What was your favorite novel at the age of 18?
I am 18. My Favorite is Moby Dick.
>>8219220
infinite jest. what else.
>>8219220
Dune
The great gatsby.
>>8219220
The Stranger by Albert Camus, is there any other option?
I'm 18 now. I really liked The Red and the Black
American Psycho, cause I was edgy af
Either Ulysses or Hamlet.
The bible.
Moby Dick
>>8219220
well rn I like Blood Meridian
The World According to Garp
Faust
Prince of Foxes
catch-22
>>8219246
Yes.
I loved The Fall, personally. It seemed more complete and far-reaching in its analysis than The Stranger, and I love[d] it for that reason.
Of Mice and Men
White Noise
>>8219297
you didn't read that when you were 18
Don Quixote
>>8219279
>What is a play
was mostly into kerouac and salinger in high school, then the fall semester of my freshman year right after i turned 18, i spent alone at the university of north texas and read the first few harry potters, a bunch of chuck klostermann and david sedaris, all the president's men, the diving bell and the butterfly, and candide
>>8219324
Yep, I was 16. I went to a boarding school for the last two years of HS and it was summer reading from a memorable professor. He assigned Dubliners to the 11th graders the next year, I wish I could have gotten that too.
>>8219330
It's a closet drama.
i.e. a novel
>>8219220
Slaughterhouse Five. United me with another plebeian literature friend when I was fifteen.
BNW, stay pleb turboplebs
I also did unironically read and dissect the themes in it and like it because it reminded me of how lonely I am because of my patricianness, so I wasn't just a turbopleb 18 y.o. edgeshit
oh and by 18 I mean I read it at 16, but of course it remained my favorite even though I did in the meantime move on to more """"complex"""" prose works such as Finnegans Wake and Gravity's Rainbow
On the Road/Less Than Zero
>>8219220 (OP)
Lolita.
Read it by 17 because I knew what it was about and I was already a pedo then. It was the first step to my /lit/ lifestyle. There was a 12 yo gf I was "seeing" during that time, but it didn't progress and now I'm happy that it didn't. My vest is still white. That's worth something if you aren't a Stirnerist.
>>8219220
Atlas Shrugged
Believe me when I say I want to go back in time and slap myself.
Wizard and Glass
Gravity's Rainbow, first read at 17
21 now - still is
I read it on holidays in the Rocky Mountains and I thought it was fitting.
I wish I was good at writing then I would write a book about a road mender in the Rocky Mountains.
Read Les Miserables unabridged during my junior summer vacation. Feels good. Quickly became my favorite.
For real?
Probably a fanfiction.
Los Siete Locos by Roberto Arlt
>>8219220
The Worm Ouroboros.
However, Finnegans Wake looks like it's going to far surpass that, but I need to read more of it before I can say it's my favourite novel.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Read it in one sitting. I can't think of a better book.
>>8219392
If you're a Stirnerite it's still worth something. Just not morally.
Faserland, or Watership Down, or American Psycho.
Red dragon. Just started reading back then
>>8219220
Stoner
The Hobbit.
Day of the Jackal
>>8219392
I've got a surprisingly similar story. I'm not a pedo, but when I was 17 I had a 19 year old gf who had a 13 year old sister that liked me. I read Lolita while in that relationship. It never inspired me to lust over the nymphet though.
>>8219220
His chest hair spells God.
>>8219513
This was my favourite as well.
>>8219392
Kys.
On the Road = 1984 = Less Than Zero.
Either On the Road or For Whom the Bell Tolls
Siddhartha
Lolita, I was a paedophile.
The Count of Monte Cristo
>>8219900
>was
>>8219220
Ender's Game
The silmarillion
The Castle. Probably still is.
Le Chants des Maldoror by Comte de Lautréamont
My edge was supreme
I once brought it to English class when we were told to bring in and read a book of your own, and I made sure to have it open on the page where he describes raping the shark. Our teacher, who was a girl in her late twenties, asked to see my book. I handed it to her with a big grin and as she read her face slowly began to turn pink, and then red. She never looked me in the eye after that again.
Marabou Stork Nightmares by Irvine Welsh or The 25th Hour by David Benioff. I liked 'em both a lot.
>>8219967
Nice, same here. It's only been 2 years but I think I'll re-read it, see if my perspective has changed.
Op here.
Currently 18 mine is The Sun Also Rises
Just started lolita.
