QTDDTOT

>>9131825

Is Zen Buddhism just a meme?

>>9131825

When asses smell they smell bad. They either don't smell or smell bad.

>>9131817

Which country has the best literature?

>>9131817
How am I supposed to hold my Kindle? There's no edge big enough to hold it between thumb and index finger. My hand is too small to basketball hold it from the back.

Is Lena Paul the best porn star right now?

File: bezos_laughing.0.jpg (80KB, 1600x900px) Image search: [Google]

80KB, 1600x900px

>>9132277
>he doesn't have an Oasis

>>9132277
Why do you have such tiny hands? Are you a girl, or Donald Trump?

>>9131825
Sometimes. They are generally a musky smell, but can smell like literal shit.

>>9131834
any religion is only a meme if the person who practices it has that mindset. That being said, scientology and zen-anything is a meme. Meditation is not, though.

>>9131850
Depends on time period. England for 1600-1700, Russia for 1800, France for 1900, America for later 1900s. Right now everyone sucks.

>>9132277
four fingers on the back and the thumb on the front, at the edge. Give a little pressure from the front to have it balance between the two points. I usually lay my entire thumb on the bezel.

File: 1428982805_Bishop-9-MONSTERS.jpg (2MB, 4167x6100px) Image search: [Google]

2MB, 4167x6100px

Somebody on /lit/ recommended I read Baudolino as my third Umberto Eco novel and pointed out some similarity between it and The Book of the New Sun.

Has anyone read both Baudolino and Book of the New Sun? I thoroughly enjoyed Baudolino and Gene has been on my list for a while now. Are they actually at all similar, even stylistically? I think whoever it was mentioned the strangeness of each.

Best translation of the Republic?

File: IMAG0349.jpg (2MB, 2688x1520px) Image search: [Google]

2MB, 2688x1520px

What's the best edition/copy/combination for reading Blake at a critical/academic level? I'm thinking of springing for the Norton, but I've flipped through it and it seems to be terribly abbreviated.

Pic related is what I'm working with.

>>9132330

>Right now everyone sucks.

Follow up question.

Does everybody really suck? I mean, literature is such an old and time consuming medium. Add that to the fact that literally anybody can write a book, wouldn't it be more reasonable to simply assume that the best books of our era just haven't been found yet? Or their influence hasn't been felt by the time of this discussion?

>>9132321
Trump is 6'2", so his hands are likely larger than the average hands.

>>9132482

>taking the bait

>>9132349
The standard scholarly edition of Blake is "The Poetry and Prose of William Blake" edited by Erdman, published by Doubleday. It does not contain many of his designs, but all of the extant text.

If you're loaded and want to do some searching around. Princeton has a gorgeous series of facscimiles of his illuminated books, but they ain't cheap.

Of course, make yourself familiar with the Blake Archive online, if you're not already.

And if you were interested in Blake illustrations for other others, say for Edward Young's Night Thoughts, or for his illustrations to the Book of Job, Folio Society has some mind-numblingly expensive editions.

>>9131817
Is there any good lit on the subject of apathy?

>>9132505
>"The Poetry and Prose of William Blake" edited by Erdman, published by Doubleday
The one with commentary by Bloom? I'd been eyeing that one for a while but wasn't sure if there was a...better alternative.

I'd never thought about searching online for a Blake Archive, but thanks. I'll look into those Princeton editions since his plates are very important to his overall work. Thanks a lot.

>>9132710
Yeah, with the commentary by Bloom. Surprisingly, the commentary is very good anf requently lucid. He wrote it earlier in his career, before losing his mind in Blaketown.

If you're not fussy about picking up a used copy, I'd look for a hardback copy of the 1970 edition and for two reasons: the hardback holds together better than the softcover (the spine on mine splt pretty quickly... it's too thick for the perfect binding methods they used) and the way that the Four Zoas is printed in the 1970 edition is better than the 1997 edition. For some reasons Erdman, based on doubtless solid research, changed the order of some of the MS pages. I think it reflected Blake's own efforts to obscure linear meaning from the text, but the way that it's printed in the 1970 is simply easier to understand. I don't think there are other substantial changes to the text.

There's a few copies here: https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?an=blake&bi=h&kn=erdman+1970&sortby=17&tn=poetry+and+prose

Anyay, best of luck with it. Blake rewards careful and hard work. Beware of too many commentators, because they make the text far too esoteric. The Dictionary by Damon is useful, though.

>>9132710
>>9132774
Could one of you Blake-anons recommend a nice route into Blake? My knowledge of Romantic poets is generally lacking but his mythology and esoteric themes have piqued my interest often.

>>9132330
>pressure the front of Kindle
This is why ereaders will always be inferior. It is painful to press down on this device for a long period of time.

Is French difficult to self-learn if your main purpose with it is to read classic literature?

What are some good books that give a broad overview of the Ancient Greeks from their origins to, say, Alexander?

>>9132793
I'd say take the illuminated works in order...

