ITT I will read 52 classic, educational, and bizarre books for 2013 (reps)

[arkskier]

I will post here reviews of books I will read for 2013. I will read books in the following categories:

Books to Read for 2013

1.Classics (Bible, Don Quixote, Crime and Punishment, War and Peace, Schopenhauer, Faulkner, Casanova)
2. Educational (Trivium, Norton Anthology of Poetry, linguistics, grammar, history, math, maybe a dictionary)
3. Bizarre or Experimental (Queneau, Perec, Donoso, Krasznahorkai, French, Japanese, or Eastern European Literature)

If you can suggest any good books, I will rep. Subscribe if you want to keep updated.

[srets]

harry potter

[kingesco]

how to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie.. probably read it tho?

[arkskier]

BOOK #1 OULIPO: A Primer of Potential Literature, edited by Warren Motte

rating: 8/10

Introduction

My first brush with the Oulipo (a French group of select “experimental” writers whose roster includes Italo Calvino, Georges Perec, and Marcel Duchamp) was a book of poems written by the mathematician Jacques Roubaud, titled, “The Form of the City Changes Faster, Alas, Than the Human Heart.” The poems had an experimental and mathematical feel to them quite different from my usual fare – in short, I loved the book. I then proceeded to get books by other Oulipo members: Harry Matthews wrote a small, wonderful book of 61 vignettes, “Singular Pleasures,” all about different people in different countries, all in the act of masturbation. Raymond Queneau tells the story about an altercation in a bus – one story, but told in 99 different ways – metaphorical, philosophical, gastronomical, operatic , mathematical, in the form of a sonnet, ode, haiku, peragoge , and dog Latin, among others.

History of Literary Play and Experimentation

Experimentation and play with literary form is amusing, and it seems plausible that as long as literature has existed, so has experimentation. In the 6th century BC, Lasus of Hermione already wrote lipograms: He eliminated the letter Sigma from his work, “Hymn to Demeter.” Lope de Vega wrote five stories, the first without the vowel A, the second without the vowel E, and so on. In the 3rd century A.D., Nestor of Laranda rewrote the Iliad, but didn’t use the alpha in the first canto, the beta in the second canto, and so on. In the 11th century, Pierre de Riga translated the Bible such that the first canto had no letter A, the second no B, and so on. The Bible itself is suspected to be God’s joke; some say it is an acrostic, a code. A word like “Agla” in the Bible could mean Atha Gibor Leolam Adonai. Some suspect that each letter in the Bible is only the first letter of a word of a much bigger book, about which only God knows.

In the twentieth century, in 1939, Ernest Wright published a 267-page novel, “Gadsby,” where the letter E was not used. In 1962, Marc Saporta published a factorial novel, “Composition No. 1,” whose unbound pages could be read in ANY order that the reader chooses (This was republished recently and available in amazon). Georges Perec, a member of the Oulipo, wrote a 300-page novel “La Disparitions” in 1969 entirely without the letter E.

What many consider THE Oulipian work is Raymond Queneau’s “Cent Mille Milliards de poems,” a set of 10 sonnets, each having 14 lines. The first lines of all 10 poems are interchangeable, and so are the second lines, and the third lines, and so forth, so that we could essentially make one hundred trillion sonnets in all. It would take approximately 200 million years for one person to read all the sonnets.

History of the Oulipo

Oulipo, which stands for Ouvroir de Litterature Potentielle, is a French group of writers that was founded in 1960 under the College de ‘Pataphysique (a college established by Alfred Jarry in 1948) by Raymond Queneau and Francois Le Lionnais. Its main objective was to create, using mostly mathematics, new literary structures or forms that writers in the future could use. In the last 50 years of its existence, it has counted about only 38 members, many of whom are university professors, mathematicians, scientists, musicians, linguists, and philosophers (one is a chemical engineer, another an architect). Its most famous members are Italo Calvino, Raymond Queneau, Marcel Duchamp, Jacques Roubaud, Harry Matthews, and Georges Perec.

