I am certainly a fan of Fyodor Dostoevsky and a majority of writers from Russia: their literature, such as Nikolai Gogol's
Dead Souls exudes this beautifully-crafted view of peasant-life and of there being incredibly strong dividers in society, with each man having and knowing their place and existing precisely to conform to what they are there to do; if they're born a land-owner, they'll own land, if they're born a farmer, they'll farm, and so-on. When I heard, after reaching almost the end of the book, that
Dead Souls was unfinished, I was very upset and desperately wished to know how it would have turned out...
That's wassup. Throw some Nabokov in there and you have the holy trinity.
Notes from the underground - Dostovevsky
Anna Karenin - Tolstoy
For instance, I loved
Crime and Punishment and
The Idiot and I'm saving
The Brothers Karamazov for a day when I've read everything else within my collection and truly lack something epic to read, and speaking of epics, I've a wonderful hardback edition of Leo Tolstoy's
War and Peace; regardless of whether his
Anna Karenina is quintessential or not, I find this a thrilling piece and I'd love to be able to finish it, though finishing any book is a truly tragic affair with realization that, no, there is no more afterwards, and that's precisely why I'm saving some Dostoevsky for later!
'Penguin Classics' have an incredible title named
Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida and I've read every story in there - some of them twice - because I just, for some reason, find this area of literature to be so agreeable that I even attempt to mock it; to imitate and re-create it in my own works, yet it just doesn't show and in my embarrassment I'll destroy the nonsense manuscript, as if I am
Frankenstein (now
there is definitely a great book by Shelley) myself attempting to create a counterfeit
Crime and Punishment mockingbird that wouldn't fool a soul and could barely even caw, but raspily croak instead, all stitched together from others' genius with the most inaccurate and clumsy methods possible!
hydroazuanacaine said:
appears some bluelighters use this thread for "i just read blank" posts. i'll do the same, if that's alright.
Pnin by nabokov
other than Lolita, this is my favorite of his so far. cute, sad, funny, and of course well written. not too much in the way of plot, just a character sketch and a quick description of a period in that character's life. the novel does not try to be anything grandiose. it's short and light. and for what it is, it's close to perfect.
reminded me of Four Seasons in Rome by anthony doerr.
Lolita is one of my favorites: I've been shunned in the past by a girl for reading something about a paederast and general paedophilia, but the book is hilarious in and of itself, and the descriptions so deep and powerful that I wonder how the man managed to research everything in it. But just by closing my eyes, I can recall passages as read by Jeremy Irons, the perfect choice for any Humbert Humbert and there's a Humbert within every man, whether he wishes to admit it or not: we can all be awkward and shy but in love with whom our eyes have designated the most beautiful creature upon this planet and somehow, someway get into her life and proclaim our love... I laugh out loud whenever I read
Lolita and I'm not at all ashamed to do so, even though I've no lust or sexual passions for children, silly woman attempting to criticize
me for reading that book? Must I be a devout Christian, or perhaps Jesus himself, to pick up a copy of
The Bible..? Tshk!
grimble crumble said:
just read Life of Pi by Yann Martel last week, great great book, heres my review of it for those who havent read it and my analysis with of the underlying themes and messages for those who have read it in NSFW because it contains spoilers
A boy of many faiths and a 450 pound Bengal tiger sharing a life boat waiting for rescue in the Pacific Ocean after a shipwreck… sound like an interesting story? Then read on.
First off let me say Life of Pi is a great great book. Its one of the few books that even though I didn’t necessarily agree with the final premise, I still wholeheartedly enjoyed the book. Not because if was written very well, was suspenseful and made a tiger come to life in my mind (which it did all of these things) but because it made me look at the underlying debate differently. As I said, I may not have agreed with the final premise but it gave me a new perspective on it, and that is what I think good books should do.
If your looking for an emotional survival story mixed with light waters of man vs. nature and faith vs. knowledge look no further.
Again, another book that I thoroughly enjoyed!
lostNfound said:
Having said that though, I also loved Hubert Selby Jnrs Last Exit to Brooklyn.
Ah, I've recently ordered that (seems that it wasn't being printed at the time, though it's come back into vogue here?) and I must say that as a piece without punctuation and following on from the whole Kerouac school of writing without care for presentation, merely for thought and emotion to be passed along, it is a fascinating piece that I'd love to spend time on, but a Degree in English Language and English Literature actually affords little time for reading anything other than the prescribed reading list's contents!
