Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:19:55 No. 603
E-ink display e-readers are probably going to be easiest on your eyes short of physical books
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:19:56 No. 609
>>602 Yes. It's called a book. It's made of paper and you don't need electricity to run it.
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:19:56 No. 610
>>609 ah yes, buying communist literature. great way to get put on a list
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:19:56 No. 611
>>610 Use the library or ask to borrow from someone else
Étienne 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:19:56 No. 614
> I am sick of looking at my laptop to read these huge pdfs Then get physical books, that is what I do ! Check out your local book shops and or libraries !
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:19:56 No. 615
>>614 I can’t find any at my local library (even if there are any, they’re in urdu which I can’t read easily). Should i just write them out if they’re of a small size? Like the communist manifesto?
Étienne 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:19:57 No. 617
>>610 After purchasing a book, the 74 year old seller grabs a black phone form under their desk, they dial a secret number and say to the phone «Yes FBI, put Jean Dupont on the spooky list because they purchased the book Ten Days That Shook the World by John Reed!»
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:19:57 No. 621
>>610 I unironically bought Mein Kampf and the Capital together to confuse the hell out of Feds.
Anonymous 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:19:58 No. 631
>>630 I'm a ML so keep that in mind
Anonymous 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:19:58 No. 632
>>631 Lolita, MLs love lolis.
Anonymous 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:19:58 No. 633
My personal favorite is 11. Lots of good stuff on that list. You can go ahead and skip 54 I think.
Anonymous 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:19:59 No. 634
None, its not like you're ever going to read all that shit
Anonymous 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:19:59 No. 635
>>634 Lots of normies enjoy fiction.
Anonymous 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:19:59 No. 637
>>630 Find a better list tbh. This is what you get when you base a list like this on polling. You get a bunch of "hidden gems" that aren't hidden at all. And you get fucking Harry Potter at #54 book of all time.
>>631 Unironically go read Animal Farm. It's very short. And if you haven't read like half that list in high school go look up some high school reading list and remedy yourself.
Anonymous 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:19:59 No. 638
>>637 I did high school in Turkey.
How do I know if a reading list is better if I haven't read the books?
Anonymous 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:19:59 No. 639
>>636 MUST…. CONSOOM…. MUH LITERATURE…..
Anonymous 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:19:59 No. 640
>>639 What's better, consooming sports or literature?
Anonymous 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:19:59 No. 642
lolita's unironically fun, made me fell a lot of things
Anonymous 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:20:00 No. 643
Fuck that list it's mostly all fiction, ain't nobody got time fo dat. Fiction is just a written dressed up movie, read poetry if you want pretty words. It's just petitbourg indulgence to read muh sophisticated literature and it only makes you sound pretentious when namedropping books you've read off a list.
Anonymous 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:20:00 No. 644
>>643 >Fiction is pretentious, but poetry isn't what a faggot
Anonymous 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:20:00 No. 646
>>644 I said if he wanted to waste his time and read well written english at least poetry would give him more of that. Half those books are high school tier with little knowledge value. Lord of the flies, Harry Potter, Tolkien, Gatsby, walden, camus, wtf brainlet tier stuff.
Anonymous 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:20:00 No. 647
>>630 >Harry Potter series OUT OUT OUT OUT OUT!!
Anonymous 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:20:00 No. 648
>>643 Unironically kill yourself you fucking illiterate mongoloid
Anonymous 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:20:00 No. 649
>Infinite Jest A meme but unironically great book that really captures american suburban culture and the american mind in general. I still rec >The Stranger I've never been a big Camus fan. read "The Fall" by him instead. It's a lot more interesting. >Blood Meridian Actually as great as everyone says. MLs probably wouldn't like it though; it's a book all about unpassable isolation, desolation of mankind. >Lolita really fun. my gf's favorite book >Gravity's Rainbow Probably not the place to start with Pynchon. Read Crying of Lot 49 or V. first. You also probably have to have a heavy interest in 20th century American culture (and its corresponding logic) to really dig it. He's great though. >Don Quixote If you have any interest in culture whatsoever you have to read it. It's long as fuck but well worth it. >The Trial My favorite book. Kafka is the leftist fiction writer. Nobody else captured the modern world and the modern psyche like Kafka. Highly rec reading Walter Benjamin's and Adorno's respective readings of Kafka as well. >Journey to the end of the night Celine is a fascist, and was so antisemetic even the Nazis told him to chill (true story). He's also credited with inventing the modern french prose style. I didn't enjoy it very much though, too cynical and misanthropic even for me. >Ficciones Borges is the most bourgeois writer out there and self-admittedly so. His works are such a joy to read though. Maybe read Calvino instead if you want a truly left-leaning fabulist author. Borges, though, is a genius. His works completely swallow pre-modern fiction and explore their legacies in always captivating, charming ways. >2666 Bolano is /ourguy/. Read him. Read everything by him. >Dorian Gray I don't fully understand the Wilde hype. but you can read this book in a single afternoon. It's fine. >Sound & The Fury Do not start with this for Faulker. >Invisible Cities Like I said earlier, Calvino is a stunning author, in same sort of movement as Borges and Marquez. Novel is about Marco Polo describing Kublai Khan's cities to him. It's a great, short read. A seductive book.
Anonymous 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:20:00 No. 650
>100 Years of Solitude Marquez is fun, but I never loved him as much as other people do. Talk about proletarian lit though. An ML would probably enjoy. >Mason & Dixon Again, advanced Pynchon. Harold Bloom called it one of the best books ever written. Written entirely in prose-poetry, pretty perfectly mimicking late 1700s American English. Mason & Dixon go hyucking across colonial america, running into Scooby Doo while still making cold war and entirely obscure revolutionary war references. I love it. >Notes from the Underground The first book about Alienation? The first existentialist literature? Probably. >Divine Comedy So much fun. Extremely readable. If you've ever wanted to get into epic poetry, this is a smooth way in. >White Noise Man I love Delilo, but he's real-deal postmodernist lit. It's a book essentially about telephones, airwaves, grocery stores, the liberal university. ML would probably consider it self-indulgent bourgeois lit. Delilo though, on his part, is probably the best literary critic of late capitalist society. Maybe Mao II would be a better start, though. >Stoner oh I love stoner. Williams has an indomitable, simple, concise prose style that can just break your heart. he was the real successor of the flaubertian novel. >Dubliners Joyce is our guy. Accessible in a way that Ulysses isn't. MLs go apeshit for Joyce. >Book of the Disquiet Pessoa was also a fascist. This book is long, prose-poetry fragments about life. As the name suggests, it's pretty doomer. >In Search of Lost Time Would an ML like this? Maybe, maybe not. It's fundamentally about the disenchantment of bourgeois society, and a fundamental alienation of the self from one's own memory and past. But it's also about bourgeois pleasures; its ending core thesis is that only through art can the modern soul find solace, fulfillment. >As I Lay Dying Now this is the Faulker you gotta read. I won't say anything more. >Metamorphosis Kafka is my favorite writer but I never liked this one. But you can also read it in an afternoon easy. Read "The Trial" or "The Castle" instead. >Grapes of Wrath Literally the American proletarian writer. >Temple of the Golden Pavillion I've read a lot of Mishima but not this one. He had his own specific brand of fascism that culminated in him miserably failing to coup Japan and restore the emperor. Despite this he's a great writer who has a lot of insight into gender dynamics. For leftists his work also examines the conflict between reactionary ideology (ideas like honor and glory) and their contradiction under modern capitalist life. I really like his work. >Philip K Dick dude's fun as fuck. he was a conservative but all of his books examine capitalism pretty critically. it gives his work this really particular quality nobody else has >American Psycho, Harry Potter, Fear & Loathing, On The Road, Fight Club, skip em.
