What's been your biggest filter to date anons

[Anonymous No.14956399]

Books you just cannot get through, multiple attempts, head banging frustrations, and the final despairing knowledge that you're just not ready for it.

[Anonymous No.14956412]

How can Moby Dick filter you? It has some of the most beautiful prose in the English language.

[Anonymous No.14956493]

>>14956412
Long descriptions of sea birds. Which is midwit level filter, but I'm a midwit and it filtered me.

[Anonymous No.14956507]

>>14956399
Vineland and Gravity's Rainbow. All that encyclopedia knowledge just baffles me and I forget about what was going on in the plot.

[Anonymous No.14956529]

>>14956507
Both are Pynchon right? Considered reading Mason & Dixon and /lit/ made me know I wasn't even close to ready.

[Anonymous No.14956540]

>>14956399
my biggest filter to date is that i am ugly, unlikable

[Anonymous No.14956541]

>>14956529
Yeah, so far I've read Inherent Vice, Lot 49, Bleeding Edge and his short stories. Those aren't as verbose as GR.
I'm preparing to read Ulysses now with help of Dubliners.

[Anonymous No.14957202]

>>14956541
Portrait is a better preparation than Dubliners

[Anonymous No.14957232]

>>14956540

[Anonymous No.14957240]

>>14957202
You should read both though
Dubliners will simulate ulysses' episodic format while portrait is close to the prose style

[Anonymous No.14957382]

I was filtered by the first story in a short story collection, but the whole thing is just mediocrity warped in a convoluted prose.

[Anonymous No.14957384]

>>14957382
which

[Anonymous No.14957471]

>>14957202
it is not

[Anonymous No.14957485]

Infinite Jest is a fucking slog.

[Anonymous No.14957502]

>>14956399
Being too smart and insightful compared to those around me. Why read books when you're already so far ahead of the pack

[Anonymous No.14957505]

>>14957384
I can't remember. It wasn't translated anyway and it's from a shit writer that no one cares.

[Anonymous No.14957516]

>>14957485
This thread is for practicing humility. It’s a safe place for you to acknowledge your inability to finish a book was a product of your own lack of knowledge and attentional control.

For me, it was The Recognitions, but five or six years after my first unsuccessful attempt I’m going to finish it this weekend.

[Anonymous No.14957570]

>>14957516
This

Good luck anon

[Anonymous No.14957571]

>>14956399
i've just finished this book 20 minutes ago
can someone explain to me why it is ranked the first in the /lit/ chart?
can you link some materials explaining it?
i thought it was good but i can't see why it is higher than lolita, stoner or 100 years of solitude

[Anonymous No.14957595]

>>14957571
It's better because it's a really good prose and was written earlier than Lolita, Stoner or 100 years of solitude.

[Anonymous No.14957601]

>>14957571
BECAUSE THE WHALE IS INFINITE AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH I CANT UNDERSTAND IT

[Anonymous No.14957632]

>>14957571
It's one of the most human books ever written. In my opinion it is about the futility of the search for meaning, and how hard it is to ever fully understand or quantify, but yet of which we are still hopelessly drawn. that's why the cetology is there: it's about Ishmael trying to make sense of this whale that is, as starbuck tells Ahab, really just an animal. It's about how we try to find meaning in things even though it isn't there, whether it's through scientific inquiry, as Ishmael does with his dissections, or Ahab, by reading "inscrutable malice" into this animal that bit off his leg. Ahab desperately wants--needs--that to mean something, even if it was just an animal acting like an animal does. This then filters out throughout so many different mid-nineteenth century discourses--of race, of imperialism, of nationalism, of law, of the political--as Melville ponders and deconstructs the various epistemologies that structure society.

Not to mention, all of this done in an encyclopedia-esque fashion that was a hundred years ahead of it's time, and some of the most beautiful prose ever put to paper.

[Anonymous No.14957939]

>>14957232

[Anonymous No.14957947]

> Spinoza's ethics
didn't have the attention span
> Difference and Repetition
didn't get all the references and the weird prose

[Anonymous No.14957955]

>>14957601
ITS SO WHITE AHHHHHHHHHH

[Anonymous No.14957974]

>>14957571
A master work of prose and character writing which was left open enough for countless interpretations

[Anonymous No.14957990]

Catch-22, finished it but the it should have been atleast 100 pages shorter.
Funny at first but it becomes extremely trite

[Anonymous No.14958053]

Probably the Duino Elegies. The sense of impenetrability is frightening.

