(Part 2) Top products from r/literature

There was a post about this on either /r/books or here a couple months ago. Goodreads made this interesting infographic.

One of the reasons for stopping—"extremely stupid"—cracked me up.

I wish I could find the reddit post on this, but one commenter remembered an interesting "rule" someone had told them: "subtract your age from a 100, and the remainder is the number of pages you should read before dropping the book." I like the idea that the older you are, the more precious your time is, and the better sense you have of your taste and books…therefore, it's cool to drop books a little sooner. But the younger your years and the less your experience? Gotta read a little more before you shut the experience down.

For my two cents—and since your discussion interests me and perhaps mine will interest you—I rarely stop reading books. It's rare to dislike a book so much I won't give it a full run. However, I also note that when deciding what to read, I have a pretty good sense of what books I'll like. But I don't know…is that because I decide in advance that I'm gonna like a book? In which case, I'm a bit of a fraud? Ha, it's something I think about.

A book has to fail in a pretty spectacular way before I give up. I'd have to reach a subjective determination that the whole premise fails or that it lacks thorough inspiration. As an example, this is the last book I gave up on (almost two years ago). I don't read the one-line critic blurbs before I'm done with a book, so after "finishing" my read of this book, I checked out what others thought, and one of the top positive comments summed up the failure for me: "It’s The Royal Tenenbaums meets Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? I’d call The Family Fang a guilty pleasure, but it’s too damn smart….A total blast." In my opinion, that was all the book was—it felt like a failed mock-up of a Wes Anderson narrative. All quirk but no character. And this was its only benefit from my discernment—if you really dig Wes Anderson, this would satisfy your craving like a guilty pleasure.

That said, I didn't think along the lines that the book was bad or poorly written—it just failed at that initial and critical level with me. Sure that's fickle and I'm using the academic criticism equivalent of the nuclear option in chalking something up to mere druthers. But, like I said, it's rare. And in life, I feel there's rare but occasional room for an unexplained subjective "didn't work for me." I hated giving up on this book in this way, because I can't enter thorough discussion or defense on my decision. And I know a team of people worked really hard to make that book, and I don't doubt others could've loved the book. I just felt like reading something else.

Going off the idea you like Poe, Shakespeare, Dickinson, and Plath my recommendations (and reasons):

Olives by AE Stallings (the best new book of American poetry since Plath)
Harlot by Jill Alexander Essbaum (a fantastic and sexy collection of work)
The Restored Ariel by Sylvia Plath (the best book of American poetry after Eliot)
The Standing Wave by Gabriel Spera (lovely stuff)
60 Sonnets by Ernest Hilbert (some funny, some sad, all sonnets)
Broetry by Brian McGackin (light but funny)
I Was There For Your Somniloquy by Kelli Anne Noftle (a good intro into avante garde)
Azores by David Yezzi (a travelogue of sorts)
Omeros by Derek Walcott (best new epic in a long time)
With Rough Gods by yours truly (monologuing Greek gods)
Love, an Index by Rebecca Lindenberg (a beautiful work of loss and love)
The Waste Land and other writings by T.S. Eliot (the undisputed master of modern poetry)

I did the bio route, specifically botany. B_Prov has a great list, but my 2 cents: The origins go back to native American traditions of animism. Trying to find some quality and formative ethnographies on their world view may give you more of a chronistic context.

Many of the modern romance authors are, sort of, a proto-revisitation of those themes. Thoreau is solid (you can certainly pick apart things, but his premise is solid). I second Muir, and Leopold. Sand County Almanac was the precursor to the modern environmental movement and the foundations of deep ecology. Again, this is a more articulated 'white-man's' animism. Edward Abbey is a bit more cynical, but also a better author then many of his predecessors.

That said, here are a couple that you may find interesting as a biologist:

Gathering Moss

lives of a cell

Natural History of North American Trees: 2 vol ,

The Immense Journey

Oddly, I thought Vonnegut's Galapagos was riveting.

The Christian element is in the Anglo-Saxon, too. The person who ultimately wrote the poem down was probably a churchman.

I've always enjoyed Heaney's translation, though it is not necessarily the most "faithful" one around. Heaney is a subscriber to Dryden's notion of transfusion, which leaves a lot of room for the translator's license as a poet in his own right (see his forward to his translation of Robert Henryson's Testament of Cresseid).

