No.1619
>>1590Catch-22 is the greatest education one can have on both mob mentalities and the inherent dysfunctionality of large organizations. I'd rank it as the greatest work of art of the 20th century. The fact that it's friggin' hilarious is just the cherry on top.
No.1620
Almost finishing the godfather, going to start reading Battle Royale by Takami next week
No.1621
last fiction book i've read was The White Plague by Frank Herbert, in summer 2016. Since then i haven't got much time to read more than a few programming and math books, even tho i'm currently reading A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.
I plan on reading Cryptonomicon, and then Neuromancer as soon as I finish this book.
No.1622
>>1Im a newbie programmer so im reading mostly programming related stuff
No.1623
>>1621Cryptonomicon is well worth the time to read. I may even re-read it soon.
No.1624
>>1618good choice, the sprawl trilogy is such a classic (though Neuromancer is the best book out of it)
>>1621Since you're already planning to read Neal Stephenson check out Error and Snow Crash, phenomenal books
No.1755
Valis by Philip k dick
No.1809
I'm reading Anti-Oedipus. It's more coherent than some people lead me to believe, but it's still pretty fucking trippy.
No.1815
>>1809I want to get around to Euclid elements, peloponesian war, and possibly zolzhenystysn
No.1842
>>1546I wouldn't say that I am Buddhist but I have been reading about it. I've got the book in your pic, but I've barely touched it. Been too busy with tedious soykaf.
No.1850
>>99where would you put kafka's metamorphosis?
No.2212
i'm reading naked lunch now.
>>2160>everyones already readi haven't.
No.2213
>>2160Zerobooks has a lot of interesting stuff, I enjoyed "Vaporwave and the Commodification of Ghosts" . Can you expand a bit on the title by Fisher it seems right up my alley.
No.2214
>>2211Convenience Store Woman was one of my favorite reads this year. It was perfectly weird, I think it would really resonate with a lot of people here.
Not exactly the same but related, I also read Schoolgirl by Dazai and that was pretty solid. But I also found Hiromi Kawakami who is my favorite new author this year. "Strange Weather in Tokyo" is probably her best overall work but I really enjoyed Manazuru as well.
No.2218
>>2217Trust me, this is one alice who would never begrudge someone enjoying LM Montgomery's works. It's been a few years since I've read any of them though. I'm originally from PEI, and now living very far from home due to work. I tried re-reading the first one a few months ago and just got horribly homesick. I could see in my mind the landscape of my childhood, just as Anne described it, the blues and greens and reds.
I just can't call a place home if it doesn't have rich red soil and clay and sand, and deep blue water and light blue skies all the way to the horizon. It'd be career suicide, but almost every day I keep thinking about quitting everything, selling everything, and going back home for good. Alberta is just so damned soulless and artificial. No-one here gives a single thought to either history or legacy. It's all about making as much money this fiscal quarter as possible, damn the past and damn the future.
No.2220
>>2218Oh wow… Newfie Alice here. Usually when I bring up Anne on imageboards I'm advised to watch the 70s anime adaptation (which admittedly looks pretty damn cool). I only visited PEI once, when I was four, but I have pretty clear memories of it. If the tarsands go up in smoke and burn the entirety of Alberta to the ground, I'll shed no tears but I hope you and yours make it out alive first.
No.2221
>>2220A fellow islander! Granted it's not the same island, and yours is a hell of a lot bigger, but I think it's close enough for some measure of camaraderie. Us easterners gotta stick together, eh?
The new netflix Anne series is the one to watch, I think. Very true to the books so far. It's amazing filmmaking, they did a ton of location shooting on the island. The vistas of the gulf coast while Matthew takes Anne home for the first time are glorious. And everyone involved in the production has put in 100% effort, particularly in accents. It doesn't just look like Cavendish, it sounds like it too.
No.2222
>>2214>I think it would really resonate with a lot of people here.Definitely.
I would rate
Strange Weather In Tokyo over
Convenience Store Woman, it had a much stronger narrative and structure. Both are charming novels though.
I've yet to read
Manazuru but I enjoyed
The Nakano Thrift Shop. Slice-of-life romance like Strange Weather but the language is much more austere yet still beautiful.
No.2223
>>2222Yea I am gonna start Thrift Shop soon after I finish A Record of a Night too Brief by her which is ok, not at all a novel though. More like a collection of symbolist short stories with a recurring character. Manazuru is one I didn't rate as highly as Strange Weather but I remember it more even though I read it first. Its quite depressing and the story is anything but easy to get but it really sticks with you. I had to read some reviews to fully get it (since its mostly told through very vague hints and metaphor) but once I did grasp the whole story I couldn't seem to stop thinking about it.
No.2224
>>2221There is also the 1985 CBC adaptation. Though I was younger than Anne herself when I watched that, it flooded back clear as day reading the first book. I was startled at how my very old memories of that series matched the text pretty much exactly.
