/lit/ - Literature

>>13968

Here is an archive:

http://archive.is/aQDKR

I've almost read five books since

>>13663

Storm of Steel by Ernst Junger

Lost Dramas of Classical Athens—Greek Tragic Fragments

[The Speeches of] Antiphon and Andocides

The Complete Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft

The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe

But I should clarify a book. I started reading Lovecraft with "The Shadow over Innsmouth" around the time of this post:

>>13067

and around the time of this post

>>12435

I read 200 pages of Lovecraft between the second and third book of Aristophanes' comedies.

I'll have finished Werther in a day or two.

>>14026

Just finished The Temple of Dawn, thought of this video, and can't stop laughing.

The second part of the book was an interesting contrast to the first. It definitely grew on me now that I've read the whole thing. The more I reflect, the more I see each and every part dripping with symbolism. All the elements of the second part, seemingly disparate and cluttered, start to converge as you consider them. Definitely a top 3 story from him so far, though I've barely scratched the surface. A tragedy nobody translates his works anymore, though after hearing the commentary of the ones that did, I certainly understand why.

My first Chesterton

March of Titans: Very interesting and enjoyable, lots of information

Went on a two day binge and read "The Third Kingdom," "Severed Souls," and "Warheart." Started with "Wizard's First Rule" back when it came out, wanted to finally finish the series. They were decent enough for "turn brain off and relax" fantasy. If you're familiar with the series, the first three books were great, then there were a bunch in the middle that were bloated garbage, and then these last three were pretty ok. 6/10 overall.

Currently reading Tolkien's translation of Beowulf. Will report back when done.

I decided to do some light reading for a change so picked The Nigh Land. I was somewhat miffed when the version I got had excised almost half of the book, but in the end I was glad about it. The book was a heady read, as the prose was bizarre in a horrible way, and paragraphs and sometimes even whole pages could go yammering about absolutely nothing when they weren't repeating something that had just been said. And maybe modern times have ruined me, but I felt the background romance also had weird pedo vibe as the romantic interest was so ridiculously innocent she appeared pre-teen despite all the suffering she had experienced. It didn't help the book didn't feature any dialogue, so gauging her personality had to be done through the obtuse first-person narration of the main character.

I'm still glad I read it. The setting was weird and interesting, and I like stories of journeys through strange worlds, so this one really emphasizes what not to do when writing those.

The Last Fighting Tommy

A biography of Harry Patch, the last serving British WW1 veteran

A couple highlights include

>Harry is attacked by a German soldier, but chooses to wound him in the leg and shoulder rather than kill him

>Harry comes across a dying British soldier, guts everywhere, who asks Harry to shoot him

>Before Harry can pull out his revolver, the soldier dies, and his last words were "Mother!" as if he was surprised to see her

It's not a long book but worth a read if you're interested in the First World War, or Edwardian Britain.

>>13969

I've read

The Library of Greek Mythology by Apollodorus

The Religious Attitudes of the Indo-Europeans

volkischpaganism.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/hans-f-k-gunther-the-religious-attitudes-of-the-indo-europeans.pdf

The Influence of Marcus Tullius Cicero on Modern Legal and Political Ideas by Mortimer N. S. Sellers

ojs.unito.it/index.php/COL/article/viewFile/1446/1277

Wyndham Lewis: From Proudhon to Hitler (and back): the Strange Political Journey of Wyndham Lewis by Alan Munton

journals.openedition.org/erea/220

The first half of The Ego and His Own by Stirner

theanarchistlibrary.org/library/max-stirner-the-ego-and-his-own#fn_back38

Apollodorus was a dry read, although I'm uncertain if that's the fault of the text itself or translator. I had a few contentions with the Indo-Euro. work, but overall was an enjoyable read. Currently, reading the second half of The Ego and His Own, The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit, and a Conan story.

The Colour of Magic, first book of the Discworld series.

I've read comments from dozens of people saying this book series is good, so I gave it a try.

The book didn't manage to make me laugh, think, be impressed or even care about the characters.

There is an "Oh so wacky!" fantasy world that feels like it was made by a child trying to be GM for the first time. The little amount of plot it starts with is forgotten after the first chapter and the rest of the book is spent following two uninteresting men wandering without objective.

The characters barely even act. Every problem they face is solved by random coincidence and/or the gods changing the world to keep the main character alive, which removes any sense of conflict or accomplishment.

