SaSu Book Mega thread

[rih]

So I had a spur of the moment idea of creating a place for everyone to be able to post about books, recommend books and just talk about them some. It's a medium that many people can be passionate about and I like the idea of sharing books that made you feel something; anything it could be a negative response or it could have inspired a certain lifestyle or made you come to peace with something. Just something that everyone can enjoy, a little 'in memoriam' if people decide to contribute and leave, I'll do my best at trying to contribute anything I read or remember that has had an impact on me.

Even books that just seem interesting that I haven't gotten around to. Something to look forward to opening and reading through, seeing people's opinions and thoughts, little tidbits on the authors anything and everything to do with relation to books.

Please note the only necessary part of the template will be the title and author, don't feel you have a requirement to input genres or opinion pieces I haven't included things like ISBN/ASIN/Edition/Series as it feels a little too clinical for something to be a warm thread about a common interest. Also don't feel like you need to stick to this template at all, it's just there for formatting.

Spoiler: TEMPLATE

TITLE:
AUTHOR(S):
GENRE(S):

OPINION:

Please feel free to add any details about an author you like or how you felt reading it specifically as opposed on the opinion directly related to the quality of the book.

Spoiler: HOUSEKEEPING

Opinions vary a lot from person to person - if you'd like to have a discussion pertaining to someone's opinion on a specific book feel free, please don't be combative, confrontational. Provide sources if necessary and keep in mind someone else's opinion linked is not a source. I want people to inspire different avenue's of thought but if it comes at the direct cost of someone's feelings please think twice.

If you'd like me to include something in the housekeeping please DM or just let me know and i'll do my best.

Please have a cozy stay, listen to some rain and enjoy the reading.
Thank you.

 

[eden101]

.

 

[PeaceWanted]

.

 

[rih]

TITLE: Norwegian Woods
AUTHOR(S): Haruki Murakami
GENRE(S): Fiction, Romance

OPINION: So I read this back i'd say in my second year of university, it felt so apt. The writing/translation was phenomenal (Credit to Jay Rubin), I felt like starting out my own thread with a little bit a controversial book. This definitely isn't a book for everyone. It gives you such intense reactions, It's probably one of Murakami's most grounded works which he himself is confused as to why it took off so well. He seems to have a lot of opinions on his own writing usually not for the better; I like his critiques but this one felt unjust. The story isn't some earth shattering world ending event (maybe for the character involved it would be). I love how grounded it is, I love how sad it made me; how this simple story seems to pull you into a full investment. I remember tearing up on the train in cold rainy November finishing this. I'm not sure if it's the memory of the book or just how I felt at the time I enjoy more I had a complicated relationship and it just felt right reading this.

I'll end it also with a quote perfect for the start of this thread.

"If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking."

- Haruki Murakami

 

[Alexei_Kirillov]

TITLE: I Who Have Never Known Men
AUTHOR(S): Jacqueline Harpman
GENRE(S): Fiction

OPINION: This is fundamentally a story about what happens to a human being in isolation: how much is lost, yet how much is also inexplicably maintained. A human being shrouded from the society of their fellows does not regress to apehood, and this is nowhere more obvious than in their continued propensity to think. To wonder, to be curious, to endeavour to discover even when there's ostensibly nothing to discover. To learn, to improve, to ask -- such is our birthright, and even in a cage, even abandoned and starving, even isolated in a desolate, foreign landscape, there is no one who can take away your ability to think. I would do well to remember this in my moments of despair, that the mere act of thinking can be its own reward, can be enough to buttress yourself against the passage of time.

That is, indeed, my next takeaway from this book: that the years can just fly by, one after the another, until suddenly it's been a decade, then two, then three. Your life can just go on, and on, and on, regardless of whether you're doing anything with it, regardless of whether you're in constant movement or just standing still -- until, of course, you reach your inevitable fate, just like everyone else. Suicide is a recurring theme, but since the protagonist was isolated from childhood and was not inculcated with pro-life values, it isn't portrayed in a negative light. Voluntary death, in this world, is not tragedy, but relief. A final escape from the absurd, a last assertion of dignity in the face of forces that would rather have you suffer. All come from dust, and to dust all return.

