/lit/ - Literature

bonafide pleb

How do you arrive the top of a hill without starting at the bottom?

The chart is you look at what year the book was written and then you start with the first one and read until you're at 2015.

the recommended reading isnt for people who have dropped out of high school.

>>>/out/

>>6661829
Yeah, it's for people who have dropped out of college or university.

>>6661348
What books did you attempt to read?

Does anyone have the guide to scifi or something for this turbo pleb

>>6661844
Probably the meme trilogy or Finnegans Wake.

>>6661850
I'm laughing really hard at the idea of this guy reading Finnegans Wake. Is that even in our sticky?

>>6661348
you are the only honest and decent person on this board, and so i pity you

>>6661348
Oh lord have mercy on this poor, lost soul. Here is a mish-mash of scifi. Entry level stuff would be Foundation - Asimov or Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. Try either of those. God I just wanna snuggle you

>>6661348
>it's not in English but some fancy English that no one today understand really, or it's just so ambiguous that you have to take a course to learn a whole new vocabulary about what it's talking about. Like, I don't know what an absurdist is. No one does unless they take a class in it.

This is the most plebeian thing I have read in a long time.
Even if this is bait, the sad thing is that a lot of people actually think like this. Absurdist isn't an obscure term, nor is anyone hiding the meaning of it from you. Just because you don't know something it doesn't make it obscure or inaccessible.

Read what you're interested in. If you don't know something, find out what it is and what it relates to.

>>6661888
>Start with the scifi's
I started with the original version of Stern Stirner as far as philo is concerned after seeing his mug over and over again on /fit/ a while ago does this mean I'm a lalalectual? His prose is pretty chill in German tbh.

>>6661348
This is the definitively lit guide

>>6661955
Literal shit

>>6661955
Infinite Jest doesn't really belong on a joke list like that since it's nothing like any of those others. Though I guess that might be the Jest there.

I dunno, man, start small, read some japanese authors, maybe, they shouldn't have as much references and from my experience the language was easy to deal with.
You can start with Murakami, which is plebish (my favorite was Norwegian Wood), or skip him altogether and read some Mishima, Soseki, Kawabata...

Otherwise, some high school recommendations, maybe? Apparently most of what you americans read in this board is literature assigned to you in high school, despite having some good stuff there

>>6661972
>Apparently most of what you americans read in this board is literature assigned to you in high school, despite having some good stuff there
I don't know of any high schools that'd assign Ulysses, Gravity's Rainbow, or Infinite Jest.

>>6661986
>most
>Ulysses, Gravity's Rainbow

That's not most people here by far, son

Nobody understands everything and interpretation is always incomplete. Just start somewhere.

>>6661997
With all the Ulysses and Gravity's Rainbow threads I'd think most people who post here regularly have at least tried reading them. Whether they actually finished or not is another story entirely.

Plebs like me and OP are the real enfant terribles that stimulate intellectual discourse on this board, consider atheism, egoism, anarchism, communism.. while OP is generalizing he raises a taboo that you can't ever mention as a true patrician and this is a good thing. I will never read some post structuralist faggot shit and I know that I'm not missing out on anything according to my goals. More time for Stern Stirner. Sorry, not starting with the Greeks, the references he makes can be googled and most of them turned out to be filler. Whoops, looks like I audered my sapere instead of listening to some audereless litfag who just does what everyone told him to do.

>>6662032
No one actually starts with the Greeks or reads everything in its original language. You'd have to be kinda slow to think those are standards anyone really lives up to rather than just memes used to troll people who'll do anything a bunch of people on the internet tell them to.

>>6662043
Higher education starts with the Greeks and an authority figure appears.

>>6662059
We read The Iliad in high school too. That's not starting with the Greeks.

>>6661348
your sincerity is appreciated, but I cannot help my pedantry: the wording of your post is atrocious. the word "legibility" does not mean what you think it means. it's really no wonder books are giving you trouble.

but OK, since you like SF, try Bradbury's non-SF novel Dandelion Wine. It's got some great prose, is pretty short, has lotsa feels, and is even /lit/ approved. Or read Bradbury's SF, his prose is great across-the-board. I've read Martian Chronicles and Illustrated Man, which are short story collections, should be something in there to like.

>>6662077
>I've read Martian Chronicles
Ayyyyyy lmaooooo

Thanks guys. Nice to wake up to this. I like how /lit/ is clearly a 4chan board, but not as polluted and fucked up as something like /tv/.

I should've mentioned that it's easy to find new sci-fi, but I guess the trouble is finding literature that's not Joyce or Pynchon, and classics you're never sure what you're getting.

