Why is this board so pretentious? It's unbearable.
it's because it's become reddit-tier, and the worst part is that most people here think reading infinite jest and pynchon gives them the authority to be pretentious.
TOP KEK.
>looks around
>anime thread
>two harry potter threads
>several shitty obvious baits
>two "i want girls" threads
It's not pretentious, it's shit
You wouldn't understand
nothing of literary interest happened between 200 C.E and the 1600s except for dante
Thanks for that flash of insight.
>>7489908
no probs fαm
>>7489868
Saint Agustine comes to mind.
So i found A Nietzsche Reader published by penguin at a relatives house. I have not ever really tried to get in to philosophy, but from the banter on this board I gather that Penguin is shit at it. So is it worth reading, or will it give me a false overview of Nietzsche?
Neitzsche isn't a good place to start.
Read a history of Philosophy first.
Magee's Story of Philosophy is good.
>>7487348
Too general and light of an overview of Nietzsche, bad translation, and an awful place to begin with philosophy as a whole.
To start I recommend 'a History of Western philosophy' by based Sir Bertrand Russell
Post your favorite poems.
This is not a critique thread. Just post stuff you like.
Death Fugue by Paul Celan
Black milk of daybreak we drink it at sundown
we drink it at noon in the morning we drink it at night
we drink and we drink it
we dig a grave in the breezes there one lies unconfined
A man lives in the house he plays with the serpents he writes
he writes when dusk falls to Germany your golden hair Margarete
he writes it and steps out of doors and the stars are flashing he whistles his pack out
he whistles his Jews out in earth has them dig for a grave
he commands us strike up for the dance
Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night
we drink in the morning at noon we drink you at sundown
we drink and we drink you
A man lives in the house he plays with the serpents he writes
he writes when dusk falls to Germany your golden hair Margarete
your ashen hair Shulamith we dig a grave in the breezes there one lies unconfined.
He calls out jab deeper into the earth you lot you others sing now and play
he grabs at the iron in his belt he waves it his eyes are blue
jab deeper you lot with your spades you others play on for the dance
Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night
we drink you at noon in the morning we drink you at sundown
we drink you and we drink you
a man lives in the house your golden hair Margarete
your ashen hair Shulamith he plays with the serpents
He calls out more sweetly play death death is a master from Germany
he calls out more darkly now stroke your strings then as smoke you will rise into air
then a grave you will have in the clouds there one lies unconfined
Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night
we drink you at noon death is a master from Germany
we drink you at sundown and in the morning we drink and we drink you
death is a master from Germany his eyes are blue
he strikes you with leaden bullets his aim is true
a man lives in the house your golden hair Margarete
he sets his pack on to us he grants us a grave in the air
he plays with the serpents and daydreams death is a master from Germany
your golden hair Margarete
your ashen hair Shulamith
I serve the base
I was an ace
I carry her
In my face
Pls r8, no bully
The idea of Order at Key West
She sang beyond the genius of the sea.
The water never formed to mind or voice,
Like a body wholly body, fluttering
Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion
Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,
That was not ours although we understood,
Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.
The sea was not a mask. No more was she.
The song and water were not medleyed sound
Even if what she sang was what she heard.
Since what she sang was uttered word by word.
It may be that in all her phrases stirred
The grinding water and the gasping wind;
But it was she and not the sea we heard.
For she was the maker of the song she sang.
The ever-hooded, tragic-gestured sea
Was merely a place by which she walked to sing.
Whose spirit is this? we said, because we knew
It was the spirit that we sought and knew
That we should ask this often as she sang.
If it was only the dark voice of the sea
That rose, or even colored by many waves;
If it was only the outer voice of sky
And cloud, of the sunken coral water-walled,
However clear, it would have been deep air,
The heaving speech of air, a summer sound
Repeated in a summer without end
And sound alone. But it was more than that,
More even than her voice, and ours, among
The meaningless plungings of water and the wind,
Theatrical distances, bronze shadows heaped
On high horizons, mountainous atmospheres
Of sky and sea. It was her voice that made
The sky acutest at its vanishing.
She measured to the hour its solitude.