I feel cheated.

An Unquiet Mind

quickly rising on my favorite authors list

Just finished Diamonds are Forever by Ian Fleming, certainly better than the film I can tell you that much. I like how Fleming's novels go into excruciating detail over every single nook and cranny James Bond comes across. Pic very related, it's the exact copy that I own.

Finished all these in the span of two weaks

Spice and Wolf vol 2

Kraft and Holo try to figure out a way to get out of a financial crisis using a shepardess.

The Hellbound Heart

Some guy seeks the ultimate pleasure but the cenobites definition of pleasure is far from pleasurable to the human skin. Later and ex lover finds out about what has a happened to him and she learns how far she will go to be with him again.

Some poetry from TS Eliot

Poetry shit goes way over my head so I couldnt really tell you what I read.

Bruges La Morte

Hugues wife died leaving him a widow the only thing he does now is live his life in suffering in Bruges until he meets a woman that looks exactly like his dead wife.

The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine.

Synopsis Part 1: The OT is a bunch of fairy-tales. The book of Job doesn't fit in. The OT Jews were a bunch of ISIS-level savages, and the OT god was an evil bastard (who really hates jews).

Synopsis Part 2: The NY is a commissioned collection of made-up stories about a really nice guy and a God who isn't all that nice. It makes no sense and the morality is questionable.

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion

Its about a man who has a very mild form of autism that goes looking for a wife. He first makes a questionnaire to "find the perfect woman" but that falls to the side when he meets a girl name Rosie. Rosie is everything he doesn't like in a woman but puts that to the side to help her find her biological father. This begins a long chain of wacky events that only an high functioning autistic man could get into.

I forced to read this book, as my aunties loved it half a decade ago. The writing style flows fairly well for the autistic man, really taking your hand to experience a different mindset that is quite different from a normal perspective. The one thing that really got my attention was the subtle story telling for all the characters around the autistic man. As he is somewhat autistic, you see little glimpses that he ignores but have a very big impact for his friends. I don't see that in the novels i read and would like to emulate that type of story telling if i ever write.

Verdict: If you want something little weird but sweet, give this book a go.

Last book I've read was Clement of Alexandrias Stromata, if I am not mistaken.

It's so disordered and unsystematic that it makes the early von Kuehnelt-Leddihn sound perfectly stringent and understandable. He talks about different sorts of causes (in a metaphysical sense) at the very end of the book, among other things.

Still, it was an interesting read. I think heavily influenced by the Stoics, what with Clement of Alexandria saying that the perfect Christian Intellectual (whom he calls Gnostic, but without there being any relation to what we nowadays call Gnosticism) has no passions, regards his wife - if he has one - as a sister and does not ever lust for her, only eats for sustencance, does not care about material wealth at all, and so on. He takes the asceticism very far, and like I said, I doubt he is solely informed by Scripture on that. Neither did he just bluntly copy the Stoics, however. For the Gnostic, he says, God should be sufficient, so that he won't need anything from this world. Man is patently not self-sufficient.

In all this, he never gives up his opposition to religious dualism. There are neitehr two gods, nor is the world that God created evil, nor can it be evil, being made by God. He argues this point forcefully. I don't think there is a way for dualists to avoid his argument, at least not on the basis of Scripture.

Some of the passages on numerology sound very far off. It's common knowledge nowadays that you can prove basically everything using numerology, if you use the right calculations. The exegeses were fine, but I trust Origen more, personally.

This book proves the critics of the Church wrong who say it was ever anti-intellectual. Far from that, Clement of Alexandria defends philosophy, going so far as to say it was a gift from God to the Greeks.

>>14534

Thomas Paine sounds like a faggot tbh.

The Big Burn by Timothy Egan

Snappy prose, engaging, imformative, evocative characterizations. Very good read.

The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi

A treatise on effective swordplay and battle strategy. My copy of the book had commentary, which suggested interpreting Mushashi's words as figurative advice for life. Essentially his philosophy boiled down to avoiding attachment to a particular process and instead taking initiative and utilizing the correct method (which will vary) for dealing with each individual problem. A quick read, but didn't hold my attention as well as I expected it to. Also, the translation probably fails to capture the nuance of words in Japanese.

>>14653

>Was planning on reading this

>Someone already read it before me within the same year.

Time to hang myself.

