Thread 24613126

Eight months have passed so far.
What have you read in 2025?
What have you liked the most?

>>24613126 (OP)
August isn’t over yet

>>24613126 (OP)
100 years of solitude
The sound and the fury
Dubliners
Portrait
Ulysses
V
Confederacy of dunces

I think I might've forgotten a few but oh well, I don't really track my reads. The best was Ulysses by far.

Till We Have Faces was the biggest surprise so far. Really loved it, probably the best of the year. Read the Space Trilogy as a follow-up. Also good, but my feelings about it are more complex.

Rereading Fahrenheit 451 for the first time since high school and really enjoying it as well. I remembered the plot, but forgot Bradbury's prose.

>>24613126 (OP)
The Night Circus
Steppenwolf
The Stranger
Pet Sematary
The Crowd and the Psychology of Revolution
The Wasp Factory
The Crisis of Parliamentarianism
The Concept of the Political
Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders
Political Theology
Salem's Lot
Eichmann in Jerusalem
A few of the Rumpole short stories
A few of the Father Brown short stories
About half of a collection of Chesterton essays

It's been a rough year, my mother got brain damaged and I had to move across the country and now my legal practice is failing lol. Over the past few months I've been looking for comfy reading more than anything else and to that end John Mortimer and Chesterton have been perfect. I think that providence had me start reading Carl Schmitt immediately before that fat fuck on Jubilee got him into mainstream discourse just to torment me with more people arguing about books they obviously haven't read.

>>24613239
Had to move across the country to look after her, I should say

>>24613126 (OP)
Asimov is overrated. DNF Foundation. Everything in it is better done in A Canticle for Leibowitz.

>>24613159
>Confederacy of dunces
Is it as funny as /lit/ often says?

i´ve started 20 books or so
and they´ll stay that way

>>24613126 (OP)
globalistic jew

DROPPED Herman Hesse — Demian
Ottessa Moshfegh — Eileen
Marie Calloway — What Purpose Did I Serve in Your Life
Gustave Flaubert — Madame Bovary
Marc Edouard Nabe — Chacun mes goûts
DROPPED Ottessa Moshfegh — Death in Her Hands
Marc Edouard Nabe — La Marseillaise
Georges Bataille — Ma Mère
Wang Chongyang — Fifteen Essays to Establish the Teachings
Nathalie Sarraute — Tropismes
DROPPED Cosey Fanni Tutti — Art Sex Music
DROPPED Damien Echols — Life After Death
Comte de Lautreamont — Les chants de Maldoror
Tom Sharpe — Wilt

>currently reading
Thomas Bernhard — Concrete
Marc Edouard Nabe — Au régal des vermines
Laird Barron — The Imago Sequence and Other Stories
Thomas Ligotti — Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe
Léon Bloy — Histoires désobligeantes

My favorite is Wilt. It took me a while to get into it but from the moment he gets arrested it's hilarious. Concrete is shaping up to be good as well

>>24614067
It got only a few chuckles out of me. Meanwhile Ulysses (especially Cyclops) and The Recognitions (reading rn) got me to actually laugh out loud.

Hamlet
Macbeth
Schoolgirl by dazai
Turn of the screw by henry james

>>24613126 (OP)

The Bible. Uhh....the Bible.....I haven't read anything but the Bible.

>>24613126 (OP)
Money Martin Amis
The Epic of Gilgamesh
The Portrait of Dorian Gray
Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World
Book of Marvels and Travels John Manderville
The Aeneid
The Satyricon
Mythology of the British Isles Geoffery Ashe
Ubu Plays Alfred Jarry
Blood Meridian
Ridley Walker
The Wasp Factory
The Oresteia

Epic of Gilgamesh was probably my favourite read; the Satyricon my favourite reread. Sadly I haven't been able to read as much due to illness and brain fog caused by the illness, so I'm trying to catch up. After Sophocles I'm rereading the Iliad and the Odyssey and then going to read 2666 and Moby-Dick.
>>24613239
>The Wasp Factory
What did you think of the Wasp Factory? I enjoyed some of it but overall thought it was pretty meh.

>>24615455

DUDE.

The Epic of Gilgamesh is a religious text. Reading any religious text other than the Bible will open you up to demonic possession. I'm praying for you.