She was the single artificer of the world
In which she sang. And when she sang, the sea,
Whatever self it had, became the self
That was her song, for she was the maker. Then we,
As we beheld her striding there alone,
Knew that there never was a world for her
Except the one she sang and, singing, made.
Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know,
Why, when the singing ended and we turned
Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights,
The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there,
As night descended, tilting in the air,
Mastered the night and portioned out the sea,
Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles,
Arranging, deepening, enchanting night.
Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon,
The maker's rage to order words of the sea,
Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred,
And of ourselves and of our origins,
In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds.
This is one of my favorite books of all time! But enough of what I think. What did YOU all think of this book? :)
>>7486561
Legitimately beautiful. As a holder of a Bachelors in a STEM field, I found it to be really very accurate. Cline is a master storyteller.
>>7486561
stop
As an engineer I found this to be a lovely bit of Nostalgia. as a 90's kid I remember playing these videogames in my youth and this book brought back all those memories and hit me right in the feels. 5/7 cannot recommend enough.
I'll start:
As he slipped the laxing cloak over his shoulders, the little pockets of heat in the gaps made his body warm. The colour-sweet tartan swore out sweat-patches and little puddles that dripped of melancholy dew. The grass padded his bare feet as he took strides to go outside, and the cultural soil held up his stance, muddying his soles. The conviction of fresh air shook the skinny man; he held up his cloak over his thorax to defend himself from this, as the pikeman holds up his leather and bolt-nutted shield to the blade. There, the man looked out on the green swells of land, that his thatched hut oversaw. There was a plodding valley, cut deep between two ground-waves, that harboured wisp frost as the man wiped his burning-cold nose in the stinging winter.
Going back in, there was little to think of, so minutes were sat looking at the lyre, the man's instrument of strings. The small glints and lights flighted on the pig-gut, those had hit the instrument from the vestal in the middle of the room. Incapsulated in stone, the hearth didn't spread, but sat gently droned behind the sitting man. The smoke-desert smelled of sweat and steam, and coughs were let out by a man, so rarely sweetened by the swinging nature of warmth. This cough shook the weak's ribs and bade him splutter on the ground. In the air were desires, to run, play and work words, but the first was the most forcible, only that he had numb feet, bound him to clodded ground of home.
Sleeping through morning, the man woke up to the white-noise and static of rain, stringing in strong groves over the Irish inlet. He leapt up when hearing a trundle over the beads and showers of the storm, and saw a band of neighbours, the sight of a few fields away. There was an old virgin, whose ropy face hung off her skull, and whose old lamb-features meant her whole face was full of curls and bumps. She was the only face and voice recognisable from the closest-lying homes, and he stepped over weeds and growing green to converse on walks and scouts and when they talked, he laughed and smiled laconically. Her elder character gave her liability to ramble in speech and country. When the man begged to sing for bread, he was given two loaves and miserably parcelled one out to himself the short way back home. He ate it fully, before he flew the blanket around himself.
The old lady had sailed on isles and ports immeasurable. The extent of the quiet and land which these east-islands held was described:
-In each island there is no life and no hill-side fort, nor pallisade: just plunders of rock and shattered earth-ruin.
>>7480538
The man sat and imagined. Shuffled sails bit the catch of the wind at last, as he tottered along each glaze on the sea, hitting the swollen vessel with foam and billow. The passing bubbles hiss with such great sanctity in temperance that the sea cries to see them absorbed. The waves too. Those waves that are there and seen, are really there. They only last a moment and then they're gone, only 1/4th remembered by the man who's seen them, and the rest unseen and unpurposed. Rough beaches of a dash of pebbles, and sweltered rocks come first, from there, there's a small piece of level ground until much of a hill. Heather and thorn, the plants to which massochistic children touch, swap here, and after that there are no more seen. The mountain after cannot be described. It is too big for detail. The only describing words are that it is green, it stands behind hazes in the summer, and it is like a god. The close ones are domineering, and the far ones are longing. They are to be explored. The man had the picture in his head, so vivid, that the hard sea air almost seemed to crack his greasy hair behind him.
