/lit/ - Literature

>>15271226
>>"If a thread bores you, leave it, don't read it because it's on the first page, don't read a book because it's active, don't read a book because it's slow. If a thread is tedious for you, leave it... that thread has not been written for you."

>if you think it is like lifting heavier and heavier weights
if you think this is mutually exclusive with what you read being entertaining then you're wrong

>>15271226
retroactively refuted by a bowl of cereal

>>15271226
That's Borges and John Williams not John Green. Keep your Jewish trickery out of /lit/. But yes those quotes are good, but the thing is.
Obviously OP is b8ing but the thing is some people actually enjoy reading the cannon. There's a reason those books are so highly regarded.

>>15271289
Maybe OP meant John Green’s books are boring

I don't see a problem with this. Obviously literature is much more than just mere entertainment, but forcing yourself to finish a book just bc some anon says it's good is unneccessary. Not everyone is a neet on welfare with infinite consumerism syndrome. people got responsibilites and shit. Shoving books (or any medium) down your throat so you can look good on goodreads/letterboxd/rym is so pretentious and senseless.
I've seen lb accounts with over 12k films cataloged. I wonder if they actually watched most of them instead of staring at their phone and pretending to follow the plot. Do these people have a life?

>>15271226
I don't care who said these quotes, they are lies. No intellectual endeavor necessitates "having fun" as a necessary condition.

Imagine taking life advice from a YA author.

>>15271226
My mom always said that "bored people are boring"

>>15271863
If it's good advice, why not?

>>15271266
not sure if based or cringe

Regardless of Semen Cheerios guy not being the one who said it, I disagree.
Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics is a boring book, but reading it was good to me.

>>15271266
But I care about how many people have eaten the same cereal before me.

>>15271226
> dont read that physics textbook its boring bro
> you didn't understand hegel the first time you read him? just give up bro its not worth it
> Just read books that are immediately graspable to you and that never force you to learn anything or improve your abilities

what a fucking retard

>>15271226
>that book has not been written for you
I like to imagine the interviewer quipping "But it was written by you".

Then John cries at the end.

>>15271266
bet this dudes fucked like 3 girls total

>>15271226
All those things you mention are compatible with the necessity of entertainment. Plato's dialogues are entertaining to read, Moby Dick is entertaining; they are still more worthwhile to read than genre-fiction written for teenagers.
Literature should be sufficiently engaging but it must also have greater merit.

>>15272090
>>15272109
This

>>15272112
I've seen early interviews and this weak polite man is a bit of an act, he was quite braggadoccio about the amount of blowies he got at boarding school from female co-eds.

>>15272112
He's actually covering for being a fuckboy when he was young, justifying to his wife all the other women he banged

>>15271226
>If a book is tedious for you, leave it... that book has not been written for you."
That's very easy for a YA author to say.

>>15271981
Well that's the thing. It's not good advice.
>Don't challenge yourself.
>If something isn't instantly gratifying, drop it.
>Bread and circus good.
>Stay a child forever.

>>15272231
Indeed.

>>15271226
The /fit/ version of this quote:
>Lifting heavy weights is difficult.
>Nothing should be difficult.
>Just lift light things instead.

>>15272195
i guess i could see it, he's not unattractive except for those shitty glasses. he just seems like such a loser

>>15271226
Why is there no feminist investigation into his bizarre relationships (so-called "Friendships") with his underage fangirls?
Are we so naive that we take his word for it that he's "friends" with these chidlren?

>>15272231
Well thats not what he is saying.
If you want to read, then do it because you enjoy it and youre reading something you like or something in a subject you want to know more on. Dont read to impress hipsters or retards on /lit/, and dont read to seem knowledgeable or cool.
Just fucking read what you want and enjoy it, just like lifting. If you enjoy powerlifting, then go ahead, if yuo enjoy calisthenics then go ahead. Dont follow some retarded routine from some tripfag on /fit/ just because he says its the best, or because you want to get girls.

>>15272112
heh, imagine being that much of a loser amirite?

>>15272335
you neglect the fact that plebs do get filtered by pleb filters. This is a meme but it's also reality. If you didn't like Moby Dick it's not because it was too wordy, it's because you missed the point, which means you either weren't paying attention or you're not even average smart.

