Have you ever read a book you have no interest in before reading

>>8678349
I don't even like to read, my narcissim just forces me to try to become a human being I can love.

Moby Dick. And it was every bit as excruciating as I feared.

>>8678349
Your pic related
(though not to say I've read it - rather to call it shit in good conscience)

You have to be a special sort of chimp to see the need to read something just to say you read it.

>>8678404
Well you can say i'm often intrigued by the popularity of a book and the notion that some consider them to be a sort of passage to a culture and time. That sometimes is enough for me to want to give it a shot even though the synopsis does nothing at all for me.

>>8678349

Well to be fair, Fitzgerald's short stories are a hell of a lot better and Tender of the Night shits all over TGG any day of the week.

>>8678419
>my reading choice gets influenced by popular opinion
>i read books just to say i read it
how is this the same to you?

>>8678442
>just to say you have...
can be a way of saying
>just to have...
by way of
>just to say to yourself that...

>>8678492
wow, i've never seen a more idiotic way of twisting a question

>>8678510
it's nearly idiomatic in a few languages

>>8678349
pic related and the well-known dystopias which weren't good enough for me to read them to 100% i mean wow what a scary world nobody should live in such a world i can't believe someone was so brave to write this masterpiece how good that the soviets lost i'm so glad i'm free let's not burn books let's write books about that etc. wow

>>8678349
I do nothing else.

>>8678349

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

Pretty damn boring desu

all of the Greeks desu

I honestly did not care for most of them before and after reading. I did look forward to Sophocles and Aristophanes and they delivered somewhat

>>8678823
>The well known dystopias
I read them because they were actually good because they were popular. 1984 was okay, Brave New World was okay but worse, and Animal Farm was godawful. Didn't read Fahrenheit 451, don't know if I should bother.

>>8678919
Fahrenheit is the one I enjoyed the most out of all the dystopias
"We" comes second

>>8678940
Alright, I'll give them a read. You better not disappoint me!

>>8678919
Fahrenheit 451 was actually pretty good .

>>8678349
no, I read books I'm interested in. I don't even talk to people about what I read. That is why I come here i guess.

>>8678919
>>8678940
>>8678966

Fahrenheit 451 was fucking terrible. Just read "The Pedestrian", the short story Bradbury built the novel out of. It's actually good.

We is fantastic, though.

>>8679027
Fahrenheit starts off perfectly but gets a bit dull near the end. Still worth a read tho

>>8678366
Don't worry anon, you're not alone, although I doubt you'll ever love yourself at this rate
:^)

>>8678349
I forced "Pride and Prejudice" on myself.
It was one of the the worst things I've ever read.

>>8679033
Exactly. 3rd part of the book makes no justice to the first one

Faust by Goethe. Pretty damn boring, too much digressions, to be honest I skipped whole pages (such as the Walpurgis events) and when I read a summary after I finished it, I have never realized most the events that happened in the book...and I mean some serious shit essential to the plot. Horrible, horrible book. Poor Gretchen, by the way

>>8680209
Did the same thing with The metamorphosis by Frank Kafka when I was a freshie.

>>8680231
>skipping Walpurgis Nacht

>>8678376
You become a goddamn marine biologist after reading that book

File: we.jpg (60KB, 357x559px) Image search: [Google]

60KB, 357x559px

>>8678940
>"We" comes second

We is pretty good, but it kind of depends on if you like Russian lit.

>>8680232
But that is easy to read and short. Barely a torture even if you hate it.

>>8678376
I really enjoyed Moby-Dick. I was afraid that I would be bored but Melville's fucking whale enthusiasm was so captivating that I couldn't help but be swept off my feet by it.

>>8678349
The Great Gatsby

Crime and Punishment

Siddhartha

All three were uninteresting to me before, during, and after.

>>8678349
no i just say ive read them, nobody knows the difference

the heart is a lonely hunter by Carson McCullers

>>8680497
>Crime and Punishment
wew lad

>>8680497

I agree with the first two but god damn did I love Siddhartha. If we're talking about the same one by Herman Hesse

>>8680655
>>8680647
Crime and Punishment was just one platitude after the other.

Siddhartha felt like it tried to make me feel something, but I just never quite did. I'll still try Steppenwolf though.

>>8680665

I have bipolar, and Steppenwolf really spoke to me. Siddhartha did try to make you feel something- Hesse basically told the story of a man who followed a path similar to the Buddha's, saw the Buddha and the peace he had achieved in himself, and at the ending by the river finally found his own peace. What makes the Buddha special, the book implies, is that he stepped out of that serenity to try to teach and show people like Siddhartha how to get there themselves. At least that's my take on it. It's one of the most important books I've ever read in helping myself through bipolar.

>>8680665

But, fair warning, Steppenwolf as I remember it is really weird and trippy. And just as Siddhartha was steeped in eastern thinking, Steppenwolf is the story of a western man seeking what Siddhartha sought, but in the western world.

>>8680703
I'm pretty used to weird and trippy. I've read a lot of Pinecone and finished Under The Volcano a few months ago.

I don't think anything from Hesse is going to make me trip up too much. I'll give it a go.

All the fucking time, though I find most entry levelcore books enjoyable, like gatsby. It's the turgid Dickens / any thing else Victorian / greeks bullshit I can barely stand. The only point of that shit is to reference it and signal that you had a certain type of education. What a load of boring shit.

>>8680713

>I don't think anything from Hesse is going to make me trip up too much

Haha it should, Hesse was woke as fuck in my opinion. I'm not a Buddhist or anything but they've got some right ideas and Hesse understood them. And one thing I liked most about Steppenwolf was the Steppenwolf's lifestyle: a man with money renting rooms in the cities of old Europe, hauling his books with him in trunks and eating at restaurants, and walking and being weird at night.

If you want to give Siddhartha another go, up to you obviously, I'd recommend finding a temple in your city and talking to the dude in the saffron cloth for an hour- don't be hesitant to call they're the kindest people on the planet- and then reread Siddhartha and see if it makes more sense. It also helps to have a basic understanding of the history of the Buddha, just the basics of the his life that can be gotten from wikipedia.

Sorry, not preaching, not pushing but it happens to be my favorite book and it's a shame to lump it in with garbage like The Great Gatsby

>>8680713

Oh and a book like The Great Gatsby that doesn't suck: The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

>>8680732
I'll consider it.

I don't understand why Hemingway liked The Great Gatsby so much. Pretty much any of his major novels blows it out of the water. Maybe he was just being nice to his friend.

>>8678349
ITT: Pleb support group

No.

My backlog is long enough as it is.

>>8680744

It probably taught him something fundamental to his understanding of the world- namely that the excess of the twenties was emblematic of the problems with western society that helped cause the war in which he suffered.

Started Swann's Way to say I read it, because I feel and have heard it's a literary staple of sorts... I'm over halfway now and I don't regret it in the slightest, shit I even want to read all of In Search of Lost Time now but it would take me forever