/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.3238101]

Hey /lit/, did any of you set any kind of reading goals this past year? Did you meet those goals? Do you plan to set any for 2013?

I tried to read 50 books I haven't read yet, but I think I'm going to come up short by a couple of books. Going to try again next year.

Pic unrelated

[Anonymous No.3238108]

Yeah, my goal this year was 52. I'm on 46 right now, and with Christmas vacation coming up I might make it, but I'll probably be a couple short. As long as I hit 50 I'll be satisfied. Next year I'm setting the same goal.

[Anonymous No.3238145]

>>3238101
I set my goal for 52 (one a week), which is a really popular goal to set. I'm at 49 right now and should definitely hit my goal before the end of the year. Feels good, it's my first year ever really reading. Pretty good progression too.

[Anonymous No.3238152]

>>3238145
I like that list. What did you think of End Zone?

[Anonymous No.3238150]

I set one for 150 books this year, since I got a little over that last year. Probably not going to be making it, since I'm at 134 right now. I'd have to read a book a day for the rest of the year, about (but as I don't have much else going on, maybe?).

For 2013 I'll probably bring it back down to 100, like it was last year. I'm planning to read some longer works for one, and I'll also have graduate courses and a job going on. So I'll have considerably less time.

my reads so far this year are in the pic, + Saga of the Jomsvikings, The Diary of Mr. Pinke by Ewald Murrer and The Prose Edda.

[Anonymous No.3238159]

>>3238145
Nice list you have there. I read a few of those during the course of the year too.

[Anonymous No.3238173]

>>3238150
How do No One Writes to the Colonel and Of Love and Other Demons stack up compared with GGM's other works?

[Anonymous No.3238181]

I set a loose goal of 100 books.
I'm barely at 70ish and I'm planning on doing a lot of cocaine to catch up.

[Anonymous No.3238205]

>>3238152
I read it mainly because (after the DFW biography and IJ) I'd heard how DFW saw Eschaton as being way way too much like End Zone and almost bordering on completely stolen from Dellilo. With this in mind, I went in with very high expectations. It wasn't what I expected it would be at all, but in the end I liked it. I really didn't expect it to focus on his relationships so much even though they did fit in with the whole nuke motif. Also, I found the dialogue and interactions between the football players really disjointed and odd, like some of the oldest boy's conversations (Heinrek? maybe, it was something German) in White Noise.

>>3238152
>>3238159
Thanks, it's pretty heavy on /lit/core kind of stuff because I'm not very well read.

[Anonymous No.3238218]

>>3238145
I'm assuming some of those took only a day or two and some spilled over the week-mark? How long did Brothers K, Infinite Jest, and Gravity's Rainbow take you?

[Anonymous No.3238221]

>>3238152
Same guy you asked, replying a 2nd time.

Really interesting book to ask me about, as it is one of the few I've read this year that I was truly undecided on how I felt about it until thinking on it a little while after finishing it.

[Anonymous No.3238229]

>>3238218
Brothers K took 2 weeks. Infinite Jest took 3 weeks. Gravity's Rainbow took 6 weeks with a couple books read in between and a 1 week break from it after section 2. Many did take only a day or two, and I have been all over the place this year as far as going from behind to ahead to behind again. Next year I hope to stay more on track. Even though I read many novellas, according to Goodreads, the average book length of that 49 is about 325 pages or so.

[Anonymous No.3238235]

My goal was 12 books (1 book per month) and i'm almost finished with my 11th one. This is little compared to you guys but it's a big achievement for me.

[Anonymous No.3238243]

>>3238229
Cool, I had been planning on reading one of IJ or GR over winter break but wasn't sure if it would be too much of a time-sink (whereas I could be reading 8+ shorter books that are on my list in the same time). I may go ahead with it anyway.

Also what did you think of Brothers K? It's my favorite novel, so I'm always curious what people who've recently read it think of it.

[Anonymous No.3238246]

I set out 36 (3 per month) and now looking at other posts I'm really ashamed of myself that I'm such a slow reader. (I've done it today btw.) I believe these goals tend to bias you to shorter, easier books, which is not good. What do you think?

