Jun 29, 2025
Hello litsalon! Does anyone have any interesting summer reading plans? Currently going through Leaves of Grass for obvious reasons. Feel free to just share what you've been reading recently if you'd like.
Sorry to be stupid, meinkaf, but for what obvious reasons are you currently in Whitman?
cherry11 months ago
laid on the beach and read vineland, gonna do it again this weekend. this is my first pynchon, and in reading him i'm realizing how much of modern lit fic is owed to him. along with heller and vonnegut
apos11 months ago
I've been doing some self-developed/imposed prerequisites for a proper deep dive into Anglo-American modernism. Feel ready to actually get into the thick of it. The secondary source I'm most looking forward to at the moment is 'The Pound Era' by Hugh Kenner. I know it's regarded as a masterpiece, and I'm doubly excited because of Kenner's intellectual relationship with Guy Davenport (who I've spent the past year getting increasingly obsessed with). That said, I have a constant impulse to always have at least one book going that is unrelated to anything else I'm reading, so I'll be trying to make some last-minute spontaneous choices as well.
God, The Pound Era has been on my shelves unread longer than all but one or two other books I think. But I am genuinely looking forward to reading the fucker. I loved Joyce’s Voices.
I don't normally make reading plans but I do have two separate six-day spells of relative seclusion coming up and I've earmarked Marx's Capital in the new translation for one, and Gregor von Rezzori's Abel and Cain for the other. For a break from those I'll have South Wind by Norman Douglas which I've read three or four times before but could read 100 times in summer, and a reread of Jan Morris's Pax Britannica trilogy.
6 days for Capital seems rather ambitious
I've heard it's a real page-turner though?
I mean, if you're into that kind of stuff, it certainly will captivate you. It's an academic text, so there isn't much fluff. If you don't have any background in economics, the first 3 chapters are going to be challenging, but after that it gets a lot easier. Theres a lot of footnotes and they really help. They are also quite often really funny (a lot of dunking on other economists)
aenesidemus11 months ago
Capital is on my list as well. Would you be interested in discussing it?
For sure! I'm reading it for two reasons really: one, I read To The Finland Station earlier this year, LOVED it, and figured I should make an effort with its principal subject, and two, I recently got into a drunken argument with someone at work who was accusing me of being a communist because I said that the best cities were home to the full range of socioeconomic classes and I was like pah! I bet you haven't even READ Das Kapital! Me? Of course I have! while saying to myself "now you should probably read Das Kapital". Where are you coming to it from? We can set up a groupchat or something I guess.
aenesidemus11 months ago
litsalon readalong.... "From Poser To Proletariat" ... coming to you soon... Comes from a desire to understand economics more, I'm not a communist, but not actively disliking of communist theory either. Also it's a big influence on many philosophers and social scientists, so in that sense it's unavoidable. I read Smith and Malthus, and am a little over halfway through Ricardo, that's the extent of my economics "background", and I know next to nothing about Marxist theory outside of buzzwords that get thrown around in academia. So I'm going in blind & with an open mind.
Have been away in a small rural Australian town, just wanted to getaway in the middle of winter. Not long before I left, I got assaulted outside of my office building at night, so I've been in a bit of daze and not overly relaxed. Since the start of the year, I've only really been reading in french (mainly Proust), so here I've been reading a few classic American novels I haven't got around to: The Bell Jar, Tropic of Cancer, The Great Gatsby etc. I also have a copy of the Virgin Suicides which someone asked me to read with them, but I can't draw any motivation even though I quite liked Middlesex when I read it a few years ago. I'm back in two days and will likely see them not long after, so I ought to get started.
aenesidemus11 months ago
Both The Bell Jar and The Great Gatsby are amazing novels...the Sofia Coppola movie I thought was quite good, lovely music and atmosphere and Josh Hartnett, can't speak to the book though.
My long(ish) read for the summer has been Little, Big by John Crowley and it's the perfect book for the season imo
So far: Notes from Underground, White Nights, My Brilliant Friend Right now: working on some Wendell Berry. That Distand Land with Jayber Crow next at bat. Side note, this was my first time reading a translation by Magarshack. SO much better than what I've read from Garnett and Pevear/Voloshonsky.
I am maybe 20% into the Manuscript Found in Saragossa. A picaresque through the Spanish countryside to relieve the office-job-in-a-big-city-during-the-summer blues. The King of Elfland's Daughter before that for similar reasons, and next will hopefully be The Tartar Steppe but I cannot find it in ANY bookstore
Saragossa is one of my all-timers, God I love that book so much. The film by Wojciech Has is also incredible.
cherry11 months ago
i'm reading it currently and can say with complete confidence i have no clue where it's headed. very refreshing
Will likely change soon but: Keith Mcnally memoir Fagles Iliad (only read Iliad in Korean) Beware of pity Taleb’s antifragile (might give up on this, I’m already kinda bored halfway) Tropic of cancer Private Citizens by Tony T
aenesidemus11 months ago
I read the Fagles Iliad and found it solid but on occasion awkward phrasing, read Lattimore for the Odyssey and found it more pleasing, and hear his Iliad is even better. I've been slowly going through the Pope Iliad and find it better than Fagles as well. Nothing wrong with him of course but interesting to see what you think.
Hi meinkafka. It is winter over here and I have been spending a lot of time at the local library. Just picked up a copy of Franzen's Purity and am going to tear through that. Sorry, 10000 books already waiting on my desk...
aenesidemus11 months ago
Brentano / Husserl / Nietzsche / Heidegger on the philosophy side, Ricardo / Marx on the economics side, and then I'm already slowly working through Sartor Resartus and Anna Kavan's Ice for fiction. How good is Whitman? I liked O Captain My Captain but never read any more of him.
Whitman has a tendency towards lists, extreme anaphora, and what I call "I am this...i am that" statements, which can be tedious at times imo. But when he breaks out of these, it really is some of the most liberating verse out there.
i've been trying to keep plans out of it, that's the current plan. i just like structures/systems/spreadsheets too much, and i get the sense that i should just be reading what i want to read. so i've been trying to keep plans out of it. been having a great time doing that though. when my work is slow, usually at around 3pm i'll sit and have some coffee, or beer, and read. life is good..