- All Religions are One / There is no Natural Religion. These are short (single plate each) and somewhat obscure, but give you a sense of where he's starting with. Google and wiki a bit to understand the context he's reacting to (natural religion in the 18th century, Locke, enlightenment).
- The Book of Thel. Here you have a figure who is supposed to pass from a state of being into another (you can think of it as maturity, or his later concepts of innocence and experience) but fails. Try to see what it is that prevents her from making the deveopment and how the other figures respond to her.
- Songs of Innocence and of Experience. The songs give you a wonderfully approachable way into not only the concepts of innocence and experience (which are present in altered form througout his works), but also the degrees of irony through which Blake wrote. I mean, read a song and then ask yourself about who is uttering it and the ways that their perception and understanding are limited. For example, look at the difference between the fierce energy of the text of The Tyger and the ridiculous looking cat on the same plate. Or the harmful naivety of the children in Holy Thursday.
-The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. It starts getting weird now. You're not fully into Blake's mythology yet, but more of the groundwork is being laid here. When you read it, remember that the speaking voice is not Blake, but frequently a demon figure narrating his own experience in hell (and demons are good here, if "goodness" still applies). The ideas of perception and irony still apply, as do liberty (this is 1793, remember) and the idea of printing. This is the point that Blake worked out his unique form of illuminated printing and it matters to the text.

From there you are into the mythology. Follow in chronological order... Visions of the Daughters of Albion (kind of a sequel to Thel), America, Europe, Los, Urizen, and Ahania. Think of these as Blake's working out the psychospiritual function of the fragmented individual within history. His mythological figures have archetypical mappings in the psyche, but also represent historical forces. Orc, for example, is a revolutionary energy that Blake tried to imagine as operative positively in a revolutionary reading of European history. He abandoned this eventually to focus on Los, the blacksmith-poet figure, who works at his anvil at the productive destruction of systems of authority and mental bondage.

From there you're into his epics and probably will have a solid footing to make your own way.

I usually have a glossary of names and terms with me when I work on Blake, and I also refer often to the dictionary by Damon. I find early Bloom helpful as well (his commentary to the Erdman edition, as well as his book The Visionary Company).

I hope this helps some.

>>9132820
No, French is rather easy. Go for it.

Anyone read novels by Margaret Doody ? Any feedback ?

>>9132452

The old greats lived in eras where there was a lively and respectable literary life. Magazines/journals with literati critics and back and forth letters, cafés and salons with writers and artists worthy of praise. The bad was forgotten and the greats were immortalized in their own time, and the people actually read.

Now we have dying or dead journals, Buzzfeed articles, Huffpost, Stephen King lecturing on writing, 50 shades becoming a bestseller, Ready Player One considered worthy for a follow-up novel, talent being discussed as second to nationality, ethnicity and gender, and the majority of readers just grab the shitty bestsellers.

Literature is dead, and it won't wake up again. There's not enough money to be made anymore.

What are some good books for aspiring writers?

I'm mainly looking for books that cover narration, structure etc. and can be applied in any language I speak.

Something like: "X works fine if you want to build tension in your short story, while Y is a bad cliché to be avoided", or "Do these things so your prose doesn't look like a shopping list."

>>9132854
>>9132774
>>9132505
Thanks for your help. I don't know if you're "the" Blake-anon that's always helpful in these threads, but I really appreciate that some of the posters here have a good handle on a single writer rather than all of us just being kinda shallow in our collective knowledge.

File: 4141.jpg (88KB, 900x600px) Image search: [Google]

88KB, 900x600px

What do I do after I'm done with the Greeks?

I want to read the Bible, how do I go from the Greeks to the Bible?

Is there an infograph?

How do I start meditating?

>>9131825
Butts smell like butts, regardless of sex.

How do you write a decent sequel? I mean, I wrote the first instalment with the intention of following it up with two further parts. I deliberately left questions unanswered. I left the ending open enough to pick it up again. And I'm having so much trouble doing it. The folder I've been dumping false starts into has 13 entries for the sequel already. The first piece only had 2 false starts before I found the thread of the narrative I wanted to follow. Why is this so hard?

Anyone?
>>9132339

>>9132339
>>9133087

Sorry. Wish I could help.

>>9133087
The one published by Hackett. Their complete works of Plato is the academic standard.

>>9132339

Allan Bloom is usually considered the most literal and overall best

Jowett is the classic older translation that is kinda outdated but still ok


Sachs is colloquial and good for dumb college kids starting plato

>>9131817
Wait, is Martin Prince a fascist?

>>9132452
What >>9133016 said is mostly right. There are dozens of literary journals that aren't nearly as popular as they were. Writing was a way of life, and an occupation, and nowadays, with more people going to college, and social media, the focus of literature changes.

Add to that a want to make money, to sell movie rights, and you have writers like John Green who might have had potential becoming a YA author that writes shitty stories that get turned into shitty movies all saying the same thing over and over.

It used to be (in Europe) that if a family liked an author, they would become patrons, and the author (or any artist) could simply focus on the art. Now, people just want money more than anything. The one exception could be academia, but even that is changing, albeit slower than the rest.

>>9133142
>>9133118
Thanks.