Here's my list (I will do my image compilation at the end of the year):
1Thaler: Nudge
2Klein:Something for Nothing
3Pollard: Boffinology
4Iyengar: The Art of Choosing
5Wright: Evolution of God
6Kornai: By Force of Thought
7Vajda: Confessions of a Cloner
8Hand: Statistics - a very short introduction
9Chaitin: Metamath!
10Smith: Environmental Economics - a very short introduction
11Auster: Book of illusions
12Robinson: Genius - a very short introduction
13Wigner:Autobiography
14Mero: The living money
15Peters: Getting what you came for
16Harford: Undercover Economist
17Boulle: Planet of Apes
18Dasgupta: Economics - a very short introduction
19D.Friedman: The Machinery of Freedom
20Sedlacek: Economics of Good and Evil
21Ridley: The Red Queen
22Westerhoff: Reality - a very short introduction
23Harford: Dear Undercover Economist
24Szerb: Journey by Moonlight
25Gilmour: Film club
26Backhouse: The Puzzle of Modern Economics - Science or Ideology?
27Roberts: The invisible heart
28Franses: A Concise Introduction to Econometrics
29M.Friedman: Capitalism and Freedom
30Wheelan: Naked Economics
31Clarke: Rendezvous with Rama
32M.Friedman: Free to choose
33Thomson: A Guide for Young Economists
34Close: Nothing - a very short introduction
35Krugman: Peddling Prosperity
36Krugman: The accidental theorist

One can argue that few of these books are so short that I shouldn't even count them...
It is surprising how much a list like this tell about a person...

[Anonymous No.3238274]

>>3238246
>I believe these goals tend to bias you to shorter, easier books, which is not good. What do you think?

They can, but in my (OP) case it wasn't so. I managed to read War & Peace, Against the Day, The Brothers Karamazov, and the Millennium Trilogy within the year. For the record, I'm currently at 44 books.

[Anonymous No.3238294]

>>3238243

Nah it's all in your motivation.
I had a perfect storm of circumstances and managed to read Foucault's Pendulum in a day while it has taken me weeks to finish a novella.

[Anonymous No.3238304]

>>3238101
I was aiming for 25
I stopped reading around april because finals.
never got back to it.
>tfw you visit lit and haven't read in the last 7 months

[Anonymous No.3238328]

>set my goal for at least 50
>only make it to 38

I.. I was just way more busy than I thought I would be. I'll probably read one or two more, but I'm still disappointed in myself.

[Anonymous No.3238340]

I set a goal of 52 this year but I am only at 43 now. It is better than last year's 28 but I won't be making my goal. I will set the same goal for 2013.

[Anonymous No.3238342]

My goal was 52. I'm currently on my 57th. There were a few "essential" titles I wanted included within that 52 (Moby-Dick, TBK, etc.), and I'm pretty sure I got them all.

[Anonymous No.3238377]

goal is 35, at 21. i could theoretically still do it by cheating with a bunch of novellas, but there's a few really long books i want to dive into and hitting that number isn't really a big deal. next year's goal is 52 regardless of how short i fell this year.

[Anonymous No.3238420]

>>3238304
>>tfw you visit lit and haven't read in the last 7 months

Oh don't worry, 95 percent of /lit/ don't even read.

[Anonymous No.3238430]

I was aiming for 50, and I'm only likely to finish 36 by January 1. And three of those are graphic novels. Nothing like a newborn to kill free time.

[Anonymous No.3238437]

>>3238420
The reason why I don't read fiction is because, when I was a kid, a gentleman who lived upstairs told me: "You read to learn, not to entertain yourself. So I never read fiction." and that stuck with me growing up.

I'll be sure to read fiction later in life, ought. Hell, I don't even watch movies.

1. The Millionaire Fastlane: Crack the Code to Wealth and Live Rich for a Lifetime. by MJ DeMarco
2. The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything By Guy
Kawasaki.
3. Getting Things Done By David Allen
4. Faith Finish Line by Jimmy D Brown [66 pages ebook]
5. Duck Tape SEO by James Hussey
6. Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss
7. Convict Conditioning by Paul Wade
8. How to get rich by Felix Dennis
9. Compound Effect: Jump start your income, your life, your success by Darren Hardy
10. The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg
11. The Story of Sushi: An unlikely saga of raw sh and rice, by Trevor Corson

[Anonymous No.3238441]

