/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.18172815]

How have your literary tastes changed over the years?

When I was a teenager and younger I read pop lit: Harry Potter, Eragon, Stephen King.

Nowadays, at 27 years old, all I read are books that 10 or 15 years ago you could not have paid me to read. Like War and Peace and Proust. I distinctly remember believing I would never read such things and that they were “boring” and “outdated.”
In part thanks to /lit/ my mind was opened to the great works and now all I want to do in life is sit down with a nice cold brew coffee and while away the hours reading about provincial life in some European country.

[Anonymous No.18172822]

>>18172815
I have never read a book

[Anonymous No.18172839]

>>18172822
Based tbqhwyf

[Anonymous No.18173115]

Bumping the thread which derailed

[Anonymous No.18173158]

Harry Potter, Eragon, AsoIaF, some german fantasy novels (The Elves or something like that). As a kid a lot of kids books about Rome, Dinosaurs, Insects etc.
When i left school and became a neet i ordered Clausewitz, Sun Tzu, Machiavelli, Nietzsche. I started with Clausewitz and Nietzsche and was overwhelmed and dropped it (started with Antichrist and Clausewitz). Only when i tried again a few years later with the starting pack of /lit/ did it click for me. That changed my life entirely.

[Anonymous No.18173221]

>>18173158
>Only when i tried again a few years later with the starting pack of /lit/ did it click for me.
Who was your first?
For me it was Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment. That’s what did it for me

[Anonymous No.18173228]

I used to read 80% or more fantasy. Now, I still like fantasy but it’s a smaller percentage of what I read, maybe 10%.

[Anonymous No.18173245]

>>18173228
Also, I want to say that I often read about how people have a sort of golden age of reading in their teens and twenties with the amount of reading they do kind of spiking around high school or college and then tapering off. It was the opposite for me. I liked reading about as early as maybe 16 but my peak didn’t come until I was out of college. I read more at 24 than I ever did at 21 or 17 and I read more today than I ever have. It’s been this gradually building thing.

[Anonymous No.18173261]

I read the classics, at least a fair few of them in my teens. I couldn't bear to read them now. I have a highly particular and autistic taste in literature and i refuse to read anything outside of that scope.

[Anonymous No.18174680]

>>18172815
bump

[Anonymous No.18174828]

>elementary
harry potter and shit
>middle school
lots of 70s hard sci fi and technothrillers. Niven, Pournelle, Tom Clancy, Larry Bond
>high school
lots of James Michener, bible (in greek)
>young adult
I can't even remember, bulgakov?
>mid twenties
I don't read anymore, and if I do it's exit level stuff like Borges, Pessoa, or literary criticism. mostly shitposting and anxiety attacks. how do I go back to a childlike state of reading again? I have more than enough interesting stuff on my bookshelf's, just no motivation to read anymore

I'm unironically trans btw

[Anonymous No.18175063]

>>18172815
Started reading your usual kids stuff at an early age, and pulled away from normal reading for comics/ manga for a while.

Came back in a big way around the end of HS with videogame books, which transitioned to Sci-fi, then to contemporary books and classics, and now to just whatever I feel like.

[Anonymous No.18175509]

>>18172815
Read goosebumps as a kid. Then pretty much stopped until college. Read alot of scifi in college, then started to read alot of primary sources and ancient historians. Now reading is tapering off.
Between work, my girlfriend, and other goings on in life I have very little time to read. While I love having a life, I do sometimes miss sitting in my house as a kid while it's raining, reading a book

[Anonymous No.18175887]

>>18172815
>hmm isn’t it interesting that when I was a child I read children’s books but now that I’m a more intellectually mature adult I read more complex literature that would’ve bored me as a child
Why the fuck do you need to make this thread? Retard, of course you wouldn’t have liked it when you were a child, though the fact that this seems like a revelation to you rather than being an obvious progression makes me think that perhaps you aren’t so intellectually developed.

[Anonymous No.18176096]

>>18172815
When will you dunning krueger faggots learn reading W&P doesn't make you a fucking genius. I read it when I was 17. I'd have assumed most people here would have already read it and there wouldn't be any threads on it, considering it's such a simple book to read

[Anonymous No.18176243]

>>18172815
Started off as a standard scifi nerd. First reading was stuff like 40k and the Tripods Trilogy. In middle and high school I read through basically all the big classics. Dune, 1984, got really into Larry Niven for a bit. Time Ships was a favorite.
Near the end of high school I started reading some classic literature but still only stuff that had to do with scifi: Frankenstein, Dorian Gray, Gulliver's Travels, etc.
They surprised me by how much I enjoyed them but I was still largely in it for the ideas and the plot. Then in early college I read Book of the New Sun and it felt like my mind was blown apart by how fucking beautiful the writing was. A bit after that I read Lolita and then I was a full blown Literature follower. Spent a long time reading classics.
Recently I got kind of tired of that. I guess tired of the snobbery (and especially tired of my brief belief that I could be a great writer). These days I've been having great fun churning through genre trash. Working on the Dark Sun D&D novels as well the Drizzt series. Good shit.