Lord of the Shadows
The Hound of the Baskervilles
The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea
Not my favorite anymore, but I'll stand by it.
>>8219220
The Brothers Karamazov
The Catcher in the Rye ofc
>>8219220
18 y/o here,
"No Longer Human", without doubt, is it.
The Picture of Dorian Gray. I was pretty edgy, but it has some wonderful quotes.
Either House of Leaves or Life of Pi. It was a long-ago time ago
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
When I was 18 I still had dreams and thought I could be as great as Joyce
>>8219220
A Clockwork Orange
Probably either Flatland or Dune—the first because it had a radical impact on how I thought about the world, and the second because it was the first fully realized epic I had read.
>>8220497
Frustratingly inevitable feel, anon—I know it too
>>8219506
Your taste seems to run a similar gamut as mine—I'd really like any /lit/-obscure suggestions you have to offer. Also: how much of Finn's Wake do you feel you're adequately absorbing and comprehending? Just curious if you're full of shit or not, but more so how fruitful a non-academic's tackling of the most beautifully convoluted novel of all time can be.
>>8219290
I couldn't stand the narrative style of that book. And I fucks wit Camus.
>>8219220
Just wanted to respond that I'm 18, but realised I'm 19 and close to 20. Time flies so fucking fast. How the fuck you older people handle this shit?
Probably The Idiot.
>>8219220
the brothers karamazov
>>8220530
I feel like I'm absorbing a decent amount, but I am using an online guide. I don't think I'd get much at all without something like that.
It's not so much convoluted as really, really dense. Each word and phrase means loads of different things.
I think it was The Quiet American by Graham Greene or Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck.
Crime and Punishment for the themes.
Lolita for the style, although I have to admit I did identify with Humbert to a certain degree.
>>8220452
Great novel for a teenage boy to read. I read it at 20, gonna give it to my brother when he's about 16 I reckon.
Battle Royale or Catcher in the Rye, probably.
The Dark Tower series. I'm still fond of it and have good memories of reading all the books.
>>8219220
The Sorrows of Young Werther
It was Hopscotch by Cortazar. It's still top 3 probably, its poetic prose is difficult to surpass.
Count of Monte Cristo was my favorite before that one.
Probably Demian (Hesse) or Der Process (Kafka)
>>8220607
True, convoluted wasn't the best word.
>>8219248
18 too, I love that book so much. Got me into longer books.
Only good shit I read when I was 18 other than edgelord philosophy:
The Complete Stories by Kafka, especially In The Penal Colony
Collected Works of Shakespeare, especially Hamlet and Macbeth
The Waste Land and Other Poems by T.S Eliot, especially Prufrock, The Hollow Men, and The Waste Land.
Oxford Anthology of English Poets, giant volume of every canon-worthy poet.
Though I of course read what was required from my school curriculum, (Siddhartha, 1984, Frankenstein, Inferno)I didn't start obsessively reading novel sized literature until about a year ago. I'm 22.
>>8221151
what edgelord philosophy were you into?
>>8219220
probably some ASOIAF book. I started reading the good stuff just a few years ago.
>>8219220
I'm 19. My favorite novel was and still is Crime and Punishment.
>>8219220
Either On the Road or Cannery Row.
>>8219220
Warlock by Wilbur Smith
>The stranger by Camus
>The trial by Kafka
>The little prince by Egzupery
The later two are still some of my favs desu
Heart of darkness, probably still is, but I haven't read it for years
>>8219220
The first book id ever read, besides a shorten version of robin hood, The Stranger, and I think it was at 19, after that i began to read at least 2 books per week since I was working at a bookstore
>>8219344
cool blog
The Book of Flying by Keith Miller
Trainspotting.
Portnoy's Complaint
The same as it is now; weak as water; right as windblown rain fanwise through the trees; dusty as sand on the beach; that is The Waves by Virginia Woolf.
Pounded in The Butt by My Own Butt, by Dr. Chuck Tingle.
>>8219220
The Sorrows of Young WertherStill is
Once I stop being a weepy shit I think I'll grow out of it
>>8222891
It's okay as long as you like Faust too.
>>8219220
Ada.
>>8222916
I haven't read it yet but it's on my list.
>>8219262
Read suttree, also by McCarthy
Ulysses
brave new world or animal farm
>>8220497
Mine too. Thought I had a lot of dedalus - like qualities. But Stephen actually did write a poem. And he actually fucked whores instead of just fapping to online videos of whores.
