/lit/ - Literature

Why wouldn't I be casual?
Are you implying I should wear a suit?

Yes, both sides.

Fuck.

Yes. My sister is musically non-casual, though. Literature-wise, she's about the level of an eighth grader, though. Her favorite books are Harry Potter.
My mother, while a bit ahead of my sister, is still nowhere near patrician-status. Her favorite author is Janet Evanovich.

Maternal grandfather was a sports writer who had some decent literary knowledge. It was from his book collection that I found Nine Stories/Jerome's other stuff. Other than that my family is mostly plebs.

Yes. And I mean pretty much entire family, even very extended. It's so painful. Save me.

Nope, mother was an English major in university, brother is also majoring in university, and Dad is also quite the reader himself.

>>2930055
Must be nice!

My dad is a bourgeois white dad casual, which means he still keeps up on Jonathan Franzen and Michael Chabon and stuff. My mom is a total non-reader in middle age which makes it so that my little peanut mind is blown when she has (funny, informed, and mostly negative) stuff to say when she sees me reading Roth and Updike. My sister made fun of me for liking Bukowski freshman year of college but/and so far as I can tell she mostly reads art comics.

Immigrant parents = very little of their casual reading is in English. It's the reason why, as an elementary schooler, I could literally come home from the library with anything and there wouldn't be a problem.

I stopped buying books when I was 20 because it was a waste of money, my mum had already bought and read them. So now I pay her a monthly visit to drop off the books I took and to get new ones. And each time she has read at least twice as many books as I was able to. I read, on average, 7-10 books a month. Fuck yeah personal library.

Apparently my mom used to read good books but that shit stopped when I was born. My dad reads some, but not much. I've given him a few books to read that he's liked. I doubt most of the rest of my family has ever picked up a book outside of school.

Yes.

It's often that I've found myself at dinner with the fam, the droopy father sitting kitty corner to the perky, pent-up mother, who'd rush on over to my side, intent on giving me 'huggles'. The attempt is deflected with a gimp oblong shrug, coupled with my shrieking howls, in flawless Shakespearean pentameter:
:
'DO NOT TOUCH ME YOU FILTHY FUCKING CA'

She pauses, horrified

'SUAL.'

At this point, I'm generally given to retreating darkly to my basement, where shelved in the hue and pattern of an offset Serpinski triangle is my perpetually festering collection of dust-gathering hardbacks. I gaze at the collection, meta and non-metaphysically patrician in form and content, and begin to feel the trouser snake emerge.

In heat, I unbury my Martin Heidegger Real Doll™ and wrap his continental lips around my throbbing member, cooing gently as his bushy liptuft tickles my pubis. Pumping furiously, I read from my perpetually open copies of Gravity's Rainbow and Infinite Jest with my left and right eyes, respectively. I stroke my braille copy of Ulysses with my right hand, guiding Heidi™ up and down with my left. I come furiously down his ravenous, hungry throat and pull out, looking deep into those soulful German eyes as we share a cigarette in post-coital bliss.

I tuck Heidi™ away and stare at my books, thinking maybe I should read one of them.

My mother shuffles into the room and pats me on the head, singing

'Hahaha, time for 4chan.'

>>2930237
10/10. Brilliant.

>>2930237, this is such good anonymous internetting that I'm almost concerned for your personal well-being. Nearly everyone I've ever known who was really clever as a message board poster or Twitterer was a wreck in their adult personal life or on the verge of flunking out of college.

>>2930237

best post I've seen on /lit/.

Yes, by my sister wouldn't agree.

Yes.

I am among plebs.

My dad has about 5000 books. He's always reading something. Mom is a pleb.

>>2930237
now I have a throbbing member

10/10

I'm the only one in the family with the spare time to read very much, so yes. While not necessarily expensive, the time expenditure required to be an in-depth reader makes it a pretty well upper-middle class pursuit.

naw my parents are pretty damn smart. They don't read as much as they used to, but there's about 10 floor to ceiling bookshelves in my house and I almost never have to buy a book because I can just raid it off there.

They're also both extremely knowledgeable in classical music and popular music up to the 70s, my dad knows a lot of jazz. Also very well educated in films and have done film courses just in spare time.

they're both very well travelled in the western world, and have lived variously all over the americas and europe and know the places, food culture etc. very well. They can speak seven languages between them.

My parents also have between them 3 undergraduate degrees, one from cambridge, and two masters, one in business and one in literature.

My uncle is a professional art curator and has many published books, most of which are the definitive works in their field.

I could hardly be more privilidged.

Yes, the only one in my family that reads, went to university, is interested about culture... but i never say a word. Curiously, they talk about everything feeling the know something, and it's pretty pleb.

My favourite is when they talk about politics or economy and they say random stupid shit that they heard somewhere and takes them nowhere. I just nod and laugh inside.