>>3238437
12. Twelve by Twelve: A one room cabin of the grid and beyond the American Dream by William Powers
13. Words that work by Frank Luntz
14. Automatic Wealth by Michael Masterson
15. 101 Habits of highly successful novelists by Andrew Mcaleer
16. Branching Streams Flow in the Darkness: Zen Talks on the Sandokai by Shunryu Suzuki
17. SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life
Insurance by Steven D. Levitt
18. The Ultimate Cheapskate's Road Map to True Riches: by Je
Yeager
19. The Tao Of Poker: 285 Rules to Transform Your Game and Your Life by Larry W. Philips
20. Action: nothing happens until something moves by Robert Ringer

[Anonymous No.3238445]

>>3238441
21. The Book Of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi
22. The Mental Game of Poker: Proven Strategies for Improving Tilt Control, Confidence, Motivation,
Coping with Variance, and More. by Jared Tendler
23. Surely You're Joking, Mr FeynMan by Richard P. Feynman
24. The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory by
Brian Greene.
25. American Psycho by Bret Ellis.
26. 59 Seconds: Think a Little, Change a Lot by Richard Wiseman
27. Angry White Pyjamas: A Scrawny Oxford Poet Takes Lessons From The Tokyo Riot Police" by Robert
Twigger
28. The complete handbook of novel writing by Mel Leder
29. The shortcuts for the student writer by Jay Silverman
30. Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck{ Why Some Thrive Despite Them All by Jim Collins

[Anonymous No.3238449]

>>3238445
31. How to be a super read: read faster, under more and remember for longer by Ron Cole
32. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey
33. The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right by Atul Gawande
34. The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
35. Future Shock by Alvin Toffler
36. Early Retirement Extreme: A Philosophical and Practical Guide to Financial Independence by Jacob Lund Fisker
37. "Cold Hard Truth: On Business, Money & Life" by Kevin O'Leary

>tfw you'll never be hipster as /lit/ who reads Tao Lin, Infinite Jest, House of Leaves and Lolita ;__;

[Anonymous No.3238472]

>>3238449
you seem to read a lot of 'self-help-wealth' books. Are they worth the money? which one would you recommend the most
>no.31
Is that one good?

[Anonymous No.3238473]

>>3238449
I read fiction when I was in high school. I guess I grew up.

[Anonymous No.3238484]

>>3238472
>you seem to read a lot of 'self-help-wealth' books. Are they worth the money?

Yes, because you're self improving. People think it's mental masturbation ONLY if because they don't put the action into use.

I didn't have sex in high school and I thought I was going to die a virgin. I read about "social dynamics" and being charismatic, it helped me have sex with over 10 women, which beats the average lifetime of 4-6 women (most men)

>which one would you recommend the most
The most inspirational for me to self improve was "The slight edge" by Jeff Olson.

The most useful book to get rich is "How to get rich" by Felix Dennis who is close to a billionaire. He's the real deal and wrote the book.

I have a discerning eye for faggots who write get rich books who are plebs themselves, like "The authomatic milionaire" David Bach and "the millionaire mindset" by the Esker dude.

[Anonymous No.3238492]

>>3238484
>>you seem to read a lot of 'self-help-wealth' books. Are they worth the money?

And to add on, it helped me get more fit when I read books on exercising, it helped me get healthier thanks to reading about juicing / nutriention etc. and it helped me got richer.

I'm a bit of a self help junkie but 2013 I'm branching off into liberal arts, going to read dem philosophy, history, geography and religion

[Anonymous No.3238499]

>>3238492

Oh God, you're unbearable.

[Anonymous No.3238501]

>>3238499
Please don't call him God, it strokes his ego.

[Anonymous No.3238505]

>>3238499
Go back to your infinite jest, lib fag.

Made $300k this year, u jelly?

[Anonymous No.3238508]

>>3238445
>tfw /lit/ anons will never know what it's like to read Surely You're Joking, Mr FeynMan by Richard P. Feynman because they're a bunch of prententious fags

>>3238501
Do you even read?

[Anonymous No.3238512]

>>3238499
Homeostasis is the natural tendancy we all have to want to keep things the same. We must uvercome it to enable change. Recognize it is there. Be willing to negotiate with it. Develop a support system to help you through the change. Follow a regular practice, and dedicate yourself to life-long learning.

In other words, go fuck yourself anon.

[Anonymous No.3238513]

>>3238508
Do you even bleed?

[Anonymous No.3238517]

>>3238508
>>tfw /lit/ anons will never know what it's like to read Surely You're Joking, Mr FeynMan by Richard P. Feynman because they're a bunch of prententious fags
It's a terrible book, unless you like cringing a great deal.

