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Book Thread
C-poots- Shiek
- Posts : 1094
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Join date : 2013-05-12
- Post n°226
Re: Book Thread
around half way through The Odyssey and I've got to say, it is boring me a bit. I'm happy to get some more of the 'literary canon' out of the way so I can act like I understand Ulysses when I read it and not too much like a liar, but I'm going to be honest and say I'm not loving it.
Guest- Guest
- Post n°227
Re: Book Thread
I've got a week left in this year long project on Althusser so that has been keeping me pretty occupied. I have sort of half-read Hard Times by Dickens and re-read Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad though. Both were for a comparative literature class I am enrolled in this quarter.
The class kind of sucks because all of the students just masquerade their thoughts with weird analogies to Hegel's lord-bondsman section in the Phenomenology of Spirit. I hate it when people hide behind things like that because it destroys all thought. I am not going to take the time to unpack the relationship between what you are saying to fucking Hegel just so that I can respond to your comment about a fictional character. Rawwwrrrr!
The class kind of sucks because all of the students just masquerade their thoughts with weird analogies to Hegel's lord-bondsman section in the Phenomenology of Spirit. I hate it when people hide behind things like that because it destroys all thought. I am not going to take the time to unpack the relationship between what you are saying to fucking Hegel just so that I can respond to your comment about a fictional character. Rawwwrrrr!
zappo- Supermasculine Menial
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- Post n°228
Re: Book Thread
I'm reading some awful book because some hot chick at work said I should read it. I not even sure of the name of it. The Name of the Wind, I think...? Anyway, she's half-Jewish!
zappo- Supermasculine Menial
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- Post n°229
Re: Book Thread
And thin!
zappo- Supermasculine Menial
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- Post n°230
Re: Book Thread
Anyway, the book is awful. I've read a number of horrible books about Indian cinema, recently. Times are tough. Gonna get started on the Markson book about Under the Volcano, in the next week or two. Gotta reread the Lowry book first, though.
C-poots- Shiek
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- Post n°231
Re: Book Thread
Basically done with The Odyssey. It improved some in my eyes, and having read some more background on it and some of the questions the literary community (...) have come up with regarding life beyond the novel/poem, I guess I can find more to think about wrt Odysseus and fam.
Whatever, don't feel like writing a dissertation on it right now.
Prob gonna try to tackle The Good Soldier Švejk again next, after I do a bit of WWI research.
Whatever, don't feel like writing a dissertation on it right now.
Prob gonna try to tackle The Good Soldier Švejk again next, after I do a bit of WWI research.
Michael K.- Fascist Groove Shark
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pickled
- Post n°232
Re: Book Thread
The Odyssey is boring. It's a good story, but the execution isn't interesting because of translation, oral history, etc. It isn't literature, is my point.
Currently reading The Art of Fielding and I quite like it.
Currently reading The Art of Fielding and I quite like it.
C-poots- Shiek
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- Post n°233
Re: Book Thread
Weird point of view to say The Odyssey is not literature without giving a little more than 'translation, oral history, etc'. I would not question it as a piece of lit for even a second so I'm curious as to what you mean.
ClosetOfExhaustion- Have You Heard?
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disposed
- Post n°234
Re: Book Thread
started the Wind Up Bird Chronicles
Michael K.- Fascist Groove Shark
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- Post n°235
Re: Book Thread
C-poots wrote:Weird point of view to say The Odyssey is not literature without giving a little more than 'translation, oral history, etc'. I would not question it as a piece of lit for even a second so I'm curious as to what you mean.
That was a dumb thing to write and I was really tired when I wrote it. To expound (just a little bit) further, I don't think it lends itself to examination by close reading, rhetorical tropes, or analysis of theme in the same way that most books in the canon do. The Odyssey reads like an accounting of events rather than an event in itself. Which makes perfect sense because the book is more closely a part of oral tradition than it is written. There's very little detail to the vignettes that make up the book, and in spite of being long, it could've been 10x longer. I respect it and think it lays a great thematic and narrative upon which a bunch of other works have been built, but I don't enjoy reading it or thinking about it in the same way I do, e.g., (parts of) Ulysses or Mrs. Dalloway or The Sound and the Fury or a host of other things. The strokes are so broad and I deal in minutiae.
C-poots- Shiek
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- Post n°236
Re: Book Thread
Good commentary I pretty much agree with that.
Just re-started Svejk and I'm enjoying it much more this time already. With a slightly better understanding of WWI and European geography it seems to make more sense. Also reading it at a bit slower pace has helped to pick up on some of the nuance of the Svejk character.
