/lit/ - Literature

>>13201717
>technical books/manuals
Non-fiction is the true patrician's choice anyway. Fiction is for those who need to trick themselves into thinking.

Considering you like scifi, you should start with Isaac Asimov.

As with most things, it's a balancing act between discipline and enjoyment.

I don't think anyone can force themselves to enjoy books. I think if you spend some time reading books that you enjoy that have interesting ideas and perspectives to offer, the classics tend to become more appealing. This is because a lot of them just need the right context to be seen as innovative, original, or even genius.

But don't go reading books just to search for this context. Like I said, try to find those books that are genuinely fun that also manage to explore meaningful ideas. Tolkien does that wonderfully. And there are plenty of works of sci-fi that have let's approval, like "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep"?

Best of luck compadre

>>13201717
Just read what you enjoy, and try to expand on that. Just like the other anons said, if you like sci-fi, then read some of the better sci-fi novels.

As a law student, I understand OP. I can read opinions or publications fine. I can read PDK or Asimov easy, quickly even, but some of the major works I just couldn’t get into. There was no motivation in them to find out what happens or how a character acts. The only book so far that really took me off my feet was catch 22. It was so funny and absurd that I needed to keep reading it. I didn’t care about plot or characters, the style and thought behind it was what drove me to keep reading. A pure enjoyment. I haven’t got that feeling since with anything else I’ve tried reading.

>>13201727
uhoh STEMlord detected

>>13201717
>I tried the Illiad, Tom Sawyer, One Hundred Year of Solitude and Don Quixote; didn't like them. I enjoyed Tolkien, GRRM and Sanderson.
Oh seriously fuck off. You can't genuinely expect to write that you hated the Iliad and Don Quixote and loved GRRM and not get the piss taken out of you. Piss off, pleb.

>>13201717
I don't get that pic. Why are they looking down on him? I never seen anyone ridiculing someone fit

Why are people in this thread even engaging this utter cretin? Normally if someone posts about loving pleb tier fiction like ASOIAF they get hounded out. Why does this prick get special treatment? He seriously doesn't deserve the kindness if he doesn't enjoy genuinely good books and favours shit prose instead.

>>13202320
They also said they loved Sanderson. How the fuck does one love Sanderson?

>>13202325
I wish I could not be such a snob, but I'm just tired of hearing names like Sanderson and GRRM. It makes me shudder with disappointment and sadness... People don't know what they're missing. Why can't they just open their damn eyes and see that literature is more than just popcorn-level entertainment.

>>13202322
AFAIK, it's an edit. The original had a obese woman looking at painting or sculpture of ancient civilisation depicting another plump girl. As if to validate her concept of beauty

>>13201717
Sorry, OP. You're probably too dumb to enjoy them. Normies are normies not out of choice, but because it's what feels natural to them. Just like being a dumb-dumb is what feels natural to you. The fact that you want to read certain books for the sole reason of impressing a girl proves my statement.

>>13202473
This is the tragic part. Normies don't even know that they're normies. They have no idea what sort of books are actually out there.

>>13202314
Actually, I majored in History.

Try War and Peace. I really think you will like this one.

Pity you didn’t like One Hundred Years of Solitude. Is one of my favorite books. It’s interesting how it worked so well mostly by telling, without showing. There’s hardly any dialogue, and not much though-process reproduction, and yet some of the characters seem as mythological and striking as the Freek legends and the characters from the Bible.

But seriously, try War and Peace: is the greatest book I have ever read, and one of the most humane.

If you want poetry I would suggest also the greatest plays of Shakespeare. To my mind some of his best and most accessible are: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, A Midsummer Night Dream and The Tempest. I would suggest you start with Macbeth.

If you like adventure and want to try poetry in prose I suggest Moby Dick. But this novel is somewhat slow and digressive in some parts, so it might be hard to read if you don’t really love language.

Best of luck.

>Best of luck
Why are you pandering to a fucking cockroach who openly disdains good literature?

>>13202701
>He wrote all of that for someone who, based on the fact he likes GRRM and Sanderson, won't make it past the second sentence.

>>13201728
>>13201765
>>13202701
Thanks, gonna check them.

>>13201717
Read what you want to read, you shouldn't force yourself to read books you don't like because they're ''''intellectual''''

>>13202444
Wew. Makes the OP even dumber.

>>13204381
Not calling the poster dumb, just the picture.

Find what you love, OP

>>13201717
The most prevalent ways to enjoy reading are finding an author that you enjoy or finding a subject matter you enjoy those are the two easiest ways

>Reading for roasties

Never gonna make it

>>13201717
Try Gene Wolfe and Borges.

>>13204651
Is Shadow of the Torturer a good starting point? What Borges book should I start with?

>>13201717
If you like tech manuals and sci fi, read hard sci fi. Asimov already got recommended, I also recommend ringworld

>>13205098
Get Shadow & Claw if you want to check out BoTNS, it's a great starting point. Wolfe is the most literary sf/fantasy author out there, so he's an excellent way to get yourself transitioned from genre fic to more serious lit. Latro in the Mist is by far my absolute favorite by Wolfe, and one I highly recommend, just be sure to brush up on your Greek gods and goddesses beforehand.

I haven't read Borges, so I don't have any guidance there.

>>13205098
borges wrote many short stories and they're collected in lots of different ways in different countries. I started with ficciones aka fictions. I don't know what collection is near you

here is one of his stories in its entirety (translated of course)

'"... In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The succeeding Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography."

-purportedly from Suárez Miranda, Travels of Prudent Men, Book Four, Ch. XLV, Lérida, 1658'

in this story he reports a fragment of a work that doesn't exist written by a man who never existed in order to describe a reality in which an attempt at a scientific description of the world replaces the world proper. this kind of idea, in which reality isn't really real, doesn't originate with Borges but certainly was brought forward by him, leading to stuff like the matrix (as a pop example) later in the 20th century

>>13201717
i don't understand this picture, do they assume the guy is stupid or something?

>>13205725
disregard this post

>>13204396
OP here KYS or think before you fucking type and then KYS honestly I'm sick of this type of schizotripfag bullshit.

>>13205855

>>13205873
Do you not know how to delete a post when

you mess it up?

Lurk more and learn how to use a site before

you rain on everyone's parade.

>>13205320
I've been recommended Kim Stanley Robinson' Mars Trilogy before as a hard scifi, any comments on that one?

Taste is innate and maybe literature isnt yours. Not that big of a deal