Anonymous 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:20:01 No. 651
>>650 >>649 An addendum:
It all depends what you're looking for. Are you just looking for a good read? If so mostly all of the books are just canonical literature, and you can't particularly go wrong.
Are you looking for literature that valorizes some basic concepts of Marxism-Leninism? If so, you might be disappointed. There's been a long standing critique of so-called socialist realism in literature, I think it was Lukacs who first pointed out its shortcomings. The fact of the matter is that novels, as a form, are suited (and born out of) capitalist individualism. They're meditations of and on the individual as a unit. There are few books about or praising movements, or coming together productively. They're far more about the
lack of connection between people, even if they are left-leaning, or critique class politics.
Anonymous 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:20:01 No. 652
>>630 89. Walden by Henry David Thoreau. It's essentially the first book of American drop out culture. A near mid 19th century story of a man's experiment in simplified living, who moved out to a pond, and constructs a cabin so as to see if he could live more in tune with his beliefs. It's difficult to pigeonhole it, the first chapter on "economy" is a critique of america, capitalism, civilization , etc. The book emphasizes the self reliance and autonomy of the individual, while making clear that it is a fools errand, and is unnatural to avoid our social nature. The question is how can one live more simply, how to cut away the excess chaff, to find what is essential, and to build a life around that essence. Walden is celebrated by anarchists, and ecology minded folks as well, non vulgar marxists should be able to dig it, its part of the lefty canon. The book is a general praise of the depths of nature, of the sublime in the everyday, in the immediate natural world we inhabit, and which likewise inhabits us. It advocates getting closer to it, to minimizing what is unnecessary, so we can not only have free reign over ourselves, but the freedom to construct a more authentic life.
There are definite criticisms, mostly superficial, but if you are a 'marxist'(as I am) there are theoretical disagreements over certain ideas, issues with labor, its relevance, the class composition of the ideas and how they represent the emerging class struggles. Regardless, it remains an inspiration, it's one of my favorite books and has changed my life in more ways than any other book I've read, because it actually moved me to live differently, which seems to be the story of most people who love Walden too.
Anonymous 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:20:01 No. 653
>>649 >>650 Good taste. I still haven't read quite a few of those though, looking forward to trying.
Here are some of mine that weren't covered.
>"If on a Winter's Night a Traveler…" For Calvino fans, an extremely cool little meta-book.
>DecameronBoccaccio's magnum opus of 100 stories. The meta-narrative is of bourgeois youngsters escaping to the countryside during the Plague (!!!). The kids tell each other stories for 10 days, 10 stories each day. The stories poke fun at every level of society, exposing the vices and virtues of all: the peasants, city workers, bourgeoisie, clergy, nobility, no one is spared. It is absolutely hilarious, irreverent, vulgar and insightful, and even arguably proto-feminist. Highly recommend!
>Parallel LivesPlutarch's collection of biographies of famous heroes of antiquity. Part fiction, part history, full entertainment. Not only are the characters and events larger than life, but the author himself often takes the liberty of passing judgement on them, adding humor and context to the insane happenings and tying them all together. As Emerson called it, "The Bible for Heroes"
PS why is this thread bumplocked? Just because there's some trash in the OP's pic? Or does this belong in /edu/?
Étienne 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:20:01 No. 654
1984 is a fun read, I enjoyed it. Read that if you want.
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:20:01 No. 655
>>630 Well I haven't read most of them but I can give you my notes on the ones I have read.
>Brothers Karamazov>Moby Dick These are two of my favorite books of all time
>Don QuixotePretty good.
>HamletNot my favorite work by Shakespeare but all his works are good. I prefer the tempest.
>SiddharthaI've read this several times and it's pretty good. Definitely worth reading and very short. You can probably get through it in one sitting.
>The OdysseyThis one is great. I've read the original and some modernized versions and I wouldn't say you NEED to read the original. It's kinda long winded and nearly half of it is just them taking breaks to get hammered.
>War and Peace>The Divine Comedy More superb works. Definitely read these.
>The Hobbit and the SilmarillionI mean, they are fun. The Hobbit was one of my favorite books as a kid. I don't see why they are on this list though. You can skip them if you want, but if you're looking for entertainment they are worthwhile.
>Harry Potter>The Holy Bible Lmao why are these on here? They are culturally influential I guess and I've read them both and got something out of it… the Harry Potter series 4 times through. They are both rather bad from a literary standpoint though.
>Fear and Loathing in Las VegasC'mon. Seriously? I mean, it's good, but there are so many things by Thomson that are better. This should be replaced with The Great Shark Hunt.
>FaustAnother must-read.
>Huck Finn>Lord of the Flies They are alright. Would recommend but hardly essential.
>VALISUgh, I mean it's good… really good actually. Just if you like it you should also read some Octavia Butler and Ursula K Leguin.
>Thus Spoke ZarathustraYeah it's good… not as good as Beyond Good and Evil or the Genealogy of Morals but I guess it is sort of fiction unlike those two so I can see why they included it.
>WaldenI like this book. If you like it then you should also read some Edward Abbey. Start with Desert Solitaire or The Monkey Wrench Gang.
>Hitchhikers GuideFucking nerd. I feel the same way about this as I do about Tolkien.
>The IliadSee my notes on the Odyssey.
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:20:01 No. 656
>>655 Oh apparently I missed a few…
>100 Years of SolitudeIf you don't know Spanish you can skip it tbh. If you can read it in the original it is top tier. There's a lot of other books in this style I could recommend.
<Like Water for Chocolate
<The Temple of My Familiar
<Kafka on the Shore
>MetamorphosisI agree with
>>650 on this. Kafka is probably my favorite author and I would recommend literally everything he wrote, even the ones I haven't read because I know they are gonna be good.
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:20:01 No. 658
Oh and also… >A Clockwork Orange Love it.
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:20:01 No. 659
>>634 >You will never read 100 books! What? I read over 100 books in one year when I was 11. If you read every day a book a week is pretty manageable if they are 200-500 pages. So 52 a year, you should be able to finish this list in 3-4 years even if you take some breaks.
Some of the ones on this list are pretty long, but the idea that you can't read all of them is ridiculous.
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:20:02 No. 663
>>630 It's funny that /lit/s 2014 list doesn't include Marx but latest ones do.
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:20:02 No. 665
>>602 E-Readers are the way to go. I still recommend dead tree books for the "tomes" you know you'll reference a lot (
Capital and the like)
I use a Kobo Clara HD which I bought for $120 new. I'm sure the cheaper options are fine though; resolution doesn't make nearly as much of a difference as I thought it would. Just make sure it has a frontlight and a touchscreen (for highlighting). Kobo has the best piracy support (native epub + others), Kindle has the slickest software, Nook is meme tier.
Go to gen.lib.rus.ec for your copyrighted ebooks and marxists.org for public domain ebooks. Marxists.org has a ton of out of print stuff as well. I recommend making eBooks out of them as you read them to volunteer. If you need paper books check to see if your city has a radical bookstore. Mine has good prices but the best part is getting recommendations from the based boomer volunteers.
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:20:02 No. 669
>>602 I prefer to read paper books(which I often times buy), but I use e-reader to read controversial literature.
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:20:03 No. 671
>>669 What qualifies as "controversial?" Anything revolutionary, or just explicit fedbait? (an example for me would be "The Turner Diaries" out of morbid curiosity)
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:20:03 No. 672
>>671 >anything revolutionary Yes. it's controversial here cause many people, including my friends and family believe in 100 gorrilian and communism == breadlines meme
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:20:03 No. 674
>>603 >>669 Which e-readers do you guys use?
