/lit/ - Literature

>>6892490
I still haven't yet read IJ.

I never read books

Reading has caused me to lose interest in people because I just don't find them interesting enough anymore

I eat every page I read.

>Dickens my favorite author.

I'm a Lacanian Platonic-Machivellian

>>6892490
I only started reading actual literature at 22.

>>6892518
It takes a bit of digging

I burn books I don't like when I see them.

I still love the Artemis Fowl series to this very day.

>>6892555
uggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg

>>6892490
"confession" or "guilty pleasure" threads are a sign of decline on media boards.
Frequent occurrence of them only confirms what most people have known for a long time however.
The frequent posting of them is just the first step in the culture of the board coming unraveled at the seams.
None of you actually have any taste. For all your posturing and your attempts to act authoritative you don't actually consume the books/music/films you choose to because you actually enjoy them and appreciate them on any level. It's purely an attempt to gain some kind of social status.
Your hearts truly lie with the plebians you claim to despise.
Disgusting.

I saw this happen to /mu/ as well.
In one year from now /lit/ will be the /mu/ of books.
Half the threads will be about "what books are similar to X videogame or X meme tv show" and the other half will be about books that everyone was required to read in highschool, YA fiction, and meme public intellectuals like Sam Harris or Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

Sure, we're already well on our way there but trust me it will get way worse.

>>6892559
>Half the threads will be about "what books are similar to X videogame or X meme tv show" and the other half will be about books that everyone was required to read in highschool, YA fiction, and meme public intellectuals like Sam Harris or Neil DeGrasse Tyson.
That sounds like a nightmare. Where would I have to go, I don't want it to get worse.

I fell for the Gravity's Rainbow meme.

>>6892569
If you don't want it to get worse all you can do is try to post quality threads to slide bad threads.
Perhaps it's only postponing the inevitable, but at least it could buy us more time.
Idiotic posters prevail because good posters sit by and do nothing.

I still haven't read the name of the rose

I've read about half of Finnegan's Wake, but I haven't touched the book in over 6 months.

>>6892559
that things happen every summer in /lit/, don't worry too much.
also, you can enjoy high brow and low brow stuff at the same time. DFW read most of the western canon and he still found time to read hundreds of self help books and athlete autobiographies.

>>6892607

David Foster Wallace was an idiot with a Master's Degree in English and nothing more.
There's nothing wrong with enjoying high brow and low brow stuff but having these "confessions" or "guilty pleasures" thread is evidence that the board culture is skating on the thin ice of hipster posturing and pretending that you appreciate works that are actually way above your level.

>Literary confession thread
I met an old man in a park. He was walking his dogs and carrying a folio copy of Anna Kerininna. We got to talking about books and I mentioned I'd finished Blood Meridian. He told me Cormac was the greatest living author he knew of. He invited me to his house to meet his wife and show off his library and he ended up lending me every copy of Cormac McCarthy's work he owned.
This was two years ago.
I never returned them.
I lent the copy of BM to a girl I loved one year ago.
She never returned it.
Halfway thinking I'm gonna be hearing from both of these people when The Passenger is released.
What do /lit/?
>tfw afraid to go to park because old man might give me the shakedown for his books
>tfw drive 50mph, wear hoodie, a wig, and a pair of sunglasses to escape neighborhood without being seen by an old man with a two Pomeranians

>>6892617
Why is it bad to read works that are above your level? Why is it wrong to separate things you enjoy mindlessly from things you want to understand and take as a challenge and work?

>>6892490

I read Garnett translations of Dostoevsky's works. I enjoy them. I also feel Garnett's translations are not as bad as people make them out to be.

>>6892646

Challenging yourself is fine but most of the people on here are more focused on simulating the appearance of taste than with challenging themselves and getting something out of the stuff they read.

>>6892559
Universal entropy is in fact universal

I quit reading infinite jest but still shitpost in the ij general

>>6892617
Literature can't be "above your level." The worst is that you can't understand the meaning of a word or there's some bullshit Greco-Roman allegory that was shoehorned in by the author to give people like you a reason to have a superiority complex over others.

>>6892639
You're an asshole, tbh. You really betrayed a kind old man's trust for a shot at some pussy? Dishonourable as fuck.

>>6892661

So you really don't think that there aren't books that a 16 year old wouldn't get as much out of as somebody who had more life experience?

>>6892657
Excuses excuses.
Sure we all die.
Sure, the species will eventually die.
It doesn't mean we have to let it happen on our watch.

