General Literature Discussion

Wow, you read my mind! I was just thinking we should get a books topic going :wink:

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Wow this was a good idea. lol

My favorite series still is the Moonlight Bay series by Dean Koontz. Completely bonkers. Still waiting for him to finish writing it.

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  • What are you reading right now?
    Not exactly literature, but I’m reading Fermat’s Last Theorem - Simon Singh.
  • What are your favourite books?
    Many of my favorite works are classic philosophical texts. In no particular order;
    The Critique of Pure Reason - Emmanuel Kant
    The Will to Power - Friedrich Nietzsche
    Being and Nothingness - Jean-Paul Satre
    Burnt Norton (Four Quartets) & The Lovesong of J.Alfred Prufrock - T.S.Eliot
    The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas (I prefer the abridged version)
    Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell
    My System - Aron Nimzowitsch (not sure if this fits the literature criteria)
  • What is your favorite genre?
    Philosophy & mystery. Anything that makes me think.
  • What books are you looking forward to?
    Quite a few authors that I haven’t managed to get to yet. Most notably, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Franz Kefka & Agatha Christie. First on the list is The Murder of Roger Ackroyd - Christie.
  • What is the best literature character in your opinion?
    Nope, this question is too difficult.
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I also read the abridged version. It’s really an amazing book!

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Yeah, it was quite common back then that authors were paid per line/per word, so unless anyone wishes to read a few extra pages of “His eyes were as blue as the sea” & The adventures of Chateau d’lf, I would suggest the abridged. Although, the unabridged version isn’t too bad either.

I was never really into books. I only have a few books and they are all about World of Warcraft. I tried reading other stuff like thrillers or other fantasy books but i didn’t like them. I’m more addicted to vn’s/manga :smiley:

I barely ever read books nowadays, but I used to read a fair bit a while ago, and it was pretty much only fantasy.
Favourites that I remember:
Inheritance series (Starting with Eragon)
I spent many years consistently really excited for the next book to come out in the Inheritance series and always re-read the books as the new one came out.
Redwall
The Lord of the Rings (Who doesn’t like LotR?)
Chronicles of Ancient Darkness (Starting with Wolf Brother)
My most favourite was the His Dark Materials trilogy, which starts with the well known book Northern Lights/Golden Compass.
Lyra was probably the first character that I really liked in a “waifu” type way.

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I also have a book “waifu”. It’s Tris Prior, from the Divergent Trilogy. I don’t know exactly why, but I just fell in love with her. And seeing her dying was really painful T_T

Ohhh literary waifus…never thought about that much. As a kid it would have been Hermione nowadays no clue. Hard to say for an overall favorite character but one that would be up there would be Strahd Von Zarovich from the Ravenloft novels. What an awesome antagonistic character he had power and knew it, but when he was over matched he also knew how to buy time until he could get rid of the one who threatened him. Love me some Strahd books.

Book wise, I’m more into Asimov’s scifi. Oldie but goodie! <3 Also, ye good ol’ Tolkien

I recently read the Hunger Games trilogy. Or rather, listened to the audiobooks I got in a Humble Bundle a while back. I like how the narrator had different voices for each character. I’m about to commit blasphemy, but I think the movies were better than the books, especially the second one. The way the interview scenes resembled actual TV shows like American Idol were something that could only be accomplished in a visual medium. They changed some scenes, but still managed to make it work. Like when Katniss meets the second Game Master for the first time, they took out the scene of him showing her his watch, but if you rewatch the scene and listen really closely to the dialogue, you can pick up the subtle foreshadowing. Plus, I liked the ending of the second movie better, where Finnick says the “arc words” to Katniss to show he’s on her side, instead of her simply remembering them. I haven’t seen the latest movie though, so no spoilers please :3

I just finished a book called Night by Elie Wiesel.

Im not sure what I was expecting from this book. Probably “it’s just another holocaust account, I already know how those go.” But this book hits fucking hard. It made me cry. Over and over again. And it all is so very real.

I won’t go into detail, because I recommend this book to anyone and everyone who is old enough to understand. All I will say is, this book won a Nobel Peace prize. That should tell you how much effect it has.

Right now I’m reading through Wheel of Time, and inbetween each WOT book I reread a Song of Ice and Fire book in preparation for Winds of Winter :smiley: I’m also reading through the Haruhi light novel series for the second time which I adore. It gets a little weaker towards the end but I feel so comfy and at home with these characters because of how long I’ve known them. Hopefully the next one will come out soon!

I’ve also recently finished The Secret Life of Bees which I absolutely loved, Sue Monk Kidd is brilliant, almost on the level of Khaled Hosseini, almost. (A Thousand Splendid Suns is an unbelievably good novel.)

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We actually have an entire topic dedicated to light novels, if you’re interested!

