/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.4306676]

I was into video games for the longest time about 5 years ago. Grew up with a Nintendo 64, and played only games. The only book series I read was the Harry Potter books.

At age 15 however, I decided to stop because they were taking too much of my time and my grades were falling. I started reading.

Now I'm 18, and I'm wondering. When did the average /lit/erati start reading? Like, as a hobby, not just occasionally a book here or there. Where did reading take off for you? Did it ever take off? Is 16 considered "late to the party"?

[Anonymous No.4306692]

>>4306676
I've read intensely since I was very young. Though, to be fair, it was mostly shit like R.L. Stein until I was in high school.

[Anonymous No.4306704]

>>4306676
about at preteen age, 12, 13, somewhere in there. I read The Bellmaker by Brian Jacques. It started me on a Redwall kick which started me on to everything else such as religion, mythology, science, psychology, fantasy and science fiction.

[Anonymous No.4306719]

In first grade m8

[Anonymous No.4306756]

Saw this thread from the front page so I'll chip in.

Never took off for me.
Last thing I read was "2 Years Before the Mast". Loved it. All that real adventure. Don't know why I don't read more. Probably because I keep playing games with infinite replay value and long investments like grand strategy and roguelikes. I need to break this.

[Anonymous No.4306761]

Maybe 6 or 7? Then I read voraciously until around 15 - 12ish might have been the peak in terms of books read per month. I read a shit-tonne back then.

Only started getting back into it recently after never having the time/will to read anything that wasn't related to my studies during university.

[edgy No.4306764]

gossip girl has had a profound impact on american white girls in just the past five years

[Anonymous No.4306775]

I read a hundreds of shitty YA novels up until I was 12

Then I didn't read anything but School required reading until I was 18 when I got into the classics

[Anonymous No.4306788]

>>4306764
>look up gossip girls
>Teenager Blair Waldorf sneaks away from a party to have sex with her boyfriend Nate Archibald
Well that was clear cut. Also
>nate archibald
Why give a character the name of one of the more obscure basketball legends?

[Anonymous No.4306805]

Have been reading a lot for as long as I can remember, and also there is a Jonathan Franzen essay where he explores reading from a sociological viewpoint, and apparently most "readers" are people who grew up in an environment with others who appreciated the same thing, and feel a sort of lack when they're not reading anything at the moment for the rest of their lives. Anyway, it's still not impossible, and you're missing out on a lot if you're interested in it. Just decide to read an hour or two every day and you're set.

[Anonymous No.4306815]

I didn't read for shit until I was almost 21. It's never too late, anon.

[Anonymous No.4306829]

My big turning point, when I realized what it meant to read, was my freshman year of high school. I had always liked to read, and ate up Harry Potter and Percy Jackson and all that shit, but when I began high school, my Uncle, (who at the time was dying of cancer) decided he wanted to give me his old collection of Stephen King books. 1st prints, from Carrie all the way to Under the Dome. I said thank you graciously and made a special spot on my book case for every one of them. It was then that I decided to read The Shining, I had seen and loved the movie and wondered how the book would hold up. Needless to say I was blown away, the feeling and the fear and everything Mr. King gave me I cherished. And from there I spread to anything and everything; Lord of the Flies, 1824, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451. My uncle brought me into this world, and I'm more than glad to call it my own.

[Anonymous No.4306834]

>>4306676
I had a similar introduction to reading. I never gave a shit about it until I was about 19. After high school (a solid C-F student) I spent nearly all of my time chasing girls at colleges my responsible friends attended after graduation. Worked for a carpet cleaning business, smoked a lot of pot, and plated x-box live Call of Duty about 6 hours every night in granny's basement. I was interested in art and graffiti, which led me to some relatively good art, and decided one day to get off my ass and enroll in local community college for fine art. At this point I was about 19. Took a creative writing course as my ENG, read Carver's "Cathedral". Not sure why it was this story, but it was the catalyst for where I'm at now. Switched over from fine arts to liberal arts, sold all video games, still smoked pot, and took 4 lit courses for three semesters in a row (got all gen eds done in last semester at CC). I did extremely well at the CC (3.9) and became thoroughly invested in an education in lit. I became close to a prof there (one of my best friends now) and applied to a relatively good liberal arts college. I'm 23 now and am a senior Lit major, working on senior thesis, have a solid 3.8, and several promising writing samples for grad school apps. It can happen any time...for me I didn't read a fucking thing until I was 19 years old.

