/lit/ - Literature

This is why the "start with the Greeks" meme exists. This is ALSO why Bloom and his Canon exists and why it is so beloved. We have literally always told you to read only GOOD books and ignore BAD books, and we have always tried to point out the books that are universally acknowledged as good.

If you managed to miss all of this, you are either a newfag or a retard.

>>18441681
the greeks are not "fashionable" lol

>>18441638
This applies for every kind of modern media.

>>18441681
Agreed. It sounds gay, but you seriously have to treat books like a workout regimen. If you don't push yourself, if you don't struggle and overcome, if you don't go further, you will not--and I mean this seriously--make it.

I read a John Greene book a week ago. It's the first large-public book I've read in maybe two years, and it was absolutely astounding in a truly epochal way how bad it was. There were maybe one or two pieces that were alright, but the rest of it was really, really bad writing.

I know that shit is for teenage girls and sois or whatever, but it's quietly almost terrifying to think that some people, a lot of people, actually, will never read more than something at John Green level. And maybe not just because they don't like reading, or they're busy doing other things or whatever, but because they were given that type of book at an early age that conditioned them to only be receptive to that type of writing. An incredibly ego-centric, vapid, shallow mental form that cloaks itself in a put-on pseudo-empathetic "nerdy" veneer.

Which the readers then begin to emulate, because most other people--at least in their social circles--are emulating it too. And then if enough people emulate something like that for a long enough period of time, it grows into the culture, and we get the shit we've been getting from cinema and television, music and books, until something either breaks the cycle or a new form is found and adapted.

It's why so many kids who grew up on shit like John Green and Harry Potter talk and act like how they do, even as adults. They babble like children. They eat shitty food, all the time. They're not just obsessed, they are dogmatic, about the safety and security of their own comfort. They are, at some level, mentally incapable of moving beyond, of going further, of struggling to improve and lift those big heavy mental fucking weights to entertain some kind, any kind, of new thought.

It's not like great writers are great people, that's far from it--but at least most of them are pretty honest, in one way or another, which is what makes their work difficult to read sometimes.

There is nothing honest in something like John Green.

That's what makes something a "bad book".

>>18441638
This is a good excerpt. I never understand where the fuck people get the idea but you need to understand CONSOOMING books is retardation not only because yeah life is short but as people who actually read know, most of it is utter trite. Therefore read something that not only catches your eye but something that doesnt waste your fucking time. For some reason people think literature is exempt from this and it’s completely not, a book is only long when it has to be which is exceedingly rare or if its a textbook yet people are so fond of cramming bullshit and getting a higher page count which bastardizes the point doesnt it

>>18441781
this

>>18441819
Jesus Christ upside I just looked up John Greene.
I will fully admit to being new to literature in general, but just looking at his Wikipedia is enough to give me heart palpations.

>>18441638
Is this Schopenhauer?

>>18441819
Sweet Jesus Christ I just looked this guy up.
I will freely admit that I am new to literature as whole, but seeing his works gave me heart palpations.

>>18442087
It's painful in a cosmic sort of way.

>>18442080
Yea

>>18441638
>circles and checks off pages
holy keyed

People who annotate books need to be shot

>>18442114
It's painful for the soul.