/lit/ - Literature

Whats a good book that will inspire me to get out and feel good?

>>4158232

>>4158237
good choice

What book will inspire me to not kill myself?

>longing for compensation crap instead preparing for harsh existentialist reality getting shoved down your throat

>>4158232
It may not work for everyone, but Soul Mountain was an incredible experience forme. Although, it probably depends on the translation a lot.

>>4158240
The Myth of Sisyphus. Try to find a copy with some kind of commentary.

What's a book that will make me realise, truly realise, my insignificance?

>>4158244
any translation you'd recommend?

>>4158237
Besides the vague statement that it's depressing and such, what is this about? Can you give me a tl;dr of the argument it makes?

Erich Fromm was inspiring me when I was back in hi-school.
Rate my Frankfurt brainwash level.

>>4158256
Anything in particular?

>>4158253
He makes the point that life is a bad mistake at best and that it's objectively shit and worse than non-existence and discusses the mechanisms we have created to think that this is not the case.

>>4158271
Escape from Freedom,
The Art of Loving,
Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis.
The kind of book that makes you feel that whole life got turned upside down, getting you excited, then you wake up another day with same old shitty attitude.
Good stuff tho.

>>4158232
the waves
>>4158240
steppenwolf

>>4158289
Objectively bad, eh? Sounds like bullshit to me.

>>4158238
on the road

>>4158291
oh god thats way too true

>>4158248
Just this Nietzsche quote:

>Once upon a time, in some out of the way corner of that universe which is dispersed into numberless twinkling solar systems, there was a star upon which clever beasts invented knowing. That was the most arrogant and mendacious minute of "world history," but nevertheless, it was only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths, the star cooled and congealed, and the clever beasts had to die. One might invent such a fable, and yet he still would not have adequately illustrated how miserable, how shadowy and transient, how aimless and arbitrary the human intellect looks within nature. There were eternities during which it did not exist. And when it is all over with the human intellect, nothing will have happened.

>>4158298
I used objectively in the non-literal sense of the word.

>>4158232
Whenever I need reassurance that life itself is beautiful, I'll read things about biology or more specifically evolution. Fields like astronomy and cosmology also have a similar effect on me. Reading research papers instills feelings of awe, wonder, and humility in me.

Of course, similar experiences are to bad had with "popular" science works, not just research papers. Among the most accessible, in my opinion, will be works from Sagan, Krauss, Dawkins, Gould, and Darwin.

>>4158306
Goddamn early Nietzsche was a fine Schopenhauerian. Such a shame he had to go all vitality and optimism later on.

>>4158318
Fun fact:
Both Schopenhauer and Nietzsche were more or less negation of their own philosophies when related to personal example.

>>4158314
Oh. So it's just
>opinions
right?

Why bother reading it, then? I thought it was some kind of serious academic argument that life is shit and we should all be sad if we're honest, not "b'aww I'm sad, be sad like me!"

>>4158306
I think this is where Nietzsche really misses the beauty of fields like astronomy and cosmology. To begin so simply as to say "clever beasts invented knowing" (what must have been intentionally) removes the elegance of evolution and an understanding of geological time. To be existing in an age with this evolved intelligence is truly a stroke of wonderful chance. Of course it would've been much more likely for you to live before written history, before the standards of living exponentially grew, before we had the foggiest idea of our place in the cosmos.

When he implies that the, singular, star cooled and congealed he dismisses the aspirations of the species to become an interstellar race. Of course, it isn't worth dissecting the scientific accuracy of the claim. Had he related this to the death of the cosmos, rather than to the death of an admittedly obscure star, he may have had a better proposition for his case.

Nature (by it's very nature!) is aimless and arbitrary. To hoist worth upon the shoulders of Nature will of course result in an equally arbitrary and aimless meaning.

TLDR; This sounds like the pondering of a nihilistic teen with just a slight grasp of the elegance of science (it is Nietzsche after all).

>>4158332
>Nietzsche were more or less negation of their own philosophies when related to personal example.

Nietzsche was sick all of the time, though. And I don't believe that Schopenhauer necessarily negated his own philosophy. Sure, he wasn't as ascetic as he preached that one should be, but he tried.

>>4158344
>but he tried
Sorry for laughing at this phrase.
Also you should read his personal notes, like when he rejoiced when this old hag from level down below died because he was no longer forced to pay her lifelong rent for pushing her down the stairs years earilier.

>>4158232
This story made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. I quite enjoyed it.

Kind of curious on the /lit/ opinion of WP Kinsella

>>4158289
Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't that the opposite of what OP is asking for?

>>4158343
He's expounding the idea that knowledge is an illusive concept.

It's only as beautiful as you believe it to be.

>>4158232
The Diary of Anne Frank

>>4158339
you're right, why bother reading a book when you can be making up reasons for not reading a book and posting them on 4chan

>>4159594
Optimistic shit doesn't make people happy. Pessimistic shit does. When life never lives up to your idea of it you suffer, but when it's a relief some of the time and what you expected the rest of it, you'll be able to deal with it much better.

That said Ligotti is shit and he should read Schopenhauer.

>>4159695
That would normally be a good argument except that the default state is "not reading that book" and I need to be convinced if I'm going to do it.

Especially if it's just crybaby garbage.

>>4158339
All non-facts are opinions yes. Since facts don't lead to any specific course of action to take, opinions is all you have.

You can't have an serious academic argument about values, they're just more obscurantist versions of
>opinions
with no firmer basis than 'stop liking what I don't like' in the end.

Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy

Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad