Any of you know any good books about the origins and development of the Slavic/balto-slavic languages?
>>9611806
Besides Poland and Russia, they are all cultureless derivative shitholes.
Sienkiewicz's Knights of the Cross is good, or so I heard.
Reymont's The Peasants is also good if you want a comfy read.
>>9611905
Croatia has some good writers but that's it. Serbians are morons and Bosnia can only produce poets for some reason.
Begin with the Byzantines
My psychiatrist told me to read this book.It seems like a pretty generic self help book.Did anyone read this and does it work?
Contemplating suicide here can someone just say is reading 200ish pages of this worth it
>>9611796
I've never read it but it's probably pretty dumb. Just boring platitudes. Why do you want to kill yourself anyway? Are you actively suffering all the time or are you just bored?
>>9611844
mostly the first one.It isnt even that I really want to die its just that I really dont want to live.I dont know why really.I had my hormones checked and its all normal and antidepressants arent working so it isnt some chemical imbalance.
Pic semi-related as I didn't watch the tv show but only read the first book out of curiosity since everyone and their mother kept talking about this frogging bullfish and I wanted to see if it could be any good. Biggest mistake in my life.
That neckbeard Martin thinks he can be a new Tolkien, but they have nothing in common except the R.R. in the name. Tolkien wrote an awesome masterpiece full of deep meaning with Lord of the Rings, in which every word can tell you something as they were all chosen carefully, and whose messages roots in Tolkien's life as a Christian, being a work which can really give you some important advice on how to live your life and what's really important. I could spend hours just talking about Frodo and how his "inverted quest" is the most revolutionary thing ever happened to modern novel, or how the acts of mercy on Gollum are maybe the most important part in the whole story as they resonate throughout the whole story. Not to talk about hobbits in general and how they can express the modern man, or how Tolkien created a real mythology of it's own.
Game of thrones doesn't even have an inch of all of this. It wants to feel "gritty and realistic" all of the time, resulting in just recurring to soap opera means to cheaply make the reader want to know what happens next, killing off characters as it was nothing because the atheist neckbeard Martin is says "woo people die when they get killed so let's kill em off randomly" (to then bring them back to life when plot armor is needed), and making everyone a fucking douche you'd want to slap badly in the face.
One thing that ASOIAF fags often refer to as Tolkien's limit is that some characters are too "good", and the example they always use is Sam. But everyone who read LotR carefully knows that Sam isn't completely good, in fact there's a point where Gollum is almost on the brink of turning good, and tries to caress Frodo as he slesps, but Sem scolds him thinking he was gonna harm him and from then on Gollum will just want to kill them. Tolkien also said in lots of his letters that while Sam sure has some good features, he's very limited in being a "small" person, who can't go the extra mile like Frodo does. And all characters, if you pay attention, have good and bad in them in LotR, only Tolkien shows you how there are some who really choose to follow the right path.
I find it a lot more simplistic and forced that a guy like Drogo in ASOIAF, who is basically a Gengis Khan who doesn't mind killing and raping thousands of people, suddenly turns into a Nice Guy™ for that slut Danaerys and they fall in love and "bangs her gently" and blah blah blah.
(Continuing in a comment as it's long)
>>9611747
Why you would get pleasure in kicking the corpse of series that will never be completed?
The enemy is already dead. Stop it, anon. Don't do this to yourself.
>>9611747
And while LotR shows you how the good guys are superior because their means are different, they have mercy for Gollum and that's what saves them in the end, let's see how ASOIAF does with Danaerys: she has a douchey brother who sells her to Gengis Khangs and shyet in order to have an army and follow his ambition, but at the same time protected her for 13 years, and made a great sacrifice to gave her as a wife to that asshole instead of marrying her himself as tradition would have suggested (heck for a proud guy like him it must have been tough, selling your mother's crown before and then conceding your sister and future wife as a barbarian's bitch), what does she do when she has a chance to help her brother since she's now considered decently by Gengis? She mercilessly screws him up and allows the barbarian lord to kill him in a humiliating way, goodbye bro, let me fuck this guy now that I'm enjoying it while you rot in hell. Yeah, that's probably how modern SJW feminists think "strong women" are, they don't give a shit about people who did anything for them and they just hop on the more convenient cock.
Is this really a positive character Martin? What's she different from her ridiculed brother in exactly? Probably only in the fact that she is a favorite of the neckbeardy author who gave her all kind of right chances, while blonde bro was scammed and screwed by his only familiar. I'm fucking disgusted when I see that people all around the web call Daenerys a badass or shit like that, but Martin probably made her that way so that SJWs would find a douchey character they could see themselves in, so he hit the right spot.
Last but not least, the worldbuilding. Some people say ASOIAF has a great world and lots of subplots which Martin is so smart to manage well... Bullshit.
His "world" is a bastardized version of other people's (Tad Williams's Memory, Sorrow and Thorn tells you nothing?), and there is not much fantasy as the realms are simply medieval countries not even that well disguised. One thing is taking inspiration from history, another is just transposing it with stolen elements from other books. And what about the plot? The fact that it's "bug" doesn't mean it's good. Tolkien made a huge Universe but anything he wrote had some kind of meaning, Martin's plots only have shock value and soap opera intrigues to keep things messy just for the sake of it.
Sorry but I call BS on that crap. Don't tell me "just don't read it if you don't like it!!!" as I think criticism and arguments of what we find good and bad are fundamental in being conscious readers, if you only want to circlejerk with people with your same opinion just go to reddit or Facebook.
>>9611761
Maybe you're right anon. It's just that I had to rant a little bit since that shitty book wasted my time and since it still makes money and cringe worthy facebook-using mainstream "nerds" regard it as a "geek anthem", it's always good to point out what the real crap is. Nice pic btw.