QTDDTOT does not originate in /fit/, you silly goose.

>>9133035
Very glad to help. I've spent a lot of time on Blake and I think it's best to spread the wealth around.

>>9133016
I think some historical perspective would moderate this opinion some. I mean, if you look at literary culture in the 18th and 19th centuries in Britain, you'll find a lot of the same banalities that we complain about now. Once there was a literature-consuming public, there was a desire for simple and sensational stories adn journalism, hack criticism, and populist writing of all sorts. I mean, Franco Moretti has shown that the "classics" that we think of when we think of the 19th century novel number maybe 100-150 books. But this is about 1% of the poipular and literary output of the age. We have the benefit of time showing us the cream of the age, while the hack writing, the tabloid journalism, the penny dreadfuls, the shit dramas and the vapid poetry--all of which made up the literary culture of the day-- has sunk into obscurity for us.

I think we are worringly short on figures who we could think of as "great" in the way that Johnson, Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot, Henry James and James Joyce were, but it may just be that such figures are yet to emerge.

I worry about how digital culture has changed both reading and the market for reading. I can't imagine that there are no more literary geniuses, but are we just too cynical to recognize them?

>>9133161
Sounds more socialist desu

>>9133040
You don't really need anything - just start reading. Go with NASB if you want most accurate translation or with KJV if you're an autistic English lit major. Read the Apocrypha too.

>>9133084
Try doing a handful of the following and see what happens:

Take the ending of the first from a different perspective, maybe of a character that gets introduced

Fast forward a week/month/half year/year and follow the protagonist

Go to a draft of the first, and remove the ending and just continue writing. This is pretty much what Tolkein did with the frist two LotR

File: 14698358991156.jpg (35KB, 600x399px) Image search: [Google]

35KB, 600x399px

>>9133029

Try watching lessons from the screenplay.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFUKeD3FJm8


He often time mentions works like The anatomy of a story by John Truby in his video. Haven't read any myself but it might be worth looking into.

File: 1481588429764.jpg (131KB, 500x676px) Image search: [Google]

131KB, 500x676px

How's life been treating you guys recently?

>>9132820

French can be a bitch to learn when it comes to the grammar.

But it is possible

>>9133922
Tis bitter cold, and I am sick at heart.

What book should I read next, and why?
Choices:

Memoirs Found in a Bathtub

The King in Yellow

No Longer Human

Bleeding Edge (About half way through)

The Emigrants

Looking for good entry-level texts on Kabbalah and the Gnostics. Recommendations?

>>9132820
If you are a native English speaker then learning French is merely an issue of divorcing yourself from the freeform grammatical twists of bastardized German. In essence you're speaking a more fluid version of your own language.

Benjamin Franklin famously stated that he had more success learning the Romance languages before learning Latin, as opposed to the trends of the time, and I suspect the linguistic familiarity with French strongly influenced his experience.

>>9133961
Wherein lies the main difficulty? I ask out of curiosity, not snark.

>>9134068
French has very strict rules about tenses, and several common verbs have multiple conjugation sets. It's just a LOT of memorization.

>>9134008
I enjoyed The Secret Teachings of All Ages by Manly P. Hall but you may find it too broad. The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pages is a great entry point for Gnosticism.

>>9134092
Thanks, will check out the Gnostic Gospels. Anything entry level on Kabbalah? Even just a collected text of the Apocrypha would be cool.

>>9134092
>>9134110
Sorry, on phone. I meant Elaine Pagels.

>>9133922
Total indifference.

>>9134002
Bleeding Edge, so you don't end up with a half-finished book.

>>9133922

I feel absolute melancholy but thus is the life of a writer as we're often told by the Russians.

I wrote a small poem about it:

"Darkness;Shadows;Hunting my soul. A fire set ablazed. A lantern falling. Dread strikes but not alone. It sets me free; I'm on my own. "

File: 1486782593255.jpg (40KB, 385x500px) Image search: [Google]

40KB, 385x500px

Ch. II>Ch. IV> Ch. I> Ch. V> Ch. III

Based on quality, is this the correct order?

Best translation of Journey to the End of the Night?

What do you think are good ways to fracture a narrative or allow digressions without completely jumbling the thread or structure of the text?

>>9134490
Of portrait of the artist?

>>9136234
Liberalism and Conservativism refer to political ideologies, particularly one's stance on the extension and/or creation of new legal rights (i.e. suffrage, social entitlements, etc)
Political Left and Political Right merely refer to the relative framing of a population's political views, typically expressed in a two-Party system. In a country that is predominantly Liberal (in the modern sense), the difference between the Left and Right may not be particularly far, with proponents of separate parties only disagreeing on a few key issues. Meanwhile in a more politically divided country such as the U.S., the difference between Left and Right can be quite extreme and involve several levels of ideological separation even between people on the same side of the spectrum.

In short, Liberal/Conservative is more objective and deals with your political ideals, while Left/Right is more subjective and is often used as shorthand for your Party leanings, at least in two-Party dominant systems.
However, it is totally possible for one to be a Classical Liberal and identify as a member of the Political Left while maintaining largely Conservative views, because western political systems have long been skewing their terms - leading to demonization of almost all shorthand political nomenclature.

