/lit/ - Literature

Just read the wiki page

>>19537572
>Am I a lazy faggot? Should I just kill myself and give up?
your issue is not that reading is hard it’s that youre allowing all these negative thoughts to enter your brain and distract you. I assume you probably are putting more energy into your fear of failure & frustration & negative self talk & etc than you are into actually reading. My friend, anybody can read and find fulfillment. Just slow it down, take a few breaths, tell yourself you can do it, and focus on the words you’re reading not your fears! Good luck

>>19537584
You're a kind person, anon. Thanks!

>>19537572
relax my man, you have to practice. you can't just hit the ground running, you'll break your legs. build up a steady momentum reading simple books that intrigue you, make you laugh, make you excited to take the book back up. you have to show your mind that there's a reward for doing this type of work. also, do some good heavy cardio when you're feeling blocked. it'll help guide you through this. definitely don't recommend "how to read" books until you actually know what you want from reading. as it stands, just read some comfy sci-fi, or fantasy, something that takes you away effortlessly. you'll be reading the wake in no time buddy

>>19537572
Adler's method is overkill for most purposes. If you're studying something with a clear purpose - graduate studies and so on - then it's useful.
Some lighter use of his advice is better for mundane readings.

>>19537572
do you move your head/neck while you read? you're only supposed to move your eyes. The other way uses twice as much energy. Go check

Imagine reading a Jew

>>19537683
>>19537708
It's my intention to use what I learn from Adler to try to get into philosophy -- basically to start with the greeks. I got a long journey ahead....

>>19537572
That book is meant to by used by using SOME of the stuff it says to do specifically for books you're thoughouly studying. I honestly donb't even take notes desu

>>19537846
Don't do that. Sorry, but it's a total waste of your time.

All there is to reading is...reading. Carefully. Make sure you understand everything you read, every single word, every single sentence. Summarise every section.

It is as simple as that. Which is not to say that it's easy, because it isn't - it's hard. But there is no more to it than reading and memorising, which is best done in short written summaries, in my opinion.

You're only a fag if you give up

good luck

>>19537584
I just don't think reading most literature is worth it. I mean, you don't go out of your way to watch every TV show ever made, do you?

>>19538414
>just read bro
>also dont forget to summarise every section and take all the steps that adler prescribes over 400 pages

>>19537572
I'm half way through and it really is a drag sometimes but i think it gets better and i certainly feel like while you go through it you even learn to engage with his very own arguments better.

>>19537572
Most of the stuff in this book is super overkill if you're not writing an essay about what you're reading or some shit. Some of the tips are good but most of them are way overkill for the average person.

>>19539082
More like it not being worth it, it is not necessary for your growth as a person. Take your pic for example. Sometimes taking it easy is the key for fullfillment.

>>19537572
i just downloaded this too. my issue is i find it hard to stop myself from thinking about things while reading. ill catch myself sometimes and notice ive read a page and a half but not taken in a word. was looking for a good read today as im bored of gaming for now.

>>19539691
One thing that helped me avoid stuff like that from happening, as bizarre as it may sound, was running the tip of a pencil ou a finger along the text and following it while reading

>>19537572
This book should only be read after you have achieved a certain level. It's not for beginners, despite the name.

>>19539082
Some literature is the greatest art known to man. When you get the tiniest knack for it, there are some books which you will remember for your whole life. You will basically be participating in the spiritual realm of your civilization.

>>19537572
>read wiki page >>19537579
>do the exercises at the end of the book
there

adler literally says only books from the western canon are worth the effort. don't stress about thoroughly understanding every book you read

>>19537572
Adler has advice for this situation in application to other books: a first read of something shouldn't be bogged down in details and comprehending every sentence, that's a recipe for ensuring you don't finish what you start. Comprehend what you can and use that as a base for the next reading.
I recommend the above only if reading it through is resulting in more avoidance and frustration than progress for a while (a couple of weeks or more).
>>19537683
Makes a good suggestion: find a book you're comfortable reading (and which more importantly gives you satisfaction) to build an association of reading with pleasure. However, the point of reading Adler’s book is learning some methods of improving our understanding of the world. I think that’s something everyone or virtually everyone is at heart genuinely interested in and is among the most rewarding experiences we can have, so I do recommend prioritizing his book over reading for entertainment if it's amenable with your motivations and disposition. You’ve expressed an interest in philosophy, for which Adler’s book will be especially helpful. Iirc he explicitly says that the process he recommends is most applicable to older philosophy texts for which the author has a clear argument and the subject requires no “special experience” for apprehension (unlike, say, scientific experiments).
>>19539841
Adler intended his book for people past elementary reading, which OP is already proficient in (he could not get far in How to Read a Book otherwise).
>>19537584
This is very good advice, though personally difficult to implement. Getting out of that self-punitive headspace is easier with practice in CBT skills, I find.
>Wtf have I been doing for the last 30 goddamn years?
Mid-August last year I went through a similar experience reading the same section of How to Read a Book:
> “Much of my life has been spent playing at embellishing words, not understanding the common meaning expressed. It’s been so long, yet should have been taught at the outset, that I feel humiliated as an adult needing elementary instruction again… This isn’t just humiliating, it’s as though a light were shined through everything, the debased state of everything revealed. It’s having your ignorance’s privacy lain bare.”
You’re not alone OP.

