Ugggggh lit, that's another book down which was unreadable. Let me run you buy what I've dropped so far.
La Bas - J K Huysmans
Notes From Underground - Fyordor Dostoyevsky
Nausea - Jean-Paul Sartre
1984 - George Orwell
A Picture of Dorian Grey - Oscar Wilde
The Marble Swarm - Dennis Cooper (this is the latest one I dropped)
I gave all of these a fair shot, but I just can't stand the writing style, I find it so tedious. I especially hated The Marble Swarm. Dennis Cooper's narrative style where his character is constantly referring to his own writing (the narrator is supposedly writing this book stream of consciousness as you read it, and is happy to remind you of this).
I just want something that's actually readable, I hated reading all of these books.
>>8259794
Maybe look for some books under the category 'Young Adults'
>Notes from Underground
Yes, it's a challenge to read a 130 page novella.
the other ones i could vaguely understand, but 1984? its the most straight-forward book there is
>>8259841
Idk I was trucking along in it, but I think that I eventually just sort of gave up on it, because it was feeling like a chore. That's one of the books I plan on returning to though.
>>8259794
Just out of interest, what books HAVE you enjoyed?
>>8259904
The wasp factory, in the miso soup, the metamorphosis, the stranger, story of the eye. the wasp factory mostly.
>>8259912
Are you gay, perchance?
Did you recently make a thread on /lgbt/?
>>8259922
Yeah that thread was me.
>>8259924
Ok, so you're just unintellectual Trotskyist scum
>>8259928
I don't know what that means and I wish you'd go away.
I dunno anon, why not just kill yourself?
>>8259935
It means you are so stupid you don't even know all the ways you're wrong.
But seriously, if you can't get through straightforward books like 1984 or notes from underground, literature may not be for you
>gay guy doesn't like Dorian Grey
huh
>>8259943
notes from underground is hard. To be honest, the only two other books I've really read before those ones I mentioned above the burn journals and a child called it, which I read when I was very young. This is the first year where I have tried to actually get into literature, and I have been tacking a lot of books. I am, in fact, rather new to reading literature.
>>8259949
What's difficult about it in particular?
>>8259794
>1984
Seriously? They make high school kiddies read that book because it's so fucking straightforward. Maybe give up on reading altogether, friend.
>>8259952
Well, for one, a lot of it is just boring. I'd consider myself a very impatient person. I hardly play video games or watch movies anymore because I simply don't have the patience. I have been trying to get more into reading because I want it to benefit my mind and perhaps improve my attention span, and get me versed in literature. It seems that every new form of media that I engage with, whether it be music or movies, has enriched my life in some way. That is what I am hoping for, is that I can gain an appreciation for reading.
>>8259794
maybe just read contemporary books, simple stuff. not being insulting, but you can't always force literature. some lit requires herculean effort to push through a ceiling of mental resistance to new ideas and themes. I mean you're diving head first into someone's mind. Literature is for people who want to learn other people most of all. for people who love other people or hate them direly, but all in all are bent on knowing the minds of others and themselves. also, try not being such a god damn prose fag. writing style isn't every god damn thing. themes, plot, characters, ideas, though a good writer can incorporate all these things together, some authors just want to get a message across or tell a god damn story. if you expect something different, you're going to be disappointed every time. I'd say just read flowery poetry without any substance if all you care about is prose.
>>8259959
Then Dostoyevsky probably isn't a good starting point. If you truly haven't read outside of school for years, I'd recommend reading 'genre fiction' books like Harry potter so you can build up your attention span
>>8259959
>I'd consider myself a very impatient person. I hardly play video games or watch movies anymore because I simply don't have the patience.
Maybe books are just not (yet) for you then, that doesn't mean you have to give up on literature altogether though. Perhaps stick to short stories or poems for now and build up from there.
>>8259972
Yes. I want to read maldorer and sylvia plath, I was also interested in horhe luis borges, I have no mouth but I must scream.
The book I have read and enjoyed the most of is the book of disquiet. I have it next to my bed and it's nice because I can just pick it up whenever and read a single story and spend as much time and effort on it as I want, without feeling like I have to worry if I'm spending a million years on one confusing sentence in a book.
That seems to be one of the biggest problems for me when I'm reading. I'll get stuck on one paragraph that's worded in a challenging way, and I'll just keep re-reading it until I get it. Unfortunately, this stopping and re-reading is very tiring for me, and I have fallen asleep while laying in bed because of an overwhelming tiredness that forces my eyes shut, time after time.
>>8259988
>sylvia plath
fuck, I didn't mean that, I meant Lydia Davis. All girls are literally the same anyways, so you can see how I'd get confused.
