h-o-t t-o g-t-f-o-o-h-k-w-a-y-d-g-g-t-f-o-o-h-y-s-i-f-w-a-d-g-t-f-o

[Slurpee]

I swear I didn't bring up music just to segue into this but seriously how the FUCK was carly rae jepsen's "run away with me" not more of a thing? it's SO GOOD.

[u2]OE2qEpkWWoQ[/u2]

I'm looking at billboard's year end for 2015 and I want to throw up and then kill myself
ed sheeran's thinking out loud? maroon 5 sugar AND animals? all about that bass? dear future husband?
taylor swift's bad blood? rachel platten's fiht song? that awful charlie puth song for the fast and the furious guy? jealous? stitches? 🤮

chandelier was good
ex's and oh's was good
can't feel my face was good
style was good
hello was FINE I GUESS
elastic heart
even hotline bling grew on me
downtown
uptown funk
fine fine fine, but literally none of them are better than run away with me. they're just not. it's just an insanely good pop song

[DiscoBallClock]

Also yeah, this. I remember that when I started my Masters' thesis I had a pretty good idea as to what I wanted to do. For my PhD I'm aware that I need to read a lot of shit to even come close to knowing enough.

Same with literature. I read pretty much daily and I'm painfully aware that I'll never read everything I want to

Got any recommendations, perhaps even from Portugal (or Brazil or Angola or whatever)? I don't think I can name a single writer who writes in Portuguese. Wait, Pessao. That's one. Good job me.

I think you mean Pessoa, but hey, that's more than most people know.

Regarding portuguese literature, here are some options:
- Eça de Queirós, "Os Maias" ["The Maias"]: Probably the best example of a portuguese representation of the realist literary movement. Kinda heavy on the descriptions of stuff, but scathing dialogue and character writing, illustrating the decadence of the 1870s, so it's funny like that.

- Jorge de Sena, "Sinais de Fogo" ["Signs of Fire"]: Goddamn I love this book so much. It's probably one of my favorites of all time. It's set in the early XX Century, right about the start of the Spanish Civil War. It's a coming of age novel, but it pretty much puts any other representative of the genre to shame. Its depth and style are unmatched in portuguese lit imo

- José Saramago, "As Intermitências da Morte" ["Death With Interruptions"]: Probably our most controversial writer (got him the Nobel in 1999 tho), his style is quite unconventional and it may take some time to get used to, so take that into account. He basically writes pretty much without punctuation (think of like a "flow of thought" thing). I'm not his biggest fan, but I love the premise of the book and what he does with it: basically, one day in an """"""unnamed"""""" country, people don't die anymore. They just don't. The book pretty much explores what happens, and it's really clever.

I guess for prose that's it. You mentioned Pessoa, but he's mostly a poet. I really like his stuff, but idk what to make of translated poetry. Also, he had 4 alter egos who write under different names and completely different styles, so there's that. He did write stuff outside poetry in his Livro do Desassossego ("The Book of Disquiet"), but I feel like you could take more out of it if you're familiar to his "lore", because it's kinda cryptic.

If you're into philosophy, António Damásio is a neuroscientist who gives rationalists the finger. Yeah, I know, Hume already did that, but he does it on the grounds of science. Two good examples are O Erro de Descartes ("Descartes' Error") and A Estranha Ordem das Coisas (roughly translates to "The Weird Order of Things", but I couldn't find an english translation anywhere)

I can also recommend non-portuguese stuff if you tell me what books you're into

[DiscoBallClock]

{{{}}}

bureaucracy generally seems to punish honesty

then people act surprised when they hear statistics about psychopaths thriving in the business sector

this is kinda true, yeah. but it's also kinda ingrained in people, perpetuating a cycle of further dishonesty

i encourage everyone i work with to be 100% honest, including my students. it's fine if you didn't do your readings, i just need to know in order to know how i'll go about it

[DiscoBallClock]

incidentally, I don't know any Dutch writers other than Spinoza and Grotius, so if you can recommend me any I'd be thankful (@Grey)

[DiscoBallClock]

I swear I didn't bring up music just to segue into this but seriously how the FUCK was carly rae jepsen's "run away with me" not more of a thing? it's SO GOOD.