>>24613126 (OP)
Iliad and Odyssey
Battle of the Frogs and Mice
Iliad for the similes and Odyssey for the story (and the lack of filtering Catalogue of Ships)

>>24613209
>Till We Have Faces
Is it really good? What did you like about it? because I've heard that his nonfiction is better

>>24615455
Which version? Last time I read Gilgamesh every other page is missing

>>24615455
>what did you think of the Wasp Factory?
Great ideas, excellent tone, poor execution, particularly on the ending twist. Could have done with a few revisions for sure. I think it was his first novel.

Also I don't know if it's a coincidence but there are a lot of similarities to Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle, which is a much better book.

>>24615811
The Saundars translation, which wasn't that good as it didn't pull from as much material as later translations.
>>24616264
Yeah I agree with you. I really enjoyed the shamanistic element of the book, and the father's autism having sinister undertones, but the whole plot and narrative was YA-tier. The twist was kinda based in a way, I thought. As FtMs are more prone to violent outbursts, although I'm not retarded enough to seriously believe Banks is a chud..

>>24613126 (OP)
This was released three months ago, has anyone read it?

>>24614381
Absolutely mediocre taste. Kys

>>24616934
>reading anything written in the 21st century
>especially reading anything written after 2010 and the great awokening killing intellectual society

>>24616981
Do you mean Literature is dead?
Around the world?

I've finished 12 books this year, mostly novels.
The most interesting were two books with articles by Umberto Eco that he wrote for L'Espresso.
Right now I'm reading the first volume of Essays by Montagne and it's quote similar actually.

>>24613126 (OP)
Gene Wolfe - Latro Trilogy
Herodotus - Histories
Xenophon - Anabasis
Thucydides - Peloponnesian War
Stoker - Dracula
Han Kang - The Vegetarian
Philip K Dick - Eye in the Sky, Clans of the Alphane Moon, Galactic Pot Healer, Electric Sheep
Anna Kavan - Ice
Leo Perutz - By Night Under the Stone Bridge
Friedrich Reck - Diary of a Man in Despair
Descartes - Meditations and Discourse on Method
Allan Bloom - The Closing of the American Mind
John Marco Allegro - The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross
Ian McGilchrist - The Master and His Emissary
Mark Solms - The Hidden Spring
bunch of short stories by several authors

I liked a lot of them, in fact most. Can't really decide.

>>24616991
I don't know about it being dead in the East, but it's definitely dead in the West

>>24613126 (OP)
>The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee
>My Struggle Book 3 by Karl Ove Knausgaard
>Gravity’s Rainbow and Vineland by Thomas Pynchon
>Middlemarch by George Eliot
>Infinite Jest by DFW
>The Dog Stars by Peter Heller
>The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula Le Guin
>House of Leaves by Mark K Danielewski


And currently reading Europe Central by Vollmann.

Favorite? I unironically loved IJ, but Lathe of Heaven was a great breezy book

Least favorite? I fucking hate House of Leaves. I went in with an open mind about the retarded formatting in hopes that it was more than just a gimmick. By the end I was pissed that I had been fooled by a gimmick

>>24615808
TWHF was -- I believe -- his last fiction book, and is far more complex and mature that his other writing. I enjoyed Narnia as a child and I think the Space Trilogy is fun, but both are definitely worse than his non-fiction, and the latter would probably have been better off as an essay collection.

TWHF feels like he really matured as a writer. It's a distinctly Christian novel about the relationship between humans and the divine, but it takes place in a world without Christianity. It's also a remarkably layered book. It has a lot to say about gender, power, identity, self-awareness, and the holy, among other themes.

It's also a great read for /lit/ posters who love the Greeks and classical philosophy, as they factor in heavily.

Narnia is, in many ways, devoted to making Christianity comprehensible. TWHF is devoted to making it incomprehensible again, and then giving you the tools to fix it.

Man and technics by Oswald Spengler
The soul of China by Amaury de Riencourt
Nihilism By seraphim rose
Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis
The origins of woke by Richard Hanania
Our oriental heritage by Will Durant
The life of Greece by Will Durant
Analytic idealism in a nutshell by Bernardo Kastrup
The oldest book in the world by Bill Manley
The passion of the western mind by Richard Tarnas
The total state by Auron Macintyre
The revolt of the elites by Christopher Lasch
Leviathan and its enemies by Sam Francis
Beyond weird by Philip ball
War in human civilization by azar gat
The worlds religions by Huston smith
The myth of disenchantment by Jason .A Josephson-Storm

>>24617682
>Man and technics by Oswald Spengler
Did you like it? Is it interesting?

>>24613239
Thoughts on The Night Circus? A girl I used to know waxed lyrical about it. I'm sorry about your mother.

