Should you write a summary followed by a review of every book you read?
Or is this stupid in an age of Wikipedia and Sparknotes?
Do you think it would help with retention or would it simply dumb down the more lucid points of an argument?
>>8838053
What?
Who the fuck cares if you write something for personal retention/reflection/discussion?
If you mean write a summary and review on reddit/goodreads for other people then consider killing yourself instead.
If anyone here mention Donald Trump, they'll be banned and their mothers will be contacted.
>>8838360MAGA
I'm a sickly man, /lit/, and it kills all motivation for me to do anything. Any books about characters struggling through physical ailments?
>>8838037
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater.
>>8838037
Is it your liver? Are you spiteful?
>>8838037
Confessions of a Mask
The Fall of the House of Usher
Why do people give continental philosophy so much credit when it's obviously full of shit? Seriously, I can't understand how one can read an author like Hegel, Schopenhauer or Hannah Arendt and not go "nigga, are you serious?". Don't even get me started on the french train - Lacan, Derrida, Deleuze, Levinas, Bourdieu - and the rest of those guys.
Why is analytic philosophy so superior? Is it because continentalists are talentless hacks who hide bury themselves into an untranslatable language?
Please explain.
Continental philosophers:Sophists
Analytic philosophers: Actual philosophers
>chemicals
>>8838010
>muh identity thinking
Neck yourself
what is the best poem from this work? I would say it is the one on page 20.
Is this real life?
Is this just this fantasy?
>>8837930
Fuck off already
How does one read this? Clearly conventional methods don't work. The man has obliterated writing into sensory experience, "mouth-feel", pure aesthetics, no regard for even a singular language (apparently words from 45 different languages are used), grammar or recognizable syntactic structure.
Commentary? If so which is best? And if not, where do I start?
>inb4 the greeks
Is it possible, that the entirety of western literature is encompassed in this single book? Does one read this to understand all else, or all else, to understand this? Is it even possible to understand this if one isn't Joyce himself?
Is Ulysses better?
>>8837910
google fweet. Read an arbitrary section, fweet it, then read it again.
the greeks, history of europe, ireland and dublin, read his whole oeuvre before attempting, have a deep knowledge of art and philosophy, and most importantly realize it's an intricate autistic puzzle written by a man slave to his own genius, don't be mad if you don't get it. have fun.
>>8837910
it was written to be read and felt, not studied and analyzed
its cruel to analysts, not readers.
What is the most edgiest book on earth?
The bible?
>>8837852
On 4chan, yes
>That part when the people go into Lot house to rape angels and Lot tell them to rape his daughters instead and then his daughters rape him while sleeping.
Yeah, probably.
>>8837852
probably blood meridian. it is absolutely cringe inducing.
Does /lit/ have an opinion on Friedrich Hölderlin? I heard he's one of the best poets ever but I don't know much about him at all.
>>8837798
He is very classical in his style, in a sense that he uses an ordered and sober imagery, and few metaphoric colors.
He is also quite complex: you will have a great deal of difficulty to understand what he is saying, for he makes references to old Greek myths and terms, in a confuse Pindaric style. Most of the time his poetic diction is misterios: you don’t know what the hell the poem in question is about.
To my taste he is not that interesting because I like poets with a very dense and metaphoric style, with several images and similes (poets like Shakespeare, Neruda, Aeschylus, Coleridge, Nabokov-prose, Büchner-drama).
Holderlin is more like Sophocles: clean and a recycler of old metaphors. Not my cup of tea, but classicists might like him.
I like this response.
>>8838306
me too
Hey /lit/ I need some comfy recs that are easy to find (gen lib preferred). My grandpa (last direct relative) just died and I wanna read stuff that'll take my mind off it.
>>8837574
Hey OP, that really sucks man. Sorry to hear.
I'm not sure how easy it is to find, but The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann is a really comfy book. I also find a lot of stuff by Tolstoy and Dostoevsky comfy.
Or if you want something that's not very serious and kind of light-hearted, the Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino, I thought, was really comfy and fun.
What kind of stuff are you normally into?
