How many books did you read so far this year?
A little more than 10
A few dozen. Been reading a lot of door stoppers this year, currently reading Underworld, before that was Europe Central.
ive never read a book in my fucking life, 10 pages at most.
>>25397650Physically only 1.Audiobooks like 15 or 16, not counting short stories or audio dramas and lumping fantasy series with several books into one book, because it's just one story over many books, instead of separate stories. Less than last year but I have been mentally tired and have less hobbies that inspire picking up reference books, which are the main ones I read physical copies of.Also been listening to less audiobooks because I mainly use youtube to listen to them and they have been more strict/fast about automatically taking books down.Other option is torrents but I currently don't have a vpn and rather not get banned by my isp again.
>>25397650Finished plato and been going through Aristotle. Also included some introductory material. It depends on how you measure it. i'd say 5
>>25397650>picrelLol me
This is everything I've read this year so far, tho' I wouldn't necessarily count the mangas towards my reading goal tally (15 books this year, as it is every year), so it's more like 7/15 than 10/15.
>>253976506 or 7
>>253976503 novels + 4 or 5 non-fiction
>>253976503 and 5 of them light novels, I've been slacking when I started strong at the beginning of the year. I'll attempt to get The Odyssey and The Prince done before December
I only got back into seriously reading this year, but so far I've readBukowski - Ham on Rye, Factotum, Post Office, WomenKafka - Metamorphosis, the TrialMurakami - Wind Up Bird, Kafka on the ShoreTom Robbins - Still Life with WoodpeckerHemingway - Old Man and the SeaMcKenna - True HallucinationsCamus - The Stranger, Myth of Sisyphus, the PlagueLynch - Catching the Big FishNabokov - Lolita, Bend SinisterJames Gunn - the Toy CollectorJung - Man and His Symbols, Undiscovered Self/Symbols and the Interpretation of DreamsOrwell - 1984, Animal Farm Macdonald - Based on a True Story Fitzgerald - the Great GatsbyBeckett - Waiting for GodotFreud - An Outline of Psychoanalysis Dostoyevsky - Crime and PunishmentSaint-Exupery - the Little Prince Sartre - NauseaBaudrillard - SimulationsKipling - the Jungle BooksBorges - LabyrinthsCortazar - Blow Up and other StoriesWolfe - Shadow of the Torturer, Claw of the Conciliator
12-13 so far.
Less than a dozen. Finishing an MA that I despise, hate it with every fiber, sucks all the joy out of life and takes up most of my time. I would rather be reading or hiking or even playing vidya, academia sucks and I loathe it. It should improve my career prospects at least
>>25398037*Fewer thanGet it right.
>>2539765066The best one I've read so far are Jane Eyre, Spring Torrents (Turgenev), I am a Cat and Lolita.
>>25397650Who cares how many slop books you read a year? unless you are reading Moby-Dick tier works don't even count it as some accomplishment.
>>25397659Im reading elroys underworld, its great
>>25398091This desu, only goodreads redditors care about that shit
zero except for comic books or manga because I'm a goy
42 but 33 are every volume of the light novel Ascendance of a Bookworm because I'm unemployed and that was my obsession in June and I just read every single volume in that month
>>25397650I don't read books I only read and post on /lit/
>>25397650Maybe like 20-25, I don't keep track
17 so far. Usually manage 3.5ish a month. Got badly held up with work in June.
>>25398037The only purpose of postgrad is shagging.
Five, or four, if you don’t count the Book of Genesis. Kinda disappointed desu. At least two among those are Moby-Dick and the Odyssey, which can be considered “big” books and which I enjoyed massively. Dropped Blood Meridian though. Reading Exodus rn, and I’m in a bit of a toss-up between A Portrait, the Iliad, or another book of the Bible for what to read next.
