Archived threads in /lit/ - Literature - 18. page

>>10024982
Stop posting this fake shit
2017 chart comes at the end of the year like always

>>10025017
every single year's chart was made in like, march or so newfag

>>10025022
>september/october/november
>march or so
>newfag
>>>back

I don't like work — no man does — but I like what is in work — the chance to find yourself. Your own reality — for yourself, not for others — what no other man can ever know.

>>10024977
>>10024984
Excellent

>>10024991
I was just thinking about this one today. The alliteration is what makes it.

My favorite:

But on the way home tonight, you wish you'd picked him up, held him a bit. Just held him, very close to your heart, his cheek by the hollow of your shoulder, full of sleep. As if it were you who could, somehow, save him. For the moment not caring who you're supposed to be registered as. For the moment anyway, no longer who the Caesars say you are. O Jesu parvule, / Nach dir ist mir so weh... So this pickup group, these exiles and horny kids, sullen civilians called up in their middle age, men fattening despite their hunger, flatulent because of it, pre-ulcerous, hoarse, runny-nosed, red-eyed, sore-throated, piss-swollen men suffering from acute lower backs and all-day hangovers, wishing death on officers they truly hate, men you have seen on foot and smileless in the cities but forgot, men who don't remember you either, knowing they ought to be grabbing a little sleep, not out here performing for strangers, give you this evensong, climaxing now with its rising fragment of some ancient scale, voices overlapping three- and fourfold, up, echoing, filling the entire hollow of the church- no counterfeit baby, no announcement of the Kingdom, not even a try at warming or lighting this terrible night, only, damn us, our scruffy obligatory little cry, our maximum reach outward- praise be to God!- for you to take back to your war-address, your war-identity, across the snow's footprints and tiretracks finally to the path you must create by yourself, alone in the dark. Whether you want it or not, whatever seas you have crossed, the way home....

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"Do you know why I believe in the novel? It's a democratic shout. Anybody can write a great novel, one great novel, almost any amateur off the street. I believe this, George. Some nameless drudge, some desperado with barely a nurtured dream can sit down and find his voice and luck out and do it. Something so angelic it makes your jaw hang open. The spray of talent, the spray of ideas. One thing unlike another, one voice unlike the next. Ambiguities, contradictions, whispers, hints. And this is what you want to destroy."

A lot of German and French literature from the late 18th to the mid 19th century

Just read the fuck out of everything German and French

>>10024943
any examples I can start with?

>>10024954
Omelette du Fromage is always a good place to start.

>>10024871
The Fault In Our Stars. Nothing comes close.

>>10024871
The Bible obviously. But besides that, I might be able to narrow it to three. The Odyssey, Brothers Karamanazov, and Plato's Republic.

my diary desu

you made this thread in bad faith, but i genuinely like his stand up. it isnt horrible. would never read his book though. celebrity novels tend to substitute quirk for good prose.

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>>10024888
nice trips, this book was co-written with sociologist Eric Klinenberg.
Ansari does integrate his comedy in the book, of course, but the majority of the book is just the psychological / sociological aspect of dating in the modern age. Everything is backed up with studies, data, and citations for each corresponding source.

Of course he isn't a "literature god", but the book is worth a read.

>>10025088

>a comedian co-writing a book with a sociologist

Sounds a little too close to Marty Beckerman's "Generation S.L.U.T." which tried to mix "facts" with "humor"

Rhapsody: Child of Blood, Elizabeth Haydon

Steve Erikson's Malazn book of the fallen series. Plenty of mystical shit and strong female characters.

>>10024761

>buying books in an age where the internet provides nearly all of them for free
>placing value on "owning" "things" in the age of the internet

>>10024761

>library
>buy them used
>pirating e-books
>decide to just not read them

>>10024790
>buy them used
I'll definitely buy a lot used.
>>10024782
You never read e-books.

If a zombie virus were airborne there would be no chance of anybody surviving. It would likely be a very short and depressing read.

>>10025028
The story would likely be about a select few who are immune to the virus somehow

Sounds like ass, you should write it.

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>The world is too pleb to let beards grow this long.

Titus Alone

>>10024875

Hmm, I don't think so. I don't remember the boy being given a name. And he was alone in the ruins, he met no one.