>>665 Thanks for the post comrade, very helpful! How's the battery life? My partner got an amazon one and it is basically bricked in under a year because the battery is so bad now. Also what is a radical bookstore?
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:20:04 No. 683
>>830 You can delete it yourself. Click on the triangle and click delete post and you'll delete it
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:20:05 No. 689
>>674 The battery life is still pretty great on it after a year and a half or so of use. I once took it on a family vacation and blazed through Trotsky's
History of the Russian Revolution for several hours a day for a week, never had to charge the eReader once. I may be remembering wrong but I think the battery is replaceable if needed, there's no glue or shit like on the Kindles.
A radical bookstore is a bookstore specializing in radical left / socialist books. Look for independent bookstores in your city and radical bookstores should be on the list if you have one nearby. Typically they'll be cash only. Anarchist bookstores are more common than Marxist / "authleft". Besides buying books, radical bookstores are a good place to socialize and learn which events are happening in your area without the sectarian spin.
http://www.maydaybookstore.org/ Mayday Books is my specific example, I don't think I'm doxxing myself too bad.
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:20:06 No. 699
>>666 Because it's one of the best examples of English prose that doesn't sound fucking retarded? Personally I prefer Lord Byron to Shakespeare but in general english is a pretty ugly language imo.
Everyone memorizes the monologue from the end of hamlet at some point right? I certainly did as a kid along with the first however many digets of pi. Fucking nerd…
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:20:07 No. 702
>>670 Really hope there’s a futa cock beneath that book.
Anyways I don’t really like reading that much, Flowers for Algernon is one of the few books I’ve read and I liked it a lot
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:20:07 No. 703
>>630 Where the fuck is socialist literature, OP? Are you even ML or did you read all of them?
Anyway, in that list, I recommend Faust. And skip everything from post-modern authors
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:20:07 No. 704
>>702 I forgot about Flowers for Algernon! I have read it three times I think and it might actually be my favorite book. I do like reading and I do it every day, but I'd say you have good taste in literature even if you don't like to read!
This same thread was put up in hobby. I will copy and paste my response from there.
>>670 >What is your favorite book? Hmmm hard to say but my favorite one I read in 2019 was Moby Dick. The His Dark Materials series was probably my favorite as a kid.
>What book influenced you the most?In terms of my actual life? Maybe the Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver or Hatchet by Gary Paulsen. In terms of how I write? The books that made the biggest impression on me stylistically where War and Peace by Tolstoy, Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami, and basically everything that Kafka wrote.
>what are you planning to read?I guess I will finish capital some day. The Grunderise or however you spell it might be another priority.
>What are you reading now?Yesterday I read anti-duhring. I might read it again today. I will finish the german ideology soon. I've been slowly working through leviathan by hobbes but it is a bit of a slog.
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:20:08 No. 710
>>703 >post-modern authors You mean like anyone after the 1800s or what?
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:20:09 No. 718
>>670 >What is your favorite book? Poor folk by dosto atm.
> What book influenced you the most? 18th Brumaire
> What do you like about books? I like to read cause it allows me to learn new things, and explore human psyche as well.
> what are you planning to read? The Greeks as I’d like to get into philosophy more.
> What are you reading now? The Republic.
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:20:09 No. 719
>>699 I've never actually read it in English, maybe I will give it a go…
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:20:09 No. 720
>>710 Postmoderns are those rebellious retards after 1950s
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:20:09 No. 725
>>720 t. Hasn't read Deleuze
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:20:09 No. 726
>>650 >The first book about Alienation? IMO Notes is not so much a book about alienation as about the involuntary integration from which the narrator tries to desperately escape through deliberately irrational but futile acting out. It's before its time by 150 years.
>Man I love Delilo, but he's real-deal postmodernist lit He's actually an anti-postmodernist. A lot of his works are Baudrillard's attack on postmodern society in literary form.
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:20:11 No. 738
>>610 Will summoning communist literature mitigate this problem?
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:20:12 No. 746
>>674 I use kindle, but I mostly read physical books.
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:20:12 No. 747
I could not find a reading position that did not feel like destroying my posture. Even reading while standing I have to turn my head way down.
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:20:12 No. 750
>>747 Hold the book up higher.
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:20:12 No. 755
>>726 >A lot of his works are Baudrillard's attack on postmodern society in literary form. I agree, but this doesn't exclude him from post-modern lit. Sure he's not playing with the novel as a form, but all of his works are hyper-meta, partiularly Mao II, explicitly asking itself what the novel, as a medium, and each of his books in particular, can do in the postmodern age. Can they reconcile history? Can they still save the individual? Are they capable of constructing world narratives?
>>703 Most ""Socialist Literature"" is bad.
Literature by socialists, however, is good.
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:20:12 No. 756
>>755 > Most ""Socialist Literature"" is bad. > Literature by socialists, however, is good. At least read Тихий Дон.
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:20:12 No. 757
>>756 I didn't say all socialist lit was bad, just a lot of it.
>And Quiet Flows the Don My Russophile friend always badgers me to read this but, man, I don't really wanna read a four volume novel. I tend to tap out after one thousand pages
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:20:12 No. 758
>>757 Please, read it. It's not only a Russian novel, but a socialistic novel. It shows how the revolution actually was, from the viewpoint of non-proletarian class.
Also Как закалялась сталь, this is not a masterpiece, but it shows the revolution from the viewpoint of proletarian class. Both of them will give you a quite completed picture of the revolution
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:20:14 No. 771
>>720 We're talking about literature here… so you're telling us not to read who? Allen Ginsberg?
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:20:23 No. 845
>What is your favorite book? That's really hard to say. The Brothers Karamazov, Point-Counterpoint, or Ulysses. Honorable mention to The Journey to the East and The Glass Bead Game.
>What book influenced you the most? Probably Point-Counterpoint or
The Bible >What do you like about books? The texture of the pages, the feel and sound of shuffling paper, but most of all the fact that I can connect with people from hundreds or thousands of years ago.
>What are you reading now? The Trial
>>704 No surprise to find Kafka fans here. War and Peace was the last big novel I've read and it was amazing. Good on you for all the Marx, Grundrisse is really important and can illuminate the argumentation provided in Capital. However it's very long and you can probably skip some of the polemical parts if you only want to use it to help with Capital. Also, Leviathan represents Hobbes' mature views, you can find similar more simply put ones in his "De Cive"/The Citizen.
>>718 Good for you for getting into The Republic. Probably not enough of us have this foundation.
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:20:29 No. 903
>What is your favorite book? Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro >What book influenced you the most? hard to say, every book influenced me in some way. Of the recent ones it´s Anarchism by Emma Goldman and Anhilation by Jeff Vandermeer>What do you like about books? Reading is like getting a break from this world and at the same time learning something about it, and this is to me one of the best things ever.>what are you planning to read? Some works by Tarrance McKenna and Herbert Marcuse and probably an other Patrick Moridano novel>What are you reading now? The other side by Alfred Kubin and some HP Lovecraft short stories.
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:20:31 No. 926
>>670 Weird one but it’s the Iron Heel. Even though it’s one of London’s less known, mediocre works, but I still hold it dearly.
Reading that and some of his views later in life showed a level of desperation and hopelessness at the failure of US socialist movements but with a tiny light of hope of a socialist future really stuck with me. Not to mention his description of the Iron Heel and how it accurately foresaw what happened to the socialist movement of the 20th century just both enlightening and depressing. The way the oligarchy crushed mankind being straight up what happened to Chile as well.
