/lit/ - Literature

Excuse me xir, >>>/sci/ is two boards down and to the left

I've just finished reading A Confederacy of Dunces, these are the next few books I've got planned out to read, but which one should be the very first I go for?

>>17591673
Eat shit, newfag

>>17591786
Stop trying to pretend this gay general has been around for a time, it’s literally a transplant from /sci/

>>17591868
Seethe, cope and dilate newfag

>>17591627
What's the gayest genre of genre fiction?

How much of the problems on /lit/ (very own aspiring writers) come down to trying too hard? I see most of your excerpts and its 99% purple prose and peacocking, substituting story with paragraphs that could be turned into a couple lines.

>>17591627
the fuck happened to teh moby dick annotated thing

>>17591945
Inspirational fiction

>>17591749
Why do you have two books that are the same? Anyways, go with Titus Groan.

>>17592500
Severely. Most of them want to be the next Joyce, Tolstoy, Salinger, Faulkner, Pynchon, etc, etc. When they barely have the potential to be John Green. And instead of admitting this, they double down.

Any books that deal with the psychological fallout of being in an incestuous relationship with siblings? Particularly, Older sister-younger brother? I need references for the book I'm writing.

>>17592687
>Why do you have two books that are the same
not him but I think the dots at the bottom show different volumes

>>17591627
Okayu's fat.

Since my thread is about to die; are there any books that discuss the aesthetics of cute ?

>>17592960
>aesthetics of cute
>posts a sonic character
go hang, you autistic fuck.

>>17592977
Tails is fucking adorable. Those who disagree you are dead inside.

>>17592717
Okayu is not fat, she’s flabby.

>>17591627
Why do only women write novels these days?

>>17593187
They're the only ones who aren't delusional.

How much of writing is genetic? Let's just operate in fiction. A 17 year old who started writing when they were 13 might get published by Penguin. a 45 year old who has been writing since they were 25 might have sent in a thousand manuscripts and haven't been published once. Even if you disagree with the example I used, clearly there are some teenagers who are better writers than some adults who have been writing for their entire lives. So, how much of writing (let's simplify it to fiction) is genetic? Is it almost everything?

>>17591627
any Rosicrucianism reading lists or charts?, or would it be better to ask the schizos on /x/ for this?

>>17592701
Yeah it's just one novel split into two volumes

When did 300 word chapters for novels become a thing?

>>17593477
Anon, writing is a meme. Agents only care about what sells, anything else is secondary or even tertiary. If you think wordbuilding and characters carry a story, then I'm sorry to say that they don't.

>>17593691
The length of a chapter has always been flexible, anon. There are no predetermine words that determine a chapter.

>>17593679
I thought they were just different editions of the same book.

>>17592960
>are there any books that discuss the aesthetics of cute ?
Like in what way?

>>17594507
What makes something cute? What are the aspects of cuteness? Is this uniform across items, creatures, and behaviors?
Something like that.

How do I decide what I want to read? I have downloaded a shit load of books and am trying my hardest to drop vidya for reading but I'm having trouble just committing to one book and getting the ball rolling. So far I have learned that I am currently unable to read fiction without getting bored or frustrated because my brain is incapable of visualizing extremely detailed descriptions of things so I downloaded a bunch of philosophy and non-fiction books. I'm also worried i'm going to be too retarded to understand the philosophical books.

>>17595009
Anon, I don't think we have the answer to your indecisiveness.

is freelancing worth it or is it really that fucked

>>17595813
Freelancing as in working or writing stories? Because depending on who you ask, it is worth it.

>>17595816
yeah like writing stories, having your own site, and getting your own crew together. Always get cold feet because Im an introverted guy and not very good at advertising myself

>>17595847
From what I understand, you can just go to either WordPress or Royal Road and shill your work discreetly and subtly. No need to add other people, unless you want to include art in which you might want to get an artist.

>>17595847
>>17596144
Also, post your work in other forums that allow stories.

>>17595813
Depends, are you willing to write smut?

>>17595007
Aesthetics.

Who are the literary equivalents of Bergman and Tarkovsky?

>>17595296
This.

>>17595007
>>17592960
Eh, since no one else is answering I know one book that gets a little bit into it. While it’s not a text on general aesthetics, the work does go a bit at length at analysis of cute/kawaii aesthetics within Japanese culture and especially among the otaku.

Otaku: Japan's Database Animals by Hiroki Azuma, you can easily find a pdf.

>>17598560
This?

>>17598829
That’s the one.

>>17598842
Yeah, I’ll buy when I have the money save up.

>>17599000
Want me to just grab a pdf for you?

