Hey /lit/, I need to read this ?
No. It's not very good.
>>7523363
Why not?
>>7523359
Yes.
lets be honest. youre not the kind of person who spends time reading. if you were you would have read this remedial intro to litcore shit years ago. you belong to the 90 percenters, which is to say the 9/10 /lit/izens who only talk about reading but never do, who purchase books just as an aesthetic statement.
no dont read this book. you couldnt possibly comprehend the subtext.
Its one of those books that you dont really wanna read but you have to just because of culture.
Like 1984, which I still have yet to even buy.
>>7523420
"Purchasing books is often confused with an appropriation of their content." some butchered Schopenhauer quote, really applies to lit, but I'd say at least 5/10 litizens read. I think most people that post on lit never read and try to pass like they do because they need to belong somewhere. I bet there are a lot of educated lurkers. But then again, who the fuck knows.
>>7523430
gee i dunno man. lurk the post your bookshelf thread sometimes and marvel at all the unbroken spines. this place used to have some heavyweights but i find vastly more stimulating convo on goodreads.
goodreads ffs!
>>7523430
>reading 1984 without being forced to
I'm the lucky minority who never had it wrenched upon him as part of his curriculum.
>>7523453
fuck. I mean it's tough to judge like that, I try not to break the spines on my books cuz I dont like the way that looks (except on penguin classics because the black looks like shit) but I havent had a good convo on here in a while either. I had a crazy good Ulysses argument back in November but other than that...
>>7523461
tough to judge but coupled with other ancillary evidence and it doesnt look good. i try not to shout abuse at normies but tonight im feeling particularly saucy because i just polished off penguins new history of the world, and yet nobody here cares because it isnt full of self referencing memes & rapecore. i weep.
anyway. whats the last good thing you read & can wholeheartedly recommend?
>>7523397
It's a stiff and unconvincing novel.
>>7523483
Shit dude, sorry. I havent read a lot of it, but I'm trying to get into nonfiction. I just bought Sailing Around the World Alone and that Chernobyl book by the woman who just won the nobel prize . Do you have any interesting, transitional books you could recommend me?
I just read Colum McCann's new novella Thirteen Ways of Looking which actually wasn't that great, the beginning is pretentious, then it gets good, then it has two mediocre stories finishing it off. I had to read a lot of Victorian lit for a class at uni and was blown away at how good Bleak House (Dickens) was, but that's a pretty thick book to recommend. We Are Not Ourselves (Matthew Thomas) its a pretty solid book that came out this year or last, very Franzen-like if you're into that. It's also pretty long but hey man, long books are good.
>>7523483
man i read a shitton and i always have people say my books look new/spines are unbroken
is it relaly that fucking hard to not abuse the shit out of your books? it's not like i'm autistically handling my books with kid gloves when im reading, i just dont go out of my way to ruin them...
>>7523526
the slocum book looks cool. i love solo man vs nature stuff. ill check it out.
bleak house is a gem.
transitional and interesting? hm.
i mean, without knowing what youre interested in, anything i rec would have to appeal pretty broadly. i dont know what your interest is in politics/state of the world type stuff but i always like to suggest the newest edition of Project Censored. it basically highlights issues of pragmatic importance that go under-reported or propagandized by establishment media.
if youre looking for something a bit more historical, try daniel boorstins creators/discoverers trilogy. both those suggestions contain easy to read and enlightening non fictional accounts of fascinating events/cultural landmarks. the former is contemporary, the latter historical.
also try some auto/biographies of interesting people. right now im reading a biography on anton lavey. it sucks but i paid for it so i gotta do it out of principle.
>>7523534
sure not every read book is gonna have a creased spine. but it is indicative of certain propensities eg; folks who dont read but strut about as if they do. i guess ive never been that guy who is concerned, at all, about the way my nooks look on the shelf. i can appreciate the artistry of certain incunabula and their more modern expressions, but a books function must take precedence over its condition, and an unbroken spine speaks more toward a concern over irrelevancies rather than substance. personal opinion and i could be wrong, naturally.
>>7523359
You should read it, but it's not very good.
The whole book is basically a simple thought experiment and a lot of the writing exists simply to explain and justify the world Huxley wants us to consider.
However the writing itself isn't actually very good and the philosophical implications aren't particularly profound. However, because of the obviousness of this sort of utopia, it makes it a really good reference point for talking about more interesting thought experiments, and that's where the value of it lies.
TL;DR: it's not that good of a book, but it's good to have read
>>7523359
Read it, but not your pic related edition
>>7523420
Savage
>>7523625
this
any meme book/film/picture/anything is another way to forward ideas easily in a discussion, and go past them. This is what Alberto Fagonio calls "meme value"
>>7523359
Read it if you want to. It's basically about ascetism vs. hedonism.
