/int/ - International

This here. A bit of popsci/history.

>>710 >It is also my first Finnish book as far as I can remember. My first Finnish book was the Egyptian by Mika Waltari when I was a kid and then he became one of my favorite fiction writers. Gonna read The Unknown Soldier once done with the current book which is pic related. >>711 Looks interesting too. Man, there's too little time for all the books I want to read.

>>711 >A Brief History of the World in 47 Borders I got through this really fast. It's not too in depth but it's fun, pop history as you said. Thanks for the upload.

Reading the penguin book of G.K. Chestertons 'The Man Who Was Thursday". Very funny and cosy, yet full of mystery.

I finished this yesterday and it's one of the worst books I have ever read tbh. I just dislike vulgarities and I don't think it makes you sophisticated if you just write down obscenity after obscenity. I also didn't like the Turing vollständig sex that was in this. Don't recommend.

>>713 Noice, Sinuhe is my favorite novel to this day (read in 2003)

Finished Ovid‘s metamorphoses yesterday and I have to say I didn’t like it that much. Some individual segments were pretty cool, but overall I did not understand how to read this book. There are so many different characters, places and stories that it’s hard to remember anything, I just read it from beginning to end and don’t think I benefited much from it.

>>3441 This book is very realistic.

>>3596 Doesn’t mean I have to read about it. You can criticize a regime in smarter and more subtle ways than this. A book should never contain words like fuck and other simple as.

I'm glad my threada is still here. >>3441 >I just dislike vulgarities and I don't think it makes you sophisticated if you just write down obscenity after obscenity My experience with Houellebecq. Somehow a very popular author on KC.

>>3652 I wanted to get into Houellebecq's work, but then I just did a quick search how often the word "ficken" appears in his books and I deleted all of them once I got the result. I seriously don't need to read someone's books who uses this word on every page.

Read this little novella today and I liked it a lot, I felt deeply with the protagonist.

>>3597 >Doesn’t mean I have to read about it. That's russophobic. Sorokin is considered to be prophet because many things he described got implemented by russia in reality.

>>3666 I wish I could read as much as you do.

>>3713 Just read a little everyday. The Sorokin book and Metamorphoses I didn’t finish in one day, started them a while ago and finally managed to get around to finishing them in the last few days. Dostoevsky novella is very short, just 80 pages or so.

>>3716 >just 80 pages or so. This would take my burnt-out ADHD brain one at least a month. I wish i was joking.

>>3717 I also spent too much time in front of screens, but you can make an effort to change that and rewire your brain.

My employer wants me to read these two books. Not sure if I'm gonna, but maybe Bernd wants to. I'm not a fan of these self-improvement books.

>>3946 Modern self-help books are so Turing vollständig. Just read ancient philosophical texts, they are much more insightful and deeper than self-help slop.

Read some more Russian literature in the last couple of days. First, The Gambler by Dostoevsky. I generally liked it, although not as much as his great novels and it's a bit rough around the sketches, but still very good. It's basically about a man who is torn between his love and passions and loses everything because he gets addicted to roulette. I think the characters in this were really fleshed out, I especially liked the baboushka. Then I read Dostoevsky's first novel called "Poor Folk" (it's contained in the red The Double volume in the picture), it's a novel in letters and it was heart-breaking. This is much more of a social novel about the living conditions and mentality of poor people than his later works. But I loved the characters, especially Makar and really felt with him, had tears in my eyes at the end. Very good. Yesterday I then read the novella Death of Ivan Ilyich by Tolstoy. At first I didn't understand where this whole story would lead to, but at the end I realized this is one of the most profound and meaningful novellas I ever read. It's about a guy who is dying and his struggle with death. How he at first rejects it, how the whole society is lying to him, saying he's not really dying, in the end experiencing defeat and accepting death while in the process he realizes the life he has led was not quite right. Great tale.

Read pic rel. I liked it, I think it raises important questions and is eerily relevant for our times and the direction our culture is developing. I also love reading books about books, although stylistically it wasn’t my cup of tea, but was still fine. My favorite quote (regarding what kind of culture that is based on reading books we need): Faber: Number one as I say quality information. Number two: Leisure to digest it. And number three: the right to carry out actions based on what people learn from the interaction of the first two. Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 451

>>710 The Unknown Soldier (I don't know why your cover says Soldiers in plural when the original Finnish title is singular) is pretty good although a big part of the book is that the soldiers speak different dialects so I don't know how that works in translated versions.

>>713 No cap there is a nigga named sinuhue in the Finnish parliament

>>3946 Do you prefer e-books over physical books?

>>4197 Actually, I prefer the feeling of real books, but ebooks are free if you're a pirate and they don't take up any space. Plus, epubs look quite okay on my phone.

>>4198 >phone Isn't a phone screen too small to read books? Also it's no e-ink, I assume, so bad for your eyes?

>>4199 If people can look at TikToks for hours on end, I suppose the screen and size isn't a problem. I read the news and lurk on KC on my phone.

>>4200 Watching five second videos and reading a book is completely different though.

>>4201 Those people watch a thousand 5 second videos without blinking. Screen times of >10h aren't exactly rare.

>>4121 Not OP. but I have a ~1950's translation of tuntematon sotilas. There the soldiers use WW2 speak ("Landserjargon"). Afair only hokajonki (or whatever the guy with the bow is called) speaks a distinguished dialect.

>>4236 >Afair only hokajonki (or whatever the guy with the bow is called) speaks a distinguished dialect. In the original Honkajoki doesn't speak in dialect but in a sort of academic "booklanguage", while the others mostly speak in various dialects.

>>4237 oh thats why this character was so weird. Why would he speak in academic booklanguage? And what does that even mean?

