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[KharBevNor]

Please describe that difference? I wasn't aware that there were standards. Is this like how an academic journal requires a certain system of referencing? Who are we excluding from the realm of the literary exactly? I am interested to see how you can formulate a set of rules for dividing the 'literary' and 'non-literary' (unless you are simply talking about fiction and non-fiction) which does not end up excluding important parts of even the accepted canon, let alone all the other things thought to be worthy of consideration but not generally included in that illustrious company.

As for sci-fi recommendations, I've been doing a lot of bus-riding the last few months, so I've been returning a bit (when I don't have academic reading to do, which is admittedly rarely) to short story collections. Some of the best sci-fi writing is in short story or novella form. We had a sort of thread about the subject last year. I posted a list of great sci-fi shorts in there, which I could expand upon endlessly, with particular ommissions I note at this juncture being:

Ray Bradbury - Dark They Were, and Golden Eyed
David Brin - Piecework
Octavia Butler - Speech Sounds
C.J. Cherryh - Pots
Harlan Ellison - Repent Harlequin, Said the Ticktockman and I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream
William Gibson & Michael Swanwick - Dogfight
Robert Heinlein - "All You Zombies-"
Ursula K. LeGuin - The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas
George R.R. Martin - Sandkings
Robert Silverberg - Passengers

All in anthologies I read recently.

[Inlander]

Please describe that difference? I wasn't aware that there were standards.

It's got nothing to do with standards and everything to do with what the writer is trying to achieve. I define a "non-literary" piece of writing as something that has no more aspirations than simply entertaining the reader. There's nothing wrong with that and I read my share of such books, but they don't linger long in the mind. As far as I'm concerned "literary" writing aspires to actually tell us something about the world in which we live, to make some incisive comment or to drive the reader to ask questions about their surroundings or see those surroundings anew.

For an example I'll offer Matter, the most recent Culture novel by Iain M. Banks. I've read all the Culture novels and enjoyed them a good deal (otherwise I wouldn't keep reading them!) but ultimately in the majority of cases they don't say anything to me of greater significance than "Here, read this, it'll be fun". By contrast the Iliad, while just as action-packed and gruesome as any of Banks's novels, offered me all sorts of insights into war and humanity.

This is not a comment on quality. It's got nothing to do with style. There are plenty of books which aspire to be purely literary and are boring or badly written. There are plenty of genre books which use crime, or science fiction, or what have you, to make genuinely incisive observations about the world. And there are plenty of genre books which try to do so and fail miseraly, such as Stieg Larsson's "Millennium" trilogy. But to say that there's no difference between "literary" and "non-literary" books is some postmodern relativist nonsense that I can't support.

[scarred]

I'm about 200 pages into A Game of Thrones and I must say, I've gotten pretty sucked in.

[Inlander]

I'm probably going down a rabbit-hole here but I don't for a minute want to suggest that all "literary" writing is better than all "non-literary" writing. There's long been a trend in crime fiction in particular for what we might call "literary crime writing" - George Pelecanos is an obvious example. I would place Stieg Larsson in that particular sub-genre - but at the lowest, least impressive end of it. However ham-fistedly, he was clearly trying to say something meaningful about identity politics, and about the role of the outsider in society, and about control of society by the authorities, etc.

So really I suppose I'm suggesting two levels of classification: "literary" and "non-literary", and "good" and "bad". They're both pretty subjective I guess but neither should be confused with the other and each is almost entirely independent of the other. There are good and bad "literary" books and good and bad "non-literary" books, and the best of the "non-literary" books are better than the worst of the "literary" books. As I've maintained since the start:

literature can encompass any genre

And by extension, works in any genre can be "literary".

Also you're right, Surface Detail is the book I was thinking of but Matter was the title that came to mind.

[KharBevNor]

It's got nothing to do with standards and everything to do with what the writer is trying to achieve.

