I used to read books as a kid but once my parents bought me my first tablet, it was all over. I was on boards before I had my first nut and I had that early thanks to the tablet, social media apps burnt through what remained once I got my first phone. I've somewhat kept my neurons functioning by learning to code but with AI taking over my day to day tasks at work, I felt like I needed to read.My friends recommended ASOIAF, which was great, and I did a bit of manga reading which was honestly subpar before reading the Stormlight Archive which so far is also pretty good but I have never read any of the classics.I've read excerpts in school of animal farm, Shakespeare's plays, inspector calls, etc>classic brit school contentBut I've never read any of the classics myself. I looked up penguin classics and some black brotha struggle slop appeared on the top of the list. I know there are info graphics out there of great works, top 100 lists and such, but is there a guide to reading that includes as many of the culturally relevant books as possible. Like I want to actually read Moby Dick, 1984, Frankenstein, the picture of Dorian Grey, etc so that I know the references and understand the work, and not be dependent on the interpretation of others and word of mouth guess work based on the Chinese whispers of some guy who read the spark notes or watched a YouTube video a while ago.I'm not interested in word vomit philosophy tryhard stuff, Hegel, Schopenhauer, and anything else along those lines. I want the types of works that I can bring up in conversation without having to study a semester's worth of content on the side. Also no weird gay shit or romance nonsense. I'm a regular zoomer, all things considered, I don't see much utility in knowing the struggles of being queer in the early 20th century.
>>25336702>no gay shit And you want to read Picture of Dorian Gay? Sorry OP, but the love that dare not speak its name is by far the most literary love.In all seriousness, the ability to read is a muscle and must be trained and developed like any other. I would recommend starting with short stories, such as the collection Dubliners by James Joyce or the short stories of Anton Chekhov or Ernest Hemingway, Hemingway in particular I believe is easy to get into, The Snows of Kilimanjaro is my personal favourite short story.You mentioned a desire to read 1984, you should always read works you hold a genuine interest in first and foremost, and Orwell shouldn’t pose a difficulty.If you are interested in longer classics, the Count of Monte Cristo is a very easy read.I hope you enjoy your stay
>>25336702Try reading William Blake if you're receptive to stuff like this:>Little fly,thy summer’s play>My thoughtless hand has brushed away.>Am not I a fly like thee?>Or art not thou a man like me?>For I dance and drink and sing,>Till some blind hand shall brush my wing...He's classic and popular enough to bring up in a conversation and if you can cite a couple relevant verses within a conversation, it will make an impact. Either an autistic one or a charming one.As far as non word-vomit philosophy and other classics, I guess you should start with shorter works, which would be Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning and Kafka's Metamorphosis, the latter being basically a leaflet. Overall it depends on what you're receptive to. If you don't resonate with poetry and general philosophy, there is no shame in avoiding it until a particular piece grabs your attention. If you don't like depressive literature, don't force yourself into Dostoyevsky, Kafka or McCarthy. What intuitively grabs your attention should be given priority. Even if it's Atomic Habits, Legally Blonde or the Twilight saga.
>>25336702read what's interesting to you and put it down if it's not or stops being so./sffg/ always has the charts mega in the OP, browse that. no one's going to give you a rec that will actual stick unless you have a list of books/authors you really enjoy. short list for cultural relevance would beBible KJVHomerShakespeare's late tragedies.these will basically serve as a point of reference for interpretation for your entire life. There's of course a near endless list of "must read classics."read more; get your own tastes then you won't need recs. your grade school teachers weren't lying when they told you to read the first couple pages of a book to see if it's worth reading.5 works you can check out, results may very: Liu Cixin - 3 Body ProblemHugo - Les MisérablesThomas Browne - The Major WorksWilliam Hazlitt - The Spirit of the AgeMurasaki - Genji Monogatari>know the references and understand the workit doesn't take a lit degree to pull up jstor and sci-hub after you finish a novel and read a few papers on the book, just an afternoon. If it's truly a great book you'll read it again someday anyways. It's okay to not grasp every theme or subtext.
>>25336734Are you trying to make his little zoomer brain fry?
>>25336748fuck 'em. If he has the vocab and a high school diploma I say throw him in the deep end. It's what he wants anyways, otherwise he would have made this thread on reddit.