>What are you reading now? The road to Phnom Penh - a memoir of a general in the war against the Khmer Rouge.
>what are you planning to read? Other Songs an alternate history book about our world but instead of Einsteinian physics it follows Aristotle’s metaphysics (I.e. Earth being the center of the solar system,…). Even though the author is Polish lib, his writing resembles Stanislaw Len a lot and the premise seems interesting.
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:20:32 No. 935
>What is your favorite book? one hundred years of solitude for literature, and for theory the 18th brumaire >What book influenced you the most? 18th brumaire and the german ideology>What do you like about books? the sense of clarity you get from theory. After the first readings of marx i used to get this sensation of sudden realization, like i was blind my whole life, and now i really see how things really are >what are you planning to read? the phenomenology of spirit, some day>What are you reading now? capital vol 1, i'm in the middle of it
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:20:34 No. 960
>What is your favorite book? Probably I'd say Mutual aid, pretty relaxing and interesting analysis on human nature>What book influenced you the most? Industrial society and its future>What do you like about books? The texture and the smell >What are you planning to read? Planning to read more of Bakunin and Emma Goldman>What are you reading now? Technological slavery
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:20:34 No. 961
>>960 Goldman is an excellent writer. Her essays are simple yet inspirational. Her critique of 19th century American feminism is also great. Bakunin is also great yet for my taste he is a little too optimistic and somehow a child of the enlightenment.
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:20:35 No. 970
>What is your favorite book? Madame Bovary by Flaubert, and The Martian Chronicles by Bradbury for sf specific. I know Flaubert is utterly bourgeois and a big pos but I love his sarcasm.>What book influenced you the most? Brave New World. Houellebecq heavily influenced how I write.>What do you like about books? Learning, feeling a connection with the author. Being disconnected from time. >What are you planning to read? For next week, Virginie Despentes for fiction and Jodi Dean for theory. I want to read so much but I lose focus fast >What are you reading now? La Horde du Contrevient by Alain Damasio (big new sci-fi french leftist author) and How the world works by Dickblast.
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:20:38 No. 995
>What is your favorite book? Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said - Philip K. Dick or Lolita - Nabokov >What book influenced you the most? La región más transparente (Where the Air Is Clear) - Carlos Fuentes and Noticias del Imperio (News From the Empire) - Fernando del Paso >What do you like about books? The designs on the covers and how they smell. They can also make you look interesting, ngl >what are you planning to read? The U.S.A. Trilogy from Dos Pasos, some Magic Realism from Latin America and also any book on Alienation >What are you reading now? Revolutionaries for the Right, by Kyle Burke, it's about the internationalism from the Right that emerged in order the combat the "Communist Menace", it connects some dots and offers insight on how local conflicts and agendas ended up transforming the Cold War
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:20:38 No. 996
>>670 >What is your favorite book? Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix
>What book influenced you the most?Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
>What do you like about books?They're great to be seen with in public.
>what are you planning to read?The Fault in Our Stars
>What are you reading now?Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows, for like the fifth time!!
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:20:38 No. 998
>>995 What are the classics in magic realism? I remember having a conversation with a Chilean about South American literature and how there was none before the 80s or something, it must be interesting to read.
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:20:39 No. 1004
>>998 The Reign From This World - Alejo Carpentier
One Hundred Years of Solitude - García Márquez
Pedro Páramo - Juan Rulfo
The term is somewhat old, check the article if you're interested in its history
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:21:35 No. 1502
>>630 >>631 >I'm a ML 2,3,9,10,13,28,31,34,35,36,40,45,49,50,56,68,71,79,84,85,91,92,94,100 are mandatory reading
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:21:35 No. 1503
>>756 >>757 >>758 any thoughts on chernyshevsky's "what is there to be done"? also, is "mama" a good entrypoint to gorky?
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:21:35 No. 1504
>>630 Blood Meridian, Dune, Solaris, Valis, Roadside Picnic, Illuminatus
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:21:35 No. 1507
even though I never finished it I can easily say V by Thomas Pynchon is such a great book from the ingenuity of Thomas Pynchon’s writing style. If you’re curious to know what innovative slang looks like, read V.
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:21:37 No. 1537
>>630 skip everything.
read "kingkiller chronicles".
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:21:38 No. 1541
>>630 >two Camus >no Balzac or Zola For leftists I would recommend reading those authors instead. They made realist novels about the working class and French capitalism in the 19th century.
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:21:38 No. 1542
>>1541 Hell, not even Les Misérables by Victor Hugo, or Candide by Voltaire. No Asian literature. This list is burger centered.
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:21:40 No. 1560
>What is your favorite book? currently reading coin locker babies and I'm loving it so far. So probably that>What book influenced you the most? capitalist realism>What do you like about books? the fact that I don't feel miserable as opposed to watching anime and playing vidya>what are you planning to read? lots of books, too many to count. But I'm having my eye on the ecstasy of communication>What are you reading now? coin locker babies
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:21:41 No. 1568
>What's your favourite book? I'd probably say the White Steam Ship by Chinghiz Aitmatov. But there are many contestants to this. >What book influenced you the most? Reflections on Violence by Georges Sorel, 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon and the German Ideology by Marx and Engels >What are you planning to read? Ego and Its Own ,again, because the first time that I've read it I was an edgy 16 year old. >What are you reading now? An Introduction to Reading of Hegel by Alexandre Kojeve
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:21:41 No. 1569
>>1567 I loved
The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector. It's about a girl living in poverty in Rio de Janeiro.
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:21:41 No. 1572
>>1567 Rayuela by Cortázar
Los detectives salvajes by Bolaño
2666 by Bolaño
Cien años de soledad by García Márquez
Ficciones by Borges
My favorite writer ever is Bolaño and my favorite novel ever is 2666.
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:21:41 No. 1573
>>1567 El Llano en Llamas by Juan Rulfo
Batallas en el Desierto by José Emilio Pacheco
Both are pretty good and leftist pilled. The later is pretty short and simple so it could help you a lot if you're learning spanish
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:21:41 No. 1579
>>1567 La palabra del mudo of Julio Ramon Ribeyro, a good storyteller (idk how to say cuentista).
Some books of early Vargas Llosa, like Conversacion en La Catedral.
Borges is great, you should check it.
Idk what book of Arguedas to sugest, Rios profundos is about his childhood in a intern in the peruvian highlands. His cuentos/stories are about the indigenous people. Or El Sexto, about life in jail as a political prisioner.
Cesar Vallejo, the poet wrote some cuentos too. Paco Yunque, or El Tungsteno (a little novel about intrigues in a mine camp.
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:21:42 No. 1586
So uhh, am I the only one who thinks that Merso's execution is lowkey justified in Cameus "The Stranger"?
Kyuseishun 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:21:43 No. 1589
>>1567 Cronica de una muerte anunciada de Gabriel García Márquez
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:21:43 No. 1596
>>630 You can skip Orwell, Tolkien, Rowling, Lord of the Flies, and the Bible.
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:21:47 No. 1629
READ DUNE! Seriously how has nobody recommended that one of the list, that's not only just a great piece unto itself but also a political commentary that was meant for the weird relationship between the US and OPEC back in the 1960s and 70s that's only gotten more relevant as time goes on.
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:21:47 No. 1630
>>1629 Dune’s by far the most boring book I’ve ever read. and I read philosophy.
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:21:48 No. 1639
>>1630 >Dune >Boring Of all the things to call dune, from dense vocabulary, to vague and enigmatic metaphors that are easily missed, and the general theme that it's easy to feel like the focus is lost; boring is the last thing I'd generally call Dune. I mean maybe the first eighth of the first book that's really a prolouge but other than that it's fine. You sure you didn't read one of the new ones by Frank's son?