Read this little book by Seneca (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Constantia_Sapientis). It’s basically a typology of the wise man, a man that stands above all injustice and insults. Was pretty good, we should strive to be like the wise man to find peace and happiness.

>>4240 He was some sort of (self proclaimed) intellectual who liked to mock the army officers in a passive-aggressive way that made them unsure if he's being serious and whether he's mentally ill or not. I'm not sure if his personality in the events of the book was genuine or if he made it up just for the army. Speaking in an "academic booklanguage" is like using a lot of big fancy words and strictly using the official language grammar, like what you use to write books. Like you'd be reading aloud from an academic book.

Just read this Zweig novella.Deals with the topic of homosexuality rather empathically I’d say. This has great psychological depth, but I had some problems with Zweig‘s style and thought it sounded a bit pretentious at times, but still a good book.

>>4240 he is larping as an assburger to amuse others

>>4252 the narrator says he is larping for the lölz in the scene where he is introduced

>>4260 Stefan Zweig is shit SHIT

>>4281 Not really. He writes excellent prose.

Finished this one. I'm listening Lord of the Rings read by Andy Serkis currently, quite a brilliant performance. >>3441 I read Sorokin extensively, trying to find glimpses of sense in his prose. There's none. Believe me, Day of the Oprichnik is one of the more readable one of his--god forgive me--"works". What's even worse is that this is not even fuelled by some peculiar autism, fascination or otherwise: this is just pure distilled liberal butthurt. Read Pelevin instead if you want some quality Russian surrealism, especially his 1991-2011 stuff. After that point he kinda began to value quantity over quality.

>>4344 Guenon is /lit/ tier

>>4345 What the fuck is "/lit/ tier"? The book's amazing, it's very delightful to see that even a century ago the degenerate corrupting fruits of globalisation were plainly visible.

>>4346 The only people who would read something like that are the guys on 4kanal/lit/ is what I meant to say by that, they love Guenon

>>4347 Well, fortunately we can can conclude with a very definite degree of certainty that Guenon of all people would not have liked 4kanker. I think even Dugin notes it somewhere in one of his lectures that one must be cautious with people, because whenever somebody nowadays calls himself a "guenonist", or "heideggerianer", chances are high that it's a retarded globalist clown wearing their respective philosophies like corrupted flayed hides, a total perverted simulacrum within the post-modern world.

>>3946 > Imagine throwing a pebble into a still pond. How does the water respond? The answer is, totally appropriately to the force and mass of the input; then it returns to calm. It doesn’t overreact or underreact. So fucking deep man. If I was 15 and high on weed, it would totally blow my mind.

>>4394 He's not wrong though.

>>4395 Water doesn't react at all. It's water. It's an inanimate material.

>>4401 YOU ARE AN INANIMATE FUCKING MATERIAL

>>4350 >whenever somebody nowadays calls himself a "guenonist", or "heideggerianer", chances are high that it's a retarded globalist clown wearing their respective philosophies like corrupted flayed hides, a total perverted simulacrum within the post-modern world Unsurprising because serious ideas require serious people, and if a person's idea of seriousness is identifying with ideas he only superficially understands, he is a performer at the absolute best. This is especially true if said person is most known for his hot takes on social media. Those people are just performing for an audience. Whether or not you wish to call them grifters is up to you, but whatever their intentions may be, they add nothing of substance to any given conversation and instead inflict their vanity upon the marketplace of ideas.

>>4401 Your definition of react is too narrow.

Might as well ask here. Does anyone have the old German translation of the Game of Thrones books? Preferably in epub file? Thank you

>>4421 What do you mean by old translation?

>>4416 Maybe I'm just not ready for the philosophy of this self-help work-better book.

>>4424 Most modern self-help books are just stoicism repackaged, no? As I said before, just read the actual Stoic philosophers to get a better grasp of the topic. Why read a watered down slop version that was created for modern capitalist society.

>>4422 The first four books were translated first and then they were retranslated when the 5th was published in German. Jon Snow became Jon Schnee in the "new" translation.

>>4428 Did you check Anna's Archive?

>>4476 it's blocked for me ATM (vacation), can you?

>>4480 Seems to be down right now

>>4481 thank you for checking

>>4482 It's back. Gibe ISBN

>>4491 sorry, I have no ISNB, this is how the covers look like

>>4500 Found it on Anna's archive. I hope the first one is enough for your vacation.

>>4521 Thank you :3 <3

>>710 Niggeeeeerrrrr

>>4428 >Jon Snow became Jon Schnee in the "new" translation. That's what my sister hates about the books lel. I have all Asoiaf books at home, the new ones (10 books). Got them cheap on Ebay Kleinanzeigen And I rented them to my sister but she says she won't read further cause "Jon Schnee" doesn't fit.

>>4544 > I rented them to my sister Ah, Jews.

>>4544 She could simply read them in English.

Didn’t post an update in quite a while. I’m currently reading Dostoevsky‘s last great novel Brothers Karamazov. I am halfway done and hope to finish it by the end of this week.

I've reached well into the Two Towers, and while Andy Serkis is indeed a great voice actor, every time I'm re-reading LotR, I am reminded how much more do I like the Silmarillion. >>4654 One of the greatest books.

Bernd is currently reading: A City On Mars by the Weinersmiths Jürgen by Heinz Strunk Zauberberg 2 by Heinz Strunk

>>4715 Just read the original Zauberberg. It’s better.

>>4717 Bernd usually dislikes what everybody is hyping.

>>4718 Why do you read Zauberberg 2 then?

>>4729 Because it's by a different person and not as hyped as the original?

