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  • Showing only topics in ~books with the tag "literature". Back to normal view / Search all groups
    1. The greatest lesson you've learned from classical fiction?

      I am currently enjoying a very thought-provoking semester of American Literature. Prior to this class, I wouldn't have considered fiction as useful in my everyday life, as opposed to something...

      I am currently enjoying a very thought-provoking semester of American Literature. Prior to this class, I wouldn't have considered fiction as useful in my everyday life, as opposed to something like a self-help book. What I've found is exactly the opposite, and I have found novels such as Great Expectations to be even more influential than anything I've ever read.

      So I ask you all, what is the greatest lesson you've learned from classical fiction?

      12 votes
    2. What's the deal with Proust?

      I've never read Marcel Proust, and I know very little about his work. But every serious reader of literature I know absolutely gushes over him, but never seems to be able to explain what's good...

      I've never read Marcel Proust, and I know very little about his work. But every serious reader of literature I know absolutely gushes over him, but never seems to be able to explain what's good about it or what the books are even about.

      The scarce pop-culture references I see to his work (like in "Little Miss Sunshine") seems to cast an affection for Proust as kind of a mark of being an unmoored and depressive romantic.

      So is he worth reading? The full collection of "Remembrance of Things Past" is nearly $100, so that's not a trivial amount to invest. Is there a recommended/definitive translation or edition I should read? What should I keep in mind or be open to if I do try giving it a shot?

      By that last question I mean like, I'd have hated "Catcher In the Rye" if I wasn't told ahead of time to approach it from the mindset of a 15 year old boy. Or I kind of hated 'Madame Bovary" but when explained to me that this was Flaubert's exercise in trying to make people see themselves in an adulteress, a generally reviled archetype, and this was groundbreaking for the time lets me at least appreciate it for accomplishing what it's set out to do. Are there any literary contexts like I this should have in my head before I delve in?

      11 votes
    3. What are the most influential books to you?

      I'm young, I'm looking to understand more ways of looking at the world. What books do you recommend people to read that had profound impacts on your world outlook, character, or anything else like...

      I'm young, I'm looking to understand more ways of looking at the world. What books do you recommend people to read that had profound impacts on your world outlook, character, or anything else like that. Future me says thank you.

      Edit List (Books listed so far by Title):
      "Accelerando" by Charles Stross
      "A Clockwork Orange" by Anthony Burgess
      "A People's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn
      "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson
      "Bardo Thödol" by Padmasambhava
      "Brave New World" by Huxley
      "Book of the Dead" by ?
      "Cain" by José Saramago
      "Capital vol.1" by Karl Marx
      "Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software" by Charles Petzold
      "Collected Fictions" by Jorge Luis Borges
      "Crime and Punishment" by Dostoyevsky
      "Die Grundlage der Allgemeinen Relativitätstheorie" by Einstein
      "Divine Comedy" by Dante
      "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" by Philip K. Dick
      "Don Quixote" by Cervantes
      "Daughters of the Dragons" by William Andrews
      "Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card
      "Ethics" by Spinoza
      "Fables" by Aesop
      "Fahrenheit 451" by Bradbury
      "Faust" by Goethe
      "Flowers for Algernon" By Daniel Keyes
      "Fragile Things" by Neil Gaiman
      "God and the State" by Mikhail Bakunin
      "Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid" by Douglas R. Hofstadter
      "Good Omens" by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
      "Great Books" by David Denby
      "Harry Potter" by J.K. Rowling
      "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams
      "History of Violence" By Édouard Louis
      "Homo Deus" by Yuval Noah Harari
      "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie
      "Illiad" by Homer
      "Ishmael" by Daniel Quinn
      "Kafka on the Shore" by Haruki Murakami
      "Le contrat social" by Rousseau
      "Les fleurs du mal" by Baudelaire
      "Leviathan" by Hobbes
      "Maus" by Art Spiegelman
      "Naked Economics" by Charles Wheelan
      "Name of the Wind" by Patrick Rothfuss
      "Neuromancer" by William Gibson
      "Odyssey" Homer
      "On the Origin of Species" by Darwin
      "Paid Attention" by Faris Yakob
      "Personality-Shaping Through Positive Disintegration Processes" by Kazimierz Dąbrowski
      "Player Piano" by Vonnegut
      "Poetics" by Aristotle
      "Republic" by Plato
      "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Noah Harari
      "Shogun" by James Clavell
      "Slaughterhouse-Five" by Kurt Vonnegut
      "Tao Te Ching" by Lao Tzu
      "Tales of Power" by Carlos Castaneda
      "Theory and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science" by Peter Godfrey-Smith
      "The Ancestor's Tale" by Richard Dawkins
      "The Bible" by :contentious_topic_here:
      "The End of Eddy" By Édouard Louis
      "The Goldfinch" by Donna Tartt
      "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood
      "The Lucifer Effect" by Philip Zimbardo
      "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" by Julian Jaynes
      "The Prince" by Machiavelli
      "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins
      "The Singularity Is Near" by Ray Kurzweill
      "The Stranger" by Camus
      "The Tao of Pooh" by Benjamin Hoff
      "The Three-Body Problem Trilogy" by Cixin Liu
      "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus" by Wittgenstein
      "Traité d'atheologie" by Onfray
      "Treatise of the Three Imposters" by ?
      "Where Mathematics Comes From" by Lakoff and Nunez
      "Where I'm Calling From" by Raymond Carver
      "1984" by George Orwell

      20 votes
    4. What are some good Spanish books?