>>9137392
>burgers unironically believe that there are extreme differences between their Right and Very Right parties as opposed to the rest of the world

>>9137432
It's subjective. Work on your reading comprehension before posting next time.

>>9131834
I think a lot of people use it for the wrong reasons, and like to rub it in other peoples faces and brag about how spiritual they are, and it's so fucking pretentious. TRUE zen buddhism is not a meme, but piece of shit human beings are real and they are real in all philosophies/doctrines/religions.

How do I get into Shakespeare?

Also, I'm looking for contemporary short story collections.
Any rec?

File: zUwqrhM.png (513KB, 1280x720px) Image search: [Google]

513KB, 1280x720px

>>9134421

>>9133182

Are there other boards who regularly make them.

File: google.png (49KB, 1158x461px) Image search: [Google]

49KB, 1158x461px

Gonna mail this to Google. Funny or not?

>>9138148
You catch a healthy one here on occasion.

>>9138218
Do it, faggot.

File: 3093420-businessman-committing-suicide-through-hanging.jpg (50KB, 800x530px) Image search: [Google]

50KB, 800x530px

>>9138218

Do it.

File: IMG_5114.jpg (127KB, 768x958px) Image search: [Google]

127KB, 768x958px

The battery on my old nook finally died for good; what's a good e-reader that's
-cheap
-has a light
-has physical page turn buttons (optional but i really want them)

thanks

How long and how often should someone need to write before they can expect to be capable of writing anything worth publishing?

Are the King Arthur books any good?

I was thinking about reading them and just wanted opinions, also are they mainly intended for children?

>>9138218
no one will read it (including me), so sure

>>9139256
I dont get the pic

>>9137587
Try watching a play instead of reading it if you can't make up your mind to picking it up. If you are asking for a starting point King Lear is good.

>>9131825
Girl ass can smell amazing, smell like nothing, or it can smell horrible. When you're a virgin you think any "bad" girl smell must be "bad in a sexy way." But no, girls can be just plain horrifyingly bad, like choking and vomiting, you cannot even force yourself to do this, bad.

The key thing is that you always do an exploratory smell before you go in there for the long haul, enough to give yourself plausible deniability if you detect it's gonna be bad and need to deflect to kissing her back or something.

Never gamble on swampass. Eventually, you'll lose.

>>9133048
Someone recommended Mindfulness in Plain English here recently and it seems good. He also said not to go too deply into vipassana if you are potentially schizo.

My meditating friend recommends starting with 10-20 minutes a day of very low-key, easy mindfulness, in no particular position. Just one that you won't fall asleep in. Do some reading on how mindfulness works and try it out. Many different versions of it exist, lots of different goals. Be careful if you're schizo prone.

>>9134588
Manheim by far. I think there's some defense of the older one, but Manheim supposedly has a better holistic feel for Celine's colloquial style. And he's a good translator in general.

>>9137587
>How do I get into Shakespeare?

Read plays that interest you first. Use an annotated version. Take it slow. Learn to feel the rhythm of the iambic pentameter. Listen to some readings of what you're reading on Youtube and see how people do it rhythmically and you'll get it eventually.

Keep your mind flexible in interpreting the syntax. Teach yourself not to demand rapid skimming with full comprehension. Slow down and logic out what the structure of a sentence you don't understand is.

>>9137587
>How do I get into Shakespeare?
Start off with one of his "lighter" plays: Romeo &Juliet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Twelfth Night, maybe Henry V. Read the lines out loud if possible. If not, just remember to forget everything /lit/ has ever told you about subvocalizing. Try to read as much of a particular play at once as you can; they were written to be consumed all at once, and actually reading them that way will help you keep up with all the characters and plotlines. Use annotations or reading companions if possible; there has been more written about Shakespeare and how to approach his work than maybe any other author, so don't ignore the resources available to you. Finally, try to enjoy what you're reading! Once you get into the rhythm of the words, hopefully you'll start to see how engaging and worthwhile the material is.

Can we talk about Proust?
What's your favorite translation in English?
Does anybody know how the Swedish translation compares to the two English ones?
I felt that Swann's Way wasn't as impressive as I hoped when I first read it in Swedish but I'm considering rereading and most likely in English, hoping to afterwards continue with part 2

Are Ishmael and Queequeg gay? Because so far it's hard to imagine how they could be more gay without actually having sex.

>>9131817
Ha! That's absolutely classic Martin!

>>9138148
/sci/ will almost always have one up

File: Untitled.png (14KB, 279x282px) Image search: [Google]

14KB, 279x282px

Is the "Penguin book of Japanese Verse" any good?
It seems like a wallet friendly option to get a little sense of Japanese poetry, which I'm planning to do,but what about the contents?
It seems decently sized.

If consciousness is an emergent quality, then causality should apply to it via traceable processes, thus negating free will. A somewhat common argument to this is "nope because quantum physics", but obviously this does not apply to molecular level where all the processes in the brain operate. Is is correct, and if not so, what opposing arguments exist?