>>2539765044.1. Joseph Heller – Catch-222. Natsume Sōseki – Kokoro3. Ernest Hemingway – A Farewell to Arms4. Haruki Murakami – Norwegian Wood5. Su Tong – Raise the Red Lantern6. Han Kang – Human Acts7. Ernest Hemingway – The Sun Also Rises8. Karel Poláček – We Were a Handful9. Sayaka Murata – Convenience Store Woman10. Yukio Mishima – Spring Snow11. Jun’ichirō Tanizaki – The Makioka Sisters12. Henry James – Washington Square13. Kōji Suzuki – Ring14. Bohumil Hrabal – I Served the King of England15. Kōbō Abe – The Woman in the Dunes16. Jun’ichirō Tanizaki – The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi and Arrowroot17. Ladislav Klíma – The Sufferings of Prince Sternenhoch18. Émile Zola – Nana19. Yu Hua – The Seventh Day20. Gustave Flaubert – Salammbô21. Cormac McCarthy – All the Pretty Horses22. Shūsaku Endō – The Samurai23. Ivan Turgenev – Fathers and Sons24. Kurt Vonnegut – Hocus Pocus25. Ernest Hemingway – The Garden of Eden26. Karel Čapek – War with the Newts27. Josef Karel Šlejhar – The Melancholic Chicken28. Christiane F. – Zoo Station: The Story of Christiane F.29. Sheng Keyi – Northern Girls30. Andrzej Sapkowski – The Last Wish (The Witcher)31. Cormac McCarthy – The Orchard Keeper32. Yi Seung-u – The Reverse Side of Life33. Haruki Murakami – After Dark34. Anne Frank – The Diary of a Young Girl35. Jiří Šotola – The Society of Jesus36. Yan Lianke – The Four Books37. Jarmila Glazarová – Advent38. Cormac McCarthy – The Road39. Vladislav Vančura – Marketa Lazarová40. Cormac McCarthy – No Country for Old Men41. Yukio Mishima – Forbidden Colors42. Yoko Ogawa – The Housekeeper and the Professor43. Cormac McCarthy – Blood Meridian44. Umberto Eco – The Name of the Rose
I started out hot in the first two quarters of the year knocking out several WW2 books then completely petered out. I think my count is up to 7 for the year. Next up: Infinite Jest. I admire DFW, but I worry that IJ might become my favorite novel and then I’ll have to lie to ppl about it if they ask what my favorite book is. (They don’t ask. No one ever asks.)
>>25397871Did you enjoy C&P and Lolita, Anon?
sometimes I forget I'm in the minority on this board that reads more than two dozen books a year.>>25398091>>25398129and this is the obvious cope by non-readers.
>>25398091>>25398129True. This is why I've taken RC Waldun's advice and limited myself to only 12 books this year. Pic rel.
>>25399649You seem to like East Asian authors. Are 'raise the red lantern' and 'human acts' good?
>>25399657Really liked both. C&P had a lot of excellent dialogue but I didn't love the ending. His conversion still kind of felt abrupt and a little undeserving. Lolita I think is a perfect book. Love Nabokov's sense of humor and the beauty of the writing contrasted with the ugliness of the story is like nothing else I've read
20. Mostly nonfiction and American classics. Biggest book I've read so far was the complete works of Poe.
>>25399687Yeah. I loved two stories of Raise the Red Lantern (it's collection of 3 short novelletes), one of them is almost like fairy-tale mixed with horror, it has very dreamy and dreary narration. The other is about chinese prostitutes surviving after communist victory, super interesting. The last story was so wannabe experimental and annoying I didn't finish it. However out of the chinese authors I've read Yu Hua is the best one (To Live is his book reflecting communist take-over and is one of the best books I've ever read and I've read lot of classics).Human Acts is amazing, I always compare it to the movie Threads. One thing I love about it is the narrative structure, it's very experimental and artsy, but not annoying and not performative at all, the structure makes perfect sense and has narrative/thematic reason. In all Han Kang books I've read she writes about one very unique thing: conflict of communalism and individualism. In Human Acts she takes original approach to it and takes it to the extreme, where it's all about individuals becoming part of a mob and then different mob tearing the first mob apart, the individuals becoming individuals again and having to cope. Usually you see the mob being always the big bad in media and art, in Human Acts it is shown to be both force of good and evil. Idk, hard to explain, but extremely good - and that's only one dimension of the novel. Another dimension that I also enjoyed deeply is the notion that trauma that comes after violence is worse pain than the violence.