Borges who was smarter and more talented than most people in here was a fan of Bradbury and Wells.

>>6662043
Tfw I started with the Greeks and im trilingual

>>6662901
Have you tried Vonnegut yet?

>>6663078
>more talented than everyone here
FTFY

>>6662043
>tfw started with the Greeks at age 14, before /lit/ was even a thing

>>6663121
>>6663143

See >>6662071

>>6663078
I don't know why people shit on Wells. He's the GOAT sci-fi author.

lol gtfo english is a second language to every third person here and most of those get by fine.

>>6663185
Wells is GOAT scifi yeah

I dunno about most people but I started with ze greeks and also your standard soapy 19th century Russian and English lit novels.
It's pretty easy to grasp Dickens, Hardy, Dosty, Tolstoy etc

>>6661348
Do you know what google and wikipedia are? Just look for basic explanations for things you dont get. What is your problem?

Is there a guide here about age-appropriation of most books?

Like, for example:
5 year olds, - Aesops' fables, and other kiddie bedtime stories.
7-8 year olds - King arthur, Robin Hood, etc.
9 year olds may read tom sawyer, huckleberry finn, etc.
10 year olds can be allowed to read the Chronicles of Narnia, and the like.
11 year olds can sink right into Harry Potter series, Eragon series
13 year old should read the Lord of the Rings, and everything by Tolkien
15 yr olds can read Percy Jackson, and other similar works.
18 year olds - Dracula, and everything by Anne Rice
20 year olds should read 1984, animal farm, the fountainhead, etc.
22 year olds can read whatever the fuck they fancy.

I think someone should make such a list. And we can all see where we all stand on the classics at least!

>>6663325
>15, Percy Jackson
>18, Dracula
>20, 1984

What

>>6663350
'Dracula' and '1984' ain't worthy of you?
Or have you read so much that you have forgotten these classics?

>>6663325
Don't bother, I found something promising -
http://www.booktrust.org.uk/news-and-blogs/news/222/

>>6663362
No I appreciate the choices but the order is fucked. Well actually I don't appreciate Percy Jackson. But 1984 is 16-17 and Dracula is 20 IMO. Dracula is much less
Accessible than 1984 or Animal Farm. Hell, I read animal in 7th grade

>>6663325
1984 and Animal farm can be read by 16 year olds or younger without a problem. Maybe not to analyse it as much but at least you can understand what it is talking about. Then you read it again when you're older to see how much progress you've made.
I would make all kids start with the Greeks when they are 14-16 so that they can understand it better once they get older and read them again.

>>6661348
>google absurdism
>learn about absurdism
Whew, that was excruciating.

>>6663372
>Philip Pullman, Watership Down, Fellowship of the Ring for 12-14 year olds

I'm actually okay with this. Not as shitty a list as I expected

>>6663374
>>6663376

Alright, so I' doing this list right now.
Could you guys advice more books for each age group?

Age - Book (book series)
05 - Aesops' Fables,

06 - Grimm's tales

07 - everything by r. l. stevenson, rudyard kiplng,

08 - everything by howard Pyle and lewis carroll

09 - everything by mark twain, Robinson Crusoe, Johnathan Swift's Gulliver's travels

10 - Chronicles of Narnia, everything by enid blyton, and H. G. Wells

11 - Harry Potter, Christopher Paolini's Eragon, One flew over the cuckoo's nest

12 - worship J. R. R. Tolkien, to kill a mockingbird, finish Johnathan swift and Jules vernes,

13 - The Silmarillion, everythign by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Mary shelley's frankenstien,

14 - Rick Rioradan's olympions, Douglas Adam's the Hitchhiker trilogy,

15 - Isaac Asimov, Escape to Witch mountain, everything by Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare.

16 - everything by H. G. Wells, Brave new world, Ernest hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Salinger's catcher in the rye, catch-22, leo tolstoy, Oscar wilde

17 - everything by George Orwell, and Arthur C. Clarke, Dan Brown, Frank herberts' Dune, Mario puzo, bradbury's fahrenheit-451,

18 - everything by Anne Rice and Bram Stoker's Dracula, Dante, Homer's Odyssey, James Joyce (Ulysses), Kurt vonnegut's slaughter house five,

19 - everything by Ayn Rand, Edgar Allan Poe, Kafka's metamorphosis, Ralph waldo emerson and H. P. Lovecraft all year baby!

