/lit/ - Literature

Does anyone else here struggle with memory problems already in their 20s?

I never had a strong memory, but it wasn't until recently where I've actually started to become worried about just how bad it is. It was a struggle when I stopped being a NEET and went back to work to remember procedures and stuff but it's really most apparent to me when thinking about media I've consumed. I have next to no retention. I'm sure it's natural to forget most of the small/medium details after a few years, but things become hazy after a few months for me now, and I'm forgetting important big things like main character names or..the entire plot basically.

I'll use a few examples. It's been 3 or 4 years now since I read Lonesome Dove. Great story, loved it, it's quite long and I even watched the TV show about it after. I remember the name of Gus, my favorite character and one of the 2 mains, but can't remember the name of the other main character. A book I consider one my favorites, that I read 700 pages or whatever it is and a TV show and I can't remember the 2nd main characters name. Even more extreme, I read Death of Ivan Ilych only 4 months ago. Yet when I saw someone discussing it in a thread here, and I tried to bring up feelings of how I felt about it I drew a blank outside of very vague somewhat positive feelings. I couldn't remember anything at all about the plot, the characters, or just my own thoughts about it. All I could remember was that I read it essentially. Now once I kept thinking about it stuff started coming back to me, parts of the most memorable scenes would come to me and the plot bit by bit - I remembered oh right he was a judge, hit his side and could never get cured, etc, etc and a brief look at wikipedia was a good refresher for the plot. Obvious problem being, this is something I read only a few months ago, and yet if someone were to ask me my feelings about it or any involved question about it I'd just be at a total blank and loss. It takes a period of recollection to even bring up any real thoughts at all and obviously a conversation would be well past by then

Am I right in thinking this isn't normal? Should I be worried? I'm actually looking through my recent goodreads past right now and am struck by the fact I basically can't remember any main names from any of these only a year or two out. If you were to say the name it'd be instantly recognizable but I can't for the life of my remember it myself for a lot of these

I got a job at a bookstore a few weeks ago and I'd like to have recommendations ready for all genres if people ask. Problem is, I've mostly only read old classics for the past few years (stuff like Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Hemingway, etc), and most people that come in aren't really looking for that sort of thing - if they wanted a old classic they could just rent it from the library or get a free ebook version from gutenburg or something. Generally people are looking more for something newer and more "accessible".

I've barely read anything that was made very recently and a lot of genres I have no experience with. So I'm asking /lit/ for help here, the only guidelines are that it's successful enough to be regularly stocked and is decently written but easy to read

so far I've been doing

>Western
Lonesome Dove
>Sci-fi
Lord of Light by Zelazny, Hyperion, Book of the New Sun if they seem experienced
>Fantasy
The Hobbit for kids, Black Company for adults
>Comedy
A Confederacy of Dunces
>Poetry
Dante's Inferno
>Military
Black Hawk Down, Goodbye to All That if they'd be interested in a WW1 biography
>General fiction
Siddhartha, Stoner if they appear serious, East of Eden/Grapes of Wrath/anything Steinbeck really

some of these are older/maybe already too well known (The Hobbit and Inferno feel kinda silly to rec) and I'd like to get newer rec's, and obviously I'm just straight up missing a ton of important genres like Romance, Mystery, Crime, Thriller, YA, etc which honestly seemed to get asked more often than the other genres since a pretty large portion of people that come in are women. Personally I don't even know how to go about finding a YA or Romance novel that wouldn't make me want to blow my brains out reading it, so I figured I'd ask here.

tl'dr - bookstore pleb looking for modern recs that average people could be likely to enjoy. I'd rather rec something halfway decent than generic bestsellers in the hopes they come back for more

/lit/ how does one overcome oblomovitis and ennui ? is there a way ?

>>7563489
I started off sympathizing with him, but as the show went on I started understanding and sympathizing with what (ostensibly) the police were doing.

I want to write but I can't seem to come up with a good enough idea that will push me or to carry on with it. How did you come up with the ideas for your novels

>>7486208

You know, doesn't EVERY story technically begin in medias res?

What is a good edition of The Sorrows of Young Werther?

>>7098544

>Try to do something different and unique
>Show it to someone else
>They instantly tell me of another book that did this already years before

How do you deal with the fact that there is nothing new under the sun?

What's the difference between stealing and referencing?

I have a similar question as OP.

I want to understand and appreciate the different ways that art is created.

Are there any books that can help me understand the creative processes that artists use to create Art?

I don't care so much about finished products as the process by which that product was thought up and created.

>that secret-side-project I've been working on for over six years has become such an integral part of my personal identity that I'm too terrified to even let other people know it exists, let alone let have them edit and critique it, for fear of having something that I personally identify with be attacked and put down

Is this autism?

>The closing of another day is here
>And I still haven't done my thousands words for the day

How do people find the time and energy to keep up with these writing-goals every single day?

Would this be easier if I quit my job, got on food stamps and unemployment, and just focused on writing?

ITT: we share words or phrases we have invented ourselves.

I'll go first:

muntard: a portmanteau between mundane and retard; your average twitter user

>>6511834
I especially recommend u reading in librarys with cafe where u can drink, u always end talking about interesting stuff with someone and drinking free beer.

>>6275249
At least. True quality here. Although the repetitive pattern and the black/white caracters eventually bored me in the long run. I think I grew out of childhood when Redwall ceased to entertain me.

Jacques died a few years after :(

>>6225623
From 1789 to 1914, there was a spirit of freedom and life in Europe, nourrished by aristocratic and democratic tendancies. It meant war, death, destruction, but also life, creation and love. Its dead now.

I upset.

>That feel when nobody in my Lycée knows what is Bretton Woods.
>That feel when nobody in my Lycée knows who is Matejko or Kant.
>That feel when everybody in my Lycée considers me as an intelectual because I read Proust.
What happened to the world, /lit/ ? The bourgeois are iliterate, now ? I understand that proletarians don't know who Kant is... But not the people in my Lycée who are suppose to be Napoelon's elite.

-Hey cute girl, what do you like doing?
-I love reading!
-Really? What was the last book you have read?
-I don't know, it's been a long time, maybe the first one from the Game of Throne series?


Seriously, why the fuck people do this kind of shit?

>>1929546
I just used the picture as a visual metaphor.