Gravity's Rainbow

You just dive in and read it. Like any other book.

Don't worry too much about making sense of all of it, or you'll never finish it.

>>8754921
you'll end up re-reading it so just enjoy it for the aesthetic the first time around. Basically every hard concept in the book has something to do with entropy or derivative of that in some way so here's your cheat code if you needed one

>>8754947
I was thinking of reading it solo the first time and then rereading it using a guide. Do you think annotations are helpful at all?

>>8754966
yes i think that would be the most efficient strategy. the annotations are incredibly helpful. I recommend using them on your first read sparingly, but definitely give them a look every so often. I would also read the pynchon wikis entry on the title before you begin

>>8754933
>>8754947
>>8754966
>>8755009
holy fucking pleb. Read it carefully, please, OP. the whole approach of "just read 4 tha prose and aesthetic dude, just b urself dude" when reading is absolutely retarded. GR is a great book, and deserves close reading. Yes, it will be hard work, but yes, you do need to put it in to make the experience worth it and to make it more than a book that you read just to be able you say you've read it.

>>8755014
too bad there aren't internet post reading guides for you. The advice has been read it once for pleasure and then every subsequent read is meticulous.

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>>8754966
annotations were written for people reading in a pre-internet era

there's no reason to use them aside from the select few idiosyncratic notes that can't be found elsewhere, in some cases the annotations are worse than what you can find for yourself by googling

also researching everything on your own will keep you from getting into the habit of looking up every little thing just because, you'll have to be more selective and you'll be able to meander into loosely related subjects -- I think one of the examples is that the writer of one of the guides didn't know what Tyrosine was and assumed it was a made-up amino acid due to the name similarity with Tyrone