r/RSbookclub

Any recs?

Just finished ugly crying for 5 whole minutes after finishing the first chapter of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

I’ve shed a tear or two here and there but this is the maybe most moved (in that way) I’ve felt while reading. So beautiful to see little Stephen stand up for himself!

No doubt a big part of my reaction was where I’m at in life right now. I have a sick and aging father. Something about reading this after spending some time with him really evoked memories and feeling of my own boyhood.

Which brings me to my question? I’m wondering what books made you ugly cry and why?

P.s. shouts out to the guy who organized the read along on this sub a while back. A close friend just finished Ulysses and was encouraging me but I don’t think I would have taken the Joyce plunge without some other folks here engaging with and enjoying that book. Thanks so much!!

I thought r/bookscirclejerk was mean for no reason and sometimes even exaggerated but wow a lot of the normies there genuinely live like that huh. I saw someone argue that psychosexual drama is akin to kink fanfiction from AO3 and that prefering Anne Carson or Simone De Beauvoir to Supernatural ABO fanfictions is classist because they came from privileged backgrounds and the fanfic writers are middle class writers trying to write something that resonates with them.

Like I try and read from both prestigious journals and indie ones. I read the classics. And I hate most of it.

Like I get 2 lines in and get mad. I feel like an idiot!

i’m willing to debase myself pretty far but modern “romance” novels are just so poorly written i feel turned OFF. but i don’t want it to be too high brow either. does smut for smart people exist?

Yeah yeah label me as performative, but it’s more so because I’m kind of embarrassed that I haven’t read a book written by a female author in a very long time, if ever.

I have never been here and don‘t know anyones opions

The Krasznahorkai Nobel Prize win has spurred a sudden infatuation with Central European literature in me. On some Cărtărescu shit, some Arno Schmidt, Miklós Szentkuthy, Drago Jančar, Gombrowicz, Thomas Bernhard, etc. What are some important works out of Central Europe that I should be reading to celebrate Central European Spring?

i’ve pathetically struggled with wanting to read for fun for my major but didn’t have the attention span nor motivation for it, if you don’t want to chug down on 50 redbulls i’ve have found that

- reading immediately after exercise has measurably higher retention rates than reading sedentary because of the brain derived neurotrophic factor that peaks post exercise and directly enhances synaptic plasticity. your brain is the most receptive to it 20 min after exercise. in many cases people have too much energy in their bodies, and reading/calmer activities are best done after expending all that physical energy so that the mental part of you can work more peacefully

- reading while standing, basically your calf muscles are like a second heart an when you stand they pump blood back up to your brain vs when you sit its the opposite severely restricting blood brain barrier potential. apparently this was used by medieval monks too who basically stood at lecterns for twelve hour manuscript sessions without knowledge of its effects

HOPE this helps someone who was once in my place idk.

I am not being contrarian or ironic here. All I mean is that certain books contaminate prose rhythm and the quality (qualitative) of my thoughts. Short, Marvel-esque dialogic thoughts, self-importance (seeing the world through a neoliberal lens, even if I don't agree with the politics). I've already eliminated movies and most English lyric music (the only language I understand fluently), so it's not coming from there. I plan on deleting reddit soon enough but I still feel directionless in terms of what literature to read and how to self-direct my education.

What's more, I find a great deal of advice like 'read broadly' works against me, and there is no organising principle to the information I see online, so all I have are platitudes I smack into each other hoping to find some structure to my approach. But all that happens is the advice just dissolves itself through contradiction. Obviously there is some degree of contamination I can't avoid, and there are great contemporary (post 1950s) novels, but it's a really mixed lot (even in so called classics). Most places have a 'democratic' canon of recommended books (which is more interested spread across countries and time over quality), for example even /lit/ (the internet's most conservative and performative community of 'readers') had The Name Of The Rose and Confederacy Of Dunces but no Urn Burial, Robert Burton, Henry Green, Gerald Murnane or Patrick White).

I would like to blame the literary culture Gen Z has, but someone with a hot rod up their arse would likely claim it's a me-problem. So here I'll pre-empt and say that if I were new to literature and went to reddit or TikTok now, I'd likely be reading The Count Of Monte Crisco, Frankenstein, TBK and Dracula (mostly good books, but you can see the limitations and narrow scope in the recommendations). That's the optimistic outcome. What's more, if you ask for something outside these (speaking from experience) you either get recommended a flood of sentimental garbage, or if you specify your tastes you get called pretentious and recommended Dungeon Crawler Carl out of spite. Yes, I am talking from experience...

What do I hope to achieve by posting this? Well this sub has intelligent readers, so I was hoping that someone that's been in a similar position to mine has some guiding principle they can share. If, for example, there is some sort of curricula or considered guide I could use that is not simple Big Classics in some arbitrary order without filtering.

