How have books influenced your life, /lit/? >To Kill A Mockingbird

They help me pass the time. That's pretty much it.

Only book that has had that much of an impact on my crucial life decisions is Lolita

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>>8372198
The Recognitions influenced me to think of people who do the kind of shit you're describing as sickening pseudo-intellectual poseurs.

>>8372209
Elaborate?

Holyshit op, you need to stop reading books.

>>8372211
thing is he makes you think you aren't a pseudo when you're exactly that

Sounds like a reddit repost

If you make life decisions based on fiction, you are an idiot. (here we can discount cultural myths that inform every part of our lives and in fact are signified by the culture more than they signify a culture)
One reads fiction for language. That's it.

>>8372373
You are objectively wrong.

>>8372380
You are living your life according to fantasies drawn out by autists who projected their egos onto paper instead of the world (yes, anyone who writes fiction is an autist)
and if you are OP you sound like a redditor

>>8372293
sorry, but what is pseudo? Like, a nom-de-plum?

Tolstoy's short stories and the gospels taught me to be more forgiving

Hermann Hesse made me appreciate life again.

>>8372198
Don't be stupid, pre-1917 Russia and post-1917 Russia are two entirely different things

>>8372388
That's a bizarre and extremely cynical view of literature, which on the whole has inspired billions throughout human history and motivated groups and individuals to strive for better things, for themselves and for society. Through reading fiction one can explore themes, concepts and ideas and relate to them, because the human condition is perpetual and some questions- who are we, what is man's place in the universe, etc- will remain whether you were born a thousand years ago or a thousand years from now. Reading literature can change the reader, shape them, move them and inspire them, because it isn't just 'fantasies drawn out by autists', it's the transmission of ideas on multiple levels. It's seeing yourself reflected and thus better understanding yourself, it's seeing what you want to be and what you don't want to be. You are entitled to your opinion, of course, but I vehemently disagree with you. To me, it's beautiful.

Pynchon influenced me to never leave my house.

>>8372414
True. I just thought Russia seemed cool as depicted in those books, decided to visit because I could, and had an amazing time, no regrets

Lolita moved me to kill a little girl's mom and subsequently rape said little girl repeatedly 'til she escaped and cucked me several times. Then it moved me to spend all my time looking for her and ruin my chances with a fantastic legal loli, and then it moved me to kill one of the dudes she cucked me with.

>>8372422
holy shit, i've never seen such a fantastically ferocious put-down like that in ages.

>>8372198
Check out Werther

>>8372279
What he needs is to read No Longer Human. Or A Perfect Day for Bananafish. Or The Sound and the Fury.

Moby Dick taught me to pursue my obessions till they kill me and ill be as cool as ahab

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>>8372422
>>8372436
back to le reddit

>>8372422
>has inspired billions
Wrong. It has always niche interest, focused mostly on the leisure class, the most parasitic of all men.

>Through reading fiction one can explore themes, concepts and ideas and relate to them
Are you in high school?

>because the human condition is perpetual
Totally unreadable. "Human condition": what leftist popycock!

>and some questions- who are we, what is man's place in the universe, etc- will remain whether you were born a thousand years ago or a thousand years from now.
Only autists really care about these things. Everyone else knows that we're here to eat, to dominate, to expand, and to eventually die, like any other living thing. This screams of boring leftist babbling, too fraught with guilt to even admit one's self permission to live.

>Reading literature can change the reader, shape them, move them and inspire them, because it isn't just 'fantasies drawn out by autists', it's the transmission of ideas on multiple levels.
And this sentence screams of high school. Listing like that, redundancy for the sake of verbosity, meaningless "deep"-sounding drivel such as "the transmission of ideas on multiple levels"—your teachers might like them but they sure as fuck won't get you far. Work hard, kiddo.