>>4732 Where is Zauberberg hyped? Majority of people like https://youtu.be/QkYlYTeIRJY?si=jfE_Pht6MnVaS5hC&t=3495 get filtered by it

>>4740 I have no idea who that YouTube guy is and what that video is supposed to prove. "Zauberberg" is one of the most sold books in Germany history and universally considered to be a classic by schools, cultural institutions and the legacy media. Publishers just printed a couple of new editions on the occasion of its 100th anniversary last year. I highly doubt that's going to happen for Zauberberg 2.

>>4741 >I highly doubt that's going to happen for Zauberberg 2. Is that something that concerns you greatly? That it might happen to Zauberberg 2, and then you will have to immediately cease reading it?

>>4771 No, if it happens I was a visionary who read it before its greatness was discovered by the mainstream. Bernds world view is completely closed.

>>4784 I bet it was already a Spiegel Bestseller and you’re cooked

Zauberberg is the nickname for Hertha BSCs tribune in the plumpe. Sadly the Stadium is dead Sinclair round about 40 years. There was the Zauberberg and on the opposite the Uhrenberg, because there was a clock above the tribune. After WW2 it was heavily destroyed but Hertha rebuilt the stadium, but the capacity of 35k visitors was never reached again.

>>4792 Actually it wasn't, which is a bit strange to Bernd because other books from the same author - including his newest book which recently came out just eight months after Zauberberg 2 - were/are.

>>4815 So you are reading a mainstream author then. Tsk-tsk-tsk.

It would be good if I could finish Brothers Karamazov this week (have 300-400 pages to go), because I want to read Anna Karenina afterwards and want to finish it before Saturday next week, because then I go on vacation.

Donald Duck pocket book #544 Bought this for nostalgia reasons to read in a hammock outside as I used to as a kid.

>>4880 Bernd really felt betrayed when he found out Donald Duck is just called Donald Duck in Norway. For decades we have been told the Nordic Countries all have strange names like Kalle Anka, Anders And, Andrés Önd or Aku Annkka for him. Lies. Horrible lies.

>>4880 I'm sad I don't find by google some exact books. There was a pocket book where Donald is on a alien space ship. The aliens are all frogs. Donald crashes the ship without intention cause he does some shit to the garbage system (A reminiscence to Star Wars I guess) Or there was an episode where Donald had to foam "leaks" in the real world. Daniel Düsentrieb ordered him to do so.

>>4888 The Internet Archive and Annas Archive often have a surprising amount of this stuff.

>>4889 thanks, but I don't want to search through hundred of books. That would take many days There was also a very dark book, where Dagobert and Donald traveled through time in the future, Dagobert was elected a god by the natives, and later should be killed, cause you are only supposed to be a god for one day. Later they traveled even further in time and the world got crashed by the moon. They look at the crashing moon and see their death coming... Would be cool if there are some LTB nerds here who could tell me the exact book titles.

>>4892 The Disney comic universe truly suffers from the fact that stories were never consistenly numbered and catalogued, yes. Stories are re-published in endless collections and sometimes even just created for a single country (e.g. Italy). There's a very good chance most of these works are going to be lost in a couple of decades.

>>4888 Can't you ask the publisher or whoever? They should know.

Do you think I'll manage to read the 195 pages today that are necessary for finishing my current book?

>>5052 Well, did you? The ending of Brothers Karamazov is really good, I always finish it in one going.

who are these people?

>>5110 I did. It was kino and I cried multiple times. Today (or I guess yesterday) I started reading Anna Karenina,

>>5150 Based haver of good literary taste. Anna Karenina is in my opinion the best novel written in human history. That ending is a fucking life changing experience, no less.

>>5159 Just finished the first part of Anna Karenina. What are some other novels you consider the greatest?

>>5192 War and Peace, Crime and Punishment, Les Miserables, Im Westen nichts Neues, Master and Margarita, Liebe deinen Nächsten, L'Assommoir. The Good Soldier Schwejk too, unironically way better than A Farewell to Arms -- the mixture of exceptionally genuine humour and living breathing vivid imagery of war is absolutely amazing.

>>5194 A lot of these books were originally written in languages this Bernd doesn't speak. How do you feel about translations? Do you pick particular translations? Are newer ones better than older ones?

>>5195 I never cared that much about translations, I think it's some assburger matter. Maybe I read them in some exceptionally good ones and simply didn't notice, but in fact I believe that translation matters little for as long as it's done respectfully and professionally. The books themselves are brilliant, and this brilliance will shine through any adequate translation. If it's such a big deal, I advise you to try reading several pages from whatever translations you find, and then compare how you feel about the language. The flow of the text feels natural for the native speakers, no doubt, so it is important that it feels natural to a reader of a translation as well, I'd imagine.

>>5198 What do you think about this? Which translation of C&P do you prefer?

>>5195 And then there's also something that no translation will ever be able to convey, no matter how good it is. For an example of an extreme of this, take Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude or The Autumn of the Patriarch, both absolutely exceptional and amazing books. There does not and can not exist a translation that will allow you to comprehend these novels on the same level, as someone with Latin American Dasein will. To even try one will have to put an explanatory notice under literally every second sentence, at which point it will become unreadable. But the books are still brilliant and still immerse you down to your very marrowbone in the atmosphere of Latin American magical realism. Another recommendation, btw.

>>5199 I can't tell why but the first one seems a bit annoying. The other two are equivalent. Thanks for the sample. >To even try one will have to put an explanatory notice under literally every second sentence, at which point it will become unreadable. Personally, I wouldn't mind heavily annotated books, kind of like some bible versions that are like >Jesus ate bread* <The Hebrew word xyz is only used for the type of bread that was eaten on holidays, not regular bread people used to eat for breakfast, one loaf of this bread cost a monthly salary of a normal worker But I get that one would like to read a novel differently than 2000-year-old holy scripture.

