/lit/ - Literature

>tfw read no books for over a month because I read one at a time and the brothers Karamazov is so fucking boring
>read less than 150 books in that time

Reading other people wank over how much philosophical / psychological insight this book has reminds me of what a pseudy exercise literature has become.

This book is horrifically boring. I can't bring myself to read and I'm only at about page 130 out of about 700.

Can someone explain what I'm supposed to get out of this? And if the insights are so profound, what are they? A third question: Is enjoyment ever supposed to be involved?

The cherry on top is that almost nobody would be praising this book if it was written today. And if it was written today and self published then nobody would read it and it would be mocked if it was read (>inb4 you dispute this). This shit would not happen in a medium / art form that wasn't close to death or dead. And I know I'll be mocked for using "enjoyment" (the E word) and that wouldn't happen with a healthy medium either.

>graduated from university almost 2 years ago
>for three years I've wasted all of my free time on internet browsing
>for at least 3 times a week in the past 1.5 years I've had junk food and told myself it was the last time and believed myself
>same as above but with coffee

How do I start working really hard and avoid eating junk? My procrastination has been immense. Is the answer really just, "Just do it"? How do other people do it?

It seems like everyone lives an easy life compared to me. Either they're a female, chad, or some generic normie who is accepted by everyone and has a support structure. I am ugly and have bad social skills and no social life so I will never have any sort of support structure. I feel like an incredible loser whenever I see any young people.

I always feel so paranoid and frustrated because there are ten trillion books / subjects people say you have to learn or else you're stupid." Not only do I get annoyed by this, I can clearly see that they're talking shit, yet I still feel constantly cucked because I haven't read that book etc.

I've completely squandered almost two years on nothing but internet time wasting and lazing about. I used to go on the bus and go to the library or cinema to feel less alone but that made me feel like a loser in public (it just makes me feel cheated). I have had graduate interviews but have never been extroverted and normie enough to pass them. My part time jobs have never taken up much time but I despised them even though I barely work.

I have never been motivated enough to work on productive things in my own time. I consider learning programming and have done about three weeks of productive maths / programming in two years but it's just another mountain to climb. I have to become a workaholic ubermensch just to create some stupid app / nonsense business / become a low tier wagecuck while everyone else floats in to prestigious jobs because they are a normie.

>>8217903
>>8217891
please don't come back

>>7071772
That's a slipper slope argument. I'm all for correcting the legacy of past oppression, but if we set an unattainable goal that's not going to be good down the line. Might as well make a note of the possibility that there might be a genetic difference in cognition and use that to make a more effective education system.

I'm extremely uncomfortable with suppressing research because you don't like what people might do with it. Look up Lysenkoism. It was a program of "Marxist Biology" that, while interesting, turned up pretty much zero useful information and guided farming practices that contributed to some serious famines, all because certain conclusions of Mendellian and Darwinian genetics were labelled, "reactionary."

>>7068351
I went on a date to a bar with a girl who carried her copy of The God Delusion with her because she'd been reading it before we met up and it didn't fit in her purse. She's cool but that was kinda spergy. Fortunately I think you can get away with that shit a little better in a college town because people may assume you have to read it for class.

>>7053050
Okay Christposters, explain how this isn't the most pathetic eunuch-tier thinking of all time. Why should you be repelled by the prospect that a woman will age? The whole nature of sexual conquest and competition is that men fight over the women in their prime, so this knowledge should serve as a reminder to the man to stay on top of his game, for a woman's youth is precious. The Catholic instead takes a cold shower and whips himself for coveting his master's fucktoy.

>>7053091
This. Pissing and shitting isn't interesting philosophically except to acknowledge that our revulsion to it is a simple survival instinct.

>>7041761
No, I suspect Tao doesn't like dudebro rugby player STEM students too much so we probably wouldn't be great friends. In my experience people on the kinds of medications he takes are only interesting on occasion and make terrible friends because surprise they're fucking crazy.

>>7041781
>strung-out Asian guy from New York represents me
As a white guy from the rural south, that seems unlikely.

>>7032682
Ok, legit smart person who graduated from a top-tier American university coming through.
For everything in this list, you can find helpful resources here:
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/

1. Quit listening to music all day and drinking caffeine more than once a day if you do those things. I've found this helps my attention span immensely.

2. Start with literature from the past century that won't strain your reading level or attention span unnecessarily. This is to train your attention span as much as it is to get into literature. The Old Man and The Sea; The Great Gatsby; To Kill a Mockingbird and An American Dream should be a good start if we're going to get prescriptive.

3. Read myth. Greek, Roman, Norse, Anglo, Native American, African and American Tall Tales. Myths are the key to culture and the proto-literature that you'll get the most out of reading. Edith Hamilton is my go-to for classical myth.

4. Study both formal logic and basic computer programming, starting with whichever you think is most interesting and then progressing to the other.

4. Go to the MIT link and check out anything under the Philosophy and Literature that catches your fancy. Once you've done the above there's no need to go in a particular order. READ THE BOOKS ASSIGNED to whatever course you choose. Guided reading schedules are more important than the lecture notes, but check those out too. If you're doing a lit course you should aim to finish a novel a week.

6. GOD MODE: Get fit. Do LSD, shrooms or peyote. Learn a language of your choice well enough to read foundational texts in it.

>>6665954
It's a story where a family dissolves and its members do things Franzen disagrees with for a while, but in the end everyone changes their worldview to something Franzen approves of. The social issues it examines are painfully flavor-of-the-month; I remember reading an excerpt of the rape scene in The New Yorker before the novel came out and thinking it seemed so deliberately formulated to fit the received narrative about rape, with no examination, just a depiction of the liberal's ideal rape scenario in which a rich white boy intimidates a girl into not resisting. Like, I could have expected to find this on a particularly talented campus feminist's blog.

Franzen makes much of his distaste for Middle Americans as well as his boner for rich art patrons. He even has Walter deliver a speech about how much he despises the ignorant hill people he's working with for being so unsophisticated, and I don't think it was entirely ironic.

It's possibly the smuggest thing I've ever read.

>>4315740
How should I present it, other than the book's official description and a link to an EPUB copy?

>"Hey guys have you seen what this SHITLORD Colin Flaherty wrote in this book? It's outrageous!"

Would that be acceptable?