[Anonymous No.3238519]

I've just really started to read, so I haven't been reading very much, but I plan to start reading atleast one book a week (or I'll try atleast).
Anyway, this is what I've read this year:
A Feast for Crows
A Dance With Dragons
Youth
Heart of Darkness
The Road
Moby Dick
American Psycho
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Crime and Punishment
Right now I'm reading The Divine Comedy, I'll try to finish it this week and then move on to The Odysee or something, idk.

[Anonymous No.3238521]

>>3238512
Yeah, but some people don't believe that homeostasis is a natural tendency. What do you say to that?

[Anonymous No.3238525]

>>3238521
I said go fuck yourself, hater.

[Anonymous No.3238526]

>>3238521
Some people believe that 2+2=5. What do you say to that?

[Anonymous No.3238537]

>>3238499
>>3238501
Same fag

>>3238513
>>3238521
Shit posters.

I remember why i don't post on /lit/ anymore.

[Anonymous No.3238543]

>>3238537
You don't post on /lit/ anymore because people make jokes?

[Anonymous No.3238545]

>>3238537
>>3238499
>>3238501
Same fag

I remember why i don't post on /lit/ anymore.

[Anonymous No.3238552]

I didn't have a goal, this sort of just happened. In no real order;

1. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
2. On the Road (Kerouac)
3. Five Plays (Chekhov, Oxford classics series)
4. Markheim, Jekyll And The Merry Men (Canongate classics)
5. Ham and Rye (Bukowski)
6. Post Office (Bukowski)
7. The Final Testament (James Frey)
8. Surely you're joking Mr. Feynman
9. Pygmy
10. Less than Zero
11. The Forever War
12. Flowers for Algerion
13. Fahrenheit 451
14. The Last King of Scotland
15. Casino Royale
16. Do Androids Dream of Electric sheep?
17. Burning Chrome
18. Thank you for Smoking
19. Fight Club
20. The Alchemist (I know I know)
21. The case of the Generals thumb
22. The Gum Thief
22. Microserfs
23. Diary of a Nobody
24. A clockwork orange
25. Metamorphis
26. A day in the life of Ivan Denisovich
27. Brave new world
28. Helmet of Horror
29. Mr Wong goes West
30. Sold as a Slave
31. Life on the Golden Horn
32. Snakes with wings and Gold digging ants
33. Hunt for the Southern Continent
34. Hella nation

Hoping to get 40 by christmas, and to do 80 next year.

[Anonymous No.3238554]

>>3238543

Self-help guy is trolling what was a productive thread. Ignore him.

[Anonymous No.3238556]

>>3238543
>>3238545
>>3238537
>>3238499
>>3238501

Wow some serious samefagging going on, AGAIN.

This is exactly why I don't come here anymore.

[Anonymous No.3238563]

>>3238556
>>3238543
>>3238545
>>3238537
>>3238499
>>3238501
OMG, this happens every time I come here. When will you guys give it a rest and stop samefagging like children?

Fuck this place.

[Anonymous No.3238560]

>>3238554
>Self-help guy is trolling what was a productive thread. Ignore him.

>productive thread
>read fiction to escape reality

Yeah okay. Just like that 55 years old guy working minimum wage when I was at the bookshop, he told me he only reads fiction. Now I know why.

[Anonymous No.3238574]

>>3238145
This guy checking back in.
>>3238243
Brothers K is one of my top 5 favorite books. It's so damn amazing. I just could never really pick a single favorite book. Also, GR is way way harder than IJ but totally lives up to its hype. All 3 of those have huge hype surrounding them and managed to live up to and deliver more.
>>3238274
Totally agree with this. I read Infinite Jest, Brothers Karamazov, and Gravity's Rainbow along with some truly great novellas.

Will probably set the same goal of 52 for next year, with the added goal of attempting to stay at least mostly on track all year and to hopefully finish some full length Spanish novels.

[Anonymous No.3238632]

Man i'm attempting 52 as well but I'm stuck on like 41 right now due to finals and other interests invading my life. Currently i've got something like 70 pages left in steppenwolf. If i miss my goal by just a few books i'll be pissed

[Anonymous No.3238651]

>>3238145
So you read infinite jest in a week? That thing took me over a month...

[Anonymous No.3238659]

>>3238552
Are the Bond books worth reading at all?

