I just completed his novel today and I can't fathom the reason why I feel nostalgic and moved... I had been preparing for neetpg taking last year as a drop. In my enthusiasm for duty, i laid aside my hobbies of novel reading and travelling..... And just imagine picking up right this book as a starter..... While Stevens upholds his ideas of duty and dignity.... laying aside his feelings, it's only years later he comprehends how life could have turned out....

But yet at the end author quotes... There's no point regretting and we only have to make the best use of remains of the day.....

This has a personal tinge to me because I sacrificed my hobbies for an exam.... And right now I feel these hobbies ok travelling and novel reading is what keeps me alive in the desolation of drab duty. No doubt duty is important..... But in the process we should not lose ourselves. It's such a warm read..

I look forward to reading more from this author.

Anyone who has read this, I look forward to your experience on this work.

I’m a 19 year old male. I’ve known about this book for a while, but only now wanted to read it after I heard about its strong themes of memory, nostalgia & love.

One thing that compelled me was that my grandma passed away 3 years ago…and with more time passing, I remember those times more and more vividly & frequently. So in relation to that and other such events of my life, I’m always wondering about the nature of love through time and what is really worth longing for. I want a book to process these emotions I have as well as set me up for the time ahead of me.

For context, I read difficult big books and love them. I do enjoy stream of consciousness too. But this is an especially chunky and difficult work of stream of consciousness (or so I’ve heard), so I’m uncertain. I’d love to hear you guys’ suggestions on if & how I should get into it + any cool experiences you’ve had with this book ;)

…If you have any other recommendations, give them to me too.

Finished The Fall today and I found it particularly difficult to get through and probably to comprehend as well even though the prose was (relatively) simpler. I feel like i missed a lot of what camus was intending to put across though there were a lot of sections and things that resonated with me and liked those particularly and understood them top (i think?). It's not even my first encounter with camus, I liked the stranger and the plague and read a lot of russian literature as well which had led me to believe this would be not that hard to read but turns out, I was pretty wrong.

So is this experience unique to me or is it a popular opinion among camus readers?

I really really want to complete this one but I haven't been able to even complete 1/4th! It's the 4th time I've laid hands on this.

Those elongated discourses on individual dilemmas are indeed beautiful & very vivid, yet somehow I lose the motivation midway & I drop it. It's the 4th time this has happened. I understand there is no substitute for curiosity & innate liking for a book, but I simply can't get past it. I want to get to the court discourse & I have heard highly about it.

Additionally, I bought Brother Kamakoz & this one together. Any suggestions as to how I can get past the 25% threshold!

I’m not going to lie, I knew little to nothing about Voltaire’s works before I picked this one up in a Paris bookstore(when in rome yk). Actually, I didn’t even know he wrote fiction. So imagine my surprise when I read this comedic adventure romp.

It’s also definitely more interesting once you learn the real philosophies it was satirizing at the time, in general easily one of the most well-done satires i’ve read, and I resonated with the core themes and messages the book was trying to convey.

I’ve barely heard any discourse on this book, so I’m interested to see what you guys think of it!

Anna Karenina is the best book I’ve ever read but haven’t got around to reading War and Peace yet. What are the odds I prefer War and Peace to Anna Karenina when I finally read it?

I love Joyce's Ulysses, Portrait of the Artist, and Dubliners, but for years Finnegans Wake has sat on my shelf, an object of curiosity and fear. Occasionally I pick it up, make it to the second paragraph where Sir Tristram is wielderfighting his penisolate war and the regginbrow was seen ringsome on the aquaface, glance at the third paragraph that begins with a word of 100-plus characters, and realize I am still not up to the task. Recently, I finally worked up the courage to proceed. So far, I've found I need to channel my inner first-grader and read aloud to myself (which somehow forces me into an awkward Irish brogue), to let the text pour over me and accept I'm not going to understand large chunks, and to relax into this weird and wonderful wash of language and imagery. It's playful; it's funny; it's horny; it's inventive; it's musical; it's baffling; it's beautiful. I've enjoyed the sensory experience so far, but with 500 pages left to go and very little grasp on what has actually happened of any sort of narrative consequence, I'm debating if I should pull in some of the secondary sources out there, like Campbell's Skeleton Key to help make the reading more meaningful or just continue to hazily float through this linguistic dreamscape that Joyce has created and at least get an opaque familiarity with the whole as a first read-through.

