/lit/ - Literature

Can you lot recommend any horror books, that are actually scary? I don't scare easily and don't wanna buy something I'd later regret. I was thinking about the shining but I don't know whether Stephen king is just overrated

Hi guys, I'm trying to find a specific book for my GF on Christmas, it's bugged her for years and she can't find it, I was wonder if you could help (please excuse the poor writing style, these are texts taken from a while ago.

These are the details:
-Believed to be a children s book.

-It has pirates in it
-The protagonist was born on Christmas day and the other characters think that means he can see ghosts
-The pirates hang him upside down and whip the soles of his feet with leaves so he'll tell them where/when he saw a ghost
-The book starts with him falling out of bed banging his shin and getting a lump roughly the size of a turkey egg on it. It's his birthday. His twelfth I think.
-One of the pirates which the main character likes gets marooned on an island and the main character meets him again later as a twist.

Can Moby Dick be considered postmodern?

I can't help but wonder how many average /lit/ frequenters are in college and how many aren't. Are most of you here to discuss things for classes, or are you here just to discuss books you are currently reading? Lets take a survey.

>Age
>School if applicable
>Favorite book
>Book(s) reading right now
>state/country/province
>Do you write
>Most annoying types of shitposting
>favorite threads

Hey everyone, for a personal project I'm making something that involves having/telling a lot of riddles. Not just the newer history of them where they're used mainly for fun, but also in the older styles where they're used to impart lessons, and also as part of riddle-fights. Does anyone know a good book or two about them?

Are there any decent mystery novels that aren't either shitty drug store books or detective stories?

>>6705698
>whether or not they're desirable qualities for people to have.

But on what basis do they choose these desirables qualities then? This sounds so vague.

>Read Plato's Meno

I will. Sooner or later.

Are there any stories where the antagonist wins?

I have a philosophical dilemma and I don't know if someone else talked/wrote about it.

Let's say that you find someone who is reading a book. He/she has a lot of fun reading that book. I f you go and socialize with this individual, you are interrupting him/her from reading and having fun, but your conversation might (or it might not) be more pleasant for her than reading the book. So is it ethical to interrupt someone's pleasure for the chance that he/she might be more pleased by something else?

Sorry for the silly example. Also, English is not my mother tongue.

How exactly do you guys incorporate literature into your worldview? Does anyone actually see something, then think, "oh, this reminds me of X character/book/etc, whick makes me think Y of the current situation."

I don't do anything like this and feel that I never really internalize any books. I'm not really engaging with them, it seems. Would going back and rereading books help? I have a horrible tendency to never reread anything.

Personal experiences and tips would be appreciated

I'd like to know more about Anarchy, of which I am totally ignorant.

What's the holy grail of Anarchist literature?

Hello, /lit/, I need help finding the title/author of a book. I don't know how well this will work out, because the description I've been given is sort of vague, but I figured this would be a good place to go to.

Some back story: My friend recently wrote me a letter, and in the second page of it he describes a book he read when he was much younger, and expresses how much he would like to read it again, though he can't remember much about it because what he includes. So I thought I'd find out for him and let him know.

Here is how he described it: "I remember when I was about eleven years old and I was still living with my mother, she rented a book from the local library and I read it when she had finished it. It was about a man, who had become depressed because his parents were divorced. His mother raised him and his sister by herself, then one day, she died. He went to a bar and got drunk, then almost died himself in a car accident. But he survived, and then realized that his mother was still around (kind of like a ghost) and she still took care of him like a son, for an entire day (maybe it was weeks) until she 'died' (again) and he had to relive all that anguish."

Any help at all identifying this would be appreciated. Thank you for your time.

Have to write short story for english class, what's in my mind goes like this. Boy lives with abusive father in a kind of semi rural place (forests nearby and such) father is abusive and beats the boy from time to time. Boy has enough and runs away from home to a nearby abandoned amusement park and tries to fend for himself away from his abusive father.. I was thinking of adding a plot twist that you find out the boy has a mental illness (not yet specified) and never actually ran away and it's revealed at the end but that seems kinda dark.. Give me your thoughts, opinions and ideas, /lit/.

I'm looking for a good e-reader? Looking for 100>
Any suggestions /lit/?
What kind do you use?

Hello guys, first time posting on this board here. I'm looking for a french book I read in high school about a 16 year old boy who escapes from a boarding school and takes the train to leave France. He meets an rich older woman (in the 30s) and falls in love with her. I can't remember the title for the life of me. Does it ring a bell to someone here?

I'm not sure but I think that in this book he really likes his grandma because his parents abandoned him and she was the one that raised him and if it is in that book the grandma dies at some point. Any clues?