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:21:54 No. 1708
Opinios in Svetlana Alexirvich? Is she a liberal? Her books are good? I recently read "the boys of zinc" and pretty much confirmed me that being a grunt in the front is always hard-to say it mildly- even when you are fighting for the upheld of socialism.
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:21:55 No. 1719
>>670 can u post more of her feet
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:21:55 No. 1730
>What is your favorite book? Fatal Strategies by Baudrillard, or almost anything else by Baudrillard, because he starts from the premise that everything is utterly fucked yet also finds ironic reversals in that. Doomers would be cured if they just read some Baudrillard (avoid Simulacra and Simulation though, that one is very mediocre compared to the rest). >What book influenced you the most? Hard to single out one book, but starting to read philosophy and sociology in particular was the biggest shift in not only thinking but just in the general attitude to everything. >What do you like about books? - reading is slow, long, painful, and submissive. Exactly what we need in the age of hyperactive and narcissistic hedonism. - you get way more out of it compared to other forms, at least when it comes to theory books. Theory can't be done in any other way than in language, any other form is at best a showcase of theory, not theory itself. - language is inherently poetic and seductive because it plays with both the writer and the reader, it's simply evil >what are you planning to read? Mary Douglas - Purity and Danger. I don't expect much from it, it's just because of the book I'm reading currently. Then I plan on (re)reading some anthropology classics like Malinowski, Mauss, Bataille, Lévi-Strauss. >What are you reading now? Jean Cezaneuve - "Sociology of rituals: taboo, magic, holy". Kinda dry and repeats itself too much, but it tries to rationally explain something deemed irrational. It's similar to Freud in this sense, only applied to social relations instead of an individual's psyche. And like Freud sometimes it reduces its object to banality, at other times it elevates the theory to the strangeness of its object (like "death drive" in Freud). <What is the last books you read? An amazing book by Robert Pfaller that attacks postmodernity, political correctness, idpol, libtardation, puritanism, narcissism, etc. It's an apologia of everything deemed by the current system as evil, inauthentic, irrational, extreme, superficial, etc. Pfaller is influenced by Zizek but radicalizes Zizek's theory way further, IMO. At times neuters himself by relying too much on psychoanalytic tropes though. The book I've read is not translated into English, but the existing English translations are really worth checking out because he repeats himself a lot across his books.
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:22:51 No. 2291
What do you guys think of The Master and the Margarita?
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:22:52 No. 2296
>>649 Invisible cities is an absolute superb book, the kind of book I sometimes just pick up and just read segments of.
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:22:53 No. 2310
>>1502 Why should I lose my time reading these useless books when I could be reading actually interesting shit like theory or history?
One of the few work of fiction I have ever read were 1984 and The Stranger, they left such a bad taste in my mouth that I haven't read any fiction since the last decade.
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:22:53 No. 2312
>>2310 >>2311 Well, maybe I exagerated a little, I actually read another fiction book, How the Steel was Tempered. I didn't like reading it, I understand why the author wrote it or the ideas he was trying to convey, but reading fiction is boring as fuck even when it's a Socialist realist work.
So yeah, if you don't read often don't bother reading useless fiction books and read theory instead or you are going to discourage yourself from ever reading again.
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:22:53 No. 2313
>>2312 the vast majority of aforementioned books are theory told in a way that's more palatable than philosophy books. Read plato/cicero/camus then read nicomachean ethics and see how much drier aristotle is.
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:22:53 No. 2314
>>2307 this list is so shit. Most of people there are irrelevant and had irrelevant philosophical thought.
The Greeks and Romans were irrelevant besides Plato, Homer and Aristotle. Irrelevant understand as in "knowing their thought will provide no value to you", but they had big and positive contribution to society (Euclid, Archimides, Herodotus, Hippocrates). If you are not a philosophy student or joined some philosophy courses (mostly beginner courses or history of philosophy. Since they start with greek materialism) then nobody ever will talk with you about Epicurus thought (believe me) and it's outdated thought, so it's only good if you want to understand the history of philosophy and materialistic thought.
(Greek materialism is primitive understanding of the world. It has no relation to modern understanding of materialism or marxist understanding of materialism. It is pretty useless)
Every philosopher in Middle Ages was irrelevant idiot that copied Aristotle. They literally copied Aristotle and changed his thought into some amalgamation of christian philosophical thought (which is dogshit btw) — look at Augustine for example or Aquinas.
also:
>the old testament >the new testament made me chuckle. There are people studying those fictional books their whole life. It seems like a waste of time (and is a waste of time). It's just a timesink and you have two choices:
1. Try to understand the testaments literally
2. Try to understand it figuratively
If you try to understand it literally then it's some nonsense bullshit that primitive people wrote about the world and how reactionary patriarchal society should work. Also it's obviously explicitly anti-marxist. It has no meaning or value. If you want to understand history or psychology of reactionary value — you would have more value (or something) if you've just read Mein Kampf or writings of Mussolini.
If you try to understand it figuratively, then which version is the right one? There are thousands of interpretations. There are people wasting their whole life trying to make sense of it. Instead of wasting life yourself, you could spend all this time reading marxist literature which or any other philosophical literature.
Also if you think that will help you better reach the masses then you are wrong. None of the revolutionary leaders cited the Bible, which was more popular in their time (it keeps getting less popular with every year) — and they succeeded in providing their message.
tl;dr => drop bible, drop greeks (besides Aristotle and Plato), drop romans (if you really want to: then Cicero, Aurelius, Plutarch and Horace seem to be more relevant than all the others. People quote them, you can semi-talk about them etc. — at least in Europe which has Latin/Roman roots), drop all middle age writers (christians). They are all irrelevant, provide no useful insight and middle ages is just regurgitated Aristotle which was fit in christian worldview (big cringe, very boring).
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:22:53 No. 2315
>>2314 Also depends on how you interpret 'revolutionary leader'. By that I mean a leader of a socialist revolution, a successful one at that. So I am not concerned with burger-centric worldview and people like Martin Luther King or Malcolm X.
Wrote that just in case somebody would want to go with the "haha gotcha".
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:22:53 No. 2318
>>630 Read 2666. Read the Savage Detectives. Read everything Bolaño wrote.
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:22:53 No. 2319
>>649 >Do not start with this for Faulker. I did and I loved it. English is not even my first language. I used a reading guide though.
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:22:57 No. 2363
>>2291 I'm reading it right now. I think it has an entertaining style, feels very magical realist. You have kind of fantastic elements mixed in with an everyday setting in Moscow. But I was very skeptical of the book going in because it is so highly praised in its historical context (as a satire by a persecuted literary genius or whatever), and that this seems to typify which soviet writers are elevated. It is almost always somebody who was decrying Stalinism or something. It seemed in the early scene with Pontius Pilate that Bulgakov was trying to suggest that the jew coming to meet Pilate was a stand in for the USSR, because Pilate yells at him why he would let a murderer go and not allow this delusional holy man to go around preaching peace. Even if he is a competent writer, I imagine by the end of it I will still feel like this book was simply exalted for political reasons.
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:22:59 No. 2381
Oh you like reading, eh? Name every book.
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:22:59 No. 2385
>>630 Bruh are those even books? Looks like something children and liberals read.