I'm looking at billboard's year end for 2015 and I want to throw up and then kill myself
ed sheeran's thinking out loud? maroon 5 sugar AND animals? all about that bass? dear future husband?
taylor swift's bad blood? rachel platten's fiht song? that awful charlie puth song for the fast and the furious guy? jealous? stitches? 🤮

chandelier was good
ex's and oh's was good
can't feel my face was good
style was good
hello was FINE I GUESS
elastic heart
even hotline bling grew on me
downtown
uptown funk
fine fine fine, but literally none of them are better than run away with me. they're just not. it's just an insanely good pop song

I will preface this reply by stating that there's a youtube channel that does "best of 20xx" videos with snippets of the best songs of that year and I love them. It obviously has something to do with the nostalgia factor (because you get kinda taken to that specific year in your memories), but there's something about that "oh shit, that song" feeling that just makes me wanna go on living.

now that that's out of the way

yeah, CRJ fucking slaps. She's a really good pop artist. In fact, that "I really like you" song off this album is a banger. Her songs are perfect for daydreaming about love, dancing in the living room, or whatever it is people do when they listen to her music. I hate the claim that music can't be "taken seriously" unless it's super deep or intricate - sometimes good music is just vapid stuff that makes you happy, and there's nothing wrong with that

about those other songs you mentioned:

sucks: thinking out loud; sugar; anything meghan trainor (i can't stand her music); fast and furious song; hello (every adele song is the same come on)
eh: animals (i like the chorus ok); bad blood; chandelier (overplayed as hell); elastic heart; uptown funk (so fucking overplayed jfc)
slaps: stitches (it's really catchy and i have good memories of it); can't feel my face; hotline bling

[DiscoBallClock]

i really just bared my heart out to the CC BT huh

[GreyClock]

I think you mean Pessoa, but hey, that's more than most people know.

Eça de Queirós, "Os Maias" ["The Maias"]
Jorge de Sena, "Sinais de Fogo" ["Signs of Fire"]
José Saramago, "As Intermitências da Morte" ["Death With Interruptions"]

I can also recommend non-portuguese stuff if you tell me what books you're into

No, Pessao. You haven't heard of him? For shame. Yeah, Pessoa. The Book of Disquiet has been on my to-read list since forever. Can't remember why, but there you go.

Will check those out, thanks!

As far as other recommendations go, I don't care, go nuts. I'll read pretty much anything that seems interesting to me at a first glance. Predominantly fiction, from the classic realist and modernist novels to more recent (avant garde) stuff. I try to read from all over, but it's mostly US/UK/Russian/Dutch/Flemish and French stuff, statistically speaking. I raved about Louis-Ferdinand Céline and Robert Musil's The Man Without Qualities in this thread not too long ago. Weird horror, detectives, drama, romance, absurdist, whatever. It's hard to narrow it down without resorting to a list of I've read this, this, this, this and that.

Out of your recommendations I'm probably most likely to read Signs of Fire. "It's a coming of age novel, but it pretty much puts any other representative of the genre to shame." That's a pretty bold claim, but we'll see. It's gonna be hard to beat Death on Credit by Céline or something like Ham on Rye by Bukowski.

[DiscoBallClock]

I think you mean Pessoa, but hey, that's more than most people know.

Eça de Queirós, "Os Maias" ["The Maias"]
Jorge de Sena, "Sinais de Fogo" ["Signs of Fire"]
José Saramago, "As Intermitências da Morte" ["Death With Interruptions"]

I can also recommend non-portuguese stuff if you tell me what books you're into

No, Pessao. You haven't heard of him? For shame. Yeah, Pessoa. The Book of Disquiet has been on my to-read list since forever. Can't remember why, but there you go.

Will check those out, thanks!

As far as other recommendations go, I don't care, go nuts. I'll read pretty much anything that seems interesting to me at a first glance. Predominantly fiction, from the classic realist and modernist novels to more recent (avant garde) stuff. I try to read from all over, but it's mostly US/UK/Russian/Dutch/Flemish and French stuff, statistically speaking. I raved about Louis-Ferdinand Céline and Robert Musil's The Man Without Qualities in this thread not too long ago. Weird horror, detectives, drama, romance, absurdist, whatever. It's hard to narrow it down without resorting to a list of I've read this, this, this, this and that.