The word “Ouvroir,” in French, means a mobile shop in which master cobblers in Paris sold wares. It could also mean a group of rich women who, to assuage their conscience, did needlework for the poor. When the Oulipo was founded, as an “Ouvroir,” it saw itself as a sort of laboratory of literary structures, a search for forms that writers can use. While it may seem that Oulipian works today seem avant-garde, the members consider themselves as only “the most recent manifestation of a venerable literary tradition.”

Oulipo vs. Surrealism, and the Paradox of Constraint

Some of the members of the Oulipo were part of the Dadaist and Surrealist movements in France in the 1930s, from which they defected. The surrealists emphasized subconscious automatic writing. They emphasized freedom in writing and inspiration, against the rigid structures and logic of the Parnassian movement of the 19th century. The Surrealists wrote by chance, randomly. The Oulipo, in turn, go against the surrealists, saying that writing from the subconscious or from inspiration is not freedom but fascism. The Oulipo is anti-chance. Oulipians do not believe in inspiration or waiting for inspiration before writing. They believe that writers are never inspired by subjective chance. They believe that, to write, a writer only has to choose any of the Oulipian forms or constraints, then produce from there a conscious “voluntary” literature. Arguably, we can say that the Oulipo urges us to go back to forms and constraint, traditional or newly invented. The harder the form or constraint, the greater the merit of the solution.

But don’t forms or constraints hinder the writer’s freedom or inspiration? The Oulipo replies that even inspiration has constraints of diction, vocabulary, etc. The Oulipo just uses maximal formal constraints. (All Oulipians believe in constraints, but they deviate in application. Queneau wants that for each constraint that the Oulipo invents, they give several texts as example. Roubaud wants only 1 example for each constraint. Le Lionnais wants no example at all. Ideally, the constraint is simple, and the application difficult.)

The paradox is that, by applying constraints, we are so focused on these constraints that we are distracted regarding the other natural constraints in the language that we take for granted. Thus, we are freed. Constraints are like verbal vacuums that suck in lots of verbal elements that we would otherwise not realize or use. The only real freedom in writing, according to the Oulipo, is the generative power of mathematical forms applied to literature. By creating new forms and structures, not unlike the constraints of the sestina or sonnet of the past, the Oulipo believes that literature could be made.

The Objectives of the Oulipo

The Oulipo has two directions: Anoulipism or analysis, which means a rediscovery of old literary forms (like the sonnet or sestina), and synthoulipism, or synthesis, creation of new forms. Their goal is to furnish future writers with new techniques and forms that would free them from the clutches of inspiration. Thus, the Oulipo wants to discover new structures and to give a few examples for each. They do not really aim to give birth to literary works but to discover the forms that could give birth to, or have “potential” of becoming, a literary work. Queneau even claims that the Oulipo is not a literary school or movement. They are beyond aesthetic value.
Another way to say this is this: The aim of the Oulipo is to explore language scientifically. For them, language is an object that can be explored, like in science. What is Literature? Literature doesn’t only refer to external objects, but to itself as an object, as language. Literature is literary because of its indefinite number of potential meanings; it calls attention to itself. In effect, Queneau wanted to do for literature what Hilbert did for Math. In place of axioms on point, line, and plane, Queneau used words, sentences, and paragraphs.

Oulipo and the Future

Many consider the works of the Oulipo as trivial and only acrobatic amusement, not “serious literature.” But the same way that topology, the theory of numbers, probabilities, and game theory used to be only “mathematical curiosities” that would later become full-fledged fields in themselves, I feel that the Oulipo, from mere potential, mere amusement, has become a literary movement (Even if its founder denies that it is a movement, and even if it has not yet gained critical popularity).

The mixture of mathematics and poetry that the Oulipo does is intriguing. Using Matthew’s Algorithm, for example, we can use any old text, parse the sentences into its constituent parts, scramble the different parts, and generate a new text. With the aid of a computer, we may even be able to make a program that writes a poem or story especially suited to the taste of any reader. The writer creates the program, the program asks the reader to choose the parameters he likes (theme, length, characters, style, décor), the reader selects his choices, then the program will print out a unique story or poem especially made for that reader. Now that's literary customer service.

