/lit/ - Literature

Paradiso by Lezama Lima

>>18679882
Hegel (the phenomenology of spirit)
Was also the first book in my native language to filter me

>>18679882
I remember a high school attempt at the Phenomenology of the Spirit, which ended on the second page of the first foreword. Never tried again

>>18679896
>>18679897
You were not filtered by the book. You were cucked into believing you have to read and understand the worst philosophical book ever written.

Pierre; or, the ambiguities by melville

I know the start is a parody but its sooooo sickly idealistic that i couldnt get past it to the gritty parts. The humor didnt land well most of the time either.
I want to retry later though, im into deconstruction bigtime

>Aristotle Metaphysics
I read the words, understood the sentence structure, but the meanings remained void.
I have been learning ancient greek for a year just to give that book another try.

>>18679882
Ulysses
Finnegans Wake
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Man Without Qualities
The Magic Mountain
Either/Or
Also Spracht Zarathustra

KJV bible
People claim to have actually read that shit? Impossible

What is philosophy, Deleuze

>>18680002
You have to read his glossary of terms to understand what they even mean. It's not a straightforward read.

1984, the story is so vague and dull i only got halfway through before i lost all interest.

>>18680082
you're either retarded and/or a zoomer. The book isn't that interesting mostly, but it's not vague.

>>18680002
>>18680076
Not to mention there are academics to this day who still fuss over exactly how his metaphysics work. So don't expect to just "get it" on anywhere near the same level as, say, Kant.

>>18680026
I just reread Jeremiah earlier this week and Lamentations today, although Lam is only 10 pages. It's not that hard.

Minima Moralia - Adorno
no idea what this fella was going on about

inherent vice, thomas pynchon

>>18679896
>>18679903

I don't know, whenever i read it afterwards i sat in the bathtub having schizothoughts. I'll retry without being way too serious about it.

The Myth of Sisyphus by Camus.
I keep wanting to go back and read it but I got the feeling he was just quoting people at me.

>>18680289
I picked it up recently and thought the same thing. Haven't fully read it though. As stupid as it sounds, I believe that the essay will be a valuable read because of all those quotations. Can't bring myself to read a proper philosophical work right now, those little excerpts could do me good.

>>18680018
I also got filtered by The Magic Mountain and Either/Or. Haven't tried the rest of your list.

>>18680153
You weren't filtered, it's just a shitty book full of lame boomer humor

Gödel Escher Bach started to go over my head about halfway through.

>>18680095
i am a zoomer but i enjoyed animal farm before this. 1984 just felt like a rehash of it and vague in the sense it just wasnt engaging to read and how everything falls in place for the mc with no real direction so far ive read.

I spend 3 months reading Northrop Frye's "Anatomy of Criticism". I don't think it was my problem. Literary Criticism as a field is pseudoscience

Mason and Dixon. I found it more challenging than Gravity's Rainbow for some reason.

First I tried to listen to the Phenomenology of Spirit and almost crashed my car and had to return it a few hours later.

Then I read it but only got islands of beautiful lucidity and insight in a sea of confusion.

So I got the most complete commentary, 1,600 pages with a paragraph by paragraph breakdown and summary of each paragraph into clearer sentences.

Well frens, Hackett takes a pretty literal interpretation of Hegel, the Hegel that is a Christian mystic that is hugely influenced by Boehme and the commentary is written in that vein, is incredibly complex, and presupposes a familiarity with German idealism too, so now the commentary is filtering me too.

The ideas just pile up and I don't have the mental shorthand to deal with it. Maybe it's a cognitive ability thing, but I've always aced standardized tests without effort, so I should be on the far end of the scale. And in practical terms, I went to an elite grad school, tested into the advanced courses, and was one of the top students in a number of PhD level classes, so I am not sure if it is that. I think understanding PoS requires both a great deal of cognitive ability and a phenomenal amount of prepwork and background reading.

I can't say I'm totally filtered because I am getting points and can see the brilliance, but it is very hard.

Boehme kind of filtered me too, but I found The Signature at least passable in a single go.

>>18680391
You liked Animal farm because it is written like a children's book.

>>18680446
Where did you get filtered? Was it still in the South Africa part or after they got to America? Because the SA part filtered me so hard I just restarted the book and read it over to have the who's and what's more thoroughly internalized as there was a lot of jumping around, but I found when they got to America to be a lot more traditional in its presentation and easier to follow (or I was at least more used to it). I'm glad I didn't stop, because I think about rereading it pretty often these days, a short year since I read it even.

