Books to overcome my cynicism.
I can't have a social life until I find a reason to not be cynical.
"E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction"
Wallace talks about irony and cynicism prevalent in television and fiction.
>>8841227
try therapy
>>8841227
You have plenty of reasons; if you're looking for ways out of being a cynic, you know this. Your cynicism consists in your inability inability to respond to them.
Crime and Punishment, maybe
>used book stores
>>8841034
>giving a shit
Get a life
>>8841034
>bought a used book
>For its aesthetics
>>8841034
iktfb
I bought I am legend at a used book store and just ended up buying a brand new 2nd copy online cause the one I got into store had a SUPER fucked up sticker that just ruined the whole fucking front cover when I took it
What should I read before reading Ulysses?
>>8840993
nothing
The Western Canon.
>>8840993
Dubliners and Portrait
How hard on a scale of 1-2 is it to learn Ancient or Koine Greek?
Anyone done it?
>>8840720
Yes, I am fluent in both.
I'd say 1 if those are your metrics.
>>8840726
outside of a university?
I meant to put "independently" in the OP.
Hard
I would learn Ancient first unless you're very certain you're ONLY going to need Koine, like you're solely interested in the New Testament
The learning curve is mostly high because there is a lot of memorisation, and you have to stick to it and really not slack off in learning all the forms
The grammar itself isn't super complicated or anything if you already know Latin, standard fare aside from the usual quirks and actually kind of easier than Latin in certain ways, but if you don't know anything about grammar you might struggle with learning/memorising all the constructions while also memorising tables and shit
The problem with not having a teacher is you'll have to 1) get over conceptual snags on your own using Google, 2) keep motivated to learn and drill a lot of conjugation, like an amount that will surprise you if you've just come from learning French, and without slacking off, 3) pace yourself without knowing what to prioritise. The last one is important because it can really help to have a teacher in charge who knows when it's a good time to slow down, to cover a chapter especially deeply because it's a nightmare, and to assign side readings that keep your motivation up by showing you that you're actually coming along nicely.
Hansen & Quinn is on libgen if you want to try an intensive course. The first chapter with the accent placement explanations is a pain, and in our class, we were encouraged to temporarily ignore the rules for accents on nouns (which have special rules apart from accents on verbs, and need to be learned as part of the vocab) until later on because it made the first chapter such a pain. If you do that, try getting past the first chapter and going a few chapters past it, and see what kind of work you'll be doing. Then skim to later in the book so you can see that it pretty much goes on like that.
It's an OK language to learn if you're willing to put in the hours and you've already learned Latin. But by yourself there's a high risk of burnout, for the average person.
What are /lit/'s thoughts?
>>8840694
Very low IQ. I feel sorry for you.
>>8840706
i genuinely want to hear your criticism
>>8840721
Its contrived and substanceless.
Idiots trying to answer "what comes next" without first having a clue whats actually been happening
I have seen this phrase said many times on the web
WHAT THE FUCK DOES THIS MEAN
Remove the semicolon; nobody knows how to use it.
>>8840687
>687▶
>Remove the semicolon; nobody knows ho
well noted
but answer the question please
>>8840742
>22:23:24
epic numbes
Is pic related a /lit/ college? Looking for something that places an equal emphasis on literature and science (cause devoting your time to just one is gay and vacuous as fuck). At the same time, I don't know if I want my parents to shell out 200,000 dollars for my education when I could read the same books at home.
Between this and colleges like Williams, Amherst (and in my case, maybe Cornell), which has the better culture for writing? STEMfags need not apply (though your sacrifice is well appreciated)
Great school, but don't expect that reading Ptolemy, Gallileo and Newton will give you a firm background in technical knowledge. Theory and philosophy of science yes. Also be aware there is definitely a covert theistic slant to everything taught there. That may or may not be your thing.
>>8840643
>>8840643
Williams and Amherst are incredible schools, but St. John's offers something pretty unique. I think you'll leave with more close-reading skill than you could get from any other school. I also think there's something pretty romantic about a writer who's read most of the most important books ever written.
