/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.6971699]

ITT: Things that would make you instantly throw the book you're reading into the trash bin

> The protag of the fiction book you're reading ends his journey by revealing that he is currently writing a book about his life and the title of this autobiography is the same as the book you're currently reading

[Anonymous No.6971720]

I've read good books that do this.

[Anonymous No.6971722]

>>6971720
like?

[Anonymous No.6971723]

> it was a dream after all
> breaking the 4th wall
> spelling mistakes / wrong translations

[Anonymous No.6971728]

So you throw the book into the trash once you've read the whole thing? Why? You've already read it, presumably the rest of it was good enough to keep you reading. OP is a retard.

[Anonymous No.6971744]

>>6971722
The Human Stain by Philip Roth did this

[Anonymous No.6971749]

>>6971723
> breaking the 4th wall

You would throw Hugo in the trash?

[Anonymous No.6971753]

Pompous explanations of ordinary foreign words.
Especially if those words are Japanese. People really love to project themselves onto Japan.

[Anonymous No.6971758]

>>6971699
>Tao Lin

[Anonymous No.6971767]

>>6971722
That Cirque Du Freak kid series did this kind of.

[Anonymous No.6971774]

>>6971728
The ending ruined it all, I felt like I was rused.

[Anonymous No.6971782]

>>6971749
As well as Cervantes, Sterne, and a good deal of post-1800 literature.

[Anonymous No.6971797]

>>6971699
The Outsiders does this. A shit ending for a pretty decent story. Should of just ended it somewhere after the last guy died

[Anonymous No.6971804]

> Naming any landmarks Helios/Poseidon/etc
> Naming any landmarks Darwin/Freud/Platon/etc
> Bad guys are the devil incarnate with no good redeeming features

[Anonymous No.6971808]

>>6971699
"There and Back Again: A Hobbit's Tale, by Bilbo Baggins."

[Anonymous No.6971850]

>Purposefully using minimal punctuation and capitalization to seem interesting
>Overly describing each new character's appearance until the reader falls asleep

[Anonymous No.6971857]

>>6971850
Did you just finish reading something by Gertrude Stein?

[Anonymous No.6971868]

>>6971722
Green hills of africa

[Anonymous No.6971895]

>>6971804
>Not naming a place Hephaestus because it sounds nifty

Well what's even the point of living then

[Anonymous No.6971902]

>>6971895
Idk tbh imo lol.

[Anonymous No.6971920]

>protagonist is a writer

Intentionally avoid paper recycling bin and into regular trash it goes

[Anonymous No.6971928]

>book is in first person AND present tense

[Anonymous No.6971956]

>>6971928
>Not experiencing a situation as viscerally as possible

Pssh

[Anonymous No.6971969]

>>6971920

> A portrait of the artist as a young man

I haven't been on this board long, is Joyce a meme or what?

[Anonymous No.6971970]

>>6971956
>implying stories should be about visceral experience

This is what video games do to people.

[Anonymous No.6971980]

>>6971970
>implying visceral experiences don't make for good storytelling

[Anonymous No.6971988]

>>6971970
>>6971980
Let's get some examples of each and maybe we can have an actual discussion, nerds

[Anonymous No.6971994]

>>6971980

Your uncle molesting you is a visceral experience, but it's not a great story.

Seriously, name one good book that's in present tense and first person.

[Anonymous No.6972016]

>>6971994
>but it's not a great story.

Yes it is. You learn what it's like to be a victim of molestation, get to think about the different complex emotions they go through, what a person that molests children behaves like, what he said to you, pondering what your uncle might have been thinking, etc. You learn things, even if they're unpleasant.

[Anonymous No.6972028]

>>6971994
>Your uncle molesting you is a visceral experience, but it's not a great story.
Could be. And by "visceral experience" you can understand "the least degree of detachment". Third person past tense is someone telling you something that happened to other people.

>Seriously, name one good book that's in present tense and first person.
The one I'm writing.

Also, present tense is usual for chinese literature.

[Anonymous No.6972039]

>>6971722
The Bible.

[Anonymous No.6972057]

>>6971994
My fingers are flying, I have to tell this faggot on the internet that he's wrong and I'm right. He'll be thinking of replying to me, so I need to carefully craft this sentence so he doesn't think I'm being an asshole. To my left is a toilet. I look up and crack my neck, I feel the sour twinge of self hatred and press post.