[Anonymous No.18176260]

>>18172815
Phillip k Dick, Asimov, Dostoevsky growing up.
Now just greeks,medieval, and esoteric stuff.

[Anonymous No.18176538]

>elementary
Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Harry Potter, some Percy Jackson
>middle school
literally nothing aside from whatever I was assigned to read in school.
>high school
Catcher in the Rye became my favorite book (Holden was literally me!!!!), The Fountainhead was the longest book I had ever read and I liked it for the most part, and I became more interested in philosophy around this time and read the works of Plato my school library had available (Crito, Apology, The Symposium, Republic)
>College/present
Currently reading some Jung. Last book I picked up was What Is Philosophy? by Deleuze.

[Anonymous No.18176914]

yeah its weird, up through middle school I found anything old to be cringe or off-putting, even though I wanted to like it because I want to like everything. in high school I started enjoying classical and moderately enjoyed modernist literature. Now in college I full blown love classical and Literature with zero reservations, its a good feel. Ive enjoyed painting since high school but im never gonna get that into painting since I only really enjoy looking at art in person and im too lazy and awkward to go to a museum very often.

[Anonymous No.18176926]

>>18173261
what do you read?

[Anonymous No.18176930]

>>18172815
>In part thanks to /lit/ my mind was opened to the great works and now all I want to do in life is sit down with a nice cold brew coffee and while away the hours reading about provincial life in some European country.
He actually fell for the meme, holy shit.

[Anonymous No.18176943]

>>18172815
I jumped straight into postmodernism in my early 20’s but over the next decade I cooled off and don’t read those maximalist tomes anymore. Other than that I try to read a little bit of everything

[Anonymous No.18176956]

>>18175887
You do realize that most adults of the age range that browse /lit/ read Stephen King do not read complex literature, right?
Go look at what is most popular on YouTube or Goodreads, tard

[Anonymous No.18176984]

When I was 15 I read Kafka and Dosto to seem smart, at 26 I still read Kafka and Dosto (and much more).

[Anonymous No.18176988]

Rereading the Potter books at the moment.

And I realized that they offered Dumbledore the job as Wizard Prime Minister, but he preferred to dick around in Hogwarts instead. Despite knowing full-well that Voldemort will return eventually.

He could have prevented countless deaths and suffering caused by Minister Fudge's nonexistent response to Voldemort's return. He could have crushed those death eaters while they were still disorganized.

Instead he was busy making his favorite student win pointless school awards. What a cunt.

[Anonymous No.18177171]

>>18172815
Same thing for me, except I didn't outright refuse to read classics. I think those pop books helped me get interested in reading, and then I started reading more heavy books. So Harry Potter and the like are stepping stones on the path to more advanced reading.

[Anonymous No.18177186]

i never read until college, where I started with philosophy, mostly germans. i have still read only a few works of fiction, but i generally like it

[Anonymous No.18177201]

Didnt used to read at all. Probably read my first book on my own, a historical book about the crusades at the age of 20. Fell in love with reading history books, then around 22-23 started reading fiction, almost exclusively the classics I had missed out on. Challenging part is wanting to catch up fast and mixing levels of complexity, like one week I’m reading the arabian nights, next week I’m reading Ulysses. Just finished crime and punishment and I’m 26 now. Glad I woke up to the joys of reading, bit later than most but I’m a late bloomer in most things

[Anonymous No.18177243]

Read Greek mythology, CS Lewis, ghost stories (Poe) and, tales from the crypt comics as a kid. Read stuff like Michael Crichton in grades 7/8. Read Kafka, Shakespeare, Dante, Conrad (and started getting into philosophy by reading Nietzsche) in highschool. I also read the beats and Hunter S. Thompsin around that time (cringe: had a picture of Burroughs in my locker).

I still like all of the above but started hating hippies and hedonism and think the beats are pseuds now (Burroughs is still ok though). Glad I never found a copy of the Electric Kool-aid Acid Test until I became an adult...I probably would have thought they were cool instead of pathetic.

[Anonymous No.18177259]

Read Greek mythology, CS Lewis, ghost stories (Poe) and, tales from the crypt comics as a kid. Read stuff like Michael Crichton in grades 7/8. Read Kafka, Shakespeare, Dante, Conrad (and started getting into philosophy by reading Nietzsche) in highschool. I also read the beats and Hunter S. Thompson around that time (cringe: had a picture of Burroughs in my locker). Also read Future Shock and thought it was awesome.

I still like all of the above but started hating hippies and hedonism and think the beats are cringe/pseuds now (Burroughs is still ok though, Toffler is a retard). Glad I never found a copy of the Electric Kool-aid Acid Test until I became an adult...I probably would have thought they were cool instead of pathetic.

