/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.11831490]

How old were you when you started reading literature that this board would approve of?
How old were you when you read your first 'difficult' book?

[Anonymous No.11831506]

16, depression got me into Schopenhauer, ironically made me happy though

[Anonymous No.11831639]

>>11831490
Read Anna Karenina at 14, liked it but didn't really absorb most of it. Until about 16 though I almost exclusively read detective thrillers with the occasional classic thrown in. Got really into literature at 17.

[Anonymous No.11831650]

>>11831490
I was 15 when I read Blood Meridian, looking back on it I probably shouldn’t have started with such a gruesome book. Now I’m really into literature that has dark/depressing themes and I think that may have influenced it.

[Anonymous No.11831653]

>>11831506
Hey Elon Musk

[Anonymous No.11831668]

>>11831490
I first read Paradise Lost when I was 15, but most of it was lost on me because it was a translation.
I kept reading other series, such as Wheel of Time after that. However, I peeked into Lovecraft and Poe when I became 17, but I wouldn't get seriously into literature until I met a good friend who happened to browse /lit/, when I was 19.

[Anonymous No.11831678]

>>11831490
After high school. I spent high school being a stoned Chad who worked out and went to the clubs on the weekend with my fake ID. I had a sort of existential crisis at the end of highschool, and this sent me diving headlong into literature and philosophy. Since then I’ve hardly come up for air.

[Anonymous No.11831681]

I was reading Dostoevsky and Jung by the time I was 17. I finished The World as Will and Representation by 18. I was into a lot of bogus stuff as a teen though, heavy into mysticism and other claptrap. I didn't straighten out until about 20.

[Anonymous No.11831687]

I read The Bell Jar when I was 15

[Anonymous No.11831699]

I was 16 when finished the Divine Comedy and I think that book got me into ¨ literature that this board would approve of¨

[Anonymous No.11831710]

I read Stoner when I was 17. Dostoevsky and Camus came after.

[Anonymous No.11831721]

>>11831490
I read tons of Harry Potter and narnia and shit up till highschool, but it wasn’t till my mid twenties that I started getting into “real” literature like Bradbury, KVJ, Dawkins etc

[Anonymous No.11831732]

I was really obsessed with 1984 and Brave New World when I was twelve, but I started kicking off and reading "serious" fiction after reading Catcher in the Rye (embarrassing) when I was 15.

[Anonymous No.11831916]

I’d read people like Steinbeck, Salinger and Keruoac when I was in high school. Think I read Crying of Lot 49 when I was a junior and enjoyed it but most of it probably went over my head.

[Anonymous No.11831923]

31 GR

[Anonymous No.11831934]

is it /lit/?

[Anonymous No.11831947]

>>11831934
No, but Luke the Bellmaker is.

[Anonymous No.11831950]

not sure i was like 15 or 16 when i read artaud's heliogabale

[Anonymous No.11832071]

18, for me it was The Stranger.

[Anonymous No.11832358]

>>11831490
I tried reading Ulysses when I was 12. I read up to Calypso and then quit

[Anonymous No.11832456]

Jude the Obscure at 15.

[Anonymous No.11832561]

>>11831490
looks like Jon Maus

[Anonymous No.11832710]

Science-fiction was my gateway drug at around age 14 or 15 - shit like Philip K. Dick, Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, William Gibson, etc. Obviously none of that is especially high-brow, but it was more complexly written, and dealt with more complex themes than I was used to up to that point.

From there, I leap-frogged into 'serious' literature at about age 16, which is about when I started going on /lit/ - about 6 years ago now, jesus.

[Anonymous No.11832733]

>>11831490
I rad Infinite Jest when I was 15 so I guess around that time

[Anonymous No.11832741]

13, The Stranger and all Voltaire... I don't remember wich one was first.

[Anonymous No.11832745]

>>11832733
>rad
*read....fuck

[Anonymous No.11832747]

>>11831490
I was goaded into reading entry-level "difficult" books since i was 15 or so, and was familiar with a variety of names and titles and such, but it wasn't until I was 19 and had dropped out of engineering school and was struggling with a sense of self-identity that i really understood anything. I was re-reading comic books to pass the time and saw a reference to Gabriel Garcia Marquez of all places in a DC superhero comic, tracked down the book in question out of guilt that i hadn't read anything on my own in over two years. Cien años de soledad made a huge impact on me at that point in time and introduced me to literature as more than just a method for introducing arguments/philosophies to the reader. Since then i've been constantly in the process of enjoying books and literature whenever my schedule permits. I'm jealous of the /lit/ posters here who can study or write in a university setting or who are producing literature with the intention of releasing it. hope i can get there someday.