75
>>25399687human acts was superb, by far one of the best 2000's books i've read
Books read: 18.Books bought: 0.
5-6 English books3 Chinese books(为人民服务、沉沦、冈底斯的诱惑)Idk how many non fiction books and essays for my thesis
How many books does this count as?
>>25398261Sometimes I find it's nice to take a break from novels and go for something lighter like comics and manga.
-The things they carried — Tim O'Brien-Metaphors we live by — George Lakoff & Mark Johnson-The Hero With a Thousand Faces — Joseph Campbell-Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion — Robert B. Cialdini-The house on mango street — Sandra Cisneros-Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die — Chip Heath & Dan HeathAnd a whole fucking lot of short stories, like 40. Going slow because I feel compelled to take notes and underline.Currently going through Thought Contagion by Aaron LynchI only bought one book this decade: Designs Basic Index.
>>25398261Read this, it's peak
>>25400221I already read it ages ago and I dropped it like halfway through because it got boring. I usually prefer British comics like 2000AD to capeshit.
>>25399660it's not non-reader cope. there's a huge difference if all you're reading is romantasy smut #67 vs. something like Nabakov or Charles Dickens
>>25400306It is non-reader cope. 35 of the 74 books I've finished this year have been philosophy related, the others have been novels. Do I need to list every book I've read to show you that no, reading 1-2 books a week is not a fucking insane task? Literally an hour a day will keep you on the same pace as me, most of my reading is done during my morning shit and before sleeping at night.
>>25400350What have you learned or gotten out of those 35 books? How has your world expanded or diminished through them?
>>25400350there is no way you are integrating the contents of 35 philosophy books in 7 months, unless you're just re-reading the same shit over and over again in different forms. if you were tested on the contents of these books two years from now you could not even give an accurate account of them. so what is even the point then? may as well be surfing tiktok for brainrot memes to keep your mind occupied; it's the same thing
>>25400379Why are you so fucking mad? You're really starting to sound like a coping non-reader. How many books have you read anyway?
>>25400371>>25400379>the non-readers continue to cope>you have to INTEGRATE the philosophy dude your worldview has to be fundamentally CHANGED you can't just read it because you enjoy the stuffAnd I hate to break the news to you, but 12 out of those 35 were Nietzsche related, and actually yes reading him basically is reading the same shit over and over again because he repeats himself quite frequently.
>>2539765058, here are some favorites:Goncharov - OblomovLévy - SuicideHouellebecq - AtomisedMori - ColorfulProust - In Search of Lost Time (volumes 1-5)Hugo - La Légende des siècles, La Fin de Satan, DieuYoshida - ParadeRimbaud - LettersDickens - Great ExpectationsCurrently reading Les Misérables for the first time and enjoying it very much.
>>25400390I was genuinely curious though, not salty.I don't like burning through books, I feel the need to take notes and shit to feel like something will stick.