Hey now now. Ever read any Roland Barthes...death of the author, etc.? The intent of the author is seperate from the content of the text which is seperate from the reading reached by the reader. This is like, post-modern literary criticism 101, and it makes eminent sense. We can only really claim to have an idea of what the author intends the messave of their work to be through cultural, linguistic and metatextual clues outside of the text itself; where these clues do not exist, how are we to evaluate the text? As critics, we are readers. Any text must be considered from the point of view of how it is read; anything else is really insupportable. And it seems plain that any text can communicate the arbitrarily defined 'meaningful' messages you claim seperate the literary from the non-literary to a specific person. Some people may draw meaningful meditations on the human condition from Iain M. Banks, or from the back of a cereal packet. But of course, the very idea that there are certain aspirations a writer must have is woefully subjective in the first place.

And what about the sections of Shakespeares plays written entirely to amuse the cheap seats. What of the endless words Dickens churned out mostly to meet publishers deadlines.

[JD]

A History of Western Philosophy

I will be reading that soonish, whenever I finish Russell's Best.

[Inlander]

We can only really claim to have an idea of what the author intends the messave of their work to be through cultural, linguistic and metatextual clues outside of the text itself

I'm sorry but as a life-long reader this strikes me as manifestly untrue. Reading is a skill like any other and those who are practiced in it - as everyone participating in this thread surely is - should be able to identify what point (if any) an author is trying to make in his or her writing with relative ease. Of course we're free to add our own intepretations and doing so will even enhance our experience of the text but the idea that the author is simply a vessel through which the words pour is ridiculous. Perhaps I'm occupying an unusual position in that I've written many tens of thousands of words of fiction over the last decade or more and I spend a large amount of time thinking very seriously and in great depth about the craft as well as the art of writing, but if a writer is unable to convey their intentions clearly to the reader then the writer has failed in their chosen field of endeavour.

And what about the sections of Shakespeares plays written entirely to amuse the cheap seats.

What about them? They're sections, as you say, not the whole. Surely you're not suggesting that we start isolating particular excerpts from a piece of writing and start considering them as if they were a whole and complete text?

What of the endless words Dickens churned out mostly to meet publishers deadlines.

Maybe they're not "literary" by my definition. That doesn't mean that Dickens isn't a "literary" writer. Graham Greene famously divided his novels into "novels" and "entertainments".

[StaedlerMars]

I've just finished A Feast For Crows and the first volume of Sandman, and have started reading Bob Dylan's Chronicles. The first two were good, and I'm enjoying Chronicles so far, really like the way he's written it.

[elizaknowswhatshesfor]

I have just read the books that Homicide Life on The Streets, The Corner & of course The Wire were based on. They were tirelessly brilliant in tone style & honesty.

I'm finding choosing other books quite hard work since reading them as everything falls flat.

I followed it up with Iain Banks' Canal Dreams. Which I found quite weak & nowhere near his best work.

 I have also read the Adventures of Huck Finn & Sense & Sensibility (I have decided I do not like Austin, not one bit)

Funnily enough, baring in mind some the discussion in the thread. I am trying not to read any Sci Fi or Horror based books until after my birthday in April. Not for any reason except I like to push myself to read as many different types of book as possible.

I would like some suggestions for good Non Fiction or Fiction books. Of any kind (Although having read through most of the thread I may have to get on Amazon....)


EDIT: Ignore me I have just found the recommendations thread. I will go in there....

[KharBevNor]

if a writer is unable to convey their intentions clearly to the reader then the writer has failed in their chosen field of endeavour.

I think this is a very narrow idea indeed. Surely this is a difference between fiction and non-fiction. Much art arises out of a failure to be able to clearly communicate. Furthermore, I think you're fundamentally wrong; the text itself cannot reliably communicate the authors intentions. Even the most straightforward text can be interpreted in a huge number of ways: as a code, as an allegory, using a marxist reading or a feminist reading. Winnie the Pooh can be about the class system or spiritual enlightenment or whatever, depending on how the reader chooses to see it. The intention of the author is a fact that is extrinsic to the text itself; even if it is stated in the text we do not actually know the authors intention, we only know the authors stated intention. It becomes clear, in fact, that the stated or presented intention is all the intention we can ever know, if we know the intention at all. Thus, plainly the idea of intention is meaningless; it is the relationship between the reader and the text that is important, as it is the only one that we, as the critic/reader, actually understand, at least in the single special case of our own relationship with a text. An author can call his works whatever the hell he wants, but if a reader can read a book that has been called mere 'entertainment' and comes away enlightened, and if a reader can read a book that is supposed to be full of some deep, considered meaning and is merely entertained, or bored shitless, then we can see the idea is completely false. It relies on an insupportable intellectual premise.

