What's the best book written before 1500
>>7470142
>best
?
Anyhow, probably the Bible.
>>7470142
Canterbury Tales
>>7470142
Tale of Genji
Guys, do you know a novel or a tale setlled in a dark weird universe ?
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
>>7469338
I'm reading it
>>7469344
I'm glad you took my suggestion.
The only critique thread up is for poetry, so here's a critique thread for the rest of us.
Post your shit and respond to others.
>>7468859
http://pastebin.com/cCSSin5Z
>>7469003
I read through your story. I enjoyed it quite a bit. The tension was very well defined but I felt that Jonathan's outro wasn't quite well defined enough.
It gave the ending an almost hasty feeling that left me unsatisfied. Perhaps more clarity to the conspiracy at the end and more detail in Jonathan's disconnect leading to the murder.
>>7468859
http://pastebin.com/3LFm4XvQ
I wrote this on the fly in my own thread on here but nobody is saying shit. I know the grammar is a mess lol
Today I was on/pol/and there was a thread with a news article about how a black dude was complaining that there are no black Hobbits or African themed movies/shows such as GoT.
It got me to thinking, what if someone wrote a High Fantasy book featuring African mythology, or if Africans were knights but set in Africa?
I think the liberal media would eat it up, Jews would love the idea and it would probably do good box office numbers if it was made into a movie because they would be promoting it a ton and a good amount of blacks around the world would go see it.
I'm thinking about writing this. Seems like the niche to fill to get published.
So, anyone know about African mythology?
>>7468636
>So, anyone know about African mythology?
I don't think Africans know about it, since they weren't too good at recording history and literature
>>7468636
A white guy writing this would be appropriating black culture.
A black person writing this would make it all about slavery and reparations.
Black people don't actually care about African culture and actual African people think books are toilet paper.
I guess if you could get a white guy to write it and a black guy to put his name on it, other white people may read it.
Any movie based on it would do poorly in America and flop as hard as possible in China.
That said, I think it would actually be a cool idea. Neil gaimans Ananzi Boys kind of does it to some degree.
But there's already tons of fantasy about Egypt.
So I was presented with a really cool post-grad opportunity(I'm an English major, so being more than a barista for at least a few years is something worth pursuing - and this potential job will also directly support my graduate degrees)
So the point of this - I have to take some unusual classes that are outside of my comfort zone. Namely, I am taking an education class. A teaching class, on teaching literature.
I have to select 40 books and write 3-5 page lesson plans based around each of them. They have to satisfy the following 10 categories, 4 for each category:
Youth
Modern Fantasy
Traditional Fantasy
Modern Realistic
Traditional Realistic
Animal Fantasy
Biography
Poetry(remember, books, not single poems)
Biography
Multicultural
So, most of these sound easy. I'm struggling with a few. I have to be able to argue literary merit for adult readers for all of my selections, and present why I believe essentially every person on the planet should read what I choose.
I'm really, really struggling with Animal Fantasy and Modern Fantasy. All I can think of with Animal Fantasy is, like, Watership Down and Johnathan Livingston Seagull. Maybe Animal Farm, but that's obviously pretty cliche. All of these options are cliche. It's so difficult to find adult-oriented literature from the perspective of an anthropomorphized animal.
As for Modern Fantasy I am entirely lost. I can not re-use themes(and I'm supposed to be creative and varied, so I wouldn't want to). So far I think I may use The Handmaids Tale to satisfy like the "dystopian" type theme, but I'm dying trying to come up with what essentially has to be genre fiction with literary merit. Very difficult.
Any help would be appreciated. I want to begin reading ASAP, because while I'll be using plenty of books I've already read recently, I'll still probably have to read at least half of these before this thing is due in March, on top of the 5 other classes I'm taking.
do your own work faggot
>>7468608
I've got something in Animals, but realistic, not fantasy. Does that interest you ?
Otherwise, I can think of "City" by Clifford D. Simak
>>7468616
Animal fantasy is qualified by these traits:
animal lead/narrator
human-like thoughts(i.e. no "realistic" animal thoughts)
Nothing else. Not sure why exactly it's called fantasy.
>>7468615
I'm asking for general recommendations for things to look into for a couple of very difficult categories. I figured it would start some discussion, and I've put a lot of time into trying to come up with good options for these categories without much success. I know many of my class mates will end up just using Watership Down, Fire Bringer, etc. and just focus on making the easier categories good, but if I have to read four books about animal characters I'd like to at least do something interesting.
Serious question /lit/
How in the fuck does one become a genius tier writer such as Milton, Nietzsche, Dante or Shakespeare etc? What seperates them from the rest of us plebs?
It's like they weren't even human. Everytime I remember that Nietzsche was professor of classical philology at the University of Basel in Switzerland at only 24 years old, or that Blaise Pascal wrote his first scientific paper at age 8 and by 16 had written a mathematical essay advancing the field of geometry or any other similar stories of great minds throughout history I get an overwhelming sense of dread and I'm usually left feeling like a worthless lazy piece of shit.
Seriously, how did they do it? Was it just that they weren't distracted and worked for hours everyday or what? How in the fuck does one even write an epic as great as Paradise Lost, it would seem impossible and unimaginable if it hadn't already been written by a blind and impoverished man named John Milton.
How do we become great /lit/?
>>7467691
>How do we become great /lit/?
Stop going on 4chan
>>7467704
I don't believe this though. There must be a way
>>7467713
So you're saying do not allow yourself to be distracted at all costs?
>>7467691
>We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit
~Aristotle
I'll start
>Dostoyevsky
>Terrorism
>Myths
>>7466047
It varies, but here is what my writing normally focuses on:
>alienation
>the nature of art
>absurdity
>monads
>bimbos
>megahertz
>pride
>Huysmans
>distance
Why were fascists such good writers?
