At what point in your life did you become interested in literature and begin reading seriously?
i began reading at 7 and started the entry-level at 13. i attribute a large portion of my autism to this.
>>7386883
At 20, in early 2010. Almost simultaneous to the creation of /lit/.
>>7386883
23
25 now, I basically just read hard philosophy all the time now
it got me out of mayor depression, good stuff
i needed this shit when i was 19 yo
>>7386896
So you've been raised by memes?
>>7386934
No, I "created" a lot of memes myself, though that wasn't really much of a thing then. I've shaped my own taste, but /lit/ was a motivating factor. None of my family reads, so it was nice to have the various groups that formed here over the years to shoot the shit with.
Now. I was an English major in college, but never cared much for reading. I was more into anime and film. Now that I've graduated, I'm starting to become more interested in lit.
>>7387428
You realize that it's against the rules to say that you reported someone right?
>>7386883
20. Steinbeck did it for me. Before that, I had read quite a bit of Vonnegut and Palahnikek in my mid-teens, being an edgy hard-ass and all.
>>7387437
I reported myself
>>7386883
22, the Wolfe-meister
>>7386883
In elementary school, we had this computer system that gave each kid a unique login and allowed them to take tests on books they had read. In 2nd grade, I transferred to an elementary school that had this and proceeded to out-autism everyone and take the most tests. This apparently proved that I read the most books, so I won an award. Then, in 3rd grade, my parents pushed me to win again (They didn't have a clue that I was reading like a mad dog until they got a call that I was winning an award for it) so I got burned out from the pressure. Some years later, here I am. I just bought a Kindle Paperwhite (Would've bought a Kobo but the Black Friday sale was too good) and here I am on /lit/ for the first time trying to get back into reading books. Currently starting out with the Memester's Guide to the Galaxy because a pretty girl I know read it recently.
When I was 14--19 now.
At eleven or twelve. Curiously enough, I vigorously spited books until then. Harrowing to ascertain how superegotical prescription (via family and educative institutions) can shape children. Had it not been for Hesse I would most likely abominate everything to do reading to this day.
When I was 17 we read heart of darkness for school and that summer I read Old Man and the Sea, Of Mice and Men, On the Road and some Allen Ginsberg. Now I'm 20 and reading proustby which I mean shitposting on lit daily
>>7386883
I always read, I liked goofing off in class by reading Dante over and over again in high school, and read some Nabokov and Kafka and Beckett and other high school authors on my own time, got serious 18ish and I read at least six hours a day now
at 15, Fight Club led to the rest of Palahniuk led to Rapes His Sister, Phoebe led to On the Road led to Burroughs' oeuvre, and at that point I was bit by the Love Centipede and never looked back.
>>7386883
When I was 15-16, when OCD kicked into high gear and I needed something to ground me and distract me from my shitty,constant intrusive thoughts. My favourite book is Meditations by Marcus Aurelius still.
That was also when I started going to the gym to distract myself as well. I always thought OCD was a meme mental illness but it definitely isn't now that I've experienced it.
>>7388164
how mad do you get when people ask how organized you are or tell you how OCD they are too
>>7388175
I keep it to myself and I wear a mask in public anyway so people wouldn't really take it seriously. They would probably think "The funny,seemingly happy guy couldn't possibly be having constant compulsions and obsessions that are only barely being pushed down through sheer force of will" or something like that.
It's honestly the worst shit ever and the special snowflake types that pretend they have it are lucky that they actually don't.
Halfway through my senior year of high school, until then I was a scientism fedoralord retard that read genre-fiction (mainly sci-fi) garbage at best.
>>7387203
College freshman about to go into 2nd quarter, hoping for English major. Any general tips or things to prepare myself for ?
This year.
My first attempt to begin reading seriously was maybe 16 or 17. I didn't read at all between 18 and 22. At 22 I started reading lots of non-ficition. At 24 (current age) I'm beginning to get into novels and other fiction.
I've discovered reading helps me deal with the frustration, anxiety and loneliness of being cerebral and curious in a stupid age.
It also prevents me from turning inward and becoming neurotic by giving me a steady stream of complex events, ideas and situations to consider.
Highly recommend for anyone thinking about reading more. And trust me, you can definitely build solid reading habits after many years of non-reading.
>>7388204
Be ready to read and write a lot. Think you have an idea how much? More than that.
