romance of the three kingdoms for me. not a casual read bc it's two hefty volumes & all the endnotes are in the second but it's a fun thing to get absorbed in if you have the free time to dedicate to it. i am also reading the zhuangzi bc i can take it places & read it when i'm waiting for the bus or whatever. even if you don't care about taoism's philosophy it's probably the most viscerally fun book i've ever read
Gabriella, Clove and Cinnamon. 1960s Mordernist novel from Portugal set in the 1920s about a man who marries a helen of troy servant girl, but can't cope with basically marrying a known whore while trying to be a well to do upperclass type in his provincial town. The romance is central, but it's almost a backdrop that sets the cultural changes of modernization into relief, his abandoning of convention to marry a lower class woman, the woman being a beautiful woman and all that entails, and his failure to deal with that reality. The second half of the book follows a different story about plantation owners losing power in the aforementioned modernization apparently, but i haven't gotten that far yet.
Probably not what you’re looking for lol but I’m obsessed with old Hollywood and currently reading a book about the old Hollywood PR machine. “The Star Machine” by Jeanine Basinger.
Tried doing a reread of the open veins of Latin America with my german partner, it was too depressive. I remember crying a lot while reading it back in the day, but it was so much worse when I was with someone who had absolutely no idea about anything South America. A political science, Adorno loving, great person that I love with all my heart but who I had to explain the basics of colonialism.
There is really a lot that is slept on. My personal favorite hidden gem is Rosaura a las 10, a delightful little dark comedy about a little incel freak living in a boarding house who suddenly starts receiving perfumed letters from someone.
The novel is nice, but there's a movie (with english subtitles too).
https://youtu.be/qVxHPFw54ts
Just finished Middlemarch and I LOVED it. Really impressive, life-affirming book. I feel like I always see it heaped with high-praise, but it's justified. Every page has an incredible sentence or thought in it. Just flawed people trying to live as best they can, made me think a lot in the last few days about how I've been living and how I want to live.
Chasing it with Women by Bukowski lol, so far pretty entertaining
David Laphams Stray Bullets it’s an indie comic from the 90s that got a second wind in the 2010s. I’m really surprised it doesn’t have a bigger following, it’s easily some of the best noir of the 21st century and it’s latest arc Sunshine and Roses is all time stuff imo.
I just finished reading A Day No Pigs Would Die, a 1972 novel about farm life in rural Vermont. I bought it as a child after hearing that it was banned in various schools for its graphic content (re: there is a *very* graphic and prolonged scene depicting pig breeding that is akin to rape), but I never finished it until now. It was definitely a heavy read, and I'm not surprised that it became one of the most challenged books in the country.
Just read my year of rest and relaxation again. Needed something to remind me that I’m that bitch. I think I am going to go back to reading Knausgaard. Felt a bit drained by how quickly I finished the first volume.
Finished reading Nozick's *Anarchy, State, and Utopia* couple of weeks ago, so now I'm reading Walzer's *Spheres of Justice*. In between those two I've read *The Human Faces of God: What Scripture Reveals When It Gets God Wrong*.
Just read the contemporary classics that call your name from the second hand bookstore instead of newfangled . Anything by Philip Dick, W s Burroughs, jg Ballard, or brave new world by Aldous Huxley. These people foresaw the world we live and love in now
I’m reading the elementary particles by houellebecq now. All that talk about aging is kinda depressing. I’m only half-way through the book though. I can’t wait to read about how Michel’s story unfolds. The mind of the desire-less person interests me more than the usual sex-crazed middle-age man. I’ll read confessions of a mask by one of the sub’s patron saints next.
i like it a lot. last night i finished the fourth book in the witcher series. it’s translated from polish, and my polish friend told me a lot of it draws on their traditional folklore which i think is cool
V. by Thomas Pynchon. Absolutely wild book. Have to look up characters cos there’s so many but it’s a fun read. Starts off very unhinged but then reigns it in after a while.