>>18680153
>>18680349
Both of you got filtered by a great detective DUDE weed story
SAD!

>>18679882
I found absolutely nothing of interest in Clarice Lispector despite how much /lit/ hypes her up.

>>18679882
The Phenomenology of Engineering (Architecture, Demolition and Aviation) by George W. B.

>>18679882
The Big Book of Reddit

>>18679882
Of Grammatology by Jacques Derrida. Couldn’t understand a single sentence.

>>18680561
It was the South Africa part. Maybe it was because I was very fresh off Gravity's Rainbow and thought M&D would be a bit lighter of a read, but between the language and the Pynchon-ness of it, it just hit me with a ton of bricks. I'll pick it up again soon.

Jung, Liber Novus
Yates, Upanishads
Maxwell, Treatise on Electricity
God, The Bible
Upton, Systems of Antichrist

>>18681129
>God, The Bible
you mean
>jew worship, slave morality manual

>>18679882
Aristotle’s nichomacean ethics. I just could understand some of the words or the writing. Too archaic :/

The ultimate filter.

>>18681137
t.

>>18681137
Slave to what master?

>>18681163
anyone who wrongs you gets the other cheek, too

everyone itt shouldve started with the greeks

House of Leaves but I doubt anyone here would disagree about that book being shit

>>18679882
Atlas Shrugged. Just pure trash

>>18679882

Iliad was so fucking BORING that I skimmed most of it.

I enjoyed Odyssey though.

>>18679882
Joyce (in general)

>>18679882
The stranger. I didnt get the sort of absurdist existenialism and I didnt think the writing was that good. Plenty of other authors are able to showcase their philosophy whilst actually writing incredible works of fiction.

>>18679882
I gotta admit for the second part of The Man Without Qualities I was just running on fumes for like a 500 page stretch in the middle. It seems like it was just too much for Musil too as the structure of the novel was literally just falling apart in his hands near the end. The hardest thing to wrap my head around was that he wasn’t even writing philosophical essays or dialogues in lieu of action, but something very opaque in between the two that I did not absorb at all. I can say that whatever it was, I’m still confident though that nothing like it will ever be written again if humanity lives to be a million years old—everything about how the book came about and how it was written was unique to that one moment in time and to the one and only person who could write it

>>18679882
Notes from Underground
Something about running at a wall? It wasn't leading anywhere.

>>18679882
Beckett in general. I want to like him, and I get his style and why he is critically acclaimed, but he just is such a slog to to read after a while. Not my cup of tea at all

>>18683181
What did you start with? I always recommend people start with his popular plays and “First Love” in the collection “Complete Short Prose” because it’s Beckett trying to find his own way through language from his early work to his later.

>>18679882
Oxen of the Sun in Ulysses. Joyce may enjoy sniffing his own farts, but I don't.

>>18681056
>Of Grammatology by Jacques Derrida
I found the nearly 80 page preface by the translator in the John Hopkins print to be reallly excessive

>>18683779
>reading a translator's preface
To what end?

>>18683161
His teeth hurt.

>>18679882
Ulysses
Mason & Dixon
Being & Time

>>18679882
finnegans wake

>>18680002
same

>>18683795
not him but I'm a linguist nerd and I get an autism boner over the small details

>>18679882
Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon

>>18679882
Naked Lunch. I'm still convinced it just sucks.

I want to eat your pancreas.
it just seems like a ok light novel and nothing really amazing but managed to make me a bit emotional.

>>18683506
I started with the Trilogy and got burnt out quickly. I didn’t care for Waiting For Godot either, but I generally don’t like reading plays. Thanks for the advice. I’ll give him another shot at some point. A few of my favorite writers I was very slow to warm to, so I try to reread books every few years

>>18679896
>the absolute state of g*rman “people”

Gravity's Rainbow, despite me finishing it and being able to at least be able to follow what was going on on the surface at all times.

>>18684961
It does, I told myself I'd finish it after losing interest 1/4 in and I really regret that.

OP That picture is my wallpaper good pic funny show bump

>>18679882
Currently getting filtered by Pale Fire.

Guess I'm just a retard.

>>18685050

Was looking for this one.

I think it's difficult even just flicking back and forth through the poem and the novel.

