Need help

[Anonymous No.13780267]

Hi, /lit/.

I don't read that much books and wanted to invest more time now for books. Top 100 books look quite good, but I need help regarding choosing them.

My low IQ may not be enough for all the books, so I would like to avoid hard books for now. Can someone mark 5 easy and 5 hard books in this list? So, I know what I should avoid and what not.

I will eventually read all of them but would like to start with the easiest one. The only books which I have done reading from that list are "No longer human". I liked it.

Thanks.

[Anonymous No.13780306]

>>13780267
I recommend starting with the basics (The Greeks) and high school senior level lit. So stuff like The Iliad, The Stranger, The Republic, The Odyssey, 1984, The Trial, The Catcher in the Rye, Brave New World, Metamorphosis, The Great Gatsby, Of Mice and Men, East of Eden etc.
Harder stuff would be Infinite Jest, Phenomenology of Spirit and so on.
Good luck anon!

[Anonymous No.13780313]

>>13780267
Careful with these lists, some of the books are good but there's a lot of memes that are just a miserable slog to read through.

I'd personally suggest Notes from the underground by Dostoevsky. It's short, accessible and a great book. Also not on the list but Kokoro by Soseki and Naomi by Tanizaki are two novels that I really enjoyed when I first started reading.

[Anonymous No.13780397]

>>13780267
Novels that are quite plot-heavy and keep you wanting to turn the page are the easiest books, while harder books tend to be quite aimless which puts new readers off as they wonder why they find it so hard to keep reading. A good example of this is the way high school students seem to hate The Great Gatsby and find it a slog to read, despite it's incredibly short length. It's also entirely subject to your tastes.

There are a lot of books on there that are pretty standard high school literature like 1984, Brave New World, Slaughterhouse 5, The Catcher in the Rye. Perhaps those are the best to start with, but I'm not sure about that.

Out of that list, the more plot-heavy, easy but long novels I would recommend are The Lord of the Rings and The Count of Monte Cristo. People seem to fall in love with both of those novels, and they make people want to read more books.

I would recommend reading Kafka's The Trial and Mishima's The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea to dip your toe in with two short examples of how unique and interesting literature can be. The Trial is very short, while Sailor is a bit longer but still quite a short novel.

Avoid anything but Joyce or Pynchon, as well as Philosophical texts on that list. I also wouldn't recommend the big Russian authors to start with. Moby Dick will probably bore you. Blood Meridian will most likely be too hard, but absolutely go for other McCarthy novels like The Road which are beginner friendly.

After you've dipped your toe in and you enjoy reading, go for Lolita. It's beautifully written but also entertaining.

Then you have nothing else to do but Start With The Greeks because everything else is inspired by them.

[Anonymous No.13780408]

>>13780306
Don't listen it start with the greeks is important but >>13780267
don't start with that. Invest in something you like !

[Anonymous No.13780412]

>>13780267
From what I've read that's on that list, these are the easiest books:
Stoner
The Stranger
Hamlet
Fictions
1984
Dubliners
Notes from Underground
Catch-22
The Trial
Brave New World
Hunger
Siddhartha
Metamorphosis
The Great Gatsby
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Meditations
The Grapes of Wrath
Madame Bowary
Storm of Steel

[Anonymous No.13780455]

>>13780267
if you don't read much then you should read whatever types of books you actually like.

if someone didn't really watch film, you wouldn't recommend for them to start with the most artistic films out there first.

[Anonymous No.13781190]

Thanks, bros!

[Anonymous No.13781203]

From my personal experience:
Easy:
>Crime and Punishment
>Stoner
>Count of Monte Cristo
>2666
>The Stranger
Hard:
>Ulysses
>Blood Meridian
>Heart of Darkness
>Moby Dick
>Gravity’s Rainbow
Neither easy nor hard:
>Lolita
>Anna Karenina
>War and Peace
>Book of the New Sun
>Hunger
>The Idiot

[Anonymous No.13782058]

>>13780397
Not OP but aside from Fagle's translation, do you recommend anyone else? Thank you in advance!

[Anonymous No.13782068]

>>13782058
I meant for both The Illiad and The Odyssey*

[Anonymous No.13782091]

>>13782058
>>13782068
Don't read Fagles. Read Anthony Verity's version (Oxford). See: >>>13779383

[Anonymous No.13782130]

>>13782058
I actually was the Anon who did the survey for the 2018 chart. "The Odyssey by Fagles" was just a mistake made by the guy who did the chart, it wasn't in the actual responses. Read the version you like the most.

[Anonymous No.13782150]

"Start with the Greeks" is retarded advice. If I were interested in the literature of psychoanalysis I would obviously start with Freud and not Plato. What are you interested in specifically, OP?

[Anonymous No.13782181]

>>13780267
Hesse and Kafka have been easy for me to understand. Some parts of Steppenwolf are quite dense and take some more time to read and understand. I have not read Glass Bead Game.

[Anonymous No.13782230]

>>13780267
>Sakespeare