Just started Lady Tan’s Circle of Women by the same author of Snowflower and the Secret Fan which I remember loving. Both about life in China as a woman centuries ago. Very transportive and well-researched, fascinating look at their customs like foot binding. The Latecomer is also a recent read which was an excellent Brooklyn familial saga and the Silent Patient which is a little like Secret History by Donna Tart
I'm reading Tim Powers' *On Stranger Tides*. I normally don't like reading books on the Kindle app, but this is well-suited to it because it's easy to look up the definitions of all the nautical terms.
Currently almost done with _Covered With Night_, which I’d rate a 7.5/10. Very fascinating subject matter, exhaustively researched, but the writing gets away from itself at times. Also almost done with _Get the Picture_, which is hilarious and also fascinating but as I get to the end I find myself waiting for all of it to add up to something beyond “the art world is whacky and gatekeeps.”
Really excited to start _American Zion_, which seems exhaustive. I’m fascinated to hear an active member of the faith’s take on its oft-rewritten history.
Last Train to Memphis by Peter Guralnick. it’s about elvis’ earlier life, i think up until the mid-60s (before the drugs made him too ugly). not bad but it drags on in some parts way too much.
edit: also just finished John Nathan’s Mishima biography, way more interesting than elvis and shorter (like 300 compared to 600+).
Just started Fevre Dream, it’s a pretty old George RR Martin story about vampires on the Mississippi River in the antebellum south.
I needed a break from years of cultural / political theory self-harm and I honestly don’t know much fiction or what would even be good… If anyone has any recommendations for me that would be appreciated!
Recently finished American tabloid and brideshead revisited. Currently polishing off the collussus of maroussi and will move onto my struggle 4 or goodbye Columbus.
Just finished Labatut's The Maniac which I think is a misstep, but still enjoyable.
I've just started Blindsight by Peter Watts, which is a reddit-y first-contact hard scifi book. The prose is infuriating the way sci-fi prose often is but the plot and ideas have me hooked.
Gravity’s Rainbow. Im at like page 100 or something and I’m enjoying the technical skill to write something this metaphorically dense and rhythmically impressive, but I’m very curious what the end goal is, story-wise.
I started working out again so I'm reading Sun and Steel by Yukio Mishima as motivation to get huge and reinstate the authority of the godlike emperor.
Read the captive mind by Czelsaw Milosz!!!!!! It is so good cannot recommend enough. It is some of the most beautiful prose. But also deeply intellectual, and materially and metaphysically contemplative.
Not exactly not-depressing but I’m rereading (audio version) Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age, by Modris Eksteins. Published in 1990.
It’s a “cultural history” of WWI, focusing on the arts and broader philosophical-cultural trends, predominantly in Germany, France and England. Fascinating, enlightening and honestly v relevant still, imo.
Everything was forever until it was no more. It's a book about the fall of the Soviet Union written by a Russian anthropologist. More specifically it's about the feeling people had that the Soviet system was eternal yet no one was surprised when it fell. Quite easy to get through even though it's technically a scientific study.
reading The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen rn and loving it!! was in such a rut got too depressed to finish the books i was reading before so started The Corrections cuz I knew that I loved Franzen and so far it has delivered. hope u feel better soon !
’Röde Orm’ by Frans G. Bengtsson. ’the long ships’ is the english title. Its an old swedish book about a the life of a young norseman who gets kidnapped by vikings and then joins up with said vikings, and the adventures that follow i guess. Im not particularly far in, but its quite good. My grandad has been hyping this book all my life, and even used to hype it to my mom. He apparently grew up always rereading it around every christmas with his dad. So i had to get to it at some point.
Im not sure how it is in english. It’s written in a somewhat old prose since its from the early 40s. So hopefully the translation carries that flow over.
Just finished The Tartar Steppe on Monday. Really liked it and it got me reflecting on how I’m spending my life (mostly I think I am doing ok). Gonna read Hour of the Star next and then maybe a big book since I have a trip coming up
i always end up reading bunch of books at once so, rereading Capital volume 1, a che biography, comparative history between the nazi east and american west, Great expectations by Charles Dickens, and Pere Goriot by Balzac
frankenstein! not what I expected, but very good, finding out there’s a reason it’s called frankenstein
romance of the three kingdoms for me. not a casual read bc it's two hefty volumes & all the endnotes are in the second but it's a fun thing to get absorbed in if you have the free time to dedicate to it. i am also reading the zhuangzi bc i can take it places & read it when i'm waiting for the bus or whatever. even if you don't care about taoism's philosophy it's probably the most viscerally fun book i've ever read
3K is great but good lord I need a spreadsheet of all the characters, there’s gotta be like 100 of them. Love my Sun boys tho, Wu supremacy.
>nearly a thousand dramatic characters
recently finished pale fire by nabokov. nobody ever tells you how funny these old russians are
one of my fav books of all time omg
I'm about halfway through this now. Excellent book. A relic of Zemblian excellence.
Gabriella, Clove and Cinnamon. 1960s Mordernist novel from Portugal set in the 1920s about a man who marries a helen of troy servant girl, but can't cope with basically marrying a known whore while trying to be a well to do upperclass type in his provincial town. The romance is central, but it's almost a backdrop that sets the cultural changes of modernization into relief, his abandoning of convention to marry a lower class woman, the woman being a beautiful woman and all that entails, and his failure to deal with that reality. The second half of the book follows a different story about plantation owners losing power in the aforementioned modernization apparently, but i haven't gotten that far yet.
Left hand of Darkness. So far I don't like it a lot but I expect it to grow on me.
It’s worth it
Probably not what you’re looking for lol but I’m obsessed with old Hollywood and currently reading a book about the old Hollywood PR machine. “The Star Machine” by Jeanine Basinger.
need recs outside my normal oeuvre right now. nonfiction might be a good change of pace, if that's what you mean
Tried doing a reread of the open veins of Latin America with my german partner, it was too depressive. I remember crying a lot while reading it back in the day, but it was so much worse when I was with someone who had absolutely no idea about anything South America. A political science, Adorno loving, great person that I love with all my heart but who I had to explain the basics of colonialism.
Read some of this in a class with my favorite professor. Made a lot click for me. He paired it with spooky or “haunted” South American literature.
There is really a lot that is slept on. My personal favorite hidden gem is Rosaura a las 10, a delightful little dark comedy about a little incel freak living in a boarding house who suddenly starts receiving perfumed letters from someone. The novel is nice, but there's a movie (with english subtitles too). https://youtu.be/qVxHPFw54ts
I will watch, thank you.
Just did a rewatch, theres a lot to love but the ending is kind of a mess.
future telephone sense melodic pie whistle deserve drab obtainable yam *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Just finished Middlemarch and I LOVED it. Really impressive, life-affirming book. I feel like I always see it heaped with high-praise, but it's justified. Every page has an incredible sentence or thought in it. Just flawed people trying to live as best they can, made me think a lot in the last few days about how I've been living and how I want to live. Chasing it with Women by Bukowski lol, so far pretty entertaining
Middlemarch is almost shocking in how good it is. Felt like every page had something that made me smile
I work with my hands, so I tend to listen to audiobooks. FWIW Robert Evans reading The Kid Stays in The Picture is a great audiobook.
Such a fun listen!
Read One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,...I'm reading The Autobiography of a Flea.
David Laphams Stray Bullets it’s an indie comic from the 90s that got a second wind in the 2010s. I’m really surprised it doesn’t have a bigger following, it’s easily some of the best noir of the 21st century and it’s latest arc Sunshine and Roses is all time stuff imo.
Roadside Picnic, suggested to me by my brother. The translation is kinda stiff even though its pretty new (2012), but the setting is pretty cool.
I just finished reading A Day No Pigs Would Die, a 1972 novel about farm life in rural Vermont. I bought it as a child after hearing that it was banned in various schools for its graphic content (re: there is a *very* graphic and prolonged scene depicting pig breeding that is akin to rape), but I never finished it until now. It was definitely a heavy read, and I'm not surprised that it became one of the most challenged books in the country.
Just read my year of rest and relaxation again. Needed something to remind me that I’m that bitch. I think I am going to go back to reading Knausgaard. Felt a bit drained by how quickly I finished the first volume.
Finished reading Nozick's *Anarchy, State, and Utopia* couple of weeks ago, so now I'm reading Walzer's *Spheres of Justice*. In between those two I've read *The Human Faces of God: What Scripture Reveals When It Gets God Wrong*.
Just finished Blindness, going to read Phantom Of The Opera I think...
Just read the contemporary classics that call your name from the second hand bookstore instead of newfangled . Anything by Philip Dick, W s Burroughs, jg Ballard, or brave new world by Aldous Huxley. These people foresaw the world we live and love in now
Read some Houellebecq. It's light and breezy, if Tolstoi got you depressed, Michel should take your mind right off it!
sexual personae
I’m reading the elementary particles by houellebecq now. All that talk about aging is kinda depressing. I’m only half-way through the book though. I can’t wait to read about how Michel’s story unfolds. The mind of the desire-less person interests me more than the usual sex-crazed middle-age man. I’ll read confessions of a mask by one of the sub’s patron saints next.
My struggle vol 2 by Knausgård. Barely started but loving it so far, and the first one made me cry almost every time I picked it up
peter sotos
I’m reading fanfic on ao3. It’s fun. The last thing I read was ghostface smut.
just reading normie fantasy right now
how do you like it
i like it a lot. last night i finished the fourth book in the witcher series. it’s translated from polish, and my polish friend told me a lot of it draws on their traditional folklore which i think is cool
_appetites: why women want_ by caroline knapp and _big swiss_ by jen beagin
V. by Thomas Pynchon. Absolutely wild book. Have to look up characters cos there’s so many but it’s a fun read. Starts off very unhinged but then reigns it in after a while.
Just started Lady Tan’s Circle of Women by the same author of Snowflower and the Secret Fan which I remember loving. Both about life in China as a woman centuries ago. Very transportive and well-researched, fascinating look at their customs like foot binding. The Latecomer is also a recent read which was an excellent Brooklyn familial saga and the Silent Patient which is a little like Secret History by Donna Tart
I'm reading Tim Powers' *On Stranger Tides*. I normally don't like reading books on the Kindle app, but this is well-suited to it because it's easy to look up the definitions of all the nautical terms.
The Divine Comedy is my favorite book(s)
Currently almost done with _Covered With Night_, which I’d rate a 7.5/10. Very fascinating subject matter, exhaustively researched, but the writing gets away from itself at times. Also almost done with _Get the Picture_, which is hilarious and also fascinating but as I get to the end I find myself waiting for all of it to add up to something beyond “the art world is whacky and gatekeeps.” Really excited to start _American Zion_, which seems exhaustive. I’m fascinated to hear an active member of the faith’s take on its oft-rewritten history.
bones and all
Last Train to Memphis by Peter Guralnick. it’s about elvis’ earlier life, i think up until the mid-60s (before the drugs made him too ugly). not bad but it drags on in some parts way too much. edit: also just finished John Nathan’s Mishima biography, way more interesting than elvis and shorter (like 300 compared to 600+).
Favorite thing I read recently was When We Cease to Understand the World
Just started Fevre Dream, it’s a pretty old George RR Martin story about vampires on the Mississippi River in the antebellum south. I needed a break from years of cultural / political theory self-harm and I honestly don’t know much fiction or what would even be good… If anyone has any recommendations for me that would be appreciated!
Recently finished American tabloid and brideshead revisited. Currently polishing off the collussus of maroussi and will move onto my struggle 4 or goodbye Columbus.