>>17599016
If you have the time, sure.

>>17599052
https://mogami.neocities.org/files/otaku.pdf

>>17599057
Thanks.

>>17591627
Is this ugly burger worth anything?

>>17599208
Yes.

Has anyone here ever read The Island? BNW gets discussed a fair amount and rightly so, but I've never even seen this book mentioned.

>>17598560
Thank you

>>17599441
Maybe because Island is Utopian compare to the dystopian world of BNW?

>>17593478
https://www.rosicrucian.org/recommended-reading-lists

>>17597053
No one.

Anyone know how I can read .mobi books without downloading / signing-up for Kindle Reader?

>>17601139
If you’re reading on an iPhone or iPad or some kind of android product, there’s plenty of apps which you can download which convert mobi to PDF/epubs for example.

>>17593478
Frances Yates, Webb (Occult Underground), Manly Hall

>>17593847
Not only this, but the intellectual elite used to be smaller, less numerous, and even more incestuous, so anyone with obvious talent could get recognized or at least get a foot in the door by doing something like just sending a letter to Pound or Eliot, and lots of people with zero talent could get five feet in the door by simply schmoozing with those fucking socialite faggots around Hemingway in Paris or the Bloomsbury queers

Nowadays you are a big nothing in a sea of nothing and the nothings at the top don't even have Hemingways and Pounds to sift through so they have reverted to selling diarrhea chapbooks for housewives and braindead teenage hookers only

>>17593478
Don’t forget your Jacob boehme, Paracelsus, agrippa and the chymical wedding.

>>17601213
Thank you. I'm on a PC, so not sure if there is anything for that?

>>17601242
>Nowadays you are a big nothing in a sea of nothing and the nothings at the top don't even have Hemingways and Pounds to sift through so they have reverted to selling diarrhea chapbooks for housewives and braindead teenage hookers only
John Green seems to be the great author of our era.

Is there a value of something well-written (fiction) if it lacks the creativity of story?

>>17601879
Yes, it will entertain people.

>>17591627
In "Fundamental principles of the metaphysics of morals ," what does kant mean by "Will."
actually what does he mean by "duty" too and the other shite he says. He doesn't seem to clearly define his terms.

what is a lexeme/phoneme/morpheme in layman's terms?

What's it called when you explain a novel idea to someone and since it's so obvious and easily to understand they fail to grasp its significance?

>>17603661
Synopsis?

>>17602950
>lexeme
a basic lexical unit of a language, consisting of one word or several words, considered as an abstract unit, and applied to a family of words related by form or meaning.

>Phoneme
any of the perceptually distinct units of sound in a specified language that distinguish one word from another, for example p, b, d, and t in the English words pad, pat, bad, and bat.

>morpheme
a meaningful morphological unit of a language that cannot be further divided (e.g. in, come, -ing, forming incoming ).

>>17602227
How about you read his work?

>>17601262
Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz

>>17606167
do I really need a character relationship chart for War and Peace?

>>17606172
Definitely, you would be mad not to do so.

>>17601879
Who cares about creativity?

>>17606452
Every one.

What are your favourite adventure books set in the arctic regions and written before 1940?

>>17598560
>Simulacra Theory
this shit gives me Matrix / Psyop vibes

I have a booklog. Therein lay the books I've read, and plan on reading or at least trying to, rating all.
However, the latex pkg glossaries is such that no duplicate entries can exist, meaning that if under my current config >1 books share a name, only the first encountered entry shall be shown. But I can't format (easily at least) the entry to be order (currently bookname) if it includes both book and author, and the thing is a bit touchy.

QUESTION
>Would it be better, bibliographically at least, have entries be merely the authors, and children entries by their books? Dunno how series would look like in such a scenario. but I gotta know because it's bound to happen sooner or later..

>>17606915
??

Is it stupid to be paranoid about leaving my kobo’s WiFi on? I feel like i’m going to wake up one day and find that it’s updated and deleted all of my pirated books. I want to try out the Pocket article thingy

Are there any philosophers of not anything at all? As in, a philosophy that makes no claims about anything.

What classics use lying as a major theme?

>>17609630
Stoicism is the only good philosophy

>>17608704
Yes, Kobo wouldn't gain much of anything from doing that, especially since their marketshare is "people smart enough to not use Amazon", limiting themselves like that would lead everyone to just get a Kindle or an Android ereader instead

>>17609630
Pyrrho, Hume

>>17610563
t. stopped reading in highschool

>>17610681
Doesn't refute what he said.

Is the international jew worth reading? Is it schizo or actually filled with some good stuff?