You could read those books at home, but you likely won't, just because you likely won't have four years to dedicate to consuming the whole western canon.
Also, as I suspect you realize, the end of education at St. John's isn't to have read a lot of books, but rather to get good at reading, understanding things, and presenting your thoughts.
St. John's also has two campuses, which you can switch between as you like.
I went to a more selective liberal arts college because I was pursuing a particular field of study, but after listening to many of my professors wax poetic about St. John's, I came to wish I had gone there isntead.
>>8840643
i visited it when i was looking at schools. campus is quaint in a nice way. seemed to be a really cool community of students - it's small enough that everyone knows everyone pretty much.
whether you should attend depends on what you are thinking about doing afterwards. you'll be well read af, but won't really have specific technical knowledge or transferable skills. so your options are basically getting a job somewhere where they don't give a fuck what your degree was in or go into graduate school.
The chapters with wyatts family could have been a stand alone book. They were great. Some of the most bizarre stuff I've ever read. When wyatt came home was the most perfect section of the book. Also how did he make esme so loveable even though she's completely fucked. the ending with Stanley lmao holy shit. this book was something else. what were your favorite parts and characters?
>that part when wyatt asks "am i the one for whom christ died"
;_;7
>>8840611
what page is that on?
>>8840607
wyatt coming home was a climax the likes of which i have never seen in a novel. a thunderbolt literally and figuratively. My favorite part of the book is the build up to that moment, and how Aunt May's reaction to his artwork and religious zealotry really defined him psychologically and philosophically throughout the rest of the book. It's not often that those interactions built up in what seemed to be subtleties into a giant flood of emotion and passion and, well. Really was a damn fine novel. I look forward to reading it again. I admit that the second half was muddled for me, mostly because of my numbness after the climax, and exhaustion from the act of reading the book itself.
Opinions on this series
>>8840535
My older brother loved that stuff but I never really got passed the 2nd book
>>8840535
It's pretty okay
>>8840540
I read the entire series when I was in 6th grade reminds me of better times
I'm new to literature and just finished this and wanted to talk about it. Here are some of my observations
>prose is functional, never really poetic
>philosophy and ideas are in dialogue (mostly), not from narrator's observations
>pacing is 10/10. Events lead into each other naturally and the subject of the narration is never uninteresting
>emotional moments are paced to be every 1-2 chapters. you can't read more than 30 pages without coming to some sort of emotional moment
>every character is given strong traits and characterization is very important
It feels to me like, above anything, it's a very well-designed story. The way that events and characters tie together feels more natural than any other story I've ever read, and it has the effect of a constant stream of emotional moments. It's really impressive, and it's interesting that other books seem to focus more on the style/prose and less on actually making the story interesting. Because it's not focused on style, it seems like the sort of thing some /lit/ posters would call pleb, but it's part of the western canon and it still focuses on ideas and philosophy as much as story. I guess I just don't understand the fetish of style
>>8840344
>I'm new to literature
It shows
>>8840344
ok but did you feel it in your heart
>>8840344
fuk im 50 pages from the end
Is this still accurate or it needs an update?
>>8840224
These are good entry level books. There's no need for an update
It should probably have books you can actually talk about on here without being told to go back to rebbit.
Mine: (Top to bottom)
Traupman - Conversational Latin for Oral Proficiency
Ed. Bloom - The Best Poems of the English Language
Melville - Moby-Dick
Hemingway - A Farewell to Arms
Allen & Greenough - New Latin Grammar
Berard - Capti
Dostoevsky - Demons
Dostoevsky - Crime and Punishment
Ed. Bloom - Modern Critical Views: Dostoevsky
Tacitus - Opera minora (OCT)
The Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy
Horace ed. Kirkman - Satires & Epistles
Horace - Opera omnia (Teubner)
The Cambridge Companion to Horace
Konstan - Roman Comedy
Wallace - Consider the Lobster
The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature
Conte - Latin Literature
>>8839914
*Conte - Latin Literature: A History
And I guess it's left to right since my pic uploaded sideways
>>8839914
is that a fucking abridged moby dick
>>8839968
why would norton critical be abridged
Why haven't you read the essentials yet?
