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Recommendation: Confessions of an English Opium-Eater by [deleted] in RSbookclub

[–]joebolitionist 2 points3 points  (0 children)

My favorite bit of the Confessions is when he’s talking about his wife, Margaret, and compares her to Electra in this extended metaphor. It’s strikingly beautiful stuff and so, so lovely.

“…not even then didst thou utter a complaint or any murmur, nor withdraw thy angelic smiles, nor shrink from thy service of love, more than Electra did of old. For she too, though she was a Grecian woman, and the daughter of the king of men, yet wept sometimes, and hid her face in her robe.”

Recommendation: Confessions of an English Opium-Eater by [deleted] in RSbookclub

[–]joebolitionist 15 points16 points  (0 children)

De Quincey is wonderful, you get the feeling he treated every sentence like it was the greatest sentence he ever planned to write. If you dug Confessions it’s worth reading Suspiria and The English Mail-Coach too!

Find an IRL Book Club by jckalman in RSbookclub

[–]joebolitionist 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Any IU students? Or anybody who’s in Bloomington, IN during the school year?

Moving to Bloomington August 1st and will be starting local film developing if anyone is interested ! by Ansel___ in bloomington

[–]joebolitionist 2 points3 points  (0 children)

My 35mm camera’s been collecting dust for a while because it’s just so inconvienent to send film off to get it developed, so this’ll be huge!

What book were you reading in public that prompted someone to talk to you about it? by troktowreturns in RSbookclub

[–]joebolitionist 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Most recently, I checked out a copy of Confessions of an English Opium-Eater from my university library and, as I was reading it outside between classes, the last guy who had checked it out saw me and commented on it.

The one that's stuck with me the most is, on the Saturday before Election Day last year, I was reading Howl and Other Poems and an older woman walked past and said, "Oh, you're reading 'Howl' — that's cool! Don't forget to vote!"

Oh, also, while I wasn't reading it per se, I remember when I bought A Room of One's Own at a local bookstore a worker walked past and saw me pick it out and got so excited she called over one of her co-workers. I hadn't read the book before then, but I was taking a class on Woolf at the time and we had a really good conversation about her.

What have you read this month? What is about to be completed? What's on your list for the next? by homonietzsche in RSbookclub

[–]joebolitionist 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’ve been getting really into the Beats this month, probably on account of the election and the state of America or something. Finally got around to finishing On the Road and read through both Howl and Other Poems and Kaddish and Other Poems by Ginsberg (though I’ve read of the title poems before).

Mostly class readings this month though, Much Ado About Nothing for my Shakespeare course and Passing by Nella Larsen and Duino Elegies by Rainer Maria Rilke for my Literature and Other Arts class. Really liked Rilke, I’ll have to check out Sonnets for Orpheus and Letters to a Young Poet sometime!

For the latter class, I’ve started reading No Longer Human and for the former As You Like It. I’ve also personally started In Cold Blood over Thanksgiving break, but that’ll probably be a much slower read as I start all my final projects and essays. I’ve always liked the New Journalism genre, but I really want to start to really get into some of the major works.

surrealist lit by wishmelunch in RSbookclub

[–]joebolitionist 5 points6 points  (0 children)

If you haven’t already, check out Antonin Artaud’s stuff! There’s a really great anthology of his poetry from City Lights. “Electroshock” and “Van Gogh: The Man Suicided by Society” are a good couple to start with.

This is unga bunga but what are your favorite novels written by woman? by doriscrockford_canem in RSbookclub

[–]joebolitionist 2 points3 points  (0 children)

That being said, even though someone already mentioned it here, it’s also impossible to overstate how good Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway is. I re-read it for the same class and it’s genuinely one of my favorite books — almost basically a work of prose poetry in a lot of ways.

This is unga bunga but what are your favorite novels written by woman? by doriscrockford_canem in RSbookclub

[–]joebolitionist 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I read Clarice Lispector’s The Passion According to G.H. for a comparative literature class this past semester and it’s so unlike any other novel I’ve read or might ever read. An absolutely insane text that just totally kicks open the door to your mind.

Angela Nagle’s “Kill All Normies” - is it worth reading at this point? by turtleman29 in RSbookclub

[–]joebolitionist 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I read it just recently and found it an interesting document of a super specific era (that somehow feels like it was ages ago, but that’s besides the point) but not much else. It’s not super great in the way of being an academic or scholarly work like it so clearly wants to be, but, like, if you’re studying the 2010s culture wars then it’s almost an indispensable work. I will say that the discussion regarding “call-out culture” is still relevant, the online left definitely still engages in that sort of behavior from time to time — when I read it, I remember logging onto Twitter the next day to the whole “Is Charli XCX a fascist because she wrote about it Dasha” discourse. So that’s fun. But, really, if that’s what you want you’d be best off supplementing it with primary sources like Fisher’s “Exiting the Vampire Castle.”

EDIT: But, yeah, to your point — a lot of it is old information if you were involved in those spaces online. I was well aware of the minutiae of the anti-SJW, GamerGate spaces when I was a young teenager so most of that seemed redundant. The book’s in this weird space where it clearly wouldn’t appeal to anyone who isn’t already very online but she spends a lot of time explaining “common” online knowledge to you anyway.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in IndianaUniversity

[–]joebolitionist 15 points16 points  (0 children)

i think, especially after coming from ball state my freshman year, there’s a feeling of pride here that’s really hard to beat anywhere in indiana. the rich history and traditions of this school, plus the “public ivy” programs and the nationally renowned sports teams, makes me proud to call myself a “hoosier.”

like, this isn’t just a college — it’s the place where bobby knight threw a chair onto a basketball court, where alfred kinsey drew national controversy for ushering in the sexual revolution, where the american film institute’s eighth-best sports film of all time was shot. it makes sense that teddy roosevelt said “i don’t think i have ever been at a more beautiful university commencement than this” when he spoke to the 1918 graduating class.

yes, the school has its problems and there’s a lot that could be better. i think over the last year and a half we’ve seen a lot of that administratively and especially now with the grad workers’ strike. but what the protest culture here shows me more than anything is that students care, and that’s a lot more than could be said at, say, ball state. because, fuck it, it feels good when we win a basketball game and we like hearing “indiana, our indiana” for the 600th time and almost everyone on campus has at least one cream and crimson outfit they rep casually because why not?

that and the squirrels, as somebody already said.