Random Literature Thread

[mōdgethanc]

YMMV on the art style of anime and manga. I realize it's classic, but it gets tiresome when all the character designs look the same with the huge eyes and purple hair.

If you like manga and are looking for a Western comic, you may want to give the Scott Pilgrim series a try. It's basically a Western graphic novel with manga influences.

I'd like to read the Abrahamic religious books someday. Can anyone help me out here? There seem to be several different versions for the bible, at least. And I've been told that some translations of said books might not be very accurate. Also, which one should I start with? I guess with the Torah, which is the Old Testament, if I'm not mistaken?

I guess it depends what you're reading it for. One of the chief reasons for reading an English translation for the Bible at the college level, for instance, is because of how influential it's been on English literature. And the KJV is both the most-quoted version (until relatively recently) and the one which reads the best as literature, despite its inaccuracies. But if you're more interested in it from a sociocultural point of view, it might be better to read a more scholarly and updated version like the NIV or NAB. But even those put it through a strong Christian filter, which Jews would doubtless say has a distorting effect on the original Torah (which represents only the first five books of the Old Testament).

The Qur'an is more problematic, of course, since any believer who's more than casually interested in understanding it learns to read it in the original Arabic. I wouldn't even know where to start when it comes to evaluating translations.

I concur with all of the above. The KJV is widely held to be the most beautiful translation of the Bible, but it suffers from some mistranslated words and the archaic style might be hard if you're not a native speaker. The NIV or NRSV are more scholarly. These are the versions I'm most familiar with.

As for the Qur'an, I've seen several different translations and they vary so widely it almost makes you want to learn Arabic just so you can avoid dealing with the issue. I have a good translation, but I find it much harder to read than the Bible, which is very readable. It feels a lot more esoteric and harder to interpret.

[vijayjohn]

Yes, unless you're interested in the ones that don't make it.

Probably almost(?) every manga I've ever read is one that never really made it to the West; it just so happens that my dad stumbled across an obscure and short-lived magazine that printed and translated a lot of these manga for people interested in learning Japanese (and also once got me all the available back issues for my birthday).

I think there are some genres that are less likely to be published in the West.

If manga are nearly as varied in scope as the magazine I mentioned says they are, then I think most genres of manga are unlikely to be published in the West.

YMMV on the art style of anime and manga. I realize it's classic, but it gets tiresome when all the character designs look the same with the huge eyes and purple hair.

This is one of the reasons why I like the manga I have read. They're all black and white, so all the characters have either black or (if they're old enough) white hair, and a lot of them have much more reasonably sized eyes.

[Yasna]

What kind of art styles are you thinking of then? I've read graphic novels with dozens of different art styles, ranging from minimalist to little paintings for every picture, and everything in between. That's something I specifically look for, that variety in styles. I think it would be quite boring if every comic used the same art style.

The sort of stuff linguoboy mentioned and all the Marvel and DC stuff.

Why do you think that?

To me it seems like there is a big quality gap. What comic can compare to a masterpiece like Death Note?

[linguoboy]

Here are the books I got for Christmas this year:



I've read the other two novels in Farrell's so-called "Empire Trilogy" (Troubles and The Siege of Krishnapur) and enjoyed them both. The other books were recommended to me by various acquaintances (except perhaps The speckled people, which I think I came across while reading an article on the Irish Revival).

[Yasna]

My haul from Kinokuniya in NYC:

[Yasna]

Are most books that would deserve to be classics "discovered"?

I wonder if most great books (let's ignore books that are merely good) get the recognition they deserve or if most end up drowning in the sea of mediocre books because maybe they never reached the right influential, sympathetic reader that would bring them to a wider audience. This seems like a bigger problem for books than say for movies. I would wager that even the most obscure independent movies are still watched beginning to end by hundreds of people because hey, even if it sucks you've only lost a couple hours. But how many people are willing to give a 500 page (or god forbid a 1000 page) book by an obscure author the same sort of chance, especially if it wasn't marketed ideally, and/or was written in an obscure language?

[linguoboy]

Are most books that would deserve to be classics "discovered"?

I think we need to unpack the words "deserve" and "classic" in order to answer that. Do there exist books that would be hailed as "classics" within their respective civilisations if they were known to a wider audience? Almost certainly. History provides us with several examples and we know that more works are being written and published today (and in more languages) than at any point in human history.

But what does it means to be a "classic" and how does a work merit this classification? That's a complicated question and one tied up with very specific and shifting cultural assumptions. The library I work is stuffed with "classics" that are very little read nowadays, for any number of reasons. To what degree is that a bad thing? Well, it's going to depend heavily on such things as your belief in the need for literary canons or other standards of cultural literacy, the relative importance of reading vis-à-vis other educational and recreation pursuits, and so forth.

[Yasna]

I think we need to unpack the words "deserve" and "classic" in order to answer that. Do there exist books that would be hailed as "classics" within their respective civilisations if they were known to a wider audience? Almost certainly. History provides us with several examples and we know that more works are being written and published today (and in more languages) than at any point in human history.

But what does it means to be a "classic" and how does a work merit this classification? That's a complicated question and one tied up with very specific and shifting cultural assumptions. The library I work is stuffed with "classics" that are very little read nowadays, for any number of reasons. To what degree is that a bad thing? Well, it's going to depend heavily on such things as your belief in the need for literary canons or other standards of cultural literacy, the relative importance of reading vis-à-vis other educational and recreation pursuits, and so forth.

"Deserve" as in have what it takes to become classics if only they get some exposure. "Classic" as the word is usually used in literature discussions. I would argue that those "classics" in your library which are little read now have lost their status as classics. A classic needs to prove itself in each new generation.