SELECTED QUOTE: "It wasn't her body that was giving up, but her spirit, which had grown increasingly weary of animating those muscles, of making that heart beat, of going through all the motions of living, the spirit that nothing had nourished for such a long time [...] I sincerely wanted to say some helpful words that would sustain her, but, to be honest, in this sterile land, in the silence and the solitude, ignorant and sterile myself, what could I give her? Why would she want to live? We were doing nothing, we were going nowhere, we were nobody."

 

[rih]

Thank you so much for the addition, been added to my long list of to reads.

Figured i'd add another book.

TITLE: The Temple of the Golden Pavilion
AUTHOR(S): Yukio Mishima
GENRE(S): Fiction

OPINION: I loved this book, the writing keeps you so focused. The way Mishima seems to incapsulate obsession is amazing. The main character I think is meant to go against the grain. Not be like-able. The story is largely based on a real life event too, but how he turns it into this masterpiece is I guess a reason he became such a well-renowned writer. I've said it in a previous thread but as an author Mishima had such a colourful, crazy and strange life. I enjoyed reading about him. I won't go into too much details but i'd definitely recommend anybody that has an interest in his work to read about his life. He inspired me to keep a healthy life style despite my own obsession hence why i'm on this forum.

 

[eden101]

TITLE: Martin Eden
AUTHOR: Jack London
GENRE: novel

opinion: im very tired, just read this book, its great! haha

 

[magicalsarcoma]

TITLE: Exile and the Kingdom. Stories
AUTHOR(S): Camus Albert
OPINION: i felt lonely yet cozy while reading this

 

[hot]

TITLE: Norwegian Woods
AUTHOR(S): Haruki Murakami
GENRE(S): Fiction, Romance

OPINION: So I read this back i'd say in my second year of university, it felt so apt. The writing/translation was phenomenal (Credit to Jay Rubin), I felt like starting out my own thread with a little bit a controversial book. This definitely isn't a book for everyone. It gives you such intense reactions, It's probably one of Murakami's most grounded works which he himself is confused as to why it took off so well. He seems to have a lot of opinions on his own writing usually not for the better; I like his critiques but this one felt unjust. The story isn't some earth shattering world ending event (maybe for the character involved it would be). I love how grounded it is, I love how sad it made me; how this simple story seems to pull you into a full investment. I remember tearing up on the train in cold rainy November finishing this. I'm not sure if it's the memory of the book or just how I felt at the time I enjoy more I had a complicated relationship and it just felt right reading this.

I'll end it also with a quote perfect for the start of this thread.

TITLE: I Who Have Never Known Men
AUTHOR(S): Jacqueline Harpman
GENRE(S): Fiction

OPINION: This is fundamentally a story about what happens to a human being in isolation: how much is lost, yet how much is also inexplicably maintained. A human being shrouded from the society of their fellows does not regress to apehood, and this is nowhere more obvious than in their continued propensity to think. To wonder, to be curious, to endeavour to discover even when there's ostensibly nothing to discover. To learn, to improve, to ask -- such is our birthright, and even in a cage, even abandoned and starving, even isolated in a desolate, foreign landscape, there is no one who can take away your ability to think. I would do well to remember this in my moments of despair, that the mere act of thinking can be its own reward, can be enough to buttress yourself against the passage of time.

That is, indeed, my next takeaway from this book: that the years can just fly by, one after the another, until suddenly it's been a decade, then two, then three. Your life can just go on, and on, and on, regardless of whether you're doing anything with it, regardless of whether you're in constant movement or just standing still -- until, of course, you reach your inevitable fate, just like everyone else. Suicide is a recurring theme, but since the protagonist was isolated from childhood and was not inculcated with pro-life values, it isn't portrayed in a negative light. Voluntary death, in this world, is not tragedy, but relief. A final escape from the absurd, a last assertion of dignity in the face of forces that would rather have you suffer. All come from dust, and to dust all return.

