/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.16328671]

Post books that changed your life, I'll start

[Anonymous No.16328691]

>>16328671
I want to read this. How did it affect you for better/worse? How long did it take to read?

[Anonymous No.16328703]

>>16328691
It has completely changed my perspective of life and shown me the importance of love and enjoying the precious gift of life

took me like 3 months but I'm a slow reader. It's not a hard read, it's just long

[Anonymous No.16328706]

>>16328691

It made me gay.
Took about a day to read

[Anonymous No.16328720]

>>16328671

[Anonymous No.16328722]

I'm still mad at Tolstoy for not judging Napoleon and Kutuzov in the same way. Napoleon apparently didn't change history at all, because the will of the people drove him, whereas Kutuzov knew how to guide the will of the people? That's some Russian bullshit right there.

[Anonymous No.16328731]

>>16328722
The Kutusov dicksucking did get tiring DESU, I agree with Tolstoy that Historians suck Napoleon's dick too much though

[Anonymous No.16328733]

>>16328722
Based

[Anonymous No.16328762]

>>16328722
Tolstoy says that Kutuzov didn't guide the will of the people. He was a good general because he merely went along with the current, while attempting to protect as many lives as possible in the process.

[Anonymous No.16328845]

>>16328671
Based.

[Anonymous No.16329051]

>>16328703
3 months? kek what the heck man i read it in like 14 hours u dumb-duh-dumb-dumb?

[Anonymous No.16329057]

>>16328671
Based.

[Anonymous No.16329434]

>>16328722
Lol this is so true. He sucks that guy off every two minutes. Also Napoleon was legit based and badass I have no idea why he had such a hate boner

[Anonymous No.16329445]

>>16329051
Consoomer readers should be shot

[Anonymous No.16329657]

>>16328671
Wtf is that chapter with pierre going nuts with the comet??

[Anonymous No.16329921]

>>16328671

Anything by Saul Bellow. But if you need a good place to start read, "Seize the Day". It's only 120ish pages.

[Anonymous No.16330441]

>>16328671
unironically

[Anonymous No.16330453]

>>16328671
I'm of the opinion Tolstoy is the literature plato and dosto, aristotle

[Anonymous No.16330615]

That one, though not as profoundly as Anna Karenina, really affected me. Sirens of Titan, Solaris, and Gravity's Rainbow had a similar feeling, one of an almost esoteric, but in fact rather ordinary change or revolution. I'm suddenly reminded of the ending to Snow Country, that one and the whole of King Lear really fucked me up too.

[Anonymous No.16330684]

>>16329051
I hope you did that in one sitting you casual

[Anonymous No.16330713]

Pic.
The brothers karamazov.
100 years of solitude.
East of Eden
Grapes of Wrath
On Being and Nothingness
Mans Search For Meaning

There are others and I'm currently trying to push through the phenomenology of spirti

[Anonymous No.16331082]

>>16330713
Are you me?

>One Hundred Years of Solitude
>East of Eden
>Brothers Karamazov
2666 and Savage Detectives, most things Bolaño and Marquez really

[Anonymous No.16331115]

>>16328671
>Sophie's World
>Les Miserables
>Crime and Punishment
>1984

[Anonymous No.16331161]

>>16328703
It took me 4 months but obviously it depends how fast you read.
I would recommend the book to everyone and it's possibly my favourite book. It has pretty much everything. Tolstoy has such a great understanding of people.
If you're English, I would also recommend Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky's translation (as always with Russian texts). It's the perfect blend between a literal translation while still maintaining its readability.

[Anonymous No.16331284]

>>16331082
I loved 100 years. I don't think I've seen a more universal portrait of humanity in all of literature. Unfortunately Love in the Time of Cholera, though beautiful and tragic, fell a little short for me.

Haven't read any Bolano but I'll add him to my already too long list. If it's similar to Marquez then I'll definitely get around to it.