Just finished volume 1 of this sucker. It's good, but super dense. It's taking me a while, which sucks, because the book makes me feel like shit about myself

>>13968

'The Ancient Greeks' is a quick introduction to Greek history/culture (not including Byzantium). Only really for people who know nothing about the subject and want to read something by an authority. Next is 'The Greek Commonwealth' which is a narrative history that focuses more on political organization. The book was written in the 1920's so it just radiates old world learning and wisdom. Fifty pages of landscape descriptions in and it's everything I'd hoped it would be.

I've finally finished:

The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit by E. Michael Jones

The Argonautica by Apollonius

Theogony and Works & Days by Hesiod and Elegies by Theognis

The Aeneid by Virgil

Eclogues and Georgics by Virgil

I also finished all of a series' light novels translated heretofore. I'm still undecided on what to read next of my backlog.

>>14277

>>14278

The first few DW books are very silly shallow parodies, the series really gets good with Mort and Small Gods and Witches Abroad, around there. Give it another chance. They aren't really wacky at all in the later books, actually he goes a little far in the other direction. WARNING the last final two books are bad as well, Pratchett's brain was going and we suspect someone helped ghostwrite those two.

I've been reading The Public Burning, I'm only 240 pages in but it's already become a favorite of mine. The satire of anti-communist hysteria and right-wing insanity has only become more relevant since this was published, while reading this I find myself thinking "wow this could have been published yesterday". Also it doesn't hurt that it's very funny. There are a few places where the author goes on waaaay too long with an established joke or idea that the reader already understands, and he just goes on and on for two pages…but those moments are rare. A+ satire would recommend.

>>14873

You're right, but I've already read them unfortunately.

Naked Lunch by Burroughs.

That was a waste of time, although some passages were nicely written, most of the work is just junkie's vomit. You must be really into drug culture to like this book.

Also, can anyone tell me what the fuck is that thing at the end of the fork in the spanish cover.

Culture of Narcissism by Christopher Lasch

I would not recommend it unless you are oriented towards details for the sake of details. He had no use attached to the information he provided. No remedies. It was pure observation with no point.

The Haruhi books. The series' characters, taken individually, make good stories, but it never feels like they're a brigade. The first book keeps them separated as they switch places in the spotlight, which is how they stay most of the time. Towards the end, the rivals have the same problem; the main plot of the last two books is them using a poorly thought out plan while the heroes don't have one at all.

The best stories would be The Melancholy, The Sighs, The Disappearance, Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody, Love at First Sight, and Wandering Shadow, with The Intrigues, Editor in Chief, Lone Island, Live a Live, Where Did the Cat Go?, and The Day of Sagittarius comprising a second best tier. The Disappearance kino is as good as the book.

I began reading Imagination; a psychological critique by Sartre and I found it very difficult to apprehend. He states the different schools of philosophy and their approach in defining the image and its role in regard of thought construction. And then he proceeds to counterargument their positions. But I think that without a solid grasp of the concepts he wishes to criticize, the comprehension will be very altered. So could you recommend me some introductory books to read before returning to it ?

>>14760

Since this post I've read:

Idylls by Theocritus

The Lightning and the Sun by Savitri Devi

Odes by Pindar

The Tale of Cupid and Psyche by Apuleius

The Poems of Callimachus

I finally finished the last book on the 22nd. Of all the books, I'd say Theocritus and Devi I liked the most. "The Lightning and the Sun" is one of the best books I've ever read. What I found striking about it is how similar my views are to hers, whose views in turn aren't always concordant with /pol/'s, particularly the pagan element. The work by Apuleius was missing two pages (39 and 40) and is apparently an extract found in his work "The Golden Ass", which is fortuitous because I have that book anyway. After finishing the story, there was modern egalitarian commentary that impelled me to not finish it. Pindar's Odes were tediously laborious for me and may need to be reread some time in the future to truly appreciate them (although I liked one or two). Lastly, given the fragmentary nature of most Callimachus' works, it was nearly impossible to savor them; of them, "Hekale" and his hymns, particularly the one about Artemis, stand out. I've since started Arrian's Anabasis.

Recently read these.

Man who was Thursday is a fun farcical adventure with an interesting premise that's best discovered firsthand

The Waste Lands is another entertaining entry in the Dark Tower series. Personally I found the first two much more compelling, and the cliffhanger ending is a slap in the face, but it was good.

Sea Lord is a decent sailing-based thriller.

Satan in St Mary's is an interesting historical murder mystery.

