I would like to know what /lit/ considers their personal favourite or the definitive "best" English translations of Homer's Odyssey. I AM interested in both a verse and a prose translation. For the Illiad I have read both Fagles for verse, and Hammond for prose. I greatly enjoy Fagles verse and I value Hammond's for its accuracy and literal translation of the Greek. Though he often falls into dull descriptions, and lacks the life, energy, excitement, and tension that I have found in Fagles. Now, the Odyssey is ultimately a very different poem to the Illiad in many ways, and thus a great translator of the Illiad may not always make a great translator of the Odyssey. I have yet to read the Odyssey in full, only a handful of passages when I took a Homer module at University. I own Fagle's translation but would love some input on others before I start a full reading.
Ezra Pound, Canto I
>>24749792Fagles, obviously.
>>24749792this is missing Lattimore.
>>24749610That seems like a you problem, not the ebook problem. I have no issues reading from my smartphone at home.
>>24749396Don't see how that would affect my computer with linux nor my home server though?
>>24749724>That seems like a you problemI don't deny that. Step one is to admit I have a problem. It's like some people are alcoholics and others aren't, you know? And if you're an alcoholic, best to stay away from bars.
Nigga if you find yourself in a scenario where the internet suddenly blacked out to the point where you simply cannot recover anything you have bigger issues than literature preservation, there's probably a band of raiders driving to your house to rape you. Papertards always invent these apocalypse now scenarios that justifies their consooming of relic media. >DUDE WHAT IF ...WHAT IF A MASSIVE SOLAR FLARE FRIES UP THE ELECTRONICS!!!
>>24749325>goy spending more money because a study told him toI have plenty of money to spend. What else am I going to do with it?
Are there any crypto-pagan authors from the 1800's or early 1900's I could read?If it's philosophy or non-fiction it's going right into the trash can.
Didn't the Romans erase all of Pagan history? There's only second hand, interpreted knowledge, right? Especially from the super early Celts. Which has survived the longest, continuously?
Thomas Taylor for Platonism. Try Friedrich Hölderlin for the neo-pagan stuff
>>24749482Strange how you get embarrassed from others. Must be cringe beta male behavior.
>>24749529>Didn't the Romans erase all of Pagan historyThink about what you're saying before you make retarded posts, anon.
>>24749446Not sure if he counts, but Nathaniel Hawthorne was sympathetic to pagans, mostly due to his virulent hatred of the Quakers.
It's just more aesthetically pleasing than organizing by title, subject matter, author, last read, or favorite.
>>24749644I organize by height.
>>24749644I don't own books
I prefer to integrate the form of books into my home. For example I use one as a mouse pad.
>>24749644
>>24749653woman moment
Seriously asking here, because I really don't get it. It's a simple activity, yet I have a real hard time with getting into the flow of reading for more than ten minutes. Describing it as mere ''adhd'' seems reductive to me. What are the mechanics of this shit and how do I turn back the gears into a functional position again?
>>24748785Getting epubs and editing them on Calibre is preferable
>>24749233>Internet brainIt wasn't always the case. I doubt that the average internet user had his neurons dried out and neutered this hard in 2008. It's a social media thing, 4chan included
It isn't. You just do it.
>>24748758Doesn't reading easily digestible books kind of end up doing nothing at all to your brain and perpetuates the low effort hedonist cycle further?
>>24749696Obviously you need to give your children Ulysses by Joyce. You know, they might never mature from those picture books.But let's be serious. Let's also imply that you are OP and you know nothing about books. Reading easy books has a different appeal and purpose than reading difficult books.First of all, easy books are easy only if you wanna see them that way. Aesop's fables were written originally for adults. But now we tell them to our kids. If you are low IQ, you'll only see the superficial aspect of them. It's called "death of the author": you can make out what you want of what you read.Secondly, if you really think about it, there is no opposite of easy books. There are just books with a specific purpose, and how well it is implemented.A manual shouldn't be difficult, if written well. An "easily digestible" novel shouldn't be difficult, if written well.The truth is, if you feel the appeal of easily digestible books to the point that you would devote your life to them, that's because you are retarded, not because they are easy to read. Would be able to stomach Dr. Seuss stuff every day for the rest of your life? No. That's because you don't have the brain of an infant.If you are not retarded then it will be difficult to spend time reading slop.The art we consume defines us: you might aspire to be someone who can quote the Bible by heart, but if your mind goes to the Warhammer novels, then that's who you truly are. Same goes with vidyas: you might look up to the Dota fags, but if you can't go beyond League, I'm sorry, but Dota is just too much for you. And as you may know, even League has its depth, but only if you are not a superficial retard.Last but not least, classics are *just* influencial. The Count of Montecristo was written by a nigger who was paid the more he wrote. It's slop before slop was invented. The aristocrats weren't reading Dickens, who was serializing his novel and was loved by the women who had nothing to do all day. The patrician choice was to study the Greeks instead.And the Greeks were killing their philosophers, because they were grooming young men into their useless activities.Pushkin was disregarded, because the true russian complexity lied in theological treatises. In one of his books there is even the word "roastbeef".Shakespeare was stealing, like every other theatre kid of his day, and how many times is there the word "whore" in Othello?Comment too long. Click here to view the full text.