I'll try it again one day but fuck it was exhausting.

>>18685050
Same. I spent so long forming ideas trying to understand the actual poem and then got totally lost in the footnotes.

>>18685213
I personally skimmed the poem and mainly followed the footnote narrative. I don’t think there is a wrong way to read it

>>18679882
Kant CoPR

Vilppu Drawing Manual

>>18679896
https://youtu.be/Ixyg77ylBp8

>>18679882
Tao te Ching.

>>18685702
>just accept the Tao, bro
>the Tao is good... because it is, ALRIGHT?!
it's an easy book

>>18685848
Everyone I talk to about this book is equally filtered by it. PLEASE SOMEONE TELL ME WHAT THE TAO IS

>>18679882
The Brothers Karamazov
The sheer fucking volume

>>18680303
How is the magic Mountain a filter? I just finished and found it quite enjoyable and comfy (before the ending). I read it in Norwegian. Maybe it doesn't translate well into English ?

>>18685858
>TELL ME WHAT THE TAO IS
"if you question the Tao, you aren't following it", would be the usual response
>>18685859
Christ... it's not that hard of a book; maybe get another translation? idk

>>18679882
All of them. I don't think i derived any meaning or understood anything from any book i read. It's just words on paper. I get no emotional or intellectual stimulation, i just don't get it.

>>18680482
Yes.

>>18679882
The Sound and the Fury. I've read Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, but something about that one just wouldn't let me in.

>>18681641
based and bowden pilled

>>18679882
Any philosophy book
I just can't into it for some reason, even though I really want to and keep trying to

>>18686093
I love the ferocity of his speechs. Has anyone here read any of his books? (besides the anon who got filtered)

>>18686193
Get some edition with notes, it should help.

>>18679882
None.
I don't force myself to read shit.

>>18680082
The book is boomercore. You have a brain so you don't see any value in it.
>Here read about these bad people coming into power, and look how awful it will be.
>Do something about it? No that would make you just as bad as they are. Just recite "1984 was not an instruction manual". That will show em.

>>18680108
Shut up boomer.

>>18686193
Did you try the republic?
It's the starting point for everything.

The Turner Diaries.
The cringe was to much for me, could not make it through the first chapter.

>>18679882
The Bible

>>18679882
Brave New World somehow. The science gobbledegook in the first chapter was too tedious.

>>18681144
Then get a more contemporary translation or learn ancient greek

>>18681641
thats not the dad of war

>>18686204
Yeah maybe that's a good call, I'll try it out
>>18686216
>the republic
I tried many years ago, I'll give it another shot

>>18685858
The Dao is just the most basic form of energy that all things physical and abstract exhibit and also "the way" that you can go through life that lets you see "the mystery" and be free from illusions. "the way that you can speak is not my way" is just the fact that any kind of explanation for mystical things never comes out in a satisfactory way.

I was in high school when i had to read him, so maybe it would be different now, but I didn't understand any of what this boober was talking about.

>>18680026
its pretty easy, the only trouble for me is my copy has incredibly small text

Don Quixote. For the number of people shilling it as the greatest book ever written, it didn’t seem particularly profound, and after a while the side plots got boring.

>>18679882
Ulysses but I'm gonna try again since the book club I'm in enjoyed it. I'm gonna read Dubliners first since they mentioned a lot of the characters in that reappear in Ulysses. I already read the Iliad and the Odyssey but my group said the connections weren't as impactful as people convey.

I found it really boring.

>>18680422
>Literary Criticism as a field is pseudoscience
It's not science, nor does it purport do be. You got filtered because you're a pseud.

>>18679882
the antichrist

what the fuck did he mean by that, also that spinoza book

Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico Philosophicus

It’s complete nonsense and really shows how we’ve been robbed of our ability to dream and be creative as people in postmodern society.

>>18679882
Ready Player One, only managed to read 3 pages before giving up.

>>18688073
that isn't a filter; it's just a bad book. Essentially a nerd jerking off to his 80's pop consumer knowledge.
Better yet, this gif, but in the 80's

Mason and Dixon fully filtered me. I made it halfway in and realized I had absolutely no idea what was going on anymore

>>18679882
Thomas the Obscure
Society of Spectacle
Mirror of Production

>>18679882
Being and Nothingness. Just couldn't be fucked to slog through it. I appreciate the display of intellect, but it's not at all intermediate-friendly.