>>15272280
>if you think it is like lifting heavier and heavier weights, stop reading

>>15271226
What a fucking simp interpretation of what he's saying. If enjoying reading means following charts, reading books just to get a body count, caring about entry-level literature, using literature as self-improvement, etc. etc. then you're still enjoying reading and literature.

Is it impossible for you dipshits to not feel attacked by every opinion anyone has that doesn't line up exactly with the shit you think?

>mfw i didn't grind enough ancient greek philosophy

>>15272008
cringe
FTFY

>>15271863
why do y'all say Young Adult fiction instead of just Teenage Fiction?

>>15272350
But isnt this logic leading to the problem of staleness in art? If something is objectively good and something else is objectively bad art, then it will become stale and taste wont be a thing. People can enjoy "bad" things, and others dislike "good" things. It depends on taste. And yes some people are patricians or snobs enjoying high concept art and literature, while others are more grounded and "plebs" as you say and enjoy more concrete works. This doesnt necessarily make any of it bad or worse, only that one should stay true to their enjoyment instead of consuming stuff only because they want to identify with a certain group of people. If I read Moby Dick and hated it, I should say so, instead of pretending to like it to fit in with /lit/.

>>15272425
Because it's not aimed at teens, it's aimed at young adults (18-24 years). Teen fiction is generally aimed at 12-16 years of age. People 17 years-old don't have anything to read.

>>15272350
Or maybe I can understand Moby-Dick but still think it's a boring pile of shit.

>>15271226
i started out with nietzche, one of the best things to happen even to me even though i literally could not understand a thing.

retarded take by this clown.

>>15272447
If you think it's boring you didn't get it. You got filtered.
>>15272440
Art isn't stale right now, there's some really cool stuff happening especially in music and installation. I don't think there's anything morally wrong with being a pleb but you cannot deny that there are pieces which are held to be achievements by any critic and most readers, and disagreeing with that judgment on the ground of personal taste means your personal taste deviates from the highest achievement of the field, which you need to defend with something other than "boring," otherwise you're saying more about your pleb taste than the work itself.
Not trying to be a dick or insult you, I just don't think subjectivity is so radical as it's been treated by guys like Green. I believe in a pleb-filter of sorts. I should find a different word than pleb.

>>15272494
I got filtered because I was too smart for it. Patrician-filtered if you will.

>>15272510
I just think that is unlikely.

>>15271226
Imagine wanting to study mereology but never doing so because it's boring

>>15271226
>le studying is fun meme

>>15271226
>"Absolutely. My God, to read without joy is stupid.
Yes, dont push yourself to be better or experience new things, you might actually become better yourself, nope just stay in the same little bubble you where when you where 25 and stop growing.

The attitude is so prevalent in academia and I think it goes a long was in explaining why they're all such mediocre thinkers. They don't challenge themselves. If a genuinely great book is boring the problem is you.

>>15272678
You shouldn't suffer through life. Pointless waste of effort.

>>15272715
Well it’s true that to read without joy is stupid, but it’s also true that if the book you can’t enjoy is a classic, you’re probably the stupid one.

>>15271871
Yo mama based

he got us again lads.

>>15272510
That wasnt me

>>15272518
I agree there are pieces we can all agree are masterpieces, but they are not necessarily must reads for anyone. If I read 50% of it and do not enjoy it, I should stop unless I plan on making a critique or have any sort of need to read it. If I am reading for my own enjoyment, I should stop and not listen to taste makers and others. I can be a pleb yes, but its better to accept my plebness than to pretend to not be a pleb and read things I do not enjoy.

>>15272112
>multimillionaire author for teens
>only fucked 3 girls

Pick one. Either way the man is a fag.

>>15271226
How do i get better, then?

For me main criteria is how hard for me is to read a book. If i struggle, if i sometimes bored due to complex approaches of composing sentences then i know the book will make me better.

Someone who follows the advice this post gives will never intellectually grow. We see people who actually follow it everywhere: stupid, dull, not able to maintain a simple conversation, reading a lot of "fun" books, not lifting heavier intellectual challenges.