>>9140644
*Is this

>>9137587
>contemporary short story collection
Make Something Up by Chuck Palahniuk is a fun read

>>9139989
Yes and No
Start with Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, as it's largely disconnected from other Arthurian series. If you like what you read, The Death of Arthur is a good collection.

>>9139256

Don't get the picture either.

File: ShakespeareFlowchart.jpg (2MB, 3000x2000px) Image search: [Google]

2MB, 3000x2000px

>>9137587

File: short_stories.jpg (1MB, 2495x2921px) Image search: [Google]

1MB, 2495x2921px

>>9137587

>>9140870
>>9140113
reading DFW turned that girl into a whore

>>9137587
Definetly start with Richard III or King Lear, that's the lighter stuff. Julius Caesar and Romeo And Juliet are mid tier, and save Macbeth Hamlet and The Tempest for last.

File: 1367.jpg (96KB, 600x877px) Image search: [Google]

96KB, 600x877px

Should I read Ulysses first with notes or without notes?

Also, which text? I've heard the 1922 Oxford is good.

I'm a newfag, I looked on the wiki and read some books on it and it's mostly been pretty pretty bad, what are some good books for a newfaggot like me?

The books that I've read and enjoyed so far is Catch-22, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and Siddhartha

who the fuck is the /lit/ resident shitposter and where is his oeuvre of art?

>>9143475
Look at other charts, dum dum

Anyone got any poets to share in the same ilke of Rimbaud, Blake, Kenji Miyazawa, Frank Stanford? Or Mystic poets in general. Looking for some enlightening poetry.

Similar recent interests are Ibonia: Myth from Madagascar

>>9143496
but anon that's not as easy as being told what to read! I'll do it anyways though

>>9143609
Up next should be Dharma Bums if you haven't already read it.
And check out Player Piano.

File: 1487815077459-1454543010.jpg (2MB, 2592x1944px) Image search: [Google]

2MB, 2592x1944px

What I'm in for /lit/?

What do you guys think of Orwell's "Keep The Aspidistra Flying"?

I read it around six years ago and I remember it really touching me. I have an easy time connecting with disturbed loner type characters.

Haven't been feeling too happy lately. Is it as good as I remember? Having a hard time whether I should re-read it or move on.

>>9131817
how much in general do you think it would cost to hire an artist to cartoon a graphic novel?

i have the entire story ready to go but i am totally shit at art but i have a few key visuals i would love implemented. but basically i need someone to illustrate.

id be willing to go 50/50 with someone, if theyd be open to it. but itd be on a year to year basis if it ever took off.

just curious. pls respond

Is Menander worth reading considering that non of his works are completely recovered?

>>9140644
William James had the same problem, when the prevailing opinion among 19th century psychologists was that mechanical physical processes and "mental contents" were linked. The latter are deterministic, and so the psychic realm is just an epiphenomenal ghost-image. Free will is impossible.

James' readings of Renouvier and Darwin convinced him that consciousness would not have evolved if it were truly epiphenomenal, i.e., if it truly had to causal efficacy of its own. Why naturally select for something that has no benefits?

Maybe check out Robert Richards on Darwin, James, evolutionary theories of mind, etc.

But really you aren't asking about whether consciousness has efficacy, because even in this argument, it would be said that consciousness, whatever it "is", is just another mechanism. All this argument really proves is that mind has a purpose, not that freedom specifically has a purpose.

The answer to the question you're really asking doesn't exist, at least yet.

Yeah, quantum mechanics is sometimes suggested - check out Roger Penrose. I was originally hostile to those arguments even though I'm a free will guy, for the reasons that Dennett et al. usually lob at them, i.e., that even irreducible quantum randomness at the particle level of a machine made of particles doesn't mean much. At best, it guarantees some randomness in the mechanism, which doesn't imply freedom or even subjective consciousness. At worst, the randomness might even be too microcosmic to affect macrocosmic events. But recently I've opened up a bit more to Penrose. He's a subtler guy than his caricatures let on.

Philosophically though, no, there is currently no satisfactory answer as to how free will exists in a mechanistic universe. Common-sensically, it shouldn't. But neither, really, should subjective experience. Kant would say that our faculy of "pure" (scientific) reason is simply built to interpret events/nature mechanically, and so we can only "see humans as" mechanical objects. To respect them as moral ends and not just automata, we need to view them through our "practical" (i.e., in-built moral) sensibilities, which is where religion comes in. Similar idealists like Schelling cross their fingers and hope for spooky magical freedom energy from beyond the veil.

Another interesting argument, also bordering on mysticism/religion though, might be that human reason is presently, or has presently become, incapable of seeing Aristotelian "final causes" in nature, and only sees efficient and material causes - again, can only see quanta mechanically. So, we're free, but we're too dumb to see it.

The current state-of-the-art scientistic answer is: "you're a robot kill yourself."

>>9133922
Job sucks and I'm single but everything else is fine.

