/lit/ - Literature

>>5045336
I'd take out Fahrenheit 451.

>tfw ive read almost all of those
get on my level, plebs hah

>>5045336
Replace American Psycho with The Stranger
Replace 451 with Darkness At Noon

>>5045336
Is this a /lit/ starter kit, or a reading starter kit?

>>5045336
Cut Fahrenheit 451 and SH5

Replace them with The Crying of Lot 49 and Sirens of Titan

>>5045336
>Fear and Loathing
why though

>>5045391
but you level is beneath me

>>5045336
Replace The Catcher in The Rye with Fight Club

>>5045436
It's one of the best (and most significant) books on the list. If you have to replace it, swap HST out for something by Hemmmdog Mmmingionaire.

>>5045439
pff yeah ok how much do u bench bra

>>5045439
pff yeah ok how much do u bench brah

>>5045436
The book is engaging and well-written, but if you have to replace it, put something by Hemmmingway, who should already be on this list, but, inexplicably, isn't.

>>5045448
>>5045461
what the fuck how

>>5045336

I'd keep Lolita.

>>5045439

pff yeah ok how much do u bench brah

>>5045461
Obviously hemmingway should be on the list, but I feel that's just common sense for most people wanting to read. This list shows a more diverse collection of books that gives a broader range than the top ten of Modern Libraries top 100 books.

>>5045448
Fear and Loathing is neither one of the best nor the most significant books on that list.

The fact that Hunter S Thompson only has one book that isn't horribly dated is telling in and of itself.

But as for Fear and Loathing, it's watered down Burroughs. More accessible, maybe, but not more significant.

>>5045497
If you're referring to Naked Lunch (which is shit), then I disagree. But If you're referring a one of his novels, like The Hippos Were Boiled In Their Tanks, then I agree.

Is Invisible Man any good? I've never read that kind of thing before.

Just whipped this up. I think it's more accurate to what's actually discussed on lit and more of a /lit/ starter kit than just a literature starting kit. It's admittedly not as accessible as OP's, but why would someone who hasn't read "to kill a mockingbird" or "1984" be on /lit/ in the first place?

>>5045497
>watered down Burroughs
It's Burroughs + Hemingway, and it's still worth reading. Campaign Trail '72 aged surprisingly well.

>>5045519
No. Why would you force anyone to ingest such garbage?

>>5045519
>no Joyce

>>5045439
rekt

Replace Androids with Flow My Tears, Scanner Darkly or the Man in the High Castle.

Remove American Psycho and replace it with The Crying of Lot 49.

>>5045434
>Sirens of Titan
my nigga

>>5045519
I haven't read 1984 because everything else Orwell wrote is overrated garbage.

Some fucking french litterature. Shit.

>>5045582
Animal Farm is a good children's book.

>>5045587
You must know some incredibly dull kids.

>>5045336
everybody should have read all of this if they are 16 years old. take it all out.

>>5045596
Why's that? It's a nice introduction to the dangers of corrupt leadership for kids that may be interested. Why would the kids that are questioning things be dull?

>>5045336
Remove 'One Flew' and add The Sorrows of Young Werther

I don't get this picture. If it's an intro to literature, why is Lolita there? Not a good starting place at all. If it's an intro to /lit/, why is there high school shit like Cuckoo's Nest and Lord of the Flies?

Remove: To Kill a Mockingbird and The Great Gadsby

Add: Notes From the Underground and Slow Learner

>>5045626
it's all high school shit. lolita is high school shit.

>>5045336
Remove American Psycho. Put Dubliners in its place.

>>5045633
>remove Gatsby
TOP FUCKING KEK
>>5045639
Bait.

>>5045646
why is that bait? which of those books did you not first read/encounter in high school? please humor me. i'm very curious.

>>5045646
>Remoce Gatsby topkek
I know but it was a tough call and the two I added are more valuable

>>5045336
Steinbeck's Contribution should be Grapes, Not M&M

>>5045646
i read brave new world, clockwork orange, tkamb, catch 22, 1984, slaughterhouse five, catcher in the rye, fahrenheit 451, american psycho, great gatsby, fear and loathing, of mice and men, dorian grey, lolita, lord of the flies, huck finn, and siddhartha in or before high school. i had friends who read everything i hadn't on that list in high school.

by a /lit/ starter kit, am I taking that to mean it's for /lit/ specifically, or people new to literature in general? anyhoo, I'm going by the latter:

>take out
To Kill A Mockingbird -- high school shit that's not really worth reading after
Farenheit 451 -- we have enough dystopian lit
American Psycho -- doesn't really seem entry-level to me, though it is a reasonably popular book by now; if any BEE is going to be on here, let it be Less Than Zero
>add to
Notes from Underground -- like another anon suggested
The Stranger -- good intro to existentialism that doesn't feel horribly dated
The Metamorphosis and Other Stories
Fight Club

>>5045651
You read Lolita in high school? Nabokov mastered the English language and there's no way anyone in high school could see that, let alone be taught it.
>>5045653
I'm not so sure about Slow Learner. Also, remove something like American Psycho. Not Gatsby please.

