So 2025 will be just another year you wasted by not reading Yu Hua's masterpiece To Live, huh?Come on, buddy. You have 10 days, you can finish a short novel in that time. I believe in you. Come the fuck on!
>>24966987>movie is also quite different from the book.c'mon the only difference is there's no water buffalo at the end
>>24967876There are more differences, for example the novel has nothing about puppets and there's whole puppetry symbolism in the movie. The book is more honest-to-life and less 'art', it's like any symbolism in the book feels almost accidental like all things in are.But holy moly is Gong Li at her peak in it.
>>24969011she's not my type but i would like to see what she looks like now
>>24969011>puppetry symbolismit's a motif, but how is it symbolism?
>>24969029Been ages since I saw the movie. But seemed to me that the puppets pretty much symbolically tell how much power over his life Fugui has and his life itself. Again, the puppets are not present in the book and are much more visual way to tell the theme. And overall the book is very different.>>24969028like your average 59 year old grandma! See pic related (2024).
prev: >>24962658
>>24969198The funny thing about this meme is that classical is pop music. In terms of spotify plays Chopin alone is on a similar level to modern pop stars. 80% of under 25s are willing to pay for classical live concerts.
>>24969305You're the one who wanted to associate your ignorance of Nietzsche and Browning with classical, that's how it got linked in the archives.
>>24969314Or even if you think about how Foundazione Haydn has played Led Zeppelin tributes etc
>>24969303Boo!
>>24969303Fun fact, people like that exist in every thread. Why are you surprised?
Is nominalism really that bad? A lot of galaxy brained people seem to say so. CSP says that individualism (his term for the combination of nominalism and the belief that particulars are ontologically fundamental) is "a tool of the Devil if Devil there be" in a letter.
>>24964982If you cannot explain why sophistries and lies are bad per se your philosophy is ridiculous.
>>24964982>So is that why guys like Rorty, Nietzsche, and Deleuze seem so relativistic in many ways?But then how do they say anything at all. For instance, for Nietzsche, overcoming is clearly good and slave morality is not good (or substitute good with some other term, but the point is obviously normative). Likewise, Deleuze obviously values creativity and freedom. Rorty holds up preventing cruelty as a sort of good. If these measures didn't exist, I don't think their philosophy would make much sense. So is that the problem then, both the relativism (which the latter see as a perk, it supports freedom) but also the self-contrdiction (which is presumably bad)?Yup. People want their goodness and they want their justification of absolute freedom. But you can’t have both. Hence the needless coping by radical nominalists (not the based pre-modern nominalists).
>>24964982>>24969192you guys actually have to read nietzsche this shit makes you look retarded people primarily focused on greek and medieval philosophy have the most to gain from it moderns trying to read it will basically not be able to actually understand it because they never put the effort in to deal with the greeks that is required anyone who uses the word "relativism" is a retard on either side. Actual greek/medieval morality is fundamentally relative it's not about a set of rules, it's about the perfection of specific objects and the intellect grasping them and willing to bring them to that, there is no "rules" apart from things derived from engagement with particular things. Goodness is just a being expressing it's nature, and for humans that includes using the intellect, seeing the natures of things and willing to bring them about and user their powers in accord with their own nature. It has literally nothing to do with rules or objective laws apart from to the extent things share a nature.
>>24969342What's your point? To deny relativism is not to subscribe to some sort of deontological, law-based morality. Teleological approaches are not relativist in the relevant sense, particularly not those embracing the Doctrine of Transcendentals. There is a real (objective) distinction between what appears good (what appears desirable/is desired) and what is truly good (truly most desirable).Every philosopher allows for some sort of relativism. It is good to scoop your child off the ground after they bang their knee. It isn't so good to scoop a stranger's kid up at the park. It is good for a tiger to eat a monkey. It is not good for a monkey to be eaten by a tiger. And yet this not the sort of relativism people talk about vis-á-vis ethics. It doesn't deny an anchoring point in the Good. Plenty of modern thought absolutely does deny this sort of anchoring though, and so are relativistic in a more thoroughgoing sense.So too with truth and perspectivism, e.g., "there is no truth, only interpretations."