>>24613126 (OP)
didnt read as much as i should, hope i will recover this fall

some book about the american revolution
a collection of post-9/11 essays by gore vidal
stoner by john williams
the magic mountain by thomas mann
the electric kool aid acid test
bought leaves of grass and read some random poetry from time to time
stella maris by cormac mccarthy
about to start the great american novel by phil roth

Who We Are and How We Got Here - David Reich
The First Philosophers: The Presocratics and Sophists - Waterfield, Robin A.H.
Alcibiades, Lysis, Laches, Charmides, Protagoras, Hippias Minor, Hippias Major, Gorgias, Meno, Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Symposium, Phaedrus, Republic, Parmenides, Theaetetus - Plato
Categories, On Interpretation, Metaphysics I-VIII - Aristotle
The problems of philosophy - Bertrand Russell
Discourse on Method, Meditations on First Philosophy - Rene Descartes
Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks - Friedrich Nietzsche
Ethics - Baruch Spinoza
Spinoza's Ethics - Beth Lord

Currently reading: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke

My favorite is definitely Ethics.

>>24613126 (OP)
I havent read shit this year, thanks for reminding me.
"Do androids dream of electric sheep" by dick
"1776" by McCullough
"The last wish" (witcher) By sapkowski
"Promise of blood" by McClellan
"Bronze age mindset" by BAP

Fuck, last i year i read almost 30 books, this year i dont think ill get past 10.

This year so far i have read

Infinite Jest - DFW
Salt: A World History - Mark Kurlansky
Dark Sun - Richard Rhodes
When Einstein Walked with Godel - Jim Holt
Surfaces and Essences - Douglas Hofstadter
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich - William Shirer
Nuclear War: A Scenario - Annie Jacobson
Euclid's Window - Leonard Mlodinow
You, Me, and Ulysses S Grant - Brad Neely
A large amount of 40k audiobooks too numerous and embarrassing to list here because i got into painting Orks late last year.

Currently Reading:
Consider the Lobster - DFW

>>24617050
What did you like about infinite jest?

>>24617007
>Descartes - Meditations and Discourse on Method
I bounced right off this one lmao

>>24613126 (OP)
what the fuck happened to his son

>>24618484
The tone and writing are very strong, but some of the characters are quite flat and the romance is thoroughly unconvincing, really comes out of nowhere.

Thomas Bernhard - Extinction (technically started it in late 2024 but finished this year)
Robert Stone - Dog Soldiers
Cormac McCarthy - The Passenger+Stella Maris
Bruce Wagner - The Met Gala & The Tales of Saints and Seekers
Michel Houellebecq - The Map and the Territory
Umberto Eco - Numero Zero
J.G.Ballard - Super-Cannes (haven't finished yet but soon)

>>24619890
I've found his son

>>24613126 (OP)
I'm disappointed in how little I've read, I get in slumps and binges and don't read consistently as much anymore. I'm too obsessed with Nubby's Number Factory and AI shit. At least I only had one single DNF, an obscure book of protestant theology from the 1860s I got from a store in Lancaster a few years ago

The Empire Of Tea
Without A Doubt: Bringing Faith To Life
Native Son
The Boy's Book Of Industrial Information
Socialism And Strikes
Valley Of The Dolls
Thoreau's Country
Brain Lock
Shinto: The Kami Way
Convenience Store Woman
Philbrick's Mayflower
The Republic
Heaven (obscure old Catholic anthology of writings about heaven)
Roman Literature And Society
The Spirit Of The Ghetto
The City Of The Dinner Pail
Eruvin & Beitzah
Commerce And Society In Sung China
Of Plimoth Plantation (I'll give myself credit for finishing that, it's ~550 pages of nonstandardized Early Modern English with tons of largely irrelevant letters reproduced in full)

My favorite was Native Son. I read half of this on the beach one day. You don't hear it discussed on this board much anymore, but this book is a lot more than "white people le BAD!!!!!!!!" how they made it out to be. Bigger is an interesting and compelling antihero who continues to make the worst possible decisions, and I liked the existentialist themes.