Out of your recommendations I'm probably most likely to read Signs of Fire. "It's a coming of age novel, but it pretty much puts any other representative of the genre to shame." That's a pretty bold claim, but we'll see. It's gonna be hard to beat Death on Credit by Céline or something like Ham on Rye by Bukowski.

Yeah, the Book of Disquiet is great. It's worth a read, even though, as said, it's kinda cryptic. But it's really interesting and an entertaining read if you're in the mood for some analysis.

Oof, I've...read some stuff. I guess I'll list a few of my favorites: Gabriel Garcia Marquez/100 Years of Solitude; Haruki Murakami/The Wind-up Bird Chronicle; James Baldwin/Tell Me How Long The Train's Been Gone; Hermann Hesse/The Steppenwolf; Friedrich Nietzsche/Beyond Good and Evil; Agustina Bessa-Luís/A Sibila

i have other favorites but they're fairly obvious

That's an excellent choice, I love the fuck out of that book. I should warn you that it's an unfinished novel (it still has like 700 pages tho). I think that it's easy for coming of age novels to fall into trite "being an adult is soooo hard" bullshit, but this one doesn't patronize its protagonist. Quite on the contrary, I think that it's wonderfully nuanced regarding his character development. It also touches ever so lightly on social criticism without being preachy. God, I love it so much

[GreyClock]

incidentally, I don't know any Dutch writers other than Spinoza and Grotius, so if you can recommend me any I'd be thankful (@Grey)

Well, I'll devide this in two. Dutch writers and Flemish writers.

In the Netherlands we have the so-called "Big Three" of postwar literature: Gerard Reve, Harry Mulisch and Willem Frederik Hermans. They're a good place to start. I prefer Hermans, in fact his novel Beyond Sleep is one of my favorite books. It's about a geology student who goes on an expedition somewhere in the north of Norway. (I don't want to say too much.) All three are dead now and all three lived through WWII. The latter two have written really good fictional books set during the war: The Assault by Mulisch and The Darkroom of Damocles by Hermans. The former was turned into a movie that won an Oscar, you might've heard of it. Mulisch's The Discovery of Heaven is also relatively well-known I think, but I haven't read it myself. I haven't read that much by Gerard Reve, save The Evenings. It's a book about life shortly after the war and explores themes like loneliness and boredom. I don't know how well it translates, especially since the main thing that struck me about it was the style.

I hate this expression, but all three were real characters. Mulisch was the son of a Dutch collaborator and a Jewish woman, a bit of a dandy and really arrogant in a funny way. That "Big Three" thing I mentioned, he referred to himself as the "Big One". Hermans was the sort of wry, nihilistic professorial type. Reve came out as gay in the early Sixties and combined that with being a practising Roman Catholic. He was famously tried for blasphemy after writing a story about a character having sex with God in the form of a donkey. All three are very funny in their own way, I wonder if and how that translates as well though, but yeah. You can sorta use this information to extrapolate what they might write about, and how.

Other interesting Dutch writers include: Jan Wolkers, Maarten 't Hart, Hella Haasse and Ferdinand Bordewijk.

Wolkers is funny, idiosyncratic, artistic, sexually uninhibited in that very '60s way. At the same time, I used to watch these segments on TV when I was a kid, where he would talk at length about all the plants, insects and animals in his garden. He also wrote the novel the movie Turkish Delight was based on, you might have heard of it? Maarten 't Hart is a crossdresser/gardener/biologist whose novels are nostalgic and almost polemical in their treatment of the repressive Protestantism he was raised in. I don't mean essays against religion or anything, just nice vivid stories about growing up in such an environment and his (or rather his proxies) dealing with that later in life, a lot of stuff about sexual frustration and repression, but let me reiterate: nice, with real heart and a peculiar warmth. Of course, this being (highbrow) Dutch literature and all, expect a lot of sucking, fucking, masturbation, both hetero- and homosexual, anything goes. Hella Haasse is the "Grand Dame" of Dutch literature. She grew up in colonial Indonesia and the books I've read by her dealt with her time there, or were set in that period (although she has written other books as well). Bordewijk I mentioned specifically because his novel Character is set in a law firm and the protagonist is an (aspiring) lawyer, but mostly deals with the strained relationship he has with his father. I don't know if you're into that specifically.