>>11831934
more like it's /ck/, goddamn the feasts in these books always stood out to me

>>11832710
PKD, Clark, Ellison, Heinlen, etc were big to me too. I still binge that shit on the side while taking breaks from other books

[Anonymous No.11832799]

moomins at 9
c&p at 17

[Anonymous No.11832910]

>daily cia intelligence collection thread
I've read allot of Pushkin and Tolstoy as a kid (<10) and later hopped on Dostoyevsky's literature.
Then resumed reading at 15, with some of Kant and Spinoza
Now I mainly read philosophy

[Anonymous No.11833156]

>>11832910
I read all of western philosophy at age 12 and concluded it with Spengler at 13, now I exclusively read tomboy doujinshi

[Anonymous No.11833202]

26 feels batman. So much effort to catch up.

[Anonymous No.11833232]

22 maybe? I took a lib Ed and read My Ántonia. After that I went back to reading 1984, A Clockwork Orange, Cat's Cradle, Snow Crash. Plan on reading Lolita.

Everyone here says, "Oh I read this at 5 but it went over my head." I'm an engineer so I feel like even now classics go over my head. Really enjoyed My Ántonia because maybe and fields while I was stuck in a city finishing school. But like other stuff, what am I supposed to "get"?

[Anonymous No.11833243]

>>11832071
This. I was recommended it here though. Read Dorian Gray and No Longer Human and then branched out

[Anonymous No.11833303]

Experienced a massive personality shift at age 19 and took a deep dive into reading starting with modern classics and fantasy. Then I found that I enjoyed /lit/-type books, and I've never read more than I did at that point in my life. I had all the time in the world (i had no life outside of going to class) so I would sit in my apartment huddled over some classic, enraptured, thinking that literature would be the thing that saved me. I'm 22 now and I still read, but not with anywhere near the same kind of zest, sadly.

[Anonymous No.11833350]

>>11833156
Who hurt you ?

[Anonymous No.11833352]

>>11833350
The stranger side of a kiss of a close heart

[Anonymous No.11833413]

>>11833352
Are you quoting YA

[Anonymous No.11833638]

>>11831490
16, probably when my friend loaned me Kafka's Trial.

[Anonymous No.11833643]

>>11832561
I think it's Ian Curtis

[Anonymous No.11833669]

>>11831653
No, he is a pussy who could not handel schopenhaur and turned to scifi.

[Anonymous No.11834848]

>>11831490
16, started reading The Greeks and the Western canon.

8, finished the Lord of The Rings trilogy in 6 months. That was the first time in my life I could find 2-3 words on a page and think "huh, I don't exactly know what that means".

[Anonymous No.11834858]

14 I had to do a book report and my dad gave me Broom of the System

[Anonymous No.11834889]

>>11834858
>tfw dad reads DFW

[Anonymous No.11834898]

16 after I've read A Canticle for Leibowitz, which changed my perception of information forever.

[Anonymous No.11834903]

>>11831506
I can agree to this, I both liked Schopenhauer and it weirdly made me happy reading him, when not much else did

[Anonymous No.11834931]

I read the Bible at 8 and studied books like Heart of Darkness, Frankenstein and The Stranger in high school along with the standard Shakespeare stuff. I only started really reading at 23.

[Anonymous No.11834932]

>>11831490
Started late. Read some random books and series at a younger age, like Harry Potter and stuff. Didn't start reading "proper" literature before the age of 20, when I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, but suddenly thought "why don't I start reading some real shit".
First 'difficult' book must have been Ulysses, which I read at 22 I think

[Anonymous No.11834939]

17/18. Started reading because i was NEET and needed something to fill my time, mostly fantasy at first and then found /lit/ in like 2012 and the rest is history

[Anonymous No.11834942]

Friend recommended botns to me at 16, went on /lit/ for discussion. Within a month was reading Lolita and Kierkegaard (no relation).

[Anonymous No.11834947]

Read Call of Cthulhu and other Stories when I was 10 because autism. 17 I decided to get back into reading again.

[Anonymous No.11834953]

>>11831490
i read the sorrows of young werther at 13
that counts, right?

[Anonymous No.11834954]

Does this count? read it at 17 and it's still one of my favorite books. After that i read do androids dream of electric sheep and that was great too.

[Anonymous No.11835030]

>>11831490
17, started with thus spake Zarathustra (of course). Understood it well as I had basically youtubed myself into nietzsche for hours and hours. Was at a really rough point in my life, and immaturely considering myself to be das ubermensch got me through it

[Anonymous No.11835057]

8. Read Dumas, Hugo... (im french)

Read a fuckton until I turned 12 then went back to reading around 18/19

[Anonymous No.11835063]

>>11831490
I was reading on my own at 3 years old. My parents fostered my natural talent and I was reading highschool tier books like Siddhartha, catcher in the rye, etc when I was 8-9 years old. By the time I was 14 I was more well read than 90% of my teachers. And it wasn't just a checklist of classics I read, but I would occasionally obsess about a certain author and read their biographies, then I would read everything in the bibliography of the biography and so on. So for certain books/authors I had such a depth of knowledge that I would often "hog" class time "discussing" a book with a teacher. In reality I was the one giving a lecture. I would literally get 99% in my English classes. Did wonders for my average, and I would often write my classmates assignments for them as well for a fee. I did get caught, and nearly expelled once they discovered how "prolific" I was, but ultimately they couldn't stomach punishing me severely because they admired me.