Is there a good word for "a group of individuals that you are able to interact with." Lets say there is a game where you can talk to 90% of the players, but not the remaining 10%. The example sentence I have is "your hair color is different than your [interactable fellow competitors]"

>>17611381
contemporaries

How good is Martin Eden by Jack London

>>17611619
It is astounding how long it took for me to digest this book and I say this is nothing but praise. Honestly, it's not like I'm sure the process is completed; I tend to believe the best books are the ones you never wholly digest, the ones that keep nagging at your mind for weeks, months, years, forever, too, if that is what it takes. And the best books are, also, the ones that, lo and behold, turn out to be but little mirrors of yourself - and more often than not, very much to your own dismay, shame, embarrassment, and a tiny, timid ember of inner joy.

Meet young Martin Eden: a sailor, a commoner, an illiterate, a Mr Nobody, were it not for one thing: his boundless, painful sensitivity to beauty. Martin Eden can be described as naive in many (or possibly all) respects, but not this. He may not be able to give a cultured, sophisticated definition of what art is or is thought to be, but he just knows. He would say that he just knows it in his guts, though he wouldn't be able to elaborate further than that. He uses a metaphor that I took to heart immediately, probably because I find it not only strikingly to the point, but also poignant, smeared with sadness, and that was what stuck; it goes, "Dogs asleep in the sun often whined and barked, but they were unable to tell what they saw that made them whine and bark. He had often wondered what it was. And that was all he was, a dog asleep in the sun."

I think we're all, a little, like dogs asleep in the sun. Martin Eden aimed at the stars, sought to express the inexpressible, to strip humans of their own skin; but aren't we all a little like Martin Eden, like that slumbering dog, every minute of our life? I, for sure, feel like that constantly. I constantly feel like I've got tons of things to say, and never manage. And it's frustrating, so terribly frustrating. But I guess I learned to live with that, with our never-ending communicative stalling, with beating around the bush, with being close but never really there. Yes, I feel this is a good definition of what Martin Eden is: close but never really there. He is one of "the legions of toil", a "hoodlum", but he does not conform: he is too aware and awake, almost criminally so (there is a reason if his family, or part of it, almost disowns him). But even later, after he becomes a learned man, a famous writer when he is finally allowed into the upper classes, he cannot ignore that he doesn't belong there either, as if he still hadn't got out the last bit of dirt from under his nails, or rather, as if the fact that they didn't have any, had never had any, could never, ever sit well with him. I know London didn't intend for him to be idolized, and I'm not idolizing it (obviously, or what I'm saying wouldn't have sense at all) but I see myself in him. I see myself and you and you and all, and I see myself projected in him as the minuscule Titan I am in my mind. Did London intend for this? I can't tell, but I certainly thank him for Martin Eden.

>>17599057
Thanks bro

>>17606933
The simulacra theories of baudrillard were actually the chief influence of the matrix, baudrillard’s complaint about the movie is that it implied some kind of escape was actually possible.

>>17611619
>How good is Martin Eden by Jack London
One of the most powerful books I have ever read. This book should be given to the people at the age of 18-20, and if they see their reflection in Martin, this means they are on the right path; if not - they are hopeless grey zombies of the society. I feel in pain from the fact that society managed to break the will of such a powerful individual and turn him into a cynic, absolutely apathetic to anything and unwilling to go on with the fight for happiness, which is Life! Yet, no matter how painful it was to see such termination of a seemingly striking transformation, London simply had to sacrifice Martin to make all of us question the true value of what we consider as our goal, in order to prevent us from the most bitter - disappointment.

So many parallel thematics flow along with the main theme such as an insight into the relationships between man and a woman, and the significance of faith in them; emptiness of fame, position in the society and wealth; karma, and how you inevitably see the fruits of your efforts, as long as they are true; hypocritical nature of people; and most importantly - the importance of perseverance of a true, genuine self (which Martin betrayed to) because that is the only back to rely on we have at the end of the day, and its only the voice of this self that comes to our defense even while the whole universe is standing against. This book is a must-read for all target-driven people. Standing in life with this kind of people, I have had all the challenges Martin has gone through mixed in my head, while London sorted them all on the shelves, and made a huge contribution to the path towards a goal I am on at the moment.

>>17599441
It's more or less BNW 2, and actually elucidates more of the ideas in BNW. I think if you have the motivation, you should definitely read both.

How to study philosophy along with pure math and pure physics?

