/lit/ - Literature

>>21962659
mein kampf, not even memeing. Also the dhammapada. Star here
https://esotericawakening.com/what-is-reality-the-holofractal-universe

Madame bovary....
yes men love to work hard to end up entertaining and providing for a generic stay at home slut fucking the dog or the neighbor or the postman

It's really underrated.

Pic related.It highlighted that when I was younger I used my rational/ logical side to avoid being vulnerable or forming deeper relationships or exploring other aspects of myself(my lust) which I considered myself above it all.
Be it in a platonic, romantic or sexual context.Doing so certainly stunted my development in certain aspects.I still have those tendencies but I am better at managing them.

Pauwels/Bergier, Morning of the Magicians

Colin Wilson, The Occult

Colin Wilson, Beyond the Occult

>>21962689
Beautiful book

>>21962659
The Lord Of The Rings made me think Christianity might be cool.
Ironically, The Silmarillion then turned me off Christianity.

>>21962659
the conquest of happiness by bertrand russell:

>The world is vast and our own powers are limited. If all our happiness is bound up entirely in our personal circumstances it is difficult not to demand of life more than it has to give. And to demand too much is the surest way of getting even less than is possible. The man who can forget his worries by means of a genuine interest in, say, the Council of Trent, or the life history of stars, will find that, when he returns from his excursion into the impersonal world, he has acquired a poise and calm which enable him to deal with his worries in the best way, and he will in the meantime have experienced a genuine even if temporary happiness. The secret of happiness is this: let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile.

also Yeats collected plays opened up my interest in the occult

Bronze Age Mindset

Permanently changed my outlook. You have to see that this world is shaped by conniving but very, very weak people.
It's a mix of that tophat pepe meme that says 'literally just stop caring' and a celebration of the masculine urge to wreak violent havoc.

>>21962659
this book immediately changed my entire approach to prayer and meditation. i've put what i learned from it into practice every single day since then, with truly awesome results. and indispensable revelation in my life second only to holy scripture itself.

>>21962689
underrated
Murphy

>>21962659
I listened to the audiobook and I now think BAP truly is into men sexually

>>21962659
Picrel sent me down a hedonistic spiral. Basically I was devoutly muslim till it was no longer satisfying my need for meaning. That's when 2 Mormon sister missionaries stopped me one day and said they had a message about Christ they'd like to share. I was like fuck it sure since the Islamic view isn't exactly clear on who christ was. Got introduced to the BoM. Read it with a sincere heart and I recieved a testimony that it was true ( I read it before bed one day and had the best sleep that month). anyway I got baptised and was on my way to getting a patriarchal blessing when I found out about sealed 2/3 of the gold plates. Looked online for more info, found out about this Chris nemelka guy, asked the elders about him, they said he was some crazy lunatic which only peaked my interest. Found out that he wrote the supposed sealed portion of the plates. I read it and it was pretty much look the lds church is a fraud and yh here's some mormon lore in-between moroni calling u a dumb fuck over and over again. What was interesting about it tho was that it managed to attract the attention of a certain Ida Smith who was well connected with the upper echelons of the church. Anyway finished the book, called the elders and the stake members dummies and said I'd never return to the church. Read picrel mentioned and I spent last winter cooming day and night whislt drinking copius amount of black coffee cause life has no meaning or atleast the meaning i depended on was now null and void. Ignorance is bliss and I truly wish I never met those missionaries.
Anyway thanks for reading :)

I've moved away from it a bit now, but probably Spinoza's Ethics created the biggest shift in me early on.

Fundamentally it gave me a language from which to voice my critiques of popular organised religion and its often generalised superstition and purely external law following with rewards only in the afterlife, while simultaneously affirming that the only fundamentally good life is that which consists of the reciprocal love of God and Man. I suppose this division may track at least somewhat with an 'exoteric' and 'esoteric' dimension of religion.

His hyperfocus on immanence is his biggest drawback for me now, but I believe it is because of that focus that he was able so directly to demonstrate the 'immediate' effects of knowledge of God and the restrained life - especially moving away from the solemnity of organised religion that I knew in my youth to a more genuinely joyful, happy, and calm existence.

Another aspect of him that I also enjoyed was the marriage of abstract theory with practical life. There is a tradition of metaphysics emanating from people like Kierkegaard who take up categories that are essentially filled with life like anxiety and despair and so on, in order to guard against useless knowledge. And I do think this is a fine strategy. But I also have always enjoyed the fact that Spinoza could speak of the most abstract metaphysics, and Part I is probably as abstract as it gets, and yet finds its only significance in the most practical elements of our lives and ultimately in enjoying blessedness and beatitude. Its present to a degree in those like Aquinas and Ibn Sina, yet it is much much easier to get lost in analysis paralysis of metaphysical categories with them without seeing the larger practical image.

Revolt Against the Modern World

>>21962659
The Holy Bible

>>21962659
>The Decline of the West
Made me think long and hard about cultural relativism, the origins of our most deeply held ideas, and religion.
>Aristotle's Metaphysics
Fitting my brain into totally new categories of thought was helpful.

>>21962659
anything Beckett,Bellow,Miller, Céline, Yates,Kafka,Bernhard

>>21962659
The Brothers Karamazov.
I learned to love my father. He obviously doesn’t bother talking about mothers, because loving a mother is easy for a man. I let go of my petty hatred and frustration for my father. I learned that he is a man, much like me. One that did what he could with what he had. He is a very flawed, emotionally disturbed man but he did his best. It helped me get over any and all memories of our relationship.

i suspect that most people's answer to this will be to do with when they read the book
for me it's catch-22, crime and punishment, the waves. because i read them at a formative stage when i was encountering books outside of discworld and fantasy shit and was an impressionable teenager

Here are a few.

>The Ancient City
Forced me to understand the variety of ways religion can be useful to the sustaining of a culture. Also, that religions have not always striven to be as inclusive as possible and why. It really made me see many things I had simply taken for granted were merely culturally and historically contingent.
>The Revolt of the Masses
Helped me understand that the unprecedented modern ubiquity of masses is a unique circumstance and that it would be impossible to fathom the singular nature of modern world without figuring in this factor.
>Anti-tech Revolution: How and Why
Say what you will but the pessimism toward human agency in a historical sense within this book had a pretty profound effect on me.

>>21962659
Reign of quantity

>>21962659
Zhuangzhi. Makes you realise how silly it is to get bothered by shit. Most important book of my life.

>>21963058
If you'd prefer a comforting mind vorus over the cold truth you are a bugman. Lobotomize yourself and go back to mosque loser.

>>21962659
This book changed my life. After reading it I understood a lot of what I experienced in college, and a lot of what I had been observing in day-to-day life. It really opened my eyes, a lot of things just fell into place once I understood the full story.

The education of Emile

>>21963679
It's a very good book. It's a shame it's put alongside with meme books. Kevin MacDonald is an unironic world-class sociologist, and his other books are great too. Of course he'll never be mainstream in any shape or form, but anyone genuinely interested in contemporary politics should 100% have read this classic.

>>21962659
Wind, Sand and Stars made me much more courageous and engaged in life
Tao Te Ching made me more spiritual and open to my intuition
The New Earth made me more accepting of myself and more resistant to negative thoughts

>>21962659

>>21963058
You should try a spiritual tradition that isn't among the two worst ever conceived. Read the Dhammapada.
Or take some acid.
Seriously bro going from islam to Mormonism.. I mean at least you didn't get grabbed by scientology but that is a frying pan to fire story if I've ever heard one.

>>21962659
This is the book that sparked my interest in literature. It was a huge turning point in my life for some reason. I guess I never knew that someone could be so independent of mind and character. Bukowski was my first real hero and I probably wouldn’t be the man I am if it wasn’t for picking up this book.

>>21963723
I read faktotum, is this similar?

>>21963058
Wait so you went Muslim -> Mormon -> Hedonist? I'm sorry anon that's unfortunate but also really funny. You should try Christianity when you're ready to find actual meaning.

>>21963732
Factotum is good but the sentences are shorter so its more choppy, almost similar to post office. Im a buk dickrider so i love all of them but I would definitely say ham on rye is his best, and he said that himself. As someone who had a really fucked up childhood it’s by far the most influential.

>>21962901
I've been having the same problem anon. I think I might pick up this one after I finish Lady Chatterley's Lover.

>>21964119
LCL is awesome

>>21964133
Movie is garbage though. Misses the whole fucking point. No surprise.

>>21962659
if your mind is so weak that a single book changes your outlook or even shifts it a single percentage you're probably an npc just living life blindly going through the motions. You'll be swayed by anything.

>>21964191
Bro if ur gay just be gay stop projecting.

>>21962659
Reading Samuel Delaney's ouevre turned me on to a lot of things sexually. I mean the door was already cracked but he really kicked it off its hinges

Books that impacted me deeply throughout my life are, in order:
>Seneca's Letter
>Lev Shestov's All Things Are Possible
>William Blake's Marriage of Heaven and Hell
>Plato's Gorgias

>>21964267
>Delaney's ouevre turned me on to a lot of things sexually
So you fuck children? Wow

>>21964191
>or even shifts it a single percentage
Yeah I never learn from other people who have more/different experience in life than me. Nobody has anything to offer me, as I already know everything. In fact, there's really no reason for me to read, since I won't be getting anything out of it anyways.