>>8259988
Well, if you have something that you enjoy to read then what's the problem? Novels aren't for everyone. I think your problem with wording will go away after some time (and reading) though. I had the same problem when it comes to rereading paragraphs and stopping to look up words or things I didn't understand whenever I read. It'll go away with time and you'll learn to stop obsessing over things you don't understand.
kekeke all these anon raggin on OP for not finishing 1984 tacitly admitting that they found Dorian hard.
Okay OP you seem to be picking things to be pretentious or because you heard about them from /lit/ and assumed /lit/ didn't like them to sound pretentious. Most of the ones you dropped it's perfectly fine to have an issue with the style or find the main character unlikeable (though finding the MC unlikeable is the point to Notes and Dorian)
>>8259912
Judging by what you do like, you want sparser prose and a more clipped style. You'll probably like the rest of Camus, Celine, Kafka, and Murakami. You might like Wilde better for his children's stories (be prepared to cry) or his essays and prison letters, because those are less grandiloquent than the rest of his works, but I wouldn't force yourself back to him now.
Try more from the authors you know you like.
Try Gide, since you're a faggot. He's inspired by Wilde but not as Victorian and probably closer to Celine, Banks, or Murakami in places.
Try Nabokov's short stories since he's influenced by Kafka. Lolita might be too much for you right now.
Iain Banks wrote a lot of books so that should keep you in reads for a long time, but keep in mind when he writes as Iain M Banks it's sci-fi.
You could try East of Eden if you're willing to commit to a long book, or Steinbeck in general because a lot of his works are short and dark but simple.
You could try Ritual by Pinner which is what The Wickerman was based on, though it's slightly different in the book. It seems like you want some kind of genre read with a violent edge so maybe even consider nonfiction like The Devil in The White City which is about serial killing and the World's Fair in Chicago.
>>8260036
Thank you anon, I'll look into these. I probably won't do banks though, unless it's really desolate and philosophical sci fi. I generally don't like sci fi or anything really nerdy, and I was going to try neuromancer somewhere down the line anyways. All those other things I am definitely interested in trying. I was thinking about the windup bird chronicles and all those other authors you mentioned who's books I've already tried. I'm not sure who Gide is though, why not gene genet or yukio mishimi?
>>8260066
Andre Gide isn't just homo stuff, he's homo stuff and criminal, so he's closer to what you have read.
Genet is very flowery and nice, so he's closer to the stuff you don't want to read.
You're confusing Ryu Murakami, who wrote In Miso Soup, with Haruki Murakami who writes more girly sex things than violent sex things. Mishima has a lot of stuff which is just DO YOU EVEN LIFT so you may or may not like him depending how /fit/ you are.
For Banks, it's usually clear from the cover whether it's sci fi or not (you'd probably still like him in these if you're not opposed to sci-fi, and more than you would like neuromancer which is very nerdy). If the cover says Iain M. Banks, it's his sci-fi, all his ones just labelled Iain Banks are lit fic.
>>8259809
o shit kill em
>>8260105
Sweet, thank you.
>>8259794
>tfw A book has 120 pages and 0 pictures
I'll definitely get coin locker babies and the devil in the white city, but I was also interested in getting the tunnel and Wittgenstein's mistress. A story about a girl who thinks she's the last person on earth? That sounds fucked up.
>>8260262
The Immoralist is your best bet. Guy goes on his honeymoon with his wife to get over TB in Tunis, and discovers the pleasures of young arab ass.
The Counterfeiters (I think this is the English name, Les faux-monnayeurs in French) you probably won't like as much because it's got a weird plot and does a book within a book, which you might find annoying after Cooper.
>>8260399
It wasn't just that the narrator of the marble swarm was referring to the fact that he's writing the book that he's reading, he just went into these absolutely fucking frivolous digressions that were so boring that I couldn't take it, and his personality was so fucking obnoxious. Not to mention the fact that the book had absolutely senseless torture of innocent cute young boys, which was hard for me to stomach reading.
>>8259809
Oh snap
>>8259794
I've actually read 23 tomes of Horus Heresy and only on the 24th the repetitiveness of the story got the best of me. Recommend something worse please.
>Ink characters printed on a page deriving from the accepted Latin alphabet and arranged into units of meaning known as 'words' which have been painstakingly codified and made referencable in dictionaries, and these units generally obeying all the relevant syntax and grammar of the English language.
>"unreadable"
>>8259794
Judging by your comments I have a feeling you would like Kurt Vonnegut's early books, like Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse 5. The prose is easygoing, and there is humour as well as thought-provoking ideas, and they are short.
>>8260554
I picked up slaughterhouse 5 from my parent's bookshelf a while ago, I'll have to give it a try some time.
