/lit/ - Literature

>>18986030

Protip: you can just read what you want

>>18986041
This is literally years of study.

Just read a mix of stuff.

>>18986030
For me, it's the ancient farming treatises.

>>18986055
?
you can read all of that in a month unless you're retarded

>>18986236
Iliad is 560 pages
Odyssey is 541
There are 107 of Aesop's Fables
The complete works of Plato is 1808 pages

That's over 3000 pages. Do you do literally nothing, from dawn til dusk, except read?

>>18986418

>>18986418
It's okay if you're new. It really isn't that hard to read Homer and the tragedians. I've read more Russian and English novelists (each) than even exist Greek epics and plays. In a few years whatever you've already read will feel like nothing at all. It feels more like building tenure than anything, at least to me. I often find myself wanting to circle back around and read the epics third or fourth times, and if you at all appreciate them then you'll probably end up reading them multiple times in your own life.

>>18986418
>>18986055
women detected

>>18986030
>over 500 titles from Ancient Greece and Rome. And this doesn't even seem to be comprehensive. Even if I read one per week, which is unlikely because they are all like 300 pages at least, it will be decades before I get through them.

I tell myself this: learn as if you are going to live forever, Do not make deals with time. No matter how many things I don't know yet, what matters is what I have learned. If a Greek library is dug up in Egypt and our corpus of antique literature grows at times (this is not incredible!) Why should I regret it? No.

>>18986030
>OK but what specifically?
Whatever interests you.

>>18986041
>Athenian Political Oratory
>Translated by David D. Phillips

kek Phillips was my professor at UCLA. He would mix dad-jokes in with his lectures; in one class everyone got them and laughed, and in another nobody did and it was awkward. Good guy, though; kicked a kid who was reading the student paper out of class for not paying attention to lectures, and passionately hated the Baltimore Ravens.

>>18986236
You definitely can't. You'd be reading multiple books a day. You're not gonna retain anything, and you'd have little time for reflection.

Tbh if you read anymore than 1 book a week you're wasting your time and should read something more challengeing.

>>18986030
Yes, the classics take about ten years. You would have started at age 15 at he latest with based parents.

>>18988244
>me brain no work good urs also not work good

Just imagine caring about what people said thousands of years ago. They didn't understand anything. Reading them is more than a waste of time: it will ruin your intellectual life. You will forever be trapped by their archaic notions which has taken mankind thousands of years to surpass. Don't start with the Greeks.

>>18988244
> 1 book per week
You're never going to make it.

I want to read Augustine's City of God but I feel like I need to read Plotinus first and I feel like I need to read Plato before Plotinus.

Start and read whatever you want in reality but if you really want to start (and stick) with the Greeks, then read:
Homer
Hesiod
Archilochus
Alcaeus
Sappho
Aeschylus
Sophocles
Euripides
Aristophanes
Herodotus
Thucydides
Plato
Aristotle
Menander
Plutarch
Aesop
Petronius

>>18986030
Start with these:

Iliad by Homer
Odyssey by Homer
The Republic by Plato

>>18986418
>That's over 3000 pages. Do you do literally nothing, from dawn til dusk, except read?
Be in freshman year of high school.
Have to read ‘The Iliad’ and the ‘The Old Testament’, and several other books like ‘The Great Gatsby’ ‘ The Catcher in the Rye’ etc. plus short stories we get given.
That was just english class for the first semester.
Add in biology class, history class, Latin class, shop class( yes, there were “textbooks” we had to read for shop class), and again, this is one semester.
Basically, the point of Prep schools was to get students yo the point were you read like one book every couple days and then could interpret and cross reference that literature you just read with other literature you’ve read previously or concurrently.
It’s sort of a slog at first.

>>18990514
One thing I absolutely seethe is that I couldn't get such an education, you know Eton, Stuyvesant etc. Yeah boarding etc might be absurd but man I feel sad having starting to read classics at university rather than in high school.

Don't also started me on Ivy/oxbridge, I went to a decent enough school, top 50 in the world yet they didn't had digitalloeb subscription...when I emailed them about it they said they couldn't afford it and told me to read from library...
fuckers I swear. I should've forced my father to sell some shit and send me to an ivy.

>>18988717
>the intellectual equivalent of a guy who can't change a flat tire

>>18990528
Less than 5% of the students at Ivy league schools have read the classics

>>18990546
I would be the 5 percent.
but greed is eternal it seems, I'm upper middle class but unhappy how I had to follow a professional degree rather than studying classics at yale or something.

>>18990546
>Less than 5% of the students at Ivy league schools have read the classics
which is why our privileged class is so thoroughly unimpressive

>>18988704
>>18988732
Cope more. If actually could read 1000 pages per day and retain most of it you'd be some kind of superhuman. Like become an expert in multiple fields over the course of a month.

If you look at any college course, there is a reason they also use roughly the pace I'm describing. Each semester covers 10 books or so and a lot of excerpts. That is the pace where you get the most out of the works since you have time to properly reflect, analyse and compare them to other works.

>>18986418
Bro you can read every book on there except Plato in 3 days maximum of a few (<4) hours per day. Plato you can read one dialogue per day and there are only like 30 of those. The whole chart is at most 6 months of weekend reading. You watch more TV than that.

>>18990865
>could read 1000 pages per day
who said anything about 1000 pages per day?
are you retarded or something?

>>18986030
Read the books that appeal to you when you read the blurb. As easy as that. You would have a worst time reading things you think you have to read based on a chart than stuff you actually want to.

>>18990514
>Be in freshman year of high school.
Yeah, exactly. You have nothing better to do when you're this young. Once you are a parent and have a job reading is a luxury. I know that's like 1% of this board, but every so often I run into other actual adults and not just YAs and teens reading books more as a trendy identity thing.

>>18990893
>multiple books a day

>>18986043
Spbp /thread

>>18990918
>multiple books = 1000 pages

>>18990865
what college are you speaking of? you cant get undergrad zoomers to read 10 fucking pages a week

>Just start with the Greeks bro. Just read the classics bro.

If you're tired of getting told that just tell them you're starting with pic related. Only way to beat them is to outmeme them.

>>18991608
Oh I do

>>18990906
data threads show that the average age here is around mid/upper 20s with some old people.

>>18986030
You don't need to start with the Greeks. Read whatever classics you want and you'll eventually come to an intuitive understanding of which works you should read and WHY they're read. Then you'll have finally surpassed the average chart-posting /lit/ pseud

>>18990566
Move to the forest already fag

>>18990514
That's something only people who went to high-class schools can relate to.

>>18992055
I'm just having my midlife crisis

>>18986041
Fpbp.