[Anonymous No.6972076]

>>6971868
You know that book wasn't fictional..? As in obviously autobiographic and a retelling of a hunt in Africa...?

[Anonymous No.6972085]

>>6971928
>book is in third person AND present tense
>an awkward silence.

[Anonymous No.6972089]

>>6972076
Topkek

[Anonymous No.6972099]

>>6972028
>Also, present tense is usual for chinese literature.
In a language that does conjugate.

[Anonymous No.6972111]

>>6972099
*does not

[Anonymous No.6972132]

The book opens with a academic interview in which the student is more autistic than the most autistic person to ever browse /lit/.

[Anonymous No.6972169]

>>6972132

[Anonymous No.6972209]

>>6971920
>recycling

[Anonymous No.6972260]

>book has long drawn out dialogue
>general lameness
>character learns a deep lesson about life and himself from another person
>character has no faults

[Anonymous No.6972309]

>>6972132
Well jested.

[Anonymous No.6972337]

>>6971994
Percy Jackson

[Anonymous No.6972342]

>le unreliable narrator

[Anonymous No.6972350]

>>6972342
George R R Martin says hello.
I'm not saying the series is aweome, I'm saying it definitely doesn't suck

[Anonymous No.6972362]

>>6972342
>>6972350
Fault in Our Stars too. Part of the charm of the book is experiencing Hazel Grace's beautiful cynicism through her perspective.

[Anonymous No.6972494]

>ye olde witty English dialogues
(see Rothfuss)

[Anonymous No.6972499]

>>6971699
wouldn't that be at the end of the book?

so you're throwing the book down in disgust after you read it

[Anonymous No.6972502]

>>6972362

[Anonymous No.6972505]

>author mentions "e-mailing" or the Internet in his prologue

[Anonymous No.6972517]

>introduction by some minor best seller author

[Anonymous No.6972543]

>book is in first person and the protag describes his own appearance

[Anonymous No.6972559]

>>6972517

>introduction by minor bestseller author
>it just talks about how he read the book on the bus, or when he was in a bad relationship or something
>no actual insights about the book at all

[Anonymous No.6972587]

>>6971723
>> breaking the 4th wall

dostoyevsky continually does this in the idiot, reading it now and every time he says 'dear reader' I groan a little.

[Anonymous No.6972596]

>>6972587
Isn't that like someone reading the story as written by someone and not actually the 4th wall reader

[Anonymous No.6972608]

>>6972596
no more like 'and the clothes he was wearing were terribly shabby, dear reader'
'Some would say he's a terrible man but he wasn't and we wouldn't want to lie to the reader'
etc

[Anonymous No.6972612]

>>6971767
Yea and it was awful

I was like 15 and I still knew it was terrible

[Anonymous No.6972615]

>Characters

[Anonymous No.6972617]

>realizing some sadist switched the covers, and you're actually reading Ayn Rand.

[Anonymous No.6972653]

Artemis Fowl did this iirc.

[Anonymous No.6972728]

>Book was written by a white male
Problematic as fuck

[Anonymous No.6972845]

>>6971723
>> breaking the 4th wall
perfectly acceptable

[Anonymous No.6972850]

>>6971969
that's classified as autofiction iirc and is both perfectly acceptable, and Portrait is a fantastic book in its own right and as an example of such.

[Anonymous No.6972855]

>>6972099
saying it's present tense isn't exactly correct tbh

[Anonymous No.6972864]

>>6971723
>> breaking the 4th wall
I imagine Lolita does this, albeit slightly loosely. It isn't a 'deal breaker'

[Anonymous No.6972880]

>>6972342
>not liking The Yellow Wallpaper

[Anonymous No.6973586]

>>6972499
Yes, I am doing exactly that.

[Anonymous No.6973706]

>book's title is the protagonist's name

[Anonymous No.6973743]

>>6973706
What about "I, (protagonist's name)"

[Anonymous No.6975352]

>I am able to predict the whole book from the first 3 chapters
trash.jpg

[Anonymous No.6975361]

>story takes place in the 80s-90s-00s
>technology seems stuck in the 1850s
>no mention of the internet whatsoever

[Anonymous No.6975452]

>>6973706
If the name is important to the plot, and/or there is something else written next to it that furthers understanding of the character, I can deal.
Otherwise, it's simply uncreative.