[Anonymous No.16331312]

>>16330713
I need to reread Siddhartha, read as a teen and it didn't click. Thinking of it again, I think it would be very complementary to Tolstoyian philosphy

>>16331161
I completely agree. I'm about to read the Pevear translation of Notes From the Underground

[Anonymous No.16331380]

>>16331284
I found Love in the Time of Cholera to be good as well, but it didn't have the magic spark that 100 years had for me. 2666 got me from the very first page so I might be biased towards it but it really is a quite good novel on an epic scale in terms of time and setting. I wouldn't compare him to Marquez beyond the large scale of his longer novels though.

[Anonymous No.16331432]

>>16328720
yes.

[Anonymous No.16331764]

>>16330713
Just finished Siddharta today, really enjoyed it. Really beautiful and more readable than I was expecting, I hadn’t read Hesse before

[Anonymous No.16331890]

>>16328691
I read it in about 2.5 months, 50ish hours

[Anonymous No.16332347]

>>16331312
I can see that. Siddhartha focus alot on easter ascetics and Buddhism. Steppenwolfe by Hesse is simlar but with psychadelic experiences.
>>16331380
Cool man yeah Cholera was great just wish I had read it before. 100 years.
Im looking into 2666
>>16331764
I love Herman Hesse. Steppenwolfe was similarly good.

[Anonymous No.16332502]

>>16328671
Most of these were read through adolescence, some later, but I'm still searching for good stuff.
"Walden", by Thoreau and "Marcovaldo", by Italo Calvino made value the backward woodland I was born into, for different reasons.
"The Death of Ivan Ilytch", by Tolstoy. I read that while in law school, doing an intership for a jugde's office, while in a shitty relationship. It fit like a glove.
"Stoner", by John Williams, after watching "A Serious Man", by the Cohen brothers. These two go very well together, depending on how you already perceive life.
"The Heart of Darkness", by Joseph Conrad, after watching "Apocalypse Now", by Coppola. The scenes with the French colonists were specially hauting.
Talking about colonists, "The Conquest of America", by Tzvetan Todorov, opened my eyes for history and how violence indeed drawed our world up. Plus, it's such a well written book (not sure how good the English translation is, though).
"Society against the State", by Pierre Clastres is not only a classic anthropolical essay about so-called "primitive societies" (which I'm pretty sure have better lives than mine) but is a seed to think about modern, capitalist, atomized life.
I've never read "Atomized", though. "Map and the Territory", on the other hand, made me weary of what is to come. I really hope I can find a wife and raise a family.
"Désobéir", by Frédéric Gros, is an excellent study about the ethics of obedience. I'm not sure if it has an English translation, but if it does, you retards ought to read it. He brings all the heavy weights on the theme. Instructing, specially if you're not American (otherwise you can just claim to be a libertarian and forget "obedience" is a thing).
"The Devil pay in the Backlands", by the Brazilian author and diplomat João Guimarães Rosa (a book which, I've heard, has a fine English translation) is what really brought me into literature, along with "Esencial", a collection of the works of Jorge Luis Borges.

[Anonymous No.16332510]

>>16332502
"The Screwtape Letters", by C.S. Lewis was gifted to me by my beloved grandma for my confirmation (a protestant one). I loved it and the book informed my relationship with God and the Church for some time. Another, recent book that opened my eyes more than any Sunday School was "Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World", by Tom Holland. He's not very clear on his sources, though.
"The Structure of Scientific Revolutions", by Thomas Kuhn, was demanded for my uni admissions exams. I loved it. My relationship with science was organized by it, after some years of retarded, dogmatic instruction from the school system. I taught some classes of it for underprivileged students who couldn't pay for crammers. It was nice.
"Rethoric", by Aristotle, helped me so much to through law school I'd include it in "books that changed my life". Knowing about enthymeme and paradeigma does indeed make a difference. Consequently, the book sparkled my interest in philosophy.
"Nations and Nationalism", by Eric Hobsbawm, and "The Fate of Africa", by Martin Meredith, showed me how ignorant I'm am of history. I guess these count as "changed your life" because I read many history books now.