      I'm learning Spanish and feel like reading is really helping me get to the next level. I've read 1984 and one part of Harry Potter in Spanish but now I'm thinking of trying some original,...

      I'm learning Spanish and feel like reading is really helping me get to the next level. I've read 1984 and one part of Harry Potter in Spanish but now I'm thinking of trying some original, non-translated literature.

      What Spanish-language books would you recommend (that are not too difficult to read)?

      6 votes
    5. Modern Portuguese literature, any hidden gems you know?

      Hello to all! Since I first read a Saramago novel (All the Names), I've grown to love Portuguese literature. Later I read Gonçalo Tavares and Pessoa, and I have some names to discover from their...

      Hello to all!

      Since I first read a Saramago novel (All the Names), I've grown to love Portuguese literature. Later I read Gonçalo Tavares and Pessoa, and I have some names to discover from their classics (illustrious ones like Gil Vicente or Eça de Queiroz), but because I don't know Portuguese yet, I have to make do with translations, which impedes me from following the current, less famous authors. So, I wonder if you could tell me about some of these ones. Which are your favourites, which ones would you suggest? Does not matter if translated or not, I can read in a couple other languages and will learn Portuguese soon too. Thanks in advance!

      7 votes
    6. Tolkien fans unite! Which is your favourite Tolkien book and why?

      I've personally read The Silmarillion 3 times and have found comfort and connection with the book and its stories. Sure, the names are still intimidating and the geography confusing sometimes but...

      I've personally read The Silmarillion 3 times and have found comfort and connection with the book and its stories. Sure, the names are still intimidating and the geography confusing sometimes but all that is part of the enjoyment for me.

      11 votes
    7. TIL Jame Joyce liked fucking the farts out of someone named Nora

      “My sweet little whorish Nora I did as you told me, you dirty little girl, and pulled myself off twice when I read your letter. I am delighted to see that you do like being fucked arseways. Yes,...

      “My sweet little whorish Nora I did as you told me, you dirty little girl, and pulled myself off twice when I read your letter. I am delighted to see that you do like being fucked arseways. Yes, now I can remember that night when I fucked you for so long backwards. It was the dirtiest fucking I ever gave you, darling. My prick was stuck in you for hours, fucking in and out under your upturned rump. I felt your fat sweaty buttocks under my belly and saw your flushed face and mad eyes. At every fuck I gave you your shameless tongue came bursting out through your lips and if a gave you a bigger stronger fuck than usual, fat dirty farts came spluttering out of your backside. You had an arse full of farts that night, darling, and I fucked them out of you, big fat fellows, long windy ones, quick little merry cracks and a lot of tiny little naughty farties ending in a long gush from your hole. It is wonderful to fuck a farting woman when every fuck drives one out of her. I think I would know Nora’s fart anywhere. I think I could pick hers out in a roomful of farting women. It is a rather girlish noise not like the wet windy fart which I imagine fat wives have. It is sudden and dry and dirty like what a bold girl would let off in fun in a school dormitory at night. I hope Nora will let off no end of her farts in my face so that I may know their smell also.

      You say when I go back you will suck me off and you want me to lick your cunt, you little depraved blackguard. I hope you will surprise me some time when I am asleep dressed, steal over to me with a whore’s glow in your slumberous eyes, gently undo button after button in the fly of my trousers and gently take out your lover’s fat mickey, lap it up in your moist mouth and suck away at it till it gets fatter and stiffer and comes off in your mouth. Sometimes too I shall surprise you asleep, lift up your skirts and open your drawers gently, then lie down gently by you and begin to lick lazily round your bush. You will begin to stir uneasily then I will lick the lips of my darling’s cunt. You will begin to groan and grunt and sigh and fart with lust in your sleep. Then I will lick up faster and faster like a ravenous dog until your cunt is a mass of slime and your body wriggling wildly.

      Goodnight, my little farting Nora, my dirty little fuckbird! There is one lovely word, darling, you have underlined to make me pull myself off better. Write me more about that and yourself, sweetly, dirtier, dirtier.”

      ― James Joyce, Selected Letters of James Joyce

      https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/504662-my-sweet-little-whorish-nora-i-did-as-you-told

      5 votes