>>25397650Lord of the MysteriesDungeon Crawler Carl...*sigh* I really am the kind of philistine I used to make fun of
>>25400386>How many books have you read anyway?I dunno. Thousands, probably. Been reading constantly since before I started school. But most of it is forgettable slop. You can blast through three-four shitty fantasy novels like pic related in a day if you're bored.I did read a lot of philosophy and some science I was interested in in my 20s, but at some point you realize that it's less people trying to [help you] understand the world than it is people trying to convince you to act the way they want you to. So it just gets boring. Only reason to read them is to come up with better rhetorical defences for your pre-existing positions. Like, if I wanted to talk about politics I'd go properly read a bunch of Mosca and Carlyle and Spengler and whatever, but I have no interest in that so I'm not gonna bother anymore. The science stuff is more interesting, but even there you'll read a book and then 20 years down the line people will be like "lmao this guy writes like a fag and his shit's all retarded" so whatever. The people who ACTUALLY know all this shit aren't the people spending their time writing books for laymen about it so whatever.So these days I mostly read slop or the occasional "classic" that everyone is "supposed" to have read, like Brothers Karamazov or Les Miersables or whatever. These books are definitely way better to read than slop, but they're so engaging that I find myself constantly thinking about them for months after reading them so I don't want to read too many of them at once. So I find the idea of reading 35 philosophy books in half a year to sound pretty retarded. But maybe I'm just retarded for not being able to instantly integrate all this shit the second I read it. I find that implausible though, since if being able to do that was a common trait then lawyers would be easier to mass-produce.
>>25400379It's okay to forget book details. That's what rereads are for. The joy of rediscovering one of your cherished books years later is indescribable.
>>25397650I only read whenever I feel like it and not some imaginary number that needs to be met like some sort of steam achievement. To answer your question, 5
>>25400442I think you have an over-inflated idea of what reading philosophy entails because you keep using the word integrate. Sure, if you've not read any before, it can be very eye-opening at the start and you shouldn't be reading an exorbitant amount so what you do read digests. But a lot of philosophy books are just 100-200 pages building on something else previously written, usually something very similar, it's not exactly earth-shattering. Like, Critique of Practical Reason is 140~ pages, it's not going to take you weeks to get through after reading Pure Reason, for example.
>>25397650I dunno... seven or twelve probably.
>>25397650So /lit/ does read. Why the fuck are most threads so dogshit.
>>25400533Prease to be unnerstan.... unmoderated borderu
>>25397650Rama, Moon Mistress, Starship Troopers, and now reading through Maude translation of War and Peace
>>25397650i got fined 1000€ in April for downloading one movie.Stopped watching and started reading, seven so far and I'm speeding up. Will have read 30 or more by Christmas. When life gives you lemons.
>>25399709Thanks for the reviews anon I look forward to checking them out
>>2539765015I don't think I've read anything bigger than 400 pages tho.
>>25399650>I admire DFW, but I worry that IJ might become my favorite novel and then I’ll have to lie to ppl about it if they ask what my favorite book is. (They don’t ask. No one ever asks.)kek, i have similar thoughts
>>25400812LMAO WHAT COUNTRYwhere you seeding?
>>25399649>Umberto Eco – The Name of the RoseWas it good? I’ve thinking about reading Foucault’s Pendulum but it’s a bit of a doorstop. Description on the back reminds me of Dan Brown. Maybe he was inspired?
>>2539765018 so far1. Tšehov - Ward n.62. Tolstoi - Resurrection (very boring)3-4. Rowling - Potters 1-25. Brown - Da Vinci code6-10. Rowling - Potters 3-711. Brown - Lost Symbol12. Danielewski - House of Leaves13. Brown - Angels and Demons14. Brown - Inferno15. Solzhenitsyn - Ivan Denisovitš’ Day16. Dumas - Three Musketeers17. Brown - Secret of Secrets18. Herbert - Dune p.1-319. Brown - Origin (w.i.p.)I definitely buy books faster than I read them. Thinking about either buying Dune Messiah and Children of Dune next or just pick a random book from the shelf
Literally me. I buy sixty books for every book I read.
>>25400944No seeding, which I disabled. But it makes no difference, just having the torrent in your log is the crime, even if you never uploaded a single byte and only leeched. My VPN failed for 40 seconds, at least that's the number stated in the indictment. They wrote the law so that the burden of proof lies with the accused - the person who pays the internet contract has to proof that someone else did the pirating. The fact that pirating occured is already 'proven' by the litigator's proprietary software. You have to directly accuse someone else with access to the router, so a guest or family member. If you contest the fine, the judge orders a Sachverständigenuntersuchung i.e. some IT forensics guy looking inside your asshole. That's another 5000€ + court fees. So if you get accused of pirating you can basically choose to pay 1000€ now or 10.000€ later, and there's no way out. Of course, committing a crime irl like robbing a store or beating someone up will only result in a suspended sentence or community service.Such is life in the US-occupied economic zone of G*rmany.