I think literary canons are a very natural thing given humans' love of lists. We don't just make lists of the best literature, but also movies, music, TV shows, etc. And I think there's no problem with that as long as people recognize that canons are not static, and that canons need to be reevaluated by every generation.

[linguoboy]

"Deserve" as in have what it takes to become classics if only they get some exposure. "Classic" as the word is usually used in literature discussions.

And how is that exactly? Goodnight moon, for instance, is called a "classic" at least as often as anything by Ambrose Bierce. I think to many people "Classic" is more a set of shelving at Barnes and Noble than anything else.

I think literary canons are a very natural thing given humans' love of lists. We don't just make lists of the best literature, but also movies, music, TV shows, etc. And I think there's no problem with that as long as people recognize that canons are not static, and that canons need to be reevaluated by every generation.

A canon is more than just a list of "best books". The idea of a canon, I think, is that these books reference each other and build on one another and in some way form a coherent whole which is more than the sum of its parts. A list of my favourite novels from China, Germany, and Egypt doesn't form a canon in this sense because Naguib Mahfooz hasn't read 三國演義 and doesn't assume a knowledge of it from his readers any more than Uwe Johnson or Elfriede Jelinek have read Mahfooz and expect it of you either.

[france-eesti]

I am currently doing proof-reading because I like when people do my proof-reading so I also help

Some texts are very interesting and I like to see how other authors do ! This is fascinating. I don't like to read best-sellers that are so formatted by their publisher it no longer has anything surprising or new

(now you really think I am a buzz-killer, don't you ?)

[vijayjohn]

I don't like to read best-sellers that are so formatted by their publisher it no longer has anything surprising or new

(now you really think I am a buzz-killer, don't you ?)

You're not alone. I don't usually read bestsellers, either. And anyway, currently, I'm still in the middle of my grandfather's diary, which hasn't even been sold yet, let alone become a bestseller.

[linguoboy]

I don't like to read best-sellers that are so formatted by their publisher it no longer has anything surprising or new

I've had such bad luck with "New York Times bestsellers" that just seeing this on a cover puts me off reading something. And "Oprah Book Club selection" was just the kiss of death as far as I'm concerned.

I greatly enjoyed 1491 because--unlike my friends with anthro and archaeology backgrounds--I haven't been keeping up with recent scholarship on the prehistory of the Americas. (This was the first place I heard of terra preta, for instance.) Apparently the same author has come out with 1493, which is an updating of Crosby's Columbian Exchange.

I finished the Rytkheu today and it kept me engrossed until the last page. (In fact, it became one of those books I began reading slower because I didn't want it to end.) I actually think he could've left off the last chapter without losing too much. Now, having found a copy of the Nunnally translation at a good price, I'm back to the third book of Kristin Lavransdatter.

[Johanna]

I don't like to read best-sellers that are so formatted by their publisher it no longer has anything surprising or new

(now you really think I am a buzz-killer, don't you ?)

You're not alone. I don't usually read bestsellers, either.

I've had such bad luck with "New York Times bestsellers" that just seeing this on a cover puts me off reading something. And "Oprah Book Club selection" was just the kiss of death as far as I'm concerned.

Considering that I mostly read fantasy, not many books that I've read have ever ended up on a mainstream best-seller list, but a few have and they're usually really good, very far from the mainstream novels that have been streamlined into looking like everything else in the best-seller 'genre'.

OK, they might not always be the most ground-breaking works of the authors in question, but they've still got things other novels don't.

[linguoboy]

Considering that I mostly read fantasy, not many books that I've read have ever ended up on a mainstream best-seller list, but a few have and they're usually really good, very far from the mainstream novels that have been streamlined into looking like everything else in the best-seller 'genre'.

OK, they might not always be the most ground-breaking works of the authors in question, but they've still got things other novels don't.

Can you give some examples?

[Johanna]

Considering that I mostly read fantasy, not many books that I've read have ever ended up on a mainstream best-seller list, but a few have and they're usually really good, very far from the mainstream novels that have been streamlined into looking like everything else in the best-seller 'genre'.

OK, they might not always be the most ground-breaking works of the authors in question, but they've still got things other novels don't.

Can you give some examples?

Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane from 2013, it even made #1 on the New York Times Best Seller list, in the hardcover category.

[linguoboy]

Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane from 2013, it even made #1 on the New York Times Best Seller list, in the hardcover category.

Gaiman is frankly in a category all his own.

[Johanna]

Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane from 2013, it even made #1 on the New York Times Best Seller list, in the hardcover category.

Gaiman is frankly in a category all his own.

That is very true, but he's still very much a fantasy writer (although veering on horror in many of his books)

Edit: But yeah, considering that that's what it takes for a fantasy writer to reach #1, you definitely won't find your usual Tolkien pastiche anywhere near a mainstream best-seller list.

[Jurgen Wullenwever]

you definitely won't find your usual Tolkien pastiche anywhere near a mainstream best-seller list.

I think I have several "usual Tolkien pastiches" that claim on the cover to be NY Times bestsellers.

[linguoboy]

you definitely won't find your usual Tolkien pastiche anywhere near a mainstream best-seller list.

I think I have several "usual Tolkien pastiches" that claim on the cover to be NY Times bestsellers.

Didn't Sword of Shannara make the list when it came out?

[Johanna]

you definitely won't find your usual Tolkien pastiche anywhere near a mainstream best-seller list.

I think I have several "usual Tolkien pastiches" that claim on the cover to be NY Times bestsellers.

In the last 10-15 years?

I did speak in present tense after all