Neuromancer is the quintessential cyberpunk book. My familiarity with the genre through the Shadowrun games made it an easier read than for the unitiated, but I also feel that said familiarity lessened the magic. Again, a decent read.

Overall Man who was Thursday stuck with me the most.

My current reading list is an abridged version of Gibbon's Decline amd Fall of the Roman Empire, Nixon's Six Crises, Dark Tower 4:Wizard and Glass, Thrawn Alliances and Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. That'll probably last me a few months.

The original version, before the Christian zealot brother progressively censored and edited away the best bits.

My first Bernhard

>you will never experience a genuine friendship

Why even live?

Just finished The Crying of Lot 49. It was better than I thought it would be, the nazi shrink shooting up his office was hilarious.

>>15325

Update on my reading list:

Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - a rather frustrating book. Gives some nice insight into ancient rome, the different Emperors, the wars, the territories etc, but I feel it could've been much better structured. As topics changed from chapter to chapter, the chronology jumped all over the place, and so I was left a bit bewildered. Also gave only passing mention to the early years of the empire, though I guess that's to be expected in a book about the decline. Worthwhile, but not an easy read.

Nixon's Six Crises: Essentially a book selling Nixon as a man worthy of the presidency, before he was elected. Neatly summarises key parts in his political career, and a very easy read. I felt that simply having some of his speeches in there was unnecessary, being already familiar with most of them, but overall well worth it for a look at American Politics from 1945 through 1960.

Thrawn Alliances: I was disappointed by the lack of Yuuzhan Vong. The alternating between clone wars and Empire eras was sort of neat, but broke the flow of the story.

Dark Tower 4 was as interesting as its predecessors. A bit overlong, but a very large chunk of it is actually sort of a prequel origin story for the Gunslinger, so it can be forgiven for not progressing the story much.

Nixon's No more Vietnams: An insightful account of the Vietnam conflict from beginning to end. Biased, but in a refreshing sense in that it runs against prevailing anti-interventionist sentiment.

>>15307

These are the books I've since read:

The Young Hitler I Knew by August Kubizek

Alexander the Great and the Indica by Arrian

Greek Lyric Poetry

History of Alexander the Great by Curtius

Demosthenes, Vol. 1 translated by J. H. Vince

The Young Hitler is biography by his childhood friend August who published it postbellum after hiding the manuscript and, because of this, the book reveals that Hitler had never wanted war. The biographies of Alexander were nice. I found Curtius' speeches better than those of Arrian's and at certain points it's narrative, particularly that of Philotas' trial. Arrian's is more complete as the first two books of Curtius' are lost. I think a synthesis of the two would create a definitive version. Greek Lyric Poetry was a quick read and incorporated Theognis' poems divided and categorized into authentic and apocryphal. It covers the 7th century to the 3rd century BC. I found some of Demosthenes' speeches difficult because of references to people, governance, legislation/legislative process, and history with which I'm severely unfamiliar and which the Loeb translation did an insufficient job in remedying. I have to say that the best speech of the volume was his Third Philippic, esp., when paired with the previous one On the Chersonese.

>>15536

Yes, it's an amazing book.

>>15849

Did you read an abridged version of Gibbon?

Savage Children is a political allegory transposing two rival gangs of children as Reds/Republicans and Blues/Democrats.

Protagonist, Bee, is caught between the two and tries to use each side to further her own goal of bringing down a predator, one who embodies the exploitation of child labor and lives in a glistening steel and glass corporate office (might be a metaphor for Apple or Amazon)

As a non-American this was a more entertaining introduction to the American political system and a pure capitalist economy.

Circuits of the Wind. All three volumes. Top tier writing and I love the story: protag is a slacker who grows up in the online scenes of the 80's and 90's. BBS culture, usenet, early web. Having known at least some of this pre-911 internet, it was very nostalgic.

Just finished this little brain-bender.

I mostly finished reading The Marquise of O and Other Stories by Heinrich Von Kleist. As much as I hate to admit this /lit/, I'm giving up on short stories collections. They're mostly mixed bags in my experience, were I only enjoy a couple of the stories and slog through the rest. Of the stories in the collection the only one I enjoyed was Michael Kohlhaas. Besides my disinterest in short story collections, I just don't find Kleist to be compelling as a writer. This might be a product of his time, but Kleist's prose is a tad flowery. You can skim paragraphs and not miss anything needed to move the plot or character development.

