Recommendations

So far my book collection consists of:

Carroll - Alice in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass
Crowley - The Book of the Law
Henderson - The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster
King - The Eyes of the Dragon
King - On Writing
LaVey - The Satanic Bible
Lee - To Kill a Mockingbird
Lovecraft & Others - Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos
Lovecraft & Others - Dreams of Terror and Death
Matheson - I am Legend & Other Short Stories
Sach - The Everything Buddhism Book
Tsunetomo - Hagakure

I've read all of them besides the 2 Lovecrafts (1/2 through Cthulhu Mythos)and I am Legend (reading now).

Recommendations?

get better taste

Hmmm, I don't see where my taste is necessarily BAD. Define good taste.

OP, read:

Dostoevsky: Crime and Punishment, Notes from Underground, The Brothers Karamazov

Tolstoy: War and Peace, The Death of Ivan Illych, A Confession

Dumas: The Count of Monte Cristo

Coetzee: Elizabeth Costello

Jared Diamond: Guns, Germs, & Steel, Collapse

Hesse: Steppenwolf

Brian Greene: Fabric of the Cosmos

Hemmingway: The Sun Also Rises

Tom Friedman: The World is Flat

Ayn Rand: Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead, so you can rage with me about she is bad and how we should feel bad for reading her

Jhumpa Lahiri: Interpreter of Maladies

John Irving: A Prayer for Owen Meany


Trying to find something to read myself at the moment...

>>4 here, in addition, take a look at this list: http://www.penguinclassics.co.uk/static/cs/uk/10/minisites/classics60birthday/whatsyourpassion.html.

>>3
Henderson - The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster
King - The Eyes of the Dragon
King - On Writing
LaVey - The Satanic Bible
Lovecraft & Others - Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos
Lovecraft & Others - Dreams of Terror and Death
Matheson - I am Legend & Other Short Stories

this is all bad and you should be ashamed of yourself

>>6
Fuck off.  This is exactly the kind of stupidity we don't need here.  Go back to /fa/ or /mu/.

Recommending Clark Ashton Smith.

>>7
Actually it's the kind of thing we really need here. You idiots keep reading and recommending crap and the only way to combat it is to make you leave in disgust at the obnoxiousness and arrogance of those of us who actually have good taste. For example, looking at this Clark Ashton Smith fellow's Wikipedia article, all I see is shitty genre fiction. Get out, faggot. We don't want you here.

>>8

I like how you didn't add anything productive to the thread.

Why don't you fuck off to your insipid book-club meeting at your local coffee house so you can discuss the finer points of, I dunno, Catcher in the Rye.

>>1

You seem to like things full of squamous, tentacled horrors, OP. I recommend Perdido Street Station by China Mieville. I also recommend a pocket dictionary to accompany the book, since Mr. Mieville likes to throw every big word he knows at you.

>>6
King - On Writing is actually pretty decent.

>>8
Just let the idiots post their shitty recommendations, looking at the OP's list I doubt he minds.
I don't know Clark Ashton Smith, but from the wikipedia page I'd say it's not a bad recommendation for someone who likes Lovecraft.

>>8
It's no surprise that you fail to see why bagging on anything genre is stupid.  Spoilers: you're a dope.  Additional spoilers: The genre of a work does not dictate its quality.  Further spoilers: You don't know anything about literature.

>>11
Do you even know what genre fiction is?  Get a brain, moran.

OP here:

Since you all seem to be so cool and literature educated, fill me in on what YOU all like.

>>4
here

OP, I was wondering what you thought of my recommendations.

From what I've actually heard of and my friends have read on that list, it seems very good.

I was wondering why you all were hating on Lovecraft and Matheson? Both are solid authors.

Because Lovecraft is formulaic pulp garbage. How many stories about wealthy, upper-class, middle-aged racists discovering indescribable (unspeakable, eldritch, cyclopean, etc. etc. etc.) horrors and being driven mad in the process can you read before it drives you insane as well. I suggest anyone read The Rats in the Walls, which while a prime example of the above is a pretty interesting short story, and then give the rest of his work a wide berth.

What about Matheson? I truly see your point on the Lovecraft.

Also, explain the hate on Henderson and LaVey? They both provide a good religion-based satire.

Hunter S Thompson: Rum Diaries, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Curse of Lono
William S Burroughs (I have a feeling OP will really like him): Naked Lunch, Junkie, Queer
Allen Ginsberg: Howl
Jack Kerouac: On The Road
Chuck Palahniuk: Fight Club, Choke, Snuff
Haruki Murakami: Kafka on the Shore, Underground
Ryu Murakami: In The Miso Soup
Banana Yoshimoto: Kitchen

>>4
Yeah, because someone who is into Lovecraft will find the transition to Dostoyevsky extremely logical. </sarcasm>

Expansion of literary interests is a good thing.

