/lit/ - Literature

The illiad

>>12558984
The Double.
It's short, sweet, and kind of fun for being Russian Lit.

>>12558984
Crime and Punishment.

>>12558984
Crime and Punishment
Notes from the Underground
Brothers Karamazov

You can stop there.

>>12559008
No Idiot?

>>12558984
You sound like a retard, don't bother.

>>12558984
Subhuman picture
Subhuman styometry
>>12559023
This and /thread.

>>12559023
To a degree i certainly am, who isn't though? What literature would you recommend for me to broaden my horizon?

Thanks for all the kind and helpful replies! Hope you have the best of days!

>>12559049
Based wholesome op

>>12559054
Haha, you got me!
Did this myself, but i need to go over it again

>>12559049
Have a blessed day. One bit of advice. Get a shirt on. I personally like to wear a dress shirt and tie when I read Dostoyevsky. It really ties the books together.

>>12559150

>>12558984
The Double and Crime and Punishment are good starting recs.

>>12559158
fucking kek. spit my coffee everywhere because of this.

>>12558984
you should probably start a little before Dostoyevsky to fully appreciate him. Try Gogol's the Overcoat and the Nose as well as Diary of a Madman as a lot of Dostoyevsky's writings were highly shaped by Gogol, especially in Dostoyevsky's earlier works (the double is a pastiche in many ways of Diary of a Madman). Then, if you are going to read later Dostoyevsky I would recommend first reading lermontov's hero of our time and Turgenev's fathers and sons, as Dostoyevsky takes many existential elements from Lermontov and the political elements in his last three works from Turgenev. If you want to really experience I would recommend reading his works chronologically, but if you want a one-off, I would recommend Crime and Punishment due to its ubiquity in literary culture or memoirs from the house of the dead as it requires the least background knowledge to appreciate and funnily enough was the only Dostoyevsky book Nabakov said he ever enjoyed.

>>12559150
Dont own formal dress shirts or ties. But i like your idea and will wear my cashmere turtleneck sweater
>>12559293
Great point! I do tend to try too much at once. Thanks for your input. I hope all of this is on audible, as my attention span is terrible and well, i got the subscription as a gift so it is cheaper now than reading would be for me.
On a sidenote: how would i get my attention span up? I dont know if it never was good or if i ruined it myself. I want it to be better

crime and punishment is fairly accesible

>>12559378
>how would i get my attention span up?

1. quit tv and vidya
2. quit jerking off
3. quit coffee and alcohol

>>12559378
if I'm being completely honest with you most of my attention span comes from nicotine ingestion while reading, though I don't recommend that. There is no need to listen to >>12559391 you can still obviously do all of those things, though quitting drinking will help. It's really all about the situation and how much you let yourself be absorbed by the text. I would recommend reading somewhere comfortable but not so comfortable that you will space out. Put your phone out of hands reach and focus your mind on not going to check it impulsively. Maybe put on some music, without words, I have to say when I want to read I normally listen to music that fits what I'm reading, but it ends up being a lot of Chopin and Glass. If you use audible you will still definitely get through the books, but I have to recommend, if time allows it, that you read it in print, as it allows you to set your own pace and flip back to parts of the book you have already read if you want to re read a section or start to notice a theme. Dostoyevsky is an interesting writer, not necessarily my favorite or the one I would recommend starting out with, but still, I hope you enjoy!

>>12559378
>>12559405
as someone who has to read a lot in a short period of time for university, i wouldn't recommend it as well, read at your own pace, that's important. It doesn't matter if you think you are reading too slowly, as long as you make some progress every day. Setting arbitrary goals like a chapter or two etc a day might help but really just try to focus on the text and let yourself get absorbed and read until you feel like you've found a natural endpoint for the day. Attention span is like a muscle though, so you should try your best, time permitting, to focus on reading for at least a set amount of time or pages everyday

>>12559391 i already watch nontv or play video games, so thats is ok, masturbation is hard to quit, no coffee and alcohol only in reasonable amounts, i quit drugs and excessively drinking a few months ago, so i hope i might already be getting better then! Thanks!

>>12559405
>>12559415
That is really uplifting, i also like to smoke a cigarette from time to time, quite regularly, but i try to smoke less as it is just another bad habit keeping me from being my truest, most natural self. I will go for a walk to get rid of the negative thoughts for now and check out the local library and see how that is, as i have never been inside one. Thank you all for the kindness and help answering my questions. I know 4chan(nel) is not usually the nicest place and i have been quite strongly "tainted" by the negativity that you tend to live out in anonymity, so i am glad this thread was so kind and open to me! I know i can easily be regarded as an idiot, especially in a literary sense, because i would also say that about myself, but i am trying to get past that, as setting such mental limits to yourself if equally destructive as not setting hedonistic limits. And i know what limitless hedonism has done to me in the past

>>12559452
of course, keep up the good work! It is a shame more people don't get into experiencing literature and the toxic atmosphere surrounding it in places like this definitely doesn't help it gain new acolyte. If you want anymore book recommendations please let me know and I'd be more than happy to recommend what I have enjoyed recently. Besides that, it seems that you already have the mindset and desire to improve yourself, so all there is to it now is following through. That is, of course, the hardest step, but you have still made it further than most, so good luck!

>>12559452
Try going to the library and leaving your phone in the car or wherever. With nothing to distract you, you’ll be in a great place to read a lot.

>>12559391
>1. quit tv and vidya
Yes
>>12559391
>2. quit jerking off
Difficult but yes.
>3. quit coffee and alcohol
A. No.
B. Yes.

>>12559498
I have put my phone on silent a year ago as i got annoyed by the distraction it gave me when i vibrated for every message i would get and it hase become so much better! Now i only use it when i am bored or need it. So i guess i am in a good place with that!

>>12559293
Can recommend this anon. Have read all these, though I started with Brothers K and went backwards, which is certainly the wrong order. Gogol, Lermontov, Turgenev will certainly ease you into Dosto.

>>12559551
Can you give some examples of what to start with by those authors? That would be very helpful! Thanks in advance

>>12558984
Notes From Underground is the first thing I read from Dostoevsky and I fell in love with it. You don't need to read other authors to understand it despite what other posters are saying

>>12559804
I am unsure how i will actually start, as i dont know how hard Dostoyevsky might be to read or understand for me. I guess some people just understand more easily than others, time to find out where i stand!

>>12559804
disagree that's what leads to misunderstandings like yours. Notes from underground was always meant to be a humorous work, parodying the extremes of russian and french utopian socialists. Never was it meant to be an existentialist novel

>>12559840
>Never was it meant to be an existentialist novel

bc that genre didn't exist yet. also, congratulations on reading the introduction to Notes.