/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.5948609]

>there are people on /lit/ RIGHT NOW who won't read at least 100 books this year

Explain yourselves right now

[Anonymous No.5948615]

There are faggots on /lit/ right now, and OP is one of them.

[Anonymous No.5948625]

I have a job, school, friends and a girl to fuck.

I aint got the time

[Anonymous No.5948627]

>>5948625

Add children to the mix and you get the idea.


Op always forgetting the extracurricular achievements for patrician status, fucking wanker.

[Anonymous No.5948634]

>mfw I just realised that I spent ~£400 on books last year

fug, maybe it's time to make the switch to ebooks

[Anonymous No.5948635]

i just like shitposting here

[Anonymous No.5948638]

>>5948634
Tsundoku?

[Anonymous No.5948639]

>>5948625
>and a girl to fuck.

Why lie on the internet?

[Anonymous No.5948642]

>sleep 10 hours a day
>work, and travelling to work, takes 10 hours a day
>eating, hygiene, exercising takes 2 hours a day
>catching up on my youtube shows and 4chan takes 2 hours a day

Yeah I can read for those last two hours, and that's how I get a book done once in a while, but I'd rather go on the internet.

[Anonymous No.5948644]

>>5948609
I enjoy other things and am not neet. After 8 hours of studying/day there is only so much mental energy in me left.

[Anonymous No.5948649]

>>5948642
-2 hours sleep
-2 hours 4chan youtube

6 hours reading there u go

[Anonymous No.5948657]

I get a newspaper delivered to my apartement six days a week.

[Anonymous No.5948669]

>>5948638
No, I only buy in batches of 3-5 and read them all before buying new ones. I usually only buy new editions or secondhand ones in good condition, so I guess I spend like £6 per book on average.

[Anonymous No.5948672]

>>5948642
>not reading while commuting
Why?

[Anonymous No.5948673]

>>5948672
maybe he drives

[Anonymous No.5948674]

>>5948673
audiobooks.

[Anonymous No.5948675]

>>5948672

Last time I tried to do that, some teenagers laughed at me and called me a nerd.

[Anonymous No.5948677]

>>5948675
Let me guess - American?

[Anonymous No.5948679]

>>5948675
>caring for what teenagers think

[Anonymous No.5948683]

>>5948677

Yeah. Pretty much no one I know IRL reads books. Maybe they get into the latest pop fiction craze, like Hungry Games, but nothing else other than magazines. And even then I see less and less people read magazines.

[Anonymous No.5948684]

As far as wisdom and learning go there aren't a 100 books worth reading; for entertainment I prefer video games and a film now and then.

[Anonymous No.5948688]

>>5948683
Get fit and learn how to fight and never care about what lame ass teenagers think of you again.

[Anonymous No.5948689]

>>5948679

It's not that I'm worried what they think of me, it's that I'm worried they'll go beyond name calling and get violent. I know people who get beat up by random people on the street just for "looking like a fag". You have to be careful about your image where I live.

[Anonymous No.5948692]

>>5948684
*tip*

[Married Oldfag !VqaXcWQC4Q No.5948693]

>>5948609
1) Married with 5 kids
2) Working full time
3) I *wrote* three books
4) I don't read Perry Rhodan

[Anonymous No.5948695]

>>5948683
>>5948689
is this a troll

im pretty sure this whole thing did not happen

[Anonymous No.5948697]

>>5948675
>>5948683
>>5948689
Protip: people don't make fun of you because you read books but because you're a timid homo.

[Anonymous No.5948703]

>>5948689
>where I live people might get beaten up for reading in public
Sure thing. Where is that, anyway?

[Anonymous No.5948704]

>>5948609
I'm new here.

[Anonymous No.5948707]

>>5948609
I'm about to start a 700 page history of the civil rights movement, so that may take a bit of time on the old calendar. Fuck me right?

[Anonymous No.5948708]

>>5948693
>3) I *wrote* three books
Just out of curiosity, which?

[Anonymous No.5948709]

>>5948697

Well, yeah, but they leave me alone more by not reading. I'm working on getting /fit/, but I'm really just not the fighting type. I'd hate to get shot just because I wanted to defend my right to read books on the subway when I can just listen to music like everyone else and cause no problems.

[Anonymous No.5948719]

>>5948639
why must you crush my dreams

[Anonymous No.5948722]

>>5948708
Ulysses, Infinite Jest, Gravity's Rainbow

[Anonymous No.5948728]

Because it isn't a question of how many books you've read?

[Anonymous No.5948730]

>>5948675
Thats nothing. When I tried some guy in his car started yelling David Foster Wallace at me.

