Read this 3 years ago, needs a reread.

Anyone here read anything from James Joyce?

I will probably start reading Dubliners soon. Should be his most accessible work.

glad you liked it

still one of my favorite reads this year. everybody I've recommended it to has enjoyed it too

only his letters

His dirty letter to his wife but that's about it

Great book. First murakami ive ever read and i understand the critiques now but man he really knew how to set up a mood for the book.

Best book by Nietzsche?, kind of want to get in to his work and heard most of his books are really good

zarathustra is his self proclaimed opus

Going to give this a read

Did you already read some philosophy books?
If not don't start on Nietzsche.

Oh nvm then lol, only read Camus, but the videos I’ve seen on Nietzsche were really interesting so I thought about reading a book of him

Nietzsche is a pretty good good standalone philosopher you don’t really need to read anyone else to get a good understanding, and to get into philosophy outside of academia is really only possible through reading through who interests you , and reading them would open up some other avenues of philosophers that would interest same thing happened with me by reading Marx it got me started reading Hegel.

I don’t remember what book it was i read first from Nietzche it’s been a while but i remember it was the one where he starts off s***ting on other philosophers like Socrates for trying to examine life rather than live it.

Really great horror short story collection, highly recommend it.

The centerpiece short story is a wild one.

It’s centered around a couple of investigators looking into a series of kidnapped children who almost all collectively turn up around the same time, some having been lost for years but never aged, some confirmed to have been dead yet appear unharmed.

Friend of mine has an philosophy degree and strongly advised to not start with Nietzsche, or any philosopher(except Plato), instead start with an introduction to philosophy. That’s also what I noticed to be the most popular response on internet to get into philosophy. I did do it that way, but I guess everyone is different, so if that worked for you, great.

I started with Thomas Nagel - What does it all mean. A great introduction to philosophy that makes you really think about the big questions without giving an answer. That convinced me to reading more philosophy.

I guess why a lot of people are suggesting by starting with an introduction instead of starting to read a philosopher without any prior knowledge about it is that you can get overwhelmed.

Loads of people give up on philosophy after reading Nietzsche for example without any prior knowledge , because they don’t get it and think it’s extremely difficult.

See above posts. Feel free to try Nietzsche, but I’d suggest reading Thomas Nagel - What does it all mean first.

Great and short introduction to philosophy

disagree with starting with Plato, if ur reading philosophy as a hobby if u try to start from the start to catch up to where philosophy is now just so you can read a certain author. it’ll take years and you’ll be burnt out. It’ll be much more beneficial if you start with what your interested in, and checking out secondary readings on them before you start or after ur done reading Nietzsche to get a better understanding.

Your not gonna understand everything after ur done ur first reading but that’s fine philosophy books often take multiple readings to understand “fully” but if your goal is to understand Nietzsche and the discussion around him i think it’s sufficient enough to read him and at least try to get background information on what he’s responding to and the era he lived in, you don’t really need to go through the whole canon of philosophy.

i don’t really need to read anything by the Skeptics for example to understand that Hegel is responding to them in the first chapter of POS or read anything by Kant to get what the object in itself means, would reading them give me a better understanding absolutely but i wouldn’t been interested in reading Kant if i haven’t read Hegel or Marx for Hegel.

Reading an introduction won’t hurt tho, i only read an introduction to Greek philosophies after i already developed an interest in philosophy in general through reading Marx not before.

On the giving up point i feel that though many people aren’t used to reading challenging books is that most people aren’t accustomed to reading challenging text and rather just breeze through it expecting to pick everything up, you can see that with people often trying to read the most they can rather than getting the most they can from a book.

@Marble id rec going through Nietzsche stanford encyclopedia page to see what part of his work interests you and to get his overall gist and then check out what literature you want to read whether from him or maybe secondary literature

plato.stanford.edu/entries/nietzsche/#DiffNietPhilWrit

Suttree by Cormac McCarthy

5/5

McCarthy's Suttree is a southern gothic odyssey in its truest sense. Those infamous Cormac prose flow and move like the warm breeze as you follow the main protagonist through life on the Tennessee river. Life filled with vagrants, w****s, brawlers, derelicts, b******s, and voodoo. While Cormac's words describe a world less than inhabitable its not without an off-kilter sense of humor that separate Suttree from his other novels. This is one you can reread and still enjoy with the best of em.

For fans of the southern divinity: Faulkner, Flannery, and McCarthy's own works. The music of Tom Waits and Nick Cave. And if you enjoy fishing !

5/5
A book detailing how and why modern urbanization leads to the proliferation of squatter settlements. First time I heard about necropolises- communities of squatters that basically repurposed graveyards into living spaces - was in this book
. A great read if youre in to urban planning, economics etc

Great f***ing book

This book inspired seinfeld ending

I loved this book though. You can definitely tell Albert Camus is a philosopher first. The plot and characters of this book clearly convey his views. I got really engrossed in the second half (court) of the book. It was just society condemning the way this man lived his life. Super good. I loved it.

“Crying Lot of 49” by Thomas Pynchon

This was a different read. I’d have to give it a 6.5/10. I am not the biggest fan of how Pynchon constructs his sentences and his word use. Feels like he had a thesaurus next to him for every word, but the story was fun to follow along with.

I went to go start “Mason and Dixon” by Thomas Pynchon, but I only got a third of the way through. I’m going to let that one rest for a little while.

I instead read “CivilWarLand in Bad Decline” by George Saunders

That is a 10/10 short story book for me. Felt like it had everything a short story book needed. I felt that every story was concise. I of course wanted to live in each of these worlds a tad longer, but really found no complaints with any of the stories.

Now I am onto “Dubliners” by James Joyce.

illiteratal poster here
how do guys read more than 2 pgs w/o being distracted

This is normal bro everyone goes through this

It’s solved through Willpower and patience

Willpower because you have to sometimes tell yourself “just one more page..” or “no, sit down and read it instead of getting up”

Patience because it doesn’t just change overnight, it’s not a linear thing, sometimes you regress sometimes you progress

I do still just get up after two pages. However It’s a lot less now than when I started. Keep reading; Eventually you will be able to do three,then five pages, then ten.

Just keep reading and keep trying to train the attention span, phones and the internet have f***ed us