[Anonymous No.6975457]

>>6973706
>Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo & Juliet, King Lear

[Anonymous No.6975639]

>>6975457
Also: Oidipous Tyrannos, Antigone, Medeia, Elektra, Agamemnom, Phédre, Andromaque, Don Quixote et cetera et cetera et cetera

Whatever, >>6973706 is probably bait.

[Anonymous No.6975643]

>>6971928
>book shifts between tenses
this is why ill never be a good writer

[Anonymous No.6975645]

>>6975352
how would you know if you predicted correctly if you instantly threw it in the trash bin after only 3 chapters

[Anonymous No.6975671]

>>6975457
The Tragedy of Julius Caesar
The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
The Tragedy of Macbeth
Besides, those are plays. You want to have the name in there because you can't go back in time and listen to what the name is of the main character. Or else you'd have to keep dropping that name like it's a hot potato.

>>6975639
The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha is the original title.
And plays. Lotsa plays.'

[Anonymous No.6975702]

>>6971928
>99% of fiction

[Anonymous No.6975772]

It wasn't until I read this piece of shit that I understood why people tend to hate genre fiction. It has just about every single gary stue moment you could possibly imagine and then it ends with " and it was all a dream. OR WAS IT?!"

The only reason I ever finished was because I had paid full price for it.

[Anonymous No.6975803]

>>6975643
I feel like shifting tense can make sense. (Rhyme not intended). If you have a chapter in present tense told from the perspective of an immigrant or some drugged up junkie between otherwise 'normal' chapters in the past... Well why not? It may add to the experience.

[Anonymous No.6975815]

>>6975772
m8 why even torture yourself with that shit

[Anonymous No.6975820]

>>6971699
>O Muse! Sing in me, and through me tell the story

[Anonymous No.6975851]

>Reading book by this Swede cuck cos everyone was circlejerking him a few years ago
>Main characters are a strong womyn feminist who don't need no man, and an older man who's an obvious stand-in for the author. Every woman wants him etc.
>Both total Mary Sues. She's working on Fermat's Last theorem despite not being a mathematician because she's just so quirky and smart.
>He wants to show how autistic she is or something so everything is described in excruciating detail. He literally describes how she buys a new Apple MacBook Air 2.3 GHz whatever and literally uses the trademark and copyright symbols in the text.
>She is looking for an apartment and we get to read every single last detail of each ad.

>Female protagonist gets beaten and shot in the head at point blank range, thrown into a hole in the ground and buried in earth. Not even in a coffin with air to breath. While losing consciousness she of course figures out the proof to Fermat's last theorem. Cos that's possible.

I'm shocked by this development because I wasn't expecting her to die. Actually thought it's a clever move that caught me off guard. There are 2 main characters so it was entirely plausible to spend the rest of the book with our other hero figuring out what happened to her and continuing alone.

>After a chapter of our male Mary-Sue hero we return to the girl
>She's not only survived, but she's dug HERSELF out from fucking underground with a bullet in her head.

Closed the book and put it down right there. I was willing to power through but that was too much. Only time I ever put a book down.

I went back to classics for a while and was embarrassed that it took that long (this was a few years ago) to realise that popular contemporary books are just as shit as popular contemporary pop-music, movies, and TV.

[Anonymous No.6975863]

>>6971722
How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
&
The Notebook, The Proof, The Third Lie

[Anonymous No.6975868]

>>6972608
This is not the 4th wall, Anon. I think you might be an idiot?

[Anonymous No.6975898]

>>6971767
Holy fuck that ending

>welp ill just go back in time or some shit

[Anonymous No.6975988]

>>6973743
Name a single book other than I, Robot that follows that trope.

[Anonymous No.6976030]

>>6971723
>> spelling mistakes / wrong translations

Metro 2033 translation was the stuff of nightmares.

[Anonymous No.6976035]

>>6975988
Not that anon

Graves' I, Claudius

It's good!

[Anonymous No.6976157]

>>6976035
Oh, yeah, I forgot about that one.

[Anonymous No.6976172]

>>6971699
Well, what's the fucking point of throwing it into the bin now that you finished the book?

[Anonymous No.6976178]

>>6976172
Satisfaction of putting yourself superiorly over the book. If this isn't enough for you, I suggest pissing on it in the trash can.

[Anonymous No.6976187]

>>6976178
In my experience, the physical object book is really hard to humiliate

[Anonymous No.6976579]

>>6972608
That isn't breaking the 4th wall, moron, that's only when the characters themselves turn to the reader and tell him something

[Anonymous No.6976682]

>>6972342
Mother Night and many other stories do this well.