>>25397650I read around 60 per year. Last year I did 64 and this year it'll probably be closer to 70.
>>25397650A dozen but I only really started in May.
>>253976508. Very slow year but in my defense my sleep has been so bad (barely scraping 5.5 hours a night) and it has made me pretty retarded and haggard.
17>Robert the Bruce - Penman>The Histories - Tacitus>Agricola and Germania - Tacitus>Prose Edda - Snorri>Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era - Haldon>The Hobbit - Tolkien>Alfred the Great + other sources - Asser>Sparta's Sicilian Proxy War - Rahe>All His Spies - Alford>The Twelve Caesars - Suetonius>Tale of Sinuhe >The Great Siege of Malta - Bull>The Library of Ancient Wisdom - Wisnom>China's Cosmopolitan Empire - Lewis>Hippocratic Writings>The Macedonian State - Hammond I'll either read something on chivalry or the Three Kingdoms next.
>>25400964It was alright. Little bit heavy handed with it's historical setting at points it reads like he wrote it to show everyone how much he knows about middle-ages (instead of using his knowledge to tell a story effectively). When it came out medieval philosophy probably wasn't as easy to access as it is now so it must hvae been mindblowing. Ironically it was at it's most profound when the murder mystery was happening - becouse the book wasn't talking to you about medieval thinking, but showing it to you.As someone who has read quite some medieval books I think Eco's Baudolino is far better than Name of the Rose. Baudolino is 100% written like a medieval book and as if the author is a medieval person. Or rather it's better at pretending to be that than Name of the Rose.>Foucalt's PendulumHaven't read that one, may do so next summer, but heard good things about it. AFAIK it's about conspiracy theories so it should be more approachable to average reader from the internet since conspiracy theories are everywhere nowadays. However I've heard it's his most difficult work.>Dan BrownNothing like Eco. Dan Brown is for retards, it's like comparing Dracula and Twilight.
>>25401047that's scary. I've been torrenting for 2 decades in switzerland but nothing ever happened. I also seed around 1 ration on public trackers maybe I should stop, cause seeding is the illegal part here I think
>>25401047>>25401545it entirely depends on the country's ISPs. me and everyone else pirates everything and no one was ever fined a cent. Italy. the rumor is that the main ISP receives complaints from the distributors and they just trash it.i heard that the issue in germany is that similarly to the US there's lobbying in parliament for big distributors like Warner Bros etc.
>>253976507 so far
>>25402010i dont buy new books until i read the ones i have (unless its technical manuals)
Books I've finished in 2026 in no particular order:>Gateway>Close To Shore: The Terrifying Shark Attacks of 1916>A Dragon's Head and a Serpent's Tail: Ming China & The First Great East Asian War>The 120 Days of Sodom (a re-read)>1984 (a re-read)>I Am Legend>The Conquest of New Spain>Ascension: A Novel>Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa >Around the World in Eighty Days>Treasure Island>Machete Season: The Killers of Rwanda Speak>The South African Defense Force in the Border WarI have also acquired 50x more books than this and have read almost none of them. I don't think I've even read any of the books I got for my birthday this year (which is at least eight books)It's been a slow year, I'm mildly embarrassed. Please send help.
I've read 23 books so far this year.
>>25397650I'm still reading the book I started in January. I seriously don't know what's wrong with me.
>>25397871Gotta read sword of the lictor, thats the best one
>>25399657Yeah I got sword & citadel on prime day. Will probably read them soon since I really enjoyed the first 2 and got through them pretty quick
>>25397871Performative male
>>25401960>i heard that the issue in germany is that similarly to the US there's lobbying in parliament for big distributors like Warner Bros etc.cucked country, but not as bad as spain shutting down Cloudflare every time there's a la Liga match
>>2539765013 so far, if you count the NT and OT+Apocrypha as single books, and exclude stuff on Ao3.