>>7388272
lel this. I fucked up majorly by getting all of my undergrad shit out of the way early, while waiting the recommended 2 years before declaring my major. now I am facing the next 2 years, which will be LITERALLY all upper-level English classes, AND I have a 30hrs/wk job. I am an idiot, you can laugh.
>>7388384
I work 25 hrs a week and am doubling in philosophy and English lit. I don't have much of a social life anymore, but every couple of weeks I'll go out for drinks with friends. I also browse this shuttle a lot and still get all my shit done. It's more than possible, I'd even say easy (well, depending on the work being read), and I'm at a pretty respected school so it's not like I'm in shit courses.
>>7386883
>Fifth grade - teacher reads Hamlet to Gifted class for a couple of weeks, not simplifying the language.
>Same time Gargoyles is airing, so I get enamored with Shakespeare but don't really pursue it for a few years
>In high school, actually enjoy Animal Farm, Scarlet Letter, etc. unlike most of my classmates
>But I think I really got on my /lit/ path when my intro Honors English read entirely epic poetry. The Iliad just tickled all my fancies, as an artist, reader, and writer, so I really gravitated to literary fiction, took so many English electives that I got a minor, eventually taught it for a living, and got my Masters in it.
>Now read crazy shit like Kobo Abe for pleasure, beautiful confusing pleasure.
>>7388204
>>7388272
Essentially this. In my English dept. we joke that we're the major that forces students to learn how to really think critically and properly express those thoughts (we have a practically non-existent philosophy dept). But yeah, undergrad classes... expect to read somewhere around 25-75 pages of prose for each class. Summer English classes are a nightmare. I took Bible as Lit as a term summer course. Read about 3/4ths of the Bible in around four weeks.
Grad school is a lot more group discussion, almost twice the reading, and long fucking papers that you devise complex and incredibly focused topics for.
>>7388406
And to answer the OP, I read constantly throughout childhood, children's and YA stuff in addition to entry-level "lit" like to kill a mockingbird, angela's ashes, etc. At about 11 I stopped reading and started skateboarding non-stop until about 18/19, in that time I really only read what was required for school (sometimes) and all the beats (and nietzsche, hardly understood). Long, long gaps between books. At around 19 I dropped my architecture major, switched to lit, started reading heavy outside of class, a year later picked up my second major in philosophy and now read more unassigned books than those I am assigned (of which I now read all, lol)
>>7388406
well luckily I am ahead of the game and do not have a social life at all. I'm sure I can do it, but it def is going to suck when the papers start ganging up on me. the last thing I want to do after making sandwiches for 8 hours is write about race/gender themes in Chaucer or something. race/gender issues is not why I read literature, and living in the American South I had no idea lit professors would have such hard-ons for Octavia Butler and Karen Fowler.
It was 12th grade in highschool, 17 years old, I took regular English because I was taking other honors courses. The class was exceedingly dull but the professor (who used to teach at Purdue) had a burning passion for teaching and English. The rest of the class were your normal degenerates with a few that had brains. We were reading a section of Paradise Lost and I loved it. I started reading through the lit textbook we had for stories and fell in love with Vonnegut.
>>7386883
I take lurid trash seriously. It's literature I don't take seriously.
>>7388188
i feel u
when I was younger and it was at its worst, I couldn't go more than a couple of hours without having a complete breakdown and sobbing or physically beating myself up/harming myself. also frequently washed my hands until they bled
it boggles my mind that people pretend they have OCD as though it's a fun little personality quirk
>>7386883
I read the meme trilogy when I was 16 and moved on from there.
When I was 15 I read On The Road and out really into Kerouac and the beats during teens years, which lead me on to reading their influences such as Joyce, Thomas Wolfe, Henry Miller and Dostoevsky.
>>7388164
Hey bro, I have ocd too, how u doing?
I get really irked by some representations of ocd as quirky, kooky, trivial etc. Like I used to always lock and unlock my front door four times while leaving home, but a few blocks from my house was another house with a similar door that was always open because the owners want a breeze or someshit. Anyway, so whenever I walked past this house, I thought of my own front door, became paralysed with fear that my own door was wide open too, and had to go home, check door, lock and unlock it another four times, calm down, then go about my day. This made me late for work three days in a row once and i got fired and couldn't get another job then had to move back in with my parents. That's not quirky, or even comedic, it was just sad and made me feel like shit. There's more to it than being anal about neatness or whatever people think ocd is. I'm not even a neat freak. I do brush my teeth five times a day though.