For my money the best version out there is Frederick Rebsamen's. It is a very literal rendering that pays close attention to the original's stress scheme—probably the most important feature of alliterative poetry—and somehow preserves much of its poetic force.

For a literal prose version, you might try the new one from Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library, which comes with an excellent preface.

This is a great topic and thoughtful thread. From my myopic POV there's a good argument to be made for Pynchon as the first and most radical American post-modernist. Just started reading an intriguing (post-modern?) bundle of essays by Kundera re the novel and its shape, effect and arc mapped from and across the European+ mind. http://www.amazon.com/Testaments-Betrayed-Essay-Nine-Parts/dp/0060927518/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1406291451&sr=8-1&keywords=kundera+testaments+betrayed

/r/AskLiteraryStudies might be able to help you out more.

All I can recommend is http://www.amazon.com/Charles-Dickens-Tragedy-Literary-Biographies/dp/0140580271 for a Biography, as it was very concise and gives a good understanding of the author as well as the time period.

I'm not a huge Dickens fan myself.

I read this version of Monte Cristo and thoroughly enjoyed it, but it seems it may have been abridged. The top review on Amazon recommends this version.

I can highly recommend reading Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters.

Summary

Spanish edition

I'm, like, 99% sure you could've found both of those links yourself.

A Land More Kind than Home by Wiley Cash

http://www.amazon.com/Land-More-Kind-Than-Home/product-reviews/0062088149

I'm about two-thirds of the way through it and can't wait to get home to finish. I love the author's style of writing and dark Southern atmosphere. The tale being written from several different characters' viewpoints can often be annoying or tiresome but the author uses each new narrator to reveal things that you would not otherwise get. Two thumbs up so far!

Here's a free Kindle ebook download link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07RP93B63

Get it before the offer expires.

All of his books are good, particularly 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare.

Eulogy to a Hell of a Dame is what got me into Bukowski. Personally I always thought his poetry far surpassed his prose. I think The Pleasures of the Damned is a great best-of album (it's an anthology of selected poetry compiled after his death).

The cancer ward Is my favorite Solzhenitsyn book. You might enjoy it aswell.

http://www.amazon.com/Twentieth-Century-Views-T-S-Eliot/dp/0132743248

On the cover is Stanley Wyatt's Prufrock.

I also would like to know this!

I don't know of any fiction but The Art of the Heist: Confessions of a Master Art Thief, Rock-and-Roller, and Prodigal Son is an entertaining memoir I'm reading about the New England art thief Myles Connor that you might like.

A few years ago I decided to read some book about the Israel-Palestine conflict in order to get a better grasp on it. Figured it was a good thing to do since that conflict constantly appears in the news. I'm not sure I actually got any deeper insight about it, but 2 of the books I'd recommend would be:
A Blood-Dimmed Tide; Dispatches From The Middle East by Amos Elon and Holy Land, Unholy War by Anton LaGuardia

It's kind of sad that this was the only thing the dude ever wrote:

http://www.amazon.com/With-Hemingway-Year-West-Cuba/dp/0030056179

Paul Johnson nailed this one a long time ago.

Or, maybe one is supposed to say: The very controversial Paul Johnson nailed this one a long time ago. That way it won't be like I'm sitting at the losers' table in lunch room, right?

Please, for the love of all that is amazing, read Joe Hill's Heart-Shaped Box. I had to read it all the way through as fast as possible just so I could see what would happen, and I was terrified throughout. Really solid, creepy, wonderful writing.

And once you're done with that, read Horns, which has one of the greatest monologues in all of horror literature. I feel I should caution you that this book is not horror in the sense of being full of blood and guts and terror, but manages to build an atmosphere of horror at what people are willing to do right under the surface of their "normal" lives.

Ignore the fact that he's Stephen King's son, and then finally read all five volumes (the fifth comes out this month) of Locke & Key, which has some great terror and incredible storytelling. Also ignore the fact that this is a comic book, and I guarantee you will have a good time with it--and will rage and worry and freak out at the things that happen in it.

So, yeah, I don't read a lot of horror, but when I do, apparently it's all Joe Hill.