I just started reading Steppenwolf by Hesse. My thoughts after reading the intro (not another author’s introduction to the text, but part of the book as another character describes who Steppenwolf is) are that Steppenwolf is just like me desu. Bookish and autistic, spending his days reading literature and his evenings drinking wine in pubs. I just started the main text (Steppenwolf’s schizoid ramblings) and so far so good.

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>>25327939
I’m on the final stretch reading Fin de siècle Vienna which is admittedly not a long book but I dragged my feet because I lost interest for a while there.
I’ve learned quite a lot after reading it actually.
For one, despite being a diehard Socialist I have to grudgingly concede that Hitler was right in one respect: Vienna’s cultural, artistic and intellectual life was in fact dominated by Jews back then.
The book trots out figures like Arthur Schnitzler, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Theodor Herzl, Sigmund Freud, Oskar Kokoschka and Arnold Schoenberg that when you finally get a gentile like Gustav Klimt it feels like a breath of fresh air.
In this context the antisemitic backlash capitalized upon by figures like Karl Lueger and Georg von Schönerer feels completely justified.
Austria-Hungary’s legacy is therefore quite complex.
We can admire it for its artistic and architectural legacy as well as its unique approach to diplomacy and embrace of multiculturalism but ultimately I’m glad it got destroyed in the fires of war. The politics of Austria-Hungary were an uneasy mix of liberalism and unabashed imperialism that were never going to last.
Ultimately we shouldn’t romanticize the period and should examine it with a critical eye. Still, it definitely made me want to visit the city to see the Ringstraße and all the museums as well as learn Deutsch.

>>25327939
Villette since I'm going through all the Bronte books. Only got this and the Professor left. There's something about the way Charlotte plotted her books that irks me. I think Villette is a more self-aware and realistically written Jane Eyre, but the constant contrivances and the main love interest character sours the whole thing for me.

>>25327939
Wrapping up 2666 by Roberto Bolaño, probably the last massive book I'll read this year, it was exhausting but worth it
anyway there's plenty of insight I got from it, actually, here's a few I'd like to share, surely someone who's older than me knows better right
>ignore women being killed, literally, just go on with your day pretend like nothing is happening, this seems to be a rational response
>don't have sex with a bpd artsy bitch that's also fucking your friend
>mexico is an actual shithole, NEVER go there under any circumstances
>anyone who deals with literature looks like a broken miserable dead inside person

A Confederacy of Dunces, just started it
An anon recommended it and it's pretty high up on all the "top 100" charts
It's very funny, especially because Ignatius is basically an anon with crippling autism and delusions of Saving The West. I lost my shit at "the gyro has widened".

jesus christ you guys are so fucking smart, I'm reading Deliverance and all I'm really thinking is how I don't want to get raped in the woods by mountain men

>>25327939
Got through part one of Don Quixote. Now I am reading Faust part one. After Ill probably read some pulp fiction.

>>25328048
I'm a mountain man and I promise not to rape you

i'm currently stalled out on reading normal people by rooney it's so mid i just can't bring myself to pick it up even though i could probably finish it off in a couple hours