Great Books To Read

N

NIDHI

New member
hi you must try GODAN by premchand from india which follows up the colonial setup and the hardships which prevailed then in the social structure. its more a epic in indian hindi literature.
 
Stevie B

Stevie B

Current Member
After yesterday's elections in the U.S., I thought perhaps it's time to read John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces.
 
Liam

Liam

Administrator
Is there a Harakiri for Dummies manual I can purchase? I have never been this sad, this bitter, or this cynical in my entire life, no exaggeration. This is not about party lines or deeply-held/cherished beliefs I can disagree with but still respect. This is about voting for a sexist racist homophobic liar and FRAUD with ZERO years in public service. If you voted for him you must on some level agree with or at least tolerate his views. From "grab 'em by the p*ssy" to keeping "those Mexicans" out by means of a wall, if you voted for Trump, you should be held responsible for this. What a fucking disgrace. No wonder the Canadian immigration website crashed the night of the election.

PS. The "you" above is obviously editorial and was not meant as a response to Stevie's post, which is actually quite witty, :)
 
Daniel del Real

Daniel del Real

Moderator
What can I say Liam. Now we Mexicans have to deal with not one, but two idiotic presidents. If our currency wasn't crap already, not it went down almost 15% because this fuck was elected. It is a shame and I share your anger. As many Mexicans I have family living in Los Angeles and this is nothing but bad news.

Funny thing is that, without even relating the election with my readings, this morning I started The Joke by Milan Kundera. This really seems like a joke, one of a very bad taste.
 
Liam

Liam

Administrator
Yeah, I guess this is what they mean by "rock bottom," :(

My partner has Canadian citizenship, so we might relocate to Toronto after I finish my PhD (less than two years). Whoever thought it would come to this. Has this country taken leave of its senses??
 
Liam

Liam

Administrator
True, but if gay rights begin to go (and with a Republican president, Republican House and a Republican Senate that's a very real possibility, I mean who's going to check him??), it may simply prove impossible for us to stay here. We're also getting married sooner than we thought. Can't afford it right now, but better now than never. (While we still can)--:(
 
Stevie B

Stevie B

Current Member
I take a small degree of comfort in knowing that Clinton, at least, won the popular vote, and I can't imagine Trump ever winning a second term. On the other hand, there could be a number of Supreme Court vacancies in the next few years and that is very troubling. By the way, Daniel, have you begun to save up money to contribute to the wall that Trump is going to build and Mexico is going to pay for? :p
 
F

Francis Meadows

Reader
Maybe someone could mail a copy of The Hitchhiker's Guide to Galaxy (Douglas Adams) to the White House... With some luck the president goes exploring the galaxy.

That being said, will D.T. get a second term?

Francis
 
Vitrvvivs

Vitrvvivs

Member
Stevie B said:
After yesterday's elections in the U.S., I thought perhaps it's time to read John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces.
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Not sure if that is a good analogy. Like Cervantes, Sterne, Swift, Carlyle, Joyce... the satire is very cruel. I don't really like these kind of novels.
 
Stevie B

Stevie B

Current Member
Vitrvvivs said:
Not sure if that is a good analogy. Like Cervantes, Sterne, Swift, Carlyle, Joyce... the satire is very cruel. I don't really like these kind of novels.
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It's a coincidence that you cite my post from nearly three years ago as I literally just started reading A Confederacy of Dunces several days ago. The main character in the novel, by the way, is an overweight blowhard who thinks he knows more than everyone. In that way, I think the book connects quite well with the current U.S. commander in chief.
 
Vitrvvivs

Vitrvvivs

Member
Stevie B said:
It's a coincidence that you cite my post from nearly three years ago as I literally just started reading A Confederacy of Dunces several days ago. The main character in the novel, by the way, is an overweight blowhard who thinks he knows more than everyone. In that way, I think the book connects quite well with the current U.S. commander in chief.
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Yes, but the difference is that he became dumb BY READING TOO MUCH or maybe, as Shaw said of Quixote: (paraphrashing) he didn't fail as a human being because he read literature, but because he believed it. Sometimes I feel myself becoming him: people ostracize me because I talk too much about literature, and then I am alone at home and hate everyone for being "plebeians". I think it is challenging that much more.
 
Vitrvvivs

Vitrvvivs

Member
Note: Nabokov called Quixote a (paraphrasing) crude and cruel old book. Not just me who is saying this.

Source: [FONT=Verdana,Arial,Tahoma,Calibri,Geneva,sans-serif]http://wmjas.wikidot.com/nabokov-s-recommendations

This is actually a fun list. Would recommend you read.
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Mise Eire

Mise Eire

Reader
Vitrvvivs said:
Note: Nabokov called Quixote a (paraphrasing) crude and cruel old book. Not just me who is saying this.

Source:

Nabokov's Recommendations - Wm Jas

wmjas.wikidot.com wmjas.wikidot.com

This is actually a fun list. Would recommend you read.
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Hilarious, well worth reading - what a card VN was:

Melville, Herman. Love him. One would like to have filmed him at breakfast, feeding a sardine to his cat
Faulkner, William. Dislike him. Writer of corncobby chronicles. To consider them masterpieces is an absurd delusion. A nonentity, means absolutely nothing to me.
Camus, Albert. Dislike him. Second-rate, ephemeral, puffed-up. A nonentity, means absolutely nothing to me. Awful.


Strong Opinions, indeed!
 
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Cleanthess

Cleanthess

Dinanukht wannabe
Strong opinions seem to abound among Russian writers.

Nabokov's beloved Tolstoy had some things to say about Shakespeare, that "insignificant, inartistic writer", who "might have been whatever you like, but he was certainly not an artist". Tolstoy was convinced that the fact that some readers "discover in him non-existent merits — thereby distorting their aesthetic and ethical understanding — is a great evil".

To provide some sort of rebuttal, maybe this oldie but goodie will do (I highlighted some names pertinent to Tolstoy's and Nabokov's views):

A few years ago, the French periodical Telerama and the Spanish newspaper El Pais asked one hundred of the most important living writers from both the French and Spanish languages for lists of their 10 favorite books. The results put together allow us to see the Western Literature Canon from a more democratic point of view than just one writer's strong opinions. I did some tallying up and here are the results for the top 20 writers most mentioned on those 200 lists:

1. Marcel Proust (his books were listed 61 times)
2. William Faulkner (51)
3. Franz Kafka. (41)
4. Gustave Flaubert (37)
5. Feodor Dostoevsky (36)
6. Miguel de Cervantes (35)
7. William Shakespeare (33)
8. Jorge Luis Borges (29)
9. Leo Tolstoy (27)
10. Virginia Woolf (27)
11. James Joyce (26)
12. Homer (20)
13. Herman Melville. (19)
14. Albert Camus (19)
15. Stendhal (18)
16. Thomas Mann (18)
17. Juan Rulfo (17)
18. Vladimir Nabokov (16)
19. Arthur Rimbaud (15)
20. Louis-Ferdinand Celine (15)
 
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Vitrvvivs

Vitrvvivs

Member
Sort of off-topic, but what exactly is the reasoning behind your emboldening of those names? Céline, Flaubert, & Borges are also on Nabokov's list.
 
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