>>5045503
>Naked Lunch (which is shit)

>>5045587
> Animal Farm is a GOAT children's book.

FIFY

I read obsessively as a kid and Animal Farm was one of my constant re-reads.

>>5045720
Not that guy but same. I'm pretty sure Animal Farm was my into lit.

>>5045446
replace Catcher in the Rye with a lot of things. it was angst for a previous generation, it doesn't have the same impact anymore, and it isn't god tier to be kept around.

>>5045665
what does that have to do with reading it in high school?

>>5045731
You haven't experienced literature or even English enough yet.

I'd remove American Psycho and Invisible Man and throw in some Dostoevsky and Dickens.

I just started reading for pleasure again, and I started Monte Cristo a while ago. I'm about halfway through it, and I find myself forcing myself to start reading it, even though I do enjoy it once I start. Did I pick a tough book to start reading on, or am I just a complete retard?

>>5045336
There should be two starter kits; one for /lit/ 's most discussed books, and another for people who have never really gotten into reading.

>>5045439
pff yeah ok how much do u bench brah

I would make exit level /lit/core the starter kit.

>>5045720
>>5045729
You guys had good taste early on
>inb4 samefag

>>5045799
hundres of pages of mindless and boring dinners, story could be condensed into 300 pages or less.

Remove Siddhartha, is just retarded "oh, I'm so spiritual hurr durr" shit

>>5045654
East of Eden, actually

>>5045738
jesus christ calm down

>>5045336
needs more hugo and flaubert

>>5045365
How's that shit taste working out for you?

Missing Anthem by Ayn Rand

>>5045820
Good point

The current list is okay for "never read in my life"

The /lit/core list should be more like the following:

>Das Kapital
>Beyond Good and Evil
>Game of Thrones
>Summaries of YA lit so you can fit in the occasional YA thread
>Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
>The Bible

That's about everything that /lit/ discusses so if you cover that you're good.

>>5045962
I like Ayn Rand, but there are a bunch of people with a ton of hate for those books.

>>5045968
>Sunset found her squatting in the grass, groaning. Every stool was looser than the one before, and smelled fouler. By the time the moon came up she was shitting brown water. The more she drank, the more she shat, but the more she shat, the thirstier she grew, and her thirst sent her crawling to the stream to suck up more water.

>>5045962
XD

Add The Stranger and A Confederacy of Dunces, nix Lord of the Flies and Electric Sheep.

>>5045336

OK, I'm actually interested in a "starter list" that covers every era of literature. Everyone make fun of what I came up with and please help me fill in the gaps.

Ancient Egypt:
Book of the Dead

Ancient Mesopotamia:
Epic of Gilgamesh

Ancient other areas of the world:

Ancient Greece:
The Republic
Poetics
Iliad
Odyssey

Christianity:
Holy Bible, King James Version
City of God
Confessions (Augustine)
Summa Theologica

Islam:
The Quran
???

East Asia:
Four Great Classical Novels
Analects
Tao te Ching

Pre-Enlightenment:
Romeo and Juliet
Hamlet
Macbeth
Canterbury Tales
The Prince

Enlightenment:
Discourse on the Method
Two Treatises of Government
Candide
Gulliver's Travels

Romanticism:
Les Miserables
Confessions (Rousseau)
Frankenstein
Dracula

Modern works:
The Birth of Tragedy
Beyond Good and Evil
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Civilization and Its Discontents
The Communist Manifesto
Atlas Shrugged
The Idiot
The Brothers Karamazov
War and Peace
Moby Dick
A Christmas Carol
In Search of Lost Time
A Room of One's Own
The Souls of Black Folk
Their Eyes Were Watching God
The Great Gatsby
The Sun Also Rises
1984
Infinite Jest
Blonde
Gravity's Rainbow

Genre Fiction:
The Hobbit
The Magician's Nephew
A Wrinkle in Time
Swords and Deviltry
Elric of Melnibone
The Dragonbone Chair
Lord Foul's Bane
Black Sun Rising
A Game of Thrones
Tigana
Through the Looking Glass
Harry Potter series
A Game of Thrones
2001: A Space Odyssey
Ender's Game
Jurassic Park
I, Robot
Nova
It
My Immortal