The one line I specifically remember is he comes across a sink and he wonders at the knob labelled "HOT," but it was not hot and a knob labelled "COLD" but it was not cold.

Another Pioneer

>>10024669
I stopped taking antidepressants which definitely increased my creativity but it also led me to commit suicide again.

>>10024669

I installed a typewriter sound to my chrome extensions.

Now when I'm typing on google docs, it's much easier for me to get a flow going because the sound calms me and focuses my thoughts..

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/typewriter/leonahfiookchofehhcelfdedbjndmpm

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>>10024669
Move to Japan, become inspired by the sheer exoticism, find that words just flow from you now.

>>10024622
>How do I stop thinking of the English term when trying to speak German and just speak it naturally?
Why don't you just do the opposite and start thinking about German terms whenever speaking English? Pretend you're German and trying to learn English.
>Also, the phrase "Es tur mir lied" literally translates to "It causes me sorrow" yet Google Translate changes it to "I am sorry". Why is that?
Google Translate is an artificial neural network program that generates results based on its node connection weights being updated in proportion to their gradient on the error function. So nobody explicitly decides to make that German phrase translate to "I am sorry." It learned to do that because that's how people have most often translated that phrase when it's encountered it in its training, and so its weights adjusted accordingly to where it fires off values that map out to that answer when it receives that German phrase as input.

Well even when you learn new words in English, you learn them in terms of existing words and concepts you have in your mind, it's just that you have so many and the process is so gradual that you don't really notice you're doing it. You are always making all kinds of subconscious associations, many of which you would not consider rational if you really thought about them, for example how the Germans have an intuitive "feel" for what the prefixes "zer-" or "ver-" mean. There is only a family resemblance between those terms - it's hard to define exactly what they mean and one can always find exceptions. But someone with a feel for the language will be able to use them properly without thinking.

With learning another language it's similar, it's just much harder, because you're getting a lot more at once, you have a lot less context to work with, and there are a lot of idiomatic expressions that will simply never feel comfortable to you. With things like "Es tut mir leid," textbooks will often encourage to simply remember what it idiomatically translates to, "I'm sorry." But I would encourage you to do both, and try to think of the grammatical logic behind idioms when using them. It can actually make them easier than simply remembering by rote. Eventually it will become so well-worn for you that you stop noticing.

Also eventually you will build up lots of those associations without even realising you're doing it. Whenever I learn a language, I notice that it's about 50/50. For every word or phrase I strain to remember, I'll notice that some other word auto-inserted itself into my memory without any conscious effort. As your vocabulary reaches a good number of those basic words, and especially as you first begin reading things that you are actually interested in and that have a common vocabulary with which you can quickly become contextually familiar, strange new words and expressions will start to stand out instead of being the norm, and this makes them a lot easier to remember. It only seems painful at the beginning because absolutely everything is new and strange and you're getting it all at once.

How often in your life have you ever thought about what you're "really saying" in using various expressions? "Excuse me" is more like a command than a request, if taken literally, but it feels like a request because that's how it's used. An English learner once told me that "don't take this the wrong way, but..." was a very confusing phrase for them, because they were trying to picture the "logic" of it (like, what is the "wrong way"? Upside down?), and I told them, it doesn't necessarily have any set logic to it. You just know what it means by feeling. You will get that eventually in a foreign language, don't worry - your brain is surprisingly good at learning it. But you have to stick with it, and let the layers slowly build up.

>>10024728
>there are a lot of idiomatic expressions that will simply never feel comfortable to you.

I meant to say, totally comfortable. Certain things will always feel a bit weird. I was talking to an Italian guy yesterday who is very fluent in English, but who always makes the same small mistake in elementary grammar because that's how it works in Italian. It's so counterintuitive to him to do it how English does it, it would be like trying to force yourself to say "The dog run" instead of "The dog runs," just feels off.

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I think those, especially the Oxford guides, are good, but it is much more satisfying to read the actual philosophy books and come to your own conclusions. Find the philosophers or ideas that you are most interested in, read about them directly and then maybe help your understanding with those books.

What's the guide for if you don't even know where you're going ?