>It's seeing yourself reflected and thus better understanding yourself, it's seeing what you want to be and what you don't want to be.
Wrong. It's seeing a meager understanding of the world through the eyes of someone who chose, for the most part, not to participate in it. The types of people who you read about in books would themselves never write books, barring awful, boring self-inserts that invariably act like autists (because that's what the writers were). Every character is a twisted response either to a phenomenon far beyond the understanding of a shut-in, ink-spewing excuse for a being, or worse still, another character. You are reading about archetypes, studied and scribbled out by the very bottom of humanity: people unwilling to seize their piece.

One reads for language. The best (and the ONLY) way to learn about the world is to participate in it. Fiction is a great medium FOR its looser lease on language, permitted by its inconsequentiality (its essential trait) —but to truly respect it, please, please, make an effort to recognize its place. If your favorite book is fiction, you are an idiot.

>>8372482
>>8372489
why are you on this board

>>8372498
Why are you on 4chan?

>>8372503
because i find it mildly interesting

>>8372498
Because unlike you, I actually love literature enough to recognize its place.

>>8372506
Then lurk forever.

>>8372293
S A V A G E

>>8372510
NO PLEASE

>>8372489
Okay, man. I disagree with you but I see neither of us is going to change the other's mind, so whatever. I hope you have a really good day.

>>8372516
holy shit your style it's unbearable
go back to /r/whatever and/or your mediocre self-congratulatory AP classes

>>8372522
>maybe if i call him a redditor everyone'll take my side!

>>8372526
greentexting won't hide it buddy
your style is unbearable

>>8372522
>implying I'm putting effort into crafting sentences while debating with a delusional autist on the literature board of a Mongolian panpipe enthusiast website

>>8372489
>wrong
>always been niche
You do realize that literature has been around for quite some time. I don't see how you could refute the number he suggested.

>>8372542
About a hundred billion people have lived. Of the doubtlessly infinitesimal portion that has been literate, in a social class that can afford leisure and living in an era where literature was seen as a panacea rather than a digression (more or less only the past two hundred years and exclusively in the euro tradition), how many truly could say that literature changed their lives? Certainly not billions. What a sad and eurocentriically naïve view.

>>8372580
Maybe not "literature," but everyone tells stories.

Maybe I just happened to read him at a time when the change was coming anyway, but Nietzsche changed a lot about me.

I picked the road to academia instead of the easier & safer IT which I was already in, I stopped worrying about others so much (I used to be really quiet and weak because of a will to be considerate), I started to consider pity a bad thing, I started dancing whenever I got the change, I started to see the good in tragedy/suffering. I tried to go ~beyond good and evil~ in my judgements.

I also started to read the Greeks, the biggest thing I'm sure.

I realized literally every writer I like either started as a journalist or worked as a journalist in some capacity, so now I'm a journalist

Notes from the Underground made me more comfortable with my social isolation.

>>8372489
>muh leftist

Confederacy of dunces made me hungry for hot dogs

>>8372198
Jesus you sound like a fag.

I started lifting because I wanted to develop /fit/ armpits worthy of Mishima's prose.

I grew up in a small town. There wasn't a lot to do, and my parents were dysfunctional, so I never got much direction from them, and my siblings were spastics, so I turned to the few things I could to cope. I could process vocabulary far beyond what was normal for my age, but a lot of things went over my head and probably still do. I read for at least a few hours every day, and when I was in middle school I started volunteering at the library, which I kept up through until I graduated. Then, I moved to the city and I was raped by a security guard at the best branch in the city and I haven't picked up a book ever since. It was probably time for me to give it up and actually live my life anyways. Fuck reading.

>>8373436
Well that took a turn

>>8372223
Extremely elaborate.

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>>8372198
>The Trial moved me to internalize a deepseated and ill-defined sense of persecution at the hands of society
>Nausea moved me to feel like a special snowflake
>Notes from the Underground moved me to feel pride in having no self-esteem
>World as Will and Representation moved me to adopt an extremely bleak worldview from which I will never recover

Thanks books

>>8372198
>cliché I know

They're all clichés (everybody please notice the correct use of the accent aigu) You're a cliché, OP. Why don't you get inspired by Anna Karenina and find some wide-gauge tracks to jump on, for added historical accuracy?