I'm not too sure what I'm going to read next. I'm either going to continue with my "light" reading or go back to reading philosophy.

The sign of the four, the second book about sherlock holmes. The book features, among other things, the first instance of Holmes drug addiction, Watson finding love, poison darts, a boat chase down the themes and a chest containing an Indian treasure.

I am unsure if I'll continue with Sherlock Holmes. So far, the characters dosn't seem to change all that much between stories, I might read the dog of Baskerville or I might start on Agatha Christie. Also, Holmes never wore the stupid hat.

Dune books 1 & 2

As a fan of the original Star Wars EU, I was aware that some people cited Dune as an influence on the original Star Wars films. A lot of elements were there - the rolling deserts, the evil antagonist which is actually revealed to be a direct relative of the protagonist, the death of a father figure and the protagonist's use of a supernatural power, in this case spice precognition rather than the force. The one thing that hit me as a fan of the EU, however, was that Dune influenced one of my favourite EU novels, A.C. Crispin's excellent Paradise Snare, with the Glitterstim spice granting telepathy rather than precognition, and in Jedi Search (written by KJA. Yes, him) it was revealed that the spice was produced by giant spiders rather than giant worms.

Now, the books themselves. One wonders how Frank Herbert could make a series of books about a bunch of people on a single, primitive planet that consists of little more than an endless desert compelling, but he does. There is a real knack for keeping things from getting stale. The characters live. You can see their worldviews without it being hamfisted. It might even make you stop to think. It's great. Dune, the first, was initially disappointing to me. It appeared too formulaic. Evil conspirators kill a good man changing things for the better and usurp him. The survivors endure hardship and convince the downtrodden natives to fight with them, culminating in Paul Atriedes becoming Emperor of the goddamn galaxy and winning not one, but two pretty girls. To one he gives his hand, the other his heart and dick. It overall just seems a bit silly. But Herbert has engaging prose. He writes convincing characters. Paul is not only reluctant, but horrified by the unavoidable atrocities that will be committed in his name. But he takes power anyway. Because he thinks he can make things better, even at terrible cost. It works.

Now, Dune Messiah. To those who say Dune was meant to be standalone, I say that the sequels were inevitable. Even when Duncan Idaho was long dead in the first book, Herbert seemed to without reason keep mentioning the guy. The Idaho gholas were inevitable. Messiah is a short book. When you've become Emperor of the fucking galaxy, where next? The fall. In my mind it's comparable to the 1st and 2nd Dark Tower books. When your protagonist is just that unstoppable, you've got to cut them down to keep it interesting. Roland is poisoned and loses fingers from his dominant hand. Paul Muad'Dib is trapped by despair at his need to push forwards into a future he already knows ends badly, but he sees as necessary. Conspirators conspire, and the beginning of the saga of endless Duncans begins. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed Messiah so much I went straight to the sequel.

Will review books 3 & 4 soon too, have also read those.

Has been a pretty good read. Coming up on the end of it. Fairly lengthy, but interesting and well written. Some of the things in it have been proven wrong, such as the khazar theory, but the book is old so it is forgivable.

Pretty easy read I got the concept that it basically says that overproduction leads to a surplus of product. and it talks about how humans or any animals that reproduce that once the parents die, the child takes it place or in the case of trees, deforestation once humans are gone, the forest repopulates. it states a case that seems anti-humanist but its humanist in the sense that it implicitly applies the Hegelian concept of "those that do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it"

Cons: a little hard on the US, which is low hanging fruit at this point

>>16386

Also read this (more of an essay)

https://www.anthonymludovici.com/ew_int.htm

Currently on pic related, stopping all readings of current books as listed

Until I finish it

Books in process:

Louis Ferdinand Celine - Death On The Installment Plan

Mitchell Holleubecq - Whatever

Thomas Hobbes - Leviathan (not bad, a little drudgery)

Jason Jorjani - Prometheus and Atlas

Karl O. Paetel - The National Bolshevik manifesto

Foucault - History Of Madness (this one is very good)

Adorno - The Culture Industry (kind of pretentious and annoying, might toss aside)

Jacques Ellul - The Technological System

Hey /lit/, saw your board listed up top although I've posted here once or twice before. I'll jump ITT to keep your board alive. I've been buying books lately faster than I can read them so I have like ten books right now I need to read. I'll post some books I've mostly read compared to the others.