The man snapped out with resolve and clear-mind, before living out the day again. He took some time, and walked to the small citadel in the county, and the last two hours of evening. The tracks there were fraying, and the tops of his feet were sprinkled with rustic mud. Once, they even sunk into one particular flapping hole, making a spurt of Irish grittle on his legs. The fresh cold was nippy, and frost crept behind the man. When he saw the town it was just a mass of wood, on a hilly slope. Smoke billowed from one house and another, and dotted people swarmed round their tiny nests, of wattle and dawb. There was a warm, tainting smell in the air, and the man waned forward, into the sea of sounds and small people with small livestock. The local brewery was a hive. There were 10 bearded, bawdy men all devoted to ale-cookery there, one he followed to the chieftan's court for the night's work.
>>7480539
Hollow floors and dusty space occupied in the hall of northern immaculation. There were no omissions and each beaded goblet lost itself in the face of each berserker. One man and the next, drunk with rigorous conviction and wrecking lust for a chaotic world to be comprehended in sedation. The hall was spacious and had lofty great pillars, carved out of the oak that grew on the foggy brooks around the city. The walls were bare and dowdy, and the only ornateship were in the rafters and beams of the high ceilings, where friezes of dragons and abstract whirls had been whittled away. The hall had been festooned with a warm, brown hue. The richness in the crisp skin of each feted hog or goat or hen were salted and paper-like, running with the juice of grease. Frivilous cheeses were passed round, blunt in taste. Men fought in droves, burying lists as they pounded each opponent or were pummelled thenselves. Women served, and bared bosom high and supple, and a fire pummelled an absolute swelter of heat around the room, along with the breath in each battler.
Our man burst forth tones, writhing from his belly. Though his weakling structure led others to believe he had the voice of a fowl, he sang with great bass sounds. As his voice swole up, his ribs shook through his pale, rubbery skin, and others around him opened their eyes or lifted their brows. Some notes were consequential, booming, between lulls of sound. Art moved everyone. Ancient as the hills, the songs had mindsets: the love ballad of heart-fluttered and late-night walks came first; next was the slow air of beauty, to the tune of small natural elements. The third was the war-song, heavily requested. A chanson about virtue, with hero honest, kind, unemmutable, who was handsome and muscle-packed. And the last, a god-praise to those who controlled all fates and much of everything else.
And when his voice weakly drafted off, the man stood up and walked away. He walked behind the burlers, eating and drinking, and one even lurched behind him to gently hit the man's leg. This act of painful kinship, stung the man's thigh in little ripples, while he still shuffled on. The room was densly hot, and as the man had endured glowing cheeks, embers to the touch, the cold out the door sent a powerful punch. The fresh cool meant all to the man, until his walk was out the citadel. After that, his stroll was becoming baltic, and the cold pulled up spots and pimples on the man's pale skin. The black was penetrated through by a shillelagh that touched for each beaten obstacle on the man's way home.
>>7480542
The sky cracks with the pale sunrise and it felt to the man like he had almost watched the plucking dew grow on the valleys and fens. The grass ran deep down through the crispen morning, brisk and clear. Sweet woods had been passed now, and the turns on the claggy road looked foreign and lush. However, each person has a home and a compunction to run to it, so the man kept plodding, donkey-like, until he found some similarity in the fields and woods he passed. Sometimes tree-trunks would have a slippery coat of frost on their dark, thin, being. This frost permeating on top of the sleek bark, in rings and spots, like a winter canker.
In the shadowy comforts below the hedgerows the dark warmth was sanctuary from the flanking, white cold. The frost stings, then your skin is doughy and numb. The pale man warmed his lanky fingers in his armpits, until he had to take them out, and they again grew stingy and cool. But he walked for hours, once nor twice passing through short villages and hamlets. Small, threaded veins connect the pulsating green in Éire, but the tracks are crusty over the soft mud as the frosty day wakes in crisp suit.
The man's legs drowned in lactic stings and warm pains. The swarthy, baggy breeches swaddled up his hairy, thin and pale stumps. Hung over the belting: a little blue piece, that flapped in washing winter. And that tartan cloak again, hung over gorgeously bony little shoulders, overlooking the collarbone-dents.
He was padding a road past the rushes and sallys, fields of unwound creels. Hollyhocks, ramblers, all wild flowers surely drove through. Past the wild heaths. The heather spindly and yellow as yock, between the fog. Clouds and clumps of rocks on the bump-lands, where you can almost hear the wooden pipes play, or see the older Fíanna roam. The weak willows, flanking the open, still in the morn. They would flop up from the clobber, and wind a circuit over the great lands.
