/lit/ - Literature

infinite jest
gravitys rainbow

Start and end with these

>>5938313

Read whatever. You'll always be a faggot.

The Bible

Anything written by Dan Brown

kid looks based as fuck

i wish i had his confidence when i was a fat teenager as well

>>5938313
You know those classics from high school that you probably just read the Spark Notes on and never actually cracked open the first page?

Those.

>>5938337
does it come in list form?

herodotus
thucydides
plato
aristophanes
xenophon
hesiod
homer
aeschlyus
plutarch
euripides
aristotle
plotinus

>>5938337
http://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/high-school-classics
is a fairly comprehensive list to get you started

My favorites:
-Heart of Darkness
-1984
-Animal Farm
-Brave New World
-Fahrenheit 451
-Old Man and the Sea
-Flowers for Algernon
-Lord of the Flies
-Of Mice and Men

>>5938313
alright O.P ill give you my recommended progression.

In The Penal Colony
the Iliad
The Odyssey
The Divine Comedy
Don Quixote

>>5938328
Holy shit, I wonder how many /lit/izens were fat teenagers that grewupskinny and attractive and bang a veritable mound of bitches on the weekly.
Probably just me.

>>5938313
Plato - The Republic

>>5938313
Dostoyevsky (Notes from the Underground)
Kafka (Metamorphosis)
Pynchon (The Crying of Lot 49)
Kerouac (On the Road)
Camus (The Stranger)
Vonnegut (Slaughterhouse Five)
Nabokov (Lolita)
Salinger (Catcher in the Rye)
Burroughs (Naked Lunch)
Cervantes (Don Quixote)
Carroll (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass)

>>5938313
Here you go OP.

If you've read >75 of these you're /lit/ approved. If you've read <25, then fuck off and read some

Lit starter kit

>>5938377
kek

1.The Holy Bible + Beyond Good and Evil
2. Fahrenheit 451
3. How to Read A Book

This is patrician mode.

>>5938688
What do I do when I've read them all?

>>5938605
>Kerouac
>Salinger

So is it your first day on lit?

>>5938742
You'll know how to pick your own by then

>>5938751

>Not seeing that OP asked for a beginner's list

So you do never bother reading the threads that you angst in?

I have this list but it's old

>>5938519
>grewupskinny and attractive and bang a veritable mound of bitches on the weekly.

Definitely not me

>>5938688
I've read exactly 24 of those, currently read two others (Don Quixote and 100 Years of Solitude, along with two others not listed, The Professor and the Madman and a collection of Poe's short stories). I tend to read things that won't appear on these lists.

>>5938780
Seems like you're missing my point there.

I'm just saying that Kerouac is for laymen and Catcher in the Rye is pleb-tier overrated shit that's only remembered for the whole John Lennon thing.

>>5938866

>Seems like you're missing my point there.

You can't say that and go on to further editorialize and clarify after the fact. Are you this dialectically retarded?

>>5938900
Someone got a thesaurus for Christmas

>>5938908

Someone isn't very good at saving face.

>>5938688

is this a troll image, i thought /lit/ hated infinite jest

and no, i don't lurk here often

>>5938742
Come back here and be pretentious at every possible opportunity.

/lit/ is a wonderful place

>>5938938
/lit/ likes Infinite Jest a lot, there's some lousy people who say its shit and give the impression most of lit dislikes IJ, but that's wrong, its just we been discussing this book for 4 years alredy we dont need to keep having threads about it i guess

>>5938688

>I am a Cat
>not Kokoro

shit list

>>5938316

>>5938519
>got thin for a bit because I got /fit/ but also ran 5ks 3 times a week
>hurt back
>it's all ogre now

>>5938964
>>hurt back
how?

>>5938688
>I've only read 15 of these.
Oh boy.

>>5938804
what is exit level?

>>5938980

if you've read all of that shit then you're ready to graduate from /lit/ on to /r/books

>>5938700
>most of these are a satire of people like /pol/

i guess that the joke is lost on them.