EDIT:

What about them? They're sections, as you say, not the whole. Surely you're not suggesting that we start isolating particular excerpts from a piece of writing and start considering them as if they were a whole and complete text?

Not exactly. It raises another enormous flaw in your argument though. How do you judge the overall quality of a work which contains supposedly 'literary' and 'non-literary' segments? If a novel contains 10 chapters of 'non-literature' and one chapter of 'literature' is the overall result 'literature' or does the 'literature' content have to be over a certain level. Bringing up things like this exposes the terrible weakness of the definition you're trying to make.

[pwhodges]

we only know the authors stated intention. It becomes clear, in fact, that the stated or presented intention is all the intention we can ever know, if we know the intention at all. Thus, plainly the idea of intention is meaningless

Although I am happy with the idea that we can choose to place our own interpretation on the text (and in many cases may have to), I really do not see any justification for the jump at the end of your statement in my quote.  If the author tells you something, why is it then "plain" that what they tell you is meaningless?

[KharBevNor]

Because we cannot assume the author is reliably stating his intention. I should probably have been a little clearer; it's not meaningless in terms of being without content, it's meaningless in terms of being an objective or reasonable standard by which to categorise work.

[Elysiana]

I'm about 3/4 of the way through A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. Not quite as fun as, say, A Walk in the Woods, but it's kind of neat to brush up on my natural history and science a bit, even if it is just bits and pieces.

[The Seldom Killer]

Just read The Pursuit of Glory - Bradley Wiggins

Not the best written biography but very clear and very honest, offering a keen insight into the competitive mind.

[valley_parade]

The Game, by Ken Dryden.

It's aboat hockey, eh.

[Blue Kitty]

pretty much every Siege Tie in from Marvel. I find the tie in books are a lot better than the actual event.

[Tom]

Gillen's Thor is probably my favourite thing about that event. I'm glad they're giving him Journey into Mystery as well as Uncanny and Generation Hope.

[Tom]

Wait, there are people who haven't read Phonogram?

Imo, The Singles Club is superior to Rue Britannia in every way.

[cyro]

Wait, there are people who haven't read Phonogram?

I haven't, I never really got around to it.

I actually remember Kieron's work back when he was a reviewer with PC Gamer UK. It never really jumped out at me (Though his Deus Ex review kicked ass as I recall - then again it's Deus Ex it would be hard for it not to) so I never really rushed into the transition.

[Inlander]

Part of me really wants to continue this whole literature/non literature debate because it's endlessly fascinating but a greater part of me realises that it's got less and less to do with the thread at hand and it really only involves myself and Khar, and neither of us are going to change the other's mind.

Anyway I'm reading the Odyssey now which is a story I'm much more familiar with, as is anyone who was ever a child I think. From a technical perspective it's fascinating to see how how Homer's style evolves and matures between the composition of the Iliad and the composition of the Odyssey, even through the filter of translation and nearly 3000 years of cultural distance.

[Tom]

Wait, there are people who haven't read Phonogram?

I haven't, I never really got around to it.

I was being facetious.

Gillen is credited as having invented New Games Journalism, I find this a little ridiculous but he is/was my favourite game critic.

[Ikrik]

Started Neuromancer and now have a giant backlog of Gibson books to get through. 

Every time I think of it my mind immediately jumps to Blade Runner and every time I pick it up and read it I wonder why the two are so synonymous in my head. I guess my friend and I have been talking about whether or not Blade Runner is cyberpunk or not and he always brings up Neuromancer and Gibson.  I need to start separating the two.