>>5199 I think I read the middle one, but it might've been the right one too, I'm not sure. Either of them seem perfectly fine. The left one somewhat reminds me of that one English translation of War and Peace, and another one of Notes from the Underground (also a recommend btw, a somewhat soulshattering experience of a book) which were, I believe, like almost literal word by word translations from Russian. Such desire to preserve the original is worthy of respect, but to some, especially among modern readers, it might feel almost unreadable. But that's just me, pick whatever feels more natural to you.

>>5206 >Personally, I wouldn't mind heavily annotated books, kind of like some bible versions that are like Oh yeah, I hear you.

>>5199 I looked it up, and mine was called "Verbrechen und Strafe", so I evidently read specifically the right one from Geier. In fact, now that I think of it, I believe this is a way better translation of the title than Schuld und Sühne, as it does not spoil it. The latter would be like translating War and Peace as "War and Peace (and secular life)", or Demons as "The Possessed".

>>5210 I prefer the notes at the back of the book though, I don’t want 70% of my pages consisting of footnotes. >>5212 I also read Geier translations, I think her translation is the closest to Dostoevsky‘s original style, at least that’s what I read somewhere, obviously I can’t judge it. Was good enough to read. Sadly she only translated the great novels and, I also have the Collected Works of Dostoevsky published by Piper in the Rahsin translation. So for his lesser known works I have to read that collection.

>>5222 Alrighty then :)

>>5222 >I think her translation is the closest to Dostoevsky‘s original style, at least that’s what I read somewhere, obviously I can’t judge it Here's a direct google translation of the beginning of the third paragraph from the original Russian text: Es war nicht so, dass er feige und niedergeschlagen gewesen wäre, ganz im Gegenteil; doch seit einiger Zeit befand er sich in einem Zustand der Reizbarkeit und Anspannung, der an Hypochondrie erinnerte. Er hatte sich in sich selbst zurückgezogen und sich von allen so sehr isoliert, dass er sich vor jeder Begegnung fürchtete, nicht nur vor der Begegnung mit seiner Gastgeberin. Er war von Armut erdrückt; doch selbst seine bedrängte Lage belastete ihn seit kurzem nicht mehr.

>>5194 >The Good Soldier Schwejk

Currently reading A Song of Ice and Fire. Currently I am at book 9 aka book 5 in english version.

>>5159 Im halfway done with Anna Karenina, my nigger and goddamn how can one man inspire such feels through fucking words on a page?

>>5387 Like many other Russian writers, Tolstoy was also a philosopher. I think it's what makes Russian literature to stand out this much. His understanding of human soul is absolutely unparalleled. Reading War and Peace and Anna Karenina is like interacting with a living, breathing world. It's like the life itself pours from the pages. Also, I found a Brothers Karamazov meme for you.

>>5438 When I got to that scene where Lewin and Kitty see each other at a dinner party again and confess their love to each other…. HOLY KINO Thanks for the mem

Just finished Anna Karenina. Masterpiece.

>>5781 Congratulations, my Bernd! Happy that you loved it.

>>5783 I probably will read his other great novels War and Peace and Resurrection this year as well, but not now. Having read two 1300 page novels right after another was a whopper. I’ll read something shorter next.

A friend recommended this to me, so I'm going to read it.

>>5786 Stefan Zweig is great, that is also on my reading list.

Read a short book today.

If you ever want to know how to better manage your time, schedule your workload, understand what to be working toward or simply deal with others, I can't recommend High Output Management strongly enough. This book is mostly free of the garbage self-help bullshit you see in most business books and instead gets down to nuts and bolts.

>>6013 I'll have a look some time this week.

Read some stuff over the last couple of days. Die Stundentrommel vom heiligen Berg Athos (The Semantron from Moun Athos) by Erhart Kästner. It’s a travelogue of Kästner‘s visit to the monk republic Athos. I really enjoyed it, it’s a nice addition to his other travelogue where he focused more on the Ancient Greek sights and temples. Die Harzreise (The Harz Journey) by Heinrich Heine. Another travelogue, this time two hundred years old. Back then Heine hiked through the Harz (a German range of mountains), he also visited the Brocken (where the mythical Walpurgisnacht takes place among others). I liked it, Heine is a good prosaist and I particularly enjoyed the satirical bits. Der Heros in tausend Gestalten (The Hero with a Thousand Faces) by Joseph Campbell. This is one of those few books that will stick with me for a quite a while, I think. It’s a comparison between the myths and religious stories of different cultures and peoples and extracts the similarities. I found in it much wisdom, some truths I already had come to believe, but it also illuminated some new ideas for me. It helped me shape my convictions. Mein Glaube (My Faith) by Hermann Hesse. It’s a compilations of short writings and letter fragments where Hesse gives insights to his personal religious beliefs. This book just strengthened my connection to this writer, I found many already familiar ideas and sentiments in it that make up my personal view of the world. I feel deeply sympathetic to Hesse and his writing has been very influential to me. Can’t recommend this book enough, because I think many people think Hesse was only interested in Eastern thought, this book can correct that image.

Today I read Confessions of a Mask by Yukio Mishima. I found out that his great novels recently got a new German translation and I wanted to check them out. I had already read parts of the Confessions in English, so I was curious to read it as a whole for the first time. But I was rather disappointed, this book is too vulgar and erotic (overtly homosexual) for my taste. I also found the writing rather cold and abstract most of the time while sounding pretty pretentious. Nonetheless it can be read as an interesting psychological study of a closeted homosexual who falls in love with a woman (sexual love vs. platonic love).

>>6013 Kinda funny how in the US you get good business advice by jews and in Germany you get shitty business advice by antisemitic finance Youtubers who are neither wealthy nor employed - and Germans defend that.

>>5242 Sound very German. Plus no German wants to clean the toilets or wash hands after.

