/lit/ - Literature

>>14511002

>>14500223
Start with the Greeks.

>>14446923
Is this not the way?

Is this a good chart for the greeks?

The Greeks

Okay, read all of these.

Now what?

>>14139043

>>14081699
This one?

I want to make a website where users can create charts like pic related, edit charts from others, discuss them etc.
Would you be interested? And would you contribute?

>>14042287
The Argonautica (Jason and the Argonauts)
Hesiod
Then Herodotus for some tales from the ancient world and history. Sorta a blend
After that youre gonna have to read their history

A bit of an off topic meme-question here... I want to start reading philosophy and Plato, is this a good chart to listen to? Should I start with mythology first?

>>14002367
The thing though is that without any context it's just a bunch of foreign-sounding gibberish, especially once you move past the stuff that everyone's already heard about. So I sort of have to provide some context and descriptions of each book like pic related does, also it's a very large chart with some 80-90 books and translations of primary texts featured. It will be worth the wait.

I have the lite chart

>Waterfield's "The First Philosophers: The Presocratics and Sophists"
Basically the earliest you can reasonably begin, unless you count Homer/Hesiod as part of the tradition. (which they sort of are, you should read the Iliad if you haven't already)
>Plato's dialogues
Do not begin with the Republic. It was actually a relatively minor and overlooked work until the 19th century, and is still considered to be a bad work to begin with even if you do accept it as being central to Plato's canon.
Cooper's "Plato: Complete Works" (Hackett publishing) is what everybody uses these days, but I personally like to sometimes read the Hackett edition and sometimes read Jowett's translations from the 1800s.
You can do a few dialogues and then follow up with the republic, or you can just read a lot. I like Bernard Suzanne's ordering for reading:
https://www.plato-dialogues.org/tetralog.htm
>Aristotle
Pretty dry author, you're likely to be better off just reading Nicomachean Ethics and then handling the rest of him on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy / the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, both of which are very useful and should be used regularly.
>After that
Stoics and stuff, or renaissance and stuff, or enlightenment and stuff, depending on what you're interested in.
>What you should actually do
You should just do pic related, but skip the first book (Mythology) if you like. Read Rieu(prose) or Fitzgerald's(verse/poetic) Iliad.
As Jefferson said
>Give the principal to history, the other two, which should be shorter, to Philosophy and Poetry.

Why no Hippocrates or Euclid in the greeks?

>>13847098

>>13839011
Ok you start with the Greeks, see pic related. You will probably give up not even half way through

>>13815417
first read books summarizing philosophy like

Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction
Nigel Warburtons Philosophy: The Basics
A Little History of Philosophy
Thomas Nagels What Does It All Mean?: A Very Short Introduction to Philosophy
History of Western Philosophy - Bertrand Russell
B. Russell, The Problems of Philosophy
The Story of Philosophy - Will Durant
New History of Western Philosophy - Anthony Kenny
F. Copleston, A History of Philosophy

then start with the presocratics, but by first reading a book that summarizes the presocratics like Presocratic Philosophy - A Very Short Introduction

basically you wanna read summaries explaining shit before you jump into the actual text

i haven't ready any of these so i probably don't know what i'm talking about

hope this helps

START WITH THE GREEKS

>>13780267
Novels that are quite plot-heavy and keep you wanting to turn the page are the easiest books, while harder books tend to be quite aimless which puts new readers off as they wonder why they find it so hard to keep reading. A good example of this is the way high school students seem to hate The Great Gatsby and find it a slog to read, despite it's incredibly short length. It's also entirely subject to your tastes.

There are a lot of books on there that are pretty standard high school literature like 1984, Brave New World, Slaughterhouse 5, The Catcher in the Rye. Perhaps those are the best to start with, but I'm not sure about that.

Out of that list, the more plot-heavy, easy but long novels I would recommend are The Lord of the Rings and The Count of Monte Cristo. People seem to fall in love with both of those novels, and they make people want to read more books.

I would recommend reading Kafka's The Trial and Mishima's The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea to dip your toe in with two short examples of how unique and interesting literature can be. The Trial is very short, while Sailor is a bit longer but still quite a short novel.

Avoid anything but Joyce or Pynchon, as well as Philosophical texts on that list. I also wouldn't recommend the big Russian authors to start with. Moby Dick will probably bore you. Blood Meridian will most likely be too hard, but absolutely go for other McCarthy novels like The Road which are beginner friendly.

After you've dipped your toe in and you enjoy reading, go for Lolita. It's beautifully written but also entertaining.

Then you have nothing else to do but Start With The Greeks because everything else is inspired by them.

>>13762706
Start with the Greeks.