Literature about fear in general, crippling fear of failure, other humans or a fear of everything really.
Perhaps I can shed this plight once and for all through the gods in the page.
fear and trembling
either/or
Become a Knight of Faith
>>7818306
>tfw I can only overhead press the bar
if his dick or balls popped out of the loincloth, would be be able to do anything about it?
i often hear people say that the evidence for evolution is overwhelming, and that no educated thinker now denies it, even religious folk. i believe that it's true as well, but i haven't actually read proper evidence of it because i'm an uneducated fuck
what book should i read if i want to read up on evolution?
He might be a meme now but in the 70s Dawkins wrote a book called the Selfish Gene which is potentially the single best explanation of evolution for the general public that I have encountered. It's also literally the book that created the word 'meme' which ties it all nicely together.
The Selfish Gene by Reductionism Dawkins
>>7818231
thank you
Is this test accurate?
http://katfeete.net/writing/suestart.php
>>7818173
It's not as laughable as I expected it to be. A mary sue basically is an author's wish fulfilling self-insert and this checklist reflects that.
I used a character who's essentially me and only got a score of 18 with 12 of the points coming from the physical resemblance alone.
>>7818173
I suppose it helps when your character's motives, desires, age, physical features and basically everything about them but their gender is literally not talked about.
Everyone's always telling her how ugly she is. That's gotta be the #1 'not a Mary Sue' criterion.
I'm going crazy. what is the short story I am thinking of? I read it like five years ago and cannot remember the author's name. It was a scanned PDF and I don't recall the source.
A man leaves his hotel at night and walks around a town or something by himself. he eventually gets accosted by a knife-wielding? thief? Cant really remember. I feel like it was originally written in Spanish, and I remember the author described the air at night as "feminine."
Any guesses to what I'm thinking of?
kind of??? Did it have a female narrator? and did the man get his arm cut off or something? I might be thinking of another story
>>7817680
I've never read anything by him, but the knife-wielding gaucho bit makes me think it's something by Borges.
>>7817685
my instinct is that the narrator was male. I also think that the climax was basically that the thief didnt do anything, as in let the narrator go? It's been so long I couldnt be sure
Hey did anyone else read this? I read it last year and found it underwhelming, but listening to Cohen's interview with Silverblatt on Bookworm is making me want to give it another go. If you did read it, what did you think?
I've not seen a single good thing about this. Anywhere. I haven't any motivation to read it when I have such a backlog
Wow I've never seen this. Less than 500 reviews on goodreads, and a score of 2.88.
I've heard a lot of bad stuff about it.
Would like to read it out of sheer interest but like >>7817592, when there are so many sure things still to read why take a real risk?
Has anyone read this piece of shit?
I have to write about it for class, and while I'm more than capable of doing so, is there anything that any individual on /lit/ would mention that strays from the rudimentary themes and ideas presented?
It is a particularly loathsome work, but work must be done.
>>7817568
lol, i bought it blind at a bookstore once.
i never could get myself to get too far into it.
never got my attention.
Had to get it for class and never read it
>>7817568
Piss off, faggot.
anything like this minus the humor? i like it for what it is, but i sort of feel like reading an unironic version of this, all secret organizations and lite scifi and maybe occult stuff. almost like a novel of the orignal deus ex game
>>7817541
Foucault's Pendulum?
>>7817541
principia discordia.
http://www.principiadiscordia.com/downloads/Principia%20Discordia.pdf
>>7817543
I've actually read that. not quite but a fucking great book in its own right
Pic related. Can't find any info on it so I have no idea how much it's worth or how rare it is.
>>7817434
Pic of cover
I've got a copy of Moby Dick from 1962
>>7817434
Mein bibel.
What's a good way to start reading history? Something that would give me a basic overview and a good starting point, not something that delves too much into details of specific periods.
I too am curious to find a good historical starter text
You're going to have to be more specific
western history? european history? history of mankind in general? etc
Hey /lit/, I'm reading One Hundred Years of Solitude with a group of people now. I know a tiny bit of Colombian history, mostly from Open Veins of Latin America, and I was struck by how well the chapters on the war seem to correspond to the events of La Violencia. I checked on wiki, and it turns out that Gárcia Márquez was born in 1927, which means that he was still a young man when it began. I'm starting to think that the book is a thinly veiled allegory of Colombia's recent history, or the author's conception of it, anyway. The other people in my group don't care about that at all, and see more "timeless" themes like the way war changes people in the book.
What do you guys think? Am I on the right track, or have I spent too much time reading about history?
No spoilers, please. I just began chapter 9.
Also, this is my first time here. Please be gentle.
yes, if you're not trolling, Macondo is a metaphor/synedoche for Colombia
>>7817315
Is that Hayek?
>>7817341
Why would I be trolling? How would this even work as a trolling attempt?
Hmm, interesting. That reminds me of something that's been bugging me about this book for a while.
So, in its earliest days, Macondo was basically a paradise. People were equal, well-fed, and free. Nobody lacked for anything, and there were no real political divisions in the town. The only authority that existed was informal, and the townspeople were quite happy with that. They were also pleased with the person in whom authority was invested.
But that's not what Colombia was really like then, was it? Is it that Gárcia Márquez genuinely believes that life was wonderful before, or is there something I'm not seeing?
>>7817347
No, it's Gabriel Gárcia Márquez.
Ok, so what is the best translation for Gogol? More specifically, for Dead Souls and his short stories. I know P&V is shit, but I have also seen Maguire do penguin classics. Is he good?
>i know p&v is shit
ya got memed on son
>>7817314
how
>>7817430
the meme is that p&v is shit, when its actually ntb
>tfw should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas
hey don't go without me I wanna get a picture
>>7817504
and I think I know which eye is which
>>7817257
Could anyone please explain this metaphor for me like I was stupid (and all signs so far do point to that conclusion)?
>ywn love books as wholly and unconditionally as michael silverblatt
girls on instagram like books. Silverblatt likes writing. fedora me all you want, you know it's true
[soft and breathy voice] I....... [20 minutes later] believe.... [11 min later] that this book is extraordinary and.... [to be continued tomorrow]
>>7817205
ok but my point is he loves such a wide range of literature so enthusiastically
i, and most of /lit/, tend to read from our little niches and little else
Legally speaking, can you write a story heavily based on the life of a still living person without their permission? It'd still be fiction, names and specific events would be changed, but if you know the actual story, there wouldn't be any doubt.
That's what most literature does famm
>>7817125
You can until/unless they sue you. Do they have enough money to sue you?
If you write a foreword saying that all characters are fictitious and anything that doesn't seem so is purely coincidental.
The same as South Park does
[english is not my first language, sorry in advance]
All my life (I'm now in my 30's) I only focused on informations about things I liked (movies, video games, music, etc), but my general knowledge is shit, like, really.
Now I'm suddenly starting to be more opened to the world, but I don't know where to start to fill the gaps I have on my world knowledge.
Consider me as an idiot, an alien that just landed on Earth a few months ago.
What non-fiction books would you recommand so that I can understand today's society and doesn't have to avoid "serious" subjects in conversations, or look like I know about them but just nod?
tl;dr : I don't have any general knowledge, please recommand some essential non-fiction books.
read the Story Of Civilization by Will Durant for a quick overview of what's been going on for the last 3500 years or so, then get more into specific shit that interests u
>>7817100
That sounds like a good idea to start bigger and then narrow it down. Thanks for the tip.
Still, now that the topic is here, if anyone has good recommandations of non-fiction anyone could read, don't hesitate.
>>7817096
You could read Sociologicial Theory - Ritzer & Stepnisky. Will really help you.