>>21962659
Couldn't say I had a favorite novel prior, deadass the best opening lines and pages of any from the last century. 1 and done Chad.

>>21963723
>>21963732
>>21963744
The novels are expanded short story material, see those; whatever his reputation as a novelist or poet, he mastered the short story.

>>21962659
the great gatsby, because it introduced me to the concept of social mobility

>>21963740
Nah I read picrel by the same author and it told me everything I needed about christianity. Man listening to joshua graham read the book of revelation whilst understanding what it means is a experience I wish every christian gets to goes through or atleast every mormon tho I doubt they would still be able to function properly afterwards.

Dao De Jing

>>21964137
Yeah, but Joely Richardson nekkid. And Sean Bean when he still looked like a pagan fertility god

>>21962659
Mein Kampf by Hitler
Revolt Against The Modern World by Evola


for lighter reading:
Anatomy of the State by Rothbard
Usury FAQ by Zippy Catholic
Natural Law by Spooner

>>21962668
>>21963075
>>21963107
>>21963679
excellent suggestions.

>>21963679
It took me like 6 months to finish this book.
First, because it is written like a journal paper.
Second, because its content is absolutely infuriating.
I had to keep taking breaks from it.
Definitely one of the most important books to read, though.

>>21963666
Those ancient chinks are massively under-read in the Western world. They have great poetry as well. Great bunch of niggas.

Sex and character otto weininger

>>21963107
You can't enjoy both Aristotle's galaxy brain and Spengler's pseudry.

>>21962659
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch
A Guide to the Good Life by William Irvine

They seem to fit together somewhat. There are similar themes.

Carl Jung's Collected Works Volume 9 Parts 1 and 2 really changed the way I thought about myself the first time I read them.
Archetypes of the collective unconscious, shadow, anima/animus, the chthonic and the spiritual, and the relation of Christ and the antichrist as two sides of the same really speak to me. Also the explanation of religion/myth coming from the human need to develop psychic interpretations of outer phenomena.

>>21962659
Crime and Punishment but I was 17.

>>21968587
No thanks I don't read gnostics

>>21962689
my favorite book.

>>21962901
This mfer literally me. I shed those patterns and now I have a wife and child!

>>21962982
For what reason, and, for what reason?

>>21969051
I thought the concept of hope was interesting. Like "We are children of God, so hopefully he doesn't fuck us up too hard in the end". And it sort of worked out in LOTR.
And it turned out God created a guy to dump all the sins and evils of the world on his head. And he was fated to go along with it helplessly.
The "problem of evil" is much more distasteful when you have a character embodying it.

"The Road to Serfdom" - F. Hayek
Don't agree with everything but it proves we are a retarded species

>>21962901
Literally me.

>>21963047
That was always obvious.

>>21963603
that's great to hear. Fathers were their sons once too.

>>21969204
Steelman for me what you think is the best response to the problem of evil, Christian or otherwise.

>>21963706
I'm 2500 pages in and it's finally getting good

>>21962659
no

>>21966322
Why did it make you angry, anon? I can't read it because I'm illiterate, but wonder what happened to our society and know that touches on it.

William Blake - The Marriage of Heaven & Hell - helped open up my views on institutionalized Christianity and its worship of rules and rituals over God
Steppenwolf - made me realise how self-obsessed I am
City of God (Augustine) & Gospel in Brief (Tolstoy) helped me gain a better and more pragmatic understanding of God/Jesus/BIble

>>21969732
Static things are not alive, for life to exist there has to be movement, poles. reality is these poles constantly fight to find balance, then dissolve into chaos again. How could something be wrong if there is no right? How can something be dark if there is no light?

>>21962659
I don't read fiction because fiction is for fags. read real books and think about life on your own, people who LARP as fictional characters are fucking retarded and unsurprisingly they're all mostly women

>>21962659
When I read this book, I realized that I should be willing to try new things and step outside of my comfort zone.

>>21962901
That is a really nice cover.

>>21962659
>The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking

This turned me into an atheist in college days

>>21962659
Chöd is absolutely terrifying and yet the wisest and most compassionate spiritual practice of all time. This is not for readers unrelated with buddhism. Even so, it's still of very difficult comprehension.