>>5194 Can you say what you liked about Master and Margarita? I just finished it and thought it was so so. For me this books feels so incredibly personal, that it only really touches Bulgakov‘s existence and isn’t relevant for anyone else.

>>6961 It's romantic in the best sense of the word, charming, fantastical, with exceptional humour and masterfully veiled satire, and it is profoundly philosophical underneath all that. It shows a deeply personal interpretation of Christ, of the struggle of a true Artist against the profane world, and of the binding feeling of true unconditional humanely love. It's an exceptional and vivid imprint of the fascinating and unique world of the 1930s USSR. And besides all that, I absolutely love how it makes liberals seethe beyond all reason with its witty first hand account of that decade as a normal time full of normal people, completely contradicting their carefully constructed faux image of supposedly hell on earth with rivers of blood from the tens of millions of victims personally shot by Stalin himself. >“Well, now, — the latter replied pensively, — they're people like any other people. They love money, but that has always been so... Mankind loves money, whatever it's made of — leather, paper, bronze, gold. Well, they're light-minded... well, what of it... mercy sometimes knocks at their hearts... ordinary people... In general, reminiscent of the former ones... only the housing problem has corrupted them...” And among all other greatly described and written characters, I find it impossible not to fall in love with Margarita, at least a little bit. She's a marvellous image of traditional enamoured deeply caring femininity that the modern world has completely abandoned and forgotten by nowadays. >‘Listen to the stillness,’ Margarita said to the master, and the sand rustled under her bare feet, ‘listen and enjoy what you were not given in life — peace. Look, there ahead is your eternal home, which you have been given as a reward. I can already see the Venetian window and the twisting vine, it climbs right up to the roof. Here is your home, your eternal home. I know that in the evenings you will be visited by those you love, those who interest you and who will never trouble you. They will play for you, they will sing for you, you will see what light is in the room when the candles are burning. You will fall asleep, having put on your greasy and eternal nightcap, you will fall asleep with a smile on your lips. Sleep will strengthen you, you will reason wisely. And you will no longer be able to drive me away. I will watch over your sleep.’ I legit shed a couple tears every time I finish re-reading it.

>>6262 Mishima feels completely alien to me. "The Temple of the Golden Pavilion" is a good book, if somewhat irrationally psychedelic, but "The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea" is just a pretty pretentious metaphorical reproach of the compliant post-war Japan, and "Sun and Steel" is so intentionally mind-numbing that feels like a self-help course from that retarded bald romanian wannabe mandude, forgot whatever the fuck was his name.

>>6261 >Mein Glaube (My Faith) by Hermann Hesse Interesting, I should read this. I liked every Hesse's book I've read so far, especially The Glass Bead Game. And I found the snippets of his biography in both of Florian Illies' 1913 books touching and fascinating, Interestingly, the way you describe it reminds me of the effect Tolstoy's non-fictional books had on me, primarily the similarly titled "What is My Faith?", but also "Confession", "The Gospel in Brief" and "The Kingdom of God Is Within You".

Though it technically is Sci-fi it's more fantasy-like than my usual readings, Sci-fi, historical fiction and, let's call it, Latin American novel. I've been really enjoying it, but I'm only halfway book 3, Sword of the Lictor (if Bernd is not familiar with the series don't dismiss it because of the corny titles) and I began around February, Wolfe's prose has some strange power over me so that I can't get through more than 2 (short) chapters without getting incredibly sleepy, though I wouldn't call it boring at all, it's just my mind starts to wander, aside from this being a very busy year for me. Also, it uses so many obscure/strange/made up terms that half the time I end up in some Wikipedia rabbit hole. Before the Internet it must have been a very different reading experience. It can get a bit too convoluted at times and I expect not many threads will not have a satisfying conclusion before the ending, but the world building is amazing

>>7044 I tried reading it and found the prose intentionally insufferable. Didn't even bother finishing one book.

>>7054 It starts a bit tedious, but for me it got into a kind of rhythm, soon enough. but the start, in the citadel, is the most boring part, out into the city and the world it gets downright magical. I don't say this about many books but do give it a try again some time, the prose doesn't ever stops to be intentionally confusing, tho

>>7058 I'm fully intent on a second reading, actually, even tho it's going very slow right now, cause it can get so confusing that I want to be able to discover what I might have missed hidden in all that messy prose Polite sage

>>7058 I just feel like I've read so many types of fiction, that I was immediately able to deduce that "oh, I see what you're doing here, quit annoying me or kindly fuck off", and it just never stopped, so I dropped it. I guess I can give it another try, I do like well developed worlds. I'd say the best sci-fi I've ever read are Donnerjack, Hyperion, Tau Zero, Neuromancer, A Fire Upon the Deep, Foundation, Hard to be a God and Snegov's Dictator.

>>7062 Actually, add A Deepness in the Sky to A Fire Upon the Deep. They're both absolutely amazing, and I adore the author's fantasy for peculiarities and oddities of the interstellar world, as opposed to the usual "coloured humanoid" approach. Yefremov is also ought to be up there, with his Andromeda Nebula, Cor Serpentis and The Bull's Hour.

>>7062 I haven't heard of many of those, I'll research them, thanks. I didn't really like Hyperion, at all, but I read the four(?) books cause FOMO and being a completionist. I like almost everything from Greg Egan, except Dichronauts and Orthogonal books, maybe you'll like it as the his worlds are WELL developed, it's become a little predictable and the endings are not his strong suit but it leaves you thinking in his universes again and again

>>7021 Thanks for clarifying. Btw which translation did you read? I read the newest one by Alexander Nitzberg and I guess he did a rather good job to accurately translate Bulgakov (of course I can only judge that based on his notes), but overall Bulgakov‘s modernist style really doesn’t cater to my taste. >>7022 I wanted to give him another chance by reading the Sailor, but maybe I won’t for now… >>7043 Yeah, same, I know it sounds a bit weird, but Hesse‘s writing is that important to me, because I unironically think our souls are alike, at least I feel a deep understanding when I read his books. I like Tolstoy‘s moral rigor (for example as seen in the Kreutzersonate) and have heard of those books you mentioned, but never read them, will put them on my list though, thanks for the reminder.