16 one flew over the cuckoos nest
17 the stranger
18 a portrait of the artist as a young man
19 crime and punishment
20 the brothers karamazov
21 moby dick
22 the sound and the fury
23 ulysses
24 twilight
>>8222985
>a portrait of the artist as a young man
My nigga.
>>8222985
It took 8 years but you finally acquired patrician taste
>>8219220
The Old Man and the Sea
>>8219220
The Brothers Karamazov. The first novel I read back to back, and the last.
...I don't know why I come here, really.
>>8222985
Proof of evolution, right here,
notes from undergroundi had no friends and thought i connected to him yuck
All Quiet on the Western Front
Still my favorite
>>8223169
forgot pic
Mortal Coils
>>8219220
The Call of the wild. I'm not a furry, I had an obsession with cavemen.
>>8219220
We, the Drowned
I am a pleb
>>8223169
>>8219954
>silmarillion
Honestly, just kill yourselves. I doubt you have even read this book and are just claiming to like it for the whole edgy "OH ITS WRITTEN IN THAT ARCHAIC TOLKIEN HISTORICAL STYLE OF WRITING NO ONE ELSE HAS READ IT BUT ME THEREFORE I AM SPECIAL!!!"
I think I still liked a book when I read middle school back then, hadn't really read much then regularly. Schwa was here.
>>8219220
blood meridian. a teacher i wanted to fuck gave me a copy of it for my birthday desu
>>8223195
Wow me too, except the book was How Green Was My Valley
>>8219220
Probably the Count of Monte Cristo for a standalone novel.
I was kinda edgy.
>>8219290
I'm 18 now, and I reckon The Fall's his best work
>>8222390
I don't know if I'm spelling his name correctly, but Ichenua Achebe said that Joseph Conrad was a bloody racist for writing the novella. The thoughts??
>>8219284
I second that
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. I'm surprised no one said it! We studied her poems in AP literature but that was long after I had already read it. I also like Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palinuk (sp?) he's the same guy who wrote fight club.
>>8223175
>I'm not a furry, I had an obsession with cavemen.
I'm only slightly less repulsed now.
>>8219954
>>8219954
>>8223192
>The silmarillion
>doesn't even capitalize the S
Liar.
The Children of Hurin for me. The stand alone version has a very distinct and powerful myth styling, there's something of the classical about it that's seamlessly woven into Tolkien's fairy-tale legendarium backdrop. I find myself quoting it as I would Shakespeare or Sophocles. The relentless despondency of the story helped, 18 year old me readily saw worth in abjection, I loved most stories that didn't have a happy ending.
I still think the tale has a haunting beauty to it, but the lack of a higher narrative, discounts it from topping my list these days.
>>8223227
My girlfriend just told me all about Invisible Monsters which she read the past semester in one of those college literature classes. And they also read The Bell Jar. SPOOKED
>>8223192
Dude the Silmarillion is fantastic and not even difficult at all, it's pretty fucking straightforward.
I don't understand what the whole "hurr durr archaic tolkien incomprehensible style" meme is about.
It's just pleasant prose.
>>8223234
What!!! Check it out man!!!
>>8223198
>How Green Was My Valley
Should've found out how green her valley was senpai
>>8219220
At 18 my favorite was probably Watchmen desu
Don't hate, graphic novels count
The Magus
>>8219284
third
ij
i don't even read novels anymore, but my favorite is probably demons. i'm 24 now
Probably Lord of the Rings
>>8223819
Best Dostey imo
>>8223165
4chan is filled with underageb&s.
>>8219220
VALIS. Still is, to be sincere with you my family.
Crime & Punishment. At the time I found Raskolnikov extremely relatable, and at the time character-relatability was important to me.
>8-10: sherlock holmes
>11-13: zombie stuff, tom sawyer
>14: lolita
>15: too depressed to read or do anything
>16: candide, dorian gray
>17: girl w/ dragon tattoo, george carlin, vonnegut, salinger
>18: kerouac, more depression
>19: walden, travels with charley, fear and loathing, electric kool aid acid test, one hundred years of solitude
>20: gulliver's travels, joyce, lotr, harry potter
>21: gertrude stein, dh lawrence, the waste land
>22: balzac, dickens, shakespeare, mary karr, plath
>>8225063
>depression
Pleb.
