/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.1177025]

WAIT LIT! DON'T RAGE! LET ME EXPLAIN! I feel like nobody on this board reads to enjoy the story, to find themselves in the shoes of the protagonist. It seems like you all are the type of people to pretentiously claim that no book is a good book unless it is a book that only 2 people have read ever and 1 of them is the author. Now, I put HP up because it is my first foray into the "Holy shitballs! Books are the tits!" experience. People always say "HP was a great idea, but another author could have done it better." But that's like saying that the book is better than the movie. It presumes that you can even make a comparison on an objective scale. But no matter what, they are ADAPTATIONS of a universe, and they each bring their own thing to the table. So I'm just wondering, I guess, what is the book out there that you would defend in a fistfight when someone said that it was a P.O.S.? Pic related, it's mine. Go fuck yourselves. Also, inb4 troll.

tl;dr People hate HP and other books because author is mediocre. What book do you like that others say is shit?

[Anonymous No.1177029]

You are silly and childish but not because you like Harry Potter

[Anonymous No.1177046]

Books only two people have read? You piece of shit.

How many people have read Hamlet on this board?

[Anonymous No.1177053]

>>1177046
everyone who went through high school

[Anonymous No.1177062]

>>1177046

me, and I liked the fucking story.

[Anonymous No.1177067]

Honestly, I'd fight to defend Finnegans Wake. Seriously.

[Sigmund Freud !CfaefuuTtY No.1177071]

How old were you when your mother stopped breastfeeding you, OP?

[Anonymous No.1177081]

>>1177025
>Implying I wouldn't defend its honor more eruditely (which, apparently, is a real word).

There are tons of people on this board, both humble and douchey, who would defend to the death the honor of novels deemed by a good portion of the literary mainstream to be junk fiction. Harry Potter (at least the early books) would be one. Some others would be Dune, Neuromancer, Ender's Game, the Dark Tower series, and the novels of Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman.
/Lit/ has always had its twinges of real arrogance and arbitrary value, but it seems to me that the wars over literary value have come somewhat recently, either in the form of trolls, or as a reactionary result of trolls.

[Anonymous No.1177082]

>>1177025

This whole "/lit/ are a bunch of elitists" thing has got to stop. No one gives a fuck - the vast majority of us have read broadly across the whole faux, marketing-led divide of speculative and more "literary" works (and I use that term with much reservation).

It's just the trolls stand out more. And you, and a lot of people like you, are just overreacting so much that in a lot of ways it's more annoying than they're pretend pretentiousness is.

As long as you don't limit yourself to things like Harry Potter and maybe try to read more broadly and not go "oh hurr durr Joyce is pretentious I won't read him so I can feel superior to you elitists" - you're fine. Otherwise you're a colossal faggot and I hate you for being such a narrow-minded fuck.

[Anonymous No.1177085]

>>1177082

their pretend pretentiousness*. Fucking homophones.

[Tim No.1177188]

On one hand, maybe something like The Quiet American or The Stranger.

On the other, Artemis Fowl, who, by the way, can kick Harry's pathetic ass.

[HEED No.1177201]

goddamn it, why do all you /lit/ intellectuals spend your time on 4chan instead of improving society, I feel like my brain is getting a workout just trying to comprehend these posts...

this is the book I love right now, and I will defend it to the end of the earth
or until all of you are dead
so it goes

[Anonymous No.1177210]

>Sorcerer's Stone
OP, you just reminded me of yet another of many reasons it sucks to be American.

[Anonymous No.1177211]

It only took me 6 Chuck Palahniuk books to grow weary of them, and would still recommend them to friends. DESPITE the hate internet folk tend to spew at the guy's work.

[Anonymous No.1177212]

>>1177201
what if you die before us. Ah didn't think of that.

So it goes.

[Anonymous No.1177216]

>>1177210
Americafag here, I don't know why they thought it would be easier for us to recognize "sorcerer's" than "philosopher's stone". It's not like they didn't explain what it was and what it did in the book.

[Anonymous No.1177244]

>>1177216
That wasn't done because they thought Americans were stupid, it was done because the series was already a hit in the UK but they wanted the title to make it more obvious that it was about MAGIC.

As opposed to, say, when they changed the title of "The Madness of George III" to "The Madness of King George" because they thought Americans were too stupid not to realize that it wasn't a sequel to something they never heard of.

[Anonymous No.1177255]

>I feel like nobody on this board reads to enjoy the story

I read to enjoy the story. I didn't enjoy Harry Potter because it was poorly written drivel. It takes more than "holy shitballs they're playing football on flying broomsticks!" for me to enjoy a story.

[Anonymous No.1177258]

As a counterpoint to OP, I present Infinite Jest. It's the kind of book that, when it gets discussed on /lit/ and in other places, tends to attract comments in the vein of "you only pretend to like that to look smart". This really irks me, because I really do think that it's one of the best books I've ever read. I don't say this on the basis of some claimed objective literary merit, but because I genuinely enjoyed reading it. It bothers me that these people don't see the hypocrisy in calling me pretentious for my taste in literature while at the same time telling me that their taste somehow determines the quality of a book. When people make comments of that sort on /lit/ I generally don't respond, but if those motherfuckers were to say that to my face and not online then they would subsequently see what happened.