[Anonymous No.18177604]

>>18172815
Once something becomes a favourite of mine, I never fall out of love with it. As a kid it was all genre fiction, my favourites were His Dark Materials and Ender's Game/Speaker of the Dead. Now I'll read anything at all, from trashy garbage to the literary classics, but I still prefer any science fiction/fantasy that has an emphasis on characterization. I also hated comcis/manga as a kid for some reason, but love them now. Chainsaw Man is in my top ten works of fiction in terms of sheer enjoyment.

[Anonymous No.18177629]

>>18172815
parts of roald dahl, the magic key
at 20 i'm unlikely to read a book if it doesn't open with the sentence 'a shot rang out'

[Anonymous No.18177727]

>0-10
books my mom read to me and choose you own adventurre picture books
>10-13
Percy Jackson, Harry Potter, Cherub, Alex Rider, others, Roah Dahl books, scholastic book fair kinos
>13-16
Random classics, like frankenstein, Pride and Prejudice, To kill and Mockingbird, stuff like that.
>16-18
Obssessed with magical realism, Love Murakami, Bulgakov, Borges, Kafka (Kafka was magical realism in my eyes). For some reason never read Marquez
Read a lot of PKD, Hesse, and Vonnegut. 1984 and bnw, the road ( also got filtered by Blood Meridian at this time, and filtered by Lolita at 16). Reread Harry Potter a couple of times as well. Read Brothers Karamazov as well.
>19-21
I found lit (4chan) just before I turned 19. Just reading whatever now. Favourite authors are Joyce, Melville, Tolstoy, Woolf, Márquez and Dante. Finally started reading some Poetry and Philosphy only just recently as well.

[Anonymous No.18177739]

>>18176988
He was a genuis. Thats how a genuis acts.

[Anonymous No.18177802]

>>18172822
Baseado

[Anonymous No.18177957]

>>18172822
Start with the Greeks

[Anonymous No.18177963]

>>18174828
Is Sophie's world a good introduction to philosophy for an adult or his more aimed at kids and teens?

[Anonymous No.18178076]

>>18172815
I only read blood meridian, over and over again

[Anonymous No.18178099]

>Childhood
Eyewitness books and cross-section/mechanics books
>Adulthood
Psych/evolutionary biology/complex system books revolving around the behavioral sciences. My underlying interests regarding mechanics are the same, but I focus on organisms more than objects now.

[Anonymous No.18178114]

>>18177963
It has about as much to say as any "Philosophy for dummies" incarnation. You'd be better off by exploring philosophy in depth, one title at a time. Start with something accessible like camus.

[Nemo !!GgBWHLRiayD No.18178155]

>>18172815
>How have your literary tastes changed over the years?
It has not, but, rather, I have acquired new perceptions throughout my life, and synthesized the gustatory ones within my (meta) taste.

One's sensibility informs one's affectivity; one's heartbeat guides one's voice.

[Anonymous No.18178161]

>>18178099
you sound like great fun at parties

[Anonymous No.18178371]

>>18172815
>elementary
Harry Potter, LOTR/hobbit (with my dad) narnia, wind in the willows (with my dad)
>middle
Nothing
>high school
Almost nothing I was assigned freshman/sophomore year, read the road, chronicle of a death foretold, and too loud a solitude junior/senior year and loved them
>college
Literally nothing
>a couple years ago
Sports Bios, kitchen confidential, books on cooking theory, Harry Potter again
>this year
Blood meridian, no country for old men, crime and punishment, 100 years of solitude. Sound and fury is up next, want to read constantly now, I feel like my life is changing for the better because of it already!

[Anonymous No.18178611]

When I was a teen I sought after difficult, 'important' books because I wanted to look (and feel) clever. Now I am rapidly approaching 30 and I want things that are warm and speak to the soul. I want my favourite book to be one that I have written.

[Anonymous No.18178835]

>>18172815
When I was a kid I read The Hobbit and LoTR, then downgraded to ASOIAF much later. Now I read philosophy, religious texts, literature, history, essays, scientific papers on my favorite topics, nonfiction etc. So a pretty wide variety of things. I suppose the only things I won't read are designated self-help books, and pretty much all YA. Oh, and I read Star Wars novels when I was young, too. They were pretty damn fun, but reading Tolkien when I was young had a much larger impact on me.

[Anonymous No.18178901]

Well I'm in uni and I only started seriously reading last year. The books I've liked the most so far... mhm, it's only been a year but Crime and Punishment, Infinite Jest, Spring snow, Journey to the end of the night, The secret history, The idiot, Norwegian wood and Wind up bird chronicle, No longer human, Kornel esti, A farewell to arms, a midsummer night's dream, David Copperfield. Haven't read much tho so pretty excited to discover and read more bros!

[Anonymous No.18178968]

>>18172815
At school they would make us 'read', and each 'word' I saw on paper took another concept ten times greater out of my head.