Being able to do what is not immediately fun and easy is what tells philistines from the smart people.

By the way, how come 4chan suddenly interested so much in Crash Course teacher?

To understand reading as just another form of investing in your own human capital, analogous to exercise or therapy, is pure ideology, of the Protestant-ethic kind.

I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

>>15271226
What to do if you care about the motivation of other people?

Maybe kill yourself?

>>15271226
If you're a fiction reader, I suppose this makes sense, since none of it is worth reading anyway, but the point of learning isn't to have fun.

>>15272847
Damn, i just found out he wrote "The Fault in Our Stars".

Really surprised.

>>15272866
Or even better:

Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star'd at the Pacific—and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

>>15271226
He is correct. You start with easy books, and hopefully harder books will become easier to read for you, and so you keep moving up the rungs of literature. Unless you're coping for stagnating at the YA/ popular books level

>>15272069
How many times can you eat the same cereal?

After the first go, you're basically just eating shit from that point on.

>>15272919
Exactly my point.

>>15272896
And maybe the best allegory for reading of all:

Satan with less toil, and now with ease
Wafts on the calmer wave by dubious light
And like a weather-beaten vessel holds
Gladly the port, though shrouds and tackle torn;
Or in the emptier waste, resembling air,
Weighs his spread wings, at leisure to behold
Far off the empyreal heaven, extended wide
In circuit, undetermined square or round,
With opal towers and battlements adorned
Of living sapphire, once his native seat;
And fast by hanging in a golden chain
This pendent world, in bigness as a star
Of smallest magnitude close by the moon.

>>15271386
You can easily spare time to read 30 to 50 pages, time to watch a standard length film, and time to exercise all within the same day, even if you work.

>>15271289
>>15272830
Suddenly I agree with OP because it was said by person I like instead of person I don't like. Based.

If you don't challenge your brain you'll never get better intellectually, as such, you will be condemned to life as a midwit. Simple as.

>>15273201
Intelligence is a fixed trait.
Midwits are midwits no matter what they do.

>>15273248
Mind can atrophy and quite a few habits are meaningful or detracting in nature.

>>15273248
Even the most hardcore race realists recognize that intelligence is malleable to some degree. This is why the average IQ of people who come to the United States from the 3rd world will rise about 10 points. There are twin studies to confirm this.

>>15273179
if you're lonely then yeah

>>15273443
>i'm too socially active to spend 3 hours a day on self improvement
What a fucking cope

A lot of books I've read start slow or build pace differently which further accents the reward when you finish the book. Wanting the whole book to be enjoyable is the literature form of wanting a Tranformers type movie where every scene is explosions and cutscenes

>>15271266
Absolutely. My God, to eat Cheerios without semen in it is stupid.

>>15271226
>If a book is tedious for you, leave it
I recognize that thread is obviously bait, but how are you supposed improve? It's hilarious to me that this comes from the groups of people that reject the idea that intelligence/talent/taste could be influenced by genetics. If you can't do hard things to improve yourself and you're not born with a predisposition to excel in certain things then how were any of these books written or read in the first place? We're they all inter-dimensional wizard-kin or some shit?

>>15273460
slow != not enjoyable

>>15273495
How exactly is reading books you don't enjoy reading supposed to help you improve yourself?

>>15273495
They don't improve. It's the mindset of 30 year old women who are still reading nothing but YA.

>>15271226
>If a book is tedious for you, leave it... that book has not been written for you.
I'm pretty sure Green has gushed on about DFW on multiple occasions. I doubt even his biggest fans would reject the idea that Wallace's fiction is tedious.

>>15272090
If you don't enjoy physics then search for a different profession retard.
Not understanding something doesn't mean you can't enjoy it.
Something above your skill level is not inherently not enjoyable.

>>15272830
it's still dumb advice

>>15272447
The only people who think Moby Dick is boring are people who have very surface level readings of the chapters about whales, whaling, and things of conceptual importance (whiteness especially). If you didn't understand those chapters enough to appreciate them then you're a pleb, it's not just about cataloguing whales, a fact that is obvious to those who have more than skim read it.