>>5045336
remove american psycho for fucks sake

would say lord of the flies but pretty much everyone will have read it before coming here, and those really needing the most entry level will be able to learn to pick up the allegorical elements + symbols of the novels which should translate to others

add dubliners + a greek tragedy, oedipus rex is very engaging reading. (starter kit, not novels)

also an entry level poetry book wouldnt be out of place but id feel out of my element suggesting a good one

>>5045336
>US/Anglocentric 100%
I would take out good bunch of it

>>5045336
I've read all of those, way to validate my ego OP

>>5046982
>Starter kit
>Gravity's Rainbow

Uh-huh
>My Immortal

Redeemed

>>5045519
>the republic

>>5046982
>Lord Foul's Bane

mah niggah

>>5047283
Les Fleurs du Mal

>>5045519
what the fuck is this supposed to be

literally makes no sense

im confuse r u trying to give good literature or easy literature because u picked neither

symposium is more seductive than republic and parmenides is more interesting to read

??

>>5046982
put 1001 nights for islam or maybe ibn battuta even thi hes nonfic

>>5046982
This is a fairly decent list

I'd have ecclesiastes' and get rid of quran. Also get rid of canterbury tales and chuck in Ivanhoe or Arthur/Tristan.

For Genre fiction do you reckon gibson's neuromancer or Banks' Matter would make the cut. Both are better than 2001

>>5046982
Needs more Aristotle, Dante's Inferno, and Leviathan

>>5045653
gatsby is probably the best demonstration of modernism ever its incredibly valuable

>>5047660
Yea but its gay

>>5045336
I think it could definitely use some Joyce. Dubliners is probably the best, as far as starters go.

>>5047670
>2014
>Not being gay

>>5046982
Add India, Bhagavad Gita

remove huck finn
remove american psycho
remove fear and loathing
remove invisible man
remove fahrenheit 451
remove slaughterhouse 5
remove a clockwork orange
remove lord of the flies
remove siddhartha
remove do androids dream of electric sheep
remove to kill a mockingbird


there, i just trimmed the pleb. however all of it is pretty second-rate besides lolita

>>5046982
>summa theologica
at least 'selected extracts' from summa theologica it's a fucking 4000 page manuscript in old english

>>5047990
>Invisible Man
>pleb

Fucking kill yourself

>>5047719
this
it's literally the best time in history to suck some dick

>>5048003
why get so mad over such a shitty book

>>5048003
no u

>>5047368

he's picking books based on how often they're discussed on /lit....did you not read the post?

>>5045402
>>5045519
>>5045586
>>5045604
>>5045633
>>5045659
As much as the "The Stranger" or "The Metamorphosis" are good, short introductions to /lit/ and literature, I think a point in the original list was to have as many english novels as possible to give the uninitiated proper practice in the english language. (only Hesse is exceptional. damn you, Hesse.)

>>5045646
What's so good about Gatsby? I thought it was incredibly overrated.

>>5048152
supposed to be overrated*

>>5048152
>>5048159
it deserves its praise
read it

>>5047999
>old english

WHY CAN'T YOU FUCKUPS USE THE CORRECT TERMINOLOGY???????

OLD ENGLISH=~500-1000 CE--UNREADABLE WITHOUT LEARNING IT OR TRANSLATION
MIDDLE ENGLISH=1000-LATE 1400S CE--MOSTLY READABLE, SOME WORDS NEED NOTES/TRANSLATION
MODERN ENGLISH-1500 AND LATER

SHAKESPEARE=NOT OLD ENGLISH
KING JAMES BIBLE=NOT OLD ENGLISH
CHAUCER=NOT OLD ENGLISH

AND FINALLY, SUMMA THEOLOGICA DEFINITELY NOT OLD ENGLISH SINCE IT WAS WRITTEN IN LATIN, YOU FUCKING RETARD

Remove Mockingbird, add White Noise by Dellilo, and Heart of Darkness by Conrad.

I would seriously consider removing the "e" in "A Picture of Dorian Grey" and replacing it with an "a" in "Gray" because that is the correct spelling.

Apart from that, I think its a pretty good starter kit, although there should be some Nietzsche in there as that's talked about on '/lit/ every day, perhaps "Ecce Homo" as that is essentially a summary of his work.

>>5046982
I didn't remove anything but I added everything people suggested; except for Arthur/Tristan because I don't know what to actually add for those.

I'll start taking things off the list if more people agree.

http://pastebin.com/Xji4UceX

>>5045519
>the republic
good answer

Remove Fitzgerald, replace with Kafka.

>>5045587
>animal farm
>children's book

>>5045336
Remove everything cuss no one here actually reads.

>>5045545
I feel like Androids only became popular because of Bladerunner. Man in the High Castle is so much better.