Serious reading

[gnr61]

hahah im not going to argue the point since i understand completely why many people hate him. his writing in his novels (while formally incredibly proficient) is entirely over the top and intentionally more dense and obscure than one would think necessary--referring especially to some passages of As I Lay Dying which is riddled with the most laughably obtuse similes you can imagine. the enjoyment i get from his style i think comes in part from its lack of precedent and in part because those great big stream of consciousness passages can be wonderfully poetic in context.

Sound and Fury is difficult but, i believe with some close reading, very rewarding in terms of theme/emotional payoff. everything makes sense and adds to the whole (this is not quiiiite true of As I Lay Dying, which is great but for different reasons)

HOWEVER, his short stories are generally far more terse and accessible and should probably be read more widely than Hemingway by those really interested in the form (still not exactly leisure-reading)

it should also be noted that i very much dislike hemingway xd

[Tidus810]

gnr - I definitely know whatcha mean, it's more of a political book as opposed to good literature.

By the way, what about Jonathan Swift? I get a kick out of people entirely misinterpreting his A Modest Proposal. :P

[MrGiggles]

GUYS

WHAT ABOUT NEIL GAIMAN

Seriously, American Gods is one of my recent favorites, and even The Sandman comics are totally engrossing.

[igotrhythm]

Originally Posted by MrRubix

It's truly a great book -- I did a report on it in high school via skit and basically got to invoke Agent Smith mannerisms. XD

But really, it's a short, enjoyable read with some great theme/character development that, in one way or another, puts forth interesting takeaways for the readers.

1984 is pretty much the archetype for Dystopian novels, and it's not for everyone. I personally didn't love nor hate it, but I think it's something everyone probably *should* read.

Brave New World is awesome. In my HS psych class, I used it to bring forth a sort of troll-debate that threw the rest of the class period into a massive tangent: If you were programmed to *really, really* enjoy cleaning **** for a living, would you live such a life? In that role, you would be happy... but you'd be cleaning ****.

Apparently your psych class tried to calculate the tangent of pi/2 after you asked that question. Well played, sir.

Leonard Mlodinow is indeed a brilliant writer and thinker. I personally enjoy his book Euclid's Window which explains various classic problems of geometry in a very accessible manner and goes a long way towards humanizing the great thinkers of history, from Pythagoras to Einstein. In the same vein is John Allen Paulos's Innumeracy which puts forth basic mathematical concepts like scientific notation, the multiplication principle, and laws of probability quite painlessly by utilizing them in a whole slew of possible real-world applications.

I also enjoyed reading a couple of books by Linda Nagata, particularly Vast. A very good read if you like your sci-fi with hefty doses of erotica.

Edit: Saw this and nearly fell out of my chair.

Originally Posted by smartdude1212

I just want to mention that we're reading excerpts of Aeneid in my Latin I course right now. I'm not sure which is more awesome: reading it in Latin, or being able to understand it in Latin.

I had to tackle books 1-4, 6, and parts of 10 and 12 in preparation for the Latin 400 AP exam, and my hit-or-miss translations of various passages are still floating around my room somewhere. The teacher even "recommended" that we run out and buy Robert Fitzgerald's adaptation if we got really stuck. Sure, there's some plot holes and incomplete lines, but keep in mind that Virgil intended to go on a three-year tour of Greece and polish it more before he kicked the bucket. His dying wish was that his work be burned, but thanks to Emperor Augustus Caesar's demand that the work be immediately circulated "as is", we can instead enjoy a classic work of love, betrayal, mistaken identity and epic action in the truest sense of the word.

[Iam90]

Originally Posted by MrRubix

God, Faulkner is like the worst writer ever. The way he structures his stuff is hard to follow and I hate his style.


William Faulkner, speaking of Ernest Hemingway: "He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary."

And Hemingway’s response: "Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?"

interestingly, i've never found faulkner's diction particularly challenging (this would be much more typical of an author like hesse to me), rather his syntax is at times brutal

still, faulkner is a great author, if you like that approach to literature. the syntax isn't "dense" so much as it is atypical; it really works your brain trying to "translate" his syntax, in a sense, to something more conventional while reading him. i enjoy this mental workout of sorts and i do LOVE how his style allows for some fantastic monologues; i've always been a fan of monologue but it never comes up in literature enough (outside of theatre which is distinct from lit anyway) except in philosophical literature (faulkner included to an extent) and stream of consciousness. i prefer the former in general (authors like dostoevski, sartre, kafka, and hesse) to the latter (haven't even tried tackling woolf, for instance...) but there will always be exceptions

[MrRubix]

it's a very stream-of-consciousness style of writing, only infused with heavier language. I hate needing to backtrack all the time and I hate needing to slow down just to understand what the hell he's saying. I already know all the words he uses and I don't find his structure to be anything enlightening -- just needlessly frustrating. It doesn't feel poetic. I'd have to agree with Hemingway on this one.

[xealix]

Originally Posted by MrGiggles

GUYS

WHAT ABOUT NEIL GAIMAN

Seriously, American Gods is one of my recent favorites, and even The Sandman comics are totally engrossing.

I actually wanted to bring him up back when I started this thread, but for some reason totally put the thought to rest. I did not think that anyone would take him seriously since his most famous work is a graphic novel series, but The Sandman is absolutely amazing, and I do think everyone should at least read some of the volumes, if not all of them.

[eurostud4]

if you're still taking suggestions, I would highly recommend any one of P.G. Wodehouse's novels. They're all meant to be humorous and just "feel-good" kind of stories.

All of them are also easily readable within one sitting, too. My favorites have been Something Fresh and Leave it to Psmith

[FFRGreen]

I love to read John Grisham books I loved the Partner The street lawyer and The king of torts.