Liber Null & Psychonaut

It's the book that got me to actually try experimenting with and directly experiencing the occult instead of just reading it like obscure lore.
Through that direct practice I learned many things about myself and solidified my understanding of the nature of reality as well as gaining a direct tangible understanding of the difference between the subjective and objective.
That journey all started with this book. I sometimes wonder if I didn't read it and take that first step into personal experience how long it would have taken to shed all the bullshit believes I carried before then. Or if I ever would shed such beliefs.

It probably sounds odd but it led my down the path to becoming basically a objectivist before I even heard or understood the term.

That said, chaos magicians tend to be full of themselves psudo intellectuals who unapologetically make shit up as far as jargon, and simultaneously treat everything as a joke yet themselves with unwarranted grandiosity. It can get annoying rather quickly reading chaos magick stuff even moreso than typical contemporary occult writing, which is already filled to the brim with big ego psudes. Though at least chaos mages are relatively honest about making shit up and don't pretend what they do is some hidden ancient lost knowledge from writers who never existed in the first place.

>>21963009
Might is Right is a book that is literally better in every possible way.

Bump

>>21966810
Fuck off.

>>21971061
Does this response to the problem of evil fit within any religious framework? What’s the point of responding to the problem of evil if you’re not religious?

>>21962659
The Recognitions by William Gaddis
There have been many well-known and established classics—like Kafka, Beckett, Joyce, Flaubert, Borges, Guimarães Rosa, Lowry, Kleist, Chaucer, Melville, Dickinson—that have moved me, but Gaddis' first novel really altered my perception of who I was and what I was searching for. I was fresh out of university, had a BA and had a falling out with my then-fiancée about going into post-grad studies. She wanted to keep going, I didn't have a plan besides not going into post-grad. This book opened my eyes to the question, What is real? and how can we find it in the world and in the things we do? How can we find meaning? or, at least, create meaning in our lives?
Now I look into it, reread it, and find things that are tedious and excessive (it took me three cracks to commit to this book the first time), but never less than meaningful and entertaining. Like a Bosch triptych, he lays out all of human nature and experience on a vast canvas of mistakes, miscommunications, mistaken identities and misunderstandings. He is the king of revolt against the normal, always looking for just the right twist to make things sound wrong, and beautiful. He makes all of this stupid, ugly, evil, brute world sound inviting and peculiar; after reading The Recognitions, I entered daily life like someone scuba diving for the first time.
tl;dr read William Gaddis' The Recognitions

Slaughterhouse five was that one for me. like a foil for my take on the world when I was young. thought vonnegut was a genius at 16. figured he was just a libtard boomer at 20. now kinda see he was a libtard boomer but channeled something spiritual on accident one time with that book. still one of the only books that makes me laugh out loud

>>21962659
This is the one that finally convinced me of the value of life as an aesthetic experience and the importance of sharing it with other people.
>Faced with beauty, solitude becomes a burden.
Was the quote that totally flipped my perception human interaction. I used to think of them as a burden, as a means to take what I needed from them.

>>21963058
>and yh
>peaked my interest
>calling u
>tho
When did it become acceptable to type such low quality posts? For fuck's sake, I hate the state of this board.

>>21962659
The Quest for Hermes Trismegistus by Gary Lachmann
The Corpus Hermeticum and Asclepius
The Enneads by Plotinus

>>21962659
Besides what this anon said >>21974234 personally Ecclesiastes basically people have always been knowing that life is shit, that you suffer and that bad things are there permanently and they will be like so until you do something about it.
Well Solomon in the book is a bit more depressed than that, but you get the idea.

>>21962659
-Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland - The people who committed the holocaust, the actual crimes, like shooting tens of thousands of women, children, elderly ... were just (as the book titles says) ordinary men. Average Joe's, with average jobs and life's. They weren't specially selected for the job. Just a random battalion that was told to do it. Their superior gave them the possibility of not taking part in the killings. Only a dozen out of 500 stepped forward. A book I read shortly after this one, Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing, was a psychology book that deals with this topic and argues, convincingly, that instead of trying to find a type of person that commits mass killings, or orders them (he deals with the psychology of the top nazis as well) we should try to understand the conditions under which anyone could commit what these man did.

Just finished Turner Diaries

>>21962659
Unironically study NDEs and realize that there actually is an afterlife and that we are eternal and will go to heaven unconditionally when we die. And while the Bible and the Qu'ran convinces few people who do not already believe, the book in pic related is known to convince even hardened skeptics that there is an afterlife. So it will change your worldview and make you realize paradise literally awaits.

Here is a very persuasive argument for why NDEs are real:

https://youtu.be/U00ibBGZp7o

It emphasizes that NDErs are representative of the population as a whole, and when people go deep into the NDE, they all become convinced. As this article points out:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/mysteries-consciousness/202204/does-afterlife-obviously-exist

>"Among those with the deepest experiences 100 percent came away agreeing with the statement, "An afterlife definitely exists"."