>>253976506. which is more than I thought. I tried to stop reading for pleasure again, and it sucks, so I'm way behind my normal pace of ~35 books/10,000 pages.
Great list, anon! Catch-22 was heartbreaking, but also numbingly nonsensical. A Farewell to Arms is great: have you done For Whom the Bell Tolls? The earth moves... We have a lot of East Asian Overlaps. I wrote my honors thesis on Haruki Murakami: he is literally my living muse. Have you hit up South of the Border, West of the Sun? And there's something about After the Quake that I freakin' love. Spring Snow was amazing. I wonder if you've done Kawabata? Snow Country is on my all-time top 10 list. Also, if you're into Chinese authors, have you tried Gao Xingjian? Start with Soul Mountain and feel the world melt away...In answer to OP, I'm up to 15 = ~4800 pages, but I have a couple of long-term projects on the go, like the Old Testament this year. My reading goal is 10k pages, not books - more forgiving when one of this year's books was Olga Tokarczuk's Books of Jacob.
The Twelve Caesars is bonkers. Required reading for every one currently complaining that the sky is falling. We ain't there yet.
I just started reading Harry potter as I've never read it before. I'm a novice reader and all the books recommended here scare me. I know it's a children's series but I'm mostly reading to exercise my brain and honestly it's working. Maybe I'll get to /lit/'s level in a few years but I'm happy that I'm at at least reading. 30-40 mins a day
Reminder that gamifying and blasting through literature robs you of the time required to reflect on it and you're likely only getting a surface level experience.
I've lost all respect to book readers after I found out most of them read fiction, pop history and crappy essays. Neither of them require any attention to the content, you can just blaze through sentences and have the general idea of what the author is trying to say.Compare this to an economist who reads 50 different papers in a day for his PhD. Math formulas, complex concepts, actual shit that requires brain power... Wordcels would never.
>>2539765025 so far.
>>25400350>Who cares how many slop books you read a year? unless you are reading Moby-Dick tier works don't even count it as some accomplishment.Where in my original post did I say that reading a lot is somehow bad? I'm just calling out the idea that more equals better, when the majority of books on the lists of readers who boast about numbers are mostly filled with slop. One good book is worth a thousand bad ones. And by the way, you're not actually reading and processing Moby-Dick-tier stuff in a week. The idea that these works can simply be read and moved on from means you don't appreciate art, or at least aren't a very deep thinker. You're treating it like it IS slop at that point. >But im high IQ so I actually do process it that quickly!Thinking this is proof of low IQ.
>>25403440Literal coping. You gotta stop.
>>25402775I am >>25399649, I think you were replying to me. Did you use AI to write your post? It kinda reads like it.I've read all the important Hemingways (The Sun Also Rises, FtA, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Old man and the Sea, short stories, Garden of Eden), the first two are my favorite ones. For Whom the Bell Tolls is the Hemingway book where he begins turning into parody of himself, the line you used especially is perhaps the cringiest line of the book. The love story in it is just rubbish, which is sad since it's written by someone who wrote FtA and stuff like Up In Michigan.Kawabata is on my to do list, in fact I have old 1960s collection of his works in single tome that was released here in Czechia back then that I found in my grandma's library like 10 years ago when she died. Only Haruki Murakami books I've read are Norwegian Wood (hated it), Afterdark (loved it) and 1Q84 when I was in highschool like 15 years ago (forgot everything about it). out of the two Murakamis I overall prefer Ryu Murakami (although his books are kind of samey). My favorite japanese writer is Tanizaki and Endo. I used to like Mishima but more I read of him the less I like him, Spring Snow was alright tho, last year I've read Golden Pavilion and that sucked, but long ago I've read Confessions of Mask and Sailor who (..) and I adored those, so idk.Haven't yet gotten to Gao Xingjian - his books have been released here in 2010s in small numbers or they have sold well and are now hard to get, basically collector's items, the czech translation of Soul Mountain especially goes for like 50-100 dollars here which I am not paying for a book (I buy all my books). My favorite chinese writer is Yu Hua - To Live is one of my favorite books overall.
