Why is this such a shit 'starter kit'?

Lolita, Siddhartha and Dorian Grey are masterpieces though

>>9054169
half of it is literally books you'll read if you've ever attended high school in the past decade, and they're basically all classics but following this list is a great way to make yourself hate reading

you dont need 1984 fahrenheit and brave new world on the same list, just pick one and you'll get the point
also just watch the clockwork orange/fear and loathing/cucko's nest movies, waste of time to read the books
and kurt vonnegut is pretty meme

>>9054179
Also, there is no contemporary literature, which is much more beginner-friendly than the old classics.

>>9054169
Is it? Most of those are accessible enough. Some may have been read in schools/colleges and some people new to literature may have heard others casually in passing. I don't see the harm in familiarising yourself with these - they're mostly short and can introduce new readers to even better works.

I suppose there is likely some better candidates for a starter kit but overall it's A-OK, as long as the people following the starter kit understand that there's so much more on offer in literature.

>>9054169
Why do you care, shithead?

They're high school reading with obvious themes, and with easy to find analyses. They're the type of thing that basic readers should be able to tackle before reading something with more complexity. Even then, a lot of people nope out at Lolita having French or Catch-22 having repetition and think they're going to excel at analysing French Modernism. Basics are retards who don't know what's good for them, what can I say?

>starter kit
>no greeks

I found the problem.

Why do people think that in high school your supposed to read every book ever assigned in any high school?

>>9054435
>20 high school reading level books will consume far too much of my time as a beginner
>nobody ever varies from reading all 20 by finding an areas they're interested in
tbqh, most any well read kid would have tackled most of them by high school if they were already into reading good lit. high school should catch the rest of them up. instead, we get 18 year olds and 25 year olds who can't read one of them and think video games or the list is the problem. we shouldn't need the list at all but the fact you think you only start reading and then only some of them in high school is pretty much why we need it. because 18 year olds think required reading they didn't understand the point of made them well read enough to waste the next seven years on not reading. meanwhile a fifteen year old who has read all twenty can tell you easily that they are not yet well read.

>>9054473
Let's not forget that those 20 are not an exhaustive list of the books that people deem high school-core. I reject the idea that you can't be well read if you haven't read them. I expect to read my whole life and I don't plan on going near half of them.

>>9054169
i view it as a list of "if you want to start on /lit/ and haven't read since high school, pick one of these that sounds interesting to you". starting with the normally memed books might make people feel overwhelmed, this chart is a decent collection of easy books that still give a sense of /lit/

>>9054169
because /lit/ made it. com'on op

It's not supposed to be good books, just books to get you into /lit/. /lit/ is mostly shit and so there you have it.

>>9054169
Because they're essential?

You can read Ulysses, Women & Men, and Mason & Dixon, but you're going to look like a fool if you've never read at least 75% of that list.

>>9054179
Damn really? My high school assigned meme books like The Hunger Games, The Fault of Our Stars, and Into the Wild. We read some on the entry-level chart but only like, four.

>>9054515
>I reject the idea that you can't be well read if you haven't read them.
Top meme, edgelord.

>>9055685
Are burger schools really that bad or are you just memeing?

>>9054515
>I reject the idea that you can't be well read if you haven't read them.
You can reject away; everyone interested in lit will consider not getting Nabokov or Hesse or Orwell or Wilde or Steinbeck through to be dabbling. Twain you have the excuse that his whole corpus isn't readily available for a little while, but your parents not giving you Huck Finn is probably a sign of how you wound up here.

>>9055703
The only book I read in burger high school like that was Ender's Game. We have shit schools but we pick okay books. The teachers are just terrible at making you realize why they are good, because they don't understand themselves. My freshman year teacher gave me Dan Brown after realizing I liked to read

>>9055703
Not meming. The Hunger Games was literally the first book we read in English class sophomore year. Fault in our Stars and Into the Wild was somewhat later, I forget exactly when

I mean after that, it wasn't that bad but we still wasted a good 3/4 semester reading YA.

>>9055703
It depends where you live, in America schools are funded by property taxes, so if you have tons of mansions or vacation property you are gtg, but in the ghetto you are fucked

>>9054169
Why don't you make a new list then?

