/lit/ - Literature

What are the most common book picks by avant-teens/ obscure users?
Drop your topsters btw

The lists that sad 4chan boards make for essential books or albums are useless self-indulgent displays. You don’t learn to appreciate anything with an incoherent list. Instead listen to every Phil Spector single obsessively and repeat that with every other artist one at a time

You have to understand things developmentally by building out context. To understand an artist you have to recreate him within. Read what books he liked. Read what his contemporaries wrote. Read everything he ever wrote. Only then will you know why something was a masterpiece

This is why all the great book lists are useless. They’ll just slap Faust in there but include no other work of German literature from 1760-1848. If Faust is a summation of an epoch of German culture, how can you understand it if you dont read anything else from that culture?

Likewise how can you appreciate the Beach Boys without understanding Phil Spector? Or Motown? Without reconstructing the developmental history of music production which Brian Wilson was great in context of and in relation to? You can’t. It’ll lead to superficial appreciation only

Everything is great in its own way, masterpieces dont exist in a vacuum. Studying and discovering is an endless process eternally enriching itself. Taste is about refinement. Good taste isnt formed in reference to prevailing fashion, but comes from objective aesthetic evaluation

I've spent years scouring for every insignificant forgotten piece of music, exotica, private pressing christian heavy-psych, library music. There's so much bizarre stuff out there you'll never hear if you're focused on listening to the "best" albums, which is a nonsense category

I don't think most people are ever going to become experts suddenly or develop the discipline or passion necessary to go so deeply into things. I dont think they need to, or that it's a failing not to. Whatever. But for those who want to learn the right way, this is how you do it

>>17249568
previous chart

>>16822251
The book's own author thought his other novel was better (and was right). W&P is still top tier though.

>>15718923
At least post the full size version you duplicitous faggot.

>>15547528
here

Bump because I want the mega link.

>>14402579
>None of the books you said you read are really 'patrician'.
That's what I figured about Hemmingway and Orwell. I seriously thought that The Stranger was patrician, though. Huh.

Is pic related a better "patrician" list?

>Hunger by Knut Hamsun
I'll probably try this one.

>>14402576
>Promethius Rising
I'll also try this.

Did someone say patrician books???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

>>14044387
Get into metafiction OP, you'll find that when you're living the novels it'll be terrifying enough
Borges is a good place to start for explicitly meta
also vns in general seem to have tons of metafuckery so you can always dive into the jap ones, subahibi, ever17, remember 11, stuff like that

>How could anyone ever hope to understand this book?
Halfway through my second reading right now.
As far as catching every reference or understanding every word, that's a fool's errand. I'm going my second read-through now, reading it aloud as I did the first time, first was in a permissive accent that flowed into the character of the writing typically, and then this time it is in a strict accent following my standard speaking voice more closely, then I'll look at secondary sources, and then I'll have another read or three with varying focuses that I'll figure out later.
I consciously cannot describe this book to you, and yet I have never laughed or cried harder with any media. There's nothing quite so strange as a passage bringing you to tears and not being able to tell someone else why, but perhaps other people who've read it can share similar experiences.
Also, no book had ever changed my accent before this one, that fucked me up with work and my family, still worth it desu.

Just read THE CONFIDENCE MAN!! Lol there are books that teach u everything now XDXDXD

How do you decide what to read next after you finished a book ?
Personally I roll

Old list of "patrician" books, some of which are even still taught in high schools.

What is the best book ever written?
>inb4 infinite jest, my diary desu, culture of critique
Seriously though.