I went off a bit, don't feel like tidying up. Flemish authors tomorrow.

[VCRClock]

i think i broke up with my boyfraën today
but thog dont really caare
i got worse problems:
i broke up with my boyfran

had a "whoa" moment when I realized that "hotline bling" sampled timmy thomas' "why can't we live together"
when you think about it, it's super obvious, but I knew the timmy thomas song when hotline bling came out and I still didn't catch it because it doesn't sound that much like a sample

[Slurpee]

(every adele song is the same come on)

haha

I like Rolling in the Deep

but yeah my problem with Hello was that it's literally just Someone Like You except again
like when you lose a file and have to start it over from scratch and you end up making something that's essentially the same and only different in the details

[Slurpee]

they're fine songs, but everybody forgot Hello even happened because it was so unnecessary
if you wanted to hear that. why wouldn't you just listen to Someone Like You again?

[GreyClock]

Gabriel Garcia Marquez/100 Years of Solitude;
Got that one on the shelf, ready to go.

Haruki Murakami/The Wind-up Bird Chronicle;
I've read Norwegian Wood, which is, from what I understand, his most straightforward novel? His other works are more magic realist in nature?

James Baldwin/Tell Me How Long The Train's Been Gone; Agustina Bessa-Luís/A Sibila
Never heard of either.

Hermann Hesse/The Steppenwolf;
Is on my longlist along with Siddhartha. I want to try and read more in German.

Friedrich Nietzsche/Beyond Good and Evil;
Is that a good place to start with Nietzsche? I forced myself to read Zarathustra once and I was mostly lost, too allegorical for me to distil the philosophy, not enough bagage and things to grab on to. Speaking of philosophy, Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations made me cum, it's so elegant and structured and enlightening. Everyone's always harping on about the Tractatus, but I found that to be a load of hogwash by comparison (bit strong perhaps, but you get what I mean). Maybe because later Wittgenstein is the shit and I started there.

Post your other favorites, even if they're obvious.

That's an excellent choice, I love the fuck out of that book. I should warn you that it's an unfinished novel (it still has like 700 pages tho). I think that it's easy for coming of age novels to fall into trite "being an adult is soooo hard" bullshit, but this one doesn't patronize its protagonist. Quite on the contrary, I think that it's wonderfully nuanced regarding his character development. It also touches ever so lightly on social criticism without being preachy. God, I love it so much

Have you heard of the two books I mentioned in this category? You should check them out if not, talk about unflinching looks at growing up. No holds barred sleaze, violence, degradation and death.

[GreyClock]

I'm weirdly dogmatic when it comes to reading philosophy though. I get frustrated or bored if I don't agree with something, any little thing. I even get frustrated when I read stuff that I agree with in principle, but that is argued poorly. "Ah, that's a good point. Hey, hang on just a minute there... YOU STRAWMAN MOTHERFUCKER YOU, FUCK THIS I'M OUT!" In fiction I'm up for anything, but as soon as it's presented as fact or something, I don't know what it is exactly... You could spin that as both a positive and a negative I guess, but it does stifle quite a few attemps at broadening my horizons through this particular channel.

[FLOUNDERMAN_CLOCK]

Haruki Murakami/The Wind-up Bird Chronicle;
I've read Norwegian Wood, which is, from what I understand, his most straightforward novel? His other works are more magic realist in nature?

Pretty much. Even stuff like Norwegian Wood still feels utterly surreal even though it's all just people doing people things and no supernatural stuff. I read a short story collection by him too and I can't for the life of me remember anything about it besides the title being " the Elephant Vanishes" and that one of the stories was about this woman being stalked by a secret organization of slightly smaller than normal people. Not little people little people either, a standard propositioned adult human who's only four feet tall. Like you hit someone with a shrink ray for just a few seconds. I don't even remember the rest of that story but the detail really stuck out to me.

[GreyClock]

Pretty much. Even stuff like Norwegian Wood still feels utterly surreal even though it's all just people doing people things and no supernatural stuff.