Now, I'm a fan of Chuck Palahniuk as far as modern writers go; earlier than that, Burroughs, Kerouac, I'm getting into Hubert Selby Jr. and I'm looking at a copy of
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test right now: I love classics and have a whole library of them; I collect hardbacks or signed copies or signed copies of hardbacks and therefore have more than one of certain titles, but I'm not so much a serious collector as I am a serious author - I bought those classic Russian novels hoping that they would teach me how to write an epic story. Turns out you've got to live something fantastic, or at least (day)dream that you've lived something like that, in order to be such a good story-teller.
I suck at telling stories, so I'm not going to stop reading until I've read every significant book of the past 200 years. I love all of those texts about the "American Dream" and things like that and I weep now that it's all over and has become something of an "American Nightmare": Europe is a place to see beauty in architecture and language and history and people, and travel has always served to be a very fascinating muse, though the lines she whispers into my ear as made so much more audible and relatable when I've lubricated her vocal cords with certain chemicals...
Reading is my passion and I must say that
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and Stieg Larsson's following two massive books are lacking in so much! The characters are fantastic and beautiful, but the books themselves probably could've been trimmed down to, say, less than the length of the first book for the entire trilogy in total! Even at the end, the reasoning behind it all is just...
Still, literature is a huge part of my life; I'd love to one day help write "Bluelight: The Book" and stuff it full of anedotal stories about people getting high, harm-reduction information for a generation of stoners whose parents are at their wits' ends and have no clue whatsoever about how to help, and also to just tell
the truth about drugs and the drug-user's lifestyle!
Anything by Kerouac, anything by any Russian author of some repute (Gogol was from the Ukraine, but even so...) and,
oh! I've neglected to mention Chekhov! Well, I've a collection of all of his shorts and pretty much everything Kafka and Camus ever wrote; unfinished glimpses through the eyes of genius philosophers who, at the very least from Camus's standpoint, had seen so much.
The Motorcycle Diaries is one that I'm definitely going to try and get through, along with
I Am A Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter - understanding consciousness is tantamount to understanding the reason we exist, perhaps; the reason we choose to believe in gods, indeed if we even ever choose such a thing at all, fascinates me also. There was a medical textbook on neurobiology that spoke
all about how the brain works (as far as we know) and how drugs affect it. I want to buy a copy of that, and got the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders - Volume IV (or
DSM-IV-TR) for some bargain-basement price; ten times less than it should've otherwise cost, and the only problem was a little scuffing on the cover.
Palahniuk, Ray Bradbury, Douglas Adams, Lovecraft's
Necronomicon and accompanying
Eldritch Tales, Nicholson Baker's
House of Holes is full of graphic depictions and discussion of sex, as well sex should be discussed as such, and so I love it for it, and then Ira Levin with his bizarre powers of predicting the courses of history with his books on subjects that had yet to even become mainstream political and global issues, like
Rosemary's Baby and
The Stepford Wives,
The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson was funny and fun and fascinating. Tom Wolfe, as mentioned, and then George Orwell and Thomas Harris (I
love the character of Hannibal Lecter and feel that Anthony Hopkins is some almost-perfect incarnation of the abominable yet small, non-threatening man with his curious teeth...
Oscar Wilde may very well have planned "Nothing but my genius!" as some quote to say, as Ricky Gervais riffed about on one of his DVDs, but still, I've nothing against homosexuals and, on the contrary, would die for a cause so noble as gay-marriage, though I'd rather it be for
freedom of speech. Ahem, I'm finished. Thanks and I love that you're all avid readers; teaching yourselves all about anything and everything, becoming absorbed into the characters' lives and so-on. If any of you would like to discuss literature via PM, I'd happily abide and spur on such behavior. Yes, books are very, very important to me and print is not a dying medium; we'll always like our books, even if we have to download an ebook, transfer it to an ancient PC with equally-old laser printer, print it and bind it and then read it ourselves, for books are the legacies of those before us; they invite us into their authors' minds and we touch upon what stirs them to anger or lust or hatred or love or fear and, I feel, we become closer to such people by consuming their written words...
Yes, I've ranted a truckload (or a fuckload) of nonsense, but you guys reminded me to pick up
House of Holes and read it through again, 'cause I swear I could write something even kinkier and crazier! Hell, I'm gonna challenge myself to that!
Peace. ;-)
Lolita, as praised above me, is one of my favourite books. So fucking funny, but still has a sincere, profound theme which provokes much thought.