>>17599781
>>17601242
>>17601262

thank you very much

First, what are some books that don't end with a "victory" for the protagonist? Most books end with some sort of conflict resolution where the protagonist wins, even if it's a Pyrrhic victory. I can stomach that, but I'm curious if there's anything where the protagonist doesn't "win". Bonus points if it's a good book. I'm also curious if there's any decent books where what the protagonist fails at what he perceives his goal to be, but it doesn't turn out bad for him, like the inverse of a Pyrrhic victory. "He" in these cases is gender neutral, if anyone is planning to shitpost about that; I'm fine with a female protagonist.
Second, how does one create "good" threads on /lit/? I'd like to make good posts, but sadly I don't particularly know how to do so. I read on occasion, and I see /lit/ complain about the board quality, but I'm afraid that anything I make would be the same tepid bullshit that gets to page 10 with 1 reply, or worse, it'd be sidelined by shitposting and stay on page 1 for two days just because of (for example) religious LARPers fighting about who is more based and tradpilled.
Thanks in advance.

>>17591673
I’d much rather have a knock off of an EFFECTIVE /sci/ gen than have to filter all posts that end in question marks

>>17591627
I've been having trouble with patience while reading recently. The only books I've been able to finish in the last year are ones that drop you right into action in the beginning, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas comes to mind as a good example. Does /lit/ have any reccomendations for classics that come to mind as being captivating the whole way through?

>>17612787
Siddhartha

>Second, how does one create "good" threads on /lit/?
If you're making on topic threads about a book you've actually read you're already in the PARAGON ECHELON ELITE

>>17613007
The Great Gatsby?

>>17610026
Revolutionary Road.

Is there some sort of companion I can read along with this so my western pea brain can understand jap terminology?

Just finished lolita and the language every book i try reading afterwards is so dry in comparison i can barely continue reading.
wtf do i read!

>>17610563
>>17610809
the intellectual capacity you showed in these posts proves that explaining it to you would be as futile as teaching multiplication table to a monkey

>>17591749
The stranger desu. A different kind of autismo

>>17614356
What’s wrong with stoicism?

>>17591627
what's a good last name for Hector?

>>17614769
A couple of things but I was just denying that it's the best philosophy or an adequate answer to the question above. People say start with the greeks is a meme but it seems like a bit of Aristotelian logic wouldn't hurt some posters.

>>17614856
Hector Lin. I think it's really charming the way many people in Hong Kong have Western first names. A lot of the time it's simple names—John is a really common one. But they can get a little more esoteric, and Hector is right at the limit of that. It's the often-clumsy marriage of completely distinct languages and cultures in which you can find things that become beautiful by nature of their ugliness.

>>17614870
there's an idea. I was settling on "Wright", but that's something to think about. Not Lin, though. I don't like the typo of that.

>>17611651
>>17611715
Thanks a lot lads, looks like I've got summat to really look forward to then.

anyone else watch okayu's birthday fest today

>>17591920
>tenor.gif
>calling others newfags
The STATE of /lit/

>>17613752
i already read it, thank you for the suggestion though.

Tourist here. I finished The Crime of Father Amaro and loved it. Highly recommend. Does anyone else have other suggestions for similar books that involve simple european life and religion? I also enjoyed the work of Evelyn Waugh as it pertains to religion.

>>17616832
Montaillou
The Cheese and the Worms
Great Cat Massacre

Any anons have any advice for independent study? I'm trying to get into the field of linguistics and I have little idea of what to do besides reading textbooks and learning IPA.

>>17617863
Independent scholars can be just as smart as institutionally connected ones, the only differences are that the institution gives you constant motivation with "publish or perish" and not falling behind your peers, and that the institution teaches you to colour within the lines of what it finds acceptable.

The former thing, motivation, is a double-edged sword because it only motivates you in a small and pathetic way, which creates a lot of complacent mediocrities who could just as well have done anything else, but it also prevents the most common pitfall of independent scholarship, procrastination and never actually doing anything. Most independent scholars or people with aspirations to be one will simply never do anything, or will watch a few youtube things and then get distracted. At least the institution forces you down its rails, even if they are shitty rails, if you get my meaning here.

The latter thing, the colouring within the lines, is also important in this respect, because one of the biggest motivation killers in the long run is a lack of feedback and collegiality. And bad collegiality too. Nothing worse than spending 10 years studying something on your own, being genuinely better at it than the so-called professionals, and then contantly feeling like those so-called professionals are snooty and better than you and have their own clubhouse to which you are not invited. Sometimes this can be worked around, and some people won't care in the first place, but it does suck not to be able to talk to other people who purportedly study the thing you study because of the "language barrier" that you learned it from library books (probably closer to the way the legends of the field learned it 60 years ago), and they learned it by barely scraping B's in their classes during their second- or third-rate graduate program. Again, nothing more fun than one of those soulless, on-rails dipshits talking down to you and treating you like a quaint bumpkin.

