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/lit/ - Literature

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[ERROR] No.2046568 [Reply] [Original]

I have:
Slaughterhouse 5
and
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Which one should I start?

>> No.2046572

Slaughterhouse 5

Do yourself a favor and don't read ZAMM, unless you are fifteen and them go 'head, but

>underage b&

>> No.2046576

Slaughterhouse 5 is great.

>> No.2046579

>>2046572
Haven't read ZAMM, but I still agree with this guy. Slaughterhouse 5 is great, and short enough that you'll be able to pick up whatever's next on your list in a few days.

>> No.2046585

>>2046572
Well then. What a waste of 8 bucks.

I'll read Slaughterhouse 5 first, but then I'll just read ZAMM anyways.


One last question;

For next book, should I buy
War of the Rats
or
Brave new world

>> No.2046614

>>2046585
I never read War of the Rats so I can't comment on that. But I enjoyed Brave New World. Just forget about the whole "It's just like this world." Enjoy the book with what it is.

>> No.2046620 [DELETED] 

Slaughterhouse 5 is a great book but you made a mistake with Zen, the Twilight of philosophy. Get a better book, maybe The Stranger or Nausea or even Sophie's World

>> No.2046627

>>2046568
Put both aside, and go find Sirens of Titan.

>> No.2046629

>>2046620 Get a better book, maybe ... Nausea

Skip that too.

>> No.2046636

OP here.

I made a list of books to read, and determine from 1-24 which I liked best.

My list:
Slaughterhouse 5*
The Little Prince
Dune*
A Clockwork Orange
The Trial
The Metamorphosis
Catcher in the Rye
Manufacturing Consent
Brave New World
Cat's Cradle
1984*
Fahrenheit 451
ZAMM*
The Stranger
The Sublime Object of Ideology
A People's History of the United States
Neuromancer
The Birth of Tragedy
Beyond Good and Evil
The Genealogy of Morals
Thus Spoke Tharathustra
Cosmos
Catch-22
War of the Rats

* = I own it

>> No.2046660

>>2046636
Why so much Nietzsche?

>> No.2046664

>>2046660
I think Nihilism is interesting, and I would like to read the books in order to make an opinion (instead of listening to the internet)

>> No.2046673

>>2046664
Nietzsche is an existentialist, not a nihilist.

>> No.2046677

>>2046673
Oh
Well then. I suppose I can still read them anyways
>back to learning from the internet

>> No.2046680

>>2046629
what's wrong with sartre?

>> No.2046755

>>2046680
He's French, for one.

>> No.2046769
File: 27 KB, 390x261, albert-camus.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
[ERROR]

>>2046755

>> No.2046778

>>2046769
Camus is technically Algerian.

>> No.2046785

So ZAMM isn't a good book? Not OP btw.

Welp, 5 bucks down the drain. Shoulda bought The Trial instead.

>> No.2046829

>>2046785
Ya, sorry.

>> No.2047011

Slaughterhouse 5. I've read both, Slaughterhouse Five will stick with you for much longer and you'll get it done much faster. The philosophy in ZAMM is...aight I guess, pretty scattered really but somewhat thought provoking. There's so much of it that just seems like didactic digressions. I actually like the "story" of ZAMM but that seems to be beside the point a lot of the time. SFIVE doesn't try so hard to get points across, they just exist within the text itself and the incidents within (for the most part), and it's funny and weird and memorable and just a great read.

>> No.2047024

Zen and Motorcycle is right up there with The Secret as one of the most overrated "life changing" books

>> No.2047081

I once was at Barnes and Noble and I read the first couple pages of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It was horribly written to the point that I did not buy it and don't plan to at all in the future. I bought Beyond Good and Evil that day, and it was a very interesting read, and, I love the nature and style of the writing.

OP, you should knock out The Little Prince. It is short and online:

http://wikilivres.info/wiki/The_Little_Prince

I love it so much.

>> No.2047094

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is complete shit imo. I will be the first to admit that I probavby didn't understand it all, bur the story sucked to boot.

I just read Slaughterhouse 5 about a month ago. I was going to read a few chapters before bed. I ended up reading the whole thing in one sitting. Good stuff.

>> No.2047162

>>2046680 what's wrong with sartre?

Nausea is a navel-gazing book. I would normally think, almost as a defense mechanism against acknowledging I've wasted my time on tedium, that such a book was some sort of satire on how wrapped up in their own heads some members of the intelligensia get, but there's not much in the book to support that reading.

To use an imperfect analogy, it's like Crime and Punishment without the crime. Or any of the characters. I've read philosophical treatises that were more personally engaging. Hume or the aforementioned Nietzsche, for example.

The only reason I can think of why people like the book is because it precisely describes their own feelings or thoughts, and misery loves company.

>> No.2047419

Nausea and Notes from Underground are both amazing books, I don't know what you guys are smoking.

>> No.2048252

bunp

>> No.2048276

>>2047162

>out of place references to give his half baked rambles credibility

>> No.2048290

>>2046568
OP, is your name Sidney?

>> No.2048789

>>2047162
Try rereading Nausea, it's completely different and way better than Crime and Punishment

>> No.2049049

Zen is badly written but it's a really good book that makes some fantastic points.

Some less-than-fantastic ones, too, but those are easy to ignore.

It's worth reading.

>> No.2049055

>>2046636

>The Stranger

I thought it was really fucking good.

>> No.2050081

lol @ op and others buying a book, asking for advice on lit, then deciding the book is worthless without reading it

>> No.2050103

Read Slaughterhouse 5.
Polite sage for no real contribution.

>> No.2050227

>>2050081
Yeah. Zen is a pretty decent book, all in all. It gets you asking the right questions to help you begin understanding other, more well-respected philosophers.

And a lot of what the book puts forth stands up pretty damn well. It isn't even half as bad as these anons are saying. It's just really SLOW at points.

>> No.2050241

>>2050103
I don't get this "polite" sage. Polite to whom? Not OP.

>> No.2050243

>>2050241
"Polite sage" is just to let people know that there's no malice behind saging.

But, I think it was Oscar Wilde who said, "all saging is quite useless." Obviously, since the thread gets bumped anyway.

>> No.2050805

>>2050243
How can you sage without at least a little malice, though? Saging is done to keep a thread from being bumped, which isn't exactly an act of kindness. It's an intentional extra step made to prevent others from helping the OP or entering the conversation for whatever reason.