Also, finished Casino Royale a little while ago and it really wasn't what I expected.  I was expecting it to be old, dated, and quite boring.  It wasn't exactly the most interesting thing I've read and parts of it really confused me, but it was quite a bit better than what I thought it would be like.

[cyro]

Yeah that's how I learned of him first as well, the first thing I ever read by him was a review of the PCG UK that had Warcraft 3 in it - it might even have been the Warcraft 3 review, or possibly Neverwinter Nights. I forget! Anyway he was brilliant at reviewing things, I'm kind of sad he left because now I'm not giddy about buying PCG when I go to the UK any more.

NWN and WC3 reviews were the same issue if I recall. I think it was NWN, he was always the go-to guy for RPGs and FPSs.

Anyway Gillen does regular blogs/reviews with Rock, Paper, Shotgun, if you're not already familiar with the site, it's pretty good. The Deus Ex 10 year anniversary article in particular made me chuckle profusely.

[muffy]

Have just finished 'To the Wedding' - John Berger.

I hated it. It's about a young woman dying of AIDS and her separated parents trying to make it to her wedding day. It's ostensibly about the ferocity of love and whatnot, but the whole thing was littered with misplaced exclamation marks and abstract bits of poetic prose that didn't sit too well.

Now reading 'Child of God' - Cormac McCarthy. He really doesn't like people, does he?

- And to chip a couple of penneth into the resting discussion between Khar and Inlander: most has already been said, so this is more of an aside: The intention of the author can be strengthened or weakened depending on the delivery (naturally). For example - say that an author uses the symbolism of a beetle to illustrate a point - the beetle will be different to every person who reads it. It could have connotations to the reader which hint at something more profound, it could remind someone of a phobia or it could just mean a shiny bug. The experience, knowledge and the cynicism of the reader will affect their interpretation. If the author wants to direct that interpretation more clearly, they can try, but it ultimately comes down to what the individual words mean to each reader. I don't think I illustrated that very well.

[Scandanavian War Machine]

.Now reading 'Child of God' - Cormac McCarthy. He really doesn't like people, does he?

haha no i don't think he does

maybe that's why i like him so much

[jwhouk]

That First Season by John Eisenberg.

[cyro]

The Girl With The Dragon Tatoo. I'm not really a fan of Thrillers, but I need to be slightly more diverse than my usual Philosophy and Sci-fi/Fantasy norms.

[ginandphonics]

Rollback by Robert J. Sawyer

This book is such a fast read, I'm really liking it so far.

[Zingoleb]

I just finished the Nymphos of Rocky Flats. Here's the blurb on the back:

Felix Gomez went to Iraq a soldier. He came back a vampire.

Now he finds himself pulled into a web of intrigue when an old friend prompts him to investigate an outbreak of nymphomania at the secret government facilities in Rocky Flats. He'll find out the cause of all these horny women or die trying! But first he must contend with shadowy government agents, Eastern European vampire hunters, and women who just want his body . . .

It's pretty good and not as trashy as I was expecting.

[Avec]

Just finished the second book of the Walking Dead.

[Stephquiem]

Just bought Delirium by Lauren Oliver. Only on chapter 3, so I have no idea if it's any good yet. But it's a dystopian novel, and those usually hold my attention pretty well.

Hopefully I won't lose this book I like I did the last one the author wrote.

[scarred]

Normally waiting 550 pages for the action to get started is unacceptable, but the buildup and character development in A Game of Thrones is so well-structured and engaging that it's impossible not to get completely sucked in. Of course, with 200 pages to go everything could still get terrible, but at this point I'd consider myself invested in the series.

[amok]

Don't get too invested, at the rate he's 'writing' the 'new book' you'll never find out what happens.

What's already written is superb though.

[Joseph]

Virgina Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, which is typically excellent, and somehow a book I've skipped until now. I adore Woolf's prose and technique, and her interest in relating experimental writing directly to feminism. Barely into this book, but already enjoying it quite a bit. Probably will read The Waves soon after.