[Anonymous No.6976699]

>>6971970
I'd agree that video games give people visceral experiences.

[Anonymous No.6976717]

>>6971699
it's that what Lord of the Rings is?

[Anonymous No.6976737]

>it has words

STRAIGHT INTO THE RUBBISH BIN, I TELL YA.

[Anonymous No.6976753]

>>6976717

No, the book is called There And Back Again. It's a Hobbit's Tale by Bilbo Baggins.

[Anonymous No.6978651]

>>6971699
Well it happened quite ago. I tried to read epic fantasy after reading Tolkien, and i threw most of books away because their atmosphere was too medieval for me, too much kings, too much wars, etc. I'm not saying its wrong but its not my thing. No matter what kind of books you read, there's always an atmosphere, and if this atmosphere it's not that captivating for my mind emotions or whatever, i think i'm wasting my time.

[Anonymous No.6978665]

>>6972587

Dostoyevsky does this in a lot of his other work. I'm pretty sure White Night even starts with "Dear reader"

[Anonymous No.6978672]

Whenever a book attempts to portray indulging in moral sin as hedonism

[Terrible Person !.fNJV2Jlhw No.6978676]

>>6971699
Spoiled little bitches, no matter what gender. If the main character is a spoiled little bitch, I just end up hating it.

The only exception I've had to this was The Boy Who Reversed Himself, and only because the story was interesting enough to hold me. And I was really, REALLY holding out hope that she would change. Which she didn't, and the ending almost pissed me off enough to ruin it.

[Anonymous No.6978753]

>>6975803
For me tense shifts on a sentence by sentence basis. I can't make it consistent.

[Anonymous No.6978774]

>>6978753
then you may have brain damage. get check'd

[Anonymous No.6980571]

>>6978753
I sometimes shift on accident when leaving the "present" of the text.
>set in 2015 and written in present for whatever reasons
>retell something about summer of 2012 in past
>forget to shift back when picking up 2015

Happens all the time. Sometimes after lengthy dialog I also keep the present tense. This is exactly what editing is for.

[Anonymous No.6980596]

>>6972543

[Anonymous No.6980598]

>>6971928
Read On Broadway by Damon Runyan and then tell me why this can't work.

[Anonymous No.6980881]

>>6971722
The Hobbit/Lord of the Rings

[Anonymous No.6980944]

>>6971722
The BFG

[Anonymous No.6980966]

>>6971767
and it was complete shit

[Anonymous No.6980973]

>>6971782
sterne doesn't really count, tristram shandy is a fictional autobiography so he kind of has to address a reader

[Anonymous No.6981059]

>>6971797
Stay golden Ponyboy. Damn you made me nostalgia hard. The Outsiders is actually a great book, I think it, Hamlet, and Julius Caesar were the only school curriculum books I actually enjoyed.

[Anonymous No.6981071]

>>6971970
I don't think stories should necessarily be visceral, but if you don't appreciate that some narratives are best told that way then I just feel that you're closeminded. I don't want every novel ever to be told from a third-person omniscience, and I'm sure you don't either.

[Anonymous No.6981080]

>>6971994
TBF it's a short story but DFW's "Good Old Neon" is an example of a story that makes good use of first-person present to convey a visceral experience that couldn't really be done to the same effect by a third-person narration (suicide and the leadup). The narrator reflects and much of the story is related through flashbacks, but for all intents and purposes it is first-person present-tense, especially the ending, which, for me at least, really struck me.

[Anonymous No.6981093]

>>6972494
But Rothfuss does exactly the opposite of this. In fact one of the main criticisms of his work that I've heard repeatedly is that most of the characters talk in the style of hip, modern, university students. I've even heard his dialogue called "memeish" and I would not wholly disagree.

[Anonymous No.6981124]

>>6975772
I looked this up on goodreads, and I'm curious, does this blurb on the black actually have the typo "solider"? It's there in the goodreads blurb, and also multiple times in the comments section where people quote it sometimes. BTW, this comments section is a gold mine.

[Anonymous No.6981216]

>>6971699
>Darren Shan

[Anonymous No.6981839]

>>6972517
I automatically skip intros. Not only do they suck in general, they also have a tendency to spoil the whole fucking book.

[Anonymous No.6981850]

>Child character that is super logical and rational when all the adults are stumbling over themselves

it's shit.