/lit/ - Literature

>>23160782
>Dover Thrift is $2
>Project Gutenberg is legally free

>>22427203
*ahem*
>The Holy Bible
>The Holy Qur'an
>Tao te Ching
>The Analects
>Dhammapada
>The Holy Vedas
>The Hidden Words
>Witchcraft Today

>can read Romantic poets just fine
>can't make heads or tails of what's going on in Alexander Pope's translations of the Iliad and Odyssey
>just read Samuel Butler's prose translations of the Homeric epics instead

>>21282886
>standing before me is Thomas Aquinas, Karl Marx, and Guatama Buddha
>instead of shooting them, I lay down my life so that the others may live in accordance with my Catholic values
>they all witness this and understand what I did for them
>Gautama Buddha congratulates me on accruing good karma and wishes me luck on the next reincarnation
>Thomas Aquinas puts in a word to the pope to have me canonized
>Karl Marx has a sudden religious conversion like in one of those dumpster fire "Christian" movies like God's Not Dead

>>20797817
I have read and enjoyed a variety of classic works of literature from ancient times all the way up to the 20th century, and I still like anime, video games, and fantasy novels.

>viz.

>read the Complete Rig Veda (Hinduism)
>read The Tibetan Book of the Dead (Buddhism)
>read Tao te Ching (Taoism)
>read The Analects (Confucianism)
>read The Holy Bible, King James Version (Judaism and Christianity)
>read The Holy Qur'an (Islam)
>obtain the ancient wisdom of the major world religions
>realize that they are all different paths to the same truth just like the Baha'i believe
>/lit/ will never realize this truth because it only consists of atheist edgelords and tradcaths

>>19585217
>>19585233
>the goal of Buddhism is to break the cycle of reincarnation by finding nirvana
>finding nirvana and heaven are the same thing but through different paths
>hell is simply failing to reach heaven/nirvana
>hell is other people after all

I can conceive of mind existing without body and body existing without mind, therefore mind-body dualism is true.
The world was a world in which religious thought emerged rather than a world in which no religious thought emerged. A world in which no religious thought occurred would be irrefutable evidence of God not existing. The opposite must also be true.
God is real and all religions are true.

>>19232765
>United States
>five books
I'm gonna run with "5 books per category" because that's what I'd do if I were dictator.
Everyone must learn to respect the major world religions and make up their own decisions on what they believe.
>The Unabridged Holy Vedas
>The Unabridged Pali Canon
>The Holy Bible, King James Version
>The Holy Qur'an
>The God Delusion
Everyone must start with the Greeks.
>The Iliad
>The Odyssey
>The Trial and Death of Socrates
>Lysistrata
>The Complete Poems of Sappho
Everyone must have a basic understanding of the literature of their own country.
>Moby-Dick
>Leaves of Grass
>Our Town
>East of Eden
>Gravity's Rainbow
Everyone must have a basic understanding of Eastern literature.
>Ramayana
>The Tale of Genji
>Journey to the West
>Kafka on the Shore
>Beijing Coma
Everyone should be familiar with the British Isles.
>Beowulf
>Julius Caesar
>Pride and Prejudice
>A Tale of Two Cities
>Ulysses
Everyone must have some experience with the writings of minorities.
>Giovanni's Room
>Things Fall Apart
>One Hundred Years of Solitude
>Midnight's Children
>Never Let Me Go
Everyone should be familiar with the continental Europeans.
>Don Quixote
>The Count of Monte Cristo
>Les Miserables
>War and Peace
>The Trial
Everyone must have a childhood.
>Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
>The Hobbit and LOTR
>The Lorax
>Harry Potter
>Artemis Fowl trilogy

>>19228998
It feels good to be a Catholic.
>St. Augustine of Hippo
>Flannery O'Connor
>Shusaku Endo
>Evelyn Waugh
>Seamus Heaney
>Toni Morrison
>Ernest Hemingway
>J.R.R. Tolkien
>Jack Kerouac
>Walter M. Miller Jr.
>Gene Wolfe
>Mary Karr

>>19209307
On Goodreads, I always switch my edition to the 1st edition cover for modern books. If the 1st edition is an ugly/shit/blank color with the title on it, then I use the next earliest cover that looks good. For books 19th century and older, I browse the editions looking for the prettiest cover art.

>>19142996
Why yes, reading YA fiction engendered a love of reading in my youth, giving me the skills to read literary fiction in my adulthood, although I occasionally revisit YA to see what new and upcoming authors are doing in the genre.

>>19073224
The Samuel Butler prose translation.

>>19059666
>Read a book of translated poetry
>don't read the introduction explaining in detail the cultural and historical context of the work
>don't read the translator's note explaining in detail the translator's process and why they made the decisions they did
>don't read the footnotes explaining in detail why certain elements of the poems were untranslatable, or explaining cultural references that would be lost on non-native readers
>just read the poems themselves and lose myself in the beauty

>>19013239
>set reading goal to 100
>read 60 comic book/manga volumes, 20 plays, 10 short poetry colelections, 9 average size novels, and 1 1000+ page novel

>>18968295
yes
>you read any form of genre fiction
>you think everyone's opinion should be accepted and respected
>you speak a single language
>you read for the plot
>you read for entertainment
no
>you think fantasy, science fiction, detective fiction, young adult fiction or horror are literature
>you barely know your classics
>you tend to believe that if you like a given work, it is justified on an artistic level
>you read contemporary versions of Shakespeare or Milton
>you rarely read nonfiction
>you don't have a solid grounding in philosophy
>you do not at least have some understanding of the Three Tragedians and Homer
>you have little to no understanding of literature outside of your cultural horizon
>you have little to no understanding of literature within your own cultural horizon (muh african authors)
>you mostly read contemporary literature
>you believe 'the author is dead'
>you make your literary analysis proceed from ideology
>you think intricate prose is 'pretentious' and that the author 'should just get to the point'
>your rarely read poetry
>you think Rhythm and Rhyme is just useless rules and laws restricting creativity
>you have a hard time explaining why you like a given work
>you have a hard time forming structured and relevant literary criticism
>you tend to refuse to judge works for yourself, rather relying on the opinions of literary authorities
>you rarely read for more than one or two hours straight

>>18967283
Wow, my favorite book

>read English language book from pre-1900s
>the prose is indecipherable
>read translated book from pre-1900s
>the prose is perfectly understandable and flows perfectly

>>18773304
>Why yes, I enjoy the works of Murasaki Shikibu, Sei Shonagon, and Enheduanna
>You are a racist if you think Asian women and mid-Eastern women don't count as women of color

>>18635349
Why yes, I only read books written by women about men and by men about women. How could you tell?

>>18522953
We naturally came up with religions because a higher power is guiding our evolution. The thought of spirituality would not occur if spiritually didn't exist.

>>18198296
Shakespeare is kind of cheating.
Ernest Hemingway
>Sun Also Rises
>Farewell to Arms
>For Whom the Bell Tolls
>The Old Man and the Sea
And all of the 6 Austen novels are iconic.
>>18198409
Why yes, I know about The Idiot from the Kurosawa film and it is currently on my to-read list.

>>17782158
I have ecalibre, Project Gutenberg, and #bookz.