/lit/ - Literature

being well-read is a spook mate

>>5898166
read this

>>5898166
Read this first chart, it will give you a 101 understanding of literature.

Then you should possibly go religious for a while.

The bible is a must.

>>5898171
I just want to be able to read Moby Dick without having to reference the internet 2 or 3 times a chapter.

>>5898177
The Bible is a must and I already have a copy I plan on reading after I finish that chart. But surely Greek literature isn't the only important ancient literature right? What about Roman or Chinese lit?

>>5898178
> without having to reference the internet 2 or 3 times a chapter.

dude, I know that Melville gives you that whaling shit pretty thick, but you can just read past it

Reading the complete works of Plato and Aristotle should take you approximately 30 years.

>>5898185
That's what I'm doing but it's not the whaling shit I'm missing out on it's all the literary allusions he throws out. There are like 2 or 3 references to myth in each chapter.

>>5898176
>Confessions of a Mask
>Conservatist

>>5898181
There are plenty of Romans to read. But the greeks are more important because pretty much all of Western literature refer to either philosophy, Homer and the plays.

Reading the basic greeks have blown my mind so many times as I in hindsight started to understand all earlier books I've read.

Chinese literature might be cool, if you are Chinese and want to understand your cultural context. But the Chinese are far from the influence that the greeks have on our global cultural framework.

>>5898706
Please learn how to use 'either'

>>5898188
What are the essentials then?

bump

>>5898166
>implying that you need a flow chart to read books

>>5898178
Seriously, read the first couple of technical/off-story chapters to get the idea and then just skip them, they literally make no difference to the story except to make a point. If you want to learn about extremely outdated whale biology then go ahead and study them all but really you can skip them, or skim them at least. I wouldn't waste my time looking things up on the internet, despite what all the fanboys here say it's not that deep really, the main points are very obvious and the story itself isn't anything complex.

>>5899114
Ignore him. Even reading the whole english wikipedia wouldn't take that long, he's pulling it out of his ass.

>I'm in the process of trying to become more "well-read" so I can better understand literary allusions and references in modern novels.

it's so easy to spot a pleb

>>5898176
>Nostromo
>Imperialist and reactionary

This gets me mad every single time. Who the fuck would think this after finishing Nostromo.

>>5900827
I'm sorry anon, I cannot give an answer. I've always wanted to read more Conrad, just never got around to it. A lot of selections and their attributed ideologies seem broadly applied, and for some of the authors they could have chosen better examples. Stranger in a Strange Land is definitely the best Heinlein to get a full grasp on his ideas of Fascism. Mishima can be better described as Reactionary and Batshit crazy more than Fascist in my humble opinion. Saki, though, I'm reading his short stories now, and I can see a hint of being a Reactionary, but he is more old-guard, however thin a distinction there is.

>>5901342
Nostromo is literally a criticism of American and English capitalist imperialism in South America

>>5900728
What's so wrong with trying to have a better understanding of literature?

>>5898188
I wish we were like the Asari from Mass Effect and could live for thousands of years. There are too many books I want to read...