Since NDErs are representative of the population as a whole, and they are all convinced, then 100% of the population become convinced that there is an afterlife when they have a sufficiently deep NDE themselves. When you dream and wake up, you instantly realize that life is more real than your dreams. When you have an NDE, the same thing is happening, but on a higher level, as you immediately realize that life is the deep dream and the NDE world is the undeniably real world by comparison.

Or as one person quoted in pic related summarized their NDE:

>"As my soul left my body, I found myself floating in a swirling ocean of multi-colored light. At the end, I could see and feel an even brighter light pulling me toward it, and as it shined on me, I felt indescribable happiness. I remembered everything about eternity - knowing, that we had always existed, and that all of us are family. Then old friends and loved ones surrounded me, and I knew without a doubt I was home, and that I was so loved."

Needless to say, even ultraskeptical neuroscientists are convinced by really deep NDEs.

>>21976802
argument form popularity

>>21962659
A few

B.F. Skinner - Beyond Freedom & Dignity

Max Weber - Economy And Society

And from my childhood:

Rush Limbaugh - The Way Things Oughta Be

actually the EDx course

>>21974117
don't care fag. not everyone wants to impress people online with their supposed sophistry.

>>21976802
do u get paid to write these posts?

>>21976802
No one is going to fall for this idiocy that you keep posting every day

>>21962901
This and Siddhartha by Hesse.

>>21962659
War and Peace made me more accepting of politics, I don't bother complaining about this politician or that event because it's all forces outside anyones control. As a result I live a more peaceful life. Besides that I have a much firmer grasp of human nature, this book even helped me reconnect with my father with whom I was arguing over petty things for a long time.

>>21976867
>And from my childhood: Rush Limbaugh - The Way Things Oughta Be

Interesting

>>21978144
Go back to wherever the fuck you came from. You don't belong here, nigger.

>>21978144
Also bot even close to what sophistry means, read a book nigger.

>>21970349
I'm 3000 pages in and think it's been consistent quality mostly throughout

>>21979043
Based

>>21962659
The Female Eunuch and Your Inner Fish

>>21976802
The desire for eternal life is the most degenerate, selfish, unnatural, and meaningless desire in the history of the entire world. ME ME ME GIMMIE HEAVEN ETERNAL ORGASM FOR ME ME ME. It's nothing but infinite greed.

What's the new website to download books from since b-ok.cc is shut down?

>Whatever lies in thy power, do while do it thou canst; there will be no doing, no scheming, no wisdom or skill left to thee in the grave, that soon shall be thy home.
Ecclesiastes.

>>21971559
nice
>>21980078
not this time glowie

>>21978751
It was given to me by my dad, who didn’t want me to grow being a whiny liberal in the early 90s when I was like 12.

>>21980078
Try libgen

The Hitch Hiker Guide books. It isn't particularly deep but it's quite insightful as to the overall random absurdity of life.

>>21962659
The Screwtape Letters legit reawakened me to Christ.

>>21976685
Hunter is better, read that next

>>21981402
Use KJV

>>21972279
I have the same keyboard
*high five*

leave society by tao lin

>>21981974
I often do, but I also like Knox.

>>21981628
>not this time glowie
Sorry anon, I just wanted help from you and all I get is mockery.

Crime and Punishment saved my intellectual life. I read it in junior year of high school when I was at the peak of my video game usage. I used to get home from school and turn on my PC and play for 1-2 hours minimum. I had hardly read a book outside of English class of any worth for over two years. A friend recommended me Crime and Punishment and for the first time I was introduced to novels with ideas and psychological complexity, a darkness but coupled with a mature resolve. I went into it thinking I would get some epic detective, crime novel, and came away with a spiritual masterpiece that forever changed how I approach books. I can't help wonder what would have happened if I had never made the jump to read it.

>>21980078
>>21983836
libgen dot rs

The Taoists
Henry Miller
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Thoreau
Siddhartha by Hesse
Seraphita/Louis Lambert by Balzac
Leaves of Grass by Whitman

Just a few to start. They taught me acceptance, surrender and not worry about the world or others, and just to focus on myself

>>21984808
reddit

>>21962659
This book is what made me find out "wait, books are actually good and teachers just have shit taste and zero care? My entire childhood has been wasted."
7/10 book only worth reading if you know swedish, because the translations don't quite match up to the original in writing.

>>21985693
Wow please rec similiar books in engrish prease

>>21962659
all of Kierkegaard's main writings that aren't about hardcore Christianity (e.g. the second part of Sickness Unto Death).