i don't know what to read

catch 22 imo

but out of these, crying of lot 49

Graham Greene

somehow i dont own catch 22

but then i guess i'm not really down w/ war lit

i assume it's an abridged Decline and Fall, personally i wd read that.

'war lit' idk if this is what i'd call it

forget proust, gibbon, kafka, borges and all that shite, read every insufferable 15yr old dork's favourite anti-bad people, anti-bad-stuff pablum, catch twenty two

Lots of good stuff here, depending on how serious you are feeling. That Ballard is my favorite of his early SF novels.

nakh if i had only one criticism of you it might be of overexposure to wanky literature, but that's only an 'if'

i wish d :(

need to read more books, havent finished one in about 8 months

axtually i read the j ronson book on psychopaths the other day which was a good quick read

flaubert. he's my favourite writer tho so i would say that.

some borges collection - everything is great
hinduism a v short introduction - yes i should read one of these, idk anything abt the hindus
crying of lot 49 - his best, v funny, excellent short read
delillo's white noise - read first few pages of this and they were funny, rated underworld pretty highly
decline and fall of the lolman empire - i intend to read this, 20% chance i will
a kafka short story collection, also i should finish the trial - you should, short stories first maybe
frankenstein - read at school for gcse or some shit, never again

flaubert and alice munro. you can't lose.

Alice Munro!

Not sure what the Proust lol is for - pick the first vol, at a manageable 400 pages.

i have the whole proust set, which is why lol. got it for £15 second hand, hardback, really nice edition. never gonna finish it.

abridged decline and fall. i'm not that crazy. i read the introduction one time, took about two weeks.

i don't really have any nice easy summer reads.

whole of Decline and Fall took me forever but i wd do it again tomorrow i think

if you havent read Borges yet - defenetly him.
if you did - Kafka, or Delillo

definitely

I second "The Crying of Lot 49" as an appetizer, and the Graham Greene stories should be refreshing (judging by 21 Stories). Ditto the Borges, Kafka, but then I favor short stories; past a certain point in a good novel, the rest of the world can go to hell 'til I finish, oh dear.

Catch-22 is pretty entertaining, yeah I read it at 15, so did my friends, so did our war veteran dads, awww.

Also yeah, our dads were war veterans (and dads) at 15, when they also got to read Catch-22 (and use "also" a lot). Jealous?

Graham Greene

either the chekhov stories or moby-dick

decline and fall is a total joy but quite a prolonged one

i love catch-22 but i was indeed 15 when i read it

Had a job briefly with the guy Catch-22 was based on.

It all looks good, just flip coins

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

madame bovary! it's steamy stuff, perfect for summer. save proust for when you're old

Oh my gosh, Borges.

xp
I read all of it when I was 22! FWIW, by the time you get to The Guermantes Way you won't be able to put it down (although by the time you get to The Prisoner you'll wish you could).

If you aren't as unemployed as I was, I'd say Ellison, though.

I started reading Proust when I was 18 and still haven't finished it. To-do and am-doing this year!

think i'm gonna start some kafka short stories tomorrow - finish the trial and join me!

i've read vol. 1-3 of proust twice and next time i try for 4-7 i'm gonna have to read 1-3 again because it's not like i remember anything except "to think that i should have wanted to die ... for a woman who did not appeal to me, who was not my type!" and "we could wrestle again if you like".

well you just saved me hours of reading!

i don't think the hour is the right unit, for proust

yeah particularly given the pace at which i read

i like proust a lot actually and i look forward to retreading old ground on my way, maybe, to the new ground

actually one of the reasons i haven't read past guermantes (which i have read two-thirds of once, i think) is that the recent-ish penguin translations of 5-6-7 are not available in the u.s. because (i think?) the original text isn't in the public domain here, so you have to import them, and i've never gotten around to it

AND I CERTAINLY COULDN'T SULLY MY HANDS WITH C.K. SCOTT MONCRIEFF WHAT DO YOU THINK I AM

Proust is a surprisingly enjoyable read. Not that I finished it or anything.