[Anonymous No.14958113]

The Scarlet Letter.

[Anonymous No.14958205]

>>14958113
What about was a struggle, I haven't read it yet either but it's on the list.

[Anonymous No.14958238]

I was recently filtered by Die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen by Schiller. Will try again in a couple of years

[Anonymous No.14958265]

>>14957632
Nice. Not that anon, - I read it about a year ago and loved it - but that was a very enlightening and wonderful take on it. Thanks anon.

[Anonymous No.14958321]

>>14956399
I really loved The Trial as a concept, but as a novel on its own there just wasn't much for me to grab onto. I think I gave up around the point where I was encountering single paragraphs that stretched about eight pages at a time. A friend of mine later talked to me about how that played into the over-arching theme of bureaucracy, and while I could agree with that, again, in concept, it didn't really make the novel more of a page-turner.

[Anonymous No.14958436]

>>14956493
it's a hard book. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Is it the hardest? No, but you're brave for trying it. Just keep giving it a go and try to see the humor in it each time.

[Anonymous No.14958501]

>>14956493
Don't be afraid to skim the zoology chapters. When you do so, it's a far easier book than it first seems.
Don't go for one of those retarded edits of the book which cut those chapters out though; they're still important. It's just that the immediate information conveyed through the writing in those chapters is not likely to be conductive to increasing initial enjoyment or understanding of the story.

[Anonymous No.14958502]

>>14956399
Currently reading it and I absolutely love the bits where they're actually whaling but the parts where the author is just rambling about mythology and such are such a fucking drag.

[Anonymous No.14958516]

>>14957595
Is Stoner THAT good?

[Anonymous No.14958525]

>>14957595
is this a bait?

[Anonymous No.14958553]

>>14958516
Yes.

[Anonymous No.14958591]

>>14958516
>>14958553
no. no. God, no, it's not. And Lolita isn't anywhere near 100 years, and they're all far off from Moby dick. I'm so fucking sick of these kids on break shitposting on my fucking board, REEEE, go back to school

[Anonymous No.14958595]

>>14958205
It's shit don't bother

[Anonymous No.14958610]

>>14956399
what chucklehead put an orca on the cover of moby dick?

[Anonymous No.14958747]

>>14958591
I feel like Moby Dick and Lolita are both a tier above the other two

[Anonymous No.14958753]

>>14958591
Fuck off.

[Anonymous No.14958765]

>>14958436
what’s the hardest?

[Anonymous No.14958796]

>>14958436
Based, I'll give it another go within the year, thinking I might audiobook it instead which might make the go easier. Once its been done it can be done again, and I can more readily accept the challenge of reading the actual text.

[Anonymous No.14958806]

>>14958595
Kek, I think its western canon but not sure, that alone would give me cause to read it, which might be gay but I'm working through American classics rn, so it goes.

[Anonymous No.14958894]

>>14957990
I really loved Catch-22, but completely agree. One of those books that had me in genuine tears, but I recall finding sections boring and the humor not working for me on the same level. But my dog's name is Popinjay, super minor character but I just love the name.

[Anonymous No.14958903]

>>14958894
I just call her Jay tho

[Anonymous No.14959885]

>>14958894
>>14958903
Nice dog

[Anonymous No.14959920]

>>14958502
Filtered

[Anonymous No.14959932]

>>14959920
k

[Anonymous No.14959963]

>>14958436
>it's a hard book
No it isn't.

[Anonymous No.14959995]

>>14959885
Thnxs m8.

[Anonymous No.14960662]

>tfw have to read The Master and Margarita with wikipedia open on my laptop

[Anonymous No.14960680]

>>14956412
I've always felt Melville was needlessly purple.
Between Moby Dick and Whitejacket I've come to view him in the same light as a friend who you'd tell, lovingly, to get over their shit and shut the fuck up from time to time.

[Anonymous No.14960796]

Nothing, I just power on through whatever book it is and then maybe not get all of it and maybe re-read it in the future but I never re-read anything

[Anonymous No.14960847]

>>14960680
It was the style of the time

[Anonymous No.14960872]

>>14957632

While I definitely agree, I think older books spend way too much time getting to their point. No matter how dense or complex a concept is, if you need over 200,000 words to do it, you're just not doing it right.

