/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.9924957]

Always heard that Reading is good for you, that It Can change your life ecc
But what kind of book?
Will reading a novel, like thriller or fantasy have benefits on my Life?

[Anonymous No.9924963]

Maybe start with something on how to write in English

[Anonymous No.9924965]

>>9924957
I'm working on that

[Anonymous No.9925311]

Most fantasy and thrillers and so on are intended to be primarily entertainment, and so are unlikely to affect you in any deep, significant way unless they just happen to have some element that speaks to you personally.

There are exceptions, though.

Ursula Le Guin, Cormac McCarthy, and Philip K. Dick all write (wrote in Dick's case) "genre fiction" with a more literary bent.

[Anonymous No.9925386]

>>9924957
Seneca - Letters from a Stoic
Is a fair starting point. It's not as deep of convoluted as contemporary (c. Last 500 years?) philosophers and therefore easy to digest, though still overflowing with great little wisdoms. You can use this to decide if philosophy is something that interests you.

Fiction is generally fluff material that does little good but for the few historically acclaimed writers whose novel was just a vehicle for philosophical thought in the first place. A certain amount of energic process is devoted to keeping an active memory of certain details. Better, in my opinion, not to bother even wasting these faculties on things are just make believe. Besides, history is the greatest drama ever told. Every nonfiction you book you read can maintain a plethora of references and relationship to other nonfiction writings be it history, philosophy, theology, etc. That is to say, the more you read and come to understand the past, the more every subsequent book will bear increased nuance and insight. This is not possible with fiction because make believe-world is usually self-contained in its little setting with its little characters that all comes to an irrelevant end when you shut the covers. Why study fake men when you can come to understand real men and the implications of their actions even centuries after, and whose motivations were things from just as many centuries before.