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/lit/ - Literature

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22863412 No.22863412 [Reply] [Original]

>tfw philistine
i really want to get into literature, but i must be honest. Whenever i try to judge a book based on any higher themes it might address, i am completely in the dark. How best to further develop this skill?

>> No.22863462

Read a book. Think about the book.

Then read articles or essays based on themes of that book, and see if they make sense to you, even if you don’t agree with them.

Do this until you get a basic ability to analyze literature. You’re really just making connections between different ideas and elements in the work. Reading literary theorists help with this but so many of them have no idea how to write concisely so it’s a lot of sifting through babbling to get where you wanna go.

>> No.22863551

>>22863462
any good sources or essays you'd recommend?

>> No.22863596

>>22863412
>PROOOOOH :DDD

>> No.22863601
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22863601

>>22863596

>> No.22863774

>>22863551
Maybe The Liberal Imagination

>> No.22864132

>>22863412
Read Mortimer Adler's book about how to read a book.

>> No.22864253

>>22863412
Read the Great Conversations by Robert Hutchins. It isn’t a book even but more a collection of essays on the western canon and how to approach reading the major works while also discussing what you should get out of them. John Dewey said in more eloquent words than I can put right now that fundamentally, reading should change your worldview in some way. It should help you expand as a person.

>> No.22865406

>>22864253
ty senpai

>> No.22865420

>>22863412
Read books for enjoyment and then reflect back on the themes afterward. If youre looking for themes and analyzing the message all the way through that makes for a lame experience. Also character development kind of demands this from you, since a message given at the end of the book will probably change by the end.

>> No.22865423

>>22865420
Beginning* sorry

>> No.22865430

>>22863412
start with the greeks

>> No.22865435

>>22863412
>Whenever i try to judge a book based on any higher themes it might address, i am completely in the dark.
How? People always act like a story's themes are some deep shit, but writers expend considerable energy to impart those thematics or insights to the reader. The only reason you might not get a theme is if you don't get references or influences the author had, but every story is at least thematically exploring a part of the human condition. You are human, so you understand it.
Media literacy is a psyop. I think you've been gaslit into thinking you don't understand books.