>start with the greeks
complete bullshit. if anything, one should start with the Sumerians.
does anyone know of any good books dealing with the Sumerians, their society, their pantheon, their myths and so forth? or just the mediterraneans in general?
>>9611737
Gilgamesh and the Enuma Elish. Also, read the Egyptians, Hittites, Ugarits
>>9611741
yeah I mean no shit champ. obviously I know to read the epic of gilgamesh, what I was asking was if anyone knew good annotated versions, or commentaries.
you know, like how edith hamilton's "mythology" is always hyped as a good compendium for greek myths. I want some equivalent of that for the mediterraneans, hittites, kushites..
>>9611737
>not studying cave paintings
/lit/ is full of pseuds.
Memes aside, is this book in any way worth reading? There's a copy at a local thrift store and I want to know if I'll be wasting my money and/or time if I were to pick it up.
how about you just buy it and come up with your own insightful opinion as to whether it possesses worth as a text, instead of relying on anime enthusiasts opinions? baka
>>9611843
it is one thousand pages long, that's a big commitment to something that a lot of people say is garbage trash
>>9611846
Kys. You don't have to read it all to decide if you like it or not. Besides, a thousand pages doesn't seem like a lot once you get going.
How'd you feel about the final chapter, /lit/?
And which ending of the two releases is more thematically satisfying to you?
none of them. The book fucking stinks. I don't care if Burgess was trying to replicate the slang filled dialogue of rowdy teenagers it's still fucking annoying to read and the payoff does not equal the price paid.
>>9611722
I read that book in my teenage days with two good friends of mine and we used to speak like that all the time and in public, it was among my funniest memories
>>9611732
holy shit you're a faggot
i am thinking sincerely that i dont give a shit about the Market or about a literature carreer, so i just put my last writings here, in 4 chan, if you want to read it, i put the links bellow (its in spanish, so this is just an stupid and useless information to english speakers.)
pues eso, he estado pensando que no se que quiero exactamente de la vida, asi que pongo esto por si alguien lo quiere leer, pensaba autopublicarlo pero... son ramblings de nada demasiado concreto. lo pongo en blogger porque me parece lo mas facil para publicar y despublicar (tampoco es que haya buscado muchos sitios) pero no es mi blog ni nada parecido.
http://dddhjdhjddjhnbdhjbdhjbhjdbhjdbjdhbd.blogspot.com.es/
http://dnhhrhrhhahaaa.blogspot.com.es/
todo el mundo dice lo mismo como dos veces al año
Dios mio!
I don't really speak spanish haha
>>9611627
I have no idea what you're talking about m8 in that endless sentence you have there
>>9611657
what sentence?.
What books should I read to learn to cope with my mortality?
What the hell should I do with my mortality?
Holy Quran.
Jihad.
Life is only bearable knowing that it's eventually going to end and you just have to grind it out until then.
Denial of Death - Ernest Becker
Do you have those picture guides that tell you what to read to get into a certain ideology/religion?
Pls post them here thank you :)
>>9611574
bump pls :(
Favourite genre is coming of age/bildungsroman. Rec thread for those.
Jakob von Gunten
>>9611211
Hadn't heard of this before, seems like a great rec. Thanks anon.
>>9611223
It's a damn good novel. If you like it, you should also check out The Tanners by the same author. That's about a group of siblings in their 20s though, but it's still incredible (I actually prefer it)
So for a while now, I've had the goal of starting to read ancient philosophy and working my way up to modern philosophy.
I have recently purchased The Metaphysics, The Nicomachean Ethics, Politics by Aristotle and The Republic.
For someone with no background at all in ancient philosophy, in which order do you think I should read these books in?
Start with the presocratics.
>>9611158
I have quality recommendations for anyone who wants to study the presocratics in earnest
>>9611171
plz I just want recommendations for which book is the easiest T_T
So the wiki article on socrates says that the socratic dialogues are actually reports of real conversations. If this is the case then why didnt more people contradict him? Almost every time it was "yes socrates" and "you speak the truth oh socrates"
Was he talking to plebs half the time or what?
>>9611131
Yes anon, you speak the truth oh anon
>>9611131
Wait so does that mean the plato has barely written any original material?
>>9611131
Right, they stood around and reported the entire conversations on tablets verbatim.
thoughts?
pure genius or ridiculous Bukowski-wannabe?
Its title and first page which I found by looking it up both reek of banality. I can tell it was written by a teenage girl, or some mental equivalent.
>>9610975
Thanks for posting this. I was always curious about this book due to the cover and anonymity of the author. My curiosity has been satisfied (which is to say I won't be reading it).
Its the bad anonymous author not the good one (/lit/)
>essay due
>hurrrr Wikipedia is not a valid source
Why is this allowed?
>>9610764
Just quote the article's sources
dumb frogposter
Analysis and Opinions.
Good but not as good as Pale Fire, which was not as good as Ada in which none of them were as good as Eugene Onegin so Nabokov was kind of screwed from the very beginning.
>>9610413
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjlpcL2jK3UAhUM52MKHT9NC28Q3ywIKTAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D5Lz_f1qjGiA&usg=AFQjCNE2Oc5VFwnt2Wm6sX_gjaWDF7Bidw&sig2=JWPWmKSZV3lMw5PmalovwA
Here's an excellent lecture on the novel.
>>9610413
Fantastic prose and wonderful ending. Overall, it's among my favorite books. I think it is more a book of characters and poetry than of ideas, but not every piece of literature necessarily needs to be the vessel of an idea imho.