I'll throw in a vote for mad Dickens. I started wading into that mess from the chronological beginning a few years back and it was good value. The joy of reading Oliver Twist is not unlike discovering that a seemingly-meh one-hit-wonder band actually made amazing albums.

No votes for Moby Dick? Moby Dick. Great summer reading. -1 vote for Mishima, "Spring Snow" is good but the tetralogy as a whole is not as rewarding as his many other books-- read "Forbidden Colours" instead, maybe not in the summer though. Aside from that, I'd second Borges and Chekhov.

Oh there was mention of the correctly hyphenated Moby-Dick my apologies
Out of all the books on this list I've read, Moby-Dick was the one that was so good that I kept wondering why nobody had insisted that I read it sooner.
Also, good hot weather reading is Paul Bowles

The Guermantes Way is the only volume I haven't read, don't ask why.

Chekhov

I just cast the (no doubt) lone vote for Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

I presume you would not actually finish it, but even reading a few hundred pages of it can be pretty seet, depending entirely on how new the subject matter is to you, and how fond you are of Gibbon's style; he is easily one of the top three Augustan-period writers - elegant sentences, paced slowly and subtly flavored with pinches of sharp wit and penetration. The history it embodies was so well researched that it is only slightly outdated.

moby-dick is The Best Novel and i voted for it over chekhov because maybe there will be a lightning storm one of these nights

none of these seem like ideal summer reading imo

moby dick is

i've never read it but i have read benito cereno & bartleby, both dope but neither are the type of thing i like to read in the summer

moby dick is super different from both of those, imho

I'm reading Moby Dick now and it's great, I'm about halfway through. The whole pre-shipping out section is hilarious, then it got bogged down in a bunch of exposition and digressions (these are all the different kinds of whales, these are all the different kinds of things that are white, this is why white things are scary), but now we're back to whaling adventures and it's great again.

yeah i'm sure it's dope but i've heard it's not that easy to get through from friends who've read it

obviously this is a standard stance but i like reading shorter & less dense lit in the summer, i find the heat really gets to me and it's harder to parse fucked up sentences. longest thing i ever read during the summer was probably shogun lol that said rn i'm thinking of reading magic mountain

i'd go with 'madame bovary'

Every Melville I've read has been a hugely different experience. "Confidence-Man" is perfect summer reading too, a wild book.

As great as Flaubert is I couldn't imagine enjoying him in any specific circumstance except as a means of escape from family obligations

what wd I read in this weather? The Drowned World.

what do I want to read right now? probably Gibbon - was going to get myself a kindle as a birthday present and then download D&F onto it.

what am I reading right now? Kafka short stories. fantastic. of variable length (handy in this hot weather I find). and have that handy feeling of intellectual work going on without you having to put too much effort in - they feel (as a whole) spiritually smart.

what wd I attempt to read but leave spatchcocked on the bedside table? Proust. enjoyed the volumes I read. unable to sustain long term desire to be in the mood to read it all.

what I wd definitely read again. Catch 22 - its great! fun, nihilistic, bawdy. tainted by my own teenagery enthusiasm now for me, but it's really good imo.

what am I reading right now? Kafka short stories. fantastic. of variable length (handy in this hot weather I find). and have that handy feeling of intellectual work going on without you having to put too much effort in - they feel (as a whole) spiritually smart.

otm i voted for kafka

probably kafka as he is the best thing ever

i voted for alice munro! but lots of great choices. would also go for proust, ballard, and kafka

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

ugh, moby dick. good luck slogging though that one. Lot 49, on the other hand...

aw, I should have voted for the Chekhov stories

object to the idea that reading anything = "slogging through", if you don't like it there's a world of other books, but there's nothing that's not fun

munro and chekhov are a little too wintry to me. went with kafka. summer heat = surreal head trip.