The Stranger
>0-10 : nothing much except Tintin
>11-13 : Dino Buzzati, Agatha Christie
>14 : Zola, Maupassant, Balzac, Alexandre Dumas
>15 : Voltaire, L'étranger, Baudelaire, Plato (in vain), Rabelais, Tolstoï (the age when I discovered that reading was good)
>16 : Yukio Mishima, the greeks, Shakespeare, Borges, Sade, Chateaubriand, Dorian Grey, L'étranger again as we did that in class, Dostoïevski, Homer, Beckett and Ionesco
>17 : James Joyce, Hegel, Nietzsche, Ovid, Dante, reading more of the other authors above
>18 : Proust, Rilke, Lautréamont, Heidegger
>19 : Cervantes, Jane Austen, Céline, Proust
>20 : Gogol, Boulgakov, russian stuff mostly
>21 : Barrès, Brasillach, Michel Chion, Daniel Arasse, books about history of art
>22 : Saint Simon, Frege, Baudrillard, Deleuze, Derrida, Cioran, reading my old books
>0-10 something, don't remember (Pendragon?)
>11, kind of sad at the time, read 1984, Communist Manifesto, became a leftist
>12-15, broke out of leftism, Steinbeck, Crichton (yeah), Vonnegut, realized my mind was addled and couldn't read
>15-present (less than 18), Joyce, Pynchon, Burroughs, McCarthy, Wallace, Hemingway, Gaddis (I have JR on my table but I'm too scared), Rushdie, Modernists and American Postmodernism in general
The problem is i'm having trouble concentrating and what I'm reading isn't easy (example, GR) so it's ruining me. Yeah there's a large jump in quality over five years. Thank the Internet.
If I finish GR (I hope to start again for like the fifth time this July, mid July or so) that'll be my favorite novel because Pynchon is my biggest influence.
As of now, the best novel I read was 1984 (LISTEN it's not the best but remember I don't read a lot... I've read 300 pages of GR, I know if I finish it it'll be my favorite). I know. It'll get better, I promise.
>>8219220
Catch-22
>>8225261
GR?
>>8225271
Gravity's Rainbow, by Thomas Pynchon.
>>8225275
Why are you scared, read books you find interesting, don't fall for the memes.
>>8225276
I wouldn't classify it as falling for the memes... I like intellectual challenges and the authors that I read now do pose intellectual challenges. Sometimes it's hard to get through, which is why I unwind with, for example, Game of Thrones or something like that. I do take breaks, i'm not just constantly trying to get through the hard meme books. That would be terrible.
>>8225261
mods mods mods
>>8225063
you know that lying on the internet is really bad.
I know you want to look cool at /lit/, but honesty is way cooler.
>>8219220
Who knows what it will be?
>>8219220
Probably catch 22 or the perks of being a wallflower
>>8219220
Illuminatus! Trilogy
>>8219350
I'm reading my first Vonnegut right now. Mother Night. Is all his stuff this reddit?
It was Lord of the Flies
>>8219519
The best writing style comes from English authors from late 1800s to early 1900s imho. Can't fault ya lad.
>>8226283
Vonnegut, Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett are reddit incarnate, but Vonnegut is actually worth while. Read Cats Cradle and Slaughter House 5, they're the ones of true value
>>8219220
I guess the Alchemist
Steppenwolf
>>8219220
Lolita. I'm still 18.
>>8223165
>5 of the 6 people you quoted say they're 18
>l/lit/ is filled with underages
>>8226443
"We're all mongs here" - The Mad Hatter
>>8219257
unironically this
>>8223060
>back to back
cover to cover is the expression youre looking for, esl bro
Stoner by John Williams
>>8225829
not a lie to be found, otherwise I may have mentioned any author older than shakespeare
>>8220541
bonjour! mon frere!
probably the immoralist by gide
never got into boypussy though desu
>>8222405
absolute sweetie and cutie. would propose to this beauty in a hot minute
Lolita and Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas
>>8219220
I didn't even read when i was 18
>>8219778
Been working on it tbqh family. The trappings of life are beneath me
>>8219927
for legal reasons ;^)
>>8220476
What's edgy about Oscar Wilde?
>>8219220
Notes from Underground.
Still is my favorite things I've ever read.
Well, besides JoJo's.
>>8228321
He was gay, I guess.
Also hedonism is pretty edgy.
Illuminatus by Robert anton wilson. im 19 and still my favorite
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Not strictly a novel but Joyce's Dubliners
1984
Kim by Rudyard Kipling
Neuromancer
Probably Catcher in the Rye or something gay like that.