[Anonymous No.1177262]

Books that place you in the shoes of the characters aren't bad because they're popular. They're bad because they're masturbatory.

Which is fine for getting off. But not for literature.

[Anonymous No.1177334]

All of Kafka's fiction. Every last bit of it, including Amerika.

[Anonymous No.1177345]

>>1177258

I feel the same way about the same book. I've read everything Wallace every wrote, Infinite Jest like four times, he's my friggin hero. Yet I still get people saying "doh ho ho IJ is just the book hipsters carry to look smart".

The man was a GENIUS. The end.

[Anonymous No.1177349]

Authors don't read their own shit, man.

[Anonymous No.1177650]

ok, so, about those of us who have actually read some of the books, and not found it to our liking? Am I allowed to critique it then? I read the first book when it came out, and didn't much care for it; had to read 2 other of the HP books for a class, and while they did get better, I would never read them again. I guess I'm glad it got people reading, but I felt removed from the story, not integrated into it


that being said, I read plenty of works others think are crap and some which I know have very crappy elemts to them; I can't stop reading the Laurell K. Hamilton's crap, I've read and enjoyed a bunch of Tamora Pierce, I really enjoy the sookie stackhouse novels and can't even talk about them with my best friend who prefers trueblood, and I read Weber's Honor Harrington series which is just the most mary-sue character I've ever read outside fan fiction [ I'd say Pierce's Alanna comes in at a close second]

[Anonymous No.1177652]

Currently reading: Leviathan by Scott Westerfield. Aimed at teenagers? Fuck your shit it is awesome.

[Crimson !CoijTZkBUc No.1177659]

THIS

[Anonymous No.1177665]

The secret history by Dona Tartt.

[Anonymous No.1177669]

wait,/lit/ doesn't like HP?
I am dissapoint

[Anonymous No.1177688]

I wouldn't want to be in Harry Potters shoes, hias life sucks and he acts like adick most of the time.
Not saying I would turn down a letter to hogwarts though.

[Anonymous No.1177710]

Dark Winter by Andy McNab. It's not literature by any means but fuck I bawwed.

[Anonymous No.1177726]

>>1177082
/lit/ might not be a bunch of elitists, but I almost never see any discussion of books that aren't considered "High-brow" or "Literary Classics". Where are the Lord of the Rings threads, the Dresden Files threads, the Threads about Dune, or Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy?

It's all seriousness all the time with the exception of the occasional Ayn Rand troll. I don't get it. Why does /lit/ focus so much on the serious stuff instead of books that are entertaining and fun to read?

[Anonymous No.1177731]

>>1177726
What?
There's threads about all those oyu mentioned, all the time.
Are you not here often or what?

[Anonymous No.1177748]

Harry Potter was a great idea, but in the end the entire war was won on a fucking technicality that hadn't been mentioned in the previous six books.

And Ron and Hermione might just be the two most annoying characters outside of Twilight.

[Anonymous No.1177749]

>>1177731
I must come at the wrong times.

The point I'm trying to make though is that when I do come here the discussions I see aren't about things like reccomending good new sci-fi or mistery novels, or abot the latest best sellers, it's about some serious hard-core literary classic that most people including myself have no real desire to read.

[Anonymous No.1177753]

>>1177749
>that most people including myself have no real desire to read.

Not everyone finds what you find entertaining to be entertaining. Personally I would rather discuss some sci-fi or fantasy, but I also find a lot of "hard-core" classics entertaining.

If anyone here is elitist, it's you. Apparently nobody can be entertained by something outside of your tastes.

[Anonymous No.1177763]

>>1177726
>I almost never see any discussion of books that aren't considered "High-brow" or "Literary Classics
>>1177749
>that most people including myself have no real desire to read

People here are talking about them, so obviously most of us DO have a real desire to read those books.

[Anonymous No.1177786]

>I feel like nobody on this board reads to enjoy the story, to find themselves in the shoes of the protagonist.
>HP as an example

>implying I would want to be in the shoes of an unintelligent, lazy, moralistic, self-righteous asshole

[Anonymous No.1177811]

>>1177753
You're putting words in my mouth. I never said there was anything wrong with liking the serious stuff Discuss whatever you want.

All I'm saying is that /lit/ seems to discuss thing that more casual readers might not like or find to be a bit over their heads.

>>1177763

/lit/ is not a large enough community to be a representative sample of the reading public as a whole. Yes, people here on /lit/ do want to discuss those things, but the average casual reader who doesn't come to /lit/ and probably has never even heard of 4chan would probably want to discuss something like the latest James Patterson novel or something like that.

All I'm saying is that /lit/ sometimes seems a bit too brainy for people who love to read, but are fans of things like best sellers or media tie-in novels.