Post books that have changed or significantly impacted your life.

[Anonymous No.11166597]

[Anonymous No.11166603]

The Magic Mountain

[Anonymous No.11166612]

>>11166597
The Qur'an

[Anonymous No.11166616]

>>11166603
Interesting. How did it change you?

[Anonymous No.11166642]

The Andersonville Diary by John Ransom
Barth's Saharan expedition
Any true survival story, really.

[Anonymous No.11166644]

>>11166597
nietzsche and philosophy to be quite honest desu senpai

[Anonymous No.11166653]

>>11166603
I'm very interested to hear how this changed your life. I finished reading The Magic Mountain fewer than two months ago, and I found Mann to be an obnoxious formality attempting to channel reductive, essentialized stereotypes through nationalistic ideological vessels. He seems like a try-hard desperate to say something profound but can only come up with an occasionally poignant image. What in the world did you take from such a bloated work?

[Anonymous No.11166684]

>>11166616
Hard to explain precisely. I was alone and thought that everything in life needed to have a sense to it and be perfect.
A lot of literature and (other) entertainment conveys exactly this, too – by telling beautiful stories where everything falls into place in the end, even if the ending is not a good one.
But The Magic Mountain did not. The story turned out a lot different than how I expected it to and the protagonist reacted to that a lot different than I would have.
I think this inspired me to kind of leave me isolation and do a lot of things, most of which turned out quite badly, but still, I became a different person and years later I am in a position I would not have thought I could ever attain.

[Anonymous No.11166693]

>>11166684
Wait, you were motivated to change your life because of a surprising conclusion? How little had you read, watch, or heard before TMM?

[Anonymous No.11166748]

Not even lying. I've enjoyed many "actual" books, but none have effected me as much as this. Its been almost a year now, and still nearly everyday I think about this work. Ultimately it pushed me to take a more active role in my life, and to finally develop my more masculine personality traits.

[Anonymous No.11166814]

>>11166597
Science Discovers the Physiological Value of Continence.
It made me eliminate a really bad habit from my life, that most everyone these days is engaged in. I read a book a week now. I barely read before.

[Anonymous No.11166909]

>>11166693
It wasn’t that the conclusion was "surprising." A lot of them are, but they still perfectly end the story.
It was that neither protagonist nor story cared a lot for what I would have cared for, which was Madame Chauchat, of course. I mean I was lonely and felt no one would ever love me and all that crap and maybe really no one would ever have loved me if Hans Castorp hadn’t shown me that you can also just not care about it – while not getting the woman, that is.
Lots of characters do not care *while getting the woman* (in Murakami, Kundera, Bolaño there is an unending supply of these types), lots of them do not get the woman but it is very tragic to them (the usual tragic love story, with Young Werther as its prototype), and of course some simply do not have anything to do with women.
But I don’t think I know another character like Castorp who neither cares a whole lot – about life in general, too – nor is an aggressive nihilist.
Probably a lot of real people are like that. But in books, people are always so heroic in everything they do. In their flaws and failures they are as grandiose as in their victories or their modesty. I tend to feel that I’m not worth anything if I’m not heroic like that; if my disappointments and defeats and disabilities in life are boring, maybe ridiculous, but nothing much to speak of, same as my successes, which are ultimately nothing compared to those of more talented people. So Hans Castorp showed me that you can also be nobody much, not even find fulfilled love, then go off to die, and all this without being especially sad or despairing about it.

Please stop with these subtle intellectual insults, I’m otherwise quite enjoying this conversation.

[Anonymous No.11166950]

>>11166909
Hans fucked her though

[Anonymous No.11167007]

>>11166950
Yes, he probably did. I think I did not understand that at first, because their entire preceding conversation is in French and I realized there was a translation in the addendum only after finishing the whole book.
But in any case, a single night didn’t seem decisive in this case, considering they later did not get very close anymore, even though Hans had hoped for that when she came back.

