/lit/ - Literature

>>8425787
Obviously ASoIaF too, but that's low hanging as fuck.

Aren't these kids books?

>>8425799
No. Only CS Lewis. Which people parade around as the best shit ever.

Sherlock Holmes was the airport novel of the late Victorian period.

>Dickens
>Brontë
>Christie
>Sartre
>Austen
>Dumas

>>8425806
Bronte isn't mediocre, assuming you mean Emily.

Also, we can't forget Orwell in this list.

Pretty much every celebrated book published after the year 1900 fits into this category with a few exceptions.

>>8425793

It's a kid's book, what did you expect? Lewis' actual academic work on medieval literature is actually pretty good though.

>>8425817
>It's a kid's book, what did you expect?
This isn't a "books you expected to be masterpieces but were not" thread. It's a "books that are overrated by the plebs" thread, which this is.

>>8425810
Orwell's prominence owes more to the current sociopolitical zeitgeist than anything. His writing wasn't particularly captivating, but his predictions were on point.

Great Gatsby. To Kill A Mockingbird.

>>8425831
Nineteen Eighty-Four is still considered a masterpiece, and his predictions were not on point (but people like to twist it until they are). Not to mention that most of his predictions weren't predictions so much as devices.

I still think he's okay, though.

fucking "Michael and the Sex Goblin" is such a meme.

the guy who wrote it has other stories on wattpad as well and he's a fuckin' idiot.

>>8425810

>Implying Homage to Catalonia and Down and Out in Paris and London aren't legit 9/10 and 8/10 respectively.

>>8425787
Most British lit post-Milton is dry and boring

>>8425810
Orwell is preserved for greatness by his non-ficton.

All of Russian literatures

>>8425838
I resent that being as I think it's a masterpiece. You're just mad you can't write as well as him. I just found out about that last night, and I can't wait till he posts more stories. They're refreshing.

>>8425832
>Great Gatsby
Came here to post that.

>>8425968
How to be a pleb: the post.

Don Quixote.

Dickens. He sucks.

>>8425806
>Dumas
I will fight u irl u little shit

>>8426707
Time to drink some bleach, my dear man.

>>8425831
Orwell's predictions are so off-point you might as well compare him to those old magazines where they had people flying gyrocopters to work.
He's not nearly as interesting for me as a guy who was born in the dying embers of a collapsing communist regime. I get the appeal though.

>ITT: I don't like = its garbage.

David Foster Wallace

>>8425787
Virginia Woolf

>>8425810
I agree about 1984 desu.

>>8425842
implied and substantive

>>8425968
Ha

>>8426707
Ha

>>8425832
To Kill a Mockingbird is shit

>>8427552
>>>>/r9k/

It is simply impossible for anyone who is sane to consider Woolf 'mediocre' if you've read a single page of her work. She's either sublime, inaccessible, or completely repelling, varying on the personality of the reader. Kill yourself

Great Gatsby, Catcher in the Rye

Oliver Twist, The Giver, Pale Blue Dot

>>8427682
Those are some hot opinions

>>8426716
Nah ur a Dumas

Harry Potter, Diary of a young girl (has a good ending though), Narnia, hitchhikers guide to the galaxy

>>8426716
My nigga Dumas is very clearly pulp. I'm not saying he's bad, but he's as good as Heinlein or Aasimov.

Mark Twain tbqh, I suppose most american posters will become outraged or some shit but he's a non-entity as far as the rest of the world is concerned (every language has that kind of thing, tho)

>>8427698
>Mark Twain

This. A thousand times this.

H.G. Wells

moby dick
Whales are boring

>>8427687
Hot and correct.

>>8427702
H.G. Wells isn't considered a masterpiece writer.

Am I the only person on /lit/ who unironically enjoys iconic American literature such as Huckleberry Finn, The Great Gatsby, For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Catcher in the Rye, Lord of the Flies, To Kill a Mockingbird, etc.?

>>8427727
sure he is. he is considered a science fiction pioneer with works such as the time machine and war of the worlds considered to be masterpieces.

>>8427737

inb4 someone points out my Lord of the Flies error

it's in the same category of "things /lit/ hates" though

>>8427703
You are boring.

>>8427737
No they're all fine. The great gatsby is much better than the other ones you listed though.

>>8427738
>he is considered a science fiction pioneer
Correct.
>with works such as the time machine and war of the worlds considered to be masterpieces.
Incorrect.
>>8427737
Yes, except Great Gatsby. People cum buckets over it.

>>8427765
>People cum buckets over it.

This statement only holds true if one first accepts the premise that normalfags are "people."

>>8427685
Every single thing Sagan wrote is hugely overrated. He is also the originator of the "SCIENCE IS AWESOME FUCK YEAH" attitude, and for that he should be despised.

>>8425812
>Pretty much every celebrated book published after the year 1900 fits into this category with a few exceptions

This. If you ask yourself which books of this time will still be relevant in 200-300 years - there won't be much.
Maybe the late Rilke and the early Montale, when it comes to poets, maybe Joyce, when it comes to novelists (and some others like Orwell, Ayn Rand or Houellebecq out of historical interest), and pretty much only Wittgenstein, when it comes to philosophers.