[Anonymous No.5948732]

>>5948609
i'm bored of reading
and life

[Anonymous No.5948735]

>>5948709
Are you sure you don't just have anxiety issues? Because those scenarios seem very implausible.

[Married Oldfag !VqaXcWQC4Q No.5948740]

>>5948708
- A book on training sales engineers (ghosted for someone else)
- A 'specialty gaming' book (i.e., a dungeons and dragons book) for hire
- A book on the Catholic theology of courtship and engagement.

I am a shoe in for the Booker, right?

[Anonymous No.5948753]

>>5948740
>he lies on the internet
lesmugfrogman.info

[Anonymous No.5948765]

>>5948740
>shoe in

c'mon dude, you're supposed to be a professional writer

[Married Oldfag !VqaXcWQC4Q No.5948773]

>>5948753
Why would I lie about books like that?
Seriously, who lies about writing a D&D book? Do you think I made it up for the prestige?!

[Anonymous No.5948776]

>>5948675
Kick their ass.
Or beat them with the book.

[Anonymous No.5948777]

>>5948740
>trip on 4chan

[Married Oldfag !VqaXcWQC4Q No.5948778]

>>5948765

[Married Oldfag !VqaXcWQC4Q No.5948791]

>>5948777

[Anonymous No.5948799]

>>5948777
Oldfag is probably the only tolerable trip on 4chan. That said, tripfagging is an abomination.

[Married Oldfag !VqaXcWQC4Q No.5948809]

>>5948799
Thanks
I usually don't tripfag it up, but once in a thread I leave it on to avoid the appearance of samefagging

[Anonymous No.5948813]

>>5948778
the idiom is 'shoo-in'

[Anonymous No.5948831]

>>5948777
>>5948777
>>5948777

[Anonymous No.5948970]

>>5948675
>implying this happened
nobody laughs at people for reading you autistic fuck. I live in the most shithole Southern area of the United States where all of the stereotypes come from and nobody has ever remarked on me reading.

[Anonymous No.5949019]

>>5948813
...
the implication is that he knew that and wrote 'shoe in' in an attempt to be humorous in the context of winning the Booker Prize.

[Anonymous No.5949021]

>>5948683
> hungry games
That's a /d/comic on DA.

[Anonymous No.5949063]

>>5948639

>Not using your knowledge of /lit/ and literature to bed geeks

You're doing it wrong, anon.

[Anonymous No.5949135]

>>5949021

>implying that wasn't his intention

[Anonymous No.5949157]

>>5948970
They probably didn't know what you were doing.

[Anonymous No.5949170]

>>5948642
>Sleep 10 hours a day
That's alot. I get about 8 ideally unless I've been shortchanging it and then I might sleep 10.

[Anonymous No.5949185]

>>5949063
I've never had trouble with a sex life, but this has always been my dream.

How? Where do you find girls genuinely interested in literature or academia?

[Anonymous No.5949187]

>>5948609

Person studying to be an Electrical Engineer here.

I'm not sure if it's business or laziness, but I'm willing to do the math to find out.

By definition, to complete the task,

>100 books a year = one book every 3.65 days

Question One: how fast do I read?

The longest book I ever read in a day without skimming or missing content was the first volume of Karl Ove Knaussgard's "My Struggle", a 449 page book. This took from 11 AM to 8 PM.

I ate meals and took short breaks when needed. Let's say 1.5 hours of 9 hours of reading time were wasted. That means it took 7.5 hours to read ~450 pages.

So:

>450 pages / 7.5 hours = 60 pages per hour

So, while maintaining roughly full comprehension, I can get through 60 pages in an hour, or about a page a minute.

I wouldn't want to read 100 books in a year if I didn't have a shot at comprehending what I actually read, otherwise I'd just be a poser. So that's the rate.

How long would I need to read to clock one book?

Amazon found the median novel's ~64,000 words. I need to convert from pages to words.

>(in 6 vol.) estimated 1,000,000 words / 6 volumes = ~ 166,666 words / 7.5 hours ~ = 22,222 words / hour

Therefore:
>64,000 words / 22,222 wph ~ = 2.8 hours.

This is an interesting result because as far as I'm concerned it isn't necessarily out of my reach, and I'm taking a bullshit level of difficult STEM courses.

If you're a humanities major with spare time, you have no excuse to not be a patrician god at this point.

[Anonymous No.5949196]

>>5948609

Reasons, in order.

1. I don't make time to, because I don't want to.
2. I have a job.
3. I have a wife.
4. I have other interests besides reading.
5. I also write, and prefer to make time for that.

