/lit/ - Literature

>>19831905
I don't care about that

>>19831905
I read Dostoevsky to impress pretty boys

>>19831905
I just read because I enjoy the escapism it provides

>>19831905
god he is just like me.
>>19831949
you found that pic on /lit/, didn’t you?

you're right, i'm already the smarterest

Warhammer 40k pulp shit

in the words of umberto eco "At the age of 70, those who don't read will have led only one life: their own. Those who read will have lived 5000 lives: they were there when Cain killed Abel, when Renzo married Lucia and when Leopardi admired the infinite… because literature is backwards immortality"

>>19831905
you actually get smarter from reading... it is a thought process that goes on and is pushed by reading...

>>19832200
He forgot to mention that part about prolific readers not living their own lives.

I read so I can justify buying more books

>>19831949
>tfw no nihilistic lit bf
why even live?

>>19831905
>>19831949
/lit/ has good taste in men

>>19831905
Because reading is not an end in itself, reading other works that people "deem" important is because we are to gain and develop ourselves from it. Whether you have a high IQ is not important, we're supposed to "educate" ourselves by the works of men greater than ourselves, not indulge in splurge and consume entertainment. Although most of the classics like Dicken's works were entertainment and serialized for a general audience.

Here is the start of Samuel Johnson's preface to Shakespeare:

>That praises are without reason lavished on the dead, and that the honours due only to excellence are paid to antiquity, is a complaint likely to be always continued by those, who, being able to add nothing to truth, hope for eminence from the heresies of paradox; or those, who, being forced by disappointment upon consolatory expedients, are willing to hope from posterity what the present age refuses, and flatter themselves that the regard which is yet denied by envy, will be at last bestowed by time.

Also, as someone who is looking for a high class job I need to understand references and deep meanings behind the literature that our western society deems important. Whether that's Gibbon's view of the Roman Empire or how Tolstoy viewed war, all of this is the context that each of us uses. How many phrases were invented or made up by Shakespeare or Johnson? Plenty.

Less eloquently, literature (or at least good literature) teaches us lessons about humanity and things in general, can inspire us, are cultural reservoirs and let us connect to a higher cause.

>>19831905
>tfw no qt BF
Why live? ;_;

>>19831905
Fuck, you're right

What should we do?

>>19832200
Holy cringe

Because it's enjoyable and I find it more rewarding than film/television

>>19832200
>>19836344
KEK

>>19831905
>It's not like you're gonna get any smarter
Are you sure about that? Reading gave me a pretty serious case of superiority complex

>>19831905
Stopped reading when I realized it's no substitute for action. Hope to return to it once I get my situation fixed.

>>19831905
Because I like to do things that I enjoy.

Alain has some super-based quotes about how women would just freeze up, unable to speak in front of him because he was so handsome. He quickly gained complete contempt for women because of how he could treat them absolutely terribly and they wouldn't call him out. Of course this is how beautiful women feel about simps, but it takes a man to verbalize the truth.

>>19831905
Why do you ask rhetorical questions on /lit/? It's not like you're gonna get any smarter.
>that's implied by the fact you ask a question you know the answer to, suggesting you don't seek knowledge but are just as pathetic as those you mock, if not worse off

Simple. I don't read. I watch anime all day.

>>19836810
Based and depressing

>>19831905
I lost interest in video games.

>>19831949
Cute twink

>>19832200
>>19836344

>>19831905
Lots of downtime at work. It's portable and it's socially acceptable.

>>19831905
I think it was teddy Roosevelt who said the only book you need to read is The Bible
“A thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a college education.”

“It is necessary for the welfare of the nation that men's lives be based on the principles of the Bible. No man, educated or uneducated, can afford to be ignorant of the Bible.”

>>19831905
I don't read.

>>19831949
I want to hug him

(no homo)

>>19831949
I want to sexually FUCK this boy.

I read for those little moments where you find a sentence that feels as if it was written for you.

>>19837854
I feel this with Shropshire lad, and poem LXIII in particular.

>>19831905
>It's not like you're gonna get any smarter
I'd beg to differ. I've gotten much smarter from reading.