/lit/ - Literature

1. Read several essays
2. Read Dorothy L. Sayers' translation of the Divine Comedy
3. Started reading Marlon James' A Brief History of Seven Killings
4. Got two essays published
5. Finally started on, and actually finished, the first book in my big literary project that is hopefully going to become a great work of art

audible says i listened to 500+ hours of non-fiction and added 300+ titles to my library

quarantine and other life changes fucked me up mentally this year. i got through one chapter of a shitty young adult novel, and read a bunch of technical reports for work.

hoping to get some quality reading done in this next year.

>read a good chunk of the greek corpus
>got some (You)s
That's pretty much it.

>>17168046
What did you read?

idk about all this lit shit, but my stock portfolio is looking p nice all things considered lol

>>17168037
Pick yourself up anon and you'll BTFO 2021.

>>17168056
If you've posted in the new year thread you probably already seen my post. I read all the epics, all the tragedies (including the most important fragments) and the two historians.

>>17168068
thanks anon, that's the plan

>>17168073
Based, don't forget the lyric poets (especially Archilochos, maybe Solon, and Pindar), Homeric Hymns are good, presocratics are great to have a better understanding of the tragedians and the historians (and Ancient Greece in general), and Aristophanes of course

>>17168108
Of course anon. My objective is to go through absolutely everything written by the ancient greeks. I have only one session of cegep left before beginning the Classical studies program at uni and I hope to gain some expertise in the domain.

>>17168130
Hope you're practising your latin too so you can then read the Roman poets. r/latin is good even if it's r*ddit. Good luck anon we're all gonna make it!

>>17168152
Thx fren

>>17167987
1. Read 23 books - Including GR, Process and Reality, Petersburg.
2. Journaled a lot more consistently. Wrote and developed a lot more of my ideas.
3. Befriended a girl who knows Rabelais and is impressed that I 'can talk about him'. Think there may be 'something' between us....
4. Made progress on learning russian
5. Wrote some really shitty poetry and started on short stories.

>>17168224
>Process and Reality
How was it?

Wrote 300 pages for muh book
Read a bunch of arcana and research relevant to it.
Not a bad output considering the circumstances.

Didn't do shit
but this year is gonna be different I can feel it.
https://voca.ro/1dFns6PtnBjm

>>17167987
I read 31 books, including Lolita, Dorian Gray, Sorrows of young Werther, Siddhartha and The Republic. I also read the Unabomber Manifesto and Brave New World, so i'm a fucking schizo now and I wrote a whole ass book but it was shit so now I'm writing a second one, and i get better everyday. feelsgoodman.

>>17168253
I think it was the best, or at least most comprehensive, way of formulating an immanent philosophy. He borrows a lot from Bergson, but really builds his metaphysics from the ground up rather which helps a lot. I like his view of time (wholly different than space!) and the 'atomism' of processes he describes; essentially the world is made up of concentric, infinitesimal processes. This really speaks to someone like me who works in biology/complex systems

His 'escape route' out of determinism through "pure potentials" seemed to lack a bit of rigor. I may have not fully understood it. His concept of 'creativity' is easy to get along with, but I can't quite put my finger on why.

I think it's definitely 'worth reading'. It presents a really different metaphysics than we are used to, and gave good explanations of things like objectivity/subjectivity and extension/intensity that I hadn't thought of before.

>>17167987
I read some books

>>17168631
Sounds a bit autistic ngl

>>17167987
I studied over the Corpus Hermeticum again, Scott volumes and translation this time, The Biblical New Testament, Meditations on The Tarot, A Suggestive Inquiry Into The Hermetic Mystery, Alchemy And Mysticism, and the Chemicum Britanicum with a couple of books filled up on notes from each. I have taken up regular meditative prayer and experienced somewhat regular religious ecstasis.Also fucked a sleep paralysis demon.
Really, going off literary metrics this year has been great, even if varying, multiple personal failings and me learning some not good things about myself have made me question whether I am capable or even worthy of pursuing the path I am on.
>>17168046
>>17168073
Sounds like a good year, anon. I hope the next one is even better >>17168299
>>17168757
Based

Filled six notebooks with quotes from books I read and my reactions to about a sixth of those quotes, starting to outline a book length schizo philosophical rant drawing upon those reactions.

>>17169888
Could we get an excerpt, anon? Also nice trips

Read some new books but lockdowns let me re-read books I already had. I usually do this now and then, picking an author I haven't read in a long time or a book I can't quite remember the details from, but I've had essentially a year of re-reading this time and it's been so comfy. I'm behind in newly published books compared to other years, but all my books seem more friendly and close now I've had time to whizz through them again. I don't count how many I read or how fast, but I think I got through them faster than I did before due to familiarity.
It's also made any brand new books I read seem even more shiny and novel.
Overall it's been good, but it feels a bit lazy to keep doing it for much longer. I think this year I'm going to catch up on non-fiction I missed—cheaper of course now some have moved out of paperback— and learn a new language to get the feeling of novelty without the feeling of lazy lotus eating.

>>17170050
Post-modern thought, with its emphasis on deconstructing narratives, of denying the primacy of meta-narratives, of blurring the lines between fiction and reality (highly radioactive terms, handle with extreme caution), in some cases nearly grasps emptiness. Yet too often, something is still clung to for support, whether it is the human experience or the material basis of society, or some other substitute for God that is being used to plug the hole ex-monotheistic cultures are feeling—something that deserves reverence and worship in order to hold up the universe. Because if we didn’t have this, we would think we are truly alone? That nothing we did mattered? That the heat death of the universe made everything meaningless? What postmodernism has stumbled upon is that old premodern mode of pedagogical praxis, esotericism, that there are some doctrines that not everyone is capable of hearing without preparation because they deliver such a shock to the human system.

>>17170130
Post modernism almost being a new metaphorical Abraham is always good shit. Do you think you would ever try preparing it into some sortve essay?

>>17167987
I just started reading more consistently. Didn't really have a quantitative reading goal but I ended up reading quite a few books and short stories through the second half of the year. I enjoyed most of what I read and am looking forward to reading consistently from now on.
Happy new year anon.

>>17170177
Yeah an essay might be better to start with than a whole book

>>17170270
I know I would givd it a read.

>>17170305
Good to know other people are thinking about these things. There was a thread the other day where someone pointed out how many pomos had committed suicide and it really got me thinking about how the whole school of thought had unwittingly worked itself into a corner, much like stoicism, where there really is nothing stopping you from coming to that decision. I think that's completely wrong; why is the response to the centerless, radical creativity of the world(s) we inhabit that it is a cause for misery? Lots of non-pomos have recognized that the world is appearance and their solutions did not involve suicide. The answer is not a literal return to tradition but to apply premodern perspectives to postmodern problems. Once you understand that you are dealing with sorcerors and their apprentices you will see market driven technologies of alienation and cyberbetic consumer data-driven predictive product cycle iterations as efficacious forumlae in the hands of dueling magicians. But we don't get to the bottom of images, that is the innovation pomo is afraid of.

>/lit/-related activities/achievements/revelations/thoughts/etc

None. Just another pointless year in which I read books for no purpose.