[edgy No.4306879]

>>4306788
who cares about the books, i never read those...

anyway you forgot that nate cheats on blair with serena b4 she left for summer school and tells blair abt it right after she comes back. what a dick move right? omg just when blair became popular girl queen serena comes back for her throne and they used to be best friends, but every1 knows blair is ttly jealous tho cuz serena is just totes gorg. its soo sad bc they were friends 1st then enemies for no reason then friends again then nate tells on her then enemies again, then the series rly picks up with this nobody dude gets involved with serena which like, would never have happened irl but his sister jenny becomes like bffs with blair and its soooo juicy so many scandals bro u have to read them

[Anonymous No.4306899]

First page post, why not. This is the first time I've been on /lit/ because I've been wanting to read for a while now and don't know where to start.
Reading American Psycho. Any suggestions?

[Anonymous No.4306911]

>>4306899
>that image
I feel extremely disturbed
>>4305237
Click on OP's image

[Anonymous No.4306913]

>>4306899
http://images.wikia.com/4chanlit/images/e/e2/1365475090228.jpg

[Anonymous No.4306918]

Harry Potter and some Roald Dahl as a child. Age 7-11. I re-read the HP books several times during this period. Then around 11-12 I started reading some other stuff. Count of Monte Cristo, Robinson Crusoe, both of which I found to be terrifically splendid tales. Then it evolved to stuff like Stephen King and Robin Hobb. At some point I read Dune, and Knolholet(a Hitchhikers Guide-esque sci-fi book). And then began my days of being depressed, and I didn't read for over a year. I think I was 17-18 when this started. I stopped being depressed around late 18s-early 19s maybe, at which point I started reading again.

[Anonymous No.4306920]

I read constantly as a child. Dropped it at 13 because thats nerd shit and I wanted to get girls. At 20 I decided to read an autobiography of somebody I admire(d), and it was the kick up the ass I needed.
Now its all I do.

And I get no girls.

[Anonymous No.4306924]

>>4306911
>>4306913
Good work faggots.
I'll report back when I've finished all of them.

[Anonymous No.4306925]

I read insane amounts from about 7 to 16, got more into marijuana but still read a lot, and from about 20 to now (23) I'm back to devouring books.

Also, video games were present throughout, though not so much for the last few years.

[Anonymous No.4306926]

>>4306924
Just for the record you're probably going to get some funny looks if you decide to buy Lolita or rent it out or some shit like that

[Anonymous No.4306928]

>>4306879
Why do gay people/hipsters type like little kids on the internet? I think it's because they are trying to create a detatched and aloof representation of themselves to emphasize how little they care about the way others perceive them. Of course, wanting others to see how much you don't care tells us that you actually care about your appearance a lot.

[Anonymous No.4306929]

>>4306676
1st grade. Started weakest reader in class, finished 6th grade with a 12th grade reading level. Read the LOTR trilogy in 7th and memorized the general prologue of The Canterbury Tales in middle English by graduation.

Currently unemployed with a BA in medieval lit. Probably going into the coal mines in the next town over since i've been looking for employment for months.

Reading blows.

[Anonymous No.4306930]

>>4306926
Yeah well how about I just fuck them in the ass until they scream uncle.

[Anonymous No.4306931]

>>4306928
the way he was typing was part of a joke he was making, mocking little girls literature, and how soap opera like and melodrama filled it is.

[Anonymous No.4306936]

>>4306930
That's the spirit

[Anonymous No.4306941]

>>4306936
Go team!

[Anonymous No.4306955]

>>4306931
No, I don't think so. I think this is an example of that new sincerity thing

[Anonymous No.4306962]

>>4306955
The best part about new sincerity is that none of it is sincere.

[Anonymous No.4306970]

I read a moderate ammount of sci-fi as a kid. Freshman year of H.S. I binged on Vonnegut and Hunter Thompson then literally like stopped completely. I don't think I finished a book until I was assigned The Illiad Senior year of H.S. Then I read The Oddesy, The Aneid, The Inferno, and One Flew over the Cuckoo's nest. Then I stopped dead again and until I was 20 (I read heart of darkness at some point and about a quarter of moby dick. One night I picked up Childhood's end and read the whole thing without stopping and was like shocked that books could be so entertaining. I binged on a bunch of scifi over that winter then in the summer I hit the pace I've been at for the last 2 years(2-3 books a week).