>>9143475

Read normie lit to get used to reading. You don't need to read absolute shit though. Try stuff like Dune and Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy

File: dgdgdgd.png (44KB, 581x711px) Image search: [Google]

44KB, 581x711px

Got a kindle as a gift recently and I have started to use it a lot.

I've been downloading books quite and bit and I have been using Calibre to sort them out etc.

I've run into an issue now with a few books where there is a lot of spacing between each line making the amount of words per page much smaller and the general format much worse.

After goggling around I was told to enable Heuristic Processing and unwrapping the lines but it did nothing to fix the issue.

The usual site I use to download books is currently down and after trying 2-3 other sites each book has the same issue.

>>9140486
please respond!

File: 1479155776269.jpg (76KB, 610x660px) Image search: [Google]

76KB, 610x660px

What are the best editions of In Search Of Lost Time?

>>9145833
Gallimard of 40s-60s and La Pléiade.

>>9140486
>>9145766

Bump.

>>9131817
nigga this is /lit/ we need more threads

This girl from tinder and I have been talking for a little over a week now. We're going to hang out soon. She mentioned that she wants to rent a cabin for her birthday weekend but not hang with her family or anyone, she said she wished someone would go with her.

Is she basically saying that if we hit it off then she wants me to come along with her on this trip and probably perform coitus?

Are there any philosophers, professors, or academics who have valid and well thought out criticisms of third wave feminism? I'm attending a very liberal college and whenever feminism is brought up, it receives praise simply by virtue of being feminist. I'm starting to think the "movement" is tainted with narcissism, and seems to have an almost commercialized air.

Why do I feel silly and naive for wanting to write stories?

>>9146267
Why bump it instead of giving an anwser.
I thought I finally got what I was looking for

>>9146331
>>9146267
>>9140486
>>9145766

bump

File: romantics.png (40KB, 510x367px) Image search: [Google]

40KB, 510x367px

>>9133415
As a literature student who has an entire paper on Romantic poetry and has no clue about Blake's ideology(especially his beliefs and how they shaped his response to Swedenborg); where would you suggest I start? Never read Blake before.

Pic related is the list of texts in the romantic poetry paper for this semester

im deep into a novel that I'm not skilled enough to write yet. Is it a bad idea to just finish it and then come back to edit when I'm a better writer?

>>9132336
I enjoyed both those books. Other than a vague medieval tinge to BotNS I can't imagine what that person is on about.

>>9131817
Is Severian a marry sue?

>>9146282
Just mention in a playful way that that person could be you.

>>9139950
>worth publishing?
I don't think it works like that. You can write a masterpiece and be denied, and you can write trash that gets published.

>>9146478
No that is recommended. It is easier to revise than to write.

>>9146462
Frye's book on him?

I have no idea how I want to end my book, how do I figure it out?

>>9147526

Get inspired from other works. Read more, watch movies, sit down and think about it. It'll come.

1. What is the best way to approach learning history/nonfiction (political theory, economics, etc.)? Should I just read what I can find online, or is there a recommendation guide for the best works?

2. Any ESL teachers here? What's your experience in the field been like so far?

>>9146321
Feel this too. I wonder why

>>9137392
are there any unbiased books explaining this in a detailed but dumbed down way?

I wanna watch a King Lear play, can someone link me a good one?

>>9131817
what is the figure of speech where you , say, write a big text that really means nothing?

>>9148112
anecdote?

>>9148112
lorem ipsum..?

puffed up? platitude?

File: the_man_in_the_high_castle_frontcover.jpg (272KB, 600x860px) Image search: [Google]

272KB, 600x860px

What in the hell was I supposed to learn from this book?

My heavens, was it rambling and pointless.

>>9131817
Is the censored chapter of Dosto's 'Demons' meant to be read? If so, when should I read it? I mean, after what chapter?

Has anyone read Philip K. Dick's Exegesis? Was it worthwhile?

>>9148289
pls respond

File: 5e68ac3970484238600526be28d414d9.jpg (10KB, 236x315px) Image search: [Google]

10KB, 236x315px

May I please have your trashiest novel recommendation? By trashiest I mean anything goes...it could be Ass Goblins of Auschwitz or Cycle of the Werewolf or American Psycho etc. I need something that I can turn my brain off and yet keep the pages turning. Thank you

>>9150979
More particularly I mean escapist stuff in general with tawdry as an added plus but not a necessity

File: a wild sheep chase.jpg (17KB, 254x400px) Image search: [Google]

17KB, 254x400px

Just finished this. What is this book about? I certainly enjoyed reading it, but I'm not really sure what to 'take' from it or how to digest all of the mythological stuff.

>>9150979
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

>>9152532
I had to read that in my freshman high school English class. It was one of the 'controversial' novels we had to read.

Any other recommendations for trashy or engrossing fiction?

File: shakespeare.png (4MB, 900x3462px) Image search: [Google]

4MB, 900x3462px

>>9137587

File: Floating_Opera_Barth.jpg (499KB, 550x808px) Image search: [Google]

499KB, 550x808px

If i read The Floating Opera, how necessary is it I read End of the Road?

