/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.19837395]

None of my reading during my adult life has added up to anything. I never discuss books with anyone or write about them. I read, finish, forget.

[Anonymous No.19837458]

>>19837395
About half the books I read are working towards where I want my life to go.
I guess it’s to keep me from feeling completely rudderless, but I keep big dreams kindled in me.

[Anonymous No.19837490]

>>19837395
I feel you, brother.
I can’t connect with my fellow human beings either. My life feels meaningless, I just read to pass the time.
All I can tell you is read with purpose.
Focus on what you are really interested in. I tried reading at random and it just confuses you and leaves your thoughts scrambled.
It might be cool to live in this existentialist limbo for the aesthetics but we both know there is only one end wallowing in angst leads to: looking down the barrel of a gun.
There is light at the end of the tunnel, and there is hope yet, but you have to take the first step brother.

[Anonymous No.19837492]

>>19837395
When you read you are having a discussion, every page you are discussing something with the author of the book. He may end up convincing you or not, but you had your discussion and learned something.

[Anonymous No.19837589]

Ok.

[Anonymous No.19838034]

Sounds like you are a clueless person in general. You're not going to succeed reading books with some vague idea of it "adding up" to something.
Like all other pursuits in life, reading should be done with a clearly defined goal in mind. Don't go like the USA into Iraq, with no victory conditions defined. What are you going to accomplish? When do you win?
I read most of the major philosophers over the course of several years with the intent of producing my own "cliff's notes" of philosophy in the form of notes and sketches of my own thoughts that those works spurred. I accomplished that. So I won. I discovered many other benefits in the course of that, but I was only even motivated to do it by having a victory condition in mind.

[Anonymous No.19838592]

Try writing reviews. Even if you're just reading classic or well trodden work you'll develop your analysis more thoroughly, and build skills and voice you can apply to reviews of newer or more obscure work. Reviews are extremely helpful for emerging authors too, so that's a way to give back to the community or readers and writers.
Tldr make a goodreads acct

[Anonymous No.19838603]

None of my boning during my adult life has added up to anything. I never discuss women with anyone or write about them. I bone, finish, forget.

[Anonymous No.19838633]

Why isn't reading like vidya. Why don't I gain +1 int for every meme book consumed.

[Anonymous No.19838655]

>>19838633
But it is like a video game, when you make a pile of books you have read and watching it slowly grow and seeing your notes on them grow and being able to think about the things you read and argue points from them on /lit/ is all a physical manifestation of skill

[Anonymous No.19838671]

>>19838034
I dunno, works for me

[Anonymous No.19838837]

Opposite. I ODd on trying to pick up knowledge. Worked my way through tons of philosophy: anthologies, text books of philosophy of mind, metaphysics, and logic, most Nietzsche and Plato, a lot of Kant and Hegel, Wittgenstein, a bunch of the "big" "recent" papers from Quine, Rorty, Putnam, etc. and two big historical surveys. Read Jung, Freud, and Campbell. Read theology. Went through like the entire Great Courses catalog, physics, information science, complexity, chaos theory, economics, geology, a lot of history. Read most of Durant's Story of Civilization, a lot of religious stuff including a theology intro. Read on semiotics and neuroscience, Denette, Pinker, etc. Political Science too, Fukuyama, Meirschimer, Kalyvas. Read a few books on math too, which I had avoided. This helped when I returned to A Brief History of Time and The Elegant Universe.

I made a lot of connections. I think the most interesting is the connection between semiotics, physics as information, information theory, and also complexity, and then what this means for the ontological status of universals. I've always been a nominalist, but been seeing more appeal in realism lately.

Also really focused in on the related connections between language, semiotics, universals, and how those structure cognition, both as respects models of perception in cognitive science, or physicalist philosophies of mind (I am a Strange Loop) or how the universal constructs cognition vis-á-vis knowing in Hegel.

The problem is, it's impossible to get into all these connections. There isn't enough time. I'm in a book club and people seem to appreciate all the connections I can make or references I find, but it's difficult to have any real discussion about the ideas because generally people only snatch up bits of them. I remember the ideas, but they're sort of dead because they only communicate with other ideas in other books or lectures. I'm not really engaging with them in discussions or at work.