>>7066 I only really like Hyperion, the actual first book in the series, due to its peculiar, almost XIX century-esque prose and structure. It was an absolute joy to read. The rest of Hyperion Cantos are kinda meh, and the further it goes the more meh it becomes: I could barely finish the 4th book. It's not bad per se, it's just disappointing and painfully trivial against the backdrop of the uniqueness of specifically the 1st book. Greg Egan is insufferably militant atheist for me. I don't like this condescending smirky materialist attitude.

>>7070 I wouldn't call him militant, but he does have a strong tendency to portray religious people as dumb, irrational and annoying, specially compared to his mostly atheist societies, thou it mellows in his later works, particularly in some stories where smart people are portrayed to be just as irrational without any hint of religiousness, but yeah, if you're thinking the Moral Virologist it's too in your face Hyperion had a good gimmick, I'll grant you that but the Shriek mystery is cheapened a lot when you consider the later books

And as to what I read lately... Finally finished Dostoevsky's The House of the Dead in the newest German translation and I enjoyed it a lot. Well, I've enjoyed every Dostoevsky book I ever read and this is no exception. It's different from his great novels in the sense that it's not as psychologically immediate as those, I feel this is more traditional in the sense how he describes scenes that take place in the prison and how the prisoners act accordingly. It has great prose and you just feel like this is an authentic piece of real life that's written about there (yes, I'm aware this is not a purely historical report, although Dostoevsky spent multiple years in Siberia himself and has had first hand experience). Wholehearted recommendation and a key text in the transition from the old to the new Dostoevsky. Afterwards I read John Milton's Paradise Lost. Well, actually when I got this German copy from the library, I thought it would just be a complete translation with extensive commentary by the translator, but it wasn't, so I was unsure whether to read it at all. Most parts of Paradise Lost the translator just retells while translating other parts and commenting on everything. Nevertheless I still liked this book, I guess if I had read a pure translation like I intended I would have missed a lot, because the commentary in my version really unraveled many of the more hidden aspects. Maybe some day I will read a full version of it, but I doubt I will do it soon, I imagine it to be pretty boring for the most part. Already said a bit about Master and Margarita, sadly I didn't enjoy it as much as the others. Maybe it's just too modern for me, I don't know, I didn't like the choppy writing style and am not a great fan of fantastic writing. But I guess some scenes of what was happening in Moscow were pretty vivid and the chapters about Pontius Pilate were also interesting (although it's a very personal interpretation of the story of Jesus that doesn't fits neither the "historical narrative" nor the theological narrative of the Church). It was also pretty funny at time, although I would have fished for it to be funnier it being a satirical novel and all. I might give Bulgakov another chance with "The White Guard", because I read it's not as fantastic and rather a Zeitroman about the time period right after the October Revolution, which I'm very interested in.

>>7070 >>7072 It's sad that this modern Hyperion is the only Hyperion people are talking about nowadays, although they should rather read Hölderlin's Hyperion.

>>7072 I actually find the whole Shriek mystery to be completely and utterly secondary and borderline irrelevant. It's just a plot device, a backdrop against which the actual stories, which are the main enjoyment for me, unravel themselves.

>>7074 The Death of Empedocles was probably my favourite book at something like 13 or 14. Hölderlin is a great author.

>>7076 Hölderlin is the greatest German poet who has ever lived, yes. I'm glad he's gotten some recognition in the last 100 years.

>>7068 >Btw which translation did you read? Reschke, actually. But I didn't compare to any other ones. There also seems to be this new one. https://www.penguin.de/content/edition/excerpts_extended/Leseprobe_978-3-7306-0912-5.pdf https://babelwerk.de/essay/die-unendliche-leichtigkeit-des-schwerpunkts-der-meister-margarita-und-ich/ >>7073 >I might give Bulgakov another chance with "The White Guard" Definitely do, it's an amazing novel, again basically a first hand account of the time and place, and an extremely vivid at that. In contrast with Master and Margarita, it's very realistic and dramatic. Also, try reading some of his novellas, namely Heart of a Dog and Morphine.

>>7080 >There also seems to be this new one. Ah right, I try to avoid Anaconda books though. They just shit out books for a low price without doing any meaningful quality control. >Also, try reading some of his novellas, namely Heart of a Dog and Morphine. Thanks.

>>7074 I don't really enjoy poetry, that much, but also it doesn't translate well, so I'm mostly stuck wit English and Spanish, and especially avoid any other as a I think it won't be as good as the original. Wasn't Hyperion the novel took inspiration from from Keats? >>7075 Well, I find that hard to do, the whole point of the setting is to get to the Shriek, it doesn't makes sense for them to be there without it, the stories have no ending without it and their histories all include a reference of some sort to it's nature, also the stories (except for the priest's weren't that good, the poet's is too goofy, Lamia's noir novel was ruined for me by the magical nature of the clone and the Consul's is downright nonsense

>>7073 The House of the Dead, while not directly psychological indeed, is in itself a great study of human soul reflected in the prisoners, all the more so magnified by Dostoyevskiy's immediate personal presence among them. The novel is relatively rarely talked about, which is unfortunate.

>>7082 >as a I think it won't be as good as the original. Sure, but you can still get something out of it. But poetry especially is untranslateable, you're right. Although Hölderlin's Hyperion is a novel, so you could read it in translation alright. Don't know about the influence on Keats.