Can anyone recommend any books about science? Preferably physics or med stuff.

>>9148100
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/king-lear-watch-the-play/487/

File: 1459356019243.jpg (148KB, 737x464px) Image search: [Google]

148KB, 737x464px

If I were to use the word "timbers" as the act of carefully falling down onto something, would that come off alright? Or would the idea be lost on most people? Here's the line as it currently stands:

>Neal grabs his coat off the dining room chair placed by and facing the bedroom window and walks back to the front porch where he timbers onto the bedroom chair's twin.

>>9154334
You are required by law to read it.
If you don't you will be arrested.

>>9131817
I don't like sad stories. I mean I have a have a crippling fear of feeling sad. Even if I like the book, if I start to think that something sad is about to happen, i'll stop reading it.
Sometimes I can keep going, but most of the time I can't.
How do I stop being such a pussy?

>>9155712
The body has a head By Gustav eckstein+an historical account of pharmacology to the twentieth century by Chauncey leake

>>9156330
The line now reads as this. How's this come off:

>Neal grabs his coat off the dining room chair placed by and facing the bedroom window and walks back to the front porch where, now covered by the brown jacket, he timbers onto the bedroom chair's twin.

>>9148112
>>9148112
Imagine this: you have to write a paper for college with 100 words, you don"t know what to write and don't even know the subject but if you just deliver it you'll pass. Thing is: you can't misspell words and it has to have enough "consistency" that an AI equivalent of an very old machine translator would "ok" it as an paper.

I can't pronounce the word "photograph" without close my mouth 4 times but it supposed to be a 3 sylabes word.
PHO-TO-GRA-PH
I don't understand.

>>9157278
You best be kidding.
Pho-to-graf

>>9157479
It works now !
Maybe influenced by my french mother tong
But it was a good joke for you i suppose

>9131817
I've never been taught how to read poetry. This is what I'm currently doing:
>pick a poem
>paraphrase it if it uses archaic terms
>read the footnotes
>read it again aloud a few times every 2-3 days for 1-2 weeks

It's kinda lacking, since I'm not conisdering figures of speech, rhyme schemes and all that jazz. I'm honestly clueless when it comes to that.
What should I read to bridge this gap?

>>9131817
Is there anyone who understands Christianity as well as Tolstoy, and Paganism/Tradition as well as Evola who wrote good stuff on these topics? Because I feel like Tolstoy understanding of Paganism/Tradition was lacking and Evola's understanding of Christianity (as in Christ's teachings - he understood the church well) was also lacking.

>>9157922
No problem! I did get a laugh.

I saw a post on here a while ago where someone quoted one of Lovecraft's letters towards the end of his life in which he expressed regret over the extremes of his beliefs in his youth. Anyone know which letter this is?

>>9131817
Best translation for The Count of Monte Cristo?

What books are recommended for Byzantine and Renaissance history, culture, etc? I know nothing about these cultures but I'm looking for more than just a wikipedia summary page

I borrowed War and Peace and just read the introduction saying that it's the original version from a Russian journal, instead of the later version that apparently everyone else has read. Should I just read this version or go and find the common one?

File: coco.jpg (45KB, 850x400px) Image search: [Google]

45KB, 850x400px

>>9154334

Long story short I have a crush on my TA and somehow autistically managed "to go out and talk about philosophy some time" despite absolutely knowing nothing about philosophy whatsoever. We are supposed to be meeting on Tuesday.

What do I do? I know she likes Seneca and Nietzsche by Facebook stalking her (which is how I managed to land in the first place). So how do I fake that I look as if I at least know something that isn't just

>dude nihilism
>dude not giving a fuck

I ordered The History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell, but that won't be here until Thursday.

Please help, she's like a carbon copy of that pure girl whose YouTube you ruined a few years back

>>9160232
Find a copy of Letters from a Stoic at a local store, pretty popular so shouldn't be hard to find + you can read it quickly and get the gist of Seneca.

>>9159489
Ostrogorsky? Outdated and you could probably get fifty "Byzantine History" survey textbooks for undergrads by searching a university library catalogue

Renaissance has a lot of stuff but Burckhardt is obvious first choice

>>9160232
Don't try to impress her by knowing a lot because she probably knows more than you and you'll look repulsive/pathetic if you try to "match" it in an adversarial way.

Don't assume she knows infinite philosophy things either. Most philosophy postgrads study pretty specific things.

TAs can sometimes sorta fuck students, but not students they're teaching (conflict of interest) in the States.

Ask her "which Nietzsche" she likes because you're trying to get into Nietzsche and it seems like there are several different readings of him, then get her to explain Nietzsche to you while you stare at her tits or something.

>>9160639
>>9160712
Thanks

File: anon.jpg (25KB, 220x334px) Image search: [Google]

25KB, 220x334px

Can anyone explain Anonymiad?

File: 8832030_orig.gif (27KB, 285x432px) Image search: [Google]

27KB, 285x432px

Hey, guys! I'm really interested in Norse mythology, but I haven't had much exposure to it. Could you guys recommend any books to start delving into Norse culture/mythos?