Both of these can be overcome by strategically engaging with the institution. First off, do not revere it at all, it's a pile of shit. Revere individual people for their brilliance at the thing you love, and then only respect them individually if they are good people to boot. (Meaning, if you get some "Uhhh ok bud lol" reply from a big fancy scholar, it means nothing other than he's a fucking retard.) Second, find some way to be in dialogue with what is good about the academy (motivation, contemporary problems and discourses) without having to be in dialogue with what is bad (complacency, phone-it-in types and nepotistically hired people who act like gatekeepers despite being terrible at it). You don't want to grovel for entrance before the gatekeepers, you want to be so good at it that you sublate the gates themselves into yourself.

One of the best ways to do this is to learn the history and epistemological/methodological background of the field you study. Know it better than they do.

>>17617862
I just picked up the cheese and the worms it looks great thank you anon. From the wiki page of O Crime do Padre Amaro, it is written that the book is comparable to La Faute de l'Abbe Mouret by Macquart which also seems like just what I was looking for. I'll have to try to find a good English translation of it.

>>17618149
Oops Émile Zola is the author that's what I get for skimming through a wiki page too quickly.

>>17616105
Yeah, it was a good watch.

https://youtu.be/RxytWppYJq8

How do I overcome Pyrrhonism?

>>17591627
Sort of meta question, but the /wg/ thread seems too crowded: does anyone know of write as a publishing platform? I like the idea of supporting an open-source project focused on anonymity but that's all I know

>>17618335
Royal road. Fiction Press.

>>17616105
I love her singing.

https://youtu.be/DkrXPHYDy50

>>17618323
You don’t.

>>17614863
>Aristotelian logic
Is a meme.

>>17616105
Was it good.

>>17618848
yeah, there was a model tracking mishap near the end and they had to reset the stream mid-song

>>17619231
Oh, at least they had fun.

>>17618157
At least you know now.

>>17618323
Platonism. Pyrrhonian scepticism still implicitly prusupposes a rationalist, discursivist criterion of truth and knowledge, even as it denies all criteria for knowledge. True, consistent scepticism would be pre-philosophical, doxic, psychologistic egoism or nihilism. Pyrrhonists are proving that they care about philosophy even while denying it is possible. They just have an impoverished sense of philosophy.

The pyrrhonist says that no axiom or first principle can stand as a criterion for all other truths, because it will itself require justification through some criterion. But this is only true of the ordinary, discursive form of knowledge, based on judgments and demonstrations in the Aristotelian sense. Many philosophers, including Aristotle, would agree that the grounds for discursive knowledge (logical first principles, the drawing of inferences) cannot be proved from within discursive knowledge itself. Some, like Hume, share the pyrrhonist's scepticism about their ultimate veracity as a result. But others, like Plato, Bergson, and Malebranche, simply shift the focus of the search for ultimate truth toward forms of knowledge other than the discursive.

Not only do we have hint and intimations of forms of knowledge other than discursivity, we always already exist in a world that is manifestly structured rationally and even benevolently ("good" is an objective feature of nature, at least in the minds of certain natural subsets of nature, i.e. living beings). The pyrrhonian might be correct in a very limited sense if he says that we don't know the ultimate source of this rationality and benevolence, but the platonist would just reply "not yet." The trick is in seeking out those hints and intimations of faculties and forms of knowledge other than the discursive, and focusing them on those hints and traces of living truth in the world (the Goodness, Truth, Oneness of reality, or your experience of free will or of unitary personhood, for example).

For the platonist, we are related to reality and it is related to us. What appears subjective will ultimately reveal itself as objective, including subjectivity itself. The pyrrhonist can reply that we don't know that for sure, that we can't currently hold it for certain, in our existing faculty of discursive knowledge, whose ground and nature is itself unknown. But the platonist would just shrug and say that's exactly what he's looking for. At that point, as Aristotle says in the Metaphysics, the choice is not really a philosophical one. You can either continue the search and continue trying to develop human conceptions and faculties to a level of adequacy with their primal grounds, or you can "accept" pyrrhonism and cease being a philosopher altogether. The platonist isn't fundamentally in disagreement that discursivity is insufficient, but he chooses to "follow" those traces and mysterious tugs of sympathy on his soul from beyond the veil rather than ignore them.

Which book should I read next? I am almost done with Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.

>>17621153
Which book do you want to read?

Any books about the effects of incest between siblings? I read a few reports and videos on how an older sibling being molested starts molesting their younger siblings and I want to know more about the subject.

Any philosophers who didn't write anything besides Socrates and Pyrrho?

>>17622102
None.