20 - everything by Ambrose Bierce, American Psycho by Bret Ellis, Paulo Coelho, Washington Irving's Sleepy hollow,

21 - everything by Chuck Palahniuk and D. H. Lawrence, Danielewski's house of leaves, Nobokov's lolita

22 - Stephen king and Suzanne Collins (because you've read everything nice already)

please help me fill more books in this list. Change the order as you wish.
And how many have you read in these /lit/?

>>6663488
So where's Ulysses and Infinite Jest? Cause I read those when I was 16.

>>6663488
you are cancer

>>6663543
What's it like being obligatory to the point you might as well be a bot? Netjester is more original than you dumb teenage faggots.

>>6663543
i put Ulysses in 18. forgot infinite jest.
new and improved list coming up in about 10 minutes.

>>6663548
At least I'm contributing something to the board.

Also, if you are talking about my zodiac, then you are spot on!

>>6661348

>the literature board
>they can't detect basic irony in someone's writing

are you guys seriously fucking retarded?

get off this board and read a book you mongoloids.

>>6663488
The fuck is wrong with you nigger?

>>6663581
why? aren't we on a lit board?
even the thread is about recommended readings.

>>6663569
OP here. I was being a little cheeky. Honestly I spend all my time on /tv/ or /mu/ or /r9k/.

I'm actually glad that you guys actually responded. You're like a real 4chan board. The way it's meant to be. You still got your attitude, but your taste is intact. The other boards are so shitty that threads like this wouldn't get a real response. I envy that.

That said, I am genuinely interested. It's just books have a tendency to make me feel dumb, and I wanted to start with things that I would be able to enjoy and understand without having to read up on. Maybe I should go back to the "high school classics" that I never understood like The Invisible Man, Franny and Zooie, The Bluest Eye.

>>6663589
But what are you even saying? When a kid is 11 they should read Harry Potter and 12 LoTR but not vice versa? When a nigger turns 21 he's going to be big into DH Lawrence?

Your list is dumb, kids are going to read whatever they feel like not some prescribed polystyrene culture you dreamt up.

>>6662901
How I got into literature was by reading Earth Abides(A bible reference, Ecclesiastes) and Alas Babylon (Another, Revelation) and then I read The Road...Maybe that path would work for you

>>6663614
NOTE: the following is a SUGGESTIVE reading list for all ages. (not even recommended!)

new and improved list -

Age - Book (book series)

00-05 - The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle, Would You Rather? by John Burningham, dr. seuss' cat in the hat,

05 - Aesops' Fables,

06 - Grimm's tales, pinocchio, hansel and gretel, little goody two shoes, Johanna Spyri's Heidi, 3 litle pigs, charlotte's web,

07 - Rudyard kiplng, L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh, charlie and the chocolate factory, pippi longstocking,

08 - everything by enid blyton, everything by howard Pyle and lewis carroll, Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney

09 - everything by mark twain, Robinson Crusoe, Johnathan Swift's Gulliver's travels, everything by r. l. stevenson, curious george, Tintin,

10 - Chronicles of Narnia, and H. G. Wells, Père Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers, the burrowers,

11 - Harry Potter, Christopher Paolini's Eragon, One flew over the cuckoo's nest, H. Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne,

12 - worship J. R. R. Tolkien, to kill a mockingbird, finish Johnathan swift and Jules vernes, where the wild things are,

13 - The Silmarillion, everythign by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Mary shelley's frankenstien, the call of the wild,

14 - Rick Rioradan's olympions, Douglas Adam's the Hitchhiker trilogy, Suzanne Collins

15 - Isaac Asimov, Escape to Witch mountain, everything by Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare.

16 - everything by H. G. Wells, Brave new world, Ernest hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Salinger's catcher in the rye, catch-22, leo tolstoy, Oscar wilde, Infinite Jest, everything by James Joyce (Ulysses),

17 - everything by George Orwell, and Arthur C. Clarke, Dan Brown, Frank herberts' Dune, Mario puzo, bradbury's fahrenheit-451,

18 - everything by Anne Rice and Bram Stoker's Dracula, Dante, Homer's Odyssey, Kurt vonnegut's slaughter house five,

19 - everything by Ayn Rand, Edgar Allan Poe, Kafka's metamorphosis, Ralph waldo emerson and H. P. Lovecraft all year baby!

20 - everything by Ambrose Bierce, American Psycho by Bret Ellis, Paulo Coelho, Washington Irving,

21 - everything by Chuck Palahniuk and D. H. Lawrence, Danielewski's house of leaves, Nobokov's lolita

22 - Stephen king (because you've read everything nice already)

please help me fill more books in this list. CHANGE THE ORDER as/if you wish!

