What are your top 10 favorite books?
>>9646861
Psalms
Proverbs
Ecclesiastes
Matthew
Mark
Luke
John
Acts
1 Corinthians
Revelation
But if I post my favorite books I'll get called all sorts of mean names even though I really like them.
How do I evoke specific emotions out of my readers?
There's a hundred ways of delivering sad emotions, but I want to narrow it down into an almost scientific formula that will 98,8% for sure activate the dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins.
b
Just sell drugs instead
>>9646914
Have you ever managed to read a book while doing any sort of drugs?
I didn't notice it was an abridged edition until after I had purchased it due to my severe retardation. Will I be missing out on too terribly much?
google it fag
>>9646834
This, books like this, if you need to refer to an unincluded section then you're able to google it. Otherwise, it's handy to have on your bookshelf. In some cases the full edition might be too expensive. Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is a multi-volume set that in a condensed form 1,000 pages long is like the Reader's Digest version of Infinite Jest.
>>9646830
It depends if you're in it for the long dive or just want a decent snapshot. Keep in mind Gulag is not exactly accurate in terms of numbers. Even the most 'muh black book of communism' liberal estimate trims his death toll by like half.
Are there any anthologies or collections of key Buddhist texts (preferably from the Pali Canon) comparable to the bible?
I'm slowly making my way through the New Oxford Annotated Bible - and I'm really enjoying it - so I'd love to read a similar thing for Buddhism. i.e. historical context for each text, multiple translations, sweet leather binding, etc, etc.
>>9647715
Thanks anon but I'm guessing the answer is 'no'.
Oh well. If anyone is interested in the history of Buddhism I'd recommend reading Richard Gombrich's "Theravaada Buddhism : A Social History from Ancient Benares to Modern Colombo", and Hajime Nakamura's "Ways of Thinking of Eastern Peoples".
Also Nakamura wrote a highly esteemed 2 volume biography of Buddha titled "Gotama Buddha: A Biography Based on the Most Reliable Texts" but I can't find it anywhere.
The closest thing would be the Pali Canon, huge and it not translated fully, so you would have to learn Pali to read it all.
There are also many different Buddhist traditions, with their own texts, commentaries on those texts and so on.
Selections from the Pali Canon:
Basic Teachings of the Buddha (Glenn Wallis)
Sayings of the Buddha (Rupert Gethin)
Early Buddhist Discourses (John H. Holder)
In the Buddha's Words (Bhikkhu Bodhi) + his other anthologies
Other traditions:
Buddhist Scriptures (Donald S. Lopez)
Buddhist Scriptures (Edward Conze)
>he doesn't read female authors
I don't mind them, its just half the books I'm interested in just happen to be written by men. And I wont force myself to read something just because a woman wrote it.
Good for him!
I love female authors
Virginia Woolf, Virginia Woolf, Virginia Woolf ... the list goes on!
I turned face-up on the slab of stone, gazed at the sky, and thought about all the man-made satellites spinning around the Earth. The horizon was still etched in a faint glow, and stars began to blink on in the deep, wine-coloured sky. I gazed among them for the light of a satellite, but it was still too bright out to spot one with the naked eye. The sprinkling of stars looked nailed to the spot, unmoving. I closed my eyes and listened carefully for the descendants of Sputnik, even now circling the Earth, gravity their only tie to the planet. Lonely metal souls in the unimpeded darkness of space, they meet, pass each other, and part, never to meet again. No words passing between them. No promises to keep.
The way they do Japanese translation isn't even sentence by sentence, let alone word for word. The original for a paragraph like that might have had the last sentence first or five extra sentences or five less. To even talk about an author's "prose" with Japanese translations is an insult to the translator and yourself.
>>9646744
>wine-colored
Anyone know if it is true that the ancients could not see blue as we do. In Icelandic and old English there was one word for both yellow and red.
>>9646744
I think DFW probably weighed around 235lbs. What a slob.
Father's day is coming up, and my dad loves the sci fi genre. I know he was a fan of star trek and starship troopers. Would anyone know a good sci fi book to get for him that's not too uncommon?
just get him hyperion, theres a movie coming
go to the sci fi general, fuck off, or r/books
Anyone reading Origins of Totalitarianism? I'm struggling with how dense it is with information, I understand she expects historians to be reflexively aware of much of what she's talking about, but I don't have a strong knowledge of European 19th century finance and it's tough. You recommend any good documentaries or supplemental material that I can read that will kind of smooth it out?