I only started to dig into philosophy when I was 16-17. I majored in French literature in university. I'm only 22 but my interest in fiction has been seriously diminished to the point where I only read it to facilitate language acquisition, i.e. I only read foreign fiction (mostly French, working on German). In English I read mostly history, and biographies of people I consider exceptional.

Basically that's all to say I was /lit/ from a young age, and outgrew literature before most of you even started.

[Anonymous No.11835481]

>>11831506
Thats exactly what i did

[Anonymous No.11835595]

>>11835063
BASED savant

[Anonymous No.11835810]

18 when I started consciously pursuing "literary fiction"

[Anonymous No.11835812]

>>11831490
probably 15 or 16

[Anonymous No.11835816]

>>11831490
Probably 16 or 17. That's when I developed an interest in Krasznahorkai.

[Anonymous No.11835837]

I had stopped reading for a while until I read Dubliners in one sitting, at 12 or 13, after which I fell off the wagon. The earliest /lit/core was Gravity's Rainbow around 14 or 15, then again at 17, and again at 19, understanding a bit more each time. 17 was probably my most formative year, when I began studying Milton in earnest. The only comparable head-over-heels moment I've had with an author was my first Henry James, starting at 20 and continuing until now, though he's not a frequent object of discussion around here.

[Anonymous No.11835888]

>>11831490
Around age 10 I started reading things like Lord of the Flies that I would find on my parents' bookshelf, a book like that was childish enough to intrigue me but also had the 'something more' that I had started to want as I got tired of things like Lord of the Rings. I started an independent inquiry into philosophy when I was 14, mostly on the internet though I would buy books as they seemed relevant.

The first 'difficult' book I read was Critique of Pure Reason when I was 15. It took me 6 years to properly understand that book. In the end it was a waste of time because Kant is wrong and I only understood the book by reading huge quantities of other things that elucidated what Kant was doing. Almost all of western philosophy is deeply retarded

We have ruined our education system, in a proper system based on Greek, Latin, mathematics and metaphyiscs, I wouldnt have had to undergo all this confusion and autodidact memery, I would have been given the proper framework. Our schooling system is a joke

[Anonymous No.11835891]

>>11833669
witt literally said we are all gamers. he was a true old school gamer

[Anonymous No.11836289]

16 when I read the book of the disquiet in Portuguese (my mother tongue)
Put me in a big depression for over 1 year, then I read Meme Aurelius medications and started to actually make a lot of improvements in my life

[Anonymous No.11836333]

I was 19 when I picked up the Illiad. Before that I was only into sci-fi / fantasy and nonfiction. I've had an appreciation for the encyclopedia since childhood however, my first memories of reading were dictionaries and Guinness Book of WRs in kindergarten

[Anonymous No.11836449]

>>11835063
do you ever feel like all that reading was a waste? how has all that knowledge improved your life? What do you do for work?

It almost seems like once you go beyond the basics you're in realm of your own. must be lonely

[Anonymous No.11836458]

I'm 15 (yeah yeah muh underage I get it, but I've been regularly browsing this shithole since I was 13)

1984 when I was 14

First "difficult" book would be French and English Philosophers from the Harvard Classics Collection that was gifted to me by a Harvard alumni I got the chance to speak with about a year ago who shipped it to me a week after meeting me. I still have trouble understanding some parts of that book but it was worth the mental anguish.

[Anonymous No.11836463]

>>11836289
wtf, book of disquiet made me embrace the world

[Anonymous No.11836465]

Ulysses at 12 and understood none of the allusions and half of the actual story. Not my choice, I used to pick up books my mother bought and read them before her

[Anonymous No.11836468]

>>11831490
At 15, I had to read A Clockwork Orange and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. That teacher recommended a few more books to me, including The Stranger and Demian. Within the next few years I came across The Outsider by Colin Wilson and that really got me started with Dostoevsky and Nitchee (and more Hesse and Camus)

[Anonymous No.11836731]

>>11831490
Around 10. I have read through some old ass soviet book about a russian guy who gets caught by bandits in the caucasian wars of the 19th century. Cant remember much of it tho.

[Anonymous No.11836871]

>>11835063
I get more pussy than you

[Anonymous No.11837224]

>reading literature that this board would approve of
Twenty-one years old and still don't.

[Anonymous No.11837552]

>>11835063
Exquisite b8

[Anonymous No.11837875]

>>11836871
Doubtful. French lit classes are 95% female. He was probably drowning in pussy. And if he wasn't he probably would have lied about it. Yet he never mentions it at all... A sure sign that he did infact get plenty of pussy

[Anonymous No.11839298]

>>11831490
I'm 23, and I'm still reading literary capeshit like the Wheel of Time.

[Anonymous No.11839417]

>>11831490

I read Animal Farm, Brave New World and 1984 when I was 10, and then The Road when I was 12. I don't think I read anything else considered even basic lit tier until my late teens after that.

[Anonymous No.11839433]

>>11831490
15, pic related. Still the best book I've ever read.