/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.11127335]

STOP READING BAD BOOKS

[Anonymous No.11127368]

The best way to start dreaming is through books. Novels are especially helpful for the beginner. The first step is to learn to give in completely to your reading, to live totally with the characters of a novel. You’ll know you’re making progress when your own family and its troubles seem insipid and loathsome by comparison. It’s best to avoid reading literary novels, which tend to divert our attention to the formal structure.

I’m not ashamed to admit that this is how I started. Strangely enough, detective novels, are what I instinctively read. I was never able to read romantic novels in any sustained way, but this is for personal reasons, I being romantically disinclined even in my dreams. Let each man cultivate his particular inclination. Let us never forget that to dream is to explore ourselves.

[Anonymous No.11127394]

thats incomplete.

books are not always good or bad in themselves and too much can be poison.

[Anonymous No.11127561]

>>11127335

Here's a related question:

Do you try to avoid reading fiction that you would never consider re-reading?

Do you think there can be a work of fiction that is definitely worth reading once but definitely not worth reading twice?

(This excludes anything so short that you basically have it by heart first time and can re-visit it mentally without actually re-reading.)

[Anonymous No.11127611]

>It is most laughable the way the public reveals its liking for matter in poetic works; it carefully investigates the real events or personal circumstances of the poet's life which served to give the motif of his works; nay, finally, it finds these more interesting than the works themselves; it reads more about Goethe than what has been written by Goethe, and industriously studies the legend of Faust in preference to Goethe's Faust itself. And when Bürger said that "people would make learned expositions as to who Leonora really was," we see this literally fulfilled in Goethe's case, for we now have many learned expositions on Faust and the Faust legend. They are and will remain of a purely material character. This preference for matter to form is the same as a man ignoring the shape and painting of a fine Etruscan vase in order to make a chemical examination of the clay and colours of which it is made.
Much of /lit/.

[Anonymous No.11127625]

>>11127561
Not OP, but maybe to both. Depends on what you read for. I reread a few books just for the prose, or for the structure. Flannery O'Connor and Amy Hempel both craft smartly structured stories that help me smooth down my plots. Alice Munro is a master psychologist. Maupassant can do seemingly everything through simple detail, and Virginia Woolf can wrap the language around anything she wants.

As for books worth reading once but not twice ... hmm. A few offhand - the novella "Atta" (can't remember the writer right now, it's about the guy who crashed the plane into the North Tower), "Mrs. Caliban" by Rachel Ingalls, and pretty much anything by CS Lewis for me

[Anonymous No.11128219]

>>11127335
So who decides which books are naughty and nice? Fucking Schopie? Do I have to never read Hegel again?

[Anonymous No.11128246]

>>11128219

Calm down, Mr. You're Not The Boss Of Me. Artur's point is valid; it doesn't mean you have to accept his judgement on what is and isn't good.

[Anonymous No.11128269]

>>11127335
only read the upanishads and tristan shandy lmao

[Anonymous No.11128308]

>>11128246
No, he's full of shit. Bad books (whatever the hell he means) do not "destroy the mind" in any way, and most of us can find time to read a variety of stuff in our lives.
The four greatest novels according to Schopenhauer?
Don Quixote
Wilhelm Meister
Tristram Shandy,
La Nouvelle Héloïse
He also says nice things about Jean Paul and Walter Scott. He makes the common-sense idea of reading more than the latest best-sellers and knowing when it's time to generate your own ideas into some ethical maxim.

[Anonymous No.11128310]

>>11128308
>common-sense

[Anonymous No.11128323]

>>11128308

> Bad books (whatever the hell he means) do not "destroy the mind" in any way

If you want to reach maximum fitness, eat a mixture of healthy food and junk. You don't need to eat ALL healthy food.

>most of us can find time to read a variety of stuff in our lives

Irrelevant. Since there's more good stuff out there than anyone can read in a lifetime, every bad book you read means one more good book you won't have time for.

[Anonymous No.11128326]

What's worse? To read bad books or to not read at all?

[Anonymous No.11128332]

>>11128326
In all honesty I'd almost be inclined to argue that it's better to not read at all depending on how we define "bad books"

[Anonymous No.11128334]

>>11128326

Depends HOW bad, I think. Some books are better than nothing but you wouldn't read them if you had anything decent available. (Anyone stuck somewhere on holiday pre-internet will know what I mean.)

[Anonymous No.11128357]

>>11128326
Preceding the OP's quote
>Hence, in regard to our subject, the art of not reading is highly important. This consists in not taking a book into one's hand merely because it is interesting the great public at the time—such as political or religious pamphlets, novels, poetry, and the like, which make a noise and reach perhaps several editions in their first and last years of existence. Remember rather that the man who writes for fools always finds a large public: and only read for a limited and definite time exclusively the works of great minds, those who surpass other men of all times and countries, and whom the voice of fame points to as such. These alone really educate and instruct.
Schopenhauer's essay is about popular books written for money. For these, it would be best never to have read at all. Schopie also wrote that reading is only a method of guiding one's thought, and should only be attempted when thought is exhausted.

[Anonymous No.11128406]

>>11127335
Says the guy that based his life on eastern mumbo jumbo and died alone

[Anonymous No.11128418]

>>11127368
Brainlet here, what did you mean by "literary novels" and "formal structure"? You mean is best to read genre fiction so that you're more easily carried away by the story?

[Anonymous No.11128439]

>>11128418
Novels that are more about the prose than the actual characters and story