>>8837574
I found the Socratic dialogues pretty comfy and they're available everywhere online. Alternately Epictetus's Discourses are pretty comfy and might be helpful, link here:
http://classics.mit.edu/Epictetus/discourses.html
Hope you feel better soon, sorry for your loss
>>8837598
I'll read anything but lately I've been sticking to the western canon + some lesser known Slavs. Right now I guess I'm just looking for something more pulpy that's just to be read for the plot so I can feel like a kid. Kinda like how it felt when I first read Belgariad and Mallorean.
I'm planning on writing a story in which the protagonist, maybe in a stream of consciousness style, will oscilate between his past (in which he believed in a project and gradually burned out without ever achieving anything) and his present (in which he tries to bring back the past, distorted by his present perception as a period of efervescence and juvenile enthusiasm).
Just as a detail of his nostalgia, I might introduce some mentions of ephebophilia (not younger that 18 tho) in his present life, but I still don't know if it should be heterosexual or homosexual. He would fuck the teenager only as a way of trying to bring back what he felt about sex back when he was young. I guess that if he fucked a girl, he'd do in order to contemplate her juvenile enthusiasm, like she wants him to know he's already an adult and shit. If he fucked a young guy, I guess he would be searching for the feels he felt during his youth, when he had an equally young male lover. I'm planning to make the adult man an average joe, so he would be the only one that knows about his homosexuality and the relationship. He's married now and shit.
So it would be trying to simulate the past (gay shit) or trying to contemplate the past (straight shit). What do? What would make the story look less like a story about fucking teens and more like a story about wanting to bring back the past?
When is going homo ever the wrong choice?
second bump...........
>>8837516
I think you should go the straight route, it's more relatable due to 9/10 of the population being straight and you seem to want the story to be relatable and nostalgic.
What books help me cope with my rampant hatred, agression and disdain towards other humans /lit/?
I want peace of mind.
>>8837388
Enchiridion or Marcus Aurelius meditations. Or Confucius Analects, fuck if I know
get some pussy and you'll be fine
>>8837398
>tfw 21 year old virgin
That's not it, though, it goes deeper than that.
>tfw to slow too finish a book in an acceptable amount of time
How long does it take you to read a moderately difficult book of about 500 pages? I've been reading the preface to The Iliad since Homer was coming up with the blueprints for The Odyssey
I usually schedule about 60 pages give or take per day. A ~450 pager can be done in a week, 500-700 in roughly 10-14 days and 700-1,300 page memes in just under a month.
>>8837285
Depending on the book I can usually do 60 pages/hour, even slower if I'm vocalizing the text in my head. If I'm speedreading then I'll do something like 1k words/min.
>>8837285
This is how i do it. If its a small book aka less than 200 pages ill try to break the book down into halves to finish over 2 days
Hey /lit/, who are your favorite female science fiction writers?
I've been reading a lot of stuff by Philip k dick and stanislaw lem recently, and noticed that most of the sci-fi I read is by men. Any recommendations?
>>8837219
>most of the sci-fi I read is by men
and?
Ursula K. Le Guin
Margaret Atwood
idk I don't read genre trash
>>8837221
It's not like there's anything wrong with male writers, but I'm interested in accessing different perspectives to my own. Plus, because of the social context of the 20th century the most celebrated authors are men, so I'm interested in finding out about what else is out there.
>>8837246
Cool, I've seen Ursula K. Le Guin's name around so I'll check her out.
What do you read?
Recommend me some good old detective novels /lit/…
inb4 Dostoyevsky
Anything by Dashiell Hammett.
As a matter of fact there's a solid writer who isn't a lit meme yet.
>>8837321
>As a matter of fact there's a solid writer who isn't a lit meme yet.
Who's it?
Hey /lit/
I've been struggling on the intro to my novel. I think it sounds too edgy and pretentious, but I'm not sure. Brutal tips welcome. Thanks
1/3
The complex sciences of unexplored phenomena have always fascinated me.
