/lit/ - Literature

Who are your favourite authors and your favourite books from them? Explanations as to why you like them so much are welcome.

Are artists born? Or can people become artists through effort and determination? Is it the fate of the latter sort to forever remain frauds in the shadow of the former group?

>want to read Dostoevsky, Kafka, Borges, Beckett, all the wojak authors due to being an alienated college aged white male
>want to start the Western Canon with the Greeks

Which one, /lit/? How do you do it? Do you mix and match? I'm definitely not against the Greeks, in fact, I definitely don't want to miss out on them, but I'm torn between beginning at either point. I'd miss a great deal of cultural context if I started with 1 though, but 2 would make it so that it would be years before I reach the guys I mentioned in 1. I'm a complete literaturelet. Please help.

I have a question for those of you who learned a new language recently...how do you become "emotionally invested" in the languages you just learned? No matter how moving the prose or the poetry is otherwise, it would seem that I simply can't resonate with the words I'm reading in both German and French. I recognize the words, I understand the sentences, but it feels as if the text and my perception of the text are worlds apart. I wonder if this is a matter of exposure, because English, a language just as foreign as the ones I mentioned beforehand originally, feels intimately bound to me as far as the "strength" of the language goes.

I wonder if I'm making sense to anyone. Have you ever experienced anything like this? Did it go away with enough exposure eventually?

>>13821444

>>13816527
I’ll have you know you should read those by age 12