/comfy/ - A place to relax

Corpus Hermetica: “eberrything moves, nothing is still.. birth is not the beginning of life, nor is death the end of it all”. The fact that it is as old as it is makes it really impactful to me & made me shed a tear. The things they carried: “I couldn’t endure the mockery... I was a coward. I went to the war”. Typical war book but with a really great description of the beauty and tragedy or life & war What of yourself?

>>39
>Corpus Hermetica I need to read that someday.

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky is one of my favourite books and was a major factor in my eventual conversion to Christianity. I'm not great at writing but I think primarily it has to do with Dostoevsky's understanding of the human condition and without spoiling the story I found the main character's thoughts relatable and the ending in regards to the characters' resolutions rather beautiful in a way.

I can't decide which one but one from Alan Watts. Maybe The Wisdom Of Insecurity, Psychotherapy East And West, Become What You Are, The Way Of Zen, Tao: The Watercourse Way.. I can't decide.

I could never pick a "best" book out of what I've read. I don't really know why. Right now I'm reading Congo by Michael Crichton.

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Definitely Journey to the end of the night by Louis Ferdinand Céline. It was the first and only time that a book had really moved me so deeply. I think that this book contributed to change my vision of life and my way of traveling it.

I have to add Thus Spoke Zarathustra to the list because it has helped me a lot in some difficult moments of my life. I always like to come back to it, just to read specific parts when I feel I need it.

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tl;dr: Can you recommend me books before the WW2 era?


Aspiring writer here. I've read in another imageboard about the Millennial Writing phenomenon with its tendency to write poor quality dialogues and give wacky personality or apathic personality to characters, specially the female ones. I actively intend to not follow the same methodology as them, and I love writing dialogues so I'm doing good so far. I have read Matilda, and 1984, and I love these books, they kinda help me as inspiration to write narratives and dialogues. But I have a feeling that it's not enough since I have read a few books.

In that thread I have seen someone's response replying with a certain line that resonated within me.
>If you really wanna be sure to not commit Millenial Writing, consider reading books that came out before the WW2 era.

I believe that if I read some of these books my perspective will become wider and towards in the direction I want. I've noticed >>41 and >>39 's mentioned books so I have a good feeling that these are good examples to start.

So... can you recommend me books to read that came out before WW2?

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>>8351
Ulysses, Neighbor of the Narcissus, Traumnovelle. You should start with these based on what you're looking to write.

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>>8351
>>9955
Replace Ulysses with Burmese Days if you think it's too hard.

>>38 (OP) 
Moby-Dick.  Melville's wit is timeless, and is perhaps not even the greatest of the book's attractions.  To go coursing around the world with Stubb, Starbuck and that whole motley is as comfy as Fellowship of the Ring.

As for whether it changed my worldview, it's hard to say; I first read it 20 years ago.  Captain Ahab is, in the final analysis, a madman, but is self-consciously so.  He knows what he's doing is wrong, but he's too pissed to give a caca.  He has "greatness" ascribed to him multiple times for the way his obsession drives him to be more or less superhuman.

I guess there's always been a part of me that's a little too eager to cast my pipe into the sea and declare jihad against things beyond my control.
>>8351
>Can you recommend me books before the WW2 era?
If we're talking about dialogue specifically,

1. Tales of Unrest by Joseph Conrad
2. Satan's Diary by Leonid Andreyev
3. The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

I'm a little disappointed with myself that I can't think of any others, among the hundreds of things I've read.

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>>8351
The Burning of the World, by Bela Zombory Moldovan. It's a memoir of a Hungarian artist who fought in WW1, had PTSD, and lived though Hungary's communist era. It's a window into what life was like back then in that part of the world. His use of words have stood out to me, they're quite expressive and really capture what he thought and felt. (Fun fact, the photo on the cover of the book with him and his friends was taken just a few hours before he received the news his country was at war).

It's hard to pick a favorite book. From my university days the Epic of Gilgamesh was one of my favorites. I really enjoyed Lolita by Nabokov despite some of the *aspects* of it. The story telling and world building was amazing. Right now I'm reading Brave New World by Huxley.

For children's books, I will have to go with 'The Little Prince'. 'The Secret Garden' is a close second. Both are berry beautiful philosophical pieces that you enjoy as a child and truly appreciate as an adult. I heard that 'Night on the Galactic Railroad' was another good one, and I watched the anime movie featuring the two cats but not the novel (Movies don't count). It's something on my to-do list once my Japanese improves.
Now, as for literature aimed at an older audience, one of my favorites has to be 'The Confederacy of Dunces'. As a short summary, you may as well call it 'Anon's Eberryday Life' (And yes, my phrasing of the summary is a reference to that guro manga). I was told to read 'Don Quixote' next so that'll be my next stop.
'The Brothers Karamazov' is also one that I have read a bit of and have yet to finish, but already I am enjoying it immensely. Dostoevsky has so far touched my heart with what I've read from him, and that is rare. People make fun of his prose but he enriches the heart, right down to its core.
Now this next book, 'Memories of My Melancholy Whores' isn't a contender for my best book but I mention it because I hear so little of it. It's by the same man who wrote 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' and the prose (well, the english translated prose by Edith Grossman) was berry bretty. Subject matter is somewhat similar to Lolita, take that as you will. I find it funny how two books about older men taking advantage of young girls can have such wonderful wording.
>>10089
>Right now I'm reading Brave New World by Huxley.
You too? How coincidental.