Gail Scott takes Woolf's ideas on the intersection of feminism and writing, and builds on them with attention to more contemporary theories of gender. She is also one of the few authors working in English who is in direct contact with current experimental Quebecois writers like Nicole Brossard. I'm reading her book of essays, Spaces Like Stairs right now, and it's really incredible. Already wanting to revisit her early stories which I read a few month ago, looking at them again through the ideas presented here, but as I lent that book to my girlfriend, I'll probably read one of her novels in the near future.

Edward Dorn's Gunslinger is a long modernist poem set in the mythical American West, with a mysterious gunpacking cowboy, his pot smoking talking horse, long asides about philosophy, many puns, and a great sense of music and mirth. Only done the first book so far, but it is absolutely excellent.

Samuel R. Delany's Jewel Hinged Jaw & Empire Star, which are both making me really hungry to read more sci-fi. Going to try and track down a few Theodore Sturgeon, Joanna Russ, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Alfred Bester books soon, and read up.

Slavoj Zizek's The Sublime Object of Ideology, which is a pretty great and entertaining book of critical theory. It's his first book written in Englihs, and I'm enjoying it a lot more than the more recent books of his which I've read. I've been reading it pretty slowly until recently, and now that I'm going through it, from the beginning again, at a decent pace, I'm getting a lot more out of it. Good introduction to Lacan, at the very least, and great stuff on ideology and Hegel as well. Not much to say beyond that until I get more into it though.

And then mostly just various collections of contemporary poetry.

[Johnny C]

Part of me really wants to continue this whole literature/non literature debate because it's endlessly fascinating but a greater part of me realises that it's got less and less to do with the thread at hand and it really only involves myself and Khar, and neither of us are going to change the other's mind.

actually i hadnt read this but it owns that khar is a strict barthesian re: authorial theory it's too bad he's already been ethered like fifty years previous by sartre who posited that texts are ultimately a negotiation between writer and reader not reader and text and that the work of the two interested human parties in tandem is ultimately what generates the meeting so in fact Writers Do Matter i'm sorry to weigh in on this really glibly i should go home

[KharBevNor]

Just because Sartre posits something doesn't mean it's true. I don't do much thinking about literature (such a restricted form of communication is beneath me), but you seem to be suggesting something similiar to the idea in aesthetics whereby a work of art is taken to be like a conversation and people find aesthetic value in the same sort of things they value in a conversation. Value/quality and meaning are not the same thing at all however, although the two things may have already been rather confused in the conversation above, but not in the same way. My argument, which I think is perfectly sound and pretty difficult to assail, is that the intent of the author is ultimately uncertain and thus cannot be used as a qualifier to sort works into two sets ('literature' and 'not literature'), because it makes the two sets meaningless, and thus the terms meaningless.

New thread?

[Stephquiem]

Desires of the Dead by Kimberly Derting. It's... eh, okay. I remember really liking the book before it, but I re-read it before this one came out and couldn't remember why. It's getting better as I get further along, anyway.

[Elysiana]

I finally spent my Christmas gift card and picked up:
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (have never read)
Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov (have read before and wanted a copy of it)
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (have seen the movie but never read the book)

I'm starting with Brave New World and have gotten a few chapters in so far. Not quite sure what I think - normally I love a good dystopian novel, but so far I'm finding this one a little strained and often downright corny. We'll see.

[Johnny C]

Just because Sartre posits something doesn't mean it's true. I don't do much thinking about literature (such a restricted form of communication is beneath me), but you seem to be suggesting something similiar to the idea in aesthetics whereby a work of art is taken to be like a conversation and people find aesthetic value in the same sort of things they value in a conversation. Value/quality and meaning are not the same thing at all however, although the two things may have already been rather confused in the conversation above, but not in the same way. My argument, which I think is perfectly sound and pretty difficult to assail, is that the intent of the author is ultimately uncertain and thus cannot be used as a qualifier to sort works into two sets ('literature' and 'not literature'), because it makes the two sets meaningless, and thus the terms meaningless.