[Anonymous No.5949208]

>>5949196
>thinks he's going to be a successful writer when he doesn't have the time to read such a minuscule amount of books

kek

[Anonymous No.5949233]

>>5949187
A Median Novel's length is an average of "every" novel. Those of us who browse /lit/ dont read "every" novel. We read novels of a different category, works that are more or less considered to be on the excellent side of the spectrum.

I don't know what the numbers are on this "side" of things, but my estimate is that amongst the better novels, there is a higher word count on average.

I would say this definitely holds true amongst the most popular(more likely to be read) novels especially, like twilight, harry potter, LOTR, game of thrones, hunger games, etc.

So in essence, I think you'd need to use a different median.

[Anonymous No.5949273]

>>5949170
I have to lie in bed for at least 12 hours just to guarantee 6 hours of sleep. Fucking mind racing all the time.

[Anonymous No.5949278]

>>5949185

The tradeoff matrix of smart versus attractive is where you're liable to get tripped up.

It's not hard to date women magnitudes more intelligent then you and who enjoy lit and academia. Many of these smart women are pining for a little personal attention, since often friendship and normal romantic pursuits fell to the wayside on their quest to become patrician.

However, whether or not they're conventionally attractive is a different story. When all of your time is consumed in study, personal hygiene tends to suffer. Makeup, a force multiplier for attractiveness, may not be part of their routine. They often either have more intense hobbies which demand technical proficience to discuss at their level, or no other hobbies beside their studies. They tend to lack traditional media socialization. This means they may be less funny then you're used to. Also, references which would normally hit it out of the park in normal circles will fly over their heads.

If you just want the brainiest girl in the room and could care less how she looks, go to one class and, critically, the first office hour, since there isn't anything to discuss yet unless you're brainy and trying to impress the professor. Find the girl who's continuously answering and asking questions in both settings and is obviously going to get an A, no matter how she does on the final, since the professor loves her so goddamn much.

Talk to her and ask her out.

If you want normal beauty too, you gotta search.

[Anonymous No.5949291]

>>5949278

This. Most people who are very smart stay outside of the socially sanctioned mixing places like bars and end up with a small circle of friends and acquaintances, usually professional at least indirectly, gotten through classes, jobs literary events, conferences, etc. You have to either be ballsy and risk breaching common conduct by approaching these people in public settings, or you have to put yourself into the places they go with the expectation of approach.

[Anonymous No.5949294]

>>5948609

Don't eat the fruit of knowledge?

I can read what I write. Fuck Sciencefags here btw.

[Anonymous No.5949302]

>>5949208

>thinks writing isn't about developing technical skills through sustained practice, like music
>thinking you have to read like a lit phd to do this

[Anonymous No.5949339]

>>5949233

While I'd agree that /lit/ holds itself to higher standards, I believe there's an implicit assumption that if you say "I'm reading for quantity this year" you're either reading "normal books" or the best shortform content you can find.

Infinite Jest and similar /lit/ recommended doorstops I believe can be excluded from the list.

[Anonymous No.5949394]

>>5949339
I'd hold that implicit assumption elsewhere but not on /lit/, only because I think the point of all this is to be a "literary patrician", something you won't achieve by reading 100 of the shortest novels you can find.

[Anonymous No.5949406]

>>5949208

> He writes not because he enjoys it, but because he wants to be successful.

I'm sad for you, friend.

[Anonymous No.5949413]

>>5949406
They aren't mutually exclusive. If your understanding is as bad as your writing, then i am the one that's sad for you.

[Anonymous No.5949545]

>>5949394

The question is whether the challenge is meant to be a speedreading, quantity, or exposure challenge.

(I'm gonna operate under the assumption that in all cases one's goal is to beat the challenge)

If it's a speedreading challenge, then sure, include /lit/core hard philosophy, doorstoppers, and highly dense/lengthy literature.

I just believe the challenge's quantity goal then directly opposes gaining value from anything more complex than simple prose. Anyone who can read a Plato in three days probably hasn't mentally done Plato, for example.

Similarly, part of being patrician is knowing what you're talking about. I believe any medium complexity probe by someone who knows what they're talking about will reveal people speedreading these types of books as frauds.

If it's a speedreading challenge, fine, but you certainly won't come out either internally or externally as a literary patrician. You'll just be a really good skimmer with a few new quotes to show off with to the uninformed.

If it's a quantity challenge, literally "Just read 100 books", then it's meaningless. I'll clock Dr. Seuss today, Goosebumps tomorrow, and Animorphs next week, and I'm done.