Second favorite is easily The Boy's Book Of Industrial Information, it's pretty much a book of crafting recipes for basic chemical processes all the way up to more complex machined tasks for nearly every industrial good produced in the 1860s. It's fully illustrated too, pic related. Only issue with it is I don't know in what universe this would be intended for boys unless it's some sort of votech textbook, it's incredibly dense and having studied organic chemistry helped with some of the background info needed to understand it. It's on Gutenberg but I was lucky enough to get a physical copy from a library book sale, it's in damn near flawless condition
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/49489


>>24614067
Yes, and even funnier than that. It's the only time I was laughing at least once per page for nearly the whole book

>>24620996
How was Super Cannes? That's on my backlog

>>24613126 (OP)
>read
The Four Zoas - William Blake
Blake and Antiquity - Kathleen Raine
Jonathan Livingstone Seagull - Richard Back
The Old Man and The Sea - Ernest Hemingway
A German textbook
A French textbook
Heraclitus: The Cosmic Fragments - G.S. Kirk
The Art and Thought of Heraclitus - Charles Kahn
>reading
Acts of Worship - Yukio Mishima
The Tartar Steppes - Dino Buzzati
Blake: Prophet Against Empire - David V. Erdman
Poetical Sketches - William Blake (I'm ashamed it's taken me this wrong to read this)
Plato's Epistles - Glenn R. Morrow
The Four Zoas was an incredibly hard read but definitely fulfilling, as well as the studies about Heraclitus but in a very different way.
>>24613239
How was Salem's Lot? I got into reading when I was younger because of King but I only read Cell and Under The Dome.

>>24622125
>How was Super Cannes? That's on my backlog
excellent, one of his best imo

Prokopios - The Wars of Justinian -- now reading
Matt Colville - Thief -- loved it
John Brunner - The Shockwave Rider -- very meh
Frederick Forsyth - The Day of the Jackal -- good
Eric H Cline - 1177 BC The Year Civilization Collapsed -- super interesting
Yanis Varoufakis - Technofeudalism -- This guy gets it
Jack Vance - Tales of the Dying Earth -- underwhelming
Albert Mudrian - Choosing Death -- good
Stanislaw Lem - The Invincible -- decent
Geoff Mortimer - Wallenstein -- super interesting

>>24618267
It’s a good read but I hardly learned anything new from it.

>>24613126 (OP)
Dune/anything Conan related. Dune is more intelligent and thought provoking. Conan is just plain more fun to read. The writing is just so vivid and creative.

>>24613126 (OP)
>On the Divine Names - Saint Dionysius the Areopagite
>Mystical Theology - Saint Dionysius the Areopagite
>Life of Moses - Saint Gregory of Nyssa
>Commentary on the Song of Solomon - Saint Gregory of Nyssa
>Commentary on the Inscriptions of the Psalms - Saint Gregory of Nyssa
>Commentary on the Psalms - Saint John Chrysostom
>On the Divine Incarnation - Saint Athanasius the Great
>The Hexaemeron - Saint Basil the Great
>The Long Rules - Saint Basil the Great
>The Morals - Saint Basil the Great
>The Latter of Divine Ascent - Saint John Climacus
>Ascetical Homilies of Saint Isaac the Syrian - Saint Isaac the Syrian
>The Divine Liturgy: A Commentary in the Light of the Fathers - Hieromonk Gregorios
>Apocalypse Commentary - Archbishop Averky of ROCOR
>The Institutes - Saint John Cassian
>Byzantine Sacred Art - Photius Kontoglou
>The Yugoslav Auschwitz and the Vatican - Vladimir Dedijer (USE CAUTION - WRITTEN BY AN OPEN COMMUNIST)
>The Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit - Saint Photius
>The Brothers Karamazov - Feodor Dosteyevsky
>The Idiot - Feodor Dosteyevsky
>Crime and Punishment - Feodor Dosteyevsky
>House of the Dead - Feodor Dosteyevsky
>The Gambler - Feodor Dosteyevsky
>The Life of the Virgin Mary - Holy Apostles Convent, Colorado
>My Elder Joseph the Hesychast - Elder Ephraim of Arizona
>The Three Musketeers - Alexander Dumas


Up Next:

>A Raw Youth - Feodor Dosteyevsky
>50 Homilies of Saint Macarius - Saint Macarius the Great
>Counsels - Saint John Cassian
>On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ - Saint Maximus the Confessor


>>24617682
Seraphim Rose did an interesting series of talks on the traditional Christian perspective regarding the evolution of Modernity starting at Post-Schism Western Christianity. It is called "Orthodox Survival Guide" - You can find it on youtube pretty easily

>>24613126 (OP)
About 16 books so far of varying quality, the one im on right now is pretty decent, tracing the origins of German historical thought up to WW2 from its origins in the philosophy of Johann Herder.

>>24624917
>Seraphim Rose
Sounds like a stripper's stage name