I'm 18 now - Of Human Bondage
All these replies and not a single Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy... for shame
>>8230321
Woah now, Catcher in the Rye is not gay
>>8219220
>What was your favorite novel at the age of 18?
I haven't read a book since I was 12.
probably crime and punishment
>>8230356
Why you here nigga?
>>8230372
I want to write movies.
>>8225261
>underage
>read 1984 and the Communist Manifesto at age 11
>>8230385
>>I want to write stories without reading them
At least read some scripts.
Neil LaBute is fantastic, he does film as well.
>>8225261
>>Less than 18
MOOOOOOOODDDDDDSSSSSSS
>>8223165
>underages
Not everyone is from America.
>>8230461
Did you just conflate the age of consent with the age of majority?
>>8230432
I'll check Neil LaBute out, did you post this picture for me though?
I've already seen A Clockwork Orange, so I can't read the book. Same with American Psycho.
I never finished To Kill A Mockingbird, it bored me intensely. Lolita too.
And isn't Huck Finn racist?
>>8230387
>read 1984 and the Communist Manifesto at age 11
I read the manifesto at that age. Got it from my brother. Ironically(?) he also gave me 1984 but that was a few years later.
Some hunter Thompson books, old man and the sea, maybe I'd read Lolita by then but I'm not sure
>>8230466
Not going to start a flamewar, but I don't believe you shouldn't read a fiction book because it has racist characters or themes, but maybe that's just me. Also Jim is smarter than he seems on the surface.
>>8230466
It's just the /lit/ starter pack from the wiki, for anyone.
>>8230513
If you have a problem with a theme in a book, I argue you should read said book even more. How can you fight against something you don't understand?
>>8219220
Kafka was practically the only writer I had a strong opinion about (well now I know Gaddis but I'm older now), so I guess the answer should be The Trial
Oryx and Crake and 1984 got me into literature my senior year of high school, but the Stranger probably had the most profound impact on me, so I guess that.
>>8230513
I'm black, I don't want to deliberately read something racist, it's just going to make me mad and I'mma go on a four week rant about how much I hate white people.
>>8226348
Douglas Adams is at least funny, which I could never sincerely say of Vonnegut.
Naked Lunch
>>8219220
ppl actually read books that young
bitch i started reading at 23
>>8219220
Probably "A Long Way Gone"
I hadn't read a book in like 3 years at that point, unless you count 2/3s of Grapes of Wrath
>>8231290
Pleb
>>8219392
I'm 32, my girlfriend is 19. I look about 25, she looks like she's 14.
Who knows how old our minds are.
Numbers are relative in this matters.
>>8219220
>What was your favorite novel at the age of 18?
The Name of the Rose, probably.
>>8223250
>Don't hate, graphic novels count
And what about Visual Novels? If so, I could consider Bible Black.
Not kidding.
A shitty book called Water for Elephants.
That was before I actually started reading though.
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
Nadja
Andre Breton
>>8220463
This family
>>8230513
I kind of get what you say, I try to avoid Arthur Conan Doyle because I love readheads.
>>8226373
>>8219220
Encontro Marcado - Fernando Sabino.
Dont know if it has a translation
Middlemarch. Still up there with the best.
>>8225829
why did you assume he was lying? I had a similar development so it strikes me as weird
>>8219220
Fight Club
>>8219243
>>8220505
>dune
This
>>8220476
This
Is it only because the OP had 18 in it, or are there really this many kids on /lit/?
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World was probably my favorite, if I had a single favorite back then.
The Stranger
Ender's Game. Not sure whether or not I should be ashamed of this...
>>8219220
Let me fix that for you to better suit below-gutter /lit/ in 2016:
>What will your favorite novel at the age of 18?
>>8219220
Master and Margarita. Still is in the top 3
Notes from Underground, of course.
Dune
vurt
the long walk
1984 probably
how do you people remember this?
>>8230683
>Nilotics blaming others for their problems
shocking
>>8219220
François Mauriac's “The Enemy”.
The Last Samurai (not related to the shitty tom cruise movie)
>>8231275
Me too senpai
Reading Burroughs definitely made me wanna write. Pity it was garbage for 5 years,
>>8231038
Player Piano is hilarious.
>>8219255
>novel
>hamlet
>>8219220
I'm 18
Favourite novel: The Trial (or Frankenstein if you want an English one)
Favourite play: Hamlet / Richard II
Favourite poem: Paradise Lost / The Hollow Men / Rime of the Ancient Mariner