>>5938688
41 on the list, but a handful I've read most of. Currently reading the The Fall.

The fact remains that hardly anyone on /lit/ has read most of their professed essentials and fewer still have really read their texts ie with nuance, sensitivity. Instead most opt to merely finish the texts as quickly (and lazily) as possible with the help of summaries or memorising more salient lines. Understanding this, what matters more than the texts you choose to begin reading is that you actually START to read in a LITERARY fashion, that is, with an appreciation of how the text constructs knowledge stemming from its literary features both generic and idiosyncratic. Of course one would benefit much more from reading a text with appreciable literary merits eg most classics versus less "heavy, popular" variants. However do not let this stop you from reading in the first place. Almost any texts written by any writer worth his or her salt will be sufficient to yield new insight.

>>5939030
How does one read in a literary fashion?

Read one paragraph at a time stopping dissect each line and word then proceed to write a 10 page paper on how it made you feel?

>>5938605
I disagree with other Anon. This is a good starter list, minus Carroll.

>>5938702
Get george r. r. martin the fuuuuuck off of that list please, i can't take it

>>5938804
Holy shit, I didn't know /lit/ into Street of Crocodiles! Had a huge surge of nostalgia when I saw that cover, thank you for that anon. reminds me that i still have to get my hands on Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass once i'm through with my maximalist fiction stage

>>5938313
I mean really if you want a solid background in western lit, you should probably read The Bible, The Odyssey, Shakespeare and maybe Metamorphoses. Those will give you a good framework and then shit will be easier to read down the line. But if you don't actually want to improve and be a namedropping faggot just read high-school lit. There are plenty of charts.

>>5939299
I would say being able to catch references and draw comparisons between different authors and their works is the mark of a well-read mind.

>>5938866
>for laymen
as opposed to professional readers?

>pleb-tier overrated shit
top criticism pal

>>5939316
>minus carroll

>>5939338
you don't know what you're talking about at all and should go fuck off and pretend you're well read somewhere else

>>5939030
you do not read to "yield new insights" and literature is not concerned with "constructing knowledge". this is a stupid post disguised as a wise one

literary masterman:
reads notes from underground, other dostoevsky works, some stuff on russian literature and history of the time, the bible if somehow he hasn't read it already, what is to be done (the chernyshevsky novel not the lenin thing), dostoevsky biography, a biography of lenin, other canonical russian literature, something on the contemporary geopolitical issues and cultural trends in russia, something about orthodox christianity in russia, a bunch of enlightenment shit, ...

non-literary man:
reads notes from underground and goes "damn this book is a lot like my life, except in russia" then starts reading infinite jest and makes jokes about footnotes on the internet

>>5939397
no you are thinking of a middlebrow reader

to read well is to read like a great writer would read, which is nothing like that

>>5939407
you can't read properly if you're spending your time writing

For Chan we all go blind

>>5939361
If you get that pissed about people pretending they're well read you should get the fuck off of /lit/

>>5939407
>to read well is to read like a great writer would read
why is a great writer necessarily a good reader
also,
>not explaining

>>5939419
im not actually mad lol this is /lit/ this is just how we talk

>>5938953
>Come back here and be pretentious at every possible opportunity.
this

>>5939316
why would you take out carroll and not vonnegut or salinger?

>>5939481
why do people think disliking salinger makes you smarter

if that's you in the picture then I suggest a change in clothes and some motherfucking "golden books" for children.

go to a library walk around the stacks and choose something off the shelf. No ones opinion here is of value.

>>5939316
>minus Carroll
WWHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAATTTT

>>5938702
>the books I read this year are now recommended reading for beginners
I don't know how to feel about this

>>5938313
is that ben lerner

I'm so glad nobody's posted the actual list for this retard

>no avid reader pasta

FUCK OFF

>>5941525
you're a pleb and you didn't even realize it, just like every other pleb.