I didn't find it all that surreal? I remember feeling as if the story might suddenly veer off into the surreal at several points, but it never actually did for me. Like the introduction to that whole episode in the institution in the woods for example. I don't know, I think I might have immediately attributed anything odd, like strange reactions to situations or interactions, to cultural differences. Oh right, I only just now remembered the ending. Never mind.

and that one of the stories was about this woman being stalked by a secret organization of slightly smaller than normal people. Not little people little people either, a standard propositioned adult human who's only four feet tall. Like you hit someone with a shrink ray for just a few seconds. I don't even remember the rest of that story but the detail really stuck out to me.

That's neat.

[GreyClock]

Speaking of surreal: The Blind Owl.

[FLOUNDERMAN_CLOCK]

Speaking of surreal: The Blind Owl.

I only had to skim a few words to think "hey this shit seems up my alley". Sounds like a real trip. I'll have to look into which of the three english translations is best.

I didn't find it all that surreal? I remember feeling as if the story might suddenly veer off into the surreal at several points, but it never actually did for me. Like the introduction to that whole episode in the institution in the woods for example. I don't know, I think I might have immediately attributed anything odd, like strange reactions to situations or interactions, to cultural differences. Oh right, I only just now remembered the ending. Never mind.

It's that real/surreal feeling where you know it happened and it makes sense but it doesn't feel real, or life just seems dreamlike because of the state it's in, good neutral or bad.

That feeling has me thinking about these two japanese manga anime comics I read a month or two ago (I'm sorry) by the same guy, Fire Punch and Chainsaw Man. Fire punch is (mostly) an action series set in an incredibly shitty nihilistic post-apocalyptic world. It starts out as a weird but standard revenge story, but then the revenge story peters out in an odd but believable fashion, and the overall story becomes a commentary on identity. In particular the various faces we put on in the different groups we interact with, how they interpret those faces when we're not around, and how those faces are all still part of us, whichever one we might be wearing currently. There's also a lot of punching people. with fire. The MC is like if the Venture Bros' version of the Human Torch mostly got used to it and started traveling around setting other people on fire. With punching.

The other big feature of the series is the constant outright god damn absurdity from the worldbuilding to the characters, their perspectives, and the absurd things they do. Though there's actual reasons behind what they do and believe even if it's ridiculous and detrimental. Another part of that absurdity comes from the way it subverts or ignores standard manga plot writing or even just sensible writing. and it's like this the entire time. Normalcy is only built up in this series to be shattered nonchalantly. Then rebuilt and shattered again and again until the very last chapter puts it together one more time. And no matter how fucking ridiculous it gets things never stop feeling human, and you never forget this is the same guy from chapter 1 no matter how much changes.

It's almost like one big shitpost, but a self-aware and heartfelt shitpost. I think if you told the writers for Xavier Rengade Angel to write a serious and bloody as fuck seinen manga, this is what you'd get. He does the same "wander into a town/situation with good intentions  / ruin shit for everyone with ignorance and naivete or lack of foresight" thing Xavier does. Except people start to band around him because he doesn't spew bullshit all the time so they assume he's this cool silent badass literal god. To the point of building a religion around him. In a world where people are as hopeless and powerless as they are here, a guy who can just punch the bad guys away might as well be a god, even if nearly every decision or action of his turns into a complete fuckin disaster.

With Chainsaw Man I didn't expect the author's follow up to be a fun adventurey demon fighting series but hey why not. Reminds me of Soul Eater a bit with the horror theme and upbeat attitude except the entire cast is memorable not just a couple of them. It's also plenty fuckin ridiculous but not like fire punch was. The MC doesn't have the ingenuity or crazy battle ability other dumb protagonists do either, he's just a regular guy trying to earn some money for food and rent, overwhelmed by his life. He did get some chainsaw powers, he can probably fight one guy and win for sure, but he can't kill or save everyone. He can't outplan or outkill the antagonists due to morality or ability, these are continuous problems.

Really though the only information you need to know about it is that the main character has a chainsaw for a face and arms



Fuckin beautiful. Of course that's only till a particular chapter late in the series that makes you remember it's the same author oh god.

[FLOUNDERMAN_CLOCK]

I know in reality this thing would eat me but his giant bulbous head is adorable







They're just so big silly and endearing. Like a pelican.

[RobClock]

Https://www.garfield.com


Depressing.