New thread?

good call

[Tom]

So, I'm about 100 pages through Perdido Street Station and it more or less feels like a Discworld novel written by Upton Sinclair in his twilight years.

[The extra letter]

I'm reading "Ender's Game" at the moment. I'm about 1/3 of the way through. So far, I'm really not too sure what to make of it. I'm enjoying it, but the way Card is portraying the kids is just bizarre. I understand that they're supposed to be more intellectually developed than kids these days, but I still think Piaget et. al. would just be scratching their heads and going "what the hell is this?"

Suspension of disbelief? Whassat?

[Kugai]

Mostly Yuri Slashfic online at the moment   

But still chewing through Anne McCafftey's Pern Series as well.

[Joseph]

Lots of Language Poetry, trying to figure out my feelings towards it. Definitely someone like Lyn Hejinian seems far and away better (at least to my sensibilities) than someone like Charles Bernstein, but we'll see where I am in a while with all this. Ron Silliman has a few interesting things, but his blog, though full of lots of interesting things, is a little too shallow. But, I haven't had a chance to immerse myself in Language writing properly yet - perhaps sometime in the next few weeks when my workload falls off a little.

Also a fantastic book by Jacques Roubaud, Poetry Etc.. Investigates the nature of poetry in a series of short essays, and one long long dialogue. Fun and entertaining, and it's all theory on poetics! Roubaud is one of my favourite Oulipo writers, though he doesn't begin to approach Raymond Queneau or George Perec. Miles ahead of Harry Matthews and (especially) Jacques Jouet though.

[est]

Mostly Yuri Slashfic online at the moment   

That you say this shit to us is one of the reasons why we find you a really creepy dude.

[Tom]

I've been catching up on Breaking Bad. I just finish watching the episode "One Minute" and holy shit was tense.

[Kugai]

Mostly Yuri Slashfic online at the moment   

That you say this shit to us is one of the reasons why we find you a really creepy dude.

Probably, but that all depends on the style it's written in.  Some of the stuff out there has me going WTF was the Author thinking??!!  Then again, there is Yuri Fiction out there that is well written and isn't just PWP or worse.  Believe me est, I do have standards as to what I read in that Genre.

Yes, I know it's not everyone's cup of Coffee, and I rarely if ever mention it - save for the links to what I consider very good, well written Yuri/Shoujo-Ai style fics on my Homepage.  The only reason I mentioned it that time was I was in one of my silly moods after a long, irritating day.  Probably shouldn't have and just stuck to mentioning the Pern Novel I was also reading, but there you are - I did.  Sorry if it creeps you out, didn't intend it to, just meant if as a bit of humour.

[eyefielbad]

I was recommended The Adderall Diaries by Stephen Elliott a while back so I'm four chapters into that. It's an engaging read so far. True-crime mystery report/memoir/commentary on life in 2008/everywhere at once. That's the best way to describe it. Alright, it's not the best way to describe it, but that's the best I can do for now because I'm not sure where it's going yet. So many things going on, and I kind of like that. I hope it doesn't fizzle out.

[Border Reiver]

For the Emperor  by Sandy Mitchell.

Think Flashman in space.  Don't judge me by the lowbrow stuff - I do 90% of my reading on the bus and need somthing that I can pick up and put down without too much concern.  That and I read lots of intellectually demand stuff at work each day, so want the mind-candy to wind down with.

*Damn I should never try to type without triple checking my work when tired.  Those sentences read like a mentally deficient individual wrote them.  Or someone to whom English is just something that other people speak....

[Kugai]

Interspersing my McCaffrey reading with a bit of Tom Clancy.  SSN is the one of his I'm reading at the moment along with The Masterharper Of Pern.

[horsefish]

Stuck Rubber Baby by Howard Cruse - a graphic novel about the Civil Rights movement and being gay in the 1960s rural South.  Best graphic novel since Maus.  Although I also highly recommend Persepolis.