>>24964982You are asking good questions
>be American Protestant child>after 364 days of boiled vegetables and dry chicken, it's finally that most wonderful time of the year, Christmas>after a dinner positively Catholic in its decadence (steamed Brussels sprouts, unsalted mashed potatoes, one cold slice of ham, and one unbuttered bread roll) you are finally permitted to open your one present, which is labeled "from Santa" to teach you that gifts always come from supernatural sources, never your friends or family>heart racing, you open the present>it's a novel about a little girl who gets both her legs broken>"Merry Christmas, young Anon! I hope getting such a lavish gift doesn't spoil you and make you as entitled as a heathen!
Puritans banned Christmas tho
All americans should be killed. Bunch of degenerates.
My family from the former USSR were converted to Evangelicalism by "missionaries" who wanted to turn us from our foul Catholic ways. This is the first Christmas I will celebrate now that I live alone because my father always said that Christmas is a pagan invention by the Roman Catholic pagans. Feels good to be normal.
>>24969354American missionaries*
What is the greatest "high school reading" book? Excluding ancient poems and plays
>>24969114You're a retard
>>24969114Mayhaps.
>>24967268Damn, that Animal Farm cover is great.
>>24969114lucky you, we read communist propaganda at my school. although granted, this was way better than the asian diaspora trite in senior year.
The House of the Scorpion
Its one of sci-fi's greatest sneak disses on feminism and feminized men.>an emotional female calls for a superior race of beings to come conquer earth "for our own good">a feminized humanity hands the most important job in the solar system to a woman, because we have pretty men now>said female is handed the most important job to keep humanity's enemy at bay and she fails within 10 minutes of having the job. a man held the same job before her for 50 years and forgot how to talk because he took his job so seriously>that same woman takes back control of her company from a more than capable man so that he wouldn't work on a tech that could save most of humanity>said woman then is saved by the same tech she tried to stifle and gets to be counted as one of the last representatives of humanity>a simp who just happened to accidently get stuck with her at the end of the world tries to let her off the hook for her failures. at least we can farm and fuck comfortably in our own universe for the next 10 years amirite!Women and simps will be the downfall of humanity just wait and see.
>>24966596What absolutely not ability to read between the lines does to a niggaAnyway I like it, about halfway through the second book now. It gets too much like he grew up injecting Dan brown and James Patterson paperbacks directly into his veins sometimes, but so did I a little so it’s cute instead of unbearable.
>>24966596“For your own good” is a paternalistic drive though.
>>24968628It’s a 10/10 classic tv show if only for being one of many sources I draw my humor from.>And this is an image which I created of you as Sheila, queen of the lost city of ants! >>and that’s Arkmed your lover, be careful though since he’s only a drone and you’re the queen the love which you share is forbidden…
>>24966596Yeah it's anti female I noticed that too
>>24967143why? it's better than the english translation?
Renaissance edition>τὸ πρότερον νῆμα·>>24914151>Μέγα τὸ Ἑλληνιστί/Ῥωμαϊστί·https://mega dot nz/folder/FHdXFZ4A#mWgaKv4SeG-2Rx7iMZ6EKw>Mέγα τὸ ANE·https://mega dot nz/folder/YfsmFRxA#pz58Q6aTDkwn9Ot6G68NRg>Work in progress FAQhttps://rentry dot co/n8nrkoAll Classical languages are welcome.
>>24964381Probably has to do with you learning Latin. If you learned Greek instead, you'd certainly have a completely different view. I've always been stunned at how much more modern the Greek mind was than the medieval. What fucked everything up until the Renaissance was the orientalization of the western mind. That said, I don't think it was all bad.