I started carrying around a notebook when I went out. I took it everywhere I went and put it on my nightstand when I slept. I bought a nice leather cover to keep it in and a fancy ink pen to write with. I felt very unique and hoped that people thought I was smart when they would see be scribbling in the book. I’ve read that this is what writers do. They carry around notebooks, so they can always write when their muse whispers to them, so they are never without the means to record the words that appear in their minds. So I started carrying around a notebook, hoping a muse would sing to me and that letters would flash in my head, but it was never so easy for me. Words don’t appear in my head, I’ve got to force them in, I’ve got to struggle to remember vocabulary flash cards and lines of old poetry. My handwriting has always been atrocious, but it’s practically unreadable in my notebook since my hands shake when I try to write while standing or walking. The letters are all misshapen and because pages warp from the humid air, their all connected like cursive script because I don’t lift my pen off the page enough while writing.After a month, I looked back at what I had written. It was all terrible. Dull descriptions of the grey carpet and off-white ceiling tiles of the building I work in. Poorly wrought poems about philosophers with preposterous rhymes. I was so ashamed of how awful it all was that I burnt the notebook (but I kept the leather cover and pen, those cost me money, why shouldn’t I keep them?) Perhaps I’m not a writer. Perhaps I can carry around a paintbrush, but I’ll never be a painter. I wish I was a writer. I wish I was creative and capable of conjuring beauty.
>>24748480crazy how much variety and nuance the world has yet you choose to think in binary. you have a lot to learn about identity brother
>>24743944I think natural talent is more pertinent in writing compared to other art forms because it materializes entirely from your brain whereas in painting or music, there's more muscle memory involved to achieve mastery. I was a decent writer until antidepressants ruined me cognitively and I never read many books, words entirely came to me in the form of a lightbulb moment. Sometimes either your brain has it or it doesn't, maybe take psilocybin to rewire it
>>24749483You probably just had more passion back then.
>>24748566Yeah, it sucks. I'm bored all the time.
>>24743911>I started carrying around a notebook when I went out. I took it everywhere I went and put it on my nightstand when I slept. I bought a nice leather cover to keep it in and a fancy ink pen to write with. Holy shit are you me? I started doing the exact same thing, even got my first ever fountain pen because of it>I felt very unique and hoped that people thought I was smart when they would see be scribbling in the book. This is where your autism started taking things off the rails. It does not make you smart, and certainly does not make you look interesting. You do not carry the journal around for the aesthetics but instead you do it because you NEED to write something down, be it reminders, thoughts, poems, etc.>I’ve read that this is what writers do. They carry around notebooks, so they can always write when their muse whispers to themYes and 90% of those notebooks they carry are full of dogwater content that never saw the light of day. That's how your notebooks should look like, with some of them even having 0 pages that are actually worth reading and every once in a while when you get a good thought going and you write down, you put a bookmark on that page so that you can come back to it later>PicrelSome of my ramblings. A year ago I started journaling everything I do every day, along with some of the thoughts I have throughout the day. Some entries are really good, some are bad. What matters is not the quality of the prose or handwriting or anything like that, but instead the fact that you write at all
Bad Title and Thumbnail Edition (pic related)Stubbed>>24740312>What is /wng/ — Web Novel General?A general for readers and authors involved or interested in the growing phenomenon of 'web novels', serialized English fiction posted to websites such as: Royal Road, Webnovel, Scribblehub, Wattpad, Archive of Our Own, Spacebattles, HFY, various personal author websites, and more>Why read web novels?Not for prose or tight editing or deep themes, frankly. As a whole, web novels are infamous for content sprawl and pacing issues. If you enjoy having millions of words to sink your teeth into to get to know the world and characters, though, you may be interested. Keeping up with other readers on a weekly basis to discuss the story's events unfolding is another perk, in the same way discussing an ongoing TV show might be.>Why write web novels?Ease of access & potential for Patreon earnings. Many successful authors gain an audience on their website of choice and funnel their readers into a Patreon. See graphtreon.com/top-patreon-creators/writing for an idea of what some are earning.Also, once an author has earned a fanbase, transitioning into an Amazon self-publishing career is several orders of magnitude easier than starting 'dry'.>Advice for Noobs!Comment too long. Click here to view the full text.