[Anonymous No.3238660]

>>3238659
My favorite is Of Human Bondage.

[Anonymous No.3238665]

>>3238632
heres the the list, i know there a lot of easy to read throwaway fantasy but its pretty easy to read through really quickly so i figured it'd help the list along. Theres a bit more /lit/ stuff near the end.

1. A Storm of Swords - George R R Martin
2. A Feast for Crows
3. A Dance with Dragons
4. Neuromancer - William Gibson
5. Black Company - Glen Cook
6. Eye of the World - Robert Jordan
7. Radio Free Albemuth - Phillip K Dick
8. The Great Hunt - Robert Jordan
9. A Stitch in Time - Andrew Robinson
10. The Dragon Reborn - Robert Jordan
11. The Shadow Rising
12. The Fires of Heaven
13. Lord of Chaos
14. A Crown of Swords
15. The Path of Daggers
16. Winters Heart
17. Crossroads of Twilight
18. Knife of Dreams
19. The Gathering Storm
20. Towers of Midnight
21. The Gunslinger - Stephen King
22. The Drawing of the Three
23. The Wastelands
24. Wizard and Glass
25. Wolves of the Calla
26. Song of Susannah
27. The Dark Tower
28. The Wind Through the Keyhole
29. New Spring - Robert Jordan
30. Shadows Linger - Glen Cook
31. The White Rose
32. On Dreams - Sigmund Freud
33. Pet Semetary - Stephen King
34. Rocketship Galileo - Robert A Heinlein
35. Time’s Arrow - Martin Amis
36. The Road - Cormac McCarthy
37. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
38. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S Thompson
39. Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy
40. The Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
41. Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom - Corey Doctorow

[Anonymous No.3238677]

>>3238574
Go away you nerdy faggot. Maybe one day you'll have a gf.

[Anonymous No.3238766]

I aimed for over 100 books and I easily achieved that (pic related). Some things were re-reads for me like Homer's Iliad, Virgil's Aeneid, Gilgamesh, Hamlet, Richard III, the Mark Twain, Plato's Republic, and some of the Nietzsche.

I also read things online like "Structure, Sign, and Play" by Derrida, and lots of poems. Decided to read the whole Bible and stopped during Exodus.

I'm not even going to bother listing all of the graphic novels, comics, poetry journals, short stories, etc...

[Anonymous No.3238784]

I stopped reading for some reason when I got into highschool so I made an effort to start reading again. I read all these this semester.

A Farewell to Arms
Metamorphisis
Crime and Punishment
Slaughterhouse 5
Sound and the Fury
The Brothers Karamazov
The Death of Ivan Ilych
Lolita
The Grapes of Wrath
Notes from the Underground

[Anonymous No.3238786]

>>3238766
If you have trouble with Exodus, Numbers and 1 Chronicles will drive you nuts.

[Anonymous No.3238792]

>>3238665
Well done, you wasted a good half a years worth of reading on easy to read throwaway fantasy,
but that's ok because it'll be really satisfying when you get to 52 and the xbox achievement blippy sound plays

[Anonymous No.3238817]

mfw i've never missed a reading goal...

what are you guys doing with your time?!
like wtf!?

[Anonymous No.3238865]

>>3238173
The only other GGM I've read not on there has been Memories of My Melancholy Whores, and most anything would be better than that. I haven't read 100 Years of Solitude yet, so I can't say anything there.

Of those three I read there, I think I most preferred Chronicle of a Death Foretold. I would consider No One Writes the Colonel the weakest, but I'm pretty sure it was meant to be a short story anyway. But I prefer magical realism when it's fairly mild like in Chronicle - a lot of Love and Other Demons felt way too silly to me. Which makes me wary of 100 Years of Solitude, since I gathered it's pretty heavy on that stuff.

[Anonymous No.3239140]

My goal is 36.
I have read 23, maybe tomorrow will finish another (#7 from Stephen King's The Dark Tower :B)
I wanted to read more, but college wouldn't give me the time.
I will still read a lot from here to new year's (I live in Chile, so I'm on vacations now).

For next year I plan on also having a goal of 36 (no really smart to lower that, right?)

[Anonymous No.3239217]

>>3238865
One Hundred Years might not be to your liking then. I've read Chronicle and Love in the Time of Cholera. You might enjoy the latter because it's light on the magical realism and holy shit, it gave me a bad case of the feels.