File: a7d.jpg (45KB, 600x837px) Image search: [Google]

45KB, 600x837px

>>9054179
>watch the clockwork orange/fear and loathing/cucko's nest movies, waste of time to read the books

>>9055784
>tfw watching Dune because it's a waste of time to read the books

>>9054169
it's
actually
not

anything on starter kit must be short, aiming at insemenating the mind of starter and not overwhelming him, this one does that

it's still missing the metamorphosis, though.

>>9055969
>must be short
yes, bc anyone not /lit/ is a retarded baby

>>9055737
thats depressing

where im from we read caesar while learning latin so we could understand some poet called catullus

>>9055797
>tfw watching both versions of lolita at the same time because it's a waste of time to read the book or watch just one version of the movie

>>9055685
I doubt they had that pop shit. I had Hamlet, Waiting for Godot, Brave New World, Frankenstein, Zen...Motorcycle maintenance, The Republic, and some other stuff.

File: 1483109240450.jpg (34KB, 600x558px) Image search: [Google]

34KB, 600x558px

>>9055703

So has anyone else read american psycho?

Honestly, the best way to get an appreciation for literature is to read Bloom's "How to Read and Why" in which he outlines his own starter kit:

European Novels:
>Miguel de Cervantes "Don Quixote"
>Stendhal "The Charterhouse of Parma"
>Jane Austen "Emma"
>Charles Dickens "Great Expectations"
>Fyodor Dostoevsky "Crime and Punishment"
>Henry James "The Portrait of a Lady"
>Marcel Proust "In Search of Lost Time"
>Thomas Mann "The Magic Mountain"

American Novels:
>Herman Melville "Moby Dick"
>William Faulkner "As I Lay Dying"
>Nathanael West "Miss Lonelyhearts"
>Thomas Pynchon "The Crying of Lot 49"
>Cormac McCarthy "Blood Meridian"
>Ralph Ellison "Invisible Man"
>Toni Morrison "Song of Solomon"

>>9054169
high-school core is comfy imo. I love picking one of these up for an easier read from time to time. Last year I read lord of the flies again and it held up pretty good 10 years later.

>>9057690
>>Nathanael West "Miss Lonelyhearts"
>>Thomas Pynchon "The Crying of Lot 49"
>>Cormac McCarthy "Blood Meridian"
>>Ralph Ellison "Invisible Man"
>>Toni Morrison "Song of Solomon"
where did it all go so wrong?

>>9057340
Out of all of these we only read Frankstein. Our school gave in to all the teenage edgelords saying "Lol learning Shakespeare is useless and old XD we should read more modern novels"

Keep in mind "modern" is defined as the 21st century

I would've fucking loved to read the Republic

It was made by plebs of old. We've since killed them and took their board.

>>9055784
>>9055797
>>9056213
goiys there's plenty of other shit to read, obviously the dune movie is garbage so i wouldn't recommend watching it over reading it

as for clockwork orange/cucko's nest, the movies are classics

and fear&loathing sucks no matter what way you do it so it doesn't matter

>>9054171
>Dorian Grey
>Masterpiece
Also
>reading anything by Wilde not in dramatic form

>>9057690
the problem with this list is that if a normal person picked up any of these books they would be nearly incomprehensible

whoever thinks a starter kit should have Blood Meridian on it needs to die immediately, even something that was YA in its time like Dickens is pretty hard for the average person to read

an ideal starters list would have short, straightforward, and somewhat modern novels like The Stranger or Lolita which almost everyone has the attention span for and can understand

>>9055719
>My freshman year teacher gave me Dan Brown after realizing I liked to read
Jesus Christ

>>9055797
Dune is only an 'essential' book within the scifi ghetto, though.

>>9054179
>>half of it is literally books you'll read if you've ever attended high school in the past decade
One of the trillion reasons I long for death. None of these books were ever mentioned in my high school.

>>9058494
trust me i would rather have been assigned ender's game or some shit

listening to high school students talk about these books made me wanna drop out

>>9058508
I can assure you what we were assigned is what would be considered primary/elementary school level. Below titles such as Ender's game.

>>9058523
sure but i'd honestly rather have that for the same reason i avoid literature and philosophy classes like the plague

listening to retards talk about things i genuinely enjoy makes me want to off myself i literally have to put my headphones in or plug my ears, the discussions are so cringy and retarded

>>9058535
Holes

>>9054169
Invisible Man, Lolita & Siddhartha are all great.

>>9054179
>you dont need 1984 fahrenheit and brave new world on the same list, just pick one and you'll get the point
I laughed really hard at this. (Because I basically agree.)