I only read theory, history, political-economy, science or philosophy books
aufheben 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:22:59 No. 2391
>>2385 it makes me extremely sad some people actually act like this though
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:23:03 No. 2440
Pynchon is very fun to read
Ioseb 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:23:05 No. 2460
>>630 My personal favorite is 77
Ioseb 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:23:05 No. 2461
>>2460 It’s not a book about ideology per se, however it’s an incredible book. It’s a story about childhood’s end, fear, anger, nostalgia, with some midlife crisis stuff thrown in. It’s great
Ioseb 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:23:05 No. 2462
>>670 >What is your favorite book? Dandelion wine by ray bradbury
>What book influenced you the most? State and revolution by Vladimir Lenin
>What do you like about books? There’s more room for interpretation than other forms of media
>what are you planning to read? Haven’t read for whom the bell tolls yet, I was thinking of reading that
>what are you reading now? Fall of the ottomans by Eugene Rogan
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:23:06 No. 2465
>>2356 magnet:?xt=urn:btih:e9e73292b797b1617869320745503b7447102324&dn=J.%20R.%20R.%20Tolkien%20-%20The%20Lord%20of%20the%20Rings%20(HarperCollins%20e-books%2C%202009)
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:23:08 No. 2479
>>2478 lol
She just thinks Nabakov was the century's finest prose stylist.
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:24:14 No. 3048
>>2465 This led me nowhere
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:24:17 No. 3065
>What is your favorite book? The Non-Existent Knight by Italo Calvino because its genuinely funny and I like what it says about how we define our identities.>What book influenced you the most? Manufacturing Consent because it really opened my eyes to how different the world from how it was being presented to me. Maybe some poems in there as well about community but that's harder to pin point.>What do you like about books? Being able to talk to people about them and see how they relate to other things in culture>what are you planning to read? I want to find something about Weimar Berlin because I feel like that's relevant rn>What are you reading now? Boneshaker by Cherie Priest. I wanted to read something steampunk because that's where my mind was aesthetically when I started but it seems to be more about zombies than a cool Victorian alternative universe.
/lit/ Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:24:41 No. 3253
What is your favorite book?What book influenced you the most?What do you like about books?what are you planning to read?What are you reading now?/Lit/ thread because i did not see one in the catalog
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:24:41 No. 3255
Das Kapital is my favourite Comrade. Did you forget that you are on bunkerchan?
Anonymous Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:24:41 No. 3256
Reading Six Pillars of Self Esteem right now. It validated some ideas I already had and made me realize some other aspects of life that can have an impact on your self-esteem. Also reading Manufacturing Consent. I probably have more than a dozen books lying around right now that I still have to read, but because of exams I don't have the time to get to them at the moment.
Anonymous Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:24:41 No. 3257
>What are ya reading now Capital , good lord is the third chapter a slog. Luckily I'm almost finished, and I've been told that it gets easier from there for the most part. I just finished Breakfast of Champions not too long ago, and it's so good. It's about a small incident where one of the main characters goes nuts and starts assaulting people, and the writer having his views changed about humanity. The incident it's self is a very small part of the book that is built up almost as if it's not that important in the grand scheme of things, and most of it is about all of the things inter-connected things in society and history that lead to that moment in time happening, almost as if by inevitable accident, and through it explores inequality, poverty, and race. The same goes for the author's view of people which undergoes a synthesis between what he believed before, and what a character in the book believes that convinces him to look at humanity differently. It's very much worth a read.
Anonymous Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:24:41 No. 3258
>>3253 Reading a lot of shit right now: Marx's 1844 manuscripts (currently on the Rent of Land) , Towards a New Socialism, Dialectic of Enlightenment, something about Historical Materialism by Bukharin, a lot of articles mosty from LeftComs, and On Contradiction by Mao. I also had physical copies of Society of the Spectacle and some translations of Trotsky's Notebooks but I misplaced those.
Anonymous Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:24:41 No. 3259
Anyone else growing increasingly disillusioned with art and /lit/ since being redpilled? It all just seems so hollow and pointless, or, at its worst, downright harmful in the way it reflects the ruling class's values and economic relationships. I guess I'm starting to understand how people like Sartre became skeptical of fiction in general.
Anonymous Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:24:41 No. 3261
>>3253 I’m gonna read Crito, and “Poor folk” by Dosto if I have time tonight.
Anonymous Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:24:41 No. 3262
>>3260 I read it in high school - most of book in one night. It was great, I was reading much more fiction back then, those were some harmless times. I remember chapter about dead being burried in mass graves, pretty similar to situation right now
Anonymous Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:24:41 No. 3263
>>3259 >Anyone else growing increasingly disillusioned with art and /lit/ since being redpilled? Yes i've found the remedy to this is that whenever you want to read something that is fiction or that won't help you learn anything then you should read it in another language that you're weaker in. This way of consooming helps you learn a language while you're doing it so it's not a complete waste of time
Anonymous Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:24:41 No. 3264
>>3259 are you talking about the chan board or literature in general?
I think there is just as much reason to be disillusioned by literature as to find it a revolutionary vehicle. I don't know if it has always been the case, but literature and education have a link that perhaps a lot of other arts do not, and so it is a medium for the educated. The educated also happen to be more likely to be bourgeois, capitalist sycophants, so it's natural that a lot of literature, at least within the western-anglo cannon, should fall in line with boujee values. That said, There is a significant amount of authors that also look at class relationships critically. Melville, Dos Passos, Steinbeck, etc. While I think something about the process of literature leads one to refrain from making outright political gestures and proclamations through literature, there are many heralded texts that you will find sympathetic, if not supportive, of the working class and some kind of revolution or systemic change.
Anonymous Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:24:42 No. 3265
>>3253 >What is your favorite book? Hmmm hard to say but my favorite one I read in 2019 was Moby Dick. The His Dark Materials series was probably my favorite as a kid.
>What book influenced you the most?In terms of my actual life? Maybe the Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver or Hatchet by Gary Paulsen. In terms of how I write? The books that made the biggest impression on me stylistically where War and Peace by Tolstoy, Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami, and basically everything that Kafka wrote.
>what are you planning to read?I guess I will finish capital some day. The Grunderise or however you spell it might be another priority.
>What are you reading now?Yesterday I read anti-duhring. I might read it again today. I will finish the german ideology soon. I've been slowly working through leviathan by hobbes but it is a bit of a slog.
Anonymous Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:24:42 No. 3266
>>3253 >What is your favorite book? My favourite recently has to be The City and The City. Mieville runs with the concept of border gore and somehow manages to think up nationalist spooks worse than our own.
>What book influenced you the most?In terms of writing style, I'm still trying to find my voice. I had a phase after high school where I tried to write like David Foster Wallace (I forced myself to finish Infinite Jest when I had cholera). In hindsight, DFW's nested and spangly prose is probably most of the reason people drop the book, but I still find his flawed and addicted characters compelling.
There's also the wilful stupidity in Don Delilo's White Noise. Delilo is something of a broken record and I learned this when I picked up his other books, but if you only read White Noise then he's perfect. In a nutshell, it's the Vaporwave book. It's easy to read despite how hateable the main character is.
In the end I like to write SF but I tend to hate the views and characters expressed inside. My big dick idol in terms of prose is still William Gibson. I remember trying to read Neuromancer back in elementary school and failing, and later picking up one of his hack imitators (Zack Parsons' "Eastwood" on SA) and thinking "shit, this is the future of writing". I went back to Gibson with a new lens and have loved his style ever since.
Nowadays I find it hard to be as enthused about anything as I was as a young'un, but I'm trying to get back into writing.
Anonymous Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:24:42 No. 3267
How do I become a /buddhist/? Any good introductions
Anonymous Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:24:42 No. 3269
what is your favorite book? what influenced you most, the book? what do you like about book? what are you planning to book? what are you reading now, book?
Anonymous Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:24:42 No. 3270
Anyone ever heard of Wizardrous?
