You guys meme a lot about how you shouldn't be reading for the plot. What should I pay attention to when I'm reading?

You're asking people who literally never read anything. Might as well ask about marriage advice on a pick up artist forum.

There is nothing wrong with reading for plot. There is nothing wrong with stories, as such. The human mind makes sense of reality through stories. Twas ever thus, twill ever be thus.

Story and plot and can be distinguished, but both basically turn on the question "What happens next?"

Meaningful dramatic action, as developed and set forth by a talented writer, goes deeper than ideas -- "there are more things in heaven and Earth, user, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

A good writer can tell a story that has meaning on multiple levels; that can enlighten us about the human condition; that can penetrate into its depths. E.g., Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

A great writer sees yet further.

To refuse the call of stories is to deny what makes us human. Good luck with that, faggots.

Ideas, themes, metaphors, and underlying aspects.
Lord of the rings isnt about some short fuck putting a ring in some lava.
Old man and the sea isn't about some old man and the sea.

There is no point in the way Veeky Forums regards those aspects so highly, because it's null. No user here will use that knowledge in any meaningful way. You can read Heidegger and Kant all you want, but all it will do is give you "To intelligent to" frustrations because your aversion to normies and "brainlets". Reading for the phil is your own downfall.

Fuck off. You are confusing plot with story.

Sophomore enligh teacher told me that elements in the story that are repeated throughout means the author is saying that it is significant to what he is trying to say.

Are lessons better learned through parables?
Are they better retained?

Read up on literary theory. Plot is really only there for a novel to be interesting to plebs. Is there any reason why an author must give closure to a story? Can plebs not imagine an ending other than the one presented to them from a narrator?

Plot is the medium that parables and ideas are told through. The plot must have an ending because the idea must have a conclusion. Both parables and plot must be subject to cause and effect

it isn't that you shouldn't enjoy the plot, but it shouldn't be a major hinderance in enjoying anotherwise fruitful story. If a story isn't really about the plot, or the plot is purposefully contorted, caring too much about the plot can be harmful to appreciating the novel.

There are exceptions, maybe the book has no redeeming qualities and the plot is bad, obviously criticizing the plot as well is fair.

Reading "solely" for the plot is a very reductive manner of viewing art, as if you learned your art critique from cinema sins. Which is why I meme about it at least.

>ideas aren't told through intertextuality, metaphors, mimesis...

The last chapter of Coetzee's Foe has more meaning than the rest of the novel, yet is around five pages. It's also cyclic, so there really is no ending. Same goes with Beckett's Molloy... the idea of a author-narrator or unreliable storytelling is more important than the plot, which is arbitrary

Depends on the reading. In the last year I've been solely doing two kinds of reading:

1. esoteric reading that combines some text with as much research I can do on the time period's rhetoric, symbolism, art history, political history, mythology, etc. and;

2. applying the literary theorist Joshua Landy's ideas about authors as personal trainers of your brain. Texts like Dracula becomes a personal adventure and puzzle where I put myself in character's viewpoints and work out what sort of fantasy "life lessons" I can learn by avoiding a vampire, e.g. to stop something preternaturally powerful I need to combine both occult and naturalist views (like Van Helsing).

This has been a lot of fun on re-readings of certain books.

so because that one book is like that, it means every other book is so.... right.

You might have a slight form of autism. Not joking.

Ghosts and titilating scenes are for plebs the story or plot is the skeletal system to any literary work. Serves as a foundation for the author to express ideas and hook readers.

Ah, yes, Veeky Forums is great at diagnosing autism, which I'm sure you actually understand from your years spent studying psychology and psychiatry.

No, I'm just writing an essay on them. Also, