post your fav books, discuss, guess letters etc

https://topsters.org/

unfortunately for quite a while i have not been a huge reader....i have only just really started reading again this past year so i haven't got much to put in the chart.
Thief of Time and Gravity's Rainbow both are at the end only because i am currently reading them; they are both very enjoyable so far :)
>>40373381 (OP)
>Gravity's Rainbow; Infinite Jest
twinning lole
hopefully i like Gravity's Rainbow as much as you do! i am only about forty or fifty pages into it so far. interesting that Infinite Jest is at the bottom because i was frankly a little disappointed by it for all its hype. do you feel similarly?

>>40373381 (OP)
Reading The Ice-Shirt atm, it's pretty good.

>>40373381 (OP)
oh and i guess that you are a cis gay. i forgot

>>40373381 (OP)
demian by hermann hesse changed my outlook on life

>>40373381 (OP)
i'm reading drawing blood and i like it a lot, gay horror is kino apparently

>>40373381 (OP)
I tried to read Gravity's Rainbow once but realised that I wasn't in the right moment to read a book like that. it seemed really good though. I'm curious about reading Pynchon.

Also if I had to make a guess I'd say probably cis gay or bi.

>>40373480
Based on nothing your chart gives me ftm vibes. We have some common favourites though, i like seeing Moby-Dick get appreciation since I feel like so often people reduce it to a boring book full of descriptions of whales or boats. I always feel like it has such modern appeal that people miss because they get turned off from the beginning.

In no particular order
>>40373381 (OP)
Cisgay
>>40373480
Straight MtF
>>40373748
Bi M

>>40373381 (OP)
Theymab
>>40373480
Ftm
>>40373933
Whoa the mysterious flame of queen loana? Interesting choice, I liked it but thought everybody else hated that one. Uh, cisgay

>>40373748
>i like seeing Moby-Dick get appreciation since I feel like so often people reduce it to a boring book full of descriptions of whales or boats. I always feel like it has such modern appeal that people miss because they get turned off from the beginning.
I love ishmael I want to go to his powerpoint party about whales! Imo the real point of the book is Ahab’s monologue about the pasteboard mask

judge me

>>40374186
Man

>>40374254
NOOOOO

>>40373485
OH I forgot to post favorites.

>>40373933
ftm
>>40374018
bi
>>40374186
mtf
>>40374577
gay

I know it's pleb tier but I really like 1984 except the romance and the interrogation are both hackneyed and bad

ok yay
>>40373381 (OP)
chaser
>>40373480
transbian... i'm reading moby dick right now cause i finally acquired a copy i am loving it a lot. i like dune too
>>40373748
chaser/bi m maybe? i sea doyle, just recently at a book sale i found a copy of the play of musement which is a semiotic analysis of sherlock holmes! i also was sent by a man a volume of sherlock holmes itself. this one https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2524780.The_Celebrated_Cases_of_Sherlock_Holmes
haven't gotten to it yet THOUGH
>>40373933
i liked foucault's pendulum quite a bit... het mtf?
>>40374018
ftm
>>40374186
transbian
>>40374577
based i love shakespear. reading the iliad with someone right now, liking it a lot. had read the odyssey when i was in middle or elementary school but obv don't remember it well so gonna get to it with the person after we finish iliad!

>>40374789
>reading the iliad with someone right now, liking it a lot.
AWESOME
what do you think of achilles' refusal in book 11 or something? Or the shield if you've gotten that far?
Also the book "Homeric Moments" is some really fun secondary lit on the iliad/odyssey, would recommend it if you ever have the time.

>>40374726
>mtf
yup

>>40374820
lole i haven't gotten that far. i read the first five books in a few days while out doing fieldwork & now i've just been waiting for the guy i am reading with to catch up. it's kind of excruciating but oh well... i'm thinking about just reading it through & then going chapter by chapter with his pace
& ok!!! i will maybe read that after!!! i love stuff like that i find criticism really fun to read

>>40374789
>transbian
not lesbian but yes transfem

>>40374889
Oh I see. I hope you enjoy it nona :]

>>40374789
That looks like a really nice edition of Holmes stories. While I will admit Doyle might not be the best writer from a strictly literary point of view, the fondness I have for this character and stories is enough for me to feel like I had to put at least one book of his among my favourites, if nothing else there to represent my childhood.

Ok I'm extremely obvious lol
no order or anything
>>40373480
Moid tastes but probs straight ftm idk
>>40373748
Chaser?
>>40373933
Good taste, cis gay?
>>40374018
Mtf?
>>40374186
Moidest moid, bi cis dude
>>40374577
Lesbian
>>40374726
Mtf
>>40374789
Mtf and probably on voicegen rn lmao

>>40375251
ah, kathy

>>40375283
She's the best. Will probably be more books of her when I read more but rn busy with Judith Butler and also Dying Earth which is fun but not like wow yknow + moid writing is annoying sometimes like please be less sexist Vance I beg of you

>>40373748
I don't think I could ever guess letters but I give you the Best Taste award for Possession. Also Calvino although I reread If on a winter's night a traveler recently and I didn't like it as much. The style is great but I think it starts meandering when Calvino's trying to make a point or whatever

This isn't in any order. I couldn't order them even if I tried
>>40373381 (OP)
mtf
+ for mason dixon, master and margarita.
- for memetomes like Kant
>>40374186
good meme
>>40374577
+pale king and canticle
gay
>>40375556
Personal matter has been on my list for like 3 years and I really should get around to it
Roadside picnic is epic and so is the crossing
ftm or bi m

Any other recs for speculative fiction with experimental or literary elements? Doesn't have to be a specific "genre" but I'd rather less formulaic things
So far I have
>Invisible Cities
>Riddley Walker
>Susurrus on Mars
>Engine Summer
>Dhalgren
>Naked Lunch
>The King in Yellow
>Gormenghast
>Star Maker
>Flatland
>The Inheritors
Reading picrel and I absolutely love the prose, although I wish the characterization had a bit more depth (besides Gro)

>>40377075
The City & the City

i can't tell shit about any of you

>>40377488
MtF

>40373381
mtf
>40373480
ftm
>40373748
chill chaser probably
>40373933
ftm, foucaults pendulim is sooooo good love that
>>40374018
mtf
>>40374186
chaser
>>40374577
mtf
>>40374726
very very ftm core to me
>>40374789
chill mtf vibes
>>40375556
>>40375896
bi cis m
>>40377488
transbian (affectionate)

>>40378642
lesbian probably

how come everyone's book charts contain the same couple dozen meme books

>>40379904
here anon may be seen discovering the concept of the "good book"

>>40379929
i rather think i may be seen discovering the concept of a "poser"

>>40379941
posing as someone who enjoys moby-dick?

>>40379957
i mean, if you were one of the anons who put it in your chart, yeah. though moby dick is sometimes assigned reading by schools so there may be more of a chance of it actually having been read by people

>>40379977
no i'm >>40374789
but do you really think people posting in this thread haven't even READ yhe books in the charts lol???

>>40379904
Most of the recurring books are just really well-regarded classics.

>>40379985
i think some of the people haven't read them, and i think some of the others had no particular interest in reading them and forced themselves to read them in order to augment their self-esteem or social standing

>>40380008
anon that's extremely silly

>>40373381 (OP)
I'll do letters later

>>40373381 (OP)
>>40373748
>>40373480
>>40373933
Bottoms
>>40374018
>>40374186
>40374577
>40375251
>40377488
>40378642
Bottoms

>>40374726
>>40375556
>>40375896
Tops

>>40380008
but I read moby-dick :(
nobody made me, i was just lonely and it was a comfort book

>>40380519
Bottoms see the title and be like
>I don't know why but this appeals to me

>>40380969
It didn't disappoint either

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 fireside, 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.

>>40373381 (OP)

>>40381460
you might like candide! are you bi m?

>>40381472
Well I am a male and I’m probably bi but I wouldn’t want anyone knowing that
I just like books about fictional societies

Not my faves, just random shit I've been reading/enjoying lately.

>>40373381 (OP)
>Kafka
>DFW
Omegabased
>Salinger
>Bulgakov
>Kant
>Joyce
Kinda McFucking boring but to each their own
>Pynchon
>Wittgenstein
Come on dude that shit sucks to read, nobody has ever reread either of them you just bust that shit out on the train for the university educated bitches

>>40381724
Last ones I enjoyed were Hell's Angels by Hunter S, Junkie by William Burroughs(?), some Gabriel Garcia Marquez short stories, reread Twilight of the Idols.
Dropped both Matthew McConaughey's Greenlights and Doctor Zhivago in the first third

>>40381480
for somewhat esoteric picks on those lines, I'd recommend Starmaker by Olaf Stapledon and The Disappearance by Philip Wylie

>>40381480
>>40381796
Oh and someone on one of these threads a while back recommended Day of the Oprechnik(?), which I wasn't crazy about but it also very much this vibe and quite niche

>>40381821
>>40381796
Star maker seems extremely interesting thanks anon

>>40381724
Imagine thinking nobody likes Pynchon but dickriding DFW

>>40381845
They're similar, but Pynchon is just on the wrong side of overdoing his plot and characters in a way that interferes with rather than adds flavour to his messaging and readability. Or it's possible I'm sharp enough to enjoy DFW but not quite enough for Pynchers

>>40381845
Gravity's Rainbow is to book people what 1984 is to normies, it's everyone's favourite book that most fans never finished it and nobody ever read it a second time

>>40381876
Maximalism is a sliding scale anon, also Pynchon varies his style a bit over his bibliography but his main appeal is prose sentence to sentence and intertextuality page to page. Wallace was heavily influenced by him but unlike Pynchon he just bleeds weltschmerz

>>40381896
Plenty of people have read 1984, what planet are you from?

>>40381918
MY planet bestie? 1984 being claimed to have been read by far more people than have read it is quite a famous piece of trivia

>>40381929
It's required reading in multiple schools lol, entry level teenage novella

>>40381939
I don't know what to tell you
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y83UkvHpYk

>>40381724
Thinking Kant is a more likely favourite than Pynchon is hilarious

>>40381724
I've reread pynchon and wittgenstein the most out of everything there in honesty

>>40373480
pretendious but good tran
>>40373748
good cism
>>40374018
good

>>40383289
fucked up my post but here are my favorites

omg it seems the average age in this thread is 50 wtf

>>40381508
the only intellectual itt
>>40383299
2edgy4me

bampu

Bump

>>40387680
also crime and punny is the GOAT btw and shits on all these stupid esoteric books typed out in native script on these charts

i cba to make a chart rn but add me on goodreads
http://goodreads.com/y2kate

>>40377075
House of Leaves
Klara and the Sun
Pilgermann
Infinite Jest (lol)

>>40389662
>>40377488
>>40375896
>>40374186
>>40373933
>>40373480
>>40373381 (OP)

What do you all like about infinite jest? My brother read it in rehab and seemed to get a lot out of it. I couldn't really get through it because the chapters are so LONG and there are so many footnotes. But I have a huge phobia around addiction and mind control so it sounds really scary to me! :0

>>40373748
PROOFS AND REFUTATIONS!!! I found that book in the library by accident and thought it was so fun. Calvino and nabokov on there too (pale fire nabokov, no less!). so you seem to like tightly organized books that are almost didactic, and kind of formalized. Modernist more than postmodernist. Tractatus but not philosophical investigations?

You seem to be amused by the comedy of exhaustive enumerations. Surprised I don't see any of
>borges
>beckett
>sterne
>erasmus
>tom stoppard
>raymond queneau
for whatever reason I also feel like you would like Wole Basedinka (madmen and specialists)

Ok yeah anyway!!!! My read on you is you enjoy dissociating to the place of words and ideas outside of time and space. You like the library book stacks. But you take dick. People think you’re AGP but you are actually high IQ HSTS.

But I could be wrong. If you’re a chaser I need your discord please

>>40389908
lmaooo s o y i n k a -> basedinka

>>40389714
i (>>40373480) have mixed feelings about it. it is definitely one of my favorite books, but it really let me down....i absolutely love the characters, for one. the line "Mario loves Hal so much it makes his heart beat hard." is one of the simplest sentences in the whole book and yet it penetrated my very soul. DFW just has a really authentic and honest way of writing the characters and it's so easy to become invested in all of their individual lives. i love Mario especially, and it helps that he's one of the only unproblematic characters in the book lol.
the writing itself also really got me. i enjoy that the narration adapts to the character who is thinking at the time, as if they're writing their thoughts down in the third person, and i also appreciate the borderline pretentious diction, as someone who loves words.
the piecemeal way the story is constructed is fun, as well, and it has been rewarding to go back and listen to the audiobook after having already finished it, because there are lots of little details in there that i missed my first time around because there was no reason for me to think that they were actually important upon first encountering them.
it's also just really stupid and funny sometimes, and i can't help but like it for that.
what let me down about it was the ending, which i won't spoil. i understand the point is to allow the reader freedom to interpret and construct events on their own, and it is definitely my own problem that it doesn't jive with me, but i really just wish it had gone on for another two or three hundred pages or so. i want gaps filled in. i felt at the end of the book probably similarly to how Gately felt, in his position. maybe that's just really good writing. it probably is. but i still want more.
it's definitely a long book, but it was only ever exhausting to me when i didn't pace myself and tried to read like a hundred pages at a time. i do encourage you to try it again if you ever feel the urge :)

>>40389908
>Tractatus but not philosophical investigations?
TLP speaks to my sensibilities more, even if the conclusions in Philosophical Investigations are more mature/interesting. But also, I've had much less time with Philosophical Investigations so maybe I'll change my mind one day.

>Borges, Beckett, Stoppard
I like them all but I didn't have something in mind to put for them as my favourite. For Beckett and Stoppard, I admit I usually don't think of plays when it comes to talking about books (and I know they have written other things too but nothing that I've read.) As far as Borges goes I should definitely read more. I have read some short stories and a part of his essays on Dante but never an entire collection so nothing I could really put down.

>Sterne, Erasmus, Queneau
I've never read anything by them (or S oyinka.) I will keep your recommendations in mind though.

> If you’re a chaser I need your discord
I'm not and I'm not sure why that seems to be the common guess. i'm not a trans woman either though. I thought all the gay books would have given it away easily.

Proofs and Refutations is great. I shill it all the time. It's rare to find something that is so didactical but fun and dense but quite simple. The dialogue format works really well too and you don't see that often (in modern times at least.)

>>40390335

(>>40374018 is me)

>TLP speaks to my sensibilities more, even if the conclusions in Philosophical Investigations are more mature/interesting
Oh yeah that makes sense!! I was only able to read a little of TLP and didn’t touch philosophical investigations. All I know about it (the duckrabbit, family resemblances) I basically know secondhand from my classmates talking about it. The one I’ve gotten the most out of is his lectures on the foundations of mathematics, where he gets into fights with Alan Turing. It also definitely prefigures Proofs and Refutations. Lakatos talks about “monsters” and Wittgenstein talks about “surprises”: you told me you could do X with Y, but really you invented a new meaning of Y such that you could do X with it...

>I've never read anything by them (or S oyinka.) I will keep your recommendations in mind though.
Yayy I love them, especially Erasmus' In Praise of Folly (the John Wilson translation). Rabelaisian in its manner, devastating in its observations

>I'm not
ah well, worth a shot
>and I'm not sure why that seems to be the common guess.
Genuinely no clue. I only guessed HSTS because that’s what I am. Chaser was a long shot; I’m just looking for my keys where the lamp is shining >:)

>>40380026
nta but youre naive as fuck. you still think people dont take time out of their day to post pure fabricated lies? they do, moron

I really need to read Moby Dick. I see a lot of you have it on here.
>>40373381 (OP)
ftm, majored in philosophy, could be gay or striaght, fancys themself an intellectual
>>40373480
mtf, loves art and storytelling, loves nature, knows of the horrible things this world is capable of but is optimistic and full of love regardless.
>>40373748
ftm, old soul
>>40374186
ftm, straight, wendigoon watcher, malebrained
>>40374577
malebrained, could be mtf ot ftm, either tradcath or anti-Christian

>>40374726
cottagecore mtf
>>40374769
I started 1984 but didn't finish. The world was fascinating but I just didn;t give a shit about the characters. Will probs try reading it again tho.
gay male, lover of eastern culture, gets called a weabou a lot despite not really being into anime
>>40375251
dirty frenchman

>>40381963
Well I actually read it
And it actually scared me, like it’s the only thing I ever read that scared me

>>40377488
mtf, Christian
>>40380104
I love you for having Tolkein there.
>>40381460
High school english teacher

This spam filter is so fucking retarded. Can't post anything in these threads without having to break up my post into a bunch of little pieces.

>>40391842
you can just cut off the first arrow on replies like
>>40380385
did

>>40389714
i like books with a lot of extraneous info and long tangents. like my favorite thing about Les Mis is the fact it has whole 50+ page historical essays jammed right into the middle of the story. so IJ is kinda perfect for me in that regard. i also think Wallace wrote with a sort of love and empathy that's rare in the literary fiction of the last 50ish years, like there's no trivializing anyone's pain or looking down your nose at anyone. almost every character in the book is a fully-developed person with a fleshed out story. idk i'm kinda a sucker for the sentimental shit.

>>40393557
Yeah but then they don't link to the posts in question