[Anonymous No.11167035]

The Old Man and the Sea

[Anonymous No.11167062]

>>11166597
Thus Spoke Zarathustra - Nietzsche
Tales of Horror and Mystery - Edgar Allan Poe
Left and Right - Norberto Bobbio
Loveless series - Yun Kouga
Startship Troopers - Heinlein
Flowers of Evil - Baudelaire
(Honorable mension) O Caminho do Poço das Lágrimas - André Vianco (I read it like, 7 times when I was young)

I read many books, but I think those are the major six. If I need to pick just one... Well, it's kinda hard, but I would say that Poe is my go to. Poe was the dude that until this day is the writer I look up to, is the one I aspire to become. I don't want my wife to die and don't like alcohool, so I am kinda of already in a bad spot to be like him (tho my finances are awfull lately, just like him)., but still, when I write, I often think on the man, and often question myself what could I write that would be as great as his writting.

[Anonymous No.11167086]

>>11166597
>Siddhartha
First book I read after college (no lit education). Got me through a dark period, introduced me to literature, introduced me to philosophy overall (was clueless before, reading self help books). I think about lessons learned fro, this almost every day since reading it.

>A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Made me want to be a writer/artist. I was always a good writer at school. First time i paid attention to prose more than plot too.

>Ulysses
Blew my mind as to what literature could be. I read it closely with analyses fairly early in my reading career and it made me jaded to almost all other writing.

>The Brothers Karamazov
Made me consider the existence of a higher power again

>War of Art by Pressfield

>Nicomachean Ethics
First real philosophy I read other than Aurelius and Seneca. I think about it every day since reading it.

>>11167062
Are you the guy from that 3x3 thread? Good to see you again

[Anonymous No.11167089]

>>11167086
Siddhartha is a favorite of mine as well, and had a similar sort of influence on me during my early adulthood. I'm actually currently reading Steppenwolf, have you read that before?

[Anonymous No.11167104]

>>11167086
>Are you the guy from that 3x3 thread? Good to see you again
Yes, it's me. Nice to see you guys still kicking and sharing stuff. I read Siddhartha this year, from the uni library. I only read because I say /lit/ talking about it all the time, and it was amazing. In the end, all the journey felt like it was worth it, I realy enjoyed it.
It kinda of reminded me of the fact I need to take a closer look at hinduism and indian history. I am very uneducated on these topics.

[Anonymous No.11167105]

>>11166597
I wouldn't say that any one book has changed my life, though they've all contributed to building the person that I am now, in the same way that not one healthy meal that builds a persons health, but many over a long period of time. If I had to name one book though, I'd probably go with Montaigne's Essays.

[Anonymous No.11167114]

>>11166597
I wouldn't say that any one book has changed my life, though they've all contributed to building the person that I am now, in the same way that not one healthy meal builds a persons health, but many over a long period of time. If I had to name one book though, I'd probably go with Montaigne's Essays.

[Anonymous No.11167119]

The communist manifesto

[Anonymous No.11167124]

>>11166597
12 rules for life and Maps of meaning by Jordan Peterson

[Anonymous No.11167134]

Vanity Fair
It might be satirical, but the character types are so on point and 100% relevant to any time period. It made me feel connected to other humans of the past in a way I never tought possible.

[Anonymous No.11167143]

>>11166597
UnIronically the bible

[Anonymous No.11167151]

>>11167143
King James's Bible?
Great learning tools for a beginning writer.

[Anonymous No.11167152]

>>11167119
it's actually not the ideas that changed me - it was just the first book i read that had some philosophical integrity, in the sense that when i read it i learned to read and understand fairly complicated concepts for that time.

[Anonymous No.11167177]

>>11167152
It's time to go deeper my friend. Summa Theologica is the way to go.
Catholic, yes, but classic and deep nonetheless

[Anonymous No.11167260]

>Meditations, Letters to Lucilius, Enchiridion and other stoic works.
Taught me how to embrace life despite the hardships that had me on the ropes then.

>Musashi
Same as above, but in a captivating story that can be read again and again.

>Rape of Nanking, Gates of Fire, Machete Season
Reminds me that I have a strong moral code and that I should stick with it, even when everyone else does otherwise.

