Great literature that's also pleasurable to read

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>>8932875

>>8932884
>"L. Ron Hubbard's "Dianetics" is a fantastically dull, terribly written, crackpot rant"
T-thanks.

>>8932875
who the fuck even use their phones in the bathroom crazy

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the GOAT

>>8932900
Objectively true

>>8932875
>Great literature that's also pleasurable to read
All great literature is pleasurable to read. Otherwise they wouldn't be considered great.

What you're really asking is, "what are some classic books that don't require more effort and attention than a YA novel?"

>>8932960
Do you know some?

>>8932960
reading Thus Spoke Zarathustra is not pleasurable

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not
even
memeing

was expecting something entirely different from all the ravage I have always seen about it here, but I'm thoroughly enjoying it, reading 50pages in one sitting is quite `natural` and easy

>>8932985

If it's your first philosophy book like most plebs in college who never move past nietzche no it won't be.

Faggot.

Uhhh, almost all of them are? The only classic I can think of that is generally agreed upon to be dull is The Aeneid (when not read in Latin).

>>8932875
All great literature is pleasurable to read, you pleb.

Anything by Nabokov

>>8933039
>>8933248
>>8932960
This desu
Besides Dostoievski, he's a great writer but a terrible stylist.

>>8932875
Anything Dosto imo famalam

>reading the classics is a chore

why don't you just fuck off back to your board or the fantasy cancer general

Sounds like you really need to read Don Quixote, Anon.

>>8933248
That is simply not true and I don't understand why you guys act like it is.

>>8933278
chill brah

>>8933476
Great literature is much more pleasurable to read than shit literature. That's part of what makes it great in the first place.
Like really, this should be fucking self-evident anon

>>8932997
It's like a thousand page long [s4s] shitpost desu.
Also, it won't be easy for too long, eventually Joyce will fill yer head with so many characters you won't be able to tell them apart.

>>8933476
It is true, you just suck tbqhfam.

>>8933476
go back to r/books

>>8933735
nice

>>8933256
Maybe not Pale Fire so much as you have to take notes and page flip a lot for it

Hemingway. War & Peace.

>>8933476
I don't understand why people would claim that ALL great literature is pleasurable to read, since great books are not all of the same type. I may love War and Peace because I enjoy a deeply descriptive prose epic while disliking Paradise Lost because I can't stand real poetry. People who claim to enjoy all literature equally are absolutely full of shit, but I would even be skeptical of people that claim that all great literature is enjoyable because I really doubt they enjoy it all. There has to be something that their experiences and personality hadn't clicked with that made it seem like it wasn't worthwhile to read it. Objectively, great literature is great because on average it is considered more pleasurable or noteworthy, but on an individual level that doesn't have to be true and anyone that says otherwise is probably just a pseud that forced themselves to read books to seem smarter and is now numb to the pleasure and pain of a good or bad read or wants to seem more enlightened by claiming all great books are pleasurable.

TL;DR, you don't have to like reading all great books to appreciate them, you pseudo-intellectual faggots. Stop trying so hard.

Armor and Grendel (obviously Beowulf as well) come to mind, along with Vonnegut and Hemingway's work. I also remember liking The Count of Monte Cristo quite a bit, and The Odyssey, though that may have more to do with their translations.

>>8934499
Armor like the scifi novel?

>>8934489
'descriptive' is what plebs on goodreads call books that aren't YA. Not dissing you that word just triggers me so hard I have to share

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>>8934630
Oh, dear. Well, I'm sorry, anon.

>>8934499
>>8934615
Vonnegut and Hemingway like the authors?

Lolita is funnest read OAT

>>8932875
Lolita. Not even joking.

One hundred years of solitude. That thing almost read itself in two days

>>8932985
>satirical reworkings of bible stories and myths
>beautiful songs and poems
>witty aphorisms
>jokes and hilarious putdowns on every page

how did you not find this pleasurable? you're reading nietzsche wrong if you're not having a great time with it

>>8934799

This tbqh femme. Even as a pleb with a low attention span I found it really enjoyable to read.

>>8933476
>>8934489
is it some insecurity thing that makes plebs literally unable to conceive that there are people who read "great" literature out of sheer pleasure? like, would it upset you if i said that paradise lost is one of the most entertaining works of art in any medium, one hundred times more visceral than the best fantasy movie? If you feel like reading capital-L literature is some chore that you do to "enrich" yourself or something, then i feel bad for you.

>>8934489 is it really so hard for you to believe that you can enjoy most of what you read? of the "great" literature that i read, i enjoy about 90% of it. sure, there are time periods and movements that i like less than others (eg not a real fan of 19th british novels), but reading any specific book is about getting into the mindset of the author and time period. so even if "The American" by henry james is kind of boring, it's still enjoyable to get a sense of what turn of the century paris was like for an american expat. the only way to read is to look for a base-level appreciation of what the novel is trying to do and the feelings that it's trying to conjure and let that guide you. plenty of novels aren't good enough to establish these things, but the novels labeled "great" are great because they are capable of it.

if you really think that its only posturing that makes people say they enjoy the classics, then you're probably reading wrong.

>>8935138
Obviously it's not an insecurity thing since I flat out said that I didn't enjoy reading Paradise Lost. If I were insecure about that fact I would have pretended to have liked it and played along with the other big boys. My point is that if you find the writing boring, then you don't find it fully pleasurable. I literally said that you don't have to like reading a book to appreciate it, so I don't know what you're going on about with the Henry James thing. It seems like you're just agreeing with me in a confrontational tone.

Proust.
Some of the Dreyfus stuff is a little un-fun if you don't know what they're talking about, but there's about a thousand pages of pure joy before you get to that point.

>>8935175
>Some of the Dreyfus stuff is a little un-fun if you don't know what they're talking about

this is why writing novels about "your generation" is always bad taste...dfw hasn't been in the ground for a decade and already tv is declining to be replaced by social media, all his stupid angsty writing about one to many passively received mass communication of the 20th century is already out of date and irrelevant, he might as well have written a novel about the angsty effects of horse carriages on 19th century society

>>8932875
James Baldwin