/lit/ - Literature

1. Go to http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?sort_order=random
2. Pick a book from the resultant page of results
3. Post said book's title and cover (if available)
4. Read the book, nigga.

1. Chicago, Illinois, USA.
2. Major: Journalism.
3. Clerk at my school's records office; editor-in-chief of my school's newspaper (unpaid :( ).

Fanfiction can be good or bad, it depends on the skill of the individual writing it.

Even taking away the fact that things like the Aeneid are basically fanfiction, you do see a handful of well thought-out stories in universes created by others. It also helps fledgling writers get their bearings, writing fanfiction, without the daunting task of creating their own universe from whole cloth.

I'd say, on the whole, it's good, but mostly used in the immediate sense for bad. The accessibility of the internet allows for a lot more of the negative material to gain viewership. Fanfiction, I think, represents in most modern instances a great churning cesspit through which many writers slog to emerge toughened and tempered on the other side, while the unsuccessful and bad writers languish in the muck, convincing themselves and each other that what they baste in is liquid gold.

A very provocative question, OP, and one that is not easily answered. But yes, I believe that all things taken as equals, fanfiction has done more good than it has bad.

I have a friend who doesn't like to read. I try to encourage her but she's just not interested. She recently had to read The Book Thief for a class and I've just bought her another book by the same author, since she really enjoyed his work. She was excited.

So, which authors are similar to Markus Zusak?

Hi, /lit/,
I'm trying my hand at stream of consciousness for the first time, and I want to know what you think of this little fragment from a first draft. Is it comprehensible?

It sickens me, the way our basest desires are used, yes I say "used", as if intentionally, to tie us to so many influences, each tugging a different direction. The way clothes become a game or a challenge to a game, in which we must force the actions belonging to our gross musculature roughly into the domain of the mind and transform our most impolitic desires from actions into words. Insinuate from a distance so for a few bare moments we can become intimate, and as a reward for our restraint expel our desire and frustration in a necessarily impermanent, no, brief moment of directness and touch and melding. And not just one game, many games, some with the same rules and some very different, all played with unique players and unique strategies, similar, like all games of psychology and chance, only in the currency we lay down and the desperate need we assign to it.

Thus does the blackjack move from darkened alleys to crowded tables, made exciting by the promise of feedback and improvement by degrees, spiced by the chance of turning those tables and walking away a winner, though, it is no secret, less often than not. Extortion still, though imposed from a distance and behind tinted windows and camera monitors. Less personal, more distant, and entirely self-perpetuating, the dealer as much a tool of the game as the gambler, both playing until insolvency or exhaustion drive them to be replaced, over and over again until weeks become generations and no one is certain if new eyes watch them through the walls of mirrored glass or if dust and flies coat abandoned skeleton in that observation room as power piles unspent, higher and higher, in some distant bank account that none of them will ever see.

>>1880701
You seem upset. Is it possible that the popularity our subculture has recently acquired has you feeling a little bit threatened?

Hey /lit/, I know this isn't really your cup of tea, but /adv/ didn't really help, and /co/ sagebombed my thread.

I intend to publish something on the web under a pseudonym/pen name. I want to use a pseudonym because I've done some work under my real name that isn't exactly kid friendly, and I intend for this project to be. So I don't really want there to be an obvious or apparent connection between the two.

Now, here's where my Google hunting hasn't really helped me. I was wondering how I "claim" this pen name? For example: Say I copyright-registered this project under the pseudonym, what legal protection does it REALLY have? If someone stole everything and sold it under their name, I wouldn't exactly be able to sue them, considering I can't prove that I'm the pseudonym. They could even say that they are. It's very confusing.

Hey, /lit/, what music do you use to write to? I'd prefer something ambient and calm, but variety is good, I suppose.

Pic is never related.

http://www.amazon.com/Financial-Accounting-Business-Decision-Making/dp/0470239808/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8
&qid=1295422026&sr=8-5

Does anyone know where I might be able to find a RS/MU/Torrent of this?

Threads of Interest
Chapter the First: In which questions are answered, mysteries are revealed, trolls are introduced, exposed, and discussed at length, and perhaps ideas struggle to the surface of /lit/'s collective consciousness.

/Lit/ was a fickle creature, of that he was certain, but she was not without her reason. It was a twisted, horrible sort of reason, fraught with uncertainty and irony, and twisted by the fears and insecurities of her denizens, but there was something there. There had to be. How could she persist if, under the layers and layers of rage, stupidity and pretension, there was no flicker of genuine interest. Often she was distant, recalcitrant, even difficult. It seemed impossible to him that she would ever tell him what she truly thought about anything, so afraid was she that she might be misunderstood, thought stupid, or even proven insufficient to discuss as an equal to her peers. But there had to be something that brought her back, day after day, to speak her pretty words to him. Some flicker of real passion must have hidden behind her facade of banality for her to have made their conversations at least worthwhile enough to perpetuate them, and so, deep in his heart, he wished that just once she would speak to him without reserve or defense.

Tell me, /lit/, why do you love literature? Who is your favorite author, and why? There is to be no discussion of anything but your own personal enjoyment. Please, try not to disappoint me.

Serbfag here.

Hey /lit/,

Next month I'm going to be driving down to Portland for a philosophy conference and then spending a few days afterwards in the city. One of the things my professor/trip-planner pointed out to do in Portland is visit Powell's Books, the largest used and new bookstore in the world(or so they claim). To save time, I've decided to compile a list of books(specifically philosophical works) that I should look for when I'm down there, but I thought I'd come here and see what you guys thought. Any suggestions, /lit/erati?