/lit/ - Literature

>>10137783
The Haunting of Hill House

I find this needed to be discussed here. Post your tips and anything you find useful.

>>7901935
sounds like my boy Marcel

>>7530833
Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby
Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice & Men
Shelley's Frankenstein
Shackleton's South: The Endurance Expedition
Zamyatin's We
Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces

How is my year going to be?

I'm fascinated by the world and I want to learn as much about it as I can. Art, philosophy, politics, economics, social movements.. you name it.

However, I'm daunted by the sheer number of subjects to study, works to read, and authorial biases to consider. Specialization, not generalization, rules the day, and that's fine, but I want to learn about everything.

How does one do that?

I've had some ideas. I fantasize about launching ambitious reading projects, like methodically reading Bloom's canon or the St. John's syllabus, but I fear that I would never reach the end, which would be frustrating because I'm impatient to learn about the contemporary world. I also consider using Wikipedia to read summaries of major ideas, events, and movements, but even that project might become a frustrating mess without a good enough plan. Then there's the idea of creating my own syllabus of survey texts--an idea that I like--but I've struggled to identify the appropriate texts (although I did just read Ancient Greece: A Political, Social, and Cultural History which was pretty apt). None of these approaches seem quite right.

Maybe I should just spurn chronology and context and dive into interesting subjects with reckless abandon?

Anyway, I'm very curious if there are other people here that have tried or are trying to self-teach themselves about the world and the forces that shape it. What's worked for your? What hasn't? Do you have any general advice about this kind of life-long learning project, or specifically how to balance breadth and depth? Specific recommendations of readings lists, online courses, or individual texts or authors?

I welcome your insights!

a pretty high skied picture hangs
from the drifting bottom of wells
and somber rooms with empty guests,
those silhouettes of shattered light
that interrupt how bleak the corners,
how low beneath and high we stretch.
from a shifting seat according high
to a standard figure thrown nearby,
such that the dead and their like alike,
with sharing tombs in frightful night,
all equal share with forgetting soon
where lay bare we down under the moon.


but follow me hither, in the afterdream
where safe and still rest side by me
below which brings back yesterday,
in a broadback valley's image in grey,
a calm but prospering shadow at noon,
and introduce ourselves, so it begins.
to my loveliest a most the terrific you
that i dedicate better and make anew
an assembly of words that all can see,
private hooray and greatest victory,
to it that i make with justice more
for what i too lightly asked before.


proceed the creeping dawn of terror
and color my picnic a terrible mauve
then embrace the ascending cloud aloft
or take refuge, strewth, the incredible
takes grace in laughing at our escape,
and while you are the intangible string
that sets the heavens right and sends,
and a pretty eyed picture in the sky,
you haven't taught the world to paint
but peacefully settled as our manor
with practicing your palette and brush.
run by my eyes the colorful array
and strike me harder, for i'm a world,
marveling, complete in your glory.