[Anonymous No.16332525]

>>16332510
I had a class in uni about "The Origins of Totalitarianism", by Hannah Arendt. I didn't read it. But "Hannah Arendt", directed by Margarethe von Trotta had just premiered so I thought: "Well I just as well watch it". I did. The film took me into a sperg spiral on which I read "The Human Condition", by Hannah, and "The Concept of the Political" and "Land and Sea", by Carl Schmitt (Arendt was in love with Carl, if you don't know). These three books, dear God, are good to understand the world. Sometimes, when I'm drunk, I think of them and that remembers me how much of a retard I am and how I love to learn things.
"Grey Eminence", by Aldous Huxley, is a personal one. The books is a biography of François Leclerc du Temblay, the right hand of Cardinal Richeleu, the First Minister of State (or Chancellor, for the CK intellectuals) of Louis XIII of France. François was a capuchin monk, heir of a nowl lost tradition of catholic mystics. He was also a master diplomat. Temblay's doings as high diplomat, heavily weaved into his faith, were instrumental to the continuance of the Thirty Years' War - a brutal, disgusting, tragic, pointless war, for an image you should check "Les Grand Misères de la Guerre" (1633), a series of drawings of Jacques Quillot. That should wrench the heart of any reactioany retard. The only reason Leclerc strove so hard for this war was the glory of France and the supremacy of the Catholich Faith. He died before 1939, so he didn't see the end of the war, but his blind faith and determination are truly inspiring. If your up to read mystic, autistic writings about early modern history, this is the book.
Finally, some books I'd never admit I read for people I know. "Atlas Shrugged", by Ayn Rand. I read it when I was 14, while listening to Tchaikovsky in my headphones. Just remembering this make me cringe, but my weird libertarian German uncle gifted the book to me and I read it. It's utter shit, but it awakened something in me. I started reading it and then read some other stuff an then when I saw it I was discussing retarded stuff over the internet and reading actually interesting stuff. So thanks, Rand. And my faggot uncle.
This is not the end. "Siddartha", by Hermann Hesse (the German translation, thanks to my uncle), helped me a lot through my lowest., that's life. "The Conspiracy Against the Human Race", by Thomas Ligotti. I hate this because I was depressed when I read it. It's fine, boring sometimes, but it confirmed my suspicions that life doesn't make sense and it's bad in general. True Crime, season 1 was inspired by it, check it out. "Hell is the Absence of God", short story by Ted Chiang (there's an easy access .pdf if you google it) crushed me. I know I have some lot to learn about God - as much as I can.

[Anonymous No.16332543]

>>16332502
Is the translation of Devil to Pay in the Backlands actually good? I've heard that the original text had a lot of dialect and jokes that makes it difficult to not read in the original Portuguese.

[Anonymous No.16332931]

>>16332543
Yeah. The idioms are not readily comprehensible even for Portuguese speakers not versed in Northeastern Brazilian (which was my case). The stuff about translation is just hearsay - I've never actually read it. In any case, if someone will read it in English, they should expect a fragile adaptation. Luckily, you'd find a good Northeastern Brazilian translator.

[Anonymous No.16333036]

These books had a dramatic effect on my character

[Anonymous No.16333140]

>>16330713
grapes of wrath and east of eden is fucking boring trash. I don't get the appeal. Whats so great about them?

[Anonymous No.16333273]

>>16332525
Correction: Arendt was in love with Heidegger, not Schmitt. I read Heidegger but didn't understand shit. Schmitt was next and it was sooo good.

[Anonymous No.16333281]

>>16333036
no sir, not fooling me twice

[Anonymous No.16333385]

[Anonymous No.16333586]

>>16333036
Third time this happened to me today. Are you happy, nigger?