>>25336724>the ability to read is a muscle and must be trained and developed like any otherI highly doubt that I need any baby steps. My vocabulary might be partially stunted with it comes to the stuff that would appear in pretty prose or a Charles Dickens book, but I had no issue reading ASOIAF and the first 3 books of Stormlight Archive, usually over a dozen chapters at a time.I just want to fill in my gaps of cultural knowledge honestly. Modern fantasy is nice but I'm pushing 30 and I haven't read a proper classic. References go over my head in casual conversations.>>25336727>Atomic Habits, Legally Blonde or the Twilight saga.Are you having a laugh mate? >William BlakeLol is that the tiger tiger...thy fearful symmetry poem guy, I only know that reference due to watching The Mentalist a decade ago. This is generally what I mean by having not read any of the references but vaguely knowing them. >>25336734>Les MisérablesI'll add that to the list since it's a name I recognise. I mean, I know the 3 body problem but it's a bit too contemporary, not Obama's biography contemporary, but you get what I mean. I want to have read as many culturally relevant works as possible, beginning with those that are the most popular amongst normie middle-upper class types. Again, I'm trying to not be dumbfounded during regular social interactions. I work in finance and a lot of my friends used to study history, politics, classics, etc, I'm not exactly trying to fit in, I just want to know actually what's going on in the conversation without being the uncultured back office guy.
>>25336781>I only know that reference due to watching The MentalistLmao same, that's the first thing I thought when I picked up the book, but it turns out the poetry is legitness.
>>25336781Pushing 30.. I genuinely thought you were a teenager. you exhibit a dangerous combination of ignorance and confidence, children can read that fantasy slop you tout as an achievement.
>>25336781guarantee more people in your office will likely recognize 3 body problem before any the other authors even if they do recognize Les Miserables by name. if all you care about is fitting in with work buds in those areas, take some general knowledge quizzes online. though that's a pretty sad existence. better to read what you enjoy and if you're not completely stunted, you'll have some overlap with other intelligent people.
>>25336781>References go over my headIf you're after references, I think reading classics won't keep you ahead of the curve. It will be quicker to watch some history of Western literature lecture series on youtube rather than reading one book per popular saying. I don't think most people who called something a "Sophie's choice" read the novel and neither did most people who frame financially motivated betrayal as "thirty pieces of silver". Most of these cliches are absorbed organically during interactions.
Try out Philip K. Dick if you want something entertaining and contemporary feeling. Something like Ubik or A Scanner Darkly (my fav of his) might pique your interest.I find Kerouac to be easy to breeze through. Something like On the Road or Big Sur might be a good starting point. Maybe you will find these to be a bit vapid, but I enjoy Kerouac's wacky adventures.Hunter S. Thompson's collected articles will give you something short to sit with. Rich and colorful vocabulary, and insightful on the subject of modern politics. He is worshiped by retarded hippie burnouts, but not everything he writes is some insane junky bender tale.Here are a couple other random recs that i enjoyed when i first got into reading:Gig: Americans Talk About Their JobsMemories, Dreams, Reflections by JungEast of Eden by SteinbeckSlaughterhouse FiveThe Good Soldier Svejk by HasekNo Country for Old MenA Confederacy of DuncesWhite Noise + Simulacra and Simulation (one will help you understand the other)Hope this helps.
>>25336748I wouldn't say little brain. When it comes to fluid intelligence, I've rarely been anything but the smartest in the room, I just lack the actual knowledge when it comes to literature so I'm just left shrugging my shoulders or making inferred guesses based on vague recollections of what other people have commented on a topic. >>25336767I've been on this site since I was 12 lol, I'm not going to ask redditors lol. I'm just curious if there's a collated guide for my specific situation. I know /lit/ has a few sprinkled all over the internet but why not just go to the source. >>25336790I'll take a look. I'm sort of put off by very dated English, but from excerpts I've seen over the centuries, 1800s onwards is not an issue.>>25336795Zoomers are getting old, I'm 25 and everyone I know is borderline having a quarter life crisis and openly joke about being old af now. I guess that's completely different to the forever young cope millennials have. I have a colleague past the age of 40 still trying to be hip and up to date with trends. We're very much well aware of our mortality and the speed at which we're aging, at least within my social circles. People are, probably prematurely, trying to rush into being more adult. I had to let go of the cliche council flat JD Sports attire eventually so I'm wearing uniqlo and whatever else normie women force me to wear. >>25336819Yh there are a few stereotypical scifi fans over here but I got along better with the people I met and work with that aren't so interested in hard scifi. Most of the fellow engineers in my age bracket came into it for the money, they'd rather play paddle, walk around Soho and go for a pint than larp as being part of the big bang theory. The friends I met through them are well read, which is where the whole feeling left out situation comes from. But even the older folk are already not typical tech bros, they're all a bit posh. I won't continue to read things that are unbearable, I just missed out thanks to going to a very ghetto state school. So I'm just playing catch up. I think 2 solid years of reading would get me to a satisfied point. I'm just hoping that there is a "introduction to western canon" infographics that isn't too pretentious or in-depth.