SELECTED QUOTE: "It wasn't her body that was giving up, but her spirit, which had grown increasingly weary of animating those muscles, of making that heart beat, of going through all the motions of living, the spirit that nothing had nourished for such a long time [...] I sincerely wanted to say some helpful words that would sustain her, but, to be honest, in this sterile land, in the silence and the solitude, ignorant and sterile myself, what could I give her? Why would she want to live? We were doing nothing, we were going nowhere, we were nobody."

Really interesting, i will start reading books soon.

Good thread idea OP

 

[cryone]

TITLE: Norwegian Woods
AUTHOR(S): Haruki Murakami
GENRE(S): Fiction, Romance

OPINION: So I read this back i'd say in my second year of university, it felt so apt. The writing/translation was phenomenal (Credit to Jay Rubin), I felt like starting out my own thread with a little bit a controversial book. This definitely isn't a book for everyone. It gives you such intense reactions, It's probably one of Murakami's most grounded works which he himself is confused as to why it took off so well. He seems to have a lot of opinions on his own writing usually not for the better; I like his critiques but this one felt unjust. The story isn't some earth shattering world ending event (maybe for the character involved it would be). I love how grounded it is, I love how sad it made me; how this simple story seems to pull you into a full investment. I remember tearing up on the train in cold rainy November finishing this. I'm not sure if it's the memory of the book or just how I felt at the time I enjoy more I had a complicated relationship and it just felt right reading this.

I'll end it also with a quote perfect for the start of this thread.

hope its okay to ask questions in the thread. I like the atmosphere of his works, but i find his works are too explicit and sexually disturbing. i had to drop norwegian wood and kafka on the shore bc of it even tho the plots was amazing. do you know which books of his would still have his empty/lonely/dissociative atmosphere but not the overwhelming amount of sex?

 

[rih]

hope its okay to ask questions in the thread. I like the atmosphere of his works, but i find his works are too explicit and sexually disturbing. i had to drop norwegian wood and kafka on the shore bc of it even tho the plots was amazing. do you know which books of his would still have his empty/lonely/dissociative atmosphere but not the overwhelming amount of sex?

Please feel free to ask questions!

Sex and Murakami I feel are very intertwined as he uses it quite explicitly for a lot of tone setting / expression, BUT with that said i've read one of his books that I can say for certain didn't have anything too raunchy albeit the narrator giving a few descriptions of someone/one scene but not 'during the act'. Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World was one of my first dips into his surrealism and just general weirdness that is Murakami. I did enjoy it quite a lot too. If you like his writing you'll like this the tones are very similar the plot might not interest you as much but I really enjoyed it.

I hope you find something to enjoy and others recommend you many more!

 

[pyx]

TITLE: The Man Without Qualities
AUTHOR(S): Robert Musil
GENRE(S): Philosophical Fiction

OPINION: decadence viewed as a mechanical force. sex and desire as physical properties of the world, in which ideas both inhere to them. a grand ensemble of actors in the decline of Viennese society, also known as Kakania in the novel. the reconciliation of the empirico-materialistic view with the undercurrents of German idealism endemic to the time. it's long, but absolutely worth it. i have more to say, but i think i'd be betraying the sheer force with which this novel has by going in blind.

 

[TransilvanianHunger]

Title: Sun and Steel: Art, Action and Ritual Death
Author: Yukio Mishima
Genre: Autobiographical essay, philosophy
Link: Download from Libgen

Opinion: I might have seen Mishima's name mentioned here or there, and it seems like he's quite well-known in literary circles, but I don't read novels often, so that'll be my excuse. Before reading Sun and Steel this morning, I was not at all familiar with the man.