The redpill is the hardest to swallow: sustained effort. You’ve already noticed that it gets better, and it only continues to improve with more effort. You’re good enough as you are, right now, to continue your quest. You will never be unworthy of it.

>>19540651
>This is very good advice, though personally difficult to implement. Getting out of that self-punitive headspace is easier with practice in CBT skills, I find.
I found with CBT that most of my ADD when it comes to concentrating on reading was due to the excessive amount of guilt I was harboring. It really is a significant factor not discussed enough. If you're doing something and you're constantly aware of the quality of what you're doing, it becomes a sort of performance. With this you'll never be able to forget yourself in a novel.

>This isn’t just humiliating, it’s as though a light were shined through everything, the debased state of everything revealed.
This is very true. We aren't really taught how to have an appreciation for literature in school because the teachers lack so much themselves. It's really just about filling the time of an agenda.

>>19541069
I think there's room for self-awareness in reading that enhances apprehension when the awareness is detached from vicious comparison. If one is guilty or shameful or envious or entitled about not reading well they have an idea (however vague) of what is better or deserved and are making a comparison of deficiency in respect to whatever is desired. Among those are a few types of indictments I make against myself automatically when reading. However, when it isn't motivated by vicious comparison, "self-awareness" can also (arguably) be simple acts of observation, they don't necessarily mean anything more than your present experience and when inferred as indicators of present ability are still never unpleasant by themselves. The judgment we make that things are not as they ought to be are the culprit, I think. These observations or "inquiries of being" also include metacognition about your state of mind and felicity with processing information. I find I'm most engaged in reading when there isn't a prideful lens through which I see things but there's still an awareness of how I'm reading. I'm making judgments about reading insofar as I'm appraising and fine-tuning my cognition for deeper reading, but I'm not making viscious judgments. You might argue this is a case of not being self-aware but rather being "cognitively aware" in some fashion. If so the distinction is still important to draw for myself because of the way "self-awareness" is usually used in conversations. I'm always somewhat unsure what "self" people are alluding to.

Moreover I don't usually want to forget myself in a good book if I bother reading it for understanding, I want to attempt self-examination through its lens and so practice self-awareness beyond the present inquiries of being mentioned earlier. That's not saying I don't want to be immersed in it, that I don't want to inhabit that blissful intentional flow that rarely results but highlights my life experience, but only that I don't want to forget my own existence for a few hours by forfeiting my mind to someone else's work. I don't want to ablate myself when cognitively aware apprehension can be such a transcendental experience. If I did I might as well read agreeable entertainment exclusively or watch endless (and bad) YouTube videos, and I would be worse-off for it. I don't think this is what you mean by "forgetting oneself in a novel" but I want to be clear where I stand on the potential issue.

>>19541069
I'm making a separate post to address the second part of your post because the last one was already long enough.
The original context of that quote wasn't meant to be a statement about education at large but despair at seeing more clearly how inadequate I am intellectually (which was and is also painful).
This is embarrassing to admit, but before reading Adler it always seemed as though everyone else around me had some kind of mystical shared feature of mind that enabled them to understand each other, without endless qualification, that I didn't possess. Part of me felt there was a kind of slight hive mind effect at work. The beginning of the section where Adler describes differences between words and terms made the idea that language reproduces more-or-less identical thoughts or images in multiple people's minds at the same time click in a way no explanation before did. I've felt a lot less like an alien since, but no less stupid.

Your reading of my quote is still true in the context of today's society though; it's shameful that I can earn a bachelor's degree but not have an intuition of how communication works. This among many other things convinced me to prioritize self-education before resuming institutional education (which afaik is required to complete my goals).
With any luck I may actually understand something one of these days.

>>19537572
Stop approaching reading from the start like it's an exercise you have to do correctly.
I would certainly never recommend anyone to read that as one of their first books, if someone told you otherwise they memed you. You should be reading popular stuff of different styles so you can find stuff you like and actually enjoy reading, and then you can start reading stuff for the sake of improving your reading skills/ability.