Hating jews doesn't make C-line a fascist
>>7464850
He openly praised fascism
>"Who is the true friend of the people? Fascism is. Who has done the most for the working man? The USSR or Hitler? Hitler has... Who has done the most for the small businessman? Not Thorez but Hitler!"
>>7464748
It's the patricians political stance.
Post your best poems for critique, and I'll tear you a new asshole (I'll also tell you if/where it's any good). I'll try to keep up with everybody if this takes off.
I like the critique threads going on but those are usually 2/3 prose.
>>7456816
working on it now, it might take me a moment
>>7456816
First thing: it's 2015, not 1975, turn off the MS Word auto-capitalize at the beginning of each line. It makes for easier reading.
There's a fair bit going on here. My main criticism is that it's way too wordy. L1-4: do we need to know about the "nameless third?" I don't think so. Just close the blinds, everyone understands the significance of closing the blinds. Now, there's some weird conflation going on here. It's night, but you're having sex. Each of those things implicitly weakens the curtain gesture, because now it has two reasons for being performed instead of one.
Hardly anyone ever describes sex with panache, and I feel your description lacks charm. It's very physical: "slide," "teeth, "tongue," "meeting" (and this whole ships business is sort of a cliche--two ships passing in the night). In a novel, a character has to open a door to make things happen. You can't jump forward in time. But in poetry, you can. Yet I feel that your sexual description is doing this, opening a door. It's performative and unnecessary. "Our bodies surge," for example, is so pedestrian, such an erotica kind of line. I think you can do without all of that.
Moonlight and blessing make for a good pair. The pair is weakened by "hazy," an unnecessary adjective, and "blows," a poor verb for describing light.
The "Portholes" sentence is doing the same kind of sexual description, "glide gently," "rounds and curves," "coverage and comfort." Sticks and stones is a cliche or at any rate a banality.
There's a huge run-on sentence that begins at "Pausing for breath" and ends at "air around us." It shouldn't be that long. At one point your clause break is confusing because it's so short and easy to miss--"in the might-have-been past AND frozen things melt." Chop this sentence into manageable pieces. Then toss out all the pieces that are not necessary to the poem. "Energy" is a worthless abstraction. Don't be cute: don't say something like "maintain your smile" or "few places we'd rather be than in bed" or "melt in our warm open bellies."
It's a good ending but it's marred by the usual pitfalls. "Abstract previews" is literally a double abstraction. Abstractions are bad, delete this. The sentence goes on with too many clauses and we can't hold onto the whole thing until the end. The final clause should be its own sentence. It's a good ending.
Have you heard of stanzas? They would help the piece, in my opinion.
Would people buy a sci-fi book about mechs? Give your opinion if you want
>>7472047
>a sci-fi book about mechs
that tells me literally nothing about the book
to get people to read something you have to prove it's interesting or at least stands out in some way from 99% of people have already made
>>7472047
Sure, why not.
>>7472047
>>7472055
Alright, the year is 2130. In the turn of the century robotic scientists have perfected the manufacturing and use of bipedial robotic vehicles. About 30 years later an alien race of warriors have contacted earth in hopes of claiming the solar system as part of their empire, earth refuses and all countries have temporarily joined together to defeat the common enemy. The race of aliens have requested that earth follow a war protocol of their people that dictates that no fighting be carried out on the respective home planets and all battles to be fought on a life less planet; the scene is set for the battle of Mars.
Stoicism after Aurelius
you sure you don't want to save this thread for a friday night?
>>7472011
Why? Everyone here are NEETs anyways. Everyday is the weekend.
>>7472028
Just thought it might be nice to have something saved for a /lit/ special occasion for once.
>want to read some pages at least
>start browsing /lit/
>what the fuck am I doing?
>maybe I could get a couple of hours of language learning in
>start shitposting pepe images and watching funny youtube videos
>hate myself for not doing the things I want and succumbing to short lived pleasures instead, promise myself I will tomorrow while in bed
>wake up
>repeat
Has technology ruined us?
>>7471885
No, anon: you've ruined yourself.
>Microsoft subscription expired on October ninth.
>set my clock back, was still able to use it
>many websites became unusable because certain certificates couldn't be accessed because I'd changed the clock
>couldn't post on 4chan
>couldn't access google or youtube
>most productive I've been in a while
>pumping out good shit
>get microsoft 2016
>Post constantly
>wasting Christmas break
I'm considering posting porno to get a ban, but idk yet.
>>7471885
no that's just your personality and lack of discipline. in the 1920s you'd still be distracted, just by something else.
If you had to choose between eating for two days or buying a book you really wanted, which one would you choose?
I'm unfortunately in this position.
Free food is all around you, just hang around a restaurant with an outdoor patio or something and then when they leave, just eat all of their remaining food
Easy enough
>>7471866
I would choose to eat. I can't imagine finding a book that I couldn't find in a cheaper edition that would seriously make me consider starving myself.
>>7471866
Depends which book...and what kind of food.
Choose favorite
And why
For a post on a board about reading you should post a picture that people can actually read.
Why don't you flip the fucking thing around and take a clear picture first.
If you could bring any author back from the dead to elbow in the face who would you choose?
I'd choose Mark Twain because then he would know who the REAL Huckleberry boy would have been.
Then *POOF* back to hell he goes.
>>7471712
Stirner just to see his face (and then elbow him just for it is the price).
>>7471712
marx, so i can kick his ass and post the video on worldstar
![uHRmE8IW[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/DLxgGu1.jpg "uHRmE8IW[1]")