So yeah you can start late, I was 20

[edgy No.4306984]

>>4306928
r u trying to imply that i am shallow superficial and vain to the point that i only really care about my outward appearance fucking bitches and posturing myself above all men but that i have the gift of actually being smarter than everyone so that i achieve my goals with relative ease? r u trying to imply that i dont care deeply abt others opinions of me but at the same time dont care at all and that i dont even understand how that works? r u trying to apply the implications that i am not actually detached and aloof bc i am and it makes me look fukn cool. what, u r sooo wrong bitch. watch what u imply. who do u think you are u aren't the pope, u don't know me m8, ill wreck ur shit right now little faggot talking shit watch my crew run up on ur bitch ass. talking shit get murked bitch nothing to say then huh huh yeah bitch thats what i fkn thought best step off hipsters died last year cept theyre still crawling around williamsburg and the mission but everyone there is gay anyway. fgt cant even handle these esoteric bombs thats what i thought bitch u are wack and gay better drink up im talking about my sperm which i just covered u in very sustaining and nutritious ur favorite snack

[Anonymous No.4306992]

If you haven't finished the western canon by the time you graduate middle school, you might as well fucking kill yourself

this includes (but is far from limited to) the Odyssey and the Illiad in the original Greek, Plato's Republic and other Dialogues in the original Greek, the Torah in the original Hebrew, the King James Bible, St. Jerome's Latin Vulgate Bible, Caesar's Gallic Wars/Civil War and Aurelius' Meditations in the original Latin, the Quaran in the original Arabic, Beowulf in the original Old English, the Canterbury Tales in the original Middle English, the Divine Comedy in the original Italian, Don Quixote in the original Spanish, all of Shakespeare's plays, Paradise Lost, the entire works of Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy in the original Russian, Moby-Dick, In Search of Lost Time in the original French, Ulysses, Finnegans Wake, Gravity's Rainbow, Infinite Jest, and Taipei.

[Anonymous No.4306989]

>>4306984
grate job posting

[Anonymous No.4306987]

When I was 10-12 or so. Was nuts about Halo, so I picked up the novels based on it. Fall of Reach by Eric Nylund to this day is probably my favourite book. It's really fucking good sci-fi

[Anonymous No.4306995]

>>4306992
great job posting

[Anonymous No.4307001]

>>4306676

I'm the opposite actually. When I was around ages 14/17 I read a lot.

Not really good books mind you. Mostly teen and young adult fiction. My favorite book in middle school/high school was Holes.

I quit reading around 18/19 and started getting real into film/cinema and music.

Being found of film, I decided upon being a screen writer and with that came my interest in actual novel writing. It's only been a few years that I have got back into reading and I started off with books like OPs pic related. Books that were turned into films.

Probably the only one on here that did this.

[Anonymous No.4307004]

>>4306992
>in the original Greek
fuck off nerd

[Anonymous No.4307010]

>>4307001

Should also note that I played video games too but also read when I was a teenager.

Mostly PS2 games. Quit vidya when my PS2 broke, never looked back.

[Anonymous No.4307008]

>>4306992
>Gravity's Rainbow, Infinite Jest, and Taipei
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

[Anonymous No.4307018]

>tfw quick reply doesn't show your post

Fuck you quick reply

[Anonymous No.4307019]

>>4307008
Congratulations, you got the joke!!!

[Anonymous No.4307024]

>>4307001

Also fuck you hipsters, you read Holes too and loved it.

>not admitting that you liked Holes

I still think it's one of the best teen fiction novels. The movie was shit though.

[Anonymous No.4307029]

What authors did you guys start off with?

Me. The generic ones like

>Stephen King
>Michael Crichton
>Anne Rice
>Tolkein

etc

I'm still trying to improve my taste in authors. Still pretty much a lit pleb baby.

[Anonymous No.4307033]

>>4306676

Bump for OP.

Where the fuck is op?

[Anonymous No.4307040]

I never considered myself a serious reader until I was 22, when I began studying literature, I've never read a single book twice (though that's not entirely my fault, I don't really have time to read anything other than what we read at school, which is way too fucking much)

[Anonymous No.4307041]

>>4306899

Fuck that book. It's just a laundry list of clubs, restaurants and /fa/shion references.

It's nothing like the film.

[Anonymous No.4307045]

>>4306899

Just fucking read whatever looks good on goodreads man.

It's what I do. I just go there and search for shit and grab whatever looks interesting. Find out about authors this way too.

Reading isn't hard. But if you are a picky guy it kind of is.

[Anonymous No.4307048]

>>4307040

>studying literature

You fucked up here. Books are for fun and nothing more. If you get stuck up like all the rest of /lit/ you will hate reading.

I started hating film because I became a stuck up film snob. I refuse to do with with books.