>>25397665so, 1
>>25397728Heyy I read that Franklin Scandal book this year too. Interesting stuff, thought it was one of the better conspiracy books
>>25402781you're one of the smartest anons in the thread, and I say that unironicallylmao at other anons speedrunning classic literature like it's some sort of achievement. Do they actually enjoy it?
>>25403714Half of /lit/ only reads books so they can get bragging rights in a Macedonian basket weaving forum
>>25403440the problem with this mindset is it doesn't take into account how much time someone has to read each day. if someone has 2-4 hours to spend each day reading, they can easily finish Moby Dick in just a few days. are they just...not supposed to read anything else for the rest of the week? why?replace Moby Dick with books that are 200-300 pages, and now you can finish 2-3 books in a week at the same reading pace. why are you not supposed to do this? because it's "art"? if i watch a Tarkovsky movie on monday am i not allowed to watch another movie for the rest of the week too? i think people are perfectly capable of appreciating and understanding classic works, and then move on to the next upon finishing.this seems like a really bad mindset to have when you have a finite amount of time here on earth.
>>25398261>>25400208Comics and manga are good its not like every novels some profound or deep shit. I enjoy both. As for novels ive read 3 so far this year but i only read casually and itd be alot more if you include partial to half reads
>>25397650Probably 10 too
>>25400306Literary fiction isn't hard to read, if a story makes you want to find out what happens next then you'll turn the page.
>>25403731>this seems like a really bad mindset to have when you have a finite amount of time here on earth.THAT seems like a bad mindset to have, like the goal is to just consume consume consume
>>25403754i mean yea you can just boil down the counterargument to 'CONSOOM' if you want.i want to experience many of the great works humans have produced, and i have a limited amount of time to do that. why would i arbitrarily limit myself, what is the benefit of that? if your only counterargument is 'DUDE IM NOT A CONSOOMER LIKE YOUUU' you're really not saying anything. i guess have fun on finishing your 5 books a year or whatever if that makes you happy.
>>25402501Just wait til I get ahold of infinite jest
>>25403766you're asking what benefit there is to savoring experiences rather than rushing through them?
>>25403808you can savor an experience as it's happening, that doesn't mean you have to bar yourself from reading post-finishing. And you're the one conflating reading at a reasonable pace as "rushing".
>>25403731>And by the way, you're not actually reading and processing Moby-Dick-tier stuff in a weekCan you read? I specifically said that there is a tier of literature so dense with meaning, themes, and interpretation (not to mention good prose) that you have to spend time actually processing it. So filling your mind with more equally dense reading in a short time frame will obviously result in less time to process each of these ideas, with the end result being a less rich reading of the texts. I'm not telling you to 'STOP READING,' rather to pace your reading with this in mind. I don't hate 'slop,' by the way, because that's the point of slop. I'm suggesting that going from dense, top-tier literature into a history book the next week will give you better returns than slamming 50 weeks straight of the top works literature has to offer.>if someone has 2-4 hours to spend each day reading, they can easily finish Moby Dick in just a few days. are they just...not supposed to read anything else for the rest of the week? why? Might I be so bold as to suggest that you could actually spend the rest of your week rereading Moby-Dick? That the idea that once you finish the last page the book has nothing else to offer you is actually the mindset of a fool? I don't think you or anyone else would actually disagree that the book has more to offer, just because you're 'done,' that doesn't mean it doesn't still have riches for you to plunder. This the modern consumerist mindset fueled by the idea that no, the thing I just read wasn't 'IT'—the next work might just be 'IT,' though! If you have never done this, try it. There's a chance you'll discover you were wrong about your reading process all along.>I think people are perfectly capable of appreciating and understanding classic works, and then move on to the next upon finishingTry reading a few threads on this board and you will soon eat your words.