Absolutely Required Works:
The Odyssey and the Iliad by Homer (~12th - ~8th century BCE)
Major Plays of Aeschylus (456 BCE)
Major Plays of Sophocles (406 BCE)
The Holy Bible (~8th century BCE - 1st century CE)
Genesis
Exodus
Daniel
Ecclesiastes
Job
Psalms
Romans
Gospels (Matthew, Mark, John, Luke)
Revelation
Apocrypha
The Aeneid by Virgil (19 BCE)
The Divine Comedy by Dante (1307)
Don Quixiote by Miguel de Cervantes (1605)
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (1616)
Paradise Lost by John Milton (1667)
Faust (Part I and II) by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1808, 1832)
Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin (1833)
The Major Tales of Nikolai Gogol (1840s)
Moby Dick by Herman Melville (1851)
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (1856)
Crime and Punishment by Fyodr Dostoevsky (1866)
Major Plays of Henrik Ibsen (1870s)
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (1877)
Dubliners and Ulysses by James Joyce (1914, 1922)
The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann (1926)
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (1929)
The Aleph and Other Stories by Jorge Luis Borges (1949)
The Recognitions by William Gaddis (1955)
Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov (1962)
Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon (1973)
Zettels Traum by Arno Schmidt (1970/2016)
*Some substitutions allowed. e.g. TBK for C&P, AK for W&P, later Flaubert/Faulkner, etc.
**This is a bare MINIMUM list, not the end all be all.
pic unrelated
>>8839238
Why the fuck do you say the Bible and then specific only certain books of it? At least make your shitpost consistent, damn.
And how the fuck you gonna have Dubliners and Ulysses but not Portrait? What is this amateur hour?
>major plays of Aeschylus
>major plays of Sophocles
>no major plays by Euripides
Why do you pretend to act like a patrician prodigy if you're not? Shut the fuck up instead
I'm working on it, I've read Homer, the Bible with the Apocrypha, I'm 3 plays away from reading all tragedies by Aeschylus.
I also read Hesiod, Archilochus, Sappho, Alkman; the Odes of Pindar, Heraclitus, and a bunch of dialogues from Plato including the usual suspects.
Eagles.
Sophomoric
That and the songs are the only things i don't like, everything else is amazing.
>>8839217
>the songs are the only things i don't like
Sophomoric x2
Help me understand moral philosophy better
Last night I was in a skype call and a friend asked me "If I put a button in front of you, and told you if you pressed the button, someone, somewhere would die. But, you will receive $1 million. Do you press it?"
When I told him I would press it everyone in the call just told me I was an asshole.
The best way I can explain my actions is that I am a nihilist in the sense that I don't think anything is objectively right or wrong (murder, for example). However I am not a practicing nihilist. I recognize that even with a lack of objective meaning, certain things make me feel good, and other things make me feel bad. With this in mind, I work to maximize the net good stuff in my life. Fortunately, I'm fairly mentally stable so the things that make me feel good don't generally hurt other people, and, if they do, then the badness i feel outweighs the goodness, decreasing my net goodness and defeating the point of those actions. In the button scenario, I believe the goodness I would have from $1mil would outweigh the badness I would feel from ending a random life. Additionally, I subscribe to the philosophy that the human mind has the ability to "get over" or perhaps "get used to" the guilt of doing a bad thing in the same way it can get over grief. So in the end, I would hope I have the ability to "move on" from the guilt of ending a random life in the event that the $1mil wouldn't cause enough goodness to outweigh the badness.
In response my friend said I was full of shit and an edgelord.
Where did I go wrong in my line of thinking and what alternatives are there to such thinking?
Say they're spooked faggots
>>8838396
/thread
You sound like a total edgelord, but you are correct to press the button. However, you are incorrect to tell a group of middle class white (presumably) people who want to feel good about themselves for 'caring' about the whole world that you would press the button, that was a dumb call. Anybody realistically presented with this scenario would do it, because it eliminates the muh feels of actually killing someone face to face as well as any possibility of getting caught, which are the two reasons why most people in the world aren't killers