>finally wrote the last setup chapter>it's short but whatever>finally ready to deliver the climax that was promised way back at the beginning>too worn out to start writing it today>have to wait until tomorrowI'm excited, but fuck, book 3 is now already twice the length of book 1, and it'll wind up twice the length of book 2 before I pare it down. Book 3 is going to be a massive chonk by comparison if anyone actually buys the physical trilogy.I've noticed something interesting on RR though. After my ad runs finished I didn't buy any more, and my growth slowed and then came to basically a complete halt at the part of the story where pacing issues were wearing out readers. Follower count stagnated, and even fell a bit. So I figured that even though the story improved later, it would remain stagnant. But now that I'm at the end of book 2, where the pace is much improved and the story is racing towards the local climax, follower and view growth has picked up again. I have no idea what's causing this. Maybe someone shouted me out or is talking about me in the forums or something. I don't have author premium to see where readers are getting linked from.But hey, it's nice to know that a weak beginning and middle isn't enough to kill a story entirely as long as [It's Serialized].
>system girl evolution changed titlepussy ass bitch
>>24749743Yeah bro they're trynna trick you, what the fuck?
>>24749743The entire x evolution cabal changed their titles after their success.
>only 5 [tags] in the titlengmi
How do you argue with someone in bad faith? Meaning - let's say that I'm having a conversation with someone and they want to either talk in circles or create an argument wherein you know that they will "win" the argument because they've made the discussion specifically designed to make it so that they win rhetorical points without arriving at truth. They don't want to share ideas or use the conversation to gain insight into some way that either person could be right and through discussion they find the best solution using reason, they want to use obfuscation in order to declare victory or get as much information out of the other person as possible without sharing any themselves. Those are two tactics that I know of. Others are just repeating yourself or getting the other person to pay attention to what you're saying merely as a distraction (I've had idiots do this to me in public spaces to see if they can get other people to run circles around me just to do it - "he's distracted run away" - people in San Francisco are more or less walking human bags of shit). Or using the "no really" "no actually" to make a statement wherein if it's interpreted wrong you have the worst possible interpretation used to poison the other person (or give them good things) - based on "karma". Using the 1979 version of the Parker Brother's games has been popular lately. My douchebag cousin had "Merlin" and dressed up as a fucking wizard and I had "Stop Thief!". I take it my sister is fucking with us and it's annoying as hell. Someone spent a shitload of money to screw with us just because and it's all over the internet and being followed all over town. They gave me glasses that make me look like the douchebag from dexters laboratory from the chinese and it is probably making me go blind. Then you're "scared of" cartoons while you don't know how someone is making you go blind while you have to pay attention to stupid cartoon shows from when you were a kid to see how you're going to be sickened to death. They are incredibly fucked up here to say the least. Using Parker Brother's games to fuck with someone is incredibly popular if you don't act crazy or "seek help" while people gas and drug you while misleading you. Because you have a "monopoly on truth". It's psychotics that will poison you and then see if they can make you do stupid shit while surrounding you with bullshit constantly.They're just so fucking incredibly awful. Sorry this started as a question about rhetoric and now all I can think about is how much I want to leave this awful city. I had two crazy people talk to me today that were both sick and fucking with me and everyone else will do the no really no actually shit. They attempt to kill people by cordoning off all the crazy people together and then sickening them to each other until they all die off. It means that anyone you talk to is going to be insane or want to manipulate you to get shit out of you.Interested in what you have to say.
https://copilot.microsoft.com/shares/6S1AEagjpoQdvidYtebJoSomeone was talking to me about bitcoin earlier and so now I'm wondering if every time I ask something someone doesn't like they'll mention some amount of bitcoin that is being spent in order to fix it and then have this subtracted from the total. A joke on CREAM and cash rules everything around me. And then I die when there's no more bitcoin. Meanwhile I don't believe that Americans landed on the moon now. Or that either Elon Musk or Donald Trump are real people.
if this is the case then this conversation has cost one million four hundred thousand dollars.