The main theme of this essay is Mishima's relationship to his own body, and his quest to transform it into a "beautiful" body in the classical Greek sense — tanned, strong, and muscular. He sees a classically aesthetic body as a requirement for a "beautiful", tragic death in — again — the sense of the Greeks. Emulating the Greeks is a recurring theme, as you can see. I understand this essay is quite popular among the vitalist crowd, those folks who are into bodybuilding and sculpting their physique as much as possible. If that is indeed the case, it is quite funny because Mishima's goal for his perfect physique was to kill himself in a tragic and heroic way, and I seriously doubt your average Mishima-loving gym rat has the same aims in mind. While he makes some interesting points, such as the abandonment that often befalls the body when one decides to pursue intellectual matters, and it sort of made me want to get up and go back to doing yoga every now and again, the main thing I found in this essay was a deeply repressed man, who was very clearly not comfortable in his own skin — the whole work is dripping with homosexual desires and masochistic urges, which the author never dares to acknowledge, trying instead to rationalise his feelings by means of philosophy and an admiration for classical Greek culture and aesthetics. In a way, it is a very adolescent philosophy (not at all surprising, if his biography on Wikipedia is to be believed) in a way that often reminded me of Nietzsche. Still, I found it an interesting read, and it's only 70 or so pages long. If you have a couple of hours to kill, give it a read and see what you think.

 

[Steff1337]

I think that @bookie will appreciate this thread, lol.

 

[pyx]

TITLE: The Lime Twig
AUTHOR(S): John Hawkes
GENRE(S): Fiction, Crime, Thriller

OPINION: i remember first reading this novel and being stunned by the prose. so intricate, yet almost phantasmagorical in nature. each page provides aesthetic value in some way. the elaborate way in which it was constructed engirds the tension that it provides you as well. there are mysterious forces here at work, most of which are outside of the reader's grasp. think the love-child of Nabokov and American Noir conceived in a grimy downtown fleshpot

Hawkes' is truly a masterful prose stylist; on par with someone like Updike, at least in this novel.

 

[rih]

Thank you all for your wonderful recommendations! I really appreciate everyone contributing.
I'll do another now.

TITLES: The Collector
AUTHOR: John Fowles

OPINION: This books was so eerie and creepy! I think a part of the reason I enjoyed it so much was due to that, learning about Frederick and learning his thought process/ideals and goals, it was all just so well written, it's written in such a way you can't seem to stop reading despite the morbid situation and event that is occurring. I hope someone gets interested enough to read it as I haven't really done it much justice.

I'll leave with another quote.

"I love making, I love doing. I love being to the full, I love everything which is not sitting and watching and copying and dead at heart."

Again thank you all for contributions and viewing this thread.

 

[rih]

I'm back after my little hiatus; unfortunately

TITLE: Dracula
AUTHOR(S): Bram Stoker
GENRE(S): Horror/Classics/Fiction

OPINION: I'm a big fan of the director Robert Eggers, seeing that he was making Nosferatu i decided i'd give Dracula a re-read, a lot faster of a read this time since when I was younger; I think the style of writing just never clicked or I had to reread some of the old Victorian phrases and mannerisms within the book. I love the book did back when I first read it do now, some parts are quite repetitive but I almost feel like it's intentional, like thinking again and again, a hyper-fixation on a fear (or in this case women) The dreary dark start of the book is definitely my favourite part. Reading it with the cold rainy weather outside this time of year too was perfect I went to this old river and there's this worn down shamble of a hour with enough protection to get cover from rain and I just sat there reading for the most part. Almost get a little bit of whiplash when I read Dracula whenever I think of current era vampires or them in media nowadays, Twillight/Buffy etcetra (Or my favourite Nick Cage movie Vampire's Kiss) Happy I reread it anyways.

Hope this thread gets some more love.

 

[nux_walpurgis]

Thank you all for your wonderful recommendations! I really appreciate everyone contributing.
I'll do another now.

TITLES: The Collector
AUTHOR: John Fowles

OPINION: This books was so eerie and creepy! I think a part of the reason I enjoyed it so much was due to that, learning about Frederick and learning his thought process/ideals and goals, it was all just so well written, it's written in such a way you can't seem to stop reading despite the morbid situation and event that is occurring. I hope someone gets interested enough to read it as I haven't really done it much justice.