[Anonymous No.4307049]

>>4306992

>Finnegans Wake, Gravity's Rainbow, Infinite Jest, Taipei

>Canon

You don't even like literature, what the fuck are you doing here? Go back to /fit/ or wherever the fuck you hail from

also

>I'm aware this is b8

[Anonymous No.4307052]

>>4307049

Quit fucking responding to the troll pasta m8.

Fuck. It's derailing the thread.

[Anonymous No.4307058]

>>4307045

Also don't be fucking stuck on one genre.

Being a fag who just reads science fiction or a fag who just reads post war drama is a poor choice.

Read books from all sorts of genres. I hate people that do that.

[Anonymous No.4307066]

>>4307049

Bloom speculates Finnegans Wake as canon

[Anonymous No.4307071]

>>4307048

While I partly agree with the snob thing (this is why I stopped studying music), I've actually learned to enjoy a far greater range of literature than I used to, I've grown a lot humbler, I can even quasi-objectively (if that means anything) appreciate some bestsellers now for their own merit instead of just dismissing everything that is below Joyce level as "plebeian". In fact, I've learned that I actually didn't understand shit about what I was bragging about reading in the first place.

[Anonymous No.4307072]

>>4307066

>ppl still responding to that guy

Sigh... This board is easier than /mu/ too troll

[Anonymous No.4307078]

>>4307066

>canon

It's like I'm back on /tv/ again

Fuck you guys are the same crowd on every board.

[Anonymous No.4307083]

Is there any great author that started reading late?

[Anonymous No.4307087]

>>4307048
>Liked video games
>Became game snob
>Liked movies
>Became movie snob
>Liked music
>Became music snob

I have maybe a year left of enjoying this before I have to find something new. What should I read before its too late?

[Anonymous No.4307088]

>>4306899
The prose and tone are pretty good, but the product placement makes the read almost unbearable.

[Anonymous No.4307089]

>>4307072

shut up about /mu/, I like that board :^(

[Anonymous No.4307092]

>>4306676
At 22 I found myself understanding literature on a deeper level, and since then it has been a passion of mine.

I'm hoping that as I mature, I'll be able to understand works on a deeper level. That is, of course, when I hit 30 and it all goes downhill from there.

[Anonymous No.4307098]

>>4307072
Yea, well at least I know the diffidence between to and too, faggot.

[Anonymous No.4307105]

>>4306926
This.
>tfw never read Lolita
>tfw I saw this nice Penguin edition yesterday which I really wanted to buy
>tfw this is the cover

[Anonymous No.4307108]

>>4307088
it's not real product placement, it's pomo.

[Oh boy. No.4307129]

>>4306676
As a child, I read often; albeit, nothing that I read as a child would give any child a genuine challenge. Once I entered the eighth grade I began "searching for truth" as I once called it. The first book I read in my "search for truth" was "Nineteen Eighty-Four." I remember hearing about "Nineteen Eighty-Four" and its influence, and all the potential insight one may acquire from it if read by a particular mind at a particular time. "Nineteen Eighty-Four" only became more attractive to me after I noticed its length.

[Anonymous No.4307140]

>>4306676
I started reading seriously at age 15. I began with Joyce, Proust, Beckett, Yeats, the high-modernists. Then I went on to the Romantics and Victorians (Browning is waaay better than you think he is), then Shakespeare and his contemporaries (Spenser, Marlowe, Donne is my favourite English poet), and then I began reading in French, the playwrights, poets and novelists, then I began reading in Spanish, an then in Portuguese and Italian. I read through most of the ancient and classical epics before I graduated from high-school and the time after that has been me reading international contemporary lit. I'm 22 right now and studying Latin-American and Lusophone (Portuguese and Brazilian) literatures at university.

[Anonymous No.4307171]

>be me
>age 6 or so
>>older brother reads Harry potter 1
>interested, read it
>enjoy it
>finish the Harry potter books read Lotr, Welles and it sort of snowballed from there
>started "seriously" reading at age 15 (1984, brave new world, heart of darkness)
I too went through a video game phase (8-17)I'm now in my movie phase but in reading more than I did a year ago, a lot more. Feelsgoodman.

[Anonymous No.4307388]

Stopped reading at 15.
Started reading again at 22.

[Anonymous No.4307425]

>>4306676
this thread is inspiring me to become a reader

[Anonymous No.4307763]

I'm 18 and I started to read just 6 months ago. It started with Georges Orwell's 1984, than some Agatha Christie books, 3/5 Fondation cycle of Isaac Asimov, and like 12 books of the Game of Thrones.