Just re-started Svejk and I'm enjoying it much more this time already. With a slightly better understanding of WWI and European geography it seems to make more sense. Also reading it at a bit slower pace has helped to pick up on some of the nuance of the Svejk character.
Bruegel- basically just a wordier, shittier sausage blurb
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- Post n°237
Re: Book Thread
got this for my Mom yesterday because she loves trees and beautiful books:
http://newsylva.com/
http://newsylva.com/
Bruegel- basically just a wordier, shittier sausage blurb
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- Post n°238
Re: Book Thread
on the subject of trees, spotted this in the Queen's Wood near Highgate yesterday:
for a grim moment, from a distance, I thought it was a decapitated head.
the hair was tied to a nail. all a bit True Detective.
for a grim moment, from a distance, I thought it was a decapitated head.
the hair was tied to a nail. all a bit True Detective.
Duff...- Current Bass Player of UFO
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Location : private beach in Michigan
Sunny.
- Post n°239
Re: Book Thread
That's a sharp looking book.
C-poots- Shiek
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- Post n°240
Re: Book Thread
Svejks Budejovice Anabasis has been such a good chapter, I'm not really sure where the book can go from here except down, tho I'm hoping I'm a fool and it continues to be this enjoyable and funny and biting.
C-poots- Shiek
- Posts : 1094
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- Post n°241
Re: Book Thread
This book could use a bit of editing, that is for sure.
Bruegel- basically just a wordier, shittier sausage blurb
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- Post n°242
Re: Book Thread
that would miss the point in such an epic way that I'm tempted to incorporate it as a plot line in a satirical farce lampooning the cultural malaise and convention servitude of western civilisation 2014-2018
C-poots- Shiek
- Posts : 1094
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- Post n°243
Re: Book Thread
Post could use a bit of editing, thats for sure.
Bruegel- basically just a wordier, shittier sausage blurb
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- Post n°244
Re: Book Thread
The Fateful Adventures of a Bohemian During the Age of Cultural Conservatism
C-poots- Shiek
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- Post n°245
Re: Book Thread
I do like the book a great deal actually so don't get me wrong, I think its really witty, funny, enjoyable, jarring, etc. And when asked what I would edit I can't actually pick something because all of the incessant talking is obviously integral to the novel's progression and the Svejk character. but at times I feel as though Hasek is playing a trick on all of the readers, treating us exactly as just another of Svejk's military seniors would be treated, pruning nothing of Svejk or his compatriots' speeches for our own experience. This very well might have been his intention and I think it is an added level of wit and comedy, but that does not mean that there aren't moments where I go slightly nutty from the endless stream of anecdotes.
Bruegel- basically just a wordier, shittier sausage blurb
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- Post n°246
Re: Book Thread
yeah, that is certainly intentional. quite a lot of nuance gets a lost in translation, particularly in the case of the more provocative devices. on first reading, i had similar issues with Don Quixote.
Pete Best- Solid Bro
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Age : 40
Location : London
Sweet
- Post n°247
Re: Book Thread
Similar topics;
http://thelesbianplayground.forumotion.com/t9-dejay-deej-reads-a-book
http://thelesbianplayground.forumotion.com/t9-dejay-deej-reads-a-book
WP64- Mystery Thread Deleter
- Posts : 3650
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Age : 30
Intransigent
- Post n°248
Re: Book Thread
I have to read the entirety of The Mayor of Casterbridge this weekend and write a 10-page paper. I've been putting it off for a while because, seriously, nobody has fucking time for this type of bullshit. It should be illegal for anything to be this dry. Thomas Hardy needed some literary vagisil.
Gene Bootcut- A fanatic of the sketch genre
- Posts : 1895
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Age : 32
Location : Bowcat Alley
- Post n°249
Re: Book Thread
I found ten books that I'd presumed long lost in a cabinet I never go into. Amongst them were Brave New World and In Cold Blood, two novels I don't think I would enjoy very much if I read them as an adult.
Gene Bootcut- A fanatic of the sketch genre
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- Post n°250
Re: Book Thread
Ҩ wrote:I have to read the entirety of The Mayor of Casterbridge this weekend and write a 10-page paper. I've been putting it off for a while because, seriously, nobody has fucking time for this type of bullshit. It should be illegal for anything to be this dry. Thomas Hardy needed some literary vagisil.
wp, I felt the same way about Far from the Madding Crowd when I tried to read it, but that degree of clinical dryness isn't present in Tess of the d'Urbervilles or Jude the Obscure, both of which are well worth your time. I actually would have imagined Hardy is a writer you would admire on an ideological basis, particularly his poetry, which I don't have an opinion on because I don't enjoy reading poetry.
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