/lit/ - Literature

So I've been giving a lot of thought recently to my biographer and the kinds of things he or she will write about me one day.

I've produced a 12-A4-page Word document of facts and images I have found about myself from google searching alone, as though I were a biographer researching myself. To be honest, most of it is pretty tame and at worst a little cringe. However, there are still some things that I would prefer the reading public not know about me. I mean, it's pretty important to me that they don't. With that in mind, I've emailed a couple of private investigators for a price quote to see how much it would cost to find out what they are able to find out about me, and so far one has replied saying it'll probably be around $800.

Is that a fair price? Has anyone else confronted this issue? Or have any writers written about how intimidating it is to think that one's life will be written about one day?

How's the writing career coming, /lit/?

Hi lads,

I'm doing this charity thing where you buy a present for a kid from a poor family. Any idea what kind of books a ten-year-old would enjoy?

I was thinking of getting a couple of novellas like My Side of the Mountain.

You ever have days where you just feel sad without meaning to and without proper cause?

So I finished writing my debut philosophical treatise recently and my mom kindly offered to proofread it and help me get it published. Honestly, it's really kind of her and all. Here's the Thing: she's a retired elementary teacher and has always encouraged my writing, but I feel like even though she says my treatise is "very good" (her words) I can't help but think she hasn't even read it (I have reasons why I believe this). She said a couple of weeks ago she would help me try to get it published, but the places she sends me links about are like websites where people publish essays for free usually about themselves and their opinion about something (e.g., mental health, relationships) based off of their experience. A lot of the essays are very basic, and barely any of them receive any comments or feedback. Do any of you guys have any advice about where to send a philosophical treatise for the first time? It's pretty long and me and my mom are going to edit it hopefully when she recovers from her surgery. She's on painkillers right now, so, you can imagine, it's not the best of times.

I recently came out to my parents as a flaneur.

With that said, what books do you think I could recommend they read to understand my chosen lifestyle?

Are there any books about how to become a good stepfather?

Any books about being a step-father, or about a boy who grows up with a step-father?

I am going on dates with a single mother, but I am really scared about the idea of being a stepdad. I'm worried about money (I don't earn much), and being the kind of man a kid needs as a father (I didn't have one myself).

>>21964748
Is free speech even possible under a naturalist metaphysics? In it everything is in accordance with the law of causality and therefore always and everywhere determined by a cause, and producing an effect, necessarily determined and dependent on what came before, including human speech. Answer me retards? How is free speech possible without presupposing free will?

>about to be in a relationship for the first time
>realise that my romantic idealism about relationships was extremely flawed
>torn between wanting to throw myself in and commit and wanting to remain a detached recluse with plenty of free time to read and reflect etc

Are there genuinely any novels or anything that cover this specific feeling?

I guess it's because I'm a little older and more jaded, but it's very strange to struggle to muster a consistent desire to want to be in a relationship with someone you care about.

Books on how to visit heaven without dying?

>"Inhabited by the feeling of being a stranger to the world, where he has been made to fall, the gnostic discovers that he is in essence a native of a beyond, although his body and his lower passions belong to this world. He then understands that he is of the race (genos) of the chosen ones, superior and "hypercosmic" beings. If he desperately yearns for an afterlife, it is because he experiences within himself a throbbing nostalgia for the original homeland from which he has fallen. This longing affects the upper part of his soul, which is a divine principle in exile here on earth, and which can only be saved by the recognition of its original origin—gnosis proper. Those whose higher part of the soul has remained extinct, or who are devoid of it, that is to say, all the individuals whom the Gnostics call hylics (the majority of human beings and all animals), are condemned to destruction or to wander in this world, undergoing the terrifying cycle of reincarnations."

That's literally me.

I recently came out to my parents (mom and step-dad) as a Globalist. They didn't really react very well when I told them. My step-dad particularly seemed angered by my confession.

Are there any books which provide a positive overview of Globalism?

Are there any novels where a lonely, socially maladjusted character meets someone they instantly fall for but lack the courage to talk to and end up daydreaming about them for years?

An example is I'm Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid. This isn't a troll thread, I'm genuinely hoping to find similar books.

>have several aunts and uncles (mom was one of seven kids)
>working class family
>aunts are all boomer housewives and one uncle is an industrial guy
>the other uncle is the black sheep of the family
>never married, no kids
>has always worked part-time in low status jobs despite being intelligent
>dressed as though he was a professor or something (e.g., blazer, collared shirt and tie), although didn't seem pretentious in that regard
>shy, reserved guy who never said much at the rare family gatherings he attended
>thought he was weird growing up
>found out last week he had died
>siblings visited his small rented apartment and it was full of books but otherwise sparsely furnished
>went through a box of them and they are obviously all read, most with significant underlining of sentences, handwritten notes in the margins etc
>bunch of other boxes of books and various files that I've been given the task of going through

I feel like this is going to be my fate somehow.

Are there any good non-fiction self-help books about "anxiety" and / or an intense all-consuming fear that dominates your life?

Without blogposting too much, ever since I was very young I have been terrified of "putting myself out there" and being vulnerable in front of people. This affects my ability to open up to people or even be "available" for people. Consequently, I really don't "exist" in any substantial way, and I know many people find me cold and distant.

Here are some examples, in chronological order:

>be around 7-8 years old
>on holiday with extended family
>they want to go to a karaoke bar but I freak out at the idea they are going to force me to sing so I ran away and they all had to go find me (in tears and terrified)

>be around 13-15 years old
>spend summertime indoors in my room on the PC
>grow terrified of stepping outside the front door fearing my neighbours and others will judge me negatively
>have to perform rituals before going outside at all (e.g., pacing around, approaching the door a bunch of times)

>be 16-17
>reluctantly create a facebook
>sister remarks that my profile photo makes me look like a serial killer (depressed expression, dark lighting) and some people comment that I never say anything on there
>delete it

>be now
>offered a job at a company
>find out I will have to post my photo and a biographical passage about myself on their website
>turn down the job

On the one hand I feel some of my behaviour is a somewhat natural reaction to the "Transparency Society" discussed by Byung-Chul Han, and the climate of surveillance technology which means you are expected to be totally public online. But on the other hand, I realise that the intense anxiety I feel at the idea of being on display isn't a healthy thing overall and that most people aren't this way.

Any advice is welcome.