My mother reads a lot of Christian books, mostly kinda light stuff but also some good stuff like Thomas a Kempis. I put her onto reading Tolstoy and Eckhart.

>>2930527
I live in the UK, and my father's side of the family is spread throughout America and Malaysia/Singapore, A few of the people on that side are pretty keen on reading, one of my Aunties likes Victorian lit and one of his uncles likes reading in general.

>>2930489
>privilidged

>>2930527

Speaking of Meister Eckhart, what books by him should I start with if I'm interested in his ideas?

>>2930553
I think the only things you can really get by him are selected writings and sermons. I started with a penguin classics edition of them.

>>2929977
I'm the non-casual in the sense that I'm the only one one who reads a lot of actual literature and philosophy on a regular basis. In fact I've never met anyone who seemed more concerned with philosophy than I am, and I've studied philosophy. Mostly people treat it as something theoretic and hypothetical apart from life and don't think of their ever waking moment as practical ethics 101. They don't live it. They're not about that whole virtue is a habit shit.

On the other hand, my sister is in a way less plebby then me, since I'm a useless bum and she is in one of the best ballet schools in the country. But even though she dances to Tchaikovsky and does so very well, her personal tastes are among the plebbest of pleb.

>>2930585
I've got my mother into some of that Seneca and Epicurus and Epictetus and such though, so she's the least pleb person of my bloodline by virtue of my own influence.

>tfw you grew up in a single parent household with no books
>tfw you read a shitload as a young kid then concentrated on fitting in and not getting bullied rather than excelling academically

>>2930620

>tfw you read a shitload as a young kid then concentrated on fitting in and not getting bullied rather than excelling academically

jesus, it's easy as hell to do both. confirmed beta.

>>2930237

>I tuck Heidi™ away and stare at my books, thinking maybe I should read one of them.

my fucking sides

>>2930237
This is fucking genius.

Lit Family, different core each.
I'm the novel-core,
Father is the non-fiction, history/medicine/military history,
Mother is the magazine/newpaper/non-fiction politics,
sister *sigh* non-casual but pleb, True-Blood, YA, Harlequin, Mystery,
My family reads more than any other I've met in real life,

I grew up in Massachusetts. Every wall in our house was books.

I am a book.

>>2930689
Is your name Twilight?

>>2930694
No.

Tropic Of Cancer be the name.

My family is the Jewish Nation, and we are as uncasual as it can get.

Both of my parents are pretty well-read but my dad is moreso in the way /lit/ would appreciate. There are a couple thousand books at their house ranging in quality from hardbacked collections (a really sexy set of Shakespeare plays) and first editions to half priced book store clearance paperbacks.

After i moved out they converted my room into a library.

3/4 of my extended family have PhD's. 12 of the walls in my parents house have bookshelves from top to bottom. Three of the shelves are solely books written by family members. Not fiction, just biology, anthropology, sociology, evolutionary science and biomedical engineering plus three or four generations ago some guy who wrote a bunch of books on religious philosophy (I think he estranged himself from our line).

Nope.

Both my parents are avid readers. I read less than them.

My father especially so.

The man is crazy yo.

>>2930736
>some guy who wrote a bunch of books on religious philosophy (I think he estranged himself from our line).

get off 4chan, this website is for grown-ups.

My parents never read literature aside from theological stuff written in Spanish (dad's a pastor), and my siblings range from much smarter than I to semi-retarded. Although even the smart ones aren't all that interested in art, literature, and culture - they majored in politics and economics.

Yes. I consider it a mission to marry a non-casual woman and procreate in order to fix my family's mistakes.

My mother watches Dr. Phil and once confessed to me in a tear-ridden drunken tirade that she doesn't have the attention span to read. My father is out of the picture, though I know he is a colossal idiot. My sister has potential, but she's going to be a late bloomer in that department if anything.

Yes...all of my family are business folks and salespeoples. I only have one engineer in my family, and he's not well read at all besides engineering books.

I tried to start a conversation with my father over whether I should read The Trial by Kafka, Cat's Cradle by Vonnegut, or The Iliad and the Odyssey. They're the last things on my list of shit I need to read. He said he never heard of any of them...He never heard of The Iliad or the Odyssey?

>>2931054
What's childish about a statement of fact?

>>2930489
>>2930736
I jelly.
>tfw most of your extended family is plebs who hack and spit in the streets and keep the TV on 24/7

>>2931204
Don't worry, you can associate with whomever you like. I certainly wouldn't judge someone's intellect by their family.

>>2931289
Easier said than done, my friend. One's upbringing influences one's ability to interact with other people - not to mention, if you manage to bring someone classier back home, they'll probably be horrified. (Unless they are extremely understanding and gracious, which never happens.)

>>2931204
Ugh, I know this feel all too well. All throughout high school I did everything I possibly could to avoid having friends over. To this day I don't think my parents have ever met a girlfriend of mine.