I'd rather not write a review for each but I'll add a short sentence to say what they are about:

-The geography book was for a university course, it's about what you would expect of it.

-Sorcery is random ramblings of various occult topics that I would classify as a memoir.

-Volsungs Saga is a new translation but I did not read the Ragnar section yet.

-Runes is a historical book about runes, small book but very good.

-Orion Mystery is about the relationship between ancient buildings and astronomy.

Got into HG well's recently. His books are a nice length for consumption on the train.

Invisible Man - Good book overall, but I was bored at times

The Island of Dr.Moreau - One of better books I've read in a long time. Highly recommend

Slaughterhouse five - A fictional book about the bombings of Dresden in WW2. Great humor, but the book has taken a weird twist. Still like it so far

Neuromancer, since I never finished it years ago.

>>16181

just ordered my lot the other day.

>>16501

Ah, I see you’re a man of culture as well.

Been toying with the idea of a “book club” similar to the film club on /tv/; going through Lovecraft’s fiction and doing a review/analysis of each story. ‘The Temple’ is one of my all-time favourites by HPL – very underrated and ignored because it doesn’t feature any of the eldritch abominations most people associate with Lovecraft. The eerie, oppressive mood and overall feeling of doom of the men hopelessly trapped in the submarine is great, and the added horrors of what the see swimming in the deep dark ocean outside the sub, and what they find on the ocean floor is superbly effective.

Gou Tanabe did an adaptation of ‘The Temple’ in ‘H. P. Lovecraft’s The Hound and Other Stories’. he has also done a two part adaptation of ‘At the Mountains of Madness’, and according to Arkham Reporter on YT it is the best Lovecraft-adaptation of all time: https://www.invidio.us/watch?v=uHn1WdXOcnA

Finished this collection of E. F. Benson’s ghost-stories spook stories a while back. M. R. James ranked Benson’s ghost stories highly, but accused him of sometimes “stepping over the line of legitimate horridness”. IMHO that is not all that accurate, as I found that his stories lacked that final stab of horror you tend to get in James’ stories. The ghosts are more often actual ghosts, instead of the elementals, daemons or enteties that are far harder to categorise in James’ own stories. I believe James could be alluding to Benson’s depiction of atrocities like suicides, murder, and cruelty.

Benson’s protagonists are also very sociable and outdoor types, who enjoy bathing in the ocean, hiking, skiing, ice skating, playing golf, driving motorcars, and hunting. They are bachelor gentlemen who enjoy their surroundings with close friends, playing golf and bridge and staying at seaside towns in peace and quiet during the silly season. His female characters are rare, but when they occur they are fleshed out and interesting, and there is even a female protagonist on occasion.

In terms of writing-style, Benson uses a richer, more colourful language than James – the dialogue is also better and more natural IMHO. His stories are also more often set in the then present day, and they are much more varied – his stories includes ghosts, elementals and vampires and undead ghouls from the grave. Some are science-fiction-esque, and there is mention of Einstein’s theories of space and time as well.

Like with James I did pick up certain recurring themes, plot ideas, characters and names in his stories; the limping ghost, a ghost who takes its time approaching and entering a house, the ghostly apparitions of someone who has committed suicide by slitting their throat, and some philosophical ideas about time and ghosts. Séances and spiritualism are also common topics, which is understandable given the time these stories were written.

My favourite spook stories by E. F. Benson:

The Room in the Tower – Vampire story

How Fear Departed from the Long Gallery – Quite a sweet story, but one scene of body horror is quite revolting and terrifying

Caterpillars

The Man Who Went Too Far – A favourite of H. P. Lovecraft

Between the Lights

Outside the Door

The Other Bed

The Thing in the Hall

The House with the Brick-Kiln

“And the Dead Spake…” – Similar to H. P. Lovecraft’s ‘Herbert West — Reanimator’

The Outcast – References the myth of the Wandering Jew?

