Hello /lit/ first time posting here but I need your help.
I'm trying to make a Book-et list (like a bucket list but for books) and I need to know what you think its imperative I read right now
>>7335299
Lolita, read it and only it and only it for the rest of your dull life.
So what does this OP like.
everything on Oprah's book club
>>7335321
Well mate, the books you ordered are fucking phenomenal so I respect you and I'll give you serious recs. My advice is some Burroughs, maybe Place of Dead Roads (might be fun with Blood Meridian) or The Soft Machine; some more McCarthy, like Outer Dark and Child of God as they are pretty short and in some ways better than his longer books; The New York Trilogy by Auster is a nice, relaxing read that is slightly intellectualy engaging; Tai Pei, surprisingly, isn't shit and you should read it and, last but not least, get ya a load of Joan Didion (her non-fiction, I mean. The White Album is her book I like the most). While you're at it, fall for the meme and enjoy Wallace's Consider the Lobster.
>>7335340
Thank you i'll add them to the list!
There are loads of lists like this already, whether in the style of "100 books to read before you die" or "the crucial literary canon"
/lit/ bitches a lot about the idea of a "canon" but it's a great place to start if you want some widely respected and influential texts. Funnily enough, this is a perfect moment in which to meme: start with the greeks. Any list worth its salt will recommend Homer, will probably recommend at least a sprinkling of Greek drama, and may very likely recommend Herodotus and Thucydides. Plato and Aristotle may crop up too, if only for their literary merit.
It all depends on why you want to read this stuff. Because everyone should read it? To get an idea of the history of literature? Depends all on you.
>>7335375
I did english literature at school and really enjoyed the greek epics, another one i'm gonna try and get a copy of is the Epic of Gilgamesh.
For a better idea of what im into;
Drugs, History, Abstract Societies (cults and stuff), Taboo, Ritual
>>7335387
Also poetry, mainly middle eastern it seems.. Rumi, Omar Khayyám...
>>7335299
Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller, Elementary Particles by Michel Houellebecq, The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea by Yukio Mishima, Thus Spake Zarathustra by Nietzsche, The Hero of our Time by Lermontov, Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by P.K. Dick, The Crying of Lot 49 by Pynchon
This is some entry-tier literature, but a whole lot better than Bukowski or Kerouac or whichever hippie fag is flavor of the month currently.
>>7335398
Added to the list, thanks pal
>>7335375
I would amend what you saying by warping the meme in, remeber ye the greeks, to mean: do remember they exist, and maybe one day check them out. To start with them isn't really productive. To clarify, I received what you would call a "classical education"; I studied latin and ancient greek for five years in high school, and acquainted myself with the Ancients' writings early on. I absolutely loathed them then, and only now, in the fullest liberty of not having ever given myself an order in which to read books, having experienced what I wanted, I can go back to their works and interface with them. I suspect not to be alone in this regard, and many that fall for the meme will reject literature because of the disinterest they have towards something they're reading just because someone told them it was the foundation of the western canon. Can we,in good faith and maybe just for a few days, avoid this meme? Just this one. Sorry for rambling, esl and all that shit.
>>7335410
I havent been here long enough to know if this is copy pasta, but its very articulately written anyway. I'll enjoy the Greeks for you pal.
>>7335418
Concocted just for this occasion, friend. Do enjoy them!
>>7335387
Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh (Drugs)
Herodotus' Histories (History, Abstract Societies, Taboo, Ritual)
>>7335498
>Irvine Welsh
Yeah i'm gonna get trainspotting and filth by him, havent watched the films intentionally because I feel it might be a true case of "the book is better"
Herodotus' sounds good too i'll get hold of that.
>>7335508
Herodotus is great fun, he has many tales such as the c`uckolding of King Candaules: http://www.livius.org/he-hg/herodotus/hist14.html
>>7335387
If you like history, Greece and then Rome are great places to start; they're fun (for someone who likes history) and will keep popping up everywhere. Gilgamesh is good for this same reason: it's a proto-epic to Homer's and Virgil's epics; you get to see that literary form at its earliest surviving stage. Herodotus is the same thing for history (and Thucydides, as a different foray into history), and Greek drama is the same thing for drama and a lot of literature.
>>7335410
I see what you're saying, and would emend your emendation by suggesting the middle ground: Instead of wholly committing to the Greeks, and instead of merely keeping them in mind, try them out. If you like them, keep going; if not, save them for later.
I was never introduced to the ancients in school (murican public education), but felt a revulsion similar to yours to any literature I was forced to read. I "fell for the meme" a few months ago and found myself really enjoying the Greeks, when not due to literary entertainment, then due to the obvious improvement in my historical and literary knowledge that they provided. I crushed through Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides, much of Xenophon, some drama, early philosophy, and am currently about 1/3 through Plato, having also recently moved on to Roman history (just finished all of Livy).
I feel robbed of exactly the rigor that your education provided, and am pursuing it on my own (although hardly to the same extent--no Latin/Ancient Greek). Rather than resenting the difficulty or dryness of the material, I am heartened by the very observable progress it is helping me make in terms of wrestling with texts that would have only very recently been overwhelming for me.
But like you said, many will be turned off by the Greeks. You're absolutely right that commitment to them should not be absolute.