I believe it's an exposure challenge, "Read the best books you can while still making deadline". This is the only context in which I'd believe someone will come out more patrician. Doing so may mean picking books one can read, finish, and digest on a quicker deadline, which probably means shorter lengths.

[Anonymous No.5949597]

>There are people on /lit/ reading over 100 books a year.
Explain yourselves right now.

[Anonymous No.5949607]

>>5949597

I put my videogames in storage and dropped cable and internet for a year to see if I could do it.

It's remarkable how much you're willing to read and do when all you have waiting for you is a long yawning expanse of boredom to look forward to after work.

[Anonymous No.5949650]

>>5949273
Meditate, biatch.

[Anonymous No.5949863]

Anyone has an archive link to the thread where people posted their charts with what they read in 2014? Pls

[Anonymous No.5949899]

>>5949650

>He thinks meditation is anything besides new age foo to be sold in classes to stressed baby boomers

[Anonymous No.5949933]

>>5948675
>living in america

[Anonymous No.5949957]

100 books is plebshit compared to what real bibliophiles read. Look up Antonio Magliabechi, he had a personal library of over 40,000 books and knew every single letter in every one of them, and he was the head librarian of the Grand Duke of Tuscany on top of that. He didn't even change his fucking clothes before he went to sleep on top of his books because changing clothes took too much time that could be spent reading. He built nests out of books to cultivate spider colonies in so that they'd eat any bugs that might damage his books. Shit, he must have read over a thousand books a year without forgetting a single comma in any single on of them. And he never wrote shit. No, strike that, he was once issued a medal for being so fucking literate, and had to decide the words to be imprinted on it. You know what he wrote? In translation, “it is not sufficient to become learned to have read much, if we read without reflection.”
Just look at the man, the very face of bibliophilia, sporting that shit-eating grin.

[Anonymous No.5949959]

>>5949273
http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/tc/melatonin-overview

[Anonymous No.5949963]

>tfw only read 1 book this year so far

[Anonymous No.5949964]

>>5949957

Nice no true scotsmans there anon

[Anonymous No.5949974]

>>5949964
A lot nicer than OPs, isn't it?

[Anonymous No.5949997]

>>5949974

I suppose. I mean, I read 99 books last year, but apparently my plebitude is maximal because apparantely 100 is the Mercator line for patricians.

[Anonymous No.5950323]

>>5949278
Thank you for that post anon. You may have very well helped me find the /lit/ qt of my dreams.

[Anonymous No.5951510]

I'm on my third, about a fourth through it. Even though it's entertaining I really hope that it starts to evolve past DUDE MANCHILDREN LMAO,

[Anonymous No.5951521]

>>5948642

>That schedule
WHY LIVE

[Anonymous No.5951534]

>read 101 in 2014

Think that's my peak though. Doubt I'll even break 50 this year let alone ever reach 100 again.

[Anonymous No.5951539]

I'm too busy writing.

[Anonymous No.5951554]

>>5948740
>theology
Dhghghghhhhuuuuhhhhhhhhh

[Anonymous No.5951616]

I read a 100 books a year but I can't remember any of it. I don't see the point of taking notes on fiction that I read for fun.

[Anonymous No.5953137]

>>5951521
Because it's immoral not to support the free market for as long as you're physically able to.

[Anonymous No.5953359]

>>5948634
not buying books 2nd hand.
pleb

[Anonymous No.5953365]

>>5949273
You've got problems. See a doctor.

[Anonymous No.5953372]

>>5951521
That was my high school schedule, man. 3 hours commute, 7 hours school, loads of sleeping. It's pretty manageable once you get started.

[Anonymous No.5953429]

>>5953372
>3 hours to school
Holy shit where do you live

[Anonymous No.5953514]

>>5949185
You find them on accident.

Once you're already in a relationship with a pleb.

:/

[Anonymous No.5953520]

>>5953429
Australia

[Anonymous No.5953538]

>>5953520
Either you went to some ultra-exclusive private school from whoop whoop, or you lived on an island or something.

[Anonymous No.5953558]

>>5953538
Australia is an island.

[Anonymous No.5953582]

>>5953558
Don't get smart with me.

[Anonymous No.5953614]

>>5953582
Sorry.

[Anonymous No.5953628]

>>5953614
You're alright.

[Anonymous No.5953690]

2-3 per week is a bit much for me. Not a lot of my backlog falls into the 200 page readabe in a day kind. And there's matters of focus, work, friends, other hobbies, depressive episodes, etc. If I could I would, I really need to knock down a chunk of my backlog. But as it stands I'll be lucky to hit 45.