Recent purchase: /lit/-memes through the modern era edition

I just finished Infinite Jest, and picked up Gravity's Rainbow. I too am living the meme

Have you read a lot before this? If you haven't read a lot of "literature," these are probably not the best places to start.

Infinite Jest is probably the easiest to understand of the 3. Ideally you read them in order of publication.

I've not read House of Leaves so no comment there.

I certainly wouldn't read Ulysses first.

>>7321236
why?

>>7321239
you should desu he's just shit posting f a m

>literally falling for the memes
get the fuck out

>>7321214
wtf is house of shit doing there?

If you are an absolute newfag and only selected these books because of the memes, then I doubt you will get much out of them. If you want to dive right into a doorstopper then you'd have been better off with something like Crime and Punishment, War and Peace, Les Misérables or Don Quixote. They are more straightforward and flat-out better desu

House of Leaves is a pretty easy read but isn't very good

Infinite Jest is slightly more hard but is really good

haven't read the other two. don't know why a "slow reader" thinks it's a smart idea to read a one-thousand page book that probably takes 50+ hours to read, but w/e

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OP here, I'm not exactly a newfag except when it comes to actually having read pinnacle books like this. I have a lot of lit-inclinations, read and write a lot of essays, dabble in philosophy (i.e. follow links and laugh at shitposts on this board), but want to get into longer-form works. I figured these would be good places to start.

>Don Quixote is on my list but I need to beef up my spanish and tackle a few more contemporary works before diving into that one
>feel free to laugh, but pic related is the only true long-form book I've read all the way through

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Lmao dude you bought the createspace ulysses????

>>7321263
why the fuck does it matter? A the point of a book isn't to see how quick you can finish

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Recently acquired books

You should really read Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and the Odyssey before you read Ulysses, if you haven't already.

>>7321474
What do you think of the Hackett editions? Do you get much in the way of introduction/notes?

>>7321279
well hey senpai, if you can at least wade through hofstatdter levels of wankery, you might make it.

also look for a good english translation of don quixote. Or just read tristram shandy.

>>7321508
You always get an introduction. Notes are generally there, but often minimal. The only notes in A Letter Concerning Toleration refer to whatever Bible passage that Locke is drawing from.

However, some editions have extensive notes and commentary, such as the Hackett edition of Hobbes's Leviathan, which is the only edition of Leviathan that I would recommend.

So a general rule for Hackett is that the less pages in a work, the less notes, whereas the larger works could have very many notes.

Many of the philosophy books that I own are from Hackett publishing and I think they're a good publisher.

>>7321537
Thanks anon.

>>7321295
I facepalmed when that came in the mail desu. Fucking unruly page format, but I was only looking at the price tag

>>7321218
>>7321214

Me too.. Memeing hard desu

>>7321214

I finished Blood Meridian recently, what is the next step up in meme-lit from that?

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>>7321537
>the Hackett edition of Hobbes's Leviathan, which is the only edition of Leviathan that I would recommend.

The Oxford World's Classics one is also good. Nice paper, nice binding, nice introduction and critical apparatus.

>House of Leaves
good entry level stuff, contrived but an interesting narrative, read it first.
>Infinite Jest
little more difficult but accessible to anyone of any background read it next
>Gravity's Rainbow
fairly difficult if the other high-lit type things you've read are the above but manageable for anyone as well, never it's really not daunting
>Ulysses
never read it, don't think I'm enough of an asshole yet to read it, so I can't say anything about it other then you should probably wait, and start with the greeks

>>7323139
depends on your prior readings. probably V. or Absalom, Absalom!

>>7323142
And it's cheaper than Hackett's.

Metametaphysics - Chalmers (Ed.)

>>7321279
Is G.E.B actually worth reading? I've got it on my shelf but it's fucking huge, so I've never melt much motivation to begin.

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>>7323327
I read it over the course of my last two years of high school. He posits a few things about computers that are pretty irrelevant today, but most of the first ~700pages aren't concerned with that. There are long stretches of dry parts, but at that age, having not read any other lit, the book was mindblowing and literally changed my worldview. Now, I'm not sure that it would have the same effect. That's not to say it isn't just as clever, or smug, or interesting in the sense of combining sentiments and knowledge from different fields, though.

My recommendation, if the length is intimidating: Read the first one or two chapters entirely, the dialogues (the short italicized chapters in between all of the meaty ones), all of the rest of the chapter introductions, and then critical analyses of the book that you find online.

>>7321214
House of Leaves is a pleb book for patrishes. So read it before your taste gets too good, but also don't read it until you're up on a few references; so I'd say:

Infinite Jest -> House of Leaves -> Gravity's Rainbow -> Ulysses

>>7321279
Is learning languages just to read books in them a meme? It takes years to become proficient at a new language. I have to think most people, especially monoglots getting a late start on language acquisition could scarcely come up with a better interpretation of the text than any of the academics who translated it did. Should this be done with all languages? Should someone learn Dutch, for instance to read a book by a dutch author?

>>7321239
it's a challenging and difficult read.

>>7323519
Does that make it a patrish book for plebs?

>>7323519
this is a good path. I'd probably say start with HoL though.

Alternately, you could read a more entry level work by the same authour as a gateway to the harder books. For example, try Lot 49 before reading GR, Dubliners before reading Ulysses

>>7323139
taipei

>>7323585
Taipei would be a step down.

>>7323552
No. Intention matters.

>>7323580
In no way is Dubliner's a primer for Ulysses

>>7323598
Which Joyce work would you suggest as a primer?

>>7323587
step down in quality, yes

but it's basically the meme: the book

it even references /lit/

>>7323600
finnegans wake

>>7323600
None of them. Its almost like telling someone to go from Beethoven's Quartet no. 16 to the Große Fuge

Is "patrician" censored or is patrish a new meme

>>7323608
I know you're meme-ing, but Ulysses is more of a primer to Finnegan's Wake.

>>7323612
sounds like an australianism

>>7323612
the term "patrish" has existed as a colloquialism for a long time now.

>>7323614
Nobody should actually read Finnegan's wake

>>7323614
>>7323627
>Finnegan's
>'s
>'

>>7323641
Even scholars of Joyce who have studied Finnegan's Wake extensively, speculate the title is a grammatical error. Erstwhile you have scarcely read 50 pages of the work

>>7323533
opie here, I'm pretty much always good with a good translation - spanish isnt' a new language for me though, so I think it would be worth the effort to try the original first.

>>7323580
I read Crying of Lot 49 not too long ago and fucking loved it, which is why I was excited to get GR. But I'm also in the process of getting through a lot of DFW essays, so if IJ is more accessible that might be a better place for me to start.