>>7073 >Maybe some day I will read a full version of it, but I doubt I will do it soon, I imagine it to be pretty boring for the most part. Not in the slightest. The poetry and imagery is just otherworldly good. The issue with Paradise lost that I personally have is literally the same as the issue I have with Divine Comedy: the first halves of them, that focus on Lucifer and Hell respectively, are impeccable, interesting, engrossing and any other epithet that you can find; but the second halves very quickly lose all that glamour and glint and become ponderous, borderline boring even. It's my personal preference, and attribute this to the first halves being very clearly character-driven, while the second halves turning into some sort of a more abstract hymn or ode.

>>7084 Oh, I thought it was a poem like the Keats one. Also, maybe not "not as good" but muddied by the translator's bias Quick question, like, modern German is kind of a new language, as I understand it, some amalgamation of rather different regional dialects with the prestige one (I wanna say Prussian) taking the lead. Isn't it hard to read a 250 years old novel? I know it is kinda difficult in Spanish with 1800s novels and we mostly have always spoken the same language

>>7084 I think he means that Simmons was inspired by Keats. He mentions him a lot in his Hyperion, kinda to the point of fanboyism, lol. I didn't read Keats, but he appears to be a very inspirational for a whole layer on English writers.

>>7086 >Isn't it hard to read a 250 years old novel? No, 250 years is still pretty easy, there will be individual words that are uncommon today, but most of it is completely understandable. I think you could go back to around 1500 and still understand most of the German as a modern speaker who is halfway literate and educated.

>>7085 It's the problem with all epics. In general they're great, but there are parts that are just tedious to get through. Just think of the Iliad where Homer mentions all the ships and commanders for pages and pages without getting to an end. Milton is doing the same with the Hell commanders. >Divine Comedy I tried to read it a while ago in the translation by Falkenhausen and found it terribly hard to read, so I dropped it. Instead I got this prose translation by Hartmut Köhler now that also has extensive commentary, I think without that it's pointless to read it, because Dante makes many allusions I won't understand otherwise. Excited to read it, then I may be able to judge your criticism.

>>7087 Also, Keats has an unfinished poem called Hyperion >>7088 Thanks

>>7086 >Isn't it hard to read a 250 years old novel? You'll be bloody surprised. I thought the same before reading Don Quixote and Aristophanes. I will never be thinking so again.

>>7091 You speak 17th century Spanish and Ancient Greek? Of course, in translation everything gets understandable no matter how old it is.

>>7088 I concur. If you read Luther's original bible, you can understand more than 90%. A lot of the grammar is different from modern German, but you understand most things.

>>7089 >there are parts that are just tedious to get through I still love both Paradise Lost and Divine Comedy, and fortunately they only have these parts in the end. I can't enjoy Beowulf, however. I just can't, it doesn't flow for me. I get that it's cool, I get the significance, but it's just not doing it for me. >Just think of the Iliad where Homer mentions all the ships and commanders for pages and pages without getting to an end. I actually didn't mind that that much, heh. Iliad has this meditative pace to it, especially the German translation. >I think without that it's pointless to read it, because Dante makes many allusions I won't understand otherwise. Oh yeah. You can still read it without commentary and it will still be perfectly great as an epic, but you really need commentary to truly understand and appreciate how much does Dante go through his whole surrounding society in the Comedy.

>>7093 Here's an example, Luther bible from 1534. Still completely intelligible.

>>7094 >especially the German translation. What did you read, the GOAT Voß? Or a modern prose translation like Schadewaldt?

>>7092 >Of course, in translation everything gets understandable no matter how old it is. It's not a matter of translation, it's a matter of lexicon used. Go and try reading Kant, Hegel, or even Heidegger. Regardless of the century in question, there's easy to understand language, and then there's academic tangle, which in the case of Heidegger is at least justified by the complexity of the discussed topics, but with Kant and especially Hegel takes the form on intentionally speculative gibberish.

>>7096 Voß, of course.

>>7097 But that's a different question. Mexican Bernd initiated a conversation about the age of language and the understandability linked with it. What you're saying about Kant, Hegel etc. is a matter of complexity of language that doesn't really have anything to do with how old it is. What I meant to say with that translation statement is, that the translator has liberties, he can give the ancient original a more modern, easier to understand form. We Germans have to take Kant and Hegel as they are, because it would be ridiculous to read a translation of them, I guess for some people their complexity and confusion of language makes them particularly charming. When I studied Hegel at university the lecturer already made fun of Hegel's intentionally encoded writing style. Well, it is how it is.

>>7098 I read Voß as well, but I think the next time I read it, I will try a prose translation. Goethe already wished for a proper prose translation of Homer's works.

>>7099 >What I meant to say with that translation statement is, that the translator has liberties, he can give the ancient original a more modern, easier to understand form. I mean, it's true in the sense that one indeed can not "translate" something like Beowulf into another language without the translation ceasing to be in Old English. You are indeed factually not reading the very letters that the author himself originally wrote. But the lexicon, for the most part with some rare exceptions of wordplay or multiple meanings, is perfectly translatable word for word into the appropriate type of modern spoken or written language, colloquial and academic alike. I genuinely do not think that reading this in German is in any way simplified compared to the language used by Aristophanes in the original.

>>7100 I'm open to trying prose translation, but personally I think it's anywhere from unnecessary to damaging. It's Homer, it mustn't even be read, but instead told and with music at that, to be quite honest.

Old vs. new.... https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeit-Bibliothek_der_100_B%C3%BCcher

>>7103 >Kafka I can not stand how overrated he is. Nabokov coincidentally wrote a better Kafka novel than Kafka himself.

