Books you're planning on reading

[MclareN]

Post what fiction and non-fiction books you're planning on reading, with the first book as first priority, etc.

Fiction:

1) Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) - Kurt Vonnegut
Will recommended this to me when we were talking about books; I plan on starting it after finishing Tropic of Cancer.

2) Demian (1919) - Hermann Hesse
Probably coming after Slaughterhouse-Five, Will recommended this as well.

3) The Glass Bead Game (1943) - Hermann Hesse
See above. Apparently this is Hesse's magnum opus (quick wiki search). Hopefully it is that good haha.

4) The Metamorphosis (1915) - Franz Kafka
I've been working on "A Hunger Artist" by Kafka for my senior research paper. Reading that, plus critical essays, has sparked an interest in Kafka. What better place to start than probably his most critically acclaimed story about some dude who wakes up transformed into "a vermin"

Others that interest me:
Lolita (1955) - Vladimir Nabokov
Brave New World (1932) - Aldous Huxley
Ulysses (lol) (1922) - James Joyce

Non-fiction:

I haven't really considered what non-fiction books I want to check out and in what order I should check them out in. Hmm.

[The Swaginator]

1) The Glass Bead Game (1943) - Hermann Hesse

iamme recommending books like a true bro

[iamme]

i love you guys. by the way, for all of you reading the glass bead game, make sure to get the republication/translation titled "the glass bead game" and not the older translation/publication titled "magister ludi." the translation differences are huge and will really detract from the experience if you read the inferior one

for now:

1) The Trial (1925) - Franz Kafka

Read the metamorphosis and absolutely loved it, this is the natural progression. By the way Ash, idk about literal translations but most translation i've read have him waking up as a bug-like creature, usually implied to be like a cockroach, rather than a vermin

[gnr61]

Fiction -

Water for Elephants [Sara Gruen] - recommended by my HS english teacher, reading first prob since i just bought it
Demian [Hesse] - recommended starting point (thx dog) so im goin with it
Short stories [Faulkner] - there are quite a few and they're pretty dense so this'll be a project haha


Non -

Unweaving the Rainbow [Richard Dawkins] - bought this for the wrong class but looks awesome so i'm reading this asap
Game Change [don't remember] - hyped up and sounds interesting so i just ordered it lol

[MclareN]

oh yeah, i should have clarified that i put "vermin" in quotes because when I was reading about Kafka on wikipedia they said that, in the original german text, he made it sound intentionally vague.

"Another virtually insurmountable problem facing the translator is how to deal with the author's intentional use of ambiguous terms or of words that have several meanings. One such instance is found in the first sentence of The Metamorphosis. English translators have often sought to render the word Ungeziefer as "insect"; in Middle German, however, Ungeziefer literally means "unclean animal not suitable for sacrifice"[19] and is sometimes used colloquially to mean "bug" – a very general term, unlike the scientific sounding "insect". Kafka had no intention of labeling Gregor as any specific thing, but instead wanted to convey Gregor's disgust at his transformation. "

yeah i also said vermin because i saw it in wiki's plot summary lol. i only read the first sentence though!

[The Swaginator]

Non-fiction:

I haven't really considered what non-fiction books I want to check out and in what order I should check them out in. Hmm.

i remember you being interested in classical music lately? The Rest is Noise by Alex Ross. Will make you compulsively expand your classical (specifically, 20th century Classical) library like crazy. I guess it's kinda more an interesting read if you're already acquainted with a lot of the shit, but it's also a great way to start for much of yr ~*~classical journey~*~

[MclareN]

oh sick idea, i hadn't even thought about reading up on classical music haha, i was more contemplating like philosophical works and stuff (will's influence again lol). thanks for the recommendation

[The Swaginator]

tbh it's just one of the few non-fic books ive read in a while and it kinda fit i guess so There U Go.

[iamme]

i would wait until you take a philosophy course to actually start reading philosophical works, ash - they're dense reading and until you get used to the tone and style of writing, you might want to rely on class lectures to elucidate some of their meaning.

[MclareN]

yea that's why i was a bit hesitant about it, i'll take your advice

[⎝⏠⏝⏠⎠]

the metamorphosis fucking owns

currently reading a song of ice and fire is consuming most of my reading time because the series is like 4000 pages long and i wanna catch up before the next book comes out

after that i'm finally going to get around to reading some dostoyevsky i dunno what yet though

[MclareN]

my friend's reading crime and punishment and he says it's pretty good so far

[iamme]

if I read Dostoyevsky it will probably be Notes From Underground or The Brothers Karamazov

but i probably won't read Dostoyevsky for a long time. i had to read some random excerpts in senior english and absolutely hated it. so dense.

[gazeebo-]

various poker books are at the top of the line right now, im working through the plo section of doyle brunson's super/system 2 right now. i just started plato on love which seems really interesting.

after that i think im going to look into some david icke but i may finish eric berne's games people play first. soon after i hope to read more ayn rand, everyone needs a little rand in their life

[The Swaginator]

ok glass bead game was checked out at library soooo

1) Oracle Bones - Peter Hessler
2) Glass Bead Game - Hesse

[Cannonball Sewage]

The Jungle
Grapes of Wrath
Death By Black Hole
Dune
Ender's Game
Mostly Harmless
Gravity's Rainbow

surprised? lol

[The Swaginator]

gravity's rainbow is quite the book lol

[MclareN]

yuck grapes of wrath

[Cannonball Sewage]

Of Mice and Men was pretty kewl so yeah

probably gonna be overly long though oh well at least it's not count of monte cristo god damn that was like a million pages

[MclareN]

man i didn't really like of mice and men either but for different reasons. yeah but grapes of wrath drags like a motherfucker