>Prometheus Rising
>ideology

Just some off the top of my head, pretty normie books all in all. Obviously there is some wisdom in almost every book. Sometimes you just might not be in a position to grasp it fully or it just doesn't resonate with you for some reason. No matter. Glad there are always new ones to read.

[Anonymous No.11167767]

>Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Made me feel strength in being somewhat of an outsider, value personal power, and lose all ideas of there being a clear way in life. Littered with redpills.

>Anna Karenin + War and Peace
Sharp observations and criticisms of society, how people are motivated by pride and trivial things, how minds are multiplicitous, in WP he shows how all the young characters transition into society. His unromantic approach is infectuous and he makes you feel some compassion for most characters

>James Joyce
Revolutionized writing with each book. Taking cracks at Finnegans Wake each day. Wrote about “spiritual” topics like change and rebirth in a very real way. The universal manifesting itself in the particular has changed my everyday life quite a bit since I began reading him 3 years or so ago

[Anonymous No.11167790]

>>11166597

[Anonymous No.11168321]

>>11166597
extremely short version:

>Hegel - PoS / (Kierkegaard)
esp. the concept of the Self and the absolute and their relation to each other, also dialectics
>Novalis - Aphorisms
more mystical insights into the absolute
>Nietzsche - Birth of Tragedy
esp. the dionysian vs the apollonian
>Rilke - Book of Hours
deeper understanding of God/the absolute
>Mann - reflections of an apolitical man
red pill/politics are a spook/democracy and politization as the enemy of art

other ones I'd count in a similar vein; Meister Eckhart sermons, the bible in general, works of cg jung

[Anonymous No.11168353]

>Aurelius - Meditations
Useful advice for a anxious, shy person like myself. Made me more courageous and less vain.
>Colin Wilson - The Outside
Saw some anon mention it here and decided to read it. The first thing I read that really spelled out all my problems in a precise, complete way. Made me interested in the artists themselves, not just their art.
>Kerouac - On The Road
Being a hedonistic drifter isn't enough to make you happy
>Melville - Moby Dick
Didn't really change my life so much, but I read it during my first year of uni when I was incredibly lonely, lost, and scared. It was what got me through the first few months.

[Anonymous No.11168403]

>>11166597

[Anonymous No.11168412]

>>11168321
Nietzsche's conception of the apollonian and dyonisian was off the mark. I'd post a Colli aphorism but my phone doesn't let me copypaste from pdfs

[Anonymous No.11168413]

>Author
David Foster Wallace

>Book
The Pale King

>Lesson
That nihilism and anti-social ideals can never truly fulfill you, nor can attention or fame, and that the true heroes of any well-functioning society aren't those who jostle for the limelight but those instead who perform some obscure boring function whose impact is miniscule yet necessary on a larger scale. That boredom is not an enemy to contend with but a necessary aspect of modern life which must be embraced and overcome for anything at all to have meaning (rather than distraction value).

__________

>Author
Fernando Pessoa

>Book
Book of Disquiet

>Lesson
That great fiction needn't include some elaborate plot full of intrigue, chapter-bait, murders or extreme expressions of emotion. To calmly, dispassionately articulate the most mundane aspects of one's interior life, being willing to reveal one's most boring yet intense fears and sources of melancholy, to forego any appeals to emotion nor to request consistent attention, is what Pessoa manages to do here. The best greentext I've ever read.

__________

>Author
Michel Houellebecq

>Book
Whatever / Extension of the Domain of the Struggle

>Lesson
A very short book (30k words) has the potential to do far more than its length suggests. (This has nothing to do with the size of my penis).

__________

[Anonymous No.11168434]

Based Hayek or A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles by Thomas Sowell

[Anonymous No.11168444]

reading the book of discomfy made me feel more lucid

[Anonymous No.11168455]

Fountainhead

[Anonymous No.11168462]

>>11167089
Siddhartha was the first and only Hesse I've read so far but I've been meaning to read it. Especially because I'm getting into Kierkegaard and existentialism overall now.