Opinions on old norse? In an ideal world I would teach my kids latin, old norse and mandarin (plus greek if they are interested), the logic being that would be the root of latin and germanic languages plus mandarin
are there any apps you guys use to build / drill vocabulary or is that not a good approach to take in the first place
>>24969193old norse isn't the root of germanic languages.
>>24969197Anki is basically the to-go app but it shouldn't be something you rely on exclusively, indeed; I used it as compendium for the textbook, basically daily review of the words I was learning and using alongside the textbookit's not so good, imho, as something you do to learn words in isolation
Surprisingly Enough(NOT), Common Sense Is Overpowered in Cliché Writing Website EditionStubbed >>24958783>What is /wng/ — Web Novel General?A general for readers and authors involved or interested in the growing phenomenon of 'web novels', serialized English fiction posted to websites such as: Royal Road, Webnovel, Scribblehub, Wattpad, Archive of Our Own, Spacebattles, HFY, various personal author websites, and more>Why read web novels?Not for prose or tight editing or deep themes, frankly. As a whole, web novels are infamous for content sprawl and pacing issues. If you enjoy having millions of words to sink your teeth into to get to know the world and characters, though, you may be interested. Keeping up with other readers on a weekly basis to discuss the story's events unfolding is another perk, in the same way discussing an ongoing TV show might be.>Why write web novels?Ease of access & potential for Patreon earnings. Many successful authors gain an audience on their website of choice and funnel their readers into a Patreon. See graphtreon.com/top-patreon-creators/writing for an idea of what some are earning.Also, once an author has earned a fanbase, transitioning into an Amazon self-publishing career is several orders of magnitude easier than starting 'dry'.>/wng/ authors.Comment too long. Click here to view the full text.
Tina is functionally illiterate. Worst piece of "writing" I've ever had the displeasure of viewing.
>>24969248100% of your posts are unintelligible garbage that completely ignore the content of the reply post to ramble on in stream of consciousness for five more posts that hit the text limit. This is not a matter of "not reading". You are just legitimately not worth replying to in any serious capacity. I could have a more coherent conversation with an LLM with the temperature cranked to max.
>>24969275>>24969271Jelly as hell?
>>24969275>ramble on in stream of consciousnessIf it works for web novels, it works for 4chan posts
those who are stronger than me are called "senior"those who are equal to me are called "fellow daoist"those who are weaker than me are called "ant"truly I have comprehended the meaning of the righteous path
When they catch you, they will kill you, but first, they must catch you.
>>24969154Was the book more or less violent than the movie?
>>24969154I almost thought that was an Orthodox monk leaning forward not a rabbit. Yes, I'm familiar with Watership Down it just caught me off guard at first.
>>24969289it always catches people off guard when it is shown on daytime television to eight year olds
>>24969322What are you trying to imply, pal?
>>24969328https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQ0JUfzuTnQ
sansa editionASOIAF wiki: https://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Main_PageBlog: https://georgerrmartin.com/notablog/Old blog: https://grrm.livejournal.com/So Spake Martin (interviews): https://westeros.org/citadel/ssm/Book search: https://asearchoficeandfire.com/SSM search: https://cse.google.com/cse?cx=006888510641072775866:vm4n1jrzsdyGeneral search: http://searcherr.work/TWOW samples: https://archive.org/details/411440566-the-winds-of-winter-released-chaptersold: >>24922194
>>24969052george himself is a believer in the all or nothing view. most characters have no real faith whatsoever, and then you have the likes of baelor and lancel who are complete fanatics and probably insane
I have a really important question and I can't find the answer anywhere, anon. Just how beautiful is truly Shiera Seastar? George seems to imply she kept herself young like Melisandre does, and practices sorcery. She's also presented as the most beautiful woman in the 7 Kingdoms but given how George loves unreliable narrators, how would she realistically compare to Cersei, Dany or Margaery? Is her legend inflated by people and she's just like any other common woman who shits and has ugly phases or is she as beautiful and deadly as the legends present her?Also rank the most beautiful woman of the 7 Kingdoms
>>24969065Isn't Davos a character in the middle though, or Catelyn too. Really a lot of characters are probably somewhere in the middle aren't they
>>24969206I'll give it a shotCersei > Margaery > Sansa > Melisandre > Arya > Rose > Shiera > Rhaenyra > Alicent
literature that helps you come to terms with the life you lived ( and regretted )I am in extreme distress because I grew very old and dont have a wife and family that I always wanted. Need some books to help me cope with the missed opportunities in my life
>>24968459>muh wife and childrenYou are a dumbass hylic.