[arkskier]

Just to give you guys an idea of my taste, here are the books that I read in 2012. The ones with asterisks are the best:

Books I read in 2012

1. The Physiology of Taste, by jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, 9/10*
2. The Cure at Troy: Sophocles' Philoctetes, by Seamus Heaney, 8/10
3. Eternal Enemies, by Adam Zagajewski, 9/10
4. The King's Question, by Brian Culhane, 2/10
5. The Inferno, by Dante Aleghieri, 8/10
6. Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius, 10/10*
7. A Philosophical Enquiry into Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful, by Edmund Burke, 9/10*
8. Unending Blues (poetry), by Charles Simic, 10/10
9. The Leopard, by Guiseppe Di Lampedusa, 9/10*
10. The Reader Over your Shoulder, by Robert Graves, 7/10
11.Story of the Eye (literary erotica), by Georges Bataille, 10/10*
12. Lysistrata, by Aristophanes, 8/10
13. The Revenge of Anguished English, by Richad Lederer, 7/10
14. How to Become Ridiculously Well-read in One Evening, by E. Parrott, 4/10
15. The Collected Poems of Geroges Bataille, translated by Mark Spitzer, 4/10
16. The Selected Poetry of Jaroslav Seifert, translated by Ewald Osers, 9/10
17. His Current Woman, by Jerzy Pilch, 8/10
18. The Superior Person's Book of Words, by Peter Bowler, 8/10
19. Do Butlers Burgle Banks, by P.G. Wodehouse, 9/10
20. Bluebeard: The Life and Crimes of Gilles de Rais, by Leonard Wolf, 8/10
21. A Boy's Life and North of Boston, by Robert Frost, 9/10
22. The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 10/10
23. Superfreakonomics, by Steven Levitt, 8/10
24. Faust (part 2), by Johann Wolfgang Goethe, 8/10
25. The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan doyle, 9/10
26. Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, by T.S. Eliot, 8/10
27. The Odyssey, by Homer, 8/10
28. Blue of Noon, by Georges Bataille, 2/10
29. The Careful Writer: A Modern Guide to English Usage (1965), by Theodore Bernstein, 9/10*
30. Purgatorio, by Dante Alighieri, translated by W.S. Merwin, 8.5/10
31. Black Leapt In (poems), by Chris Forhan, 8/10
32. All This Could be Yours (poems), by Joshua Trotter, 2/10
33. The Irrationalist (poems), by Suzanne Buffam, 7/10
34. The Power and the Glory, by Graham Greene, 8.5/10
35. Uncle Dynamite, by P.G. Wodehouse, 8/10
36. Sonnets to Orpheus, by Rainer Maria Rilke, 2/10
37. The Penguin Book of Curious and Interesting Mathematics, David Wells, 6.5/10
38. How to Read a Book (1956), Mortimer Adler, 9/10*
39. Molecules of Murder, by John Emsley, 8/10
40. Singular Pleasures, by Harry Matthews, 9/10*
41. Raise the Red Lantern, by Su Tong, 8.5/10
42. The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold, by Evelyn Waugh, 6.5/10
43. The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey, by Spencer Wells, 8.5/10*
44. Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin, by Nicholas Ostler, 9/10*
45. The Bird Hoverer (poems), Aaron Belz, 9/10
46. Horse Latitudes (poems), Paul Muldoon, 1/10
47. Nightmare in Wichita: The Hunt for the BTK Strangler, by Robert Beattie, 7/10
48. Fidelity (poems), by Grace Paley, 8/10
49. The Limerick, ed. by Legman, 7/10
50. The Fun of Speaking English: Selected Poems, by Dorothea Grossman, 9/10
51. Walking Papers, by Thomas Lynch, 7/10
52. The Discourses, The Handbook, Fragments, by Epictetus, 9.5/10*
53. The Monk, by Matthew Lewis (1796), 9/10
54. Notes from the Divided Country, by Suji Kwock Kim, 4/10
55. Lady Luck: The Theory of Probability, by Warren Weaver, 7/10
56. Drone, by A.P., 8.5/10
57. The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary, by Simon Winchester, 8.5/10
58. Full Moon, by P.G. Wodehouse, 9.5/10
59. Views of Jeopardy (poems 1962), by Jack Gilbert, 10/10*
60. The Penguin Book of French Poetry 1820-1950, translated by William Rees, 8.5/10
61. Exercises in Style, by Raymond Queneau, 8/10
62. How to Write a Sentence, by Stanley Fish, 5/10