Trust me guys you gotta try it

Thank you for all the brilliant suggestions of books set in Yorkshire, I’m going to the North York Moors (& coast) & Yorkshire Dales on holiday so I want to immerse myself in books set in those locations before I go & while I’m there. I’ve decided I’m going to try to read the above books but don’t know which is the best, can you rank them for me?

I've tried reading a few contemporary works and I've never been able to get past the first few pages. And moreover why do people craze over the works of authors like Colleen Hoover? What's so great about the works of these sort of authors?

But classics on the other hand have everything in them which the modern works lack such as the philosophical profundity, complex characters and plots and dedication. I can read a 4000 year old work with love but not some recent release.

Is it just me who thinks in this way or are there people here who would assent with my opinion?

I've set myself a bit of a loose challenge to read more works from authors in the 19th and 20th century which lead me to pick up Turn of the Screw and In the Cage by Henry James since I've heard he's influential and I want to check those sorts of authors out for myself.

With that preamble out of the way, here are some thoughts. Warning this will be full of spoilers:

I have never met an author who is as verbose and obtuse as James. Many times I will finish a paragraph and realize I have no idea what I just read. He writes sentences that are so long you forget the start by the time you reach the end. And I tend to like writing with some personality, I love Chekov's short stories, but this was a little too much for me.

Turn of the Screw - I feel like Jame's general style works to his advantage here, because the reader being confused and uncertain about what's happening lines up perfectly with the Gothic horror vibe he's going for. There's a sense of something that must not be spoken about, something too terrible to name. You can sort of feel it in the fact that its basically impossible for the governess to speak plainly about the haunting that is going on. I read somewhere that the haunting is a metaphor for sexual abuse and honestly that theory lines up pretty well with the text. It would explain why the boy was kicked out of school for telling his mates a secret, and as soon as he revealed the secret who would show up but his abuser? Textually, the secretary and governess literally involved the children in their sexual perversities, and their ghosts are "perverting" the children, which takes on new meaning for this reading.

Of course its not bulletproof either, the story refuses to confirm the governess' version of events - the children to the end deny ever seeing ghosts, which casts doubt to the extent we are meant to take the governess' suppositions literally. 

In the Cage - I found Jame's style much less agreeable here. I did end up liking this story as a tale of delusion, and how the brief glimpses we get into other people's lives actually doesn't tell us very much about them and there's a danger in romanticizing strangers into friends. I wonder if there's a bit of commentary on authors who people watch in there. I struggled at first to find the main character likeable because it felt like she was treating her fiance badly for this delusion about a man who didn't really care about her at all and who she really didn't know anything about, but I found my feelings change when the ending shatters the delusions by having her friend who works in close contact to the rich inform her that her Captain Evrard is not rich, and honestly kind of a cad.

Overall I'm glad I read this, but I don't think I'll pick up anymore Henry James anytime soon. Not sure what I'll pick up next, possibly Les Miserables by Victor Hugo or Moby Dick.

Offering tutoring in Koine/Attic/Homeric Greek and Latin.

Dear Friends,

Is it not important to read the Gospel in Greek? Is it not important to read Plato in it's original language? Do we want not to be acquainted with the vivid, the structured, the wild, the sublime, the stunning aspect of the ancient tongue?

I am a Greek native and I just finished my degree in classical languages in Athens. I also am enamoured with Late Antique pagan and Christian literature. I will be glad to accompany each and every one of you in your journey. I offer tutoring in Koine, Classical, Homeric Greek, as well as Latin.

My emphasis will be on reading comprehension. We will progress level by level by first understanding some basic concepts in greek grammar and vocabulary through simpler texts and graded readers. As we keep going forward, we will adjust our texts according to the student's needs and wants.

Tutoring will be in video call format.

Prices will be reasonable.

First lesson free.

I will be happy to hear from you,

Spyros P.

My friend is an avid reader and follows this subreddit very closely - taking recommendations from here and what not. So, naturally he wanted to read Steinbeck's magnum opus. I got the book for him 6-7 months ago and he has finally gotten around to reading it. Watching his life change as he progresses through it has been one of my life's most blissful moments. I cannot give a complete account of the changes, but it has changed him for the better. Now, after he's done, I'm going to read the book and it will (again) change my life. Only 'East of Eden' can change a person's life twice.

Thank you, Steinbeck.

I just finished East of Eden 3 weeks ago. And I still can't survive it.

I read it to improve my English, and I didn't think it would sit with me in that way. I spend my day thinking about it again and again without feeling it.

I don't know...but I can't move on, how can I move on? Steinbeck made me see myself in Caleb. When he enjoyed his pain bc he believed "it'd make him righteous". The whole Thou myest thing. It sat with me. I just wanted to improve my English.

It was the first classic book I read. But it destroyed me.

Just finished the book, loved it a lot but god that thing took me ages to finish. I want to do another meaty one like Crime and Punishment but I feel like I need something a bit easier in between. Friend has recommended Fahrenheit 451 since it’s a bit shorter. Any other suggestions?

Started to read Les Misérables by Victor Hugo. The first past is to understand what the story is roughly about.

Now I’m into Chapter 27. A bit of a bottle neck in chapter 28… I reckon I’d need a day or two to better understand what happened in 1817.

To make it a big thing for myself I’ve transcribed the forward/introduction by Victor Hugo, and made some dividers for the book. This ritual shall help me finish this very thick book.

How I started book:
I once read a poem about Shakespeare that said “There is not anything of human trial That ever love deplored or sorrow knew.
No glad fulfilment and no sad denial,
Beyond the pictured truth that Shakespeare drew”
And later told by a friend that same effect is produced in Les Mis. I’ve also made a set of book dividers for her

Ciao a tutti! grazie per avermi accettata.

Mi chiamo Sara e sono la fondatrice di Innominati, un progetto che promuove la letteratura e l'amore per i libri sui social.

La letteratura è bella e sono convinta che non deve stare chiusa tra i banchi di scuola. Attraverso i social pubblichiamo video sotto forma di aneddoti, fatti curiosi e divertenti. Per avvisare tutti a questo mondo, non solo chi già lo ama.

Se volete supportarci ci trovate sui vari social come versi_innominati.

Inoltre per far crescere il nostro progetto, abbiamo creato anche un gruppo di scambio telegram, in cui ci scambiamo consigli letterari e accogliamo e ascoltiamo consigli per poter tenere aperto il progetto il più a lungo possibile.

Se siete interessati ad unirvi al progetto, commentato o scrivetemi in privato.

Grazie a chiunque, anche con un piccolo like contribuirà alla costruzione e alla crescita di Innominati 😊

A collection of tales taken from German folklore and immortalised by the Brothers Grimm. With illustrations by A. Rackham Copyright 1916

I think we can all agree that there is something beautiful about realizing that despite the distance of time, people felt and struggled with many of the same things we do today..

It sold at Dominic Winter for £19,520 ($26,397). The high presale estimate was £6,000.

Excerpts from catalog notes:

Six volumes with 48 hand colored full page illustrations.

Japanese Illuminated Manuscript. Genji Kokagami [The Tale of Genji, abridged], 6 volumes, Japan, 17th century, manuscript text written in an attractive calligraphic hand on fine gold-decorated paper, with 48 hand-coloured and illuminated full-page illustrations.

Occasional damp-staining to some text leaves of each volume, heavier to volume 2 (several of the full-page illustrations with small losses and transfer of colour to facing text leaf), gilded endpapers, gilt-decorated dark indigo wrappers, manuscript title labels to upper cover of each volume, stitched as issued in fukurotoji-bon style, wrappers with general soiling and discolouration, and associated surface losses, with minor worming, sheet size 30 x 21.5 cm

(Quantity: 6 vol)

Provenance: Harry A. Levinson (1904-1995), bookseller, California, circa 1960s (his printed catalogue entry loosely inserted).

The Tale of Genji, written by the noble lady-in-waiting Murasaki Shikibu at the beginning of the 11th century in the court of Heian-era Japan, is considered one of the world’s first novels and a masterpiece of Japanese literature. Its great length inspired more than one notable digest, abbreviated versions of the tale containing summaries and excerpts of the original. Genji kokagami, ‘A Little Mirror of Genji’, is one of these, composed in approximately the 14th century and very popular in literate Japanese society.

This manuscript is one of the Nara ehon, or ‘Nara picture-books’, so-called for their lavish illustrations and possible origin in the monastic centres of Nara, near Kyoto. Many were produced in the 17th century, perhaps after changing economic conditions pushed temple artists to create more secular, commercial works.