The Outsiders

>>8427797
>maybe Joyce

Joyce will definitely be remembered. Him or Faulkner, MAYBE both.

>>8427797
m8 once Western Civilization collapses it will all be irrelevant. They'll pick out like Dante, Shakespeare, and Aquinas or something, and the rest will be consigned to meme status.

>>8427820
This is true, Mexicans and Muslims are not going to give a shit about European literature anymore than we care about Muslim literature.

>>8427820
>Shakespeare
Only if english stays a dominant language after said collapse which is highly doubtful.

>>8427831
It'll be like Latin was in Europe I imagine, it's already almost like that globally

>>8427820
The first collapse of Western Civilization gave us Augustine, what will this one give us?

>>8427737
Anyone who hates Twain is a pretentious twat

>>8427828
Mexico has participated favorably in Western culture, dumbass. More than most Americans post-Tommy P.

>>8427843
>what will this one give us?

Nothing, this particular collapse is accompanied by the literal replacement of European peoples by migrating non-European tribes. It's completely different from an internal collapse. There is no recovery from this kind of demographic disaster.

>>8427862
Fuck off back to /pol/.

>>8426707
>>8425968
neo-/lit/, everyone

>>8427867
Explain what is wrong with what I said.

>>8427862
>by the literal replacement of European peoples by migrating non-European tribes
That literally happened in Rome m8. And in Baghdad, it's not a new thing, it tends to happen at the end of civilizations when people stop having children and start importing foreigners.

Something new will eventually spring up, in Russia or South America or whatever and claim to be the continuation of Western civilization just like the West Europeans claimed to be the continuation of Roman/Greek civilization.

Unless technology has made the normal patterns obsolete which I don't know how the fuck you could predict that.

>>8427872
Aside of you being a racist piece of shit?

>>8427871
there has never been a time on /lit/ where someone wouldn't have been posting stuff like that

>>8427872
Every basic assumption in your post is factually incorrect.

>>8427877
>>/reddit/

>>8427877
Can you please explain 1) what is wrong with being a racist, and 2) how being a racist make one's arguments incorrect?

>>8425805
>not dickens
GTFO.

>>8427874
>mfw if the Church plays its cards right it could wind up with a whole new generation of converts

Francis probably wouldn't approve, but he's 79 and aging. The next Pope will have some interesting decisions to make.

>>8427874
>That literally happened in Rome m8

Yes true, but I think it's obvious that the deciding factor in this case is the enormous difference in degree caused by globalization and technology. The migrations and the actions taken by Western governments over the last 100 years are, at this point, too destructive to ever recover from. No part of Europe is safe.

>Something new will eventually spring up, in Russia or South America or whatever

Russia and Eastern Europe are treading the same path as Western Europe, just a few years behind. In Russia only Muslims have kids and Russia's Far East is already being defacto colonized by China. South America is an ocean away and its inhabitants are 99% mongrels, any kind of civilizational growth that happened there would not be European.

I fucking hate Lord of the Rings

terrible book

>>8427797
>Ayn Rand

Good meme kid

>>8425836
>>8426738
>“A few have become acquainted with Orwell’s 1984; because it is both difficult to obtain and dangerous to possess, it is known only to certain members of the Inner Party. Orwell fascinates them through his insight into details they know well, and through his use of Swiftian satire. Such a form of writing is forbidden by the New Faith because allegory, by nature manifold in meaning, would trespass beyond the prescriptions of socialist realism and the demands of the censor. Even those who know Orwell only by hearsay are amazed that a writer who never lived in Russia should have so keen a perception into its life.” - Czesław Miłosz

>>8425836
people on this board always shit on 1984 but I've never been captivated by a book quite like I was by that book when I was nineteen or so and first read it.

idk, something about the prose, which people bitch about, is just gritty, it really gelled with me. I read it cover to cover in an afternoon. I guess people here don't like it for that reason, it's accessible. /lit/ tends to favor purposefully obscurantist novels that they can feel smart for having read. There is a certain sense of accomplishment derived from working through a puzzling work like Ulysses or Zarathustra but that shouldn't denigrate the value of comparatively straightforward works.

>>8428177
His essays are indispensable. Orwell is the most underrated writer on /lit/ by far

>>8427874
>inb4 Holy European Empire is established in former Kazakhstan

>>8425832
Exactly this.

>>8428177
>a puzzling work like Zarathustra
your brain must not work properly

>>8427877
Go back to your university issued hug box, faggot.

>>8425842
hes a red, so no.

>mainstream and loved by popular culture
>decide to read what fans and the author consider the best work
>it's low brow shit
>mysteries are sub par at best
>in one of his mysteries, a horse killed the victim

>>8427877

Site wide trigger warning in effect, racially intensive remarks detected on lima, india, tango, be advised

Suspect is described as a fucking white male, approach with caution

>>8425806
Austen, Emily Bronte, Dickens and Dumas are fucking brilliant.

