Life After IJ

Read Charles Dickens until you can't read any more, and then keep reading until you become old Chuck.

>>9693948
Oliver Twist is the hardest book I've read in English. I didn't undestand 30%. Glad to know it is considered a hard read in linguistic aspect, otherwise I'd consider myself illiterate. Is Great Expectations on the same level or?

>>9693937
>prurient

I don't think you know what this word means

>>9694063

I actually came here from Gurochan's /lit/

>>9694053
what about it didn't you understand??

>>9694094
Well I didn't understand 30% of the vocabulary, so I didn't understand 30% of it in general. The long narrative philosophical monologues chiefly.

I know the story and the events though, there are summaries online, but not very detailed.

>>9694053
I read great expectations in 3rd grade and man it was a fucking slog. Haven't read a book since.

How can it take more than seven replies until someone gives the answer, which is Shakespeare?

How?

What happened to this place?

>>9694201
The real question is why are there people that even need to be recommended Shakespeare?

>>9693937
>et.al
>what we write is a regurgitation of what we read
yes yes exactly

>>9694201
What OP is asking is very vague

>>9695749

This board is the reason I read IJ in the first place. I would never have heard of it otherwise. I'm interested in what other esoteric works you MFA types are perusing at the moment.


Anyone have some more contemporary examples? If I ask anywhere else I dread the probably recommendations.

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>>9695824
IJ isn't esoteric. From what I've gathered it's rather famous in the US and making mention of it is popular among the middlebrow because of its length and perceived complexity. But given where you're coming from, and although that book is even more famous, the answer to your question is probably pic related.

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>>9695846
And then when you're more secure in your command of English, this one. They're called the "meme trilogy" here.

>>9695846
>>9695858
These aren't good recommendations for:
>Now don't get me wrong, my literary tastes are as prurient as befits my station in life, the only reason I'm asking is because my writing has been shit all year. I find that I don't have the skill to put ideas on the page in an aesthetically pleasing manner. As I believe that what we write is a regurgitation of what we read, in terms of style, I have come here for an expert opinion.
or:
>I'm interested in what other esoteric works you MFA types are perusing at the moment.

Recommend something that you didn't scrape off of the bottom of someone else's shoe.

>>9696154
There are no good reecommendations for
>my literary tastes are as prurient as befits my station in life
other than perhaps a dictionary and a course of Hemingway. For someone asking for style and what people read here, and who thinks Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace is some obscure work read by literary types, those two books are the most obvious recommendations.