Negotium Perambulans – Very fine story; another favourite of H. P. Lovecraft, and feels like a blend of HPL & MRJ

Mrs Amworth – Very fine and eerie vampire story. Underrated! Adapted two times (1975 & 2008)

The Horror-Horn – Very interesting and fine story with several allusions to the works of Friedrich Nietzsche

The Face – Female protagonist! Features the motif of a eerie recurring dream

“And No Birds Sing” – Very good and eerie story; feels very Jamesian, and features an elemental similar to the one in ‘Negotium Perambulans’

The Temple – Truly great! Very interesting mystery. Another Cornwall setting, with two gentlemen friends looking for the remnants of a prehistoric Stonehenge circle

The Wishing-Well – Witchcraft in Cornwall

Pirates – A wonderfully melancholic, sweet and deeply personal and semi-autobiographical story

The Sanctuary – Comfy setting & eerie atmosphere; very underrated story about Satanism/Devil worship & ghosts

https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/b/benson/ef/

https://archive.org/stream/spookstories00bensuoft

http://vaultofevil.proboards.com/thread/1906/benson-more-spook-stories

http://vaultofevil.proboards.com/thread/5013/benson-night-terrors-ghost-stories

>>16539

“Lovecraft’s prose style has engendered widely divergent judgments, from the towering condemnation of Edmund Wilson to the adulation of his colleagues and disciples, who have sought to imitate (usually in vain) both his stylistic richness and his verbal witchery. Put very simply, Lovecraft’s style is a melding of scientific realism and evocative prose-poetry. One is certainly free to dislike the style and to prefer the spareness of Hemingway or Sherwood Anderson; but it would be difficult to deny its appropriateness for Lovecraft’s type of imaginative effect. At its best Lovecraft’s work becomes a kind of incantation, seducing the mind into a momentary acceptance of the fantastic incidents being related. At worst it becomes pompous and bombastic.”

— S. T. Joshi in the Introduction to his annotated “The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories”

Benson is more “modern” and less “dense” than Lovecraft in writing-style, but he is no less colourful and enchanting, and there are some beautiful and some ghastly parts that stick with you long after you’ve closed the book. Unlike Lovecraft he doesn’t use the story within a story within a story narrative device, where a character finds a document telling a story of a story that author had heard. There is less purple prose (“evocative prose-poetry”), but a more refined, to-the-point technique. Quite a few of his spook stories are satirical and take shots at fraudulent mediums and the public’s perception of ghosts. Think the style Lovecraft used for the hotel and subsequent chase scenes in ‘The Shadow Over Innsmouth’.

Some of the elementals that appear are quite Lovecraftian in their description, but there is no sense of cosmic dread at the end. Instead of some uncaring, malevolent entity threatening humanity at large, there tends to be a vengeful spirit or elemental. Quite a few stories concern two gentlemen spending holidays at some sea-side town and them being the witness to some vengeful ghost seeking revenge on someone. Often the protagonist and his friend(s) are observers to this revenge. In his best stories he makes the protagonist more involved and brings them into direct contact with unseen forces of malice.

Benson, like M. R. James, wrote traditional ghost stories – standalone stories meant to spook the reader, rather than the more difficult, esoteric cosmic horror and dense writing-style of Lovecraft. James’ stories were meant to be read aloud at Christmas, perhaps Benson’s were as well. His spook stories often follow the same structure and “rules” of M. R. James – establishing a comfy atmosphere with characters who enjoy themselves, and then introducing the malevolent force. Some stories suffer from being predictable, but at his best his stories feel more natural than James’ antiquarian ghost-stories.

If you want stories that are closest to Lovecraft in terms of themes, I’d recommend these:

Caterpillars

The Man Who Went Too Far

Between the Lights

The Thing in the Hall

“And the Dead Spake…”

Negotium Perambulans

The Horror-Horn

“And No Bird Sing”

The Temple

The Sanctuary

I first encountered Benson’s stories in a collection called ‘The World’s Best Ghost Stories’. Two of his stories were included: The Man Who Went Too Far & Negotium Perambulans. I would probably recommend you start with Negotium Perambulans – it has a very Lovecraftian eldritch elemental, and makes you familiar with Benson’s writing-style at the same time. “And No Bird Sing” is another great story to start off it.

Negotium Perambulans was covered a while back in an episode of A Podcast to the Curious: http://www.mrjamespodcast.com/2019/03/episode-70-negotium-perambulans-by-e-f-benson/

You can find free, professional readings of several of Benson’s spook stories available for download here: https://corvidae.co.uk/benson/

“These stories have been written in the hopes of giving some pleasant qualms to their reader, so that, if by chance, anyone may be occupying in their perusal a leisure half-hour before he goes to bed when the night and house are still, he may perhaps cast an occasional glance into the corners and dark places of the room where he sits, to make sure that nothing unusual lurks in the shadow. For this is the avowed object of ghost-stories and such tales as deal with the dim unseen forces which occasionally and perturbingly make themselves manifest. The author therefore fervently wishes his readers a few uncomfortable moments.”

