I don't read much, but I want to start. Are modern western fantasy/sci-fi novels just as bad as modern western fantasy/sci-fi videogames and films? Or has literature managed to keep itself isolated from all the cultural corruption?
>>23820732Look at the state of modern publishing and you'll realize that things have gotten so much worse than you can even imagine.
>>23820732a simple solution to your entirely self-imposed problem: don't read anything modern. start with the Greeks
>>23821033I had planned to start from the Iliad and the Odyssey (and possibly the Aeneid), then move on to reading Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Does it sound decent enough?
Anyone who uses the word "western" in a derogatory sense is invariably a weeb, and probably a tranny.
>>23821051Socrates didn't write any books. Read this, or at least the first one of each pair:>Iliad (translations: Fagles, Lattimore, Fitzgerald)>Odyssey (translations: Fagles, Lattimore, Fitzgerald)>Histories by Herodotus (editions: Oxford, Penguin, Landmark)>History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides (editions: Oxford, Penguin, Landmark)>The Last Days of Socrates/The Trial and Death of Socrates by Plato (editions: Hackett or Penguin)>The Republic by Plato (translations: Bloom, Reeve)None of these are overwhelming to a novice reader and all of them will contribute immensely to your base as these works are constantly referred to by later authors and artists even to this day.
>>23821096Thanks, and yeah I should have said "Socrates by Plato".Any advice for Aristotle too? He's the one I'm most interested in.
>>23821110Aristotle is much more difficult to read than any of them. The traditional starting point is the Organon (6 works about logic) but you will probably just get filtered. The easiest starting points are Nicomachean Ethics and Politics, but read Plato first regardless and see where you stand afterwards.
>>23821137Alright I'll leave him for last, thanks again.
>I don't read much but I want to start, I like fantasy/sci-fi.>Alright, start with Histories by Herodotus, then follow it up with Histories of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides and the Last Days of Socrates and the Republic by Plato. Never change /lit/.
>>23820732Why is your brain so rotted that you “want” to read books yet have already decided in your heart that individual authors writing stories are as as le woke and pozzed as major corporations?There is an infinite number of books to choose from, whether it be books about cyborg trannies to hard science fiction to speculative evolution to GRRM style action sci-if romps.You aren’t looking for recommendations, you probably have lost the ability to sit down and read anything longer than a 4chan post.You are in a cycle where you only interact with products you hate and then get smug when they don’t succeed. Read the Expanse for science fiction action, read Red Mars for hard science fiction, read Hyperion for an all around good mix, read Asimov for theory. Better yet just kill yourself because you and I both know you cannot pick a book up and finish it.
>>23821158Victorian schoolboys used to start there and they didn't even read them in translation. No one is too stupid to start with the Greeks unless they are too stupid to read altogether.
>>23821167Sure but the greeks and romans also wrote a lot stories that are actually entertaining and fun to read that aren't a chore for someone who is just getting into reading. Like Metamorphosis, the Argonautica, the Homeric Hymns, Appolodorus' library of greek mythology etc. Why start them out on the most dry material possible for recreational reading?