Moby Dick is tons of fun

40-60 tons, even.

poll otm

FUCK YEAH

LIKE A SNOW-HILL IN THE AIR

i know a professor who tells a funny story about moby dick.

the story is she knew (of) a guy who graduated with an engineering degree, managed to get through hs and college w/o really reading a novel, or shakespeare or much of anything. he didn't read. he thought maybe he should give a classic a shot, and someone recommended moby dick. so he gives it a good effort, reads it, finds it interesting, that's that.

this must have been the 90s; the story is months later there was an episode of the animaniacs cartoon on (maybe the guy had kids, idk) and one of the characters is on the phone, yells "call me, ishmael!" and slams the phone down.

and the guy just falls out laughing. because it's a joke that he gets. but then, laughter subsides, and he's crestfallen, and says something like, "oh my god. is everything like this?"

lol

dudes loving moby dick always makes me want to get contrarian because i am basically sexist and horrible, but it is a pretty fun book.

would have voted bovary though

more like ovary

exactly

i know a professor who tells a funny story about moby dick.

the story is she knew (of) a guy who graduated with an engineering degree, managed to get through hs and college w/o really reading a novel, or shakespeare or much of anything. he didn't read. he thought maybe he should give a classic a shot, and someone recommended moby dick. so he gives it a good effort, reads it, finds it interesting, that's that.

this must have been the 90s; the story is months later there was an episode of the animaniacs cartoon on (maybe the guy had kids, idk) and one of the characters is on the phone, yells "call me, ishmael!" and slams the phone down.

and the guy just falls out laughing. because it's a joke that he gets. but then, laughter subsides, and he's crestfallen, and says something like, "oh my god. is everything like this?"

― goole, Tuesday, May 29, 2012 11:38 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

man this is kind of beautiful imo, something to which everyone can on some level relate - one of the pleasures of reading widely (or watching lots of films, or anything really) is the point when you can't help but pick up on these sorts of allusions, in either high culture or low

i like when you're reading shakespeare and you stub your toe on a giant cliche and you're like wtf shakespeare how could you be so -- oh

which is the opposite of what we're talking about but it's the exact opposite which is like being relevant

haha no yeah i know exactly what you mean

horseshoe what are you reading now

moby dick is p great obviously, just not sure I'd want to tackle it while subject to the heat anaesthesis/lethargy that a hoy hoy's initial post exuded.

some writers seem specifically suited to the bleached thoughts of continental summer - Camus is an obvious one, I think Kafka's short stories work here as well. There's a touch of the desert religion about it maybe - just you and the sun, and the bleak surdish paradoxes this imposes. v different from Nordic and gothic effect of megrims and local demons in the wooded shadows - the grotesque in other words - into which I'd probably slot Kafka's long works.

guilty confession: i couldn't finish moby dick. the lengthy excursions on all the finer points of the whaling industry, in particular the chapter where he goes on at great length and even greater ignorance about cetology and the one where he waxes equally lengthily and tediously about the history of the crows nest, were too much for me.

Chapter 55: Of the Monstrous Pictures of Whales

Ishmael considers well-known graphic depictions of whales. To a whaleman who has actually seen whales, most historical, mythological, and scientific sources are blatantly inaccurate. As a result, says Ishmael, “you must needs conclude that the great Leviathan is that one creature in the world which must remain unpainted to the last.” The only solution that Ishmael sees for one who seeks to know what a whale looks like is an actual encounter with the creature. In the ocean, only portions of a whale are visible at any one time, the majority of the animal being underwater. Only dead whales are visible in their near-entirety, and those are to the living animal what a wrecked ship is to one afloat. He warns the reader not to “be too fastidious in your curiosity” about the whale, since such curiosity is unlikely to be satisfied.

Chapter 56: Of the Less Erroneous Pictures of Whales, and the True Pictures of Whaling Scenes

Ishmael then tries to find some acceptable depictions of whales. To his mind, the only pictures that come close are two large French engravings that show the sperm and right whales in action. He wonders why the French have been best able to capture whales and whaling in art, because France is not a whaling nation.