Anonymous Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:24:42 No. 3271
>>3253 I'm reading the Faerie Queen and its really fucking good like goddamn, but its making me feel like an absolute brainlet, I have to keep stopping and rereading bits because I miss the implication of a line and misunderstand what happens then only cotton on a few stanzas later when something happens that's out of line with what I think is happening, I can't seem to understand poetry unless I speak it out loud for some reason, so I'm also destroying my throat reading this thicc bitch
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:24:52 No. 3370
>>610 You're already on a list if you use this site.
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:24:54 No. 3381
>>674 I bought a remarkable e-ink tablet. I really like the large display and the ability to write on it.
I haven't tried other e-ink readers, but I'm satisfied with this one.
My biggest problem with kindles was the tiny fucking screen. Drives me fucking mad because most books I have are PDF letter size books, which are impossible to read on a kindle. The tablet I have is large enough so that pages are usually large enough to read.
I haven't had problems with it. I've been reading much more since I got it. I love taking notes on it. I mostly use the highlighting pen though.
I've also used it to a lesser degree for note taking.
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:24:54 No. 3383
I'm a much faster reader using a big screen than with pocket-sized ereaders. You kids know nothing of pain. I used to read whole books on a shitty CRT…
>>3381 >I bought a remarkable [b]e-ink tablet[/b] That's what I need! Name of the thing?
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:24:54 No. 3386
>>3383 lol, the name is 'remarkable'. sorry for the confusion, I don't usually use the word 'remarkable'.
https://remarkable.com/ A friend that was learning classic Chinese scripture recommended it to me. I mostly use it for highlighting shit from pdfs. Sometimes I make notes on random subjects.
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:24:54 No. 3387
>>3386 Forgot to add, if you click shop, you can buy the old version if you want it now. I think they said the new version is shipping in October, but I wasn't going to wait so long.
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:25:01 No. 3468
>>621 Should have bought The Road to Serfdom as well. But then you'd probably receive a job application from the feds for organizing fascist militias in leftist countries.
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:25:22 No. 3676
I usually go to used bookstores to find stuff. If online, I use Amazon. It's pretty good for finding related books, even if you decide to not buy from there although I often do.
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:25:24 No. 3694
>>3675 Well when I had to start somewhere it was lists and recs from boards. Like one time I came across a quote from Hesse's Siddhartha on 420ch and ended up reading a bunch of his work. Or I'd visit what I've heard is canon/classic, so I did that and would then see where the text ramifies out to, like contemporaneous or within the same nation (e.g. enjoyed Dostoyevsky, went on to Tolstoy and Gogol). It's much easier to decide where to go next when it comes to philosophy and theory.
2 yards linen = 1 coat 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:26:04 No. 4097
>>3711 Solzhenitsyn's
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is an excellent book.
>…inventing his own neologisms, meandering prose with no rhyme or rhythm, and endless exposition dumps with ambitions of a wannabe 20th century Leo Tolstoy constantly fall flat on their face. This does not describe the book at all.
2 yards linen = 1 coat 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:26:04 No. 4101
>>3675 >What is your process? When I had access to a university library + a lot of time, I searched through the library catalog for certain topics then skimmed various books on a single subject, discarding the ones that didn't seem useful and noting the names of the rest for further study.
What I do now (since I only have access to what I can find on the internet) is to do the same thing by searching online using whatever platform is available, plus using authors sources and footnotes to find more books to read.
This is a good way of compiling info on specific topics.
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:26:05 No. 4103
Usually recommendation from friends. But if they got none, I go to boards that make recommendations I'm interested in and I start reading from there.
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:26:17 No. 4237
>>670 >What is your favorite book? Gotta be between:
Caliban and the Witch - it's a Marxist feminist analysis of the witch trials throughout history and the subjugation of women
Towards a New Socialism - Do I have to explain myself on this one? Everyone here talks about it
>What book influenced you the most?Hard to say, I feel like I always seek out books that fit my general internal development and they just act as a catalyst. Books that I've connected with the most when I've read them would be:
Conquest of Bread
The New Revolution
Towards a New Socialism
One Straw Revolution
>What do you like about books?I learn stuff I guess, feels like I'm doing something important, idk
>what are you planning to read?Not sure atm, chugging through a couple atm and I have a big reading list to choose from. Probably against the grain.
>What are you reading now?How the World Works by Cockshott
How to make a food forest
The Unique and Its Property - the new translation, much better read than the original
Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:26:17 No. 4249
It was Chomsky's Profits Before People in High school, when I was about 16 or 17. The path to Marx and Lenin was very quick after that
TheThingNoticer 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:26:49 No. 4659
>>670 I'd say my favorite book was the original Thrawn novel, from the Star Wars universe. In terms of actual political literature, though, I thoroughly enjoyed TANS by Dickblast. Said book has been my biggest influence to date.
I don't actually like books very much, and prefer PDFs. I plan on reading more of Cockshott's books, a few of which I've already covered. I'm normally too busy with trade school to read much, but it's still going bit by bit. That said, I'm not currently reading anything.
Anonymous 2021-01-28 (Thu) 14:38:54 No. 4924
>>670 >What is your favorite book? Zaregoto: The Kubishime Romanticist, love it for how it flips the idea of the protagonist on it's head, and the mystery is less the murder in the novel, and more the ideology that leads him down the path he walks.
>What book influenced you the most?Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, I read it as a kid, and some of the ideas of fair play that I missed out on in terms of writing lessons were something that, conceptually, I internalized after reading it.
>What do you like about books?As a means of ideal communication it's n embodiment of easy to learn, hard to master. It's a craft that attracted me as a child, and never lost it's luster, same as other crafts which have attracted me.
>what are you planning to read?Everything I'm currently reading. More political theory as well.
>What are you reading now?Infinite Jest, Boogiepop, House of Leaves, Nekomonogatari Shiro, etc.
Anonymous 2021-02-25 (Thu) 14:02:41 No. 5057
>>670 >What is your favorite book? El reino de este mundo by Alejo Carpentier, its beautifully written. Don Quijote is a great novel too.
>What book influenced you the most? Capital. It was incredibly clarifying.
>What do you like about books? Books can be an escape, I started out reading fantasy, "graduated" to science-fiction, and came back to fantasy with LOTR and ASOIAF. Books can educate you, they can help you become a master of any field. Books can make you think in new ways, exploring reality in ways you could have never imagined. Books are the congealed form of human imagination and experience.
>What are you planning to read? The Visible and the Invisible by Maurice Merleau-Ponty
>What are you reading now? In Defense of Lost Causes by Zizek. I'm in part 2 and despite its deficiency of organization I wholeheartedly recommend it to everyone.
Anonymous 2021-03-21 (Sun) 19:37:12 No. 5213
>>670 >What is your favorite book?An Alchemy Of The Mind by Dianne Ackerman
>What book influenced you the most?Rule By Secrecy by Jim Marrs. It's a conspiracy theory book that I picked up in middle school.
It kind of wasted my time and mental energy, because I was constantly looking for confirmations and contradictions to what he said everywhere, but it turns out that that's kind of a never-ending pursuit, and it's unfruitful, and there probably aren't aliens using humans to fight proxy wars or whatever the fuck that book was trying to get me to believe.
It was an influential book because it ruined my intellect and wasted my time and ruined my life, drugs are probably safer.
>What do you like about books?They change your mental state and are rewarding to read. I can go back to sleep if I drank too much the night before, or I can let the sunrise of being entranced yet awake dissipate the mental fog obstructing my perception of my imagination.