I hate ALL sci-fi books but I enjoy their plot twists.

>>6892670
Eh, I don't know. I'll have to reread Wittgenstein. This whole "experience vs. knowledge" thing is a constant struggle.

>>6892669
He said I could "keep them for as long as I needed", but it's been so long already.
I feel conflicted about keeping them because I haven't read a single one of them. They sit in my bedroom while I chip away at my actual list.
I should return them right? Should I finish them. I should buy the same BM for him.

>>6892639
Maybe you could buy the books you lost and throw in some other shit as an apology, hell you could send it in the mail so you didn't have to talk to them.

>>6892718
>throw in some other shit as an apology
Good idea. I'll do this. I could buy him a copy of the passenger.
I'll have to sneak over night because I can't afford stamps.

>>6892705

This is bait right?

>>6892639

He sounds like a really good guy. I'd return the books, replace the one I lost and hope to God I haven't ruined a potential friendship with one of the few good people I've managed to meet on this forsaken rock.

>>6892708
finish them, read his newest once it comes out, make up some excuse about work or traveling, and reunite my friendo

>>6892490


Murakami and Ginsberg are good and I don't feel the need to read 700+ year old classics and philosophy books to feel like an intellectual superior, which is what I think most of /lit/ are made up of.

>>6892551
>mfw have been reading only potential literature for years and it's way better than the actual one
also i only read books to rip off writers in order to create my potential masterpiece

>>6892559
>meme
All credibility lost

I've read more fanfiction than published literature in the last year or two, by far,because I feel than it'd be wrong for me to read something because it's a must read. It's not a "Muh purity" thing, but rather a "I used to read books to feel cultured and it's stupid" thing.

>I like Tolkien
>I read a lot of Theology books
>I don't think Moorcock is pretentious
>If you couldn't tell, I like fantasy
>I've never completed the ASOIAF series, and I am a major critic of it

now for the good parts

>I read and understood Ulysses (JJ's, not Homer's) at sixteen
>I actually write

back to bad stuff

>I write both "literature" and pleb genre shit.
>I enjoy both equally

I reread the entire Harry Potter series every January starting on New Years Day and usually ending mid-month.

>>6893323
Oh and I'm 28 years old...

I fell for the Infinite Jest meme.

I graduated as an English major from a major American university and have still never read or even picked up a Hemingway book.

>>6892490
I found a patrician gf thanks to reading Zizek. It would never happen without you /lit/. Thanks

>>6893371
nothing wrong with that
>>6893375
could you care to tell us this incredible story?

>>6892490
>>6892490
The only book I have read this year is...

I Wrote This For You.

And one of the most meaningful passages I've ever read was in that book.

Then I was somewhere else, and it was bright. A voice said

"If you'd carried on practicing that song you almost got right, you would've been great. Bigger than the Beatles."

It continued

"If you'd carried on working on that book you almost finished, it would've changed the lives of many, many people."

Then it said

"If you'd tried to reach the one you loved just a little bit more, when you almost had them, your life would've been completely different."

And I asked

"Is this what happens when I die?"

And the voice said

"Almost."

I'd be okay with being a self help writer if it meant to have other stuff published on the side. I would even go on tours and con people.

>>6892598
Reading something you don't understand is just as bad as not reading at all.

worse in fact, because it makes you autistic instead of just fucking stupid.

And stupidity can be fixed with education. Autism is for life.

>>6892647
Garnett is the most precise. /lit/ obsesses over the others because they are easier. Like the KJV of the bible, and how /lit/ encourages using aid books alongside GR and Ulysses.

It's sad, really really sad.

>>6893411

What? How is one supposed to learn to understand a book if not spend time with the text?

>>6893419
Thank you anon.

>>6893379
The story is still in the creation process ;)
If you really want to know about this... It wasn't something I would call special. Just talking between people with similar interests. I was really surprised that the talk happened and I still am. The chances of us meeting were non-existent up to that point. The conversation was full of classic Zizek jokes that never made me laugh, but thankfully they worked.

>>6893318
>major critic

Major? Not even minor just some anon

>>6892490

I think War and Peace is only praised because of how long it is. Very shallow characters and story.

Madame Bovary is garbage.

>>6892639
>Pomeranians
He deserved it, don't worry

>>6893544
Hi zeeburg, the owner of the rizon #/lit/ oped a couple of people so the spammer cannot return effectively. You had the misfortune of arriving the night he showed up when there was just the AFK owner.

