>read nothing but "the classics" for the longest

>>8448003
>the classics aren't that special
*sigh*

Look, don't be sad, this just means your standards have gone up. It'll make finding something you enjoy that much better. Just stop being a pleb and really think about what you're reading, because /lit/ didn't ruin shit for you

>>8448031

In my point of view, they're nothing special. I don't really get why people call them great aside from influence. I get why they're better than pleb shit, but I don't know why they're great. I just don't get it.

How do I get better at this? What am I supposed to think about when reading? I'm seriously ready to learn. I didn't learn anything in English class in school, which was just a big joke and we didn't learn shit from it.

I find that many classics have interesting qualities, and some enjoyable moments, but overall they give a general impression of integrity without being consistently enjoyable.

This is when you write your own shit

>>8448003
Have you tried =INFINITE JEST=?

>>8448054
Read more non-fiction and criticism and don't settle for any pop-crit - look for primary texts and things published by Oxford, Columbia, Yale, Routledge, and Cambridge. It doesn't matter where you begin - you can apprise yourself about anything you might encounter there with Google. Once you find things that interest you, find more primary text, scholarship, and criticism about them.

>>8448003
this

i used to feel happy when reading genreshit, now i'm dommed to read depressive real literature for the rest of my life

>>8448003
Read middlebrow fiction then.

blog faggot back to /soc/

>>8448054
No one gets it at first, but The Divine Comedy was what made "classics" click for me. Outside of just reading them, annotations and just getting a grasp for how majestic they are can really be helpful. I don't see how someone can not be enthralled by The Divine Comedy or Paradise Lost

>>8448054
You need life experience before you can really unwrap the classics. Perhaps you've simply grown out of pleb shit but you're still too autistic to truly appreciate the classics, not just for better word choice or how complex they are.

Just play video games.

>>8448003

Just finished reading the first Wayward Pines novel and I know your feels, OP.

All I wanted to do was get lost in a good story but I kept sperging whenever an unnecessarily purple sentence popped up.

On the other hand I would have given the book 5 stars back before I became a serious reader so maybe my elitism will help me sleep at night.

>>8448054
The key is to specifically look for well-written books that actually sound appealing to you. If you just try to arbitrarily read a bunch of classics off some "patrician" checklist then of course you'll be underwhelmed by them regardless of quality.

>>8449419
Dassa trick, mane. Live more. As life gets worse, literature and art get better.