>>25336819okay to be fair you said>I'm not exactly trying to fit inbut thats sort of what I took from it anyways>the most popular amongst normie middle-upper class typesmaybe im jaded but I feel like this is pretty much self-help, contemporary (auto)biography and booktok recs, maybe you might find a person or two who took a course on john milton in university, but by and large most people are not reading classics beyond what was assigned to them otherwise they are avid readers (and that type of person won't expect you to have the same bookshelf as them). Maybe you want a boarding school curriculum: the greeks, romans, and the greatest english prose stylists. You'll find 100 charts on that stuff, and gpt could prob do a bang up job creating a list just deduct the mandatory woman, black, and aboriginal inclusions.for history you'll be more interesting in conversation than 99% of others even if you only ever read tocqueville, ranke, and burckhardt. no one gives a shit about cotemporary interdisciplinary history except autists and those being paid to research it.>>25336875>introduction to western canonpic related, it gets memed on a lot here especially the list at the end, but the actual content of the book is exactly that
>>25336867Thanks, I recognise most of these by name, I'll add them all to the list. >>25336884What I meant is, I'm not reading these books to make friends or join some bookclub. I have my social circles, I'm comfortable with being the oaf if it comes to it, it's just annoying when I don't know what's going on so I want to read the books that are brought up in casual conversation.>maybe im jaded but I feel like this is pretty much self-help, contemporary (auto)biography and booktok recsNo lol, the only people I know with self help books are sociopaths, actual criminals that I knew from school and annoying larpers. No one ever brings up atomic habits. And these things aren't just brought up in casual conversation, I was watching GITS: SAC a while back and there were several important scenes I just never understood because they were explicitly referring to texts I've never read by authors I have heard about. That's the annoying part. Not getting it.It's not wanting to read in pursuit of some end goal. It's the regular moments of things going over my head that I dislike.>for history you'll be more interesting in conversation than 99% of others even if you only ever read tocqueville, ranke, and burckhardtI've somehow manage to be vaguely aware of most stuff through the various nonsensical YouTube videos by people like dovahhaty >yh I knowMy mini haplotard phase when I was 14 still left me with a decent summary of historical knowledge about the antiquity, the alt right era content left me with crumbs of European history, etc. I'm not a blank canvas, just a blurred one, when it comes to the humanities.I know a girl that studied classics in university and switched over to corporate law, there was a historical accuracy debate over drinks about the upcoming odyssey film>I'm not sure why but everyone loves talking about filmsAnd I was so out of my depth, which is fine when it they're reciting Greek, but I have this situation all the time in areas where any adult shouldn't I believe.
>what should I read if I'm new to literature>bro read the entire bible bro This board is fuckin retarded
>>25336839Fair point, I only recently learnt about Sophie's choice through a conversation about George's Fire and Blood after reading it, I'm fine with picking things up through a conversation and doing a quick Google at home but there's a lot of these references where the actual body of work is also worth reading. Sometimes nothing of note reaches the normie zeitgeist but the work is still great, and popular enough amongst later writers of works I should read or amongst other people I socialise with that it's worth reading for the social utility of it at the very least as long as it's still enjoyable for me. >>25336919I mean it's not that long. Its about the same word count as The Way of Kings and The Words of Radiance, I felt like those were a breeze. But considering that I'm not in the US, and I absorbed enough of an understanding of Christianity through everyday life, I don't see much use in reading it.I want as much bang for my buck as possible you might say.
>no, bro read catcher in the rye insteadbro hes fucking 30, at least someone should tell him to read some real literature.he literally said "and not be dependent on the interpretation of others">yeah bro totally keep reading babbys first novella, web novels and fantasy slop eventually you'll just culturally imbibe the meaning of Job and the myriad of references to the bible/hamlet/greeks littering modernist literature.kys
This might sound a bit obvious but it really helped me rediscovering reading after going through something similar to what you did years ago: read what you want to read, and is interesting to you, not what you think you should read. I mean yeah it doesn't mean you have to read absolute slop but don't be afraid to start on pulp or mixtures of fiction and non-fiction and short stories and modern stuff and biographies of celebrities you like or books that they based movies you liked off of, and romance and comedies etc. You don't have to start with the classics or poetry or whatever, you can get to those in time, if you ever want to.And don't be afraid to just put a book down and stop reading it if it just isn't working for you. It's better to move on to something you can and want to read, rather than letting something sit there and stop you enjoying it