[Anonymous No.11168498]

>>11167177
Wouldn’t it make sense to read some Augustine before jumping to Aquinas?

[Anonymous No.11168510]

>>11167134
Rarely see this one mentioned

[Anonymous No.11168602]

Meditations

my dad gave it to me when i was like 16

[Anonymous No.11169190]

Thus Spake Zarathustra, unironically.

[Anonymous No.11169206]

>>11166597
Brothers Karamazov, especially the chapter where Zosimas life is recounted and he gives his thoughts on various things. I read the whole thing in a religious ecstasy, blew my mind.

[Anonymous No.11169645]

My diary desu.

[Anonymous No.11169825]

In the order I read them
>Crime and Punishment
>Fear and Trembling
>Nicomachean Ethics
>Meditations on First Philosophy
>Monadology
>Siddhartha (pls no bully)
>Man's Search for Meaning
>Locke's Second Treatise on Government
>Critique of Pure Reason
>Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations

[Anonymous No.11169835]

>>11166597
The Pilgrims Progress
Colder Than Hell

[Anonymous No.11170348]

>>11168498
No,just read some evo psych by some authors with integrity and skip all this theological Bullshit ,for your own good.

[Anonymous No.11170399]

>The Stranger by Albert Camus
>Moby Dick by Herman Melville
>Stoner and Butcher's Crossing by John Williams

[Anonymous No.11170407]

12 rules for life

[Anonymous No.11170574]

>>11169825
At what age did you read Crime and Punishment? At what age did you read Philosphical Investigations?

[Anonymous No.11170618]

>not a single reference to Mein Kampf
You disappoint me 4chan

[Anonymous No.11170639]

Revolt against the modern world

[Anonymous No.11170650]

>>11170618
HEIL HITLER!

[Anonymous No.11170655]

>>11166597
Existentialism is a Humanism

[Anonymous No.11170684]

>>11166597
Ready Player One was the first book that made me appreciate fine prose, and was my first step to becoming a real intellectual.

[Anonymous No.11170687]

>>11170618
Hitler was actually an attractive man

[Anonymous No.11170911]

>>11166597
Introduced me to gnosticism and helped me bend down my rigid materialistic worldview. Not that I'm gnostic now, or have a definite belief in anything, but PKD gave me back the hope in some transcendental good out there.

[Anonymous No.11171065]

>On the Road by Jack Kerouac.
It's what got me into traveling/backpacking/hitchhiking. Turned my summers from virgin to chad.
>East of Eden by Steinbeck
Was during my transitive phase from "waahh the world is overpopulated I'm never having kids" to "you know what I could be a good father, maybe, if I try" I'm still 21 and too young to know but it's something I want and think about a lot.
>Reading Sartre
He's not my favorite philosopher, but he used to be. I really like what he has to say about the importance and signalling within every action, and it ironically affirmed my somewhat religious obsession with doing good in the world.
>Reading Hegel
I cannot explain this one very well as I've only just begun to read him but my perspective is being completely torn apart, in, I think, a good way.

[Anonymous No.11171886]

helped me make sense of myself and the world
good job based schoppy

[Anonymous No.11171960]

>>11170399
I believe I would add Homer's Odyssey too to this list now that I have had time to reflect for a few hours. Not the Illiad though, it's inherently shallow compared to Odyssey.

[Anonymous No.11172010]

Think and grow rich.

[Anonymous No.11172017]

>>11172010
This and LAW OF SUCCESS.
Both have VITAL information concerning SEX TRANSMUTATION.

[Anonymous No.11172030]

>>11171065
Just don't have more than one kid, or if nothing else not more than two. You'll still be doing your part to end humanity :^)

[Anonymous No.11172131]

>>11170687
How do you think he was so effective? Women loved him. Watch any footage of crowds and him. He was loved like no other man has ever been loved.

[Anonymous No.11172191]

>>11172131
most of them looked like shit on this pic

[Anonymous No.11172225]

>>11167086
>War of Art by Pressfield

What was good about this? I'm interested but skeptical of "self help" style books.