[Anonymous No.19838893]

My biggest issue, the single cause of my endless suffering, which leaves me either paralyzed to begin or frustrated by the inability to internalize the material, is my lack of adequate notetaking. And i know what you'll say, to just get out a book and pen 'lmao', and yes, i am aware of this. But then i suffer from how to take notes. For example, in a geometry textbook, do i bother writing down obvious postulates, such as two points define a line, or would this be a slog to fit everything barely-reworded into a notebook while passing through the primary stages of this topic at a snails pace? What do i choose to integrate into my notes? If it is not meant to be me reorienting the topics and concepts into a smaller or more personalized version in my notebook, then what is the point of these notes? Will i look back on them, as opposed to the book? Or do i focus on both? Furthermore, once I have these different notebooks strewn about, I feel like they should be further consolidated into some 'master' text, the ultimate source of reference for the boiled-down knowledge i slowly gain through time. Well, what format should these notes take? How should they be organized? How could you adequately organize a dozen or more disparate topics as well as hundreds of years of literature into something cohesive and manageable? Does digital work better, or physical? Do i use specific programs or just one, do i type everything on my typewriter and organize individual sheets into folders or do i keep a master notebook and keep filling from start to finish as my singular source? I tremble as these thoughts leave my fingers, will they ever stop their haunt and just let me work effectively?

[Anonymous No.19838895]

>>19838837
It also let me enjoy Church a lot more. I understand Paul and Christianity much better. Christ being the Logos has way more import when you read Philo of Alexandria, or Greek conceptions of the Logos as universal reason, logic, or the underlying structure of being/meaning (e.g. Heraclitus and the tension of opposites, which not surprisingly Logocentric Gnostics picked up on in the structure of the Ogdoad).

Paul is saying something very complex in Romans 7-8. He is rejecting the Cartesian I, and identifying a plurality of drives and desires, like Hume would do much later (or Greek and Indian thinkers had already done). But he follows Aristotle in a sort of ordering of these parts, with the drives of the body being lower, leading to Sin, which kills Paul ("dead in sin"), while the higher part wants to do good and follow God. This higher part seems identified with the intellect, and that makes sense in light of other commentaries. In commentaries on Genesis (Strauss and Kass are excellent), man's creation in the image of God is generally not taken to mean God is a featherless biped. It's that man, although living in the world, within the circuit of cause and effect that grounds the world, also apprehends the universal laws the rule it. That's man's share of the Logos, and we see this in John too, that the Logos is the "light of the world" and the light is "within men."

But for Paul, the members of his flesh overwhelm this part of the self, resulting in death. Freedom requires the apprehension of what moves one, and this requires knowledge and reason. We die to sin, the legion of desires, which plays a role effectively similar to the demons who call themselves Legion who rule a man in Matthew. Christ casts out the demons in Mathew. In Romans 8, Paul speaks of us being ressurected in Christ. After losing our personhood to that which moves us which is not of us, we are brought to life in the Logos. But there is also this trickier role of the Spirit.

The Spirit is less defined but I've come to see that as the essential nature of being that is Being experiencing Itself as Other. Being is a sort of Atman, but just as the Logos within man is fragmentary, a small portion, so too is our share in the Spirit. To avoid slavery to the world, we seek the higher will (I Peter 4), but the real goal is revelation, which is the Spirit, the Absolute.

But again there is the same problem here where reading makes it harder to talk about religion. You get accused of abstracting too much. In fact, I think the narrative works on multiple levels for multiple people, but the truth is the whole, all the levels on which it works.

[Anonymous No.19839584]

>>19838603
>boning hahahaha wtf lol
1980s' called, they want there word back.

[Anonymous No.19839673]

>>19837395
Start a youtube channel where you review books you read, don't need to show your face, also don't need to have a lot of views

[Anonymous No.19839806]

>>19839673
pretty good idea desu

[Anonymous No.19840727]

>>19837395
same

[Anonymous No.19840808]

>>19838592
this is good advice. I learn to express my views better by writing review in goodreads. Also is there any good book to learn about expressing critics? not necessarily limted to literary critics