>>24749636This>>24749661This is almost correct but still difficult. Because the usual response is “but let me direct your attention to this other set of goal posts over here.” Because they are bad faith shitstains. Jesus is able to pull this off masterfully (breaking out of false dichotomies) in the gospels when pharisees are playing games with him. He is able to completely shut them up because he switches to a much higher perspective and also completely exposes their bullshit. The more you study the OT and all the extra second temple history and context the more you realize how utterly fuck you Jesus gets with them, it’s pretty hilarious. But it’s like you have to take it there to just make them shut the fuck up just so they don’t get shit in their mouths when you are rubbing their faces in it. It’s hard to do this and keep *yourself* clean. So generally it’s better to do a 360 and walk away. For context, I’m a grown ass man with three kids. My inlaws live with us and they are completely selfish, dishonest, narcissistic, lying, scheming, utterly willing to sacrifice my kids so they can avoid moderate inconvenience. It’s not easy, you just have to stay disengaged and stay clean. This actually pushes my mother in law’s buttons more than anything. I’m civil with them but when they start on bullshit I won’t even correct them, I’ll just put up boundaries to firewall off me and mine and take a few days off from talking to them. Sorry to add to the walls of text, hope something in there helps.
Did everyone in this thread just read the opening sentences and not the rest of this anon's OP or subsequent posts? This doesn't sound like somene irked by conversations with people, this is someone having a mental break and being too far gone to realize it.
>>24749761Half and half. They interact.
Calling all Pynchon fans: ITT we attempt to write the first chapter of Pynchon's upcoming novel Shadow Ticket based only on the official description on Penguin Press's website.https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/316427/shadow-ticket-by-thomas-pynchon/
Later, at the Unamalgamated Ops detective agency, his boss Boynt Crosstown is waiting for him at the door, so nervous that his feet are tapping a quick four-four time on the threshold. "Flash bulletin" – he grabs Hicks' tie and pretends to drag him across the office into his room – "this'll just take a minute." Hicks tries to maintain a certain professionalism. "I assume you didn't hear anything at lunchtime..." "Bombs come, bombs go, the Santa Flavia Chamber of Commerce isn't so important anymore, write me a brief report, but that's just small potatoes, I've landed us something fabulous, and I'm telling you, this'll make us all rich men..." And so forth.
"I wish you wouldn't come to work when you're like this, Boynt." "Sure, sure, but for once it's not just another Depression daydream, there's money in it, big money, I've seen it!"
With Boynt, such things usually turn out to be illegible IOUs written in pencil on damp paper napkins. Hicks tries not to let his skepticism show. "This time it's really there, on the table and as green as Wisconsin was before they cut down all the trees." "Too bad my mattress is fuller than the police allow, the bills are already hanging out, you understand..." "You were always too cheap," says Boynt, shaking his head. "You were working for small change even before the Crash." He presses a button on the intercom. "Thessaly, would you please bring us the file?"
"You guys have a completely different tax rate up there in Shorewood, don't you?" Boynt gets the brunt of the class-warfare needling here, which comes at industrial sewing-machine speed and practically non-stop, ever since a certain page from his confidential personnel file one day folded itself into a paper airplane and sailed into the room with the mimeograph machine, from where copies quickly found their way to every employee and announced that Boynt earns a little over ten thousand a year and is also involved in some side businesses about which one might learn more details someday, but certainly not very soon.
Thessaly Wayward comes in with a fairly substantial file folder, which Boynt immediately flips open dramatically. Hicks sees a familiar clipping from a tabloid newspaper.
what if ayn rand but communist
>>24749750>who also believed in telepathy
The closest thing to Communist Ayn Rand is Jack London's The Iron Heel, although Jack London was basically a fascist by the time he died.
Can you read Thomas Pynchon's Vineland without reading any of his other books? And are there any prerequisites to reading his works? Any ideas or things you need to know to understand his works? I know it's just loosely inspired but I wanted to read it before i watch "One battle after Another".