Someone told me that first person narratives show a lack of experience. What do you think /lit/?

Any editors/agents/experienced writers out there? I've got a copyright question that Google isn't helping me with in my specific case.

Here's the scenario:
- I'm putting together a nonfiction book
- It's chronicling unused ideas and materials done for another company
- Some of the material induced plans for characters/ideas copyright to another creator

Now, I figure I'm in the clear for most of it under Fair Use:
- the unused material was never paid for by the company
- Fair Use states you can use brand, titles and the like so long as you acknowledge what the brand names belong to
- I'll have a lengthy acknowledgement that the material (characters/ideas) are copyright by others

My question concerns the material copyright by the other creator. The book chronicles unused ideas, and some of them involve material that creator introduced for the company.

This is getting complicated.

Let's say the Creator created Mr. X for the Company. The unused material I have access to (and clearance to use) includes plans for Mr. X within the context of material produced for the Company,

Does mentioning the character count as copyright infringement? Or does mentioning it in the context of a nonfictional collection make it fall under Fair Use?

Hello /lit/
I have questions regarding english language but this seems like the most suitable place. I have been speaking english for a few years but I do not understand a few idioms and hope you can help.

For instance take lyric "who feel that life is but a joke". Why does it mean the opposite of what it says: "life is everything BUT a joke"?

I also play a certain video game and the purpose of the game is to break an endless cycle. Yet the song "will the circle be unbroken" is played all the time. If the circle is being UNbroken, doesn't that >imply that the circle is broken and thus is being fixed, forming a circle and contradicting the point of the game? I do not understand.

So my library book sale is in about an hour. They have it once a year and have a lot of random junk. I've been running out of authors to read, so I was hoping for some suggestions. Individual books will be harder to find than the authors. I have most of Stephen King's books, and can get into almost any genre other than romance or generic fantasy with wizards, elves, etc. Non-conventional fantasy like Song of Fire and Ice is welcome.

A couple I'm on the look out for already:

Kurt Vonnegut
Ken Follett
More Hemmingway and Steinbeck

Any authors I should be on the lookout for?

Whats the name of the book that has weird questions in shape of mans head with spiky hair on the front cover in blue tones?

Hey guys, if you don't mind could you please read my this poem I wrote, you're welcome to comment about it (I'd love it if you do)

Title: "?"

What does it mean to forget?
How does it feel to forget love?
To forget joy?
To forget sadness?
To forget hate?
To forget everything?

What does it mean?
Forgetting?
It could mean anything,
Be it jam or honey.
Jam and honey?

Is it really that bad?
Is a new beginning really that bad?
Is losing a life that bad?

Isn't it just a word that can mean anything?
So why do we use forget?
Is it the sound? The vibe? What is it?
Maybe we've forgotten why the word was chosen?

But isn't it funny?
How the word sounds perfect?
Why? I think I've forgotten.

But seriously. It's all strange isn't it?
How everything fits in.
Especially the words we've forgotten.

Do we really forget?
Or we choose not to remember?
Isn't it wonderful to wonder?
I forgot why, or maybe I never knew?

Why do we forget "why"?
Did we ever know?
Will we ever know?
Or is it that we choose not to know?

Is it what we've forgotten what we try to discover?
Or is it a reason for why we've forgotten?
Was there even a "why" to begin with?
Was there anything to begin with?

Is it unknown?
Is the unknown "why"?
Why does "why" exist?
Maybe it doesn't.

What is the point for everything I've written?
I think I've forgotten, maybe I never knew why.
Maybe something's can't be explained.
Maybe some secrets are just meant to be.

What do you think of stories that contain no philosophical and/or ideological purpose. Obviously it's somewhat impossible for the ideals of the writer not to blend into the story, even in the case of the objectively terrible works, but what do you think of books that exist simply to tell stories.

Is there value to the story of a person who did things and it was interesting or engaging? Or is it only in the allegory or metaphor that you find fiction has any real meaning?

Similarly do you think that meaning is later ascribed to works that are considered "great" in order to make them more so? Or do you think that they are considered classics because they have this meaning in the first place?

Hi guys,

Was wondering your opinion on this. Is "because of the optimistic person i am" as equally correct as "being the optimistic person i am" or "because I'm an optimistic person"?

In Spain one translation of polite is educado (educated). I'm not a fan of this as people who receive good educations in this country are often fuckwits and the less educated are considerate and polite. Now I'm not hate mongering against the rich, just wondering why some people appear to be polite and others not.
So my question, what book character sums up a good human being for you?
For me it is Santiago from The Old Man and the Sea.
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