[Anonymous No.14960873]

>>14960847
No, he was bad even for then. I'm not gonna go look for it, but in whitejacket he spends an entire page on a single joke, because he was so chuffed at his 'either you'll (his waterlogged jacket) be dyed or I'll be died' pun that he felt it was necessary to repeat it ten times in every possible configuration. Melville is a great writer ,but also kind of a shit.

Also he jumped on the anti-flogging bandwagon after Dana wrote Two Years Before The Mast and it wasn't a potential career ender anymore and tried to make himself look big, but that's another issue.

[Anonymous No.14961183]

>>14957632
Based, I'm at chapter 15 now.

[Anonymous No.14961222]

For me it's Ulysses. I should probably try again as I am no longer 21 and now have an MA. I loved Moby Dick from the first chapter at age 16 and though it was a slog, I got through Gravity's Rainbow on the first attempt a couple years ago.

[Anonymous No.14961295]

>>14956399
Ulysses. The intro (not written by Joyce) makes it clear that Bloom is a cuck and Dedalus is a fallen Catholic that falls even further with redlight district shenanigans, and that Joyce somehow makes this a good thing. I like Joyce’s prose and references to Irish culture and Catholic theology but I’m sick of modernity. SICK OF IT.

[Anonymous No.14961309]

>>14961295
>Joyce somehow makes this a good thing.
You missed the point. Bloom is treated like absolute shit by everyone around him and is too much of a pussy to do something about it. Stephen is too prideful to accept his family(this is influenced by thomist autism.) None of these are suppossed to be good things

[Anonymous No.14961355]

>>14958610
this annoyed me as well, but I wouldn't want to pass on this cursed knowledge

[Anonymous No.14961364]

>>14961295
It's almost impossible to be sicker of modernity than Joyce, is it.
>>14961309
This point is key to understand Joyce. He writes in order to expose hypocrisy, falsehood, and weakness. In all of his works.

[Anonymous No.14961380]

>>14958765
Any codex. And/or Finnegan's Wake

[Anonymous No.14961461]

>>14956493
>Long descriptions of sea birds

Nigger what do you mean that filtered you? Just fucking read the sentences man wtf.

[Anonymous No.14961866]

>>14961380
>Finnegan's Wake
could you expand a bit please

[Anonymous No.14961913]

>>14956529
I read mason and dixon when I was 20 no problem, although it intimidates me a decade later

[Anonymous No.14961920]

>>14960680
ah, you have been filtered.

[Anonymous No.14962040]

To the Lighthouse by Woolf. I get the point of the book and the prose is beautiful but it's unbearably fucking boring.

>>14958113
Hawthorne was ruined by the school system for me.

>>14960680
Purple is an awful criticism of prose most of the time. If it's good and conveys meaning, it's not purple. I mean, hell, I've seen people call Gracq and Lautreamont purple and that's plain retarded

>>14961866
Pick it up and see for yourself lol

[Anonymous No.14962371]

>>14961913
Had you read other Pynchon at the time anon?

[Anonymous No.14962487]

ive started ulyssyes like three times, only getting to around or before aeolus each time. that was around four-five years ago. three years ago i took a course on it at uni and didnt even do the reading for that, so only got up through nausicaa
havent touched it since but i brought it to quarantine with me
might do it this time bros

[Anonymous No.14962560]

>>14958591
Moby Dick > Lolita > Stoner > 100 years.

You're an arrogant twat who needs to peacock on a basketweaving forum, take a look at yourself big guy.

[Anonymous No.14962634]

>>14962487
Imagine getting filtered by newspaper editorials

[Anonymous No.14962645]

>>14962487
post a photo of the book breh, i want to see it

[Anonymous No.14962652]

>>14962040
>Pick it up
I want to, I just wanted to hear more as I'd like to read his others first

[Anonymous No.14962664]

>>14962560

Moby Dick is one below top-level fiction. Lolita, Stoner, and 100 Years are college-level writing exercises. Get off our board, fuckwit. You don't belong here.