>Can you read Thomas Pynchon's Vineland without reading any of his other books?sure, I've also only read two of his books prior to reading Vineland
>>24748822I wanna read this because the book cover looks like black metal album art
>>24748822You can, but there's a minor reference to The Crying of Lot 49 which you won't appreciate without having read that novel. And TCoL49 is short anyway, so you may as well read it first.
>>24748822>h-h-hi guys I don’t really read but someone told me that DiCaprio movie is based on this and so I want to carry it around in public for a bit but I want to get my story straight when I tell others about how I don’t often read Pynchon
>>24749241Harsh but fair. OP, read Crying of Lot 49 or V. for your first Pynching session.
He may be a faggot but he was right here. This gives away that someone is an NPC turbonormalfaggot.
>>24749587It’s not that badMy main social problems as an adult are I don’t really form platonic friendships with women and I’m extremely territorial about my partners. In my country where single sex schools are the norm this is fairly standard, I don’t really get cultures where mixed sex friendships are common and men or women don’t get aggro about it.
>>24749641>My main social problems as an adult are I don’t really form platonic friendships with women and I’m extremely territorial about my partnersthose are not problems. that's just how every well adjusted male is for all of human history. Don't let modern sensibilities turn you into a cuck.
>>24749466makes sense, middle management is like domestic life, and women have been breed for dominion of the home as man was breed for dominion of the field.
>>24748581>This gives away that someone is an NPC turbonormalfaggot.Really? In my experience it is mostly failed normalfags that hate school the most. Or your school was full of blacks.School was nice. I was invisible, plus I'm pretty sure people were somewhat afraid of me, so I was never bullied. The only people who were bullied were low IQ autists openly obsessed with entry level anime and vidya, and would reference memes IRL.
>>24749639Underrated.
what's your strongest rebuttal against the problem of evil?
>>24749560>persecutory delusionsSounds like someone completely ignorant of history. I'd love every atheist to spend one day in Saudi Arabia just to get a taste of that.
>>24749420>Satan and his followers do evil>Therefore Christians are evilYour analogy doesn't make any sense. No one is justifying evil here. Evil is evil. Christ forgives and heals *people* but shows nothing but implacable hatred for sin and evil.
>>24749427>Alexa, how did sin and death enter the world again?
>>24749686>"Oh, man chose Satan over God, hmmm, look at that..."
>>24747966Pagan gods are not omnipotent.
I really loved this book.Does anyone have similar recommendations, even outside of sci-fi? >weird, fever dream world building >next to no or very few human characters >ideas that are very hard to grasp >body horror, or biological themes
>>24748728What's so great about this ? Seems like people think it's a hog to read and nothing happens.
ITT: The worst genre fiction you've read
>>24746295So, how it works is that every zodiac sign has a set of rules they have to follow and a set general role in society. They're all completely fucking arbitrary both in and out of universe.The protagonist is a Scorpio, and most of the people we see directly victimized by the system for breaking the rules are Scorpios. Scorpios are not supposed to ever show any emotion or have romantic relationships with anyone or live with non-Scorpios. One of the first scenes we get of what happens if you break the code is a gay scorpio boy getting killed in the street by authorities solely because his lover was from a different zodiac sign. The lover in question is basically left unharmed, and this is kinda the theme with all the similar punishments we see throughout the book: if a Scorpio breaks the rules, they're killed, while anyone who breaks the rules WITH the Scorpio at the very least gets off with a lesser punishment. Both the protagonist herself and the rest of the cast repeatedly talk about how much it sucks to be a Scorpio and unable to make friends or show emotions.The problem is, those authorities that are in charge of killing Scorpios if they break the rules? They're... the Scorpios. They literally have the highest position in the society; their leader has twice the votes of any of the other factions, they're in charge of enforcing most of the breakings of the code, and literally everyone else hates them because of this. The only other faction that has even remotely similar stupid limits on what they can do is the faction that is the bottom tier of society and is literally not allowed to step foot on land. And all the other factions like, admit they hate the code and break it all the fucking time. Literally half the scorpios we see on screen are the ones who hate the code and hide that they're breaking it to avoid persecution, while the other half are the ones who enforce that same code. It is legitimately a caste system where the most restrictive caste restrictions are on the ruling class are enforced by the ruling class.
>>24746763Tf is this an academic text, lmao. Cover art design for character is kindo though.
>>24745335bläsphemy!
Absolute fucking worthless dreck, irredeemable from the beginning to the end.
>>24745335You could name any genre fiction within the last 20 years and I would agree with you.