[Anonymous No.11172234]

>>11167119
>Dude just give up your property, your wife, and your individually. It's not like you had those under bourgeois capitalism anyway.

[Anonymous No.11172252]

>>11166597
It's sad that many people limit themselves to the musical, or worse the godawful film adaptation of the musical

[Anonymous No.11172254]

>>11172234
>it's another anon-is-willfully-ignorant-of-communism post

[Anonymous No.11172258]

>>11172131
the chad fuhrer

[Anonymous No.11172306]

>The Picture of Dorian Gray

Allowed me to articulate my cynical feelings about the world and sold me on aestheticism
>A Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime

Taught me that the best works of fiction are ones that elicit strong emotional responses.

[Anonymous No.11172339]

>>11172306
>best works of fiction are ones that elicit strong emotional responses
and which works would those be for you?

[Anonymous No.11172367]

>>11172339
I actually like flowery prose and melodrama. I struggle to get through most things that are written in a dry way— Which is an apt description for a lot of works since there’s an unjust stigma against the melodramatic and romantic.

[Anonymous No.11172379]

"Greek Zorba" taught me to enjoy life and don't think too much about anything as long as I am living my life simple and right.

[Anonymous No.11172381]

>>11166684
getting used to not getting used to things

[Anonymous No.11172382]

>>11172379
I meant "Zorba the Greek", that's the proper translation of the title

[Anonymous No.11172397]

>>11166950
how much evidence is there for that?

[Anonymous No.11172403]

>>11166597
Hory Biberu Desu

[Anonymous No.11172430]

>>11167151
edgy af

[Anonymous No.11172439]

>The Kite Runner
Cousin gave me as a gift a few years ago. One of my favorite books ever since.

[Anonymous No.11172458]

[Anonymous No.11172470]

>>11168413
Thanks kinder anon. I'll read those 3. Boredom and distraction are things i am struggling with at this moment.

[Anonymous No.11172503]

>>11166814
Meme?

[Anonymous No.11172521]

The Stranger desu senpai

[Anonymous No.11172529]

>>11172458
>tfw you will never get to shake hands with the king jew

[Anonymous No.11172542]

Infinite Jest made me more anxious

[Anonymous No.11172692]

Culture of Critique by Kevin MacDonald.

[Anonymous No.11172938]

>>11172254
>"In this sense, the theory of communists can be summed up in a single sentence: Abolition of private property."

>"You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society,
private property is already done away with for nine
-tenths of the population; its existence for the
few is solely due to its non-existence in the
hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us,
therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose
existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society. In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend."

>"On what foundation is the present family, the
bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private
gain. In its completely developed form, this family exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this
state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of the family among the proletarians,
and in public prostitution. The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.

>"Bourgeois marriage is, in reality, a system of wives in common and thus, at the most, what the
Communists might possibly be reproached with is that they desire to introduce, in substitution for
a hypocritically concealed, an openly legalized community of women. For the rest, it is self-evident that the abolition of the present system of production must bring with it the abolition of the community of women springing from that system, i.e., of prostitution both public and private."

All from the manifesto. Get fucked commie.

[Anonymous No.11173009]

>>11167062
The Forever War made me realize that Starship Troopers was a bad book.

[Anonymous No.11173039]

Quintuples by Luis Rafael Sanchez was the first book in Spanish I genuinely enjoyed. I'm not much of a reader in Spanish or English, but this book showed me that there are actual things of worth to be found in my native tongue. Plus, it was through the motivation to keep reading the book that I learned how to effectively use a dictionary to read, rather than ignoring the words I didn't know.

[Anonymous No.11173063]

>>11172938
>You don't know what private property means.
>You don't know what the "bourgeois family" means.
>You're objecting to ending the "public and private prostitution" of women.
NEXT.

[Anonymous No.11173262]

>>11166748
Im 4 chapters in and its amazing. Had to put it on hold until I read cyrano.

[Anonymous No.11173298]

>>11173063
>you cant green text

[Anonymous No.11173536]

>>11167104
>Siddhartha
which version is the best bros?