I'm a big nerd and I've read a lot of books of all different kinds, and I'm an English teacher.

Tell me what you like or what you're looking for and I'll recommend something I think is good

Also, fun history fact, this comm used to be called c/books until I started posting poetry on main every day in protest of there not being a literature comm. Direct action gets the goods comrades

  • a_blanqui_slate [none/use name, any]
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    1 year ago

    I like depressed intellectuals getting drunk as the world crumbles around them. Joseph Roth and Roberto Bolano have been my favorites of late. Anything along those line you're familiar with?

    I'll throw in Bulgakov as well though I read his stuff longer ago.

    • Wertheimer [any]
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      1 year ago

      Love both of those guys. How about Gregor von Rezzori? Memoirs of an Anti-Semite is his best.

      There's not as much alcoholism, but if you like depressed intellectuals and your favorite Bolaño book is By Night in Chile, check out my main man Thomas Bernhard and all the other novels inspired by his, like Gaddis's Agape Agape and Hector Castellanos Moya's Revulsion: Thomas Bernhard in San Salvador. I actually first got into Bernhard after he was referenced in Bolaño's 2666.

      Edit - for some serious alcoholism, Havoc, by Tom Kristensen. Amusingly enough, includes a communist character named Bernhard Sanders.

      • a_blanqui_slate [none/use name, any]
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        1 year ago

        I actually started Memoirs of an Anti-Semite, but it dovetailed from Roth in that while Roth's characters are not sexless, their sexuality is always just sort of lurking in the background and only comes through in certain moments of perceived moral failing. Memoirs of an Anti-Semite seemed way more upfront in those depictions which sort of pulled me our of it about 100 pages in.

    • PM_ME_YOUR_FOUCAULTS [he/him, they/them]
      hexagon
      M
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      1 year ago

      Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson

      Whores for Gloria by William T. Vollmann

      Suttree by Cormac McCarthy

      Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy O'Toole

      This isn't quite what you're asking about but it is about an alcoholic and is very good: The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne by Brian Moore