Top books for 2012, in no particular order

1. The Physiology of Taste, by jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, 9/10
2. Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius, 10/10
3. A Philosophical Enquiry into Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful, by Edmund Burke, 9/10
4. The Leopard, by Guiseppe Di Lampedusa, 9/10
5. Story of the Eye (literary erotica), by Georges Bataille, 10/10
6. The Careful Writer: A Modern Guide to English Usage (1965), by Theodore Bernstein, 9/10
7. How to Read a Book (1956), Mortimer Adler, 9/10
8. Singular Pleasures, by Harry Matthews, 9/10
9. The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey, by Spencer Wells, 8.5/10
10. Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin, by Nicholas Ostler, 9/10
11. The Discourses, The Handbook, Fragments, by Epictetus, 9.5/10
12. Views of Jeopardy (poems 1962), by Jack Gilbert, 10/10

[Averydabeast]

into the wild is an interesting book

[HollywoodAndDid]

I would like to recommend Jerzy Kosinsky's The Painted Bird.

From Wikipedia: "The Painted Bird (Der Gemalte Vogel) is a controversial 1965 novel by Jerzy Kosiński which describes the world as seen by a young boy, "considered a Gypsy or Jewish stray," who wanders about small towns scattered around Eastern Europe during World War II."

[notWilliam]

The Red House

[Rambostyne]

You can skip the Bible. Trust me on this one. It's the most overrated book of all time. There's a section in there about a hundred pages long that goes on and on about when and how you should sacrifice your goats and weird **** like that.

[PaulG]

The Crisis of Democracy 1975

Will the Last Physician in America Please Turn Off the Lights?

Asimov: The last question, Foundation

[Merauder]

In.

I didn't even read 52 in 2012

[arkskier]

You can skip the Bible. Trust me on this one. It's the most overrated book of all time. There's a section in there about a hundred pages long that goes on and on about when and how you should sacrifice your goats and weird **** like that.

Too late bra. I'm 2/3 in. Not too bad. I'm learning a hilarious lot.

I would like to recommend Jerzy Kosinsky's The Painted Bird.

From Wikipedia: "The Painted Bird (Der Gemalte Vogel) is a controversial 1965 novel by Jerzy Kosiński which describes the world as seen by a young boy, "considered a Gypsy or Jewish stray," who wanders about small towns scattered around Eastern Europe during World War II."

Thanks will check this out.

In.

I didn't even read 52 in 2012

dont know that feel.

U in on the 2013 challenge?

The Crisis of Democracy 1975

Will the Last Physician in America Please Turn Off the Lights?

Asimov: The last question, Foundation

Which is Asimov's best book?

[Rambostyne]

Too late bra. I'm 2/3 in. Not too bad. I'm learning a hilarious lot.

I learned a lot too. Like what the length, material and color of the curtains of the tabernacle should be and other pointless facts of the like that are repeated numerous times throughout the Old Testament. I've still yet to look up what a "cubit" is.

[dosman123]

brings the lulz big time...

[Merauder]

dont know that feel.
U in on the 2013 challenge?

yes, sure

[arkskier]

brings the lulz big time...

oh man I'm definitely getting this. thanks!

[arkskier]

I learned a lot too. Like what the length, material and color of the curtains of the tabernacle should be and other pointless facts of the like that are repeated numerous times throughout the Old Testament. I've still yet to look up what a "cubit" is.

that must have been 100 or so pages of that, if I remember correctly. I wasn't crazy about the history part of the old testament (altho that thing about the 100, 200 ballsacks as exchange for a girl was hilarious). The parts that I liked most were the poetry/wisdom parts. Proverbs, ecclesiastes. They are so full of wisdom.