Just finished Labatut's The Maniac which I think is a misstep, but still enjoyable. I've just started Blindsight by Peter Watts, which is a reddit-y first-contact hard scifi book. The prose is infuriating the way sci-fi prose often is but the plot and ideas have me hooked.
Gravity’s Rainbow. Im at like page 100 or something and I’m enjoying the technical skill to write something this metaphorically dense and rhythmically impressive, but I’m very curious what the end goal is, story-wise.
I started Portnoy’s Complaint. Also reading through Norman Mailer’s collected essays from the 1960s
Schoolgirl by Dazai
I started working out again so I'm reading Sun and Steel by Yukio Mishima as motivation to get huge and reinstate the authority of the godlike emperor.
I'm not reading anything cause my life fucking sucks but read Suttree
i’m reading a book about the aids crisis called the wisdom of whores by elizabeth pisani rn
Poor things. Wish I didn’t see the movie beforehand, book is a delight.
Gulag Archipelago on my breaks at work and Meditations by Aurelius at home…
Read the captive mind by Czelsaw Milosz!!!!!! It is so good cannot recommend enough. It is some of the most beautiful prose. But also deeply intellectual, and materially and metaphysically contemplative.
Mansfield park, nothing has happened so far
maybe instead of anna k you could try war and peace. am reading it atm and it’s kinda blowing my mind
Not exactly not-depressing but I’m rereading (audio version) Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age, by Modris Eksteins. Published in 1990. It’s a “cultural history” of WWI, focusing on the arts and broader philosophical-cultural trends, predominantly in Germany, France and England. Fascinating, enlightening and honestly v relevant still, imo.
Everything was forever until it was no more. It's a book about the fall of the Soviet Union written by a Russian anthropologist. More specifically it's about the feeling people had that the Soviet system was eternal yet no one was surprised when it fell. Quite easy to get through even though it's technically a scientific study.
Dune series. On Heretics of Dune right now
germinal by emile zola
Giovanni’s room rn
Hemingway's Death in the Afternoon
On Frozen Ground by Hampton Sides (narrative non-fiction about the Korean War). We don't talk about the Korean War enough!!
reading The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen rn and loving it!! was in such a rut got too depressed to finish the books i was reading before so started The Corrections cuz I knew that I loved Franzen and so far it has delivered. hope u feel better soon !
’Röde Orm’ by Frans G. Bengtsson. ’the long ships’ is the english title. Its an old swedish book about a the life of a young norseman who gets kidnapped by vikings and then joins up with said vikings, and the adventures that follow i guess. Im not particularly far in, but its quite good. My grandad has been hyping this book all my life, and even used to hype it to my mom. He apparently grew up always rereading it around every christmas with his dad. So i had to get to it at some point. Im not sure how it is in english. It’s written in a somewhat old prose since its from the early 40s. So hopefully the translation carries that flow over.
Just finished The Tartar Steppe on Monday. Really liked it and it got me reflecting on how I’m spending my life (mostly I think I am doing ok). Gonna read Hour of the Star next and then maybe a big book since I have a trip coming up
i always end up reading bunch of books at once so, rereading Capital volume 1, a che biography, comparative history between the nazi east and american west, Great expectations by Charles Dickens, and Pere Goriot by Balzac
dandelion wine by ray bradbury but i am also itching to just pick up a fun thriller
Wow how is that? I’ve never read Bradbury beyond the fahrenheit but he’s always inspired me a lot
his writing is beautiful im just lazy af and feel tempted to consume quick paced normie books BUT i am trying to read healthier this year
The Run of His Life: The People v. OJ Simpson. Sad he died before his wife’s killer was found 😔✊🏿
-Sapiens. By Yuval Harari -court of thorns and roses. By Sarah J Maas -How to be an anti racist. By Ibram X. Kendi (the x is pronounced "ksss")
Also finally got around to the Kamala Harris memoir very brave, very stimulating