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I picked up The Count of Monte Cristo recently and am enthralled.

France in the 1810s or so.  Napoleon's era seems to have ended, but he's still around.  A 19 year old gigachad is thrown into a gulag on behalf of a member of a managerial class and other lowlives who are mostly lashing out at a better man out of ressentiment.

The description of such banal evil, and of this guy languishing in a hole without trial made me think ah caca, this is too real, but I don't think this is going to be 117 chapters about how eberrything is terrible and only gets worse over time.

I'm hoping for some Ulysses returns home levels of bloody vengeance, but I'll just have to find out.  I don't want spoilers, obviously.

>>10120
No spoilers but I heard that book was awesome. Not a revenge type of guy, but that's something I really want to check out.

>>10125
It had my interest up until chapter 12.  Then it also had my admiration.

I'm not this anon >>10089 but I just finished Brave New World. I won't make a super long analysis on it but I will make a small note on how I really enjoyed John and Bernard's characters.
I think failed-pedestrian is the perfect way to describe Bernard. He's one of those guys who loathes society, in the guise of how they hate the way it functions, but really it's because they aren't able to reap the benefits of it in the way others can. I find it entertaining how quickly he changes the moment he reaches a higher status among his peers. It's really pathetic but berry human, and I'm glad we were able to have him as our protag for the first couple of chapters.
John was an extremely personal and tragic character. He truly belonged no where, a true outcast of society, and because he lamented being alone, he eventually gave in to pressure and betrayed his morals and his philosophy in the end. And when he truly realized the extent of what he had done, he couldn't bare himself any more. To live was to go against all in what he believed in, to live was to be a hypocrite. What I found interesting is that the author later wanted to give John another ending, I wonder how that wood have tied into the story.
There's so much to say about both of these characters but I'm not going to make my post too long, but to different extents I related to them, so that's why I made these comments. Thanks for taking the time to read.

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Last series that I finished was The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe. It was a great series, but a challenging first read through, because Wolfe goes all out in making it a vocabulary landmine meant to capture the impact of attempting to translate some long-lost autobiography from ages past. The setting is an unknown, vast period of time in the future, where the Sun is dying and Earth is still recovering from a past post-apocalyptic event that disrupted its golden age. The remnants live among the echoes of the past, almost at a pseudo-medieval technological level. In contrast, elements of the past's technology are still present, representing what was lost, with an understanding that humanity had already achieved interstellar travel. An interesting dichotomy presents itself when humans from the stars return and interact with the humans left on Earth; those from the stars are perceived as alien and god-like due to their extraordinary abilities and appearance. Great story, but the only downside initially for those who want to start reading it is having to stop eberry few minutes to look up a word that Wolfe decides to use. There is a separate book, called the Lexicon Urthus, meant to help the reader through this, but I wood only recommend it after the first read-through, as the difficulty helps to give that feeling of reading something from another time. One last thing is that Wolfe really did put some thought into the space tech and some other advanced philosophical views. There are some amazing settings in here I wood love to see as a movie or series, but I know that it wood be screwed up somehow.

>>15353
Sounds interesting. I have not read any books in years.

I'm thinking about Malazan time and again, then I also think about gouging my eyes out. American fantasy is a disappointment, but I don't want stuff laden with whatever social issues were relevant at the time of writing. I want something escapist, yet not utterly stupid. Maybe Dune, but it's also American.

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>>15362
>stuff laden with whatever social issues were relevant at the time of writing.

Same problem I'm having. I got back into scifi (post covid stuff) and it's dripping with 202X politics even 900 years into the future for some reason.

>>15376
>pronouns
Oh this is sick, I don't think I'd go on reading about that, personally. That particular discourse really got out of hand somehow.

On that note, my personal impression is that especially contemporary literature is overloaded with mass produced caca, that has neither thought nor effort put into it. It's berry hard to dig for anything worthwhile, because the mainstream aggressively advertises and pushes low quality books.

I guess we're just not in the era for reading or something. I'm bretty confident it's impossible for one person to keep up with the entire flood, and there are so berry few people whose opinion you can trust. Berry uncomfy. I wish some nation rolled out some tangible competition or I don't know. I mean a nation enforcing some quality standard for literature on their ground, so that people who don't want mass produced junk could have a home.

>>15380
>I mean a nation enforcing some quality standard for literature on their ground, so that people who don't want mass produced junk could have a home.
I like the way you think, Anon. One built without hands is probably the only answer!  :)

>>15381
True! Running a comfy bookworm community wood be berry nice. I've been wondering for a long time if anyone took up that torch before, but couldn't find anything on the surface.

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Laurus was another good read and one that I have actually thought about picking up again recently. The book is a richly textured novel set in 15th-century Russia, tracing the life of a man whose path is shaped by love, loss, and a relentless pursuit of redemption. As he navigates the various roles of healer, pilgrim, holy fool, and hermit, his story evolves into a meditation on time, faith, and the human condition. I believe this book will resonate with readers who appreciate Dostoevsky's works. It seems almost like a type of fictional hagiography. I thought it was a beautiful read.