My teacher, too long ago for me to remember the exact grade, once mentioned the multiverse theory. He claimed that there were infinite variations of me. One where I outshined Einstein. One where I was dumber than a rock. Even one where I was poor. The theory, to the mind of a affluent third grader, was incomprehensible in essence. The psyche of a child has the transcendent ability to conjure false realities, yet unlike most adults unable to recognise that these realities are false. Even adults get lost in their dreams. Take, for instance, when you ask a toddler what they want to be when they grow up. Don’t be surprised when they answer with Batman. Ask the same child ten years later, and they will tell you, now with a supposed keen sense of actuality, something along the lines of the next Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs. Add in--say--another fifteen years and that same child--now an adult--would say they’d be lucky to make general manager. Many people don’t change for their dreams, but rather alter their ambitions to fit current circumstance.
There’s no clear moment when you realize you will never be Batman, Bill Gates or the Bossman. To survive the ego-blow, ambitions must be fitted to your capabilities.
The multiverse theory went around this. The idea was always nestled in the back of my mind, inspiring daydreams of fighting pirates on a war frigate, space battles, and conquering the foreign landscape of the old west. The aspect of the multiverse theory that fascinated me most was that I was actually acting out these adventures in an alternate dimension.
2/3
All those intense tutoring sessions, language classes and business lessons that would have otherwise destroyed my youth were off put by the knowledge that in reality I was off fighting evil zombies on the planet zebulon four. As I got older and the lessons became more intense, the truth was depressing. Those other me’s were not me, for your personality is shaped by your environment. I was shaped by my boring upbringing and not captaining a pirate ship. Life is doing the dishes. Life is typing on a computer. Life is driving. Life is sleeping. Life is fooling yourself into thinking the moments you have a break in the same ol’ same ol’ is actually life. Life is stale. Only a few hours out of the week does one truly have fun. People find excitement in drama, elections, and tragedy. We, as a economically incentivised species, endure hours of torture and injury to our backs to experience two-sevenths of our life. The glorious weekend.
Today was a weekday. Just like every weekday, I slipped on my striped orange jumpsuit with my student ID code tattooed across my back. No matter how much I changed my haircut, flannel shirt or khakis, that orange jumpsuit was always underneath. Every time I took off the jumpsuit at final period, I was lifeless--but in a good way. My life was made of chores and work. Lifelessness--and I don’t mean death--was hanging out, playing video games, and unmitigated elation.
3/3
In this portion of the multiverse, my daily schedule was that of reverse aging. In the beginning of my day, I was an adult. Like an adult, my hope was throttled by reality. At seven o’clock, I had a test. At eight, I would receive math homework. Only by school’s end would I ‘un-live’ and become a teenager. When school got out, the world was full of opportunities. These opportunities, granted, were also throttled--but less so. I aged backwards even more, finally into the realm of limitless impossibilities. In the night, I returned to childhood through dreams.
All my stories start with me getting up in the morning and coming back to life. The rest of the day was reenacting my routine. I followed through school in a zombie-like trance. I got to school a bit too late. The bell rang when I was right down the hall--for the fourth time this week. My teacher was pissed at me regardless, so why not enjoy that extra five seconds of sleep?
For first period, I was hardly awake. While my teacher droned on about various charts and statistics, I zoned out and processed my life. I thought about nothing in particular, just going over previous events and repeating them in my head. What did ‘so and so’ mean when they said that? Why did ‘what’s-their-face’ act that way? I paused my trance momentarily to look at the clock, only to sigh and mutter how much time was left before my next class. Once the bell finally rang, I stuffed my half-assed notes into the front pocket of my backpack and carried on in this manner until lunch. When lunch finally arrived, I was once again disappointed. The idea of food and a break had seemed so heavenly compared to classwork. The reality was extremely lackluster, crummy food and poor lighting. Any socializing I would have was cut down by short time restraints.
Anyway, ik it sounds too wordy--but that stops after the intro.
Alright /lit/ let's play a game.
Describe the basic plot of a book as poorly as you can, see if anyone can guess it.
>Hero in a bar tells a story about how much better his life is than everyone else's.
>>8837162
All plots are the same retard.
>>8837235
harry potter?
>killed because of hot sun