Why did you start reading?

[Anonymous No.21630490]

What made you connect with reading as a medium in the first place? The majority of people I know don’t read or connect with reading in any meaningful way whatsoever. Share your reading origin story please

[Anonymous No.21630496]

>>21630490
Too poor for video games and theaters
Too weak for sport.

[Anonymous No.21630564]

>>21630490
My dad loves reading, he would read me a chapter of full length novels before bed with voices and passion in each word he said and when you see your parents doing something everyday and actively expose you into the pastime you end up getting a similar love for it.

[Anonymous No.21630613]

>>21630490
A girl I liked lent me bites from the underground and he was literally me. I just stick with reading even after that story went nowhere

[Anonymous No.21630647]

>>21630613
>A girl I liked
>he was literally me

[Anonymous No.21630748]

I wanted to know what happened next in an anime i liked so I bought the novels it was based on.

Things escalated quickly, now i don’t even watch anime much anymore.

[Anonymous No.21631643]

>>21630490
Hasn't happened yet, but maybe if I post on /lit/ for another five years ...?

[Anonymous No.21631676]

>>21630490
>Why did you start reading?
I learned how to read. Picrel is the first book I read all by myself, and I remember running down the stairs to my dad and yelling at him about it. He used to read all the time, and one of my most ingrained memories of him is him sitting in his office, wearing his work boots and a book in his hand. I'd read out of sheer delight that I could read at all, and I'd go into his office and look through his books- they were all too adult for me, but I found a couple of old children's books that I snuck off with.

[Anonymous No.21631702]

I read Frankenstein when I was 14 and I loved it. Prior to that I hated almost everything I was forced to read. Nowadays, I only read for entertainment

[Anonymous No.21631746]

>>21630490
When I got together with my girlfriend four years ago I helped direct a play for her graduation (she was a theater directing major). After witnessing the trainwreck that is the theater world from the inside and knowing from past experience that other arts were in similar disarray I realized that I could complain and be dissatisfied with the state of contemporary art or I could do something about it.
I had been writing sci-fi stories up to then so the drive to change art came with the realization that I'd have to engage with meaningful lit and poetry a lot more and after a year of trying I had read one book of Chekhov's short stories and... that was all. I didn't have the discipline. That's about when I started coming to /lit/ and for a month or two all I did was save charts and read through those threads where an anon was trying his hardest to give us something meaningful.
Being called a faggot and a retard motivated me not because I felt ashamed but because I felt connected to the people here, I knew I had to earn not being called a 90 IQ nigger and I finally decided to Start with the Greeks.
Since then I've read through some classics, philosophy, poetry and history and I can confidently say that almost everything in my life has changed because of that. Just last month I read Plato's Republic, The Aeneid, The Oresteia and a Warhammer novel, something that would've been an impossible feat two years ago. The more learn the easier everything else becomes to understand and it feels really good, as if something that had been suffocating my life for many years is now gone. I've also been lifting since last fall as I was feeling ashamed at letting myself go to the point my doctor had to prescribe proton pump inhibitors so my stomach could catch a break. I no longer need the meds and I've written some poems and there's a chance I will be published locally in the next few months.
You can do it, anon. Just don't let the cringe nihilist faggots get to you.
Oh, and this - Dostoevky's work is life affirming.

[Anonymous No.21631754]

Mom used to read a lot (before the stroke tho). I kinda imitated her and started reading comics. Last week she cried so much because she can't do the thing she loves the most, that is reading. Audiobooks work a little, but it's not same she said.

[Anonymous No.21631770]

>>21631676
>picrel is the first book I read
>empty
I was knew /lit/ doesn't read kek

[Anonymous No.21631772]

>>21630490
My mother read a lot and I grew up with lots of books around, she read with me when I was young too, so there was a kind of implicit sense of value in reading books at home growing up, most of the books I read when I became more interested in my late teens were classic literature that my mother had on her big shelves. My dad reads too but it’s mostly thrillers and genre fiction, he liked the cormac McCarthy I gave him though.
>>21630647
He’s saying that the protag from Notes from the Underground is literally him, not the girl who gave it to him, retard-kun.

[Anonymous No.21631776]

>>21631772
The anon you quoted is making fun of the fact that the other anon relates to the underground man but has a love life. I think....