[Anonymous No.4307811]

I've been reading since the philosopher's stone came out, when I was six. I've always been a reader, but never really that seriously. I read stuff like Tolkien, Harry Potter, Matthew Reilly, and other teen fiction books. A few months ago I decided I should always be reading a book. Was a good decision. I'm 19 now.

[Anonymous No.4307827]

i don't read a lot, something like 300 pages per month, sometime more, sometime less, but i've decided to read only very good books.
Anyway, i started with this rhythm when i was 17. before i read only occasionally and mainly shit.

[Anonymous No.4307839]

>>4306829
>My uncle brought me into this world

Shieet. Doesn't that make him you mother?

[Anonymous No.4307850]

I've been reading at an adult level since I was about 11.

[Fergus !hxTvuAIpXU No.4307853]

I don't actually remember ever starting to read. My parents are both huge readers, so the house was always full of books, so I read a lot of children's books from the 60s. I suppose the earliest books I can remember would be Enid Blyton story collections about toys that came to life and fairies and shit.

[Anonymous No.4307870]

Read a lot of fantasy from the ages 9 to about twelve, started playing video games and reading less, then started reading again once I graduated from high school. Now, at 22, I play video games occasionally, but most of my spare time is spent reading.

[Anonymous No.4307876]

I started out when I was about seven. The first "big" book I read was Stevenson's Treasure Island, and thus reading became a habit for me. I actually stopped reading in my late teenager years because I was stupid and started playing too many videogames and just wasting time on the chan.

Thanfully, I gave up my pleb ways when I entered uni, and resumed my reading habit.

[Anonymous No.4307899]

I read non-fiction massively since I was 8, i stopped at 16 and I have been reading mostly fiction in the last 4 years.

[Anonymous No.4308068]

I read a great deal ever since I was a child. Started reading more adult fare in the 4th/5th grade -

My school had a system called AR Points where you had to reach a certain number of points each semester. You would have to take a test once you had finished the book and the amount of points a book was worth was based on it's length and difficulty. I quickly became obsessed with acquiring more AR Points than anyone else I went to school with and read all of the books that were worth the highest amount of points (Don Quixote, Gone with the Wild and War and Peace are the first ones that come to mind)

Wasn't until middle school (believe 8th grade) that I stopped reading YA and genre fiction entirely and read my father's collection (Dostoyevsky, Proust, Hemingway, etc). now at 23 I will read one or two books a month - working 50+ hours a week makes me tend to go for more mindless forms of escapism, really need to read more actually

[Anonymous No.4308073]

>>4306676
3 to 11, stopped for a few years, then 16 upwards.

[Anonymous No.4308078]

>>4307024
Thank you. Holes is more or less the one book that I wholeheartedly loved when I was younger that I'm not ashamed to have now.

[Anonymous No.4308081]

>>4308078
I'm not now ashamed to have loved*, maybe

[Anonymous No.4308097]

>>4306676
I started at three, reading comics and newspapers (preferably yellow press since I didn't get to much), then gnawed my way up through childrens books, sci-fi and at 13 I read pretty much all kinds of stuff our small town library had available, even Marquis de Sade's 120 Days of Sodom.
It was a necessity, since this was back in the late 70s/early 80s, there were 3 TV channels (plus two from across the border, to which we lived close) and three miles to the village, so not much else to do when the weather was bad.

[Anonymous No.4308175]

>>4306676
I started REALLY reading at age 17, and I dont think Im late to the party. I do feel like I have to make up for lost time, but I wouldnt have even known about all the actually good books that I want to read now until I had hit that age anyway.

[Anonymous No.4308187]

Read like a goddamn precocious little maniac from 6 years old to around 12 or 13. Then I stopped because reading was "lame" and in middle school I wanted to be as "cool" as possible. Picked it back up in 10th grade.

My parents are fucking insane readers, they're in three different book clubs (a "classic" book club, a more contemporary plebbish neighborhood book club and a church discipleship group that requires a lot of reading) and we have a basement with wall-to-wall bookshelves stocked with shitloads of books. I guess you could say I was sort of doomed from the beginning to love reading.

[Anon No.4308203]

>>4306676
for me it was like 12 years or so. I was reading children/teenager literature from about 8 to 12, then moved to more difficult themes. I must say now, that I misunderstood some at that age, but at ages 12 to about 14 I was reading anything from 5 to 10 books a week. Then it slowed down, and now, at 20 I read about 2 to 3 books per month. But I read those as books should be read. I first quickly skim it and then focus on every sentence, wonder why it is there, what does it bring to the whole book, ... Pretty much like poem analysis.