>Confession
I haven't read more than 50 pages a week in over a month because I'm being an emo faggot

I've been skipping reading many days this month to play Pokemon.

>>6893739
Didn't mean to quote the madame bovary post

>>6893544
It only is if you don't understand it.

>>6893766
Yeah, that confused me. I'm currently out of the country and don't have my laptop with me, so I'll try to check it out when I get back.

I'm memeposting from my phone, tbh

>>6893335
that pic is gr8 anon am still chortling to mysen

I haven't read but 2 of the /lit/ recommended books

I proudly display V., Gravity's Rainbow, and Infinite Jest on my bookshelf, but have read none of them.

I bought Richard Fãrina's book just because Pynchon wrote the introduction for it.

>>6893895

I idolise Stephen King and Aldous Huxley, and want to be an author halfway between them.

I read about one book every 1-2 months.

I dropped out of a second rate stoner school.

I read Zen & the Art of Motorcycle when I was in high school (about 4 years ago) and it genuinely sparked an interest in philosophy for me. Thanks to that I'm the most unititated pseudo-intellectual plebeian pop-philosophy fan I know.

I desperately want to kill myself even though I have a pretty okay life. I know I'll never follow through so I don't tell people and admit it on a Singaporean educational cooking forum.

>>6893895
>Fãrina's book
that's a good book dude. you should read it. it's like if On the Road actually had direction, a beatnik revamp of the Odyssey. good shit. juss sayin.

>>6894061
>>6893900
Another confession - I plan on writing a short story in which Pynchon reveals himself to be a serial killer of postmodern authors.
>forcing DFW to hang himself
>pushing Kurt Vonnegut down the stairs
>sabotaging Richard Fãrina's motorcycle
>injecting Foucault with HIV

My soon to be gf and I never making past the first two chapters of philosophy books

>>6894112
>soon to be gf

>>6892490
I don't think John Green is that bad

>>6894126
dont be mean to butterfly
>>6894082
>slamming Barthes with a car

>>6894082
Does anyone have that anon's story about Tao Lin and David Foster Wallace teaming up to kill Thomas Pynchon?

I keep telling people I want to be a writer, but I haven't written shit. I have no follow-through. I don't really read at all. I've just trying to get into reading again.

I'm clearly not cut out to be a writer, or even a particularly good reader. I'm trying to brute force my way through it. I figure the more I read and write that eventually it just has to work. I put in about 4 hours of each everyday.

Is there supposed to be an element of talent here?

>>6893419
>Garnett is the most precise.

You don't speak a word of Russian.

>>6892490

I think Satre is a frail, rabble-rousing, cum-guzzling, crooked (pun intended) faggot.

>"muh capitalism"

fuck off

>muh absurdity of life

Shut up you faggot, we all had understood existential absurdities by the age of 10. It a not a novel thing to be like "holy fuck I am on a plane" or "oh shit I'm sitting in a seat" while realizing the inanities. Just because you were the first faggot to write about it doesn't mean it's special.

And misreading Heidegger doesn't get you in a brownie points either? Why was this faggot special?

Why??

>srsly someone pls tell me why this guy is significant

>>6894412

It's more than that, Sartre also said that you know what you want to do based on whose opinion you ask for about it and other such tidbits into the human psyche.

>modern literature = I can do that + but you didn't did you

>>6893445
No man, I mean, I have a lot of errors with it, which I am pretty vocal about.

Despite not having finished everything.

>>6894421

elaborate?

Seriously the more of this guy I read the more chauvinistically red-blooded capitalist and uitlitarian I become

My favorite author is Edgar rice Burroughs

>>6893286
Your first confession makes no sense, but the second clears it up perfectly.
8/10 post, would reply to again.

I read books while playing the audio versions

>>6892490
fucking hated Catch 22, can't finish it
zero laughter
meanwhile I shit myself laughing on /b/
I am fucking hopeless and I know it

>>6895750
Reform your lifestyle

I mentioned Zizek and said "start with the Greeks" within the same vocal paragraph while talking to this girl the other day.

Also, it's really difficult for me to remember shit I read in books. Like, my favorite part of Gravity's Rainbow was when the one guy feared he was not seeing his daughter every year, but instead a different girl sent from the Nazi camps. I can't remember the name of the man or his daughter in that scenario, nor can I remember the names of any main character other than Slothrop, Blicero, Tchitcherine (or however the fuck it's spelled), and Enzian

I only get interested reading text books, novel literature seems like a waste of time now

It's not so terrible, but it is something I'm ashamed of that holds me back: I almost exclusively read short stories, poetry, and novellas. I just don't have the patience or follow-through or commitment for novels of more than like 300 pages. I'm working through Catch-22 right now and it's great but jesus. This problem is why I've read all DFWs short story and essay collections, but never IJ or Broom.