I've grown old and only known the love of an exwife, a few paramours, an independently wealthy heiress, a pure virgin fraulein, a sad-eye'd beauty queen, and a handful of fashion models (for local brands no less!). Nearly thirty years old and I've neither married into extravagant wealth nor raised a brood of eight ragamuffin young children in honorable poverty through the sweat of my labour at the local mines.My books, while generally well received by critics, have not earned me a breakout reputation as a literary tastemaker. Nor have they catapulted me into high society. At best they occasionally get me invited to bohemian artists parties in NYC (and lets be honest, who wants to go to those?). When I ran away to join the French Foreign Legion I could not even complete a single push up. They told me to come back in a month and try again. it was humiliating.Barclays and JP Morgan both refuse to hire me as a financial trader, and my efforts to secure a post at an embassy abroad have been utterly unfruitful. None of my business ventures have been wildly successful or earned me a wunderkind party mansion in the hills of Palo Alto. I don't even have a studio apartment in Paris or Milan yet. Let's face it, I'm a failure, a fraud, a phony. My life is over before it even began..
>>24968459Stoner
I'm 33 and going back to school but this thread has encouraged me not to give up, seeing all these people who think their life is over who are younger than me.Thanks OP+gang
>>24968837>Most men didn’t reproduce, being weird about it is retardedThis is a misunderstanding of genomics. It's not that most men didn't reproduce, it's just that Y-chromosomes are only passed down from male to male whereas X-chromosomes are always passed on, male or female. Men may reproduce but only have daughters, in which case the y-chromosome isn't passed on. This is badly interpreted to mean "most men didn't reproduce". It's not true, it's just that much more difficult for y-chromosomes to proliferate
Where's the Gene Wolfe thread?Book of the New SunHorrible book coversEtc.I describe the appeal of these books as being imperfect accounts of unfamiliar worlds. A strong reflection on identity, consciousness, and spirituality. The way in which a tower becomes a spaceship, or even the extra work required to decipher interpersonal relationships that aren't as clear as presented. All of this in service to the faults of humanity on display, whether through the cruel societies presented in New Sun or certain elements in Short Sun. A harsh but satisfying uncertainty. Of course, these same qualities can be seen as frustrating and unnecessarily opaque
>>24969189I enjoy most of the books I read. All fiction might be called slop. Some of it is more thought provoking than others, and that's okay. Sometimes I want an easygoing comfy book, so I'll read something for young adults like a light novel. There are other times where I want something with layers that have to be unraveled, so I might go for something more like George Gurdjieff's "Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson" or Aleister Crowley's "Moonchild". I'll often read a dense nonfiction book at the same time, because they are best absorbed by reading slowly and letting the subconscious mind reflect on them. Right now I'm reading Mary Anne Atwood's "A suggestive Inquiry into the Hermetic Mystery" and it's very dense. I would put Wolfe's Solar Cycle series somewhere in the middle in regards to difficulty. It's an enjoyable read the first time through, and upon subsequent re-reads it's very likely to unravel details and notice details that were probably missed or obscured in the first read. I don't understand your criticism of it being for "midwits". Do you only ever read very difficult books? Do you believe that a book is only as good as it is complicated? It seems like your desire for literary elitism has left you out of touch with the essence of the vast majority of writing; simply an enjoyable story. I think "The Hobbit" is a fantastic example, being a great story while also written with the intention to read to children one chapter at a time. I know that you probably have no intention of having an earnest discussion about such things and you're mostly just looking for an excuse to shit on Gene Wolfe every time you see him mentioned, but I hope some of the things I've mentioned resonate with you and allow you to enjoy a greater range of stories, even if you never come to like Wolfe. That's okay. Have a Merry Christmas, and remember that we read to enjoy ourselves, friend
>>24969189Thanks for the new recs.