>>9157934
no one?

>>9161675
Read Rhyme's Reason by John Hollander (1981). It's a very short introduction to all the major metres and their characteristics and contexts used in English and it also outlines other, non-accentual types of verse
You should also look up more words, not only all their different sense but their etymologies as well because the latter is their 'proprietas' meaning, using a term from Roman rhetoric, or what the Germans call the 'eigentliche' meaning. I'm sure that play with etymology was more common back in the day as was an education in the classical curriculum but I'd wager it's still common for poets to actually look up the words they use.
For example, take W.C. William's 'The Red Wheelbarrow':
>So much depends
>Upon

>A red wheel
>Barrow

>(...)

Part of fully appreciating the poem is knowing why wrote 'depend', and you need to know that it comes from the Latin 'de' (~down) and 'pendere' (to hang), approximately giving 'to hang down from', and in turn shifting the focus from the whole poem as something audible to something visible (because the words do indeed hang down from those above) -- a very short, maybe poor example, but I can tell you from experience that it's usually rewarding to look as many words up as you can.

>>9157934
In terms of reading it with the proper rhythm, do you know what meter it's in? Free verse is a little harder because you have to build confidence in interpreting when/where to pause and emphasise and shit, and a lot of that is based on knowing vocab + context of the poem etc.

If you're clueless about this sort of thing, go on Youtube and look up (professional, or very high quality, not high school project shit) spoken readings the poem. You'll probably find it's done a lot better than you were trying to do it in your head, and this will open up more possibilities for reading that you hadn't thought of. I know for me it was a surprisingly big realisation that I'm allowed to read slowly and poignantly inside my head, rather than scanning for literal meaning. People had told me this before, but it had never clicked until I heard it in action.

If you're reading difficult shit then the challenge is going to come from ambiguity of meaning. I don't want to sound trite but maybe just read easier shit for a while? The first poems I started reading were the Lays of Ancient Rome by Macaulay, and those are easy as fuck aside from some minor archaisms. But forcing yourself to plow through Shakespeare is good too. It will improve your vocab and your sense of what syntax is possible in English.

I don't think you should drill poems for memory's sake. Once I learned to read Shakespeare's meter properly, I could do it with any Shakespeare and be okay. I think I first really "got" iambic pentameter when I listened to Leonard Nimoy reading Ozymandias in the game Civilisation 4, and after that I was like "ohhh it has a rhythm. ok"

>>9150979
Read The Mind Parasites by Colin Wilson. It did exactly that for me a long time ago.

>>9161882
Also, it can depend to some on extent on the kind of poetry you want to into, like say 17th century/metaphysical poetry where the 'decorum' of rhetorical figures and the like was more in style, dismissed by Coleridge as fancy. For example, Andrew Marvell's 'To His Coy Mistress' is structured as a syllogism: If we had all the time in the world, we could do so and so, but we don't, so let's do so and so. However, stuff like this remains and you can also find similar intricacies in Yeats, so branching out always helps.

>>9161882
I think this is ultimately good advice but right at the beginning he's going to feel drowned in meanings he doesn't understand and that he assumes everyone else understands reflexively.

There is a lot of that stuff in poetry, sure, but there are always many layers to a poem.

I read Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and understood about 70% of it, and read it very wrongly. Then I read a little "5 Critical Essays on ROTAM" book (and learned more from their introductions than I did the actual essays, which were too complicated for me, but still, learned a lot), then I watched Orson Welles' animated reading of it and realised I had been reading it wrong all along:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRGnoFf2cZQ
and then I FINALLY read it again, and got maybe 85% of all the subtlety.

Now that I've read more about it, and read Coleridge's philosophical work, I realise the extra 15% I wasn't getting was too deep for me ever to get without it being spelled out for me, AND that it's more like 200% because you'd have to spend a lifetime studying Coleridge in order to really delve into all the esoteric shit that people like him delighted in weaving into their work.

I'd rather this dude read the 70% reading, gain some motivation to continue, and make it to 90%, than spend the rest of his life assuming he has to mind-meld with Coleridge to read a page.

>>9161948
I don't disagree but I didn't mean to say he had to mind-melt with anyone, only that there are so many words you think you know but that you don't really if you look it up in the OED, which was a hindrance to me when I started reading poetry.

Are there any vibrant, active literature forums on the internet that aren't of so depressingly poor quality as /lit/.
I think "chan" culture has had its day. It's utterly septic.

>>9161975
Any attempt to tut-tut """"chan"""" culture must be made by standing on ground other than """""chan""""""""" culture, and the only ground that exists other than """""""""""chan""""""""""""" culture is normie culture, so you're a normie right now, so you should go to Facebook.

any books that will help with chronic masturbation?

What's a good medieval fiction book (not necessarily fantasy, want to avoid elves and dragons if possible) that gets extremely violent when it does get violent, yet remains tasteful? I started reading this book called Steel Remains I got from somewhere a few months back and the first few chapters gave a bad taste.

What happened to all the reading groups?

>>9161994
>>>/r9k/