/lit/ - Literature

Books on controlling your sexual energy?

>>12301494
satantango

>>12300791
sorrows of young werther, tho only some parts

Poetry critique thread.

Has there ever been a well done romance in either science fiction or fantasy? I honestly can't remember one.

>>7018499
Pretention/psuedo-intellectualism is not about any substance or depth, it is about outside image. It is not the first step to anything. How can one "love" something without the enthusiam to gain knowledge about something? The majority of people don't have this drive. They might gain knowledge for the quip, the quote but can't profess anything.

It is in fact the opposite of a first step. Intellectualism is not about your knowledge in a single subject, it is about your logic, mentality and learning. Two people in vastly different fields can have competely different intellectual abilities but it comes down to a central point: the will and drive to explore and ask questions.

Most people now do not want to be a curious child anymore or asks these questions, it is purely about image. The Internet is full of people with the rationale that by agreeing to the ideas of Evolution, Global Warming etc that it puts them on the side of right compared to the forces of "anti-intellecualism" which they believe is religion and conservative views. Yet these people learn and memorise a fact, they don't ask questions, they don't go back and read Origin of Species and follow the logic then read further works. They read a chewed up Wikipedia article, or an infograph, or find some quotes to declare themselves on the side of right, progress and intelligence.

The more serious issue I would argue is ACTUAL intellectualism being called pretentious. There seems to be a major drive in the modern world to say that their is no such thing as taste; post modernism has truly screwed us on this one. That we need to accept all opinions and all views as having a validity. That we need to punish the well read scholar compared to the person spouting their bias narrative learned through their media.

Just need to plug a documentary called Why Beauty Matters (at least give the first two and a half minutes a go). In it Roger Scruton explores the idea that beauty is a value which our society has lost.
https://vimeo.com/55426796

Why am I posting this documentary? Well, in our society we believe that originality and depravity outwits beauty in art. That being the person to declare something or to show something distasteful is somehow a better statement that to provide us with something beautiful, something that makes us think and feel.

>>7001325
For first historiography read:
E.H. Carr. What is History?

Have a list of some general history books (in no particular order):
G. Kramer A History of Palestine
Why is it good? A lot of history on the area is mostly about either the Middle Ages or the modern state of Israel. The treatment under the area by the Ottomans and then the British is fundemental in our understanding of the modern Palestinian-Israeli conflict and not enough people know enough about it.

V. A. C. Gatrell The Hanging Tree
How and what was the purpose of capital punishment in British society? How was the "bloody code" challenged? How often were people unwilling to return guilty verdits in fear of condemning someone to death?

H. Pirenne Mohammed and Charlemagne
History is about debate. Pirenne asks the qustion, how did the Roman Empire fall? In his opinion, it was the eventually conquests of Islam that caused the real break in Roman history.

J. Gallagher and R. Robinson Africa and the Victorians and their article 'The Imperialism of Free Trade'
What drives Imperialism? And the questions concerning the idea of 'informal empire'.

P. J.Geary Before France & Germany
A transnational period, long before our current states came to be. How did Merovingian civilization shape our world today?