
Check out The Just City. Blend of fantasy and sci-fi as it's about Greek Gods but has time travel stuff in it too.

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does anyone else read books on their phone during their break? or does that not display
'i'm reading' enough for lit? i've thought that once. since everyone scrolls their phone, outwardly it's all the same. i kind of like that.

i work in a warehouse and do this. lately i've been off fiction though. reading about the history of numbers and mathematics in my 30 minutes, scoffing last night's cooking. i love history because it's intellectually stimulating (open-ended) and an alien world in which i can forget the drudgery of my own. yes, i'm also learning mathematics. i have no formal education.
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>>24682884

I've had a stable, comfy pleb job for many years. Reading during work breaks is a ritual I have maintained the entire time. I can just read in a windowless, musicless airconditioned room. I just read 1-10 pages of the current book, retain the basics, and I keep reading it until I'm done. A partial listing of what I've read entirely during work breaks:

Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action
Federalist Papers
The Immortal Game (a breezy history of chess)
Agamben, State of Exception (tiny)
Society of the Spectacle
Houellebecq, Whatever
Joyce, Dubliners
Machiavelli, The Prince (a quick re-read)
Joyce, Portrait (a re-read, read the first time many years before)
Iliad, Odyssey, Aeneid (did these as a unit recently, finished Aeneid at parent's house during a break. Hated the Iliad, but at least now I know who's who)
multiple volumes of Cioran (I made a point of keeping these very discreet, so as not to attract any questions)

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>>24682884
I read books at work, as in I bring the physical book to work with me. My "break" is 3 or 4 hours long so i get a good deal of reading done.
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>>24683586
Maybe you can figure out how magnets work
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>>24683586
This is why, no matter how much tradies make, they will always be low on the social ladder.
>>
>>24687077
Not really. Since people ultimately only care about wealth, wealth moves the world, what is tasteful follows that and the rest is usually cope, an attempt to fabricate status in light of loss of it with little to prove it since it was obviously founded on wealth to start with. But this isn't about tradies, it's about new money, now not new, now indistinguishable.

Good income vs mediocre income for someone not born to wealth is an irrelevant distinction, and the difference in culturedness is also slight or nonexistent on the whole. The tradies with exceptional income are exclusively intelligent, multi-skilled businessmen. The actually wealthy have a separate culture unrelated to the masses and unfortunately I would not call it classy by any means.

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Are there any good Marxist/communist novel in the second half of the 20th century or contemporary?

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I broke a woman's heart. What literature exists to help me understand love?
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>>24686268
No one understands what love is. In English it’s literally a meme word that is devoid of analytic content. You’re better off investigating similar concepts from other languages that are more clearly defined.
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>>24686268
What did you do to her? I would recommend Eugene Onegin
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>>24687021

She described how she felt so deeply that she almost loved me. I never felt that way about her or anyone else for that matter. If she was sure she felt that way, why is it love? What separates it from friendship? How do I identify love? Is it only attraction?
>>
>>24687894
>she almost loved m
That was a manip attempt, based red-flagged bullet dodge king.

>How do I identify love?
I did that irrationally and my marriage is running strong desu.
>>
>>24686933
Top contender for September's pseud comment of the year. Subversive one.

Is this worth a read? It looks very aesthetically cool, but it's just YA space dystopia fiction. Normally I'd just enjoy the schlock, but I check the Wiki for each book and all of them start
>MC is still fighting against the evil people in charge
I've gone past 3-4 books and every synopsis starts the same exact way. It seems like an extremely dragged out series. I have my guilty pleasures and don't mind it being schlocky, but I hate stories that are so decompressed that they move at a snail's pace, especially when they're of lower tier.

So, thoughts?
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>>24687848
Apparently it has cuckshit. I'm with it in books with serious artistic merit, but I don't want it in my entertainment.
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>>24687848
They're enjoyable books. Only the first is YA, you have to get that out of the way for the series to pick up. The story is not slow paced either, it's just a large war that happens throughout the series. And ignore >>24687864 because it doesn't. It has white, bonde haired women in relationships with other white blonde haired men.
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>>24687848
It's good. But you have to keep in mind the author is unbelievably edgy and his edgelord tendencies come out in full force in book 3 and the second series.


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