>>6895750
I read Catch-22 and had a modest chuckle at best.

I thought 'Naked Lunch' was really tiring after the first few chapters.

I pretend to hate Kerouac but his prose is spectacular.

I haven't finished a good book since I started med school 6 years ago because I thought that if I was going to invest my time in reading I might as well read med boks and improve my grades. Instead I wasted my time watching tv shows (Mad Men is my favorite), movies, posting on /tv/, reading ASOIAF and discussing ASOIAF theories. I recently started reading Slaughterhouse Five and it's so good, the writing is really enjoyable.

/blog

>>6892555
>>6892558
I read this series as a wee lad, don't remember anything about it other than birds and giant rats.

It's becoming a tv serious now wtf? No one I knew growing up read the series, how is it becoming a show so many years later?

>>6894082
>injecting Foucault with HIV
with is penis?

there's a gajillion books i want to read but then i realize that it'll take me forever to get through all of them and then i get intimidated and don't start on any of them

I discovered Gravity's Rainbow before I started perusing /lit/.

>>6892490

I've never been suicidal or an alcoholic.

>poser

I really, really want to get caught up in The Brothers Karamazov but I can't seem to read it for more than a few minutes at a time... I've only just started "Why is such a man alive!" thought...Does this book get "better"? or more so, when?

>>6896262
>he discovered one of the most famous novels of one of the most famous living authors who won the national book award for that novel

are you an occultist

>>6894006
Kerrigan?

>>6896250
i know that feel so well

>>6892559
>/mu/
I knew you were a faggot

>>6892559
Better than a billion off topic religion and philosophy threads and the same 6 or 7 authors

>>6894614
it was Aristotle in the pic
the guy ranted about all thing being potential and actua
of course it makes no sense, it was a joke

>>6894143
>dont be mean to butterfly

>>6892559

>le Oswald Spengler face

>>6894211
You're probably going to be more successful than most of /lit/.
Talent is good to have, but hard work beats it, as long as you're not a complete disaster at what you're trying to do.

>>6892490
I'm in class right now.

>>6895980
I love Wallace's short fiction and non fiction; IJ and Broom are just not as good. The Pale King is 10/10 though. I like short fiction more too man.

>>6892490

I discovered Pynchon through the simpsons.

>>6892490
I've never read To Kill a Mockingbird in ninth grade or any year in my life tbh

>>6897466

Nothing wrong with that,

>>6892639
The Passenger by Antonioni released in 1975

God-tier movie

>>6893895

That's a very silly thing you're doing

The internet is kiling my ability to read, even magazines

I wish I could be a NEET again. I don't want to go to a university when the library has all the knowledge I need. I don't want to make friends with the uncritical unintellectual masses. I don't want to not be a NEET again.

i write gay fanfiction

>>6897612

> I don't want to make friends with the uncritical unintellectual masses

You're either a 14-year-old or have the maturity of one.

>>6892639
you're a bad person. return them and either get BM back or replace it.

then sudoku at the park for dishonoring him and yourself.

>>6894126
>>6894143
>>6896811

>>6892490
The closest I got to reading anything worthwhile was Metamorphosis

I didn't like 1984.

I can't develop a reading habit even though I have a lot of books I want to read.

>>6892661
>bullshit Greco-Roman allegory that was shoehorned
we all know you're talking about Ulysses and that premise is fucking cash my man

>>6892733
>because I can't afford stamps.
how poor can a guy be

>>6892532
as long asur not original

>>6893411
>Reading something you don't understand is just as bad as not reading at all.
I'd say one should thus read as much preliminary material as possible or desired before reading the work in question. Idk how people would perceive that, but in any case I disagree w/ this premise.

>>6894082
that's not a confession: that's gold.
do it, and write it in pomo style my friend

>>6894412
>we all had understood existential absurdities by the age of 10
you sound like that one guy -- oh, that one post that one guy had about figuring out all of philosophy or some shit, on reddit. uhhh...

>>6896262
same but Infinite Jest.