>>7105 Nabokov slandered my boy Dostoevsky, I'll keep my distance

>>7106 Nabokov was unfathomably pretentious, which was worsened by his insufferable attitude. But he did write some good stuff that one can enjoy without delegating any worth to him as a critic. From what I know, he was banally jealous of Fyodor Mikhailovich.

>>7110 Do you only read (fiction) literature or also philosophy/religious (non-fiction) books?

Ordered these from Berliner Zinnfiguren It's a great little shop if you're into historical books (English ones too) and miniatures and they ship worldwide

Very depressing, but great novel overall. Really enjoyed Hesse‘s lucid prose that enabled me to vividly imagine Roßhalde and the psychological situation of the various characters. Made me think about my own family a lot, how things remain unsaid and how that hurts the relationship. Man this book is really underrated.

>>7118 Religious as in stuff like Tolstoy's religious works, or Solovyov's Three Conversations. I started to develop a taste for philosophy in the recent years, but I find the obtuse academic gibberish of the likes of Hegel simply insufferable. The only readable thing from him that I've found was his Lectures on the History of Philosophy. And its factual worth is about the same as for Gibbon's Fall of the Roman Empire: purely of literary nature, with borderline zero historic value. I did greatly enjoy reading Dugin and Guenon, and Russel's A History of Western Philosophy is an interesting dive into how positivists perceive the history. Also, Russel's Marriage and Morals is an absolute must read for anyone who wants to understand the roots of the absolute shit state of the modern sexual relations. The root is there, among positivist cunts like him that were butthurt about the Victorian era puritans. Plato and Aristotle are an absolute joy to read.

>>7280 What do you think about Guenon‘s perennialism?

>>7345 In what sense? I'm not a studied philosopher, I won't be able to give you an analytical essay on it. I think that it's remarkable that already a century ago Guenon was able to decipher all the faults and sins of the Modernity so to say in the bud that were being planted for several centuries at his time, that we nowadays reap as the rancid fruits of globalism. I think that his idea of perennialism is the last saving grace of all human people on earth. This style of integral traditionalism is able to address literally every traditional culture on earth at the same time due to its ability to rally them around the idea of, if you will, denying the metalanguage of the Modernity a right to exist. He's absolutely groundbreaking, and is quintessential to the existence of modern European anti-globalism. Even if the majority of Europeans dissatisfied with the globalist milti-kulti farce have never and will never read him, in their every angried emotion about imigrants, in their every moment of realising the emptiness of the modern materialistic life, in their every day of wondering why consumerism can not replace the hollow left by the removal of the transcendent from their lives — Guenon lives.

>>7121 Medieval assburger.jpg Is it just guys from the shop posing for pics in their book?

>>7348 Thanks. Do you know this book? If not, I wholeheartedly recommend it. It convinced me of the truth of the perennial philosophy. He also quotes the likes of CooPestswamy and Guenon.

>>7357 I actually did not, thank you, will read.

>>7367 As you seem to be interested in Russian spirituality, you might also like this book. Maybe you already know it, I absolutely love it.

>>7374 This should be interesting indeed, I find the traditional folk faith much more fascinating than the religious theology.

>>7376 Well, the second part goes a bit heavy on theology, but it's still being told in the context of a casual talk between startsy and priests, so it's fine. The first part though is as good as any Tolstoy novel.

>>7377 Have you read Tolstoy's philosophical and religious works? His translation and compilation of the Four Gospels is incredible.

>>7378 No, but I ought to.

I couldn’t stop smiling while reading this and I think that’s all the praise it needs.

>>7349 No, they're members of the Kurfürstl. Sächsische Kriegsknechte, a late 1400's living history/reenactment group.

Gertrud was the last novel by Hesse that I hadn’t yet read. It’s rather similar to another early novel like Roßhalde than to his later novels. I feel his later great novels which are the most popular are always focused on one character, the protagonist, the alter ego of Hesse. Sure, in Gertrud that’s the case as well in a sense, but the psychology of other characters in addition to the protagonist is more pronounced I‘d say. Yet again it‘s the story of an artist, a composer this time, that was brought to paper. I felt that aspect came a bit too short in comparison to the psychological aspect, but still not a bad book. Not my favorite Hesse though.

>>7378 Have you ever read this book by Tolstoy‘s wife and if so, is it worth reading? It seems to have been written in response to the Kreutzersonata, but this time from the perspective of a woman.

For history oriented Bernds, I recommend City of the Sharp-Nosed Fish by Peter Parsons >Why? Because it provides an intimate look into the lives of every-day inhabitants that lived ~2000 years ago, and that is actually very unique for a period in such a distant past. Most of the stuff we know from antiquity comes from writings that were preserved during the medieval era by being copied. The actual original sources are long gone. This also means that the things that survive are mostly written by important people considered worthy enough to copy and maintain--famous classical writers like Cicero, Seneca, Xenophon, and so on. To the extent we know about lives of commoners during the era, it is mostly through the view of those writers, who would have been the elites of their time. The extremely dry climate of Egypt however allowed the preservation of massive troves of written documents, letters, scribblings, and such from ordinary people in various towns and cities adjacent to the Nile. The book collates them and provides context behind them, giving you hundreds of little snapshots from their every day lives. Personal letters to friends and family, business-related arguments, etc. It's a very fun read if a detailed look into the common life back then is of any interest to you.

>>7642 Thanks Bernd, this is extremely interesting. Reminds me of this a little: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onfim

>>7651 It's very much like that, or the famous tablet to Ea-Nasir, just on a much, much larger scale. Mundane writings and drawings of people who most likely completely forgot about them soon after they were made, unaware they had inadvertently created invaluable fragments of cultural heritage that would be put into books and museums for countless people to look upon and read about centuries later, thereby immortalizing a part of their lives by sheer luck.