[Anonymous No.21631791]

>>21631770
yeah forgot it, this is some complicated high literature

[Anonymous No.21631805]

>British Army
>Pulling stag duty in a guard box in the arse end of the South of England
>took either speed or coke because got caught sleeping by the badge
>2am and ready to fuck
>smart phones not yet a thing
>cant fuck
>read books instead
>drop coke, stick to speed
>could still smoke cigs everywhere back then

I miss those times.

[Anonymous No.21632009]

>>21630490
I am trying to cope with a life of humiliation, video games made me feel like wasting my time so i turned to books which is a more intellectual hobby so i feel special and my mom too i guess she think i am some hermit thinker rather than a retarded lazy gamer

[Anonymous No.21632252]

>>21630490
To get an answer to the religion question personally

[Anonymous No.21632267]

>>21632252
Did you find your answer?

[Anonymous No.21632419]

>>21630490
/pol/ convinced me to start reading.

[Anonymous No.21632467]

>>21630490
Because I liked reading as a child.

[Anonymous No.21632581]

>>21630490
I was just always rewarded for it. Like I would be praised by teachers and family for being able to read the "advanced" books at an early age, and I liked that praise so I kept at it until I came to expect the praise and when I no longer received it, I stopped reading.

[Anonymous No.21632620]

>>21630490
Liked reading in high school, but didn't know what to read.
Red a few books in college before dropping out.
Didn't read for two to three years, started reading again because I did acid and was botherd by all the advertisements so I got into marxism.

[Anonymous No.21632805]

>>21631805
why do fascists always love phet??

[Anonymous No.21632815]

I work in sales and when I read I speak more eloquently and therefore sell more.
You are a product of your environment and the culture you consume, culture is your operating system, powerful people are often erudite and a classical education enables social mobility in England.

[Anonymous No.21632915]

>>21632805
It is a drug that, when taken recreationally, helps a man get more out of life. Be it in sex, sports or study or combat which in essense is one of the core reasons people look to Fascism, specifically National-Socialism. It exhalts life of the tribe and its people as its primary virtue, not equity nor equality, capital or material goods. These do eventually factor in to the world-view so long as they do not conflict with it's reason d' etre, which is exclusively life.

[Anonymous No.21632948]

>>21630490
My dad got me some children's dictionaries when I was a kid, like three or four years old. One of my earliest memories is reading them on our couch. As I got older he kept getting me books that he'd heard were good (The Tales of Oscar Wilde, A Series of Unfortunate Events, How to Win Friends and Influence People, Rich Dad, Poor Dad) because he never read them himself. He still hates reading and barely graduated high school. But he didn't want his life for me. He wanted me to be educated. In retrospect, I am so humbled by his active investment in my future in spite of his own interests. He bought me books he'd never even touch, could probably barely afford (sadly, I lost many of the books he got me when we were evicted from our house during the '08 recession). I feel so grateful to him even now when I start a new book, and I thank him for my literacy often; usually after he tolerates my blathering about whatever I'm reading at the time. I love my dad. He is the biggest Chad on the planet.

[Anonymous No.21632949]

>>21632915
>helps a man get more out of life. Be it in sex, sports or study or combat
>Mariupol’s nazi crack hive

[Anonymous No.21632966]

I was interested in reading fables and culturally iconic works of literature, such as Lewis Carroll's works and others. I chose reading because the works I mentioned were the intended for this medium. I grew to like reading as an activity--it's almost like meditation. Very relaxing.

[Anonymous No.21632990]

>>21632949
There is little Fascist about Putin's Russia they are like an unsophisticated thug who can create nothing and must steal all they can. Some of the conscripts are using equipment stolen from the last time they raped and pillaged Europe under Stalin. They are the anti-fascists, the death of life and all it touches, much like America. Though America is a far prettier death.

[Anonymous No.21633046]

>>21630490
I learned how to read
So I started reading
Simple as, it was too exciting to be able to read everything I want on my own

[Anonymous No.21633052]

>>21630490
escapism

[Anonymous No.21633057]

>>21632990
They’re a regular old conservative state. I wouldn’t go so far as to call them The Anti-fascists, though they’re certainly slaughtering Ukrainian nazis. All the more power to them.

[Anonymous No.21633096]

>>21630490
As a kid my parents would enforce a pretty early bedtime, around 8-9PM, and I'd lie awake until 2-3AM pretty much every night. Reading was about the only thing to do then long before smartphones and wifi.

[Anonymous No.21633121]

>>21633057
There is no idealogy in the modern Russian state, it is a kleptocracy. It possesses no greater statesmanship than a wake of vultures that will take what it can, regardless of how much of the flock is killed while the rest feed on carrion. Ukraine is the same, only they are far weaker and thus can only wait and respond as prey.

[Anonymous No.21633160]

>>21633121
Typical liberal take.

[Anonymous No.21633220]

>>21633160
I am Fascist anon, but i suspect you will counter with something like 'Fascists are the real liberals/leftists/socialists' because you can not refute an objectively correct take. Russians and Ukrainians are animals that can only understand the whip.

[Anonymous No.21633254]

>>21632267
no

[Anonymous No.21633447]

>>21633220
A fascist is a liberal dog. They trot them out of their kennel when there’s an emergency, when a people’s movement stirs

[Anonymous No.21633659]

>>21630490
>Why did you start reading?

pic rel, modern visual media is dead

At least when I read Shakespeare or Dostoevsky, the hidden agenda is some now irrelevant bullshit like painting the Tudors in a rosy light, or lampooning socialists in Tsarist Russia, rather than a constant death-by-a-thousand-cuts covert psyop trying to convince me to cut my own pecker off and get my daughters have a bunch of mulatto babies "because its a good thing, goy!"

[Anonymous No.21633760]

>>21633447
Called it.

[Anonymous No.21633807]

>>21630490
Fortunately in my youth as a Star Wars fan I discovered Star Wars Expanded Universe books. They were enjoyable enough that my interest in reading survived the best efforts of the American Public School system. Even then, it took me half a decade to branch out from the pop sci fi genre. As far as I knew, reading was Catch 22 / To Kill a Mockingbird / A Tale of Two Cities levels of punishment and readers were masochists. Then I gave 1984 a try and realized "Oh..oh wow."

[Anonymous No.21633812]

>>21633760
Well it's the truth, duh.

[Anonymous No.21633879]

>>21633812
You are not capable of discerning truth, to you truth is only that which makes you feel good.

[Anonymous No.21634404]

>>21633879
Observable facts=truth

[Anonymous No.21634409]

>>21630490
feels good man

[Anonymous No.21634450]

>>21630490
I was really into history as a child and watched numerous documentaries. But after a while I realized I wasn't learning anything new, so books were my last option. Thankfully I did it because it made the rest of school and college easier. I feel like many people don't understand just how much can be learned from a book.

[Anonymous No.21634713]

>>21630490
A girl I liked had a crush on our English teacher so I read all the assigned books and made threads about them here so I could write good essays/make jokes in class that would annoy him. Best English teacher I ever had.

[Anonymous No.21634736]

>>21630490
>What made you connect with reading as a medium in the first place?
Boredom. In grade school I got tired of waiting for the other kids to read the passages out loud so I would just keep reading forward. Of course the textbooks don't last forever so I'd grab one being whatever I could and just read through the class. I remember in 6th grade the teacher has shelves just full of readers digest within reach. Im certain I read them all, dozens and dozens. But quickly I noticed how helpful this was, the random words I could infer the meaning to, the random facts I now had. Of course I read all sorts of shit so it gave me glimpses into how other people (seemingly) think and now I believe it helped influence my own inner monologue and thought process.
It was like saving your change, a little extra money was always good but eventually you had a large stack of resources to draw upon.

[Anonymous No.21635742]

Got bored of video games. It was the same shit over and over again. I play for the story anyways so when i got tired I decided to go to the medium where it all began.

My favorite vidyas are Max Payne 2 and COD: WaW and the first Black Ops.

[Anonymous No.21635793]

I think I was like 16 when a bunch of friends of mine called me and said you should read less books and get out more often even though I had read like three books in my life at that point of my life and I was going out like every second weekend. However, I had read many wikipedia articles at that point, ever since I got a smartphone basically, and watched many informative youtube videos. My insatiable curiosity however slowly turned into a flame and a year later I downloaded a bunch of books about economy and politics on my new laptop and read them. I visited libraries, I went to my basement and took a bunch of books, read them. At one point, when I had already become a neet, but without the nihilism, still thinking that it was just a phase, that society loved me and that soon I was going to find an employment that wasn't table waiting or farming. So I read like 6 books per week. I've also visited libraries in places apart from my home. I feel like my journey hasn't ended yet. Yesterday I picked up Oblomov by Ivan Gontcharov. The character is very relating. Cheers.