/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.3136944]

What's your most memorable experience with a book, /lit/? Things both internal and external. Maybe something altering your perception, or being in a very special location while reading or whatever.

You get the idea. Let's have 'em, people!

[Anonymous No.3136992]

toni morrison's beloved

very vivid, vibrant, colorful images, prose, passages. had some synesthesia at points; swear i could smell barn hay or musty oak at times, could see the tall grass or hear the character's voices

[Anonymous No.3137002]

Anyone ever go to know a girl just by reading a book in public?

Oh, what are you reading there anon? It's one my favorite books

[Anonymous No.3137007]

>implying I'm going to write your NYU essay for you
Don't lie, motherfucker. I'm doing it too.

[Anonymous No.3137013]

>be 2007
>be at a nice hotel vacationing in Cambria, California
>waiting for night to fall
>take out House of Leaves from my bag
>only leave desk light on
>begin reading
>mfw

I scared myself retarded and still the most a book as ever effected me on that kind of level. Loved it.

[Anonymous No.3137006]

it's embarrassing now but Bukowski made me want to write when I was fourteen. def one of the biggest impacts on my person as a writer/reader

[Anonymous No.3137043]

The prose used and the general picture it painted, blew my mind.

[Anonymous No.3137073]

Hesse. Do I even have to say more?

[Anonymous No.3137075]

I appeared to be in the clutches of a narcoleptic phase whist reading The Crying of Lot 49 the first time around. I would literally just pass out while reading it. My second reading was a much more cogent, conscious affair.

[Anonymous No.3137076]

Read the stranger at 13 in one day, I remember literally right after I finished I drove with my grandfather to the hospital to see my mom and I felt completely thankful to be alive and not scared to die at all. That book blew my 8th grade mind and got me into reading. I read it again two years ago and it didn't do anything like that for me and I realized how stupid his big speech at the end was that inspired me so much at the time. 13 is a good age for that book I think

[Anonymous No.3137083]

>>3137007
if this is true its a terrible way to write your application

4chan is filled with life's dregs

[Anonymous No.3137096]

The first time I read Moby Dick was when I was about 15. I recall just being fascinated and even a bit wowed by the chapter that lays out the big analysis/hypothesis/exploration of the color "white". After all these years, that chapter has dug itself into my memory for ever.

[Anonymous No.3137100]

>>3137083
The NYU prompt is more or less the same as OP's.. The only real difference is that the NYU app lets you choose between books, movies, and albums.

[Anonymous No.3137103]

>>3137075
hahaha I rocked a free shrugs sign at folklife festival years ago

[Anonymous No.3137109]

>>3137073
sure when I was like 15 fucking one trick pony, read one read em all.

[Anonymous No.3137115]

I bought Dance Dance Dance for reasons which I simply DO NOT recall, but well, it obviously ended up with me reading it and I loved it! It was a beautiful work of fiction and the description of loneliness really hit me right where it hurts - Such a good read.
I recently did an essay on it, and eventually started fearing that analysing every single sentence of it would ruin it for me, but thank god it did not ; still love it.

[Anonymous No.3137124]

>>3137007
>>3137100

I'm a bit lost about the whole NYU thing? I just finished a book I enjoyed a lot and wondered if anyone had ones they felt the same about?

[Anonymous No.3137130]

Picked this book up at a used bookstore one day and it sorta turned my life upside down. I both despise the "author" and owe a lot of who I am today to him.

[Anonymous No.3137143]

>>3136944
Song and book feeling synthesis.

>listening to Blue Oyster Cult Don't Fear the Reaper
>Reading Tau Zero.
>Think it's bad, but decide to read to the end because I was told something interesting happens
>It does
>ship is travelling faster than the universe and can never go back to Earth because they'll never slow down
>here's where the interesting thing happens
>It dawns on the characters that they're travelling so fast that space is dying around them
>They realize that they'll see the death of the whole universe
>they decide to speed up
>they're going to go faster than the destruction of space time so that they can out run it
>On the exact line that that the man suggests to the woman that they can live past the entirety of creation, the song gets to 'come on baby, take my hand, we'll be able to fly.'
>goosebumps

[Anonymous No.3137147]

Jacques Elull led to a pretty radical shift in my thinking only about a year ago. I only ended up finishing half of the Political Illusion, but it was glorious. Later reading only cemented this

'suppose it was just the right time in my thinking when I was particularly receptive to this. A while earlier I had come to the realization of how arbitrary delineation is and was just waiting for something like this.

[Anonymous No.3137188]

I picked up The Sound and the Fury my sophomore year of high school and was completely blown away. I had only read trash up that point. I was honestly on the edge of my chair for some of it, the words and the narration were so powerful.