>>15271226
fuck this nigger turd eater

>>15274311
>>15272518
Jesus Christ can you people not conceive of someone not liking a book for reasons other than "not getting it"? The sheer pseudery fml.

>>15274356
Certain books, yeah. That's the point I'm making.

>>15274474
Well, you're dumb then.

>>15274527
I supported my thesis bro I don't know why you're calling me mad unless...

>>15271226
I understand what the the quote is getting at in a base sense -- don't do something for the pretense of the action, or because you feel you ought to do it; do it because you want to genuinely engage in the activity and see what comes about because of it.

But your relationship to literature is like any other -- just because something is difficult, or becomes difficult after an initial period of ease, doesn't mean you immediately drop it. Because you might drop it for the same reason someone else would pick it up -- a pretense/belief that it should be easy, a deep worry that being challenged is an affront to your person, or an insecurity in your own person that arises from encountering something you haven't before.

Just like any other relationship, you don't quit when it gets bad. If you believe in it, you keep going. If you think you've reached your end, really think about it, and, if you decide after a while that the relationship wasn't for you, you leave. You don't abandon the whole field of literature, or even the segment that the book you left came from -- there might be something you end up really liking in there. You just acknowledge that you didn't like the book as much as you thought; maybe you'll return to it one day. Maybe not.

It's a complicated subject, but I do think that it's up to each person, and to make broad claims will inevitably lead to consistent errors on a case-by-case basis.

This is one of the reasons I loathe John Green, among many. He's been given a fantastic platform to introduce a lot of people to the idea of liking literature, but he's also a huge pussy, so he pussifies potential lessons with shit like, "If you don't like it immediately then it's not your place." Shit like that gets under my skin to an extreme degree. It shouldn't, but it really does.

""Augustus Waters," I said, looking up at him, thinking that you cannot kiss anyone in the Anne Frank House, and then thinking that Anne Frank, after all, kissed someone in the Anne Frank House, and that she would probably like nothing more than for her home to have become a place where the young and irreparably broken sink into love. "I must say," Otto Frank said on the video in his accented English, "I was very much surprised by the deep thoughts Anne had." And then we were kissing. My hand let go of the oxygen cart and I reached up for his neck, and he pulled me up by my waist onto my tiptoes. As his parted lips met mine, I started to feel breathless in a new and fascinating way. The space around us evaporated, and for a weird moment I really liked my body; this cancer-ruined thing I'd spent years dragging around suddenly seemed worth the struggle, worth the chest tubes and the PICC lines and the ceaseless bodily betrayal of the tumors. "It was quite a different Anne I had known as my daughter. She never really showed this kind of inner feeling," Otto Frank continued. The kiss lasted forever as Otto Frank kept talking from behind me. "And my conclusion is," he said, "since I had been in very good terms with Anne, that most parents don't know really their children." I realized that my eyes were closed and opened them. Augustus was staring at me, his blue eyes closer to me than they'd ever been, and behind him, a crowd of people three deep had sort of circled around us. They were angry, I thought. Horrified. These teenagers, with their hormones, making out beneath a video broadcasting the shattered voice of a former father. I pulled away from Augustus, and he snuck a peck onto my forehead as I stared down at my Chuck Taylors. And then they started clapping. All the people, all these adults, just started clapping, and one shouted "Bravo!" in a European accent. Augustus, smiling, bowed"

>>15274356
>can you people not conceive of someone not liking a book for reasons other than "not getting it"?
Yes, this is absolutely the case with certain books like with any artform. If someone told you that the night watch was boring and they don't like it, they would obviously be too much of a pleb to appreciate it. The idea that everyone's subjective opinion has value is pathetically low in standards for what art can be.

>>15272309
iirc he has some serious ocd and social anxiety issues which he only started to mend after he started writing.

>>15271226
"bores you" should be followed by a period or, ideally, by a semicolon.

>manchild describes how he writes books and why he’s incapable of writing anything other than YA

What a sound person to take advice from. We should elect YA authors to public office.