>Do you even know what genre fiction is?  Get a brain, moran.

Sigh.  Yes, I know what genre fiction is.  It seems you don't.  So let me give you a little primer.  Genre is a word which is used to envelope broad classifications of types of stories.  Nothing more, nothing less.  Every story ever written can be said to belong to a genre.  In our era, mainstream literary fiction is a genre.  Science fiction is a genre.  Horror is a genre.  Both science fiction and horror can be said to fit within the broader realm of the speculative fiction genre.  You're using the word in a derisive way -- as if any 'genre' story is automatically inferior.  By this I take it that when _you_ use the word genre, you have shunned the actual meaning of the word, and instead are using it as a catch-all for types of fiction you don't like.  I assume, from the context of this conversation, that means anything other than mainstream literary fiction.

But (I presume) you haven't read the stuff, and so you don't know what you're talking about.  You probably also don't realize that many of what we now consider to be literary classics are in fact genre (your definition of the word) fiction.  Consider the strange case of George Orwell's 1984.  1984 is -- by any measurement -- a science fiction novel; and it uses all the tricks and tropes of science fiction.  (The only reason you don't know this is because you don't know what the tricks and tropes of science fiction are.)  Consider Kurt Vonnegut, who wrote, to the great exclusion of most other topics, science fiction novels.  What happens, over and over again, is that great works of speculative fiction get co-opted by the literary mainstream.  As if once Penguin Classics puts out an edition of a genre novel, it ceases to be a genre novel.  Well, that doesn't quite work.

In the meantime, so-called genre fiction continues to be derided....  Usually by people who have made no effort to read it or understand it.

"But 1984 was about contemporary people," I can hear you protesting.  "It was about the social order and the role of individuals in societies and in a time where the reaches of governments were ever-increasing.  It was about big ideas and important things."

Bingo.  Yeah it was.  And that's what science fiction can do that other fiction can't (or at least, often doesn't).  Science fiction can show the world what it should not become.  By extension -- that's what genre fiction can do.  There are literary depths within the pages of many horror novels, and many science fiction novels, and many crime novels -- if we want to get into that as well.  These writers understand literature.  They know the same things that mainstream writers know.  Probably they have the same goals.  Many of them spend their _lives_ studying literature of all kinds. 

Many of them are real writers.

Now, I'll grant you Sturgeon's Law on this.  90% of everything sucks.  I agree that most science fiction is crap.  Most horror is crap.  But the flipside of that is, most mainstream literary fiction is crap.

The innate quality of speculative stories is no better or worse than that of mainstream stories.  Genre means nothing.  The name of the author on the manuscript means nothing.  The only thing that means anything is the work.  And all stories are about the same thing: People.  In the end, the only difference between genre fiction and mainstream fiction is the toolset available to the writers -- all of whom are writing about.  Guess what?  People.

Now I've spent way too much time on this, and I'm going to bed.  I almost included a suggested reading list for you.  But somehow I think you might be entrenched.

>>21
The word "genre," does, as you have said, have the denotative meaning of "a kind of literature (or painting, or music, etc.)."  But, see, in the English language, words have denotative meanings, which are outlined in the dictionary, and they have connotative meanings, which are implied based on, guess what? Context.

By and large, when someone uses "genre" as a criticism, it means "Tired out, hackneyed, and/or boring."  That's the meaning used here.

As such, 1984, the novels of Vonnegut, et alii are not "genre fiction" because, well, they're not hackneyed or boring. Learn to live in the world of implied meaning. Think outside the box. Have fun with language.

>>22
Ah.  The old "They are not genre because I like them" argument.  Good _Christ_ but you are a stupid man.  Okay.  I'm done.

Just because you only use the author's last name does not make you classy. And... "blook collecyion"? wow...just wow.

>>16

i liked at the mountains of madness and shadow out of time better

From what I've gathered, I understand why The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and The Satanic Bible need to go - they were only funny once without any re-read value. I also understand why I am Legend needs to go, through reading it I have begun to understand that it is poorly written with way too much repetition.

However, I still don't see what's wrong with Lovecraft and Lovecraft-related authors.

>>26
that's mainly because you are a gigantic nerd and im afraid it cant be helped "^_^

>>26
>I still don't see what's wrong with Lovecraft and Lovecraft-related authors.

There's nothing wrong in reading Lovecraft, but I think you should broaden your choice of genre quite a bit.

ITT: Elitist arseholes who think the word genre only applies to things of no inherent artistic value.

>>29
I better word to use for Stephen King and HP Lovecraft would be generic fiction.

>>30
generic and genre have the same meaning

>>31
No. You are an idiot.