— E. F. Benson

Sorry for making a new thread; I meant to post this here. I'm reading this. The writing is dry. Does anybody have any suggestions for books about the Russian Revolution?

After finishing E. F. Benson’s collection of ghost stories I was on the lookout for more classic ghost stories, and this 1943 collection of nine stories by Richard Henry Malden caught my attention. The nine stories in his collection “were written at irregular intervals between the years 1909 and 1942.”

Devotees of M. R. James antiquarian ghost-stories will be very pleased with this collection, as Malden’s stories are very much in the vein of the Jamesian antiquarian ghost-stories; male bachelor protagonists with antiquarian and genealogical interests and a love for old country houses and church architecture, Latin inscriptions, old documents, brass rubbings in churches…

Like James, Malden attended Eton & King’s College, Cambridge, and his love of the past is obvious from the first, and earliest, story in the volume. James & Malden were lifelong friends, and Malden acknowledges James as a source of inspiration in his preface. There are several similarities in the stories that carry over from James’ to Malden’s stories, and two bits in particular must be deliberate nods to James.

The two finest stories in the collection would IMHO be The Dining-room Fireplace & The Sundial. These are top notch. A Collector’s Company, Stivinghoe Bank, Between Sunset and Moonrise, The Blank Leaves & The Thirteenth Tree are also very fine ghost-stories that are well worth a read, and some of the best antiquarian ghost-stories we are likely to find.

In fact, the only stories I found somewhat lacking in that final stab of horror/“Jamesian wallop” would be the two last stories in the collection: The Coxswain of the Lifeboat & The Priest’s Brass.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Malden

Nine Ghosts: http://archive.vn/TaR0I / http://web.archive.org/web/20181226113218/http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0605461h.html

R.H. Malden: http://archive.vn/wZwK

We need to create a situation the next(?) administration won’t want to deal with. We must go protest in front of congress and draw the attention to us and not allow business as usual! We can’t allow totalitarians silence our voices and we need to make ourselves known!

The people totalitarians always imprison is the intellectuals. Intellectuals are always murdered and we must not forget that!

last man standing

The Blood of Elves was kinda boring in my opinion. Nothing quite happened, it set up some plot points for future books I guess. And it didn't focus on Geralt too much more on Ciri. I guess some might like it but I found it to be a drag. Still will continue reading because I don't want to watch the tv series and I don't have a good enough pc to play the games

The Blood of Elves was kinda boring in my opinion. Nothing quite happened, it set up some plot points for future books I guess. And it didn't focus on Geralt too much more on Ciri. I guess some might like it but I found it to be a drag. Still will continue reading because I don't want to watch the tv series and I don't have a good enough pc to play the games.

Now I'm currently reading The First Man in Rome and this is some quality read, just by this I learned a lot about pre Caesar (he is 20 years old or something in the stroy) Roman Republic.Still reading it and half way right now. Love the characters Marius is my favorite but I think Sulla will out wit him some how since he is set up to be ambitious.

Any of you guys read this?

>>16834

Pointless reply: why do that?

>>16830

I read it long ago, and suspect that much depends on the translator (I don't know Latin well enough to do without facing page English). Do you sense the authorial voice is the same man who wrote about bees, and composed anti-modernist eclogues? It's not as compelling, for me, as the Homeric epic which it imitates, but the story of the author's attempts to regain his lands; and then his attempts to merely to keep his life; makes this offering-to-empire tragically interesting. Also, the Dido episode is the reason that ordinary folk in our era have heard of Carthage.

The last book I finished was Save Yourself and Other Stories by Merin Wexler. It says on the cover it makes life crises hilarious and painful at the same time and in a way it did. However I was expecting milk and I got periods. After a while it got better and I'll probably read it again and again. Then I got Cat Person and Other Stories by Kristen Roupenian and that was even worse. It had the life crises again only this time it left me feeling filthy. I only read a few of the stories and I don't plan on finishing it.

No, really.

Not my kind of pro-White, NatSoc literature. Kind of strange Siege has been memed as cutting edge for years, when it reads as very dated. It was published as a series of newsletters in the 1980s and has that feel.

Mainly read as an experience.

A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

equally as jaded as these concentrated fags