Chapter 57: Of Whales in Paint; In Teeth; In Wood; In Sheet-Iron; In Stone; In Mountains; In Stars

Ishmael considers versions of whales crafted by whalers, including specimens carved in ivory, wood, and metal. Those with an interest in the creature can see whales everywhere, including in geological forms and in the starry sky.

is this not in serious need of abridgement? even that first summary is too long.

might admit that there's maybe northern autumnal melancholy to Borges, but really he is an anytime anywhere pick up for me, and that is who I voted for.

every fule kno the digressions are the best bits, c'mon

they're like listening to a grandpa simpson story, maybe that floats yer boat.

digression = literature, the rest is some monkey nuts to keep the rubes involved

gandalf got frodo to throw the ring into a volcano, fin

tristram shandy is the most typical novel in world literature, etc

i like the obsessive exegesis in moby-dick because what melville does is like what all (well, many of) the other characters do, everyone trying to understand the whale and contain it in some scientific or literary or mystical system that they understand the rules and boundaries of and can lecture learnedly on, and just before the narrative finally finds its way back to ishmael (after being separated from him for hundreds of pages despite still ostensibly being narrated by him in a weird fractured pomo-before-there-was-even-mo way, because even the book itself is not as you thought it was) everyone's at last brought face-to-face with the whale, and, well, spoilers, but you know what happens. winds back to the very first part of the book, which is not "call me ishmael" but actually a list of the words for "whale" in various different languages, ostensibly provided by "a late consumptive usher to a grammar school": "He was ever dusting his old lexicons and grammars, with a queer handkerchief, mockingly embellished with all the gay flags of all the known nations of the world. He loved to dust his old grammars; it somehow mildly reminded him of his mortality." and then after that there's the dozen pages of redundant whale-related epigraphs, these compiled by a "sub-sub-librarian" whose introduction is like some kind of prose poem about scholarship and death. ("give it up, sub-sub!") i don't know of another book that puts you through the same feeling: stuffed with knowledge and still so trivial and helpless. maybe there are traces of this in pynchon? borges? a century later?

there is more in moby-dick than that, i am not Decoding Moby-Dick here, that is just a thing in moby-dick that i like.

damn, all makin me wanna read Moby Dick up in here

this might be sort of a lame reference point, but the effect of bloated vocab/info overload + the emotional tone in Infinite Jest reminds me of the feeling i think you're talking about

^^^^ not lame

yeah that makes sense! hal's overfilled and cauterized mind, stuff like that. in IJ knowledge is (can be) just another addiction.

Virginia Woolf's Night and Day is so not the thing to read by the pool. The turtle-green cover made for a handy sun reflector though!

btw a hoy hoy if you don't want to restart Madame Bovary there's also Trois Contes, three stories that vary in form, content, and tone. The first one "A Simple Heart" is one of my top five ever.

i am going to go w/ the poll and read moby dick :)

how did you enjoy Capital?

oof. i'm about 1/10th of the way through it and much like my attempt at the bible, am finding it quite a futile slog. still sits next to my toilet though.

for me, the point of the 'grampa simpson' chapters in moby-dick is that they get you completely immersed in every mundane detail of the voyage, the way you'd be if you actually were on the ship with ishmael. to me part of the book's power is how realistic it is. the stuff about ahab and the white whale wouldn't be half as interesting if you didn't have all that humdrum stuff to remind you that this is all happening on a fuckin' whaling voyage -- a completely ordinary business venture. and melville's using it to essentially retell the story of satan in paradise lost. it's incredibly audacious and weird.

i also find melville's voice in those chapters really funny! once you accept that you're in for the long haul and let yourself get immersed in everything he's telling you, the 'here is a description of the whale's mouth' type stuff is some of the most entertaining stuff in the book.

i have the whole proust set, which is why lol. got it for £15 second hand, hardback, really nice edition. never gonna finish it.

Maybe, maybe not - I only had a couple of vols but within the first 20 pages I knew I would read not much else.

More autumnal than summer...but whatever the weather its perfect if you're feeling melancholic.

i never saw that kapital post! i got a copy of it from gutenberg for the kindle and after a couple days of pressing NEXT PAGE through the headache and not noticing the bar moving right at all i was like HEY HOW LONG IS THIS BOOK ANYWAY and then i saw it in a bookstore and was like lol never mind

moby dick is worth reading just for the 'whiteness of the whale' chapter which may be one of the 2-3 most beautiful things ever written in english.

Yes: Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the milky way?

Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers' hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as much as to say,- Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness.

