/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.4650367]

Want to get into reading again.

>read the wiki

Did. Nothing really jumped out. A lot of old boring books that don't appeal to me or its stuff i read years ago. They seem kind of literary equivalent of music recommendations for The Beatles, Rolling Stones, etc. That's what most of the "best books ever lists" I've seen seem to be like. Something has to be really old and have built up a reputation before people feel comfortable nominating it as "best ever". I feel like such lists and thinking probably turn a lot of people off of literature.

I've seen recommendations like that for music, and that kind of music isn't really for me. I had to go out there and find my own stuff. I think I'll have to do the same thing

[Anonymous No.4650371]

post more lil girls?

[sage and hidden No.4650486]

>>4650371
>>>/tv/

[Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ No.4650488]

>>4650367
Beatles where early and talented pop with huge commercial push behind them. So please don't equate them. Books don't read like music sounds.

1. What books have you read that you like?
2. What interests you now? (The books I liked when I was younger are nothing like the books I'm plowing through now

I'm really really liking The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. Le Guin, I'm starting to sound like a skipping record.

[Anonymous No.4650508]

Here, this book is fairly new and highly regarded. Plus you can't go wrong with Neil Gaiman.

[Anonymous No.4650513]

The Beatles and The Rolling Stones are indeed mediocre. I like you for recognizing this fact, mr. OP. I suppose you want a book list similar in character to a music list which recommends you Bach, Beethoven, Wagner, Stravinsky and Schoenberg? Well, then. Read the following:

Illiad, Homer;
The Republic, Plato (I know it is philosophy, and yet Plato was perhaps the greatest of all prose writers);
Chinese poetry - there are many anthologies, search for them on Amazon;
The poetry of the troubadours - search for it on Amazon;
La Divina Commedia, by Dante;
The Canterbury Tales, by Chaucer;
Hamlet/King Lear/Macbeth/Othello, by Shakespeare;
Don Quijote, by Miguel de Cervantes;
The Brothers Karamazov, by Dostoyevsky;
War and Peace, by Tolstoy;
The Collected Poems of Eliot;
Ezra Pound's Cantos;
Ulysses.

You will have notice that poetry is in my list commoner than prose. That's right, because poetry is a superior art form and no novel shall ever compare to something like the great Comedy.

[Anonymous No.4650516]

>>4650513
Fuck. I've read your post completely wrong. You want something NEW, not old. Well, then, read IJ.

[Anonymous No.4650518]

>>4650516
>Infinite Jest
>1996
>new

[Anonymous No.4650519]

You didn't see the contemporary lists? Most of them have dates listed next to the titles on the national literatures.

[Anonymous No.4650523]

>>4650518
>not knowing that /lit/ is filled with pretentious only Pre 19th Century literature Autistic Fedoras e/it/ist
>2014

[Anonymous No.4650526]

>>4650488
Plenty of movies and books are commercially pushed these days, as the Beatles and other similar pop music was and has been.

>>4650518
Considering the novel is a concept that is hundreds of years old, relatively speaking, IJ is quite new.

[Anonymous No.4650531]

>>4650488
Wow. Still on the Dispossessed, eh? You really take your time to read, don't you?

[Anonymous No.4650534]

>>4650523
>>4650526
You do realize that many of us weren't old enough to even read at all when it was published, right?

[Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ No.4650537]

>>4650531
It's my weekday book I carry to work. It does draw it out when one isn't a speed reader.

[Anonymous No.4650541]

>>4650534
/lit/ has an older average board age than a lot of other boards.

Or at least, it used to. I don't want to believe it's mostly 18 year olds on here now.

[Anonymous No.4650543]

>>4650518
>Beatles
>1963
>old

OP looks like one of those guys who have no idea about the history of human civilization and think everything made before 2003 - the year in which they were born - should be considered 'old'. He has no idea that Eliot or Pessoa are actually pretty new, since they lived in the same age as we do. In a thousand years people will put Eliot and DFW all in the same historical period. Swift is old, Arnaut is old, Gilgamesh is old, Pound is not old.

[Anonymous No.4650547]

>>4650526
>Considering the novel is a concept that is hundreds of years old, relatively speaking, IJ is quite new.
>You do realize that many of us weren't old enough to even read at all when it was published, right?

Did you read what I said? What does that have to do with what I said?

[Anonymous No.4650595]

>>4650541
>I don't want to believe it's mostly 18 year olds on here now.
Just look at the books discussed a lot on here. 1984, Brave New World, The Stranger, Vonnegut, Catcher in the Rye, On the Road, etc. Not bad books at all, but they do tend to be the favourites of those in their late teens/early 20s.

[Anonymous No.4650999]

>>4650367
>equivalent of music recommendations for The Beatles, Rolling Stones
nah man

its like recommending classics like remain in light, low, white light/white heat instead of the new current trend in fashion (idk whatever pitchfork likes atm).

its pretty hard to find a classic book without any literary merit, although obviously some will be more to your tastes that others

time is a great filter for quality

[Anonymous No.4652007]

>>4650488
>1. What books have you read that you like?

Slaughterhouse Five. A scanner darkly. Just some stuff I liked recently.

I finished reading The Disaster Artist. Way better than I thought it would be. I read it for the silly stories of Tommy Wiseau on set. What I got was this character study of this very this very strange man, and a discussion of following your dreams.

[Anonymous No.4652611]

Hey Afg, post more qt syrians

[Anonymous No.4652642]

If you couldn't find anything interesting on the dozens of lists then don't even fucking bother.

[Anonymous No.4652652]

>>4650523
Sounds like someone got told because of his shit taste.

[Anonymous No.4653441]

>>4650513
fucking pleb. Just because they're too popular doesn't mean they aren't worth a lot of the praise they receive.