I don't read much Sci-fi but I genuinely enjoyed the Ender books, especially the Shadow series.
A realistic view on human nature, the need for always bettering but doubting yourself along with others, politics and war.
My dear dudes,
I’m not a regular /lit/eratus. I’d like to ask you all about improvement in writing skill. I’m an artist, I also lift weights on occasion. When lifting, it’s pretty straightforward to find what exercises work what muscles. For art, you first identify the “fundamentals” of art, which you could say are like the muscles in weightlifting. The fundamentals are things like perspective, gesture, light & value, construction, etc. Categories of knowledge and skill. Then you assess which ones you need to work on. Trying to draw something from imagination will show where you’re lacking pretty well. After that it’s… sort of straightforward to practice. And if you're is a master of the fundamentals, that essentially means you can successfully make any image you want. Largely or entirely from your imagination as well...
So, my questions for you:
What are the fundamentals of writing? And how do you practice them? Take that in a general way, or a personal way if you like. Personal as in “how do YOU practice them”. Also, to be clear, let’s say I’m talking about writing narratives, stories.
I’m wondering because my impression of writers is that they don’t practice like a painter does. Like, do writers do “studies”? Or practice sessions dedicated specifically to some kind of structure or something? That sort of stuff.
Thanks homies.
>>9646684
test
>>9647006
Thank you for bumping my thread to test...
>>9646684
There's no way in hell John Malkovich was EVER that fit.
Are there any good online courses for learning Latin? I feel like a pleb reading translations
Bump because i want to read the romans and write poems in latin. Why Latin over ancient greek anon??
>>9646678
I've heard Latin is easier, so I want to learn that first. I also think it has more resources. I want to learn Ancient Greek eventually too.
>>9646692
"latin" isn't one language though
Is Borges the patrician/literary equivalent to anime?
Hear me out:
>his characters are self-consciously characters, somewhat detached from reality, just as it is fundamentally with all anime characters due to their animated nature
>his plots are fantastical and creative due to the detachment from reality and emphasis on imagination over realism, just like anime plots
>he often has a lot of self-conscious deconstruction of literature within the genre, exploring and parodying tropes and other literary devices, just as anime often does with anime tropes and cliches
>he often references other literature, just as anime references other anime constantly
>his stories are often just adaptations, fan fictions of other earlier stories, just as anime is often an adaptation of a manga
>He was deeply influenced by the philosophy of Schopenhauer, just as Evangelion was as well as many of the other great animes, like Texhnolyze and Ergo Proxy
>One of his main themes is identity, a theme running across anime as a whole, including classics like Ghost in the Shell, Serial Experiments Lain, Angel's Egg, My Neighbor Totoro and of course Neon Genesis Evangelion
What do you guys think?
your earnestness is endearing and i'd probably suck your cock irl but this whole line of thinking is just fucked sorry
please delete your thread
>Losing to 5th place by a full 10 votes, which incidentally is the Western author most influential in anime
BTFO HOW WILL HE EVER RECOVERThough I kind of agree
>>9646843
Dosto-sama is the king of /lit/!
what writer has the best prose in spanish?
Probably Borges
Biguerdo
Which member of the /retinue/ was your favorite?
>>9646450
Well meme'd
>>9646446
>tfw slept through the night and nobody has recognized the The Master and Margarita thread
>>9646446
>the devil will never show up with vodka and hors d'oeuvres to cure your hangover
Why live
Any book on being more articulate in your speech?
fuck that. there one on how to better articulate my dick?
Maybe Ciceros Orator whtever?
>>9646373
i thought the was just a book about sexual positions but it's more, you should read it.
Where have all the great postmodernists gone /lit/? Pic most certainly related
>>9646295
Postmodernism is a failed ideology since it can't even do the most basic thing that an ideology is supposed to do, perpetuate and reproduce itself. It has completely exhausted all of its possibilities in a single generation, it's amazing.
>>9646295
Why is he so popular with grills, /lit/?
Why is Beethoven on the cover.