>>8427828
lol.

Mexicans are patrician, you (most likely American) pleb.

>>8428505
Dickens at his worst was pretty damn bad.

>>8428187
>Holy European Empire
You mean the EEU (European Emirates' Union).

>>8428177
People only shit on 1984 because it's younger brother Brave New World doesn't get the credit it deserves

pic related

>>8428508
>drug cartels executing high schoolers is patrician

>>8427684
Great gatsby is pretty good tho

The Count of Monte Cristo is quite bad

>>8425806
dickens is hit-and-miss. but when he hit he fucking hit. his characters are timeless. he was the epicentre of anglo-realism. his only flaw is that you can tell he got paid by the page.

>>8427828
is mexican not western civilisation in terms of culture? they speak spanish. latin america is intimately connected with european lit.

is there even such a thing as wesern civilisation now? not just civilisation?

>>8425853
No

>>8428693
Yes

>>8425806
>Sartre
plz. Nausea is a masterpiece. He's got nothing on Camus though.

>>8428177
Zarathustra is divided into short chapters with a pretty much consistent pattern throughout the book, once you work that out it's a piece of piss to understand. The only mildly complicated thing is working out when Nietzche is mocking something or supporting it but that's only a problem if you're a pleb cunt who knows jack shit about philosophy.

>>8425787
>he was the epicentre of anglo-realism
what do you mean by epicentre, since the vast majority if his writing was an intentional distortion of realistic writing, whether comic, sentimental, or tragic. Eliot and Hardy both wrote a realistic fiction, largely in response/reaction to Dickens.

>got paid by the page
Decidely false. He got paid by the number, or monthly installment. It was a decided number of MS pages and he usually made 3 or 4 chapters of it. He plotted and planned his stories to be 20 numbers in length. When published in book form this would initially be a standard 3 volume novel.

>>8428763
Who are you talking to?

Salinger, Dumas, Orwell, Harper Lee, Camus

>>8427552
>>8427682
>>8427687
>>8427719
but one could argue that between joyce, proust and mayde some others, she is kind of 'useless'

>>8428147
Yeah but it was really niche before the film, so you really hate hollywood, not the book.

>>8427698
Most of his novels are "pulp" but The Count of Monte Cristo is a masterpiece.

>>8428832
>useless

wow, just.... wow anon

>>8427698
Most Americans don't really give a shit about twain. Your impressions are half a century behind.

>>8427737
There's no one list of books /lit/ as a whole likes or dislikes. Not even that massive pile of shit faggots here vote for every year.

>>8425853
Chekhov, Sorokin, and Dovlatov are good afaiac

>>8426707
I totally agree. Part 1 was so drawn out, and most of the time of was following the novels more than Quixote himself. Part 2 was better but still not really stellar.

>>8425787
ulysses

>>8427772
I like you

Foundation series. I love reading Asimov, but this was a really bad experience.

Movie scripts.

This thread is a disaster

>>8427902
>Can you please explain 1) what is wrong with being a racist

im new to this board, is this bait or is this kind of viewpoint common/accepted here?

>>8425787
Lovecraft

pic related

>>8431764
But it was fun and had an interesting enough style. Won't be remembered in 100 years, sure, but is there anything really wrong with that?

The books I dislike

>>8432324
do you even understand the point of this thread?

>>8425787
any novel by Guenther Grass

>>8427682
kek

>>8431736
Objective fact is common/accepted here. Feel free to hit that "back" button to return to reddit.

>>8425842
Youre forgetting Road to Wigan Pier, especially where he exposed the hypocrisy of middle class socialists.

>>8426707
stupid boy

>>8427727

Someone has not read The Island of Dr. Moreau.

>>8427877

>>8427902
>What is wrong with being a racist

You need to be 18 to post here

>>8427902
Racism is resorting to crazy mental juggling to avoid the unavoidable reality of class war. "White" is a term that means shit (see: how many white peoples aren't deemed white by /pol/lacks) and "black" only does because it's important to have a big Other (though, there's also THE JEWS).

Both black and white peoples are actually composed of a shitload of ethnicities, most of which most of non-students of antrhopology don't even know of

>it's a nigger book so we HAVE to read it during highschool episode

Shit tier book

>>8433981
>somebody on the internet told me I hate niggers and showed me a very convincing infographic

If you cant appreciate that last chapter or the one where he "deals" with his stepson you have no business being on this board

>>8427698
I'm a pretty big Twain fan, and I won't lie, he's not one of the great artists. But his greatness lies in substance rather than style (and I would still argue he is no poor prose stylist). Harold Bloom wrote about Shakespeare that he had the most capacious mind of all the greats. I think the same is true of Twain, though obviously to a significantly lesser degree (READ: I'm not putting Twain on a level with Shakespeare!).

I'll also point out that Gore Vidal, who considered all of American literature to be a wasteland of mediocrity, considered Mark Twain one of the few exceptions.