I fell out of love with reading for several years after I graduated, only recently dipping my toes back into it. So far this year, I've read (in some cases re-read):Invisible Cities - Italo CalvinoThe Stranger - Albert CamusThomas More - UtopiaWays of Seeing - John BergerThe Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan KunderaDistant Relations - Carlos FuentesTao Te Ching - Lao TsuMonkey - Wu Ch'eng-enHamlet - ShakespeareThe Vegetarian - Han KangWe - Yevgeny ZamyatinThe Road - Cormac McCarthyThe Old Man and the Sea - Ernest HemingwayThe Memory Police - Yoko OgawaInvisible Cities remains my favourite, but I had the most fun reading Arthur Waley's translation of Monkey.
>>25403812>you can savor an experience as it's happeningdude what do you think the word "savor" means
>>25403935>dude what do you think the word "savor" meansBasically the same as edging right?
>>25403714i promise you i am not smart. you guys are on another level
>>25401004>I buy sixty books for every book I read.This is based if one has good taste, which you seem to.
>>254001991 (one)
>>25402781>Maybe I'll get to /lit/'s level in a few years but I'm happy that I'm at at least reading. 30-40 mins a dayTrust me, It's not actually that hard. Once you get around to reading the "difficult" works, you'll quickly discover this. You shouldn't put off hard stuff for too long either, each time I have finished a "hard" book I have always felt like my reading skill improved drastically. Reading difficulty text teaches you HOW to read difficult texts, when you flip back to those early pages of the novel after finishing it, you'll notice how reading it has suddenly become child's play.If you play video games, reading easy works to "level up" is more like grinding in a lvl 1 zone as lvl 30 character. Reading Harry Potter does NOT teach you how to read War and Peace - only reading War and Peace does that. It's totally fine to read easy stuff to build up your reading habit, but don't make the mistake of thinking you level up your actual reading level much by doing so. Reality is that a big part of why it's never actually that hard is that you're not really doing it alone. The idea that "good" readers sit in a vacuum and puzzle out all these hard texts purely from their own brainpower is a myth. There are massive amounts of resources out there (/lit/ obviously being one of them) to draw deeper understanding of these texts from. Which, again, trust me, everybody here does or they wouldn't browse the board.
>>2539765015 so far, I aim for about 25~ a year because going for higher means you end up avoiding longer texts to meet some gay metric. The main goal is just to read about 1-2 hours a day.
>>25397871I see Wolfe and I know you're just a 4chan memer not a real reader
>>25405162It was a recommendation from one of my friends. It's good, you like it
>>25403829This is why I don't take people who say they've read a high number of books this year seriously. They're either reading literal baby books or are just skimming the words and forgetting what they read immediately afterwards which defeats the point of reading a classic.
>>2539765030Nice, even number. Perhaps it's time to stop and spend the rest of the year gooning.
>>25403709>thought it was one of the better conspiracy booksYeahh I bought the John deCamp book a few years ago but honestly, without reading it I admit, I always thought the Nick Bryan book would be superior so I just eventually bought that and read that instead. AFAIK all the info that's in the deCamp book is in the Bryant book.The thing that I would like to know, which isn't really brought up at all in the Nick Bryant book, but because I've read The Ultimate Evil by Maury Terry I'm wondering if there's a connection between The Finders & Scientology/the Process Church of the Final Judgement. I would figure there is, simply on the virtue of both cults being creations of MKU.
>>25405225Well, let's also be fair... You could also be fast-tracking the processing of it by spending a large amount of time reading analyses of the work or listening to other people give their opinions on it. If it's something like Moby-Dick, obviously you'll be able to find a lot of that. This would result in a rich reading while also resulting in a large number of books read yearly while maintaining high comprehension.
>>25405306You could do that for a few books but that kind of engagement isn't possible for some of the numbers fags throw out even if they're an unemployed hikikineet.