A tough-man walked on the opposite way down the track. When you're nervous you rub the sweat off your palms and clear your nose. Then your head ferments, and decomposes before you bind down that heart-beat-tick and the feeling to empty your bowels. Stomach curls and you smell a stingy, sanguine scent. The man coming our man's way, was bearded and mean, but prepossessed little in the way of raw muscle. This scared our man, as those with a smaller being have much more to prove.
But then, scary men and beautiful nature. Isn't the drowsy lot for the folk, on the good island? This was Gaia's dainty flower, that lay in the swathing oceania and home to all that our man has seen. Aye, sweetness and light, if not that the wear and the strain of it all is the man's. Tossed and turnt by pithy life here, he knew that while he was walking, he had all he had. Wallet and clothes of new jet, even broach and lyre and shillelagh. Walk then, shall we? And with that cool thought, the man dreamt once more of the isles, and with weak legs, ran.
>I fell for the "classic books are good" meme
>>7491111
what classics did you read that werent good?
>>7491111
>books from hundreds/thousands of years ago still being sold successfully
>not good
Pick one OP
>>7491123
argumentum ad populum, anon
I'm going through a pretty rough time right now and I'm getting social anxiety and poor grades. I'm lacking motivation and my sleeping pattern is fucked.
I'm looking for any recommendations of a novel which has a character who is a hard worker and successful. I know it sounds pretty pathetic but I think it will help me a lot. I'm not looking for a non-fiction help book like "How to be successful" etc, just a book which has a character which gave you a role model for hard work. Cheers
>>7490745
dickens
>>7490767
>>7490752
But that's what he made bad grades on.
>>7490764
Any particular book by Dickens?
What does /lit/ do while readingor shitposting? I drink coffee and listen to music.
>>7490627
>drink coffee and listen to music.
Spotted the hipster.
>>7490627
>listening to music while you read
This is how I know you're from Reddit.
>>7490627
try to read but be overwhelmed by silence and bad feels so I go on 4chan and listen to music to drown them out.
don't get much reading done 2bh.
>adults shouldn't read books written for kids
>>7490434
only if they are reading them to their children.
>>7490434
Yes, this is true. We know this already.
>>7490483
>literally reading books meant for children unironically
pleb as fuck
Are there any good books about rejecting Industry, capitalism modernity, hedonism, or the sexual revolution?
I'm just really fed up with the world and want to live in a hut somewhere away from everything.
>>7490065
Try the Unabomber's manifesto.
The novels of Herman Hesse.
walt whitman, also kill yourself faggot, you're the worst kind of trash.
>>7490228
>I didn't understand hesse
Can we create a /lit/ canon that isn't composed of white males? Here are some of my picks:
>Aphra Behn - Oroonoko
>Naidine Gordimer - Burger's Daughter
>Carson McCullers - The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
>Ralph Ellison - Invisible Man
>Zora Neale Hurston - Their Eyes were Watching God
>Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o - Weep Not, Child
>A.S. Byatt - Possession
>George Eliot - Middlemarch
>>7489975
Iceberg Slim - Pimp, obviously.
And an ooga booga tampon doodoo to you too, anon.
What do you think you will think when you draw your last breath, on your dying bed?
"At long last, Comfy Oblivion."
>>7489727
You will take it like that, not fighjting to the last breath, but welcome it? You think? How brave
I have no faith or religion of any kind, only thing I will have is nolthing.
>tfw no gf
What do you think of the works of this beautiful man? What are your favorites?
Game of Thrones
>>7489264
TKB
Haven't read all of them yet (missing "The Idiot" and a few short stories), but my favouriute would be "The House of the Dead". Some of his most powerful pages are in there.
Just finished House Of Leaves and I'm looking to start on this one. What are your opinions on it?
b u m p
Nothing fucking happens. Enjoy the 15 year wait for the series to end. I bought the first book, and while I'm willing to see how it goes, I'm not going to spend $500+ to read it all. Get a library card.
That chinese kid is complete garbage.
He stole Kolsti's style and doesn't even do it as well.