>>2931357
I get you. What's worse is that I probably wouldn't stay with someone whose family was similar to mine, unless there were some really serious feels between us. Hypocritical?

All my immediate family don't read.

I don't really know any of my extended family that do either come to think of it.

Don't really think anything of it, I'm just used to it. I discuss intellectual things with other students, not many of them are up for it either so my family are no different to them.

>>2930237

>I read from my perpetually open copies of Gravity's Rainbow and Infinite Jest with my left and right eyes, respectively.

11/10. Would laugh again.

My brother is pretty damn good with math and science/ engineering, and my father's a brilliant electrician. They're both smart but they don't read, and neither do my three sisters or my mother

Nope. My Dad gave me his 1939 copy of Santayana's Egotism In German Philosophy with his old annotations in it for me to read when I was 16.

Unfortunately everyone else in my family is non-casual over pleb-shit.

>>2930237

23/10

I love you

>>2932053
What does your dad do for a living?

If I ever fuck up and have a kid, the best part will be being able to indoctrinate him (the daughters will be drowned, obviously) from a young age.

>>2932097
Funny thing, hevworks at a credit card company.

I swear, if I ever have kids, they're going to be raised on a steady diet of philosophy and classics. Because awesome.

>>2930237
Fucking brilliant, screencapped for posterity.

>>2930237
>>2932110
Shit, improved version with the OP included, if anyone wants it. Still the best post I've seen on /lit/.

>>2930237
This is fucking brilliant.

pretty much, except for my dad.

>>2930237
Well, there it is. I have seen the greatest post on /lit/. I'm leaving now and never looking back.

>>2932113
meh. try again, this time resize your browser so there's 11-15 words per line.

20+ word long lines of text are the sign of the pleb

>>2930237

Too much present continuous.
Nice try, though.

>>2932184
Suck a dick.

>>2930237
This was such a shit tier story. The pacing was slow for how short it was, and built up to nothing. None of the characters had any depth to them. It was a wasteland of ideas. I can't believe any of these plebs actually thought it was any good. This was obviously an example of the kind of pop-lit plot-driven bile that is ruining my life. -10/10, kill yourself, go back to /mu/, something.

Fuck.

>>2932415

NO FUN ALLOWED

**sigh**
My mother is a professor at a decent university, but is an uneducated charlatan. She has confided in me that she has only completed three books in her life.
My father is very well-read, but tends to get up his own ass with his batshit interpretations (Rabbit Angstrom is Updike's ideal American!) and has that autodidactory curse wherein one fundamentally misinterprets everything he analyzes but lacks an external group to engage in discourse with.
Luckily, I have /lit/.
>>eyeroll

>>2932426
This post essentially proves the pleb and casual nature of >>2930237 fanboys.

>>2932470
Your dad would make for a very entertaining and even contributing poster on /lit/

my dad is into reading and is a high school english teacher. he had a knack for giving me the right book at the right time while i was growing up. i was very much taken with the obvious headiness of dfw, delillo, and pynchon around age 14. he came from a very poor background and is not particularly well educated, however, and is thus entirely out of touch with the kind of stuff i do in graduate school. he keeps up on contemporary fiction but finds the classics boring, which is exactly the reverse of my attitude.

my mom also teaches high school english, but she isn't really much of a reader. at one point she was very interested in theology but now between working and taking obsessive care of her aging parents, she probably reads a book every two months and its inevitably schlock.

my brother is a real casual. he's a smart dude, but he is not interested in doing difficult things with no clear and immediate pay off and is thus not interested in literary reading.

>>2932426
i wonder what it feels like to be dumb

nobody of my family actually reads literature as a common thing, i'm the only one i guess

My old man read a lot of sci-fi and fantasy when he was younger, but hardly reads these days. My mum reads occasional stuff but nothing serious.

My bro hardly reads these days. He did HST, Burroughs, Bukowski and the like when he was younger.

I'm the only reader I know (I don't have friends these days) and the only grad in my family.

Pretty much, yeah. My cousin is reading 50 Shades of Grey. No one in my immediate family reads.

One my aunts reads a lot of pulp.

I do have an uncle who reads a lot of history, but also Rush-Limbaugh-tier conservative porn.

My grandpa was a great reader though. My grandma's house is loaded with history books. Too bad he got Alzheimer's before I became a serious reader myself :-\

>>2929977
Does anyone know what this painting is called?

My dad has a Master's in English. He's the one that got me into reading. He's a very smart guy, although his reading has slowed down due to both failing eyesight and more time spent writing.

My mother reads the Twilight books.

My brother is a Philistine. He gets good grades, but he doesn't read anything else. Hell, this summer he got the audiobooks for the two books he needed to read.

>>2933440
>>2933440
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Haywain_Triptych
Just use google image search.

>>2933448
Thank you. Forgot about reverse image searching.

Yes.