>>8372489
>we're here to eat, to dominate, to expand, and to eventually die
I like how you didn't add 'to reproduce' to your list. So young and already lost all hope?

>>8372629
>I started dancing whenever I got the change
I bet the old horse-lover would be proud.

>>8372198
The Iliad taught me you either give glory to another man or you win it from him.

>>8372489
You can't honestly argue that all writes were complete shut-ins. In fact those who are considered the greatest have been the very opposite.

>>8372489
This post is extremely spooky

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>>8373436
good on you getting on with your life now

>>8372489
>Wrong. It has always niche interest, focused mostly on the leisure class, the most parasitic of all men.
Not exactly. Specific works were the basis for morality (Iliad, Bible) as it was narrative based. The whole society is pretty large.

Whose Justice? Which Rationality? and After Virtue are extremely good at showing how they formed the way of thinking. Especially the works which are highly philosophical.

>>8373567
>that look on the dog's face
>I'm a dog and I'm black, but even I am not that dumb

>>8373578
Pretty sure they're all aware of how wrong they look. The dog is just the least subtle.

>>8372198
Reading Nietzsche's complete words in Kaufmann's translations has taught me how to be a much better rhetorician and now im the go-to guy for advice within a few social groups at my college and get twice as many likes on facebook photos that i did before

>>8373450
This summarizes my experiences with literature as well.

>>8373614
>get twice as many likes on facebook photos that i did before
Finally some tangible results.

>>8372489
Just here to remind you that it is people like you who make the world an unnecessarily cruel place. That guy is naive, but you deserve death.

The Odyssey got me interested in taking Mythology and Classical Philosophy courses back in highschool

Grendel piqued my interest in modern philosophy, along with Hemingway. Hemingway also taught me to identify plebs by how they react to Fitzgerald and Gatsby

C&P inspired me to start nightwalking and got me to finally work up the nerve to drop out of a university where I was chronically depressed and ready to kill myself.

Vonnegut, particularly Breakfast of Champions, inspired me to start writing. Before then I considered myself unable to write fiction and found my life too mundane to be worth writing about.

1984 and to an extent BNR taught me to fear the liberal jew

Just read The Stranger and am reading Sisyphus, and that's put my mind at ease regarding making my own decisions about what I want to do in life.

The Stranger helped me grow a backbone and go out and rally against fear of life. Overcame social anxiety

2666 solidified my view on a chaotic yet beautiful world.

Infinite Jest allowed me to stop consuming so much sugar and media.

The works of Lev Shestov and Emil Cioran have had a huge (positive) influnce on my thinking. I know that sounds funny but in a werid way I find them comforting. It is hard to explain.

Oscar Wilde got me into /lit/ stuff. So that is also important.

>>8372198

You're a very good example of my thoughts that you cannot be yourself (ie original). You are influenced by literally everything around you and wanted to adopt the personalities or experiences of something else.

There is absolutely no way to be yourself. You couldn't even do it if you were the first human being on earth that just popped up.

Something would influence you.

No one can be themselves.

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>>8375352

You spooked piece of shit.

>>8375352

Hoh boy, someone still sees "The Self" as something other than an elaborate illusion.

>>8375362
>>8375355

Stop. I am just going off the old saying of "be yourself." It's an impossible thing to do.

>>8375380

"being yourself" has much more to do with ridding yourself from insecurities and being sincere than it has with the idea of "uniqueness" or "originality", sonny boy.

Pride and Prejudice taught me the relationship between precision, perspective, and perception in prose.

>>8373448
kekkelatte

>>8375384

Well people need to say that instead of vague bullshit.

>>8372536
>Needing to put in some effort to not sound like a retard

kek

>>8375400

The point is that you need to grow wiser until you can "get" those vague sayings. I know I'm growing up because I find myself saying those things I used to dismiss as simplistic common-sense.

There is a lot of poetry in popular sayings, it's like a condensed gem of wisdom which was passed down by generations, and now people simply say that without trying to grasp its meaning anymore.