>>6663623
Right now my aim is to only include the classics, the books everyone's heard about.

you can help me alter/append/edit/improve this list - >>6663631

>>6663631

general tweak: you've backloaded a lot of sophisticated shit. nobody who reads 'everything by dickens and shakespeare' at 15 is reading Anne Rice at 18. that's like regressing from renaissance watercolors to coloring books.

>>6663638
so, what are you suggesting? exchange Shakespeare and rice?
want a limited no. of shakespeare and dickens works?
if so, then, how many? and which all?

>>6663596

Dubliners is a great place to start. They're patrician-tier short stories; you can read the whole book in a few hours. If you're not satisfied with your own interpretation you can look up some online.

>>6663488
I can tell you haven't read Ulysses and a 15 year old would not understand Shakespeare, average /lit/ poster anyway wouldn't

In the off chance you are being sincere, you should let someone else make this list(or look at college curriculums)

>>6663654
>let someone else make this list
and this is where you guys come in.

Tweak it, append it, it's your now.

I decided to redo an old chart I made a few years ago. This time I have actually read every book in the image so it should be more accurate, lel.

>>6661348
>sci-fi

Robert Heinlein
Isaac Asimov
Arthur C. Clarke

i read like two heinlein books as a teenager, they were good. I was very impressed with the Rama quadrilogy though. you should check it out, even if it does have an inordinate amount of character development.

>>6663678
>placing Finnegan's Wake under the easiest category

>>6661888
still needs to have "Sentenced to Prizm" added to it

>>6663325
dude, the hobbit at 13, sure. lord of the rings? 15 probably

everything after 11 years old on your list is wack... like you're getting too puritanical.

>>6663488
>13 the silmarillion

naw dude. try 16 or atleast tell them that 13 is okay as long as they skip ahead to the 3rd age

>>6663706
it's more of a suggestive READING list. not a suggestive AGE list.
The kids can read whatever they want to.

Also, no one can read everything in 1 year. this is an exhaustive list, it's going to take time to read everything in it, so why not spread it over a couple of decades? And why not try to stay a bit puritanical while doing so?
No 11 year old boy should be reading Lolita or Sons and Lovers anyways.

>>6663715
yeah, you are right! But, maybe at 15.

>>6663727
>no 11 yo boy should be reading Lolita

why not?

are you saying that an 11 year old girl SHOULD? wtf

>>6663752
ha ha.
Enough with the sarcasm.
can you think of any changes or additions for this >>6663631 ?

>>6663488
How are people being baited by this

>>6663773
i haven't read Lolita. please answer those two questions

>>6663788
Lolita's about a pedophile.
go ahead, give it a read.

>>6663785
I don't see your suggestions, anywhere!

>>6663797
people teach kids about genocide all the time. you didn't answer the second question

>>6663802
of course, no 11 year old, be it male or female, should be reading stories about pedophiles and incest, genocides.
You know, for a literature board, you guys sure are real smart.

>>6663826
oh, so have they stopped teach people about the 3rd reich? because that is way more intense than ephebophilia mistaken for pedophilia

>>6663826
Can you say why not with some actual reasoning? Kids go through worse and the same at that age .

>>6661955
The last two made me kek

>>6663832
Aren't we supposed to shield our kids from everything even remotely bad? What happened to being sensible about raising our kids?

>>6663839
Pre-pubescent kids exposed to sex and violence can't really be good for the society, now, can it? Of course, some kids go through bad things at a very early age, it doesn't mean we should not try to avoid it from happening to any one else.

What kind of society are you guys living in? Has the society lost all its values already?
You guys have to ASK if sex and violence is good for an 11 year old, or not?

Or are you just being deliberately stupid/sarcastic?

You know what, I take my list back. I'm sorry, I thought you guys were avid readers and would love my little list. I should've known that 4chan is all about anonymous trolling, and ginormous fuck-foolery.
Fuck you and yours, faggot niggers!

>>6663185
>>6663222
>the first time reading the opening passages of war of the worlds.
>Shivers

I read Finnegans Wake as a fetus.

>>6663861
>I take my list back
as if you had a list to begin with

>>6661986
my brother read gravity's rainbow for one of his college english courses

>>6663923
>GR isn't assigned in highschool
>well my brother was assigned it in college

Ok

>>6663945
sorry i need reading lessons

>>6663130
>>more talented than everyone
FTFY

>>6661348
>OP actually has English as his first language
Kill yourself mate.

>>6663678
>Finnegans Wake.

smirked

You complain about legibility yet you start out with that garbage truck wreck of a first sentence?