/lit/ - Literature

Having read at least 4,000+ pages or 2,000,000+ words
Reading is a filter that keeps out retards and people afraid of ideas.
If someone has read at least 4,000 pages deliberately I find it difficult to assume they are either unable to understand reality or interested in knowing more.
Two very important things for someone to be able to achieve if I'm going to care about spending time with them.

>>21538221
*not interested in knowing more
fuk

>>21538221
>8 books of modest length
your standards are a little low.

>>21538201
it means having read the greeks

>>21538225
I'm talking well read, not literarily omniscient.
Reading 8 books of modest length will be too much for 99% of the world.

>>21538221
>4000 pages
So I'm settled with half a Bradon Sanderson saga? :>)

>>21538267
hmm, I see what you mean, I should probably figure out a constraint for the quality rather than just quantity.
The literature has to be varied enough that it isn't just repeating the same thing or talking from one perspective.
Like if you read all the works of Plato and Aristotle you'd just get past 4,000k pages but if you read nothing but goosebumps you're obviously not getting as well read

>>21538284
R. L. Stine is a renowned neo-platonist

>>21538284
ok so for the variety that would make someone well read something like 4k pages of all different allegories would give someone the most meaningful variety.
Something like Rings Lord by Tolkien would be a good book for reliably being well read because there's a lot of allegories about power all in one work.

> There were no more wise men; there were no more heroes; Burne Holiday was sunk from sight as though he had never lived; Monsignor was dead. Amory had grown up to a thousand books, a thousand lies; he had listened eagerly to people who pretended to know, who knew nothing. The mystical reveries of saints that had once filled him with awe in the still hours of night, now vaguely repelled him. The Byrons and Brookes who had defied life from mountain tops were in the end but flaneurs and poseurs, at best mistaking the shadow of courage for the substance of wisdom. The pageantry of his disillusion took shape in a world-old procession of Prophets, Athenians, Martyrs, Saints, Scientists, Don Juans, Jesuits, Puritans, Fausts, Poets, Pacifists; like costumed alumni at a college reunion they streamed before him as their dreams, personalities, and creeds had in turn thrown colored lights on his soul; each had tried to express the glory of life and the tremendous significance of man; each had boasted of synchronizing what had gone before into his own rickety generalities; each had depended after all on the set stage and the convention of the theatre, which is that man in his hunger for faith will feed his mind with the nearest and most convenient food.

>>21538221
That's a high school curriculum in the US.

>>21538201
being well-read means to have a broad knowledge of the global canon with a solid foundation of classic Humanist education. that said, broad and solid are quite relative to one's perspective.
It's not something you can disprove by "what? you didn't read Aristophanes's complete works? lol". It's not an achievement that pops up on your e-reader.

>>21538545
e-reader achievements are such a meme. I think Ibooks might sincerely have an achievements system.
some new age "gamifying learning" shit would be like
"achievement unlocked: basic literacy"
"Achievement Unlocked: smut whore"
"Achievement Unlocked: Read the greeks"
>>21538438
yeah it's just that the nonsense of required reading or something is that I am skeptical if people are actually engaging with the work if they aren't intrinsically motivated to read. You can also have every highschooler run a mile but unless they genuinely care about running none if them are getting a sub 5 min.