*I know I am being unnecessarily defensive, validation seeking and perhaps exaggerating, etc, but I don't know how to express my concerns in more precise language without sounding more snobbier that I currently do. Apologies in advance.

yeah, yeah, yet another poetry post, but honestly i've tried poets like celan and ponge, (translated) rilke, gluck etc, and i know these guys rock in the poetry world but i still don't really feel anything?

honestly the closest i've come is reading lyrics to songs i like i.e. worthless animal by deafheaven & love exchange failure by white ward
but i think that's largely due to the association to the music rather than the words themselves.
i've tried reading them (poems) out loud and trying to figure out how they feel in the mouth and whatnot (i used google search to find some answers), but it still doesn't do much unfortunately...

if it means anything i'm under 25 so part of it is probably me being an unrefined derp, with all the garden variety mental illnesses common of my demographic or whatever

Hi all, I'm just starting to read Orientalism by Edward Said. Was told by a few folks that it's a heavy/academic read and was wondering if y'all think it would be a good idea to read any other foundational texts first (and which ones in particular you'd suggest) so as to better understand the concepts/arguments in Orientalism?

i always see people doing this and wonder how they can possibly focus and concentrate with people talking around them (i wish i could and i tried many times but i always feel i understand and appreciate text more when i read in pure silence) though sometimes reading in my apartment gets a bit drab. i’m also the type of person to tell people to stop talking in a library/stop watching tiktoks on the train so i suppose that contributes to it.

I recently completed Ovid's Metamorphoses and went on a Greek mythology spree. Having read a few classics in a row— Metamorphoses and two Proust volumes— I wanted to read something light and fast. I decided to pick up a modern Greek mythology retelling. It was A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes. I think everyone knows the fame of Lore Olympus and the unending Persephone/Hades love stories it has inspired. There has been a lot of criticism of this trend but something I generally see missing from the said criticism is what I want to talk about. I think it's missing because perhaps it might not be the most politically correct thing to say.

There seems to be a fetish for oppression in these retelling. A need to highlight the stories of the wronged, the ignored, the judged, the forgotten and in that trend it seems like something original and genuinely subversive is missing. A lot of these women in these books, despite being feminist retellings, are quite lacking in their own agency, a lot of them rendered passive. Powerful female characters like Athena rarely get a perspective because she holds the fate of the heroes in her hand and because it is impossible to show a romance with a famous virgin goddess. Stories that obscure faithfulness to the classic sources are mostly seen in the retellings of Hades/ Persephone in order to tell a romantic story. The claim is that they wish to reclaim the narrative and push agency into Persephone's hands. I don't see how.

I can't help but feel that these retellings seem to lack diversity and an interesting perspective.

One of my favourite classical myths is that of Hylas and the nymphs. It is depicted in the beautiful and dark painting by John William Waterhouse (1896). Hylas is a beautiful man, Hercules' companion, part of the Agronauts who, when he goes to fetch some water for his men after a tired journey, happens upon a pond filled with naiads. Enchanted by his beauty and— he by theirs— gets submerged in the pond to live enternally with the nymphs, losing his mortality. The painting depicts the darkness of this tale. There's a psychosexual almost sad masochistic tone to this story and if someone were to write a retelling they could write a lyrically beautiful and horrifying story dealing with the cruelty of beauty, seduction and surrender.

There's no feminist exploration of something like this too. This painting is seen by modern scholars as depicting the anxieties of men living during the women's suffragettes' movements. These anxieties are generally depicted in the form of the femme fatale archetype. Yet the subject is not passive. Yet the man in the depiction is surrendering not trying to conquer. So why is a subject like this not interesting to modern feminist retellers?

I wonder if this is simply an ignorant take and a mere projection of my taste or if there is something real here. I am not unbiased but it's a trend that has been noticeable to me for a while now.

Who do you think are today's most influential essayists/ op-ed writers - really prompting an emotional response from their readers?

And of all times?

Im hungry for the elegant, graceful, fine styled prose that make reality seem like its a secondary experience compared to the literary reality. Im thinking of proust, celine, faulkner, mishima, pessoa, joyce, balzac, you know those who have a way with the words.

who make it seem like they have something you can't even begin to know between themselves and the words. a secret relationship with the language. Im hungry for reading reading reading and forgetting what time it is of the day and the feeling you get in that timeless space that maybe language doesnt have to be the failure that it unfortunately is. You know any writers like that?

Read this one about half a year ago and I resented having to go back to it day after day, for such a slim book it took ages to complete and I felt absolutely nothing by the time I finished it, stopped my seemingly blossoming Delillo journey in its tracks. Since then, I can't seem to stop thinking about the book. At first, weeks after I finished it, I would refer back to it ironically, "Imagine if you will, the dullest book ever written," but a couple months later I've been deconstructing the plot in my head over and over. In this time I've been attempting to figure out A. why this book was even published to begin with, it seems he doesn't have much to say on any thematic element despite the book being completely tied to themes rather than plot, and B. why I can't let go of this stupid book and why I think about it relentlessly. Would love to hear other people chime in, perhaps you've gone through these same motions.

When I read the pessimistic philosophers it evokes this extreme, intense dread in me that is like nothing else. It makes me fear this fact that suffering and evil are like a bottomless pit but joy, happiness and the good are limited. Reading them is like the deep fears that i had buried inside which i couldn't put into words were confirmed by these lauded, well read, academics.

I feel this same very sharp and intense pain and dread when I read about horrible acts of crime. How can a human subject another human to such extreme cruelties that go so beyond the pale to what most can't even think of. My heart aches so much thinking of the victims that it gets unbearable. What could one even say to these people? I fear there's nothing besides wishing well for them. I thought that when I would get older these things would affect me less but even now when I come across such things they cloud my thoughts for days. I probably sound childish and sappy so please excuse that I'm spiralling rn.

As in Kinbote is both Botkim and also the lost king of Zambla