/lit/ - Literature

Muh Marxism!

>>12833988
>Every book is about a farmboy who wants to become a chosen one
>Never get a book about a chosen one who wants to become a farmer

>>8609932

its arrogance and a lack of intellectual humility. walk into a 2000 level philosophy class for more examples of this.

>>8327148
>wahhh i'm so patrician i watch the entire porno and don't just skip to the cum shot
Hope you enjoy those hours and hours of foreplay, nobleman.

>>8201849
>12 is wrong
You were wrong bitch
Me :1
Tripfag:0
This one's for the books boys

Is sarcasm and irony the highest form of humor?

>>6828753
I've only read this and The Book of the New Sun. TBotNS is much, much more complex, and The Devil in a Forest is just 208 pages anyway.

I used to think peasants are boring and it's all about the knights and wars and stuff, but this book has to be the best (as in most entertaining) description of life in a remote medieval village. If you love medieval Europe I'd say this won't disappoint you, but if you're not into that then I dunno. And did I say how much I love Wat already, hands down the coolest guy ever.

>>6782542
This is like, the most useless post ever

>>6551379
>Pre 1900
>Russia
Illiterate farmers who were thoroughly bullied by mongolians and various others until around the beginning of the 16th century when rulers started calling themselves Tsar's and the territory they controlled 'The Third Rome', due to it's Byzantine heritage. This heritage is Saint Cyril bringing Christianity and literacy to the southern Slavs, hence the name of their alphabet, Cyrillic.

A Tsar named Peter the Great expanded Russia's territory, shaping it into The Russian Empire and making it a strong European power.

Then his descendants continued to rule until Nicholas the Second was overthrown by the Bolsheviks and was murdered along with his family in the early 20th century.

>Africa
In the North various Kingdoms were formed and much of Africa had plenty of contact with the Middle East, whose religion and culture spread far into the continent.

North African Moors conquered a large part of the Spanish peninsula for a long time and North African Pirates terrorized the Mediterranean by taking slaves, disrupting trade and raiding seaside towns.

Arabs also took lots of slaves from Eastern Africa in what is possibly the most brutal slave trade in history. The survivability of African slaves taken by the Arabs was awful.

>China
They actually had a more or less samey time of things for an exceptionally long time. Plenty of wars and technological and philosophical innovations and such but before the 20th century and their contact with western colonialism they ran things more or less the same way. Europeans eventually taking a keen interest in them was very bad for China and led to the instability that put them on the path to a painful revolution.

>India
I honestly know next to nothing about India before the British showed up and don't particularly care to learn.

>Egyptians
I suppose that since they were the one's who ended up subjugated they're considered less influential/important/interesting.

I just personally find Greece and Rome more interesting and relevant to study. Egypt had a powerful influence on their time, but I don't think they had anywhere near as much lasting impact as the Roman's and Greeks, who we still take ideas from now.

>Matriarchal societies
There were plenty of remarkable leaders throughout history who were women, but I don't know about any matriarchal societies. Elizabeth of Britain and Isabella of Spain were certainly remarkable people though. China also had some woman rulers throughout its history.

>militaristic developments
I don't know of any big book that covers everything but the big stuff is probably:

Egypt -> Greeks vs Persians -> Rome vs Carthage -> Barbarians vs Late Rome -> Charlemagne vs Europe -> Franks vs Arabs -> British vs French -> Mongols vs World -> development of guns/cannon -> Frederick the Great and Prussia (Frederick wrote on the subject of war, good stuff) -> Napoleon vs Europe -> World Wars -> Modern Warfare

*Gorilla Warfare all throughout might be worth a look also

Book of Genesis

>>6502312
How much truth is there to this?

I've been thinking of reading either The Silmarillion or Book of the New Sun. If New Sun builds on Silmarillion then that makes the choice very easy.

As for the other stuff, well I'm a Catholic but not a very good one. What constitutes 'a working knowledge'?

Please feed my peasant brain, I want to ascend.

I learned that there was a Montreal club in the late 18th to early 19th century called the Beaver Club, where wealthy fur-traders would gather together. One of the activities they supposedly did was sit themselves as if they were in a canoe and pretended to be sailing down a river in the wilderness.

>>6263091
I've gotten to the point where I only enjoy things for their aesthetic value. Most stuff below surface impressions arguably isn't there and probably doesn't even have that enough value to be worth the effort of getting to it.

Somebody recently asked me if I wanted to hear what *really* happened at the end of Birdman and I told him to fuck off. That might have been a bit much but if we were supposed to know exactly what happened there it would have been shown to us. Things are left open so people can interpret for themselves, not so autists can scrutinize every detail until they find the true meaning.

Animal Farm was about farm animals, fight me.

I don't even know the difference between genre fiction and literary fiction.

At the moment I'm reading Anne of Green Gables and The Man in the High Castle. How am I doing?

>tfw reading about Mousnier's book on peasant uprisings