/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.15703289]

>there are so many books in the world that i only spend my time reading what i enjoy

>i read difficult books, even if i don't enjoy them, to challenge myself

which camp are you in and why?

[Anonymous No.15703318]

>>15703289
My backlog is so huge that I'm always able to read the difficult books I'm interested in without ever running out of things to read.

[Anonymous No.15703328]

>>15703289
Books exist to further my development but that doesn’t mean they have to be difficult reads.

[Anonymous No.15703372]

>>15703289
the latter. easy answer is because I'm a pseud and pretentious, although I have would have no one to share my accomplishment with, or rather I have nobody who would care. but I i have never read a difficult and unpleasant to slog of a book that didn't have at least some passage or strings of words that weren't fascinating due to the creativity of the thought displayed, or because they expertly executed the sentence with pleasing syntax and sentence structure.

[Anonymous No.15703375]

>>15703289
>Heard mixed reviews of Gormenghast and beginning to suspect the guy who recommended it to me only did so because he's a contrarian who doesn't want to like Tolkien because he was so influential in fantasy
Is Gormenghast any good?

Thread question: a bit of both, the challenge can be rewarding, other times an easy read is what I feel like.

[Anonymous No.15703382]

>>15703328
for example? i would argue that the only time something can further your development is when it is challenging.

[Anonymous No.15703385]

>>15703289
>I enjoy both difficult books and genre fiction for children

[Anonymous No.15703415]

>>15703375
>because he's a contrarian who doesn't want to like Tolkien because he was so influential in fantasy
sounds like a bloom quoting POS

to answer your question: peake is undoubtedly a genius. he is not interested in making things easy for the reader. he wants to be absolutely understood. it's as though he is recording and translating each synapse jolt he experiences onto paper. it's grueling. it's boring. it's tough. it's masterful. i often think i'm a glutton for punishment each time i pick it up. it's certainly like nothing else on this earth. notions of "good" and "bad" don't come into it. i'm sorry if this isn't helpful.

[Anonymous No.15703813]

>>15703375
I think there's a long tradition of placing Peake as the anti-Tolkien. Anyway, yeah, it's good, but unpolished. Peake himself said that the mid-section of book one was half-assed. Book two is safer, but needed some sort of early editorial intervention to stop him side-tracking himself. Book three is The Pale King levels of stitched together from notes.

His prose is phenomenally visually strong.

[Anonymous No.15704305]

>>15703375
Gormenghast is fantastic if you're sort of person who doesn't mind an author taking a whole chapter to get his man down a set of stairs.

Thread answer: I enjoy difficult books. (pic related completely defeated me though)

[Anonymous No.15704380]

>>15703382
By challenge I meant the difficult books of OP. For example, novels like Don Quixote, Brothers K., Moby Dick are not ‘difficult’ reads in the way Finnegan’s Wake, Deleuze, Bottom’s Dream, etc. are. Sometimes when you read a book a mode of thinking/being simply clicks for you. Perhaps it verbalizes your own intuitions better than you could have and in seeming them put to paper you develop further.

[Anonymous No.15704668]

I read a mix of both, although the more I read of the latter the less I enjoy the former.

[Anonymous No.15704733]

>>15703289
I no longer think there's a difference between enjoyability, and artistic greatness.

>>15704380
In cultured countries, Don Quixote is taught in middleschool. If you think it is difficult you are either retarded or haven't read it.

[Anonymous No.15704784]

>>15704733
It's a pity they don't teach reading comprehension in your schools.

[Anonymous No.15704818]

>>15704784
>in the way
Implies they possess the attribute in some other way

[Anonymous No.15704852]

>>15704733
Your reading comprehension is terrible for someone bragging about their middle school reading.

[Anonymous No.15704869]

>>15704818
Difficult only in that they are longer works. Pretty clear from the post they aren’t ‘difficult’ to comprehend on a literal level, as those other works are.

[Anonymous No.15704910]

>>15703813
>The Pale King levels of stitched together from notes.
TPK was not stitched together, it is mostly the first draft as DFW had left ready to be shipped to the publisher. The notes were used to replace DFW during the editing since he was dead.

[Anonymous No.15704917]

>>15703372
That is a slog of a post

[Anonymous No.15704935]

>>15703289
>>there are so many books in the world that i only spend my time reading what i enjoy
This is a very loaded statement.

[Anonymous No.15704940]

>>15704818
It doesn't imply anything, you're being smug and arrogant.

[Anonymous No.15705017]

>>15704940
I think I can hear you crying; you should go to reddit where pretentious semicolon faggots like me get bullied out.

[Anonymous No.15705181]

Nothing in this thread has made Ghormenghast sound good.
I picked it up once, read about 50 pages and just outright didn't like it. Very boring.
>>15703289
>>there are so many books in the world that i only spend my time reading what i enjoy
Yep
>>i read difficult books, even if i don't enjoy them, to challenge myself
>difficult
Never be afraid to just say a supposed classic is just poorly written. Why force yourself? You don't get anything out of it, compensating for someones lack of talent just to seem deep, accomplished, or big brained. In the old days people had nothing to do. Slogging through inches of grey unsalted bore text had much more appeal, especially during the winter. Sometimes the emperor has no clothes.

I had to force myself to read all 3 Lord of The Rings books years ago, I'm never doing anything like that ever again. I only did it because it's supposed to be such a landmark story, but there is no getting around the pointlessness of at least 50% of the total word count, and the total lack of energy.
>Have the complete LOTR
>Get halfway through fellowship
>stop reading because IT'S SHIT
>come back a year later, I have to finish it, I have to, muh legend of literature, muh big reading man brain
>Start again from page 1, force myself all the way through to half of book 3
>Stop reading because of how FUCKING SHIT it is, fuck you Tolkien, don't give a fucking shit how this snorefest ends, gave zero fucks about anything that was happening most of the time to the non characters and the non destinations they pass through where nothing happens
There's a point in that journey where absolutely nothing happens for at least 50 pages. No plot development, no big battles or monsters, sweet fuck all. There's just no excuse, it's just pure laziness on the writers end. Do you have writers block? Then fucking deal with it, take a break for a month and come back when you have something you faggot, don't just write in circles for weeks on end then actually put your sawdust rambling in the finished product.
LOTR is an important book, because it inspired all of the orcs and elves fantasy that came after it in 1000s of books, games, cartoons, and movies. But now that we're familiar with those those they have little impact, and LOTR heavily relied on the pure dazzle novelty of those things at the time.

[Anonymous No.15705380]

>>15705181
Filtered

[Anonymous No.15705426]

>>15705181
I pray that this is bait, otherwise you're an embarrassment.

[Anonymous No.15705450]

>>15703289
There's nothing very difficult about Gormenghast.

[Anonymous No.15705457]

>>15705380
>>15705426

[Anonymous No.15705719]

>>15703289
Reading takes effort and patience and I don't enjoy reading anything, so I don't read books. Watching anime also requires some effort and patience, but it can be engaging enough, so I watch a few episodes sometimes. Video games take effort, no patience and can be very engaging, so I play them. Shitposting takes no effort or patience and can be engaging, so I mostly lurk and shitpost.