/lit/ - Literature

>>22810207
>1. Have you actually read more than 80% of those?
No. I'd say I've read about half. I try to mostly read books I already own. Reading them all isn't really the point, either -- I'd say the point is building a library that's a relief map of the contours of your soul. I like knowing that most everything I'm interested in is just in the next room. A lifetime's worth of fascinations.
>2. Do you feel smarter or better or improved because of it?
Smarter? Sometimes, if I'm reading philosophy or nonfiction. Better? Yes, but not in the sense of "better than thou" but in the sense of feeling more at ease, of feeling more enriched as a person, at home in myself. Improved? I don't read for self-improvement. I read for wonder, for sorrow, for curiosity, for simple, bright pleasure. Reading for self-improvement is a bloodless and inert way to be with books.
>>22810311
>>22810361
>>22810417
>>22810459
100% agreed. I confess I haven't read much nonfiction, but in my defense, I'm just not terribly interested in most nonfiction. I could easily go the rest of my life without reading another work of science, history, etc. I wouldn't want to, but I could. But I couldn't go the rest of my life without fiction or poetry or drama. I try to keep my taste broad and promiscuous. No point in depriving myself of good books simply to impress someone who I don't care about, and there's no point in pretending I enjoy writers or books just for the approval of someone who I'll never meet. I read swaths of contemporary poetry, for example. Most of /lit/ can't stand it. I don't care for Hawthorne, Henry James, or most of Nabokov, even though most of the posters here claim to love them.
Building a personal library is the project of a lifetime. I started when I was about fourteen or fifteen. I've lugged all my books across dorm rooms and apartments since then. I recommend everyone interested in literature try to build one for themselves. You will be immeasurably richer for it.

>age
>location
>current book
>a recommendation

24
central NC
To Live by Yu Hua

>>22259933
I'm not who you're responding to, but I'll gloss the greentext best I can.

>Like great works, deep feelings...
you got it
>The regularity of an impulse...
we do things without knowing why we do them; we like or hate things without knowing why we like or hate them; and if we step back, looking at our lives objectively, we find that we replicate the same patterns, the same cycles, do the same things without knowing why -- and we repeat them precisely because we don't even know we're doing them
>Great feelings take with them...
sometimes you can feel something so intense, so far-reaching, that it feels like the feeling itself is the size of the universe; a sadness that is greater than the world, or a joy that is bigger than the galaxy. not only that but the world of sadness/whatever is textured; it has its own ridges, valleys, its own cartography so to speak, with many different kinds and degrees of sadness within it, and this is especially evident when we feel one of those "great feelings." we know it because the feeling itself seems to create a world that recognizes itself as being vast.
>There is a universe...
same as above, but now he's saying at the end there that these great feelings also encompass a way of looking at the world, a way of living in your mind
>What is true of already specialized feelings...
okay, so hold all of what came before in your mind. he's saying that all that is even more accurate when we feel something that comes about from experiencing beauty, or experiencing absurdity. he's saying that the emotions that arise from beauty/absurdity are difficult to name -- contradictory even -- but this doesn't mean that they don't have the same qualities of "great feelings" as said above. they have them even more.

hope this helps. read more slowly, with a pencil in hand. annotate your books. earlier in the thread you said you'd read ~75 books, which probably feels like a lot but trust me, it's nothing. I keep track of every book I've read and I'm at ~1200 and it feels like I've read nothing. the more you read and the more closely you read the easier it becomes to figure out what a writer's saying. you just need practice. I'd encourage you to return to books that you didn't like just to see if you understand them better on a second go-round. I didn't "get" Melville for years, but I felt like I had to like him because everyone else did. so glad I revisited him. there will also be books that everyone loves that you can't stand. I'm allergic to Dostoevsky and Hawthorne. you'll figure all of it out just keep reading.

>>22235632
My dream is to be well-off and highly respected in my field but anonymously. If not anonymously, then as close to anonymous as I could possibly get. I want to be the man everyone's read, everyone's heard of, everyone talks about, but no one's met. I want to be begrudgingly respected by those dislike me. I want to be seen as singular and irreplaceable.