>>8375412

The word yer lookin for is aphorism

>>8375414

A "popular saying" is a specific form of aphorism, though.

>>8372198
The Infinite Jest made me more depressed.

>>8372489
>This screams of boring leftist babbling
what the fuck

>>8375332
>1984 and to an extent BNR taught me to fear the liberal jew
lol

>>8372439
Kek

Underrated

>>8372489
Lol you fucking galah

>we're here to eat, to dominate, to expand, and to eventually die, like any other living thing

(Good) writers write because they're good at writing. Writing is their ambition and their ticket to eating, domination, expansion etc.

>The best (and the ONLY) way to learn about the world is to participate in it

There is no way to not participate in the world, you galah

Illusions perdues made me very cynical

>>8372422
based
>>8372489
you sound like a closet homosexual

>gravity's rainbow
>made me a teenage anarchist

>>8375332
>Hemingway also taught me to identify plebs by how they react to Fitzgerald and Gatsby
How so?

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Reading Good Old Neon made me want to avenge the death of David Foster Wallace.
People will think this is a joke.

>>8372489
tfw u made this post yet browse lit

takes an autist to know an autist

>>8372198
I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting to try out things you've read in literature. It's like anything else in life really. My friends told my Thailand was awesome. So now I want to visit. If I read a book about how cool Thailand is right now I would also want to check it out. Just don't be a fag who goes fishing and is like "I'm just like Hemmingway now" cause that's gay. And definitely don't make big life decisions because of literature. You're just retarded if you succumb so strongly to any influence like that, especially one that has no real interaction with you.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo moved me to become an elite hacker.

>>8373514
Underrated post

>>8375332
I like The Stranger and in particular The Myth of Sisyphus. Sisyphus helped me to understand that other people go through these existential crises and that made me feel better. The philosophy was pretty good as well

>>8375340

How did that work for IJ's thing? I'm planning on reading it soon but wanted to get some other DFW out of the way so I began reading Consider the Lobster.

I want to consume less media but I am addicted to some video games and watching movies once iin a while. I already eat little sugar.

>>8376923
Play intellectually engaging that don't allow you to fall into a trance. Same for movies.
While it may not be the most effective use of your time, playing something like Dwarf Fortress or watching art film is no worse than playing Chess or reading most literature.

The key is not letting yourself docile and lulled into a state of waking-sleep.

>>8373497
btfo

>>8376933
Never read IJ, my biggest fear is unconscious lethargy, should I?

>>8376933

So you're saying one should be thinking (and creating) instead of just going through motions whilst being entertained?

I do play Dwarf Fortress, but I am also addicted to other games admittedly. I think I can see your point. In FPS games or even grand strategy I am simply reacting or following a set pattern. There's very little thought even for GSG because once you've done one thing you simply follow the flow each time.

FPS is even more braindead even though there are a million strategies because it all ultimately boils down to "shoot this person."

I never really thought too much about this before except with television, which I don't watch. I do watch documentaries but often with other people so we can either discuss in real-time or at the end (making comments along the way). Neat stuff.

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>Story of the Eye gave me piss fetish, and the sexual fantasy of deadly suffocation by a nihilistic French qt

A canticle for Leibowitz made me respect religion quite a bit.
It also made me amass data as a form of archiving.

How was Russia? I've been learning the language for about 3 months now and love Russian lit. I don't know that I'd ever want to live in Russia, but I'm definitely going to travel around it for a while.

>>8372198
How was Russia? Where did you stay?

>>8373450

Yep that's about right

>>8372489
well done

>>8372446
kek

>>8372446
Nice spoilers fuckhole.

Reading the Wainscott Weasel when I was 12 made me obsessed with eye-patches, so I stole my Dad's Swiss Army knife and slashed my eye and face up with it. Left me half-blind with a wicked scar. Got my eye-patch soon after and started demanding that everyone call me Bagley. When I take the patch off I look like Squall and get tons of pussy for of it. I regret nothing.