[bderlan]

First post, and in

[Veldy]

Hey OP, do you have any good ways to help me stop sub-vocalizing when I read?
I stopped moving my lips, but I still read everything aloud in my head, so I can't read much faster than I talk.. Once in a while I break through and freak out (so I reread the section to see if I got it all, and I did, so I wasted even more time)
Jelly of book readings.. I have lots I want to read too

[arkskier]

Hey OP, do you have any good ways to help me stop sub-vocalizing when I read?
I stopped moving my lips, but I still read everything aloud in my head, so I can't read much faster than I talk.. Once in a while I break through and freak out (so I reread the section to see if I got it all, and I did, so I wasted even more time)
Jelly of book readings.. I have lots I want to read too

This is tricky. Because I like vocalizing (reading aloud) for books with beautiful lines (poetry, some fiction, etc). In general, though, I don't vocalize. I think the faster you read the less able you will be able to vocalize. I used to vocalize each word, but in time, the faster my reading speed became, the less I vocalized. If you have a problem with backtracking, maybe you can use a finger or ruler. Put the ruler under the line you're reading, then sweep through it from left to right, then move the ruler down, etc. Or use your finger to guide your eyes. Look at about 3-5 words at a time, not every word. Look at them by chunks. It's easier to do than you may think. (Other readers can actually look at whole sentences at a glance, but I could never do that.) Maybe you can practice first with easy books, easy fiction or nonfic. Hard books I think are just not possible to speed read. And to read poetry without vocalization on some level is to fail to appreciate it.

I'm not really an expert in this. How long have you been reading this way? I think the more you read, the faster you will become.

[cejanuary]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_books

[arkskier]

In!


How do you feel about reading complete works of Shakespeare?
How about 120 days of Sodom by Sade?

Very disturbing book imo.
Title refers to a practice among birds (specific). Some birds will attack other birds that seem different and submissive. Physically painting a bird will result in even its kin rejecting the bird as an outsider, and that bird will be attacked/ pecked to death. The title is a metaphor for racism.

Yea, I'm looking for painted bird. I haven't read a lot of shakespeare. Was he required in your high school or university? He was never required in mine (yes, asian country). If you want, we can do a challenge between the two of us for this year and read his entire ouevre. You also want to do Sade?

[DrBroscientist]

The Art of War.

[Heracles26]

meditations - marcus aurelius
walden and cival disobediance - theroux
count of monte cristo - dumas

[arkskier]

meditations - marcus aurelius
walden and cival disobediance - theroux
count of monte cristo - dumas

awesome.
boring.
awesome.

I could hook you up with the painted bird ebook if you don't mind the digital edition.
Only 4 Shakespeare's plays were required in my school. Hamlet, King Lear, Romeo and Juliet, and the Tempest. I don't remember much of anyof them to be honest...
I've tried reading the whole works of Shakespeare, but got discouraged after the first play. English being my second language, I found that Elizabethan English is way above my reading level. Sure I had read some plays in high school, but teachers were always there to guide us through, line-by-line. I might try my luck on reading the complete works in the future, but not yet.

I read first couple of chapters of 120 days of sodom. The language is disgusting, and I didn't see any merit to Sade's writing. It was just one sick, twisted, bizzare paragraph after another with no apparent storyline. The reason I suggested this is because I wanted to see if you could find any value of this book.

THanks for the offer bro, but I get a headache when I read from a screen. I was thinking of starting with Justine by de Sade. I'll see about 120 days. I know a guy who read de Sade in high school and he has been pretty weird ever since. French your first language? Did you go to U of Toronto? A nice friend of mine did her MA there.

[Saeb22]

In on this, what is the protocol and the end of every week talk about the book I read?
Also I will be reading mostly non fiction

[erockp]

Naked Lunch.

[Snerf]

In and subbed for recommendations/ideas.

I'm in on 2013 52 in 52.

OP, do you buy physical books or read on an ereader/tablet/phone?

[arkskier]

In on this, what is the protocol and the end of every week talk about the book I read?
Also I will be reading mostly non fiction

Sure bro, it would be great to see your book reviews here so we can share. There is another thread though that Invictus is making for the misc, a 52 book 2013 challenge. I'm not sure if it's up.

[arkskier]

Get an ereader bro? Not expensive ones, but dirt cheap that gets the job done. There are more than 10,000 books you could get for free, including all the classics.

No, French is not. I'm not Canadian. I was an immigrant and now a citizen.

I wish I went to U of T. I went to a smaller school outside the city.

So what's your first language and where are you from? What did you study at uni? I've been out of school for so long. I'm thinking I want to go back for grad studies.