And if they're paperbacks, they're soft.
unf >what are you planning to read?The Body In The Mind by Mark Johnson
>What are you reading now?The New Left Revisited
>>704 > Hatchet by Gary Paulsen Holy shit this was my favorite book when I was in like 3rd or 4th grade
Anonymous 2021-03-26 (Fri) 18:20:58 No. 5302
>>670 >What is your favorite book? Don't really have one so much, although Brothers Karazamov, Death of Ivan Ilyich, Checkov's short stories, Pessoa and Saramago I enjoyed it a lot.
>What book influenced you the most? I'm poortuguese, so "Levantado do Chão" (roughly translates to "Risen from the ground") by José Saramago. Unironically was a novel that turned me into a convicted socialist and later Marxist and believing in a revolutionary methodology.
>What do you like about books? It's a very uniquely useful way for an autist like me to understand other humans if it's fiction. They have a lot of information to help me understand things in non-fiction.
>what are you planning to read? Currently reading Capital and other Marxist. Will continue to do that as well as some philosophy and psychoanalysis, and more canon Portuguese language authors like Eça de Qeuirós atm.
>what are you planning to read? Other than what I've already said above, Cidade e as Serras, by Eça de Queirós.
read_a_fucking_book Read a Fucking Book Anonymous 2021-03-26 (Fri) 18:23:19 No. 5303
>>5302 *>>what are you reading now?
Other than what I've already said above, Cidade e as Serras, by Eça de Queirós, Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino, and Casa-Grande & Senzala by Gilberto Freyre.
read_a_fucking_book Read a Fucking Book Anonymous 2021-03-29 (Mon) 20:30:14 No. 5338
>What is your favorite book? Not sure, maybe Dune for fiction, Blackshirts & Reds for nonfiction. Gaza: An Inquest Into Its Martyrdom is quite good as well.>What book influenced you the most? Communist Manifesto most likely.>What do you like about books? Learning, and feels better than watching YouTube or TV.>What are you planning to read. Finishing up the Dune series, and taking up Capital.>What are you reading now? God Emperor of Dune and Capital Volume 1.
Anonymous 2021-09-25 (Sat) 20:56:18 No. 7458
>>670 >what is your favorite book? the fool, raffi
>what book influenced you the most? the right to struggle, monte melkonian
>what do you like about books? idk i like learning
>what are you planning to read wagnerism, alex ross
>what are you reading now? my year of rest and relaxation, otessa moshfegh
Anonymous 2021-09-26 (Sun) 00:26:43 No. 7459
>>670 >What is your favorite book? Probably Lord of the Rings, tbh. One Hundred Years of Solitude is a close second. Man, that book is great, I never thought it would live up to the hype but somehow it did.
>What book influenced you the most? No clue. Maybe One Hundred Years of Solitude since it got me back into reading fiction again after not having done so for several years. Or some stuff that my mom read aloud to me when I was a kid.
>What do you like about books? That I can learn stuff. And actually don't feel like I am wasting my time as opposed to when aimlessly browsing the internet.
>what are you planning to read? Debt: The First 5000 Years and a book called Mute Compulsion by a Danish marxist that just got published. Also wanna read more fiction from Latin America, I just gotta decide who and what…
>What are you reading now? Bitter Fruit, about the US intervention and coup in Guatemala in 1954. Scary stuff.
Anonymous 2021-09-26 (Sun) 11:35:52 No. 7463
>What is your favorite book? That's cliché, but the first volume of Capital. It really is a total book that reunites all my fav. "genres" : at the same time victorian scientific investigation, historical study, full of Hegel influence coupled a caustic but militant style and even unconscious apocalyptic undertone. > What book influenced you the most? See above. >What do you like about books? I learn stuff and I like to be emotionally moved by a good prose. >In fiction, probably Germinal (yeah i never read it…), in essays empiriomonism from Bodganov. >What are you reading now? I reread a book from Georges Darien called "the Pharisians", basically a satire of Edouard Drumont. At the same time I read the awful best-seller of the most famous far-right french journalist and soon presidential candidate Eric Zemmour.
Anonymous 2021-09-26 (Sun) 11:36:51 No. 7464
>>7463 Off butchered my post, oh well
Anonymous 2021-09-28 (Tue) 14:52:54 No. 7504
>>4230 I'm dying fuck
>>969 checked
fr why is the op image arousing Anonymous 2021-09-28 (Tue) 16:16:54 No. 7506
>>7504 Zamenhof was a handsome man.
Anonymous 2022-01-28 (Fri) 03:43:44 No. 9566
>>689 Thanks for the advice, I found one. Seems to be a largely black one as well, so perhaps I'll learn something new from them.
Anonymous 2022-02-06 (Sun) 20:33:08 No. 9668
>>670 I'm just finishing up Geek Love by Katherine Dunn and going to read verso's Oscar Wilde collection next.
Anonymous 2022-02-12 (Sat) 18:43:28 No. 9751
>>670 >favorite book The Idiot
>book influenced you the most Literature only? This sounds gay, but probably Macbeth.
>what do you like about books? They're the purest interpersonal exploration of consciousness (though I would say this is true of 'stories' in general, and is therefore not exclusive to the written tradition, but such is our particular mediation)
>what are you planning to read? A bunch of stuff idk too much procrastinating I need to read plenty of non-fiction boring theory still… endless mountains
>what are you reading now? see above
Anonymous 2022-04-07 (Thu) 02:26:21 No. 10312
>>3259 Same here. Any remedies for that?
Anonymous 2022-07-21 (Thu) 06:10:20 No. 11289
What does /lit/ think about reading groups for different genres, rather than this survey type thread of asking what your fav book is. I'm currently interested in the greeks meme (more lit less phil), below is what I've read this year. Spent most of the year finishing Volume 3 and been burned out but just started reading stuff again, this year: > Othello, Merchant of Venice> Aristotle the Nicomachean Ethics (whatever it counts) > Agamemnon (realized I need to reread the Illiad to understand it) > currently reading the Illiad > just picked up The Histories by Herodotus I'd be down to do a comfy antiquity reading group.
Anonymous 2022-07-21 (Thu) 07:25:19 No. 11292
>>10312 read stuff by cool ppl… lots of communisty stuff out there, its just not so easy to find cause "not-censorship"
For fiction I like joseph conrad. "English canon" type shit but he's neat, anti-imperialist at least, anti-capital + pro people power at best. Flannery O'Connor is cool. Ray Bradbury is honestly fucked and full of ideology, but the writing is fun so i fw it. Lots of sci fi short story stuff is fun tbh
even tho the fear of AI singularity and machines taking over humans e.g. is literally disgusting anti-communist and prole-objectifying ideology For non-fiction or art, i mean there's historical commie shit.
Anonymous 2022-07-21 (Thu) 07:29:51 No. 11293
>>11292 I've read a few short stories by O'Connor and Faulkner and just amazed at 1) how good they are and 2) how deeply nihilistic southern writers who came out of the Reconstruction were.
Anonymous 2022-07-23 (Sat) 15:37:08 No. 11303
>>602 Library reading halls if i need to do serious study. Audiobooks on leisure time.
Anonymous 2023-02-28 (Tue) 19:30:44 No. 12532
>>10312 Be more selective with what you read I guess. Beyond that, I once had a conversation with a friend wherein we basically said the only way to enjoy things these day i.e TV, movies, art, fiction etc etc. you kinda have to wear like ideological lenses - place yourself at a distant and just use it to numb your mind to a certain extent. Otherwise you're gonna go insane with how shitty (almost) everything is. Ideally, reading theory etc. immunizes you to a certain degree from the most glaringly disgusting aspects of the Spectacle.
Unique IPs: 19