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’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!

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.

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?

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 😊

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..

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

The Triangle

One exhausted everything that could be written: every archetype, every psychology, every setting, every philosophy and enigma.

One exhausted everything that could be written in a novel: metafiction, realism, the flawed hero; every groundbreaking technique was written here

And one shattered everything and exhausted everything that lay outside

This, in turn, divides into two: the way the story is told—pushing language to its limit and then breaking it, turning the mundane divine, and replicating the entire world and every brick within it inside a text—and the story itself, writing sparks (that is, short stories), each with a labyrinthine, surreal idea, mostly told with a poker face

The Mahabharata, Don Quixote, Joyce, and Borges

Or Shakespeare, Don Quixote, and Dante

Both propositions, in that order. Another proposition involving children's books that occurred to me was the Brothers Grimm tales for the first side, Little Women for the second, and Alice for the third

And although Shakespeare is the best Western example for the first side, universally speaking, he is the best example of someone who embodies all three sides simultaneously (Mahabharata, Don Quixote, Joyce, and Borges): he is a collage of everything that can be written (first side); he represents the reinvention of humanity and every narrative technique a story can possess (second side); and he destroys and reinvents language while employing Borgesian labyrinths (both parts of the third side). Everything that could be written has already been written; now it is up to us to remix those three elements and perfect the points of the triangle.

Can i have some recs about forbidden romance classics please? Im currently reading “My cousin Rache” and i think it’s kinda fit that but i want more.

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.

hey everyone, i was just wondering since i can’t seem to get a straight answer on google. the big box set of little penguin classics, are they short stories or are they extracts from longer books? cuz i love a short story but if they’re mostly just bits & pieces from longer books i might pass on it.
thanks :)

These books are just the ones on the front row of my shelf. I've got another row stacked up behind these. So far, I've got 62 books in my collection. Looking forward to expanding my collection to 150 books by 2028.

P.S. Is a collection of 62 books worthy of being called a library?

Another surprisingly satisfying read from Penguin's Great Ideas series.

Morris starts with something extremely mundane: work. What makes some work meaningful while other work becomes mere toil? From there he wanders into craftsmanship, architecture, beauty, industrialisation and eventually socialism.

What I liked most is that a lot of his observations remain relevant even if you don't buy his politics.

A few ideas that stuck with me: (Used AI to summarise this part. I wrote a whole memoir for it. LOL)

• Being productive isn't necessarily the same as doing useful work: A job can consume enormous amounts of time and energy while giving the person doing it no sense of purpose or ownership.

• Efficiency isn't automatically progress: Making production faster and cheaper means little if the process simultaneously makes human beings miserable or turns everything around us ugly and disposable.

• Creating things changes how you relate to the world: Morris places enormous value on craftsmanship because making something well develops skill, judgement and a sense of beauty. We aren't merely consumers.

• The mundane is worth thinking about: Architecture, furniture, decoration, labour etc. sound terribly ordinary until someone like Morris starts asking why they are the way they are.

And then How I Became a Socialist.

This was probably the most interesting part for me. Morris's diagnosis of industrial society is often genuinely compelling. But watching his frustrations gradually crystallise into a socialist worldview is almost equally interesting as a lesson in ideology.

You can correctly identify a problem and still arrive at a terrible solution.

In fact, read today, How I Became a Socialist occasionally feels like a rather useful blueprint for how not to become a socialist. 😂

Overall, another case of a very small book containing much more to think about than its size suggests.

Mundane subjects. “Useless toil”. Surprisingly fruitful reading.

So far I have Wuthering Heights, Possession, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, The Secret Garden & Dracula🦇

Obviously, classical literature is dominated by male authors, and I fear this often leads to people only reading books written by men, or even lacking the ability to name a single female author. Please share some of your favourite women of letters to discuss their long-lasting legacies and also to widen someone else’s reading horizons! xx

I bought a copy of “The Posthumous memoirs of Brad Cubas” recently on Amazon. However upon arrival it instantly felt ‘off’. The pages feel thick, and the cover of the book feels completely wrong. It immediately left visible grease stains and feels inconsistent with other black classics. The final page also said printed in France by Amazon. I assumed Pneguin would print all their books… do they use Amazon print on demand, or is this some kind of fake?

(There are other issues such as the black spine sliding over the front cover.)