>>6897778

>>6892639
Alright, what you have to do is go on libgen, download a copy of each and every book you lost, and then sit down and read every book you borrowed and still have plus these. This should only take you a month if you're truly devoted. I mean do NOTHING else in your free time. Find ways to fill your dead time, waiting for the bus, etc, with Cormac.

While you're doing this, save up some money. Pawn some shit if you have to. Replace all the books of his you don't have.

Then go to the old dude's house, tell him it took you awhile, but your loved the books. They got you through a hard time when somebody dumped you or spurned you or whatever will produce the most emotional color in your voice. Then you apologize it took you so long to return them.

You'll want to add a gift of somekind to him. A bottle of scotch or something.

Last night, I pretended to be a 47 year old woman on Omegle and cybersexed this guy for about an hour, then turned it into a story about Eazy-E fighting Dr. Dre. After he asked to see my breasts, I kek'd and told him I was a man before disconnecting.

>>6892490
I've been trying to finish the Iliad for a month

>>6898141
pics

>>6898319

Not necessarily literary, but confessions nonetheless:

>I judge the majority of people based on how intelligent they seem to me, including women, which has stunted almost all potential emotional and all-around interpersonal growth, leaving me a social vestige of my previous, unsnobby self.

>On top of this, I constantly teeter between thinking that I'm an absolute moron and ostensible genius, knowing pathetically deep down that I'm probably somewhere ordinarily in between, left atop the crest of banal above-averageness, doomed to make a decent amount of money doing something nobody will remember 3 years after my retirement.

>I thought Dorian Gray was absolute shit.

>I think the average taste on this board is overtly affected and disingenuous, a taste that I at some point partially succumbed to. Once hearing myself puppet /lit/-held opinions, I wanted to vomit.

>I've never read any of the following: Melville, Fitzgerald, Proust, Zola, Nietzsche, Aristotle, DFW, Pushkin, Chekhov, Cervantes, Schopenhauer, Milton, Ovid, Dickens, James, Marquez, Flaubert, Steinbeck, Hume, Kant, Descartes

>>6892490
I don't buy or even read books if the author's name is printed larger than the book's title.

>>6898307

What do you mean by trying?

It isn't difficult to understand and it really isn't even that long.

What are you hung up on?

These threads always make me feel better than every single one of you.

Thanks OP.

>>6898374
nice tabs

>>6892490
I like the tripfag who always posts the pics of Twiggy

>>6893757
choose: charmander, bulbasaur, or squirtle

>>6898498

Everyone knows Squirtle is the ultimate starter pokemon

>>6896250
read the classics first :)

I cannot accept that the Kid could be a child molestor, or killed by the Judge in the final chapter of the book.

I refuse.

>>6899154
He was long dead before that m8

I critique my own stuff in the critique threads

I often am openly hostile and hurtful to people on /lit/ for no discernible reason.

Lately I've started to feel guilty about it.

Ever since starting graduate school, I've stopped reading for pleasure. I've started to hate sitting down to read a book or write just about anything. I've been slowly weaning myself off of vidya and TV using audio books, but it's so fucking slow.

>>6892490
I read Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five and got nothing out of them, except slaughterhouse was funny at times.

I self insert myself into every story I read.

Also I want to fuck Temeraire

I've been coasting through life with far too much consideration placed in post-irony

>>6893318
This is less of a confession and more "Im a douche and im proud".

>>6893323
>>6893325
This is a confession.

WTF

>>6892490
im b&

I didn't manage to finish a single book this whole summer. I was so depressed that I layed in bed and did nothing for about 50% of it.

>>6897626
leave this board

>>6901168
>depressed

you were just being a lazy fuck. you need to stop coming up with excuses and man the fuck up, pussy

>>6901203
wow thanks I never thought of that ! ! you're such a cool guy :)))

>>6901207
yeah, no problem, lad. now you should seriously consider killing yourself, tbh

>>6901213
I do consider that pretty often but I have a strong moral compass so I never do it. It's ethically wrong because it is the ultimate denial of the will, duh

I resent people who have read more than I have

>>6901274

>>6898382
>I constantly teeter between thinking that I'm an absolute moron and ostensible genius, knowing pathetically deep down that I'm probably somewhere ordinarily in between, left atop the crest of banal above-averageness, doomed to make a decent amount of money doing something nobody will remember 3 years after my retirement.
fucking this

>>6893335
The lower sword is clearly a penis. Ah, those old artists...

>>6892490
I don't even read, I come to this board to post about film and john green troll threads

I'm the guy who started the *tips fedora* meme.