Would that I could keep squeezing that sperm for ever! For now, since by many prolonged, repeated experiences, I have perceived that in all cases man must eventually lower, or at least shift, his conceit of attainable felicity; not placing it anywhere in the intellect or the fancy; but in the wife, the heart, the bed, the table, the saddle, the fire-side; the country; now that I have perceived all this, I am ready to squeeze case eternally. In thoughts of the visions of the night, I saw long rows of angels in paradise, each with his hands in a jar of spermaceti.

haha. i took a melville reading course in grad school, which was basically just reading everything melville wrote. we basically did a book a week. every week i'd be like, "well that's the gayest book i've ever read," but then the next week i'd realize, "nope, he's out-gayed himself!"

you become really fond of melville if you read everything he ever wrote, especially because he apparently thought each new book was going to fix whatever made nobody read his novels so that his next blockbuster is just around the corner; meanwhile his work gets weirder and weirder.

A few years ago I saw an actually amazing stage adaptation of Moby Dick. One of the top five theatre experiences of my life. The whale was represented by a giant piece of whiteish canvas that fell from the ceiling during the conclusion of the third act, engulfing everything (and everyone) and being dragged off the stage by six stagehands who manipulated it it with barbed harpoons while the men inside screamed.

The very best part, though, was the reenactment of the spermaceti squeezing scene, which somehow becomes even weirder and more Whitmanish when you're seeing six burly half-clad and moaning theatre geeks squeezing cottage cheese and smearing neufchatal all over their biceps

lol horseshoe. what melville should i read after MD?

I loved Typee

I'm wondering whether I should read Pierre before MD lol

lol good luck

great post, remy!

No to Pierre, but read Confidence-Man after MD

can't go wrong with Billy Budd!

anyone have the version of pierre illustrated by maurice sendak?

The Kraken edition? Yeah, posted some of the illustrations from it in the ILE Sendak RIP thread.
Good breakdown of Hershel Parker's OTT changes to the text here for those w/JSTOR access.

Confidence-Man is absolutely ridiculous.

can't go wrong with Billy Budd!

― Mad God 40/40 (Z S)

Or Bartleby! Horror poll got me thinking about Benito Cerino, too.

yes, "bartleby" and "benito cereno" are great. i think my favorite novel we read in that course was Mardi. it's nuts. though.

i think it's regarded as the proto-moby dick, though, so maybe you should read something else. mardi, confidence man, and moby dick were the standouts imo.

read "Benito Cereno" years ago -- spooky!

haven't read it myself, but it appears to be online right here

http://www.esp.org/books/melville/piazza/contents/cereno.html

all of his books are online bro--public domain bro

i don't know what to read either. i haven't felt like reading fiction in a while. i want an easy-to-read non-boring history book.

One easy-to-read non-boring history book would be The Guns of August, Barbara Tuchman. It covers the whole lead up to WWI and the first several weeks. Essentially the period before the war bogged down into immobile, futile, horrific, bloody trench warfare.

i'll read that in august

I thought Robert Leckie's Delivered from Evil was a good 1-vol history of WWII.

This is going way back upthread, but

actually one of the reasons i haven't read past guermantes (which i have read two-thirds of once, i think) is that the recent-ish penguin translations of 5-6-7 are not available in the u.s. because (i think?) the original text isn't in the public domain here, so you have to import them, and i've never gotten around to it

I didn't know this!Is it just 5-6-7? Because I can't find anything past the first one. I ended up reading a super old translation of vol. 2 and it just wasn't the same.

Great thread, btw. I want to try Moby-Dick again now.

i am reading

I, CLAVDIVS

clav-clav-clavdivs

xp yeah, looking it up the prisoner on can't be published here till 2019. everything up to sodom and gommorah came out here tho, couple different editions.

once i imported the british editions, actually, of the ones i was missing, and i gave amazon the wrong address, and the books bounced back and i was refunded and i've never pulled the trigger again.

Well, weirdly I just found the whole lot on Amazon (.ca), all totally available. Wonder when that happened? You could probably order them to the US from Canada.

Fuck a copyright, that's terrible!