[Anonymous No.14962675]

>>14961295
To say this is a wild oversimplification of the two characters is to state the obvious. Neither of these thing are made into a "good thing". Stephen is a harsh bit of self-criticism by Joyce, and Bloom is treated with empathy and dignity despite being a neurotic weirdo with sexual hang ups. Read the damn book anon, don't be filtered by an editor's intro.

For myself, I got beaten by The Sound and the Fury. I'll revisit it again eventually, and I usually enjoy psychotic and impenetrable prose, but by the time I made it through the first section I didn't have enough energy or interest to continue. My only failure in recent memory, but a painful one.

[Anonymous No.14962685]

I've never been able to finish naked lunch,but I don't think that bourroghs wanted you to read it like a typical book, front to back.
Right now I'm struggling through gravity s rainbow. wondering how much of this information on the digested diet of slothrops Cambridge buddy's really essential for me to read through.

[Anonymous No.14962716]

>>14962664
what would be top-level fiction then, Dostojevskij?

[Anonymous No.14962725]

>>14956399
Crying of Lot 49 by Pynchon. I genuinely hate his writing, it feels like shelving units in a retailer were mixed up and became words on a page.

[Anonymous No.14962765]

>>14962675
I read The Sound And The Fury three times in a span of a few months, I promise it's worth it to give it another try, it will make more sense

[Anonymous No.14962787]

>>14962716
Most of the Russian lit classics are top tier fiction

[Anonymous No.14962819]

Dude I own so many books I've just given up on because my monkey brain can't pay attention long enough for it to get good. I've read the first 30 pages of so many 1000 page books, only to drop it because something distracted me and when I pick it up 6 months later I get bored rereading the same uninteresting 30 pages I already read. Introductions seem to do this too. Got like 60 pages through capital's intro, which was interesting historical context, but man I just want to give up. Infinite jest. Moby Dick. Les Mis. Really, I just buy these thick books and give up on it.

And it's not like I don't read. My day job has me reading legal cases all day. I've finished a few shorter books during quarantine. The fact that I finished 1q84 really reinforces how much a nitwit I am, because that book was long but easy. I just don't have the fortitude for better books.

[Anonymous No.14963349]

Tristram Shandy
I have never made it beyond the first deep dive on Uncle Toby

[Anonymous No.14963469]

>>14958501
>"skimming" the zoology chapters

holy fucking retard

[Anonymous No.14963561]

>>14962645
why?
its the republished original 1922 edition

[Anonymous No.14963606]

>>14957485
loved it from page 1

[Anonymous No.14963634]

>>14956399
Bored me to tears

[Anonymous No.14963676]

>>14963634
See, this was easy as fuck and I finished it in like 2-3 days. I don’t get it. Weird how some books click but others stop you in their tracks. I feel like such a fucking midwit.

[Anonymous No.14963722]

>>14963676
True it is interesting. I've read War and peace, moby dick and Ulysses but house of leaves was so difficult for me to get through.

[Anonymous No.14963724]

>>14956529
mason and dixon isn't even that hard.

[Anonymous No.14963757]

Dropped it midway

[Anonymous No.14963801]

>>14962725
agree. he seems like an arsehole

[Anonymous No.14963960]

>>14961309
>>14962675
Thanks for the encouragement comrádaithe

[Anonymous No.14963993]

>>14963960
Why’s Qaddafi an IRA General?

[Anonymous No.14964050]

>>14962675
I actually just finished it, the first read is especially difficult, many a reader has found themself cracked on the shores of Benjy's retardation. But the second read is so much easier, being able to contextualize the time jumping makes the book far more palatable. But it's not a book I'd beat myself up over, I'm a Faulkner fanboy and I really struggled too.

[Anonymous No.14964055]

>>14963724
It doesn't seem like the right jumping in point for Pynchon tho, and that discouraged me a lot from even trying.

[Anonymous No.14964084]

>>14963993
He's not, he sent the 'RA loads of guns and equipment during the troubles so the 'RA like to commemorate him a lot.

[Anonymous No.14964109]

>>14964084
That’s pretty embarrassing honestly. The worst ally you could flaunt.

[Anonymous No.14964835]

>>14964109
Yeah, but he's one of the reasons they were so dangerous, very rare for a paramilitary group to have such military grade weaponry, that was thanks to gaddafi. You can imagine why they like to celebrate him, even if he was a prick.