And yes, people like us have to stick together ^_^
No.2293
>>2211>The Names by Don DeLillomeh. I love his writing but this was more of the same really. Might read
Players later.
Currently reading
The End by Karl Ove Knausgård. Read the previous five books and my library had it, so why not?
I've had an urge to re-read a few books this year but I have too many waiting to be read.
No.2313
>>2293>The End by Karl Ove Knausgårdfinished it last week, fantastic. the entire series is so well written but i have no idea why and i love that. if only i could read the original Norwegian.
came upon an interview between the author and Zadie Smith so I've started on her
White Teeth that has been sitting on my shelf for a long time now.
No.2314
I picked up a copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance from my neighborhoods' little free library a couple weeks ago and I've been reading through it a chapter or two a night with a bottle of porter right before going to bed. Before this, my reading was infrequent and sporadic. I think I'm going to continue doing this with other books once I finish this one.
No.2315
A friend turned me on to A Breakfast of Champions. I had an English teacher in school who brought up Slaughterhouse Five a lot, so I guess this was sort of inevitable.
No.2316
the last thing i read recently was the breakfast of champions, have to be honest it quite a good read.
No.2319
Just finished reading Lautréamont's The Songs of Maldoror. What an exciting book, although I feel like most of it went over my head. I'm already planning to read it again!
No.2320
>>2313>…White Teeth that has been sitting on my shelf for a long time nowfor good reason. it is a clever, funny book but that's not what I'm after these days.
Reread
The Rings Of Saturn by Sebald (if I had a top 5 list, this would be on it). Slowly chipping my way through
The Little Typer and another book that has been aging on my shelf
Brighton Rock by Graham Greene
No.2322
>>2320What would the other four books be in it?
Do you have a physical copy of The Little Typer or where can I pirate it? I've been looking for it… No.2339
Here are some of the books I've read past this year and found interesting:
Debt: The First 5000 Years by David Graeber; Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed by James C. Scott; Fanny Hill by John Cleland; glitterboys by Larry Kramer; Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts; Sculpting in Time by Andrei Tarkovsky; Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery; The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood; Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann; The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe; Nightwood by Djuna Barnes; A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle; The Technological Society by Jacques Ellul; We by Yevgeny Zamyatin; The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick; A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole; Hyperion by Dan Simmons; Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro; The Beast that Shouted Love at the Heart of the World by Harlan Ellison; What the Hell Did I Just Read: A Novel of Cosmic Horror by David Wong; Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death by Kurt Vonnegut; Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card; Storm of Steel by Ernst Jünger; The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton; Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse; Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Céline; The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci by Jonathan Spence; Man and Technology: A Contribution to a Philosophy of Life by Oswald Spengler; The Woman in the Dunes by Kōbō Abe; A Hereditary Book on the Art of War by Yagyū Munenori; The Unfettered Mind by Takuan Sōhō; No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai; Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids by Kenzaburō Ōe.
Recommend them all.
No.2345
>>1Storm of Steel by Ernst Junger, a long and very realistic memoir of what WWI was truly like from the perspective of an utter badass. Junger's biography is too long and complex to go over this post, but just an fyi he joined the French Foreign legion in his early 20s. Yeah that epic.
As for political views Junger is certainly a student of the German Conservative Revolution, and was respected by pretty much the whole political spectrum in his days.
Anyhow, I'm reading the penguin version. The introduction was very nice, I like how Sartre when asked about Junger simply stated: "I hate him" and went along. So far its been slow but the terror of warfare and especially the toxic mix of agony and boredom has gotten to me. Really, Junger hits it home when he says the boredom kills you more than the fear.
I HIGHLY recommend it!
No.2346
I bought The Man in the High Castle by Dick, Slaughterhouse 5 by Vonnegut and the Sprawl Trilogy by Gibson. Still haven't had any time to start reading em, tho.
No.2348
>>2345That's funny, I'm reading the forest passage right now and enjoying it so far.
No.2363
Currently reading 'Lolita' , 'Crime and Punishment' and 'Don Quixote'
Crime and Punishment started a bit slow imo but I am about 25% through the book and its getting really good
Lolita is good so far and I have barely started on Don Quixote
No.2364
Read American Psycho and really enjoyed it, which other works by Bret Easton Ellis are worth reading?
No.2367
Reading "In the Miso Soup" by Ryu Murakami and enjoying it a great deal so far. Some descriptions are slightly more bare than what i am used to, it is a short book I guess but i cant help but wonder how it reads in the original language.
No.2368
>>2366I finally got around to reading fear and loathing not too long ago and I love it. The exchanges between the characters become more entertaining the further you get into the book as you get clued into their inside jokes/mannerisms.
No.2369
>>2366Do you know of any other good gonzo authors or titles? The only other author i tried (couldn't remember his name) felt like regular asshole hooked on cocaine.