Not that its wrong to call them literature~

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Thanks for that. Instantly added to my Amazon Wishlist. Sounds amazing.

I realized recently I don’t know much about that particular time in history, in fact I don’t think I’ve ever read about the holocaust other than the fictional account in The Book Thief, and I thought that novel was pretty bad honestly.

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We read that in an AP English class back in High School. That book goes over some serious shit, and does it in an absolutely fantastic way to really portray the depth of the atrocities to the reader.

What are you reading right now?
I usually read 3 books at once - one print (currently the 2nd Haruhi light novel) One Digital (currently Curtsies & Conspiracies by Gail Carriger) and one Audio (currently The SIlkworm by Robert Galbraith (aka JK Rowling)

What are your favorite books?
My favorite books are the His Dark Materials series

What is your favorite genre?
I like books that border on scifi and fantasy the best. I also really like historical fiction.

What books are you looking forward to?
I have so many books in my too read stack I have chosen not to follow anything coming out.

I’m almost done with my annual re-read of the LotR trilogy, only the 2nd time I’ve read it in english tho
Want to get the english version of the Silmarillion someday, and all the History of Middle-Earth books, can never have enough Tolkien^^

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I’ve been on a mystery hunt for a while now, trying to catch up on some great classics.

Favorite author, I think, would be G.K. Chesterton, especially Orthodoxy and The Man Who Was Thursday (both are public domain, so read them for free! In fact, there are tons of public domain classics online now. You can read hundreds of fantastic books legally for free! yay). His writing style is just fantastic. Great British humor. I’ve re-read them countless times.

Though, recently, I’ve fallen in love with locked room murder mysteries again. Chesterton has an awesome series of them, called the Father Brown Mysteries. They’re absolutely fantastic. I think the order is something like The Innocence, then the Wisdom. There’s more, but I don’t see them at the moment.

Also, recently, my mind exploded. I just read about the Detection Club, which included basically all of my favorite mystery writers. G.K. Chesterton, my favorite author, was the first President; Agatha Christie, who wrote my favorite mystery novel (And Then There Were None), and Father Ronald Knox, a priest who wrote the Decalogue for the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, were part of the club and they all knew each other.

Seriously. This blew my mind. All my favorite writers ate brunch in London with each other regularly, from a journalist to an elderly lady to a Catholic monsignor. Man, I’d love to be a fly on the wall for those meetings.

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I just finished reading The Amber Spyglass, the final book in the His Dark Materials trilogy and really just have to get my thoughts out quickly. It’s great to see it mentioned multiple times in this topic!

So, as bizarre as I always find the direction it goes after The Northern Lights is, it always manages to weave such a tight narrative but above all else, and I think most would agree with me, its strongest point is its absolutely stellar cast of passionate, incredibly strong-willed characters. Yet even among all the joy I got from reading from those characters’ perspectives I live for the Will and Lyra chapters. As if just being treated to the incredible persona that is Lyra from the first book wasn’t enough, we now get a character almost, if not equal to her in passion and strong characterisation as well as the beautiful character interactions that follow.

And of course the ultimate payoff for all that is: [spoiler]when they realised they’ve been in love the whole time, right at the end. I’ve always thought that there’s nothing sweeter or cuter than young love, especially between two characters who are completely oblivious to it, but of course the bittersweetness of it all is that they can never see each other again because they have to close all the world-crossing windows. I almost like this more because the ephemerality of it makes it all the more beautiful and I love the descriptions of how Lyra and Will just spend every moment with each other on the ship back home.

I can’t help but also feel quite jealous of it all because I don’t think I will ever experience such complete, unconditional passion for another person and have it reciprocated so perfectly as is the case with Lyra and Will. And indeed the idea is that no couple has ever felt that kind of perfect love for each other which is obviously reason for the whole chain of events and prophecy etc.[/spoiler]

So I feel like this may actually place it at the top of my all time favourite book series’, toppling series like Harry Potter which I grew up with (and also love, of course). I’m definitely going to take some of the suggestions from this thread and while I’m at it, does anyone have any good recommendations for romances like the His Dark Materials series? It doesn’t even have to be the same genre, I’d just appreciate and highly regard recommendations of this type from Key fans!

Finally, has anyone read Lyra’s Oxford or the other add-on book (I forget the name) to the series by Philip Pullman? I’m almost certainly going to read them as I found one thing unique about this series that I’ve very rarely gotten from anime, movies or TV series is that I desperately didn’t want it to end; I just wanted more time with characters I so completely enjoyed.

I’m very interested also to go back and watch the film adaptation, regardless of how it is perceived, just to compare the constructs from my imagination to someone else’s interpretation of the world. That’s one thing I didn’t realised I missed about reading - this is my first foray back into reading novels for a good five years I think - it’s a very mentally active experience, whereas films interpret and stylise things in a way that doesn’t leave room for imagination.

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