>>24969189Trying too hard, anon. Anyone with a genuine literary mind, whatever fault they might find with Wolfe, would not bring up those tired, shallow criticisms based on a superficial and incomplete reading of botns. Nobody's buying that you're a keen connoisseur of "literary fiction"... you sound like you just started with the Greeks the other week or so. Keep at it!
>>24969233>>24969293BOTNS isn't really difficult. It's "difficulty" comes from when vidya brained 4channers who get into BOTNS because it's like le dark souls or because they saw it on le based /lit/ charts encounter basic literary techniques and have difficulty with them. Of course somebody's who's only played videogames all their life and only read a book because they were forced to in high school will find wolfe difficult but literati don't.It's good genre fiction. This is something i've never denied. Wolfe is a good genre writer. He's in the top 10% of sff writers. But he isn't literary. he isn't better than proust and shakespeare (as wolfe fans have claimed). He isn't the greatest writer of the 20th century. And wolfe fans are delusional in their treatment of wolfe as equivalent to joyce
>>24969302>he isn't better than proust and shakespeare (as wolfe fans have claimed).citation needed
English is such a shit language. For me the nail in the coffin for English was when I learned that the problem of ambiguity between argument and explanation, where all you have to disambiguate is context, which they talk about in logic books, is not something which is universal in logic, but rather is a problem of English. Other languages don't have this problem. English is a low IQ language. All it's good for is dumbing down the masses.
>>24969159It's not.
>>24969178Go back to /int/ where you belong and stay there, coombrain.
>>24966373>English is an illogical, chaotic language, unsuited for clear thinkingsovl
>>24969246>romance languages>west african clicking>other germanic languages (but not german)>romanianlol, what kind of bullshit map is this?German is the only language I've come across that was somewhat understandable without study so I think I'll go with my gut over "the experts".
>>24969317>German is the only language I've come across that was somewhat understandable without studyso now you're just making up stuff
>>24967843The vast majority of the manuscripts are not ilustrated, no. Your post said>I say that it is not a good mythology book if it does not include numerous pictures.Your claim is that it's bad unless it has pictures, which is asinine, because by your standard nearly all copies of the Iliad and Odyssey are bad because they're not illuminated.
>>24967925I didn't say that. I'm not the same guy. Anyways I'm phoneposting outside too lazy to continue on with the argument you win
The Penguin Book of Classical Myths
>>24965352Based D'AulairesI don't like Edith Hamilton's Mythology because it is written in the driest possible way. It's so boring. It's not even a translation, so I don't understand why it's so flat.
>>24966732Greeks didn't think think large dicks were uncivilized, they just didn't depict them in statues for the same reason women have small breasts and no vagina in Greek statues. Greeks literally had phallus worship
he had the potential to be the greatest writer of all time but he wasted his life getting high
>>24964921who?
Simply creating art that only hisself could see
>>24964921Don't you find it convenient that """the greatest author of all time"""" was speaking the same language as you do? Isn't it more likely that you are simply a sheltered retard whose knowledge of literature is limited only to his own sphere?
>>24967040>Don't you find it convenient that """the greatest author of all time"""" was speaking the same language as you do?Are you some ESL with a hateboner for English or something?
>>24967040Thomas De Quincey was fluent in Ancient Greek from age 15. He spoke Latin, Greek, and German. He was a literary genius.