I'll leave with another quote.

"I love making, I love doing. I love being to the full, I love everything which is not sitting and watching and copying and dead at heart."

Again thank you all for contributions and viewing this thread.

I loved the collector. I really admired the author's ability to change his writing style and tone and vocabulary according to who was narrating the story each time. An I felt so much anger at the male narrator lol

 

[rih]

I loved the collector. I really admired the author's ability to change his writing style and tone and vocabulary according to who was narrating the story each time. An I felt so much anger at the male narrator lol

I'm glad you liked the book! Yeah the author's range was very good, to be able to feel contempt then compassion one after another was so interesting. I wasn't so much angry about it than just 'put off' very creepy/unhinged aha.

 

[nux_walpurgis]

TITLE: Children of Time
AUTHOR: Adrian Tchaikovsky
GENRE: sci-fi

OPINION: An amazing book truly, the worldbuilding was something else. I don't know how a human could come up with all of all this. It literally takes you through the evolution of a civilzation, that reaches technological advancement, while being so different from humans. It tackles themes of comunication, human-god cmplexes, the urge to dominate or destroy, self-identity, religion, gender inequality issues. If you like sci fi it's a must.

 

[nux_walpurgis]

TITLE: Annihilation
AUTHOR: Jeff Vandermeer
GENRE: sci fi, (cosmic) horror

OPINION: This book showed me what cosmic horror is, how it should make someone feel. It is not the usual fear you feel when you watch a movie with a haunted house or a typical monster. I am talking about the guttural, instinctual, soul-freezing terror a human feels when coming face to face with the absolutely inxexplicable and totally uknown. Something so vast and alien that it might not even register you're there, something that can change your world and even you, turn everything you know, including yourself, into a living nightmare, while it may not even realise what it is doing. This book made feel a kind of fear I had never felt before in my life, it made my very soul shiver, I literally cried from this deep reaching terror. It made me feel feelings I didn't know I could feel. One of my all time favourites. Also, it describes nature so beautifully and the pictures it paints for the reader are so vivid. I almost never re-read books, and yet, I open Annihilation and read a couple of pages every few months because it is such a masterpiece.


I also need to say, I made my sister read it and she said it made her feel serenity and peace, which are totally different feelings from what I experienced lol. But goes to show you how different people can perceive cosmic horror.

 

[rih]

TITLE: Annihilation
AUTHOR: Jeff Vandermeer
GENRE: sci fi, (cosmic) horror

OPINION: This book showed me what cosmic horror is, how it should make someone feel. It is not the usual fear you feel when you watch a movie with a haunted house or a typical monster. I am talking about the guttural, instinctual, soul-freezing terror a human feels when coming face to face with the absolutely inxexplicable and totally uknown. Something so vast and alien that it might not even register you're there, something that can change your world and even you, turn everything you know, including yourself, into a living nightmare, while it may not even realise what it is doing. This book made feel a kind of fear I had never felt before in my life, it made my very soul shiver, I literally cried from this deep reaching terror. It made me feel feelings I didn't know I could feel. One of my all time favourites. Also, it describes nature so beautifully and the pictures it paints for the reader are so vivid. I almost never re-read books, and yet, I open Annihilation and read a couple of pages every few months because it is such a masterpiece.


I also need to say, I made my sister read it and she said it made her feel serenity and peace, which are totally different feelings from what I experienced lol. But goes to show you how different people can perceive cosmic horror.

That sounds amazing, definitely adding that to the list, thank you for contributing also! appreciate it.

 

[zengiraffe]

TITLE: The Conspiracy Against the Human Race
AUTHOR: Thomas Ligotti
GENRE: Non-fiction
OPINION: Best book on philosophical pessimism that I have ever read. There's no "bait and switch" at the end where the author inserts some optimistic twist, unlike in many other similar books. Ligotti's pessimism is unapologetic and boundless, it's beautiful.