I miss that.

[Anonymous No.3137193]

>>3137130
>despise
why would you despise him?

[Anonymous No.3137285]

I was not incredibly awkward in high school, but I used to read and, unfortunately, was a bit of an outsider. I was also good friends with a girl, but she was already in a relationship so we just remained good friends. Throughout this experience, I was reading "The Sun Also Rises" and was completely connected with the main character, Jake. Absolutely amazed at the ending; the final lines.

>feels, so many feels

[Anonymous No.3137289]

>>3137285
I'm not sure I'd connect as much; but I really have to read this work - Never got around to reading much Hemingway, and now I feel bad.

Captcha : Pitilessly tacky

[Anonymous No.3137345]

Journey to the Center of the Earth.

My craving for adventure and wonder are now insatiable.

[Anonymous No.3137346]

>>3137130
Why do you despise the author? Why "author" in quotes?

[Anonymous No.3137460]

Jane Eyre

[Anonymous No.3137535]

>>3137193
>>3137346
Osho is known to be something of a hack, but if it was the original poster's first encounter with a consciousness change book I'm sure it was quite transformative.

Robert Anton Wilson was mine. First Prometheus Rising, and then Cosmic Trigger really blew me away. With Bob, though, it was more just realizing that he really was a human being just like the rest of us.

[Anonymous No.3137548]

My multiple rereading of Ender's Game by OSC. The very first time I read it was back in 7th or 8th grade I've read it once a year since then. I've noticed more and more about the book as I have matured. At first I barely grasped, if that, the surface. A few years later, I understood the surface but realized there was more underneath. I'm still at the stage of fully understanding the events beneath the surface. I don't think I will ever fully understand, not until I fully understand people and what motivates them.

[Anonymous No.3137628]

>We have no comfort other than that inherent in this activity. Philosophy, we have learned, must be on its guard against the wish to be edifying -- philosophy can only be intrinsically edifying. We cannot exert our understanding without from time to time understanding something of importance; and this act of understanding may be accompanied by the awareness of our understanding, by the understanding of understanding, by noesis noeseos, and this is so high, so pure, so noble an experience that Aristotle could ascribe it to his God. This experience is entirely independent of whether what we understand primarily is pleasing or displeasing, fair or ugly. It leads us to realize that all evils are in a sense necessary if there is to be understanding. It enables us to accept all evils which befall us and which may well break our hearts in the spirit of good citizens of the city of God. By becoming aware of the dignity of the mind, we realize the true ground of the dignity of man and therewith the goodness of the world, whether we understand it as created or as uncreated, which is the home of man because it is the home of the human mind.

Happens every now and then; texts that triggered it include The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Schopenhauer as Educator, and Note on the Plan of Beyond Good and Evil.

[Anonymous No.3137633]

>>3137285
>it's pretty to think so

I know that feel bro

[Anonymous No.3137785]

I'm liking this thread

[Anonymous No.3138522]

Kierkegaard's The Sickness unto Death and Fear and Trembling .

I honestly had such, such low expectations for Kierkegaard and then he fucked me. Those two books are so far the only two I had to put down and take a second to breath before continuing.

captcha: poets moocat

couldve been moocow

[Anonymous No.3138548]

>>3137628

what's this from? augustine's City of God?

[Anonymous No.3138555]

A few years ago I was depressed as hell cause I didn't know what to do with my life. I decided to go back to writing, since I always loved doing that.
Since I was a shit tier writer back then (maybe still are) I decided to learn from the best, the great, and decided to get some of the classics. One of the books I got and the first to read was Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky.

While I wasn't in the mood of killing an old lady at that time I found a lot of things I have in common with Raskolnikov. Espeically the narcissism, the believe that I am great and better than everyone else. And reading the book really made me realize, that I am just like him, thinking I am great, while in reality I am nothing and have nothing. I realized, that the people I looked down at in school, cause they are dumb, have a normal job, maybe a family and earn more than I did with my shitty part time job. They have done more in their life than me, who was sitting at home all day, and thinking how 'great' I am.

[Anonymous No.3139439]

>>3138548
What Is Liberal Education? by Leo Strauss. The reference to the city of God is somewhat cryptic, since Strauss was an atheist. I assume he uses it, along with citizenship in the ordinary sense, as another way of differentiating between the attitude of the knower or philosopher and that of "vita activa" in the worldly sense.

http://www.ditext.com/strauss/liberal.html

[Anonymous No.3139444]

>>3137535
Why would you say he was a hack? Because he fucked with our idea of how an Eastern sage is supposed to act?

[Anonymous No.3141269]

I aced the verbal section on the SAT after reading Infinite Jest.

Thank you, based DFW.