>>15274640
The quote isn't from John Greene, it's an edited down version of something Borges wrote.
If a book bores you, leave it; don’t read it because it is famous, don’t read it because it is modern, don’t read a book because it is old. If a book is tedious to you, leave it, even if that book is 'Paradise Lost' — which is not tedious to me — or 'Don Quixote' — which also is not tedious to me. But if a book is tedious to you, don't read it; that book was not written for you. Reading should be a form of happiness, so I would advise all possible readers of my last will and testament—which I do not plan to write— I would advise them to read a lot, and not to get intimidated by writers' reputations, to continue to look for personal happiness, personal enjoyment. It is the only way to read.

Why would anyone read anything on a subject they do t give a fuck about? It diminishes the value of the reading and learning experience.

>>15271226
>>"If a book bores you, leave it, don't read it because it's famous, don't read a book because it's modern, don't read a book because it's old. If a book is tedious for you, leave it... that book has not been written for you."

If you don't engage with literature exactly as I do, for the same reasons I do, stop doing it, because you're wrong

>>15271226
>If a book bores you, leave it, don't read it because it's famous,
Glad he feels that way. Now I don't feel bad for skipping TFIOS after the first 6 pages.

>>15272335
>That's not what he's saying.
That is what he's saying. The majority of readers do only read what they enjoy. They read Harry Potter and when they run out of Harry Potter books they stop reading all together because that's all they enjoy. It's the equivalent of a child who wants ice cream for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. If you like it, that's fine, but you shouldn't have a diet that subsists entirely of it.

The fact of the matter is all classic literature, the entirety of the western canon, are challenging books and that's off putting to a lot of readers. If Don Quijote bores you, or if its tedious for you, or if it doesn't immediately spark joy, John Green says chuck it in the trash. I say you need to power through it, because like it or not you'll come out the other end a better reader, a better writer, better prepared for even more challenging stories, and you might just fucking learn something.

Fuck John Green. He should go back to raping terminally ill underage girls off reddit like the creepy pedophile he is.

>>15271863
>>15272231
>>15276083
It's not actually a quote from John Green you moron, it's from fucking Jorge Luis Borges. The fact that you deny the quote even the slightest bit of good faith to instead immediately jump onto the worst possible interpretation just because of its supposed source shows you're just an imbecile with a hateboner for Green.
In its full original context, the quote simply expresses that you shouldn't read a book just because you've been told that you have to.
If you're literally only reading a book out of some sense of obligation then you're never going to get anything worthwhile out of it and you might as well not have read it. Also, telling people that they necessarily have to read a bunch of books that bore the heck out of them will only serve to make them averse to reading anything at all, since they'll learn to associate it with pure tedium.

>>15272090
Unironically, yes. It would be better for us all if people did what they loved. There are people who do physics (or whatever) and love it, others do it for pride or fame or money or some kind of sense of fulfillment. This quote shouldn't bother you if you actually wanted to do any of those things, even if you weren't good at them.

>>15276900
>It's not actually a quote from John Green you moron, it's from fucking Jorge Luis Borges.
>you deny the quote even the slightest bit of good faith to instead immediately jump onto the worst possible interpretation just because of its supposed source shows you're just an imbecile with a hateboner for Green.
>In its full original context...
Fucking what? Was this supposed to be a setup to some kind of blowout moment? You're admitting that the quote is not being presented in its full context and the OP image implies it comes from an author a lot of people here think very little of. Why would someone go out of their way to assume that there's anything to be salvaged from it when it's both out of context and coming from a moron? Do you go around sucking hobo dicks on the off-chance one day their cum is going to taste like strawberries and cream? I'm not even saying I completely disagree with the sentiment in the OP quote, but if this was supposed to be any kind of telling bait and switch, it's a fucking stupid one.

>>15271226
I'm halfway through Kant's Transcendental Logic and its a bit of a slog. Should I stop reading or kill myself?

>>15277157
Why ask when you can just as easily do both?

>>15277129
You seem pretty ass blasted over the fact that people prefer to read things that they find entertaining and interesting.

>>15277157
If John Green read and understood Kant, he wouldn't have even said that shit to begin with.

>>15277193
The reply you just made has fuck all to do with what was actually said.

>>15276900
based anti-hate poster

>>15277197
Damm those are some heaving, heavy, hefty slabs of titflesh.

I agree. Everything you do should bring you joy, even suffering. What brings a man joy is what defines his character.