How many books do you have to read preemptively, or how high

>>8410691
You either can, or can not. You can't 'advance' in reading level by practice. You either grow into it, or you don't. This is not a video game where you 'level up'.

>>8410720
Only intelligent responses please.

>ulysses
You need to have read 29 books, including at least 2 written before 500 AD and 8 from between 1600 and 1922 AD. You also need to be familiar with the mechanics involved in penises.

>gravity's rainbow
You need to have read 26 books, including at least 1 written by a German author, 2 from between 1945 and 1965 AD, and 2 from between 1965 and 1990 AD. You also need to be familiar with at least one penis

>infinite Jest
You need to have read 3 books, including at least 1 of over 100 pages and 1 written for ages 10 and over. You also need to be familiar with masturbation.

>>8410727
He's sort of right, though. There isn't anything stopping you from reading those books right now. If you're worried about not understanding the contexts and references a lot of those "encyclopedic" books have companions you can buy for them.

>>8410755
give me a list of these companion books please.

>>8410691
You're reading the very basic literature. That's not a bad thing. When I started reading heavily (or at least knew that I wanted to), I basically made a list of all the books that I was supposed to read in high school/whatever books were assigned in other English classes that my friends may have read (for instance, I didn't take Russian lit, but I read the books for that class) and went through all of them. It took a while, because I hadn't read shit in high school, and my school had a shit ton of English classes/electives, but I felt better for it. Like I had met some benchmark. Made me feel like I wasn't missing out on as much/I felt more intellectually adequate (I never did poorly in school... Just bullshited my way through English classes). Point is, there are a lot of books out there. You have no obligation to read something like GR. Nobody will give a shit if you haven't read it. You should keep establishing your reading habit/methods/ability (no matter what people say here, you do become a better reader with every book read). Again, your going from lit 101 to a grad-school level class (basically). It's an odd comparison, and not entirely fruitful (you can read GR during your freshman year), but you get the point. Keep reading stuff that interests you. Don't jump into post-modern stuff without being able to get through something like Nausea (even though I think it's one of the worst books I've ever read). Read Hemmingway, Fitzgerald, the first two Joyce books. Stuff like that. Establish yourself as a reader who can make it through the basic gauntlet. Don't bother with GR until then. You aren't missing shit. Good luck.

>>8411129
Not OP but this is basically what I'm doing right now

>>8411129
I'm not op and I've already read the meme trilogy, but the idea of going through a checklist of things you feel obligated to read because you were "supposed to" in high school seems like a chore.

I went straight from reading mostly genreshit to things like V. and it was fine. The whole mindset of reading things because you're "supposed to" with fiction is usually pretty dumb. Just read whatever you want, and if you can't get through it either dump it or come back later.

>>8411169
This would seem the obvious answer, but it turns out it isn't valid for everybody

>>8410691
No amount of books you read will make GR any less harder, just dive into the book if you want, people overhype its difficulty anyway. The only part that I found hard to follow was part four (a lot of the tarot and kaballah stuff flew over my head).

>>8410691
You don't have to be at any level to read IJ or GR. They're pretty accessible books. Ulysses, on the other hand, is going to require a lot of dedication and supplementary material to read and understand.

>>8410759
Leopard-print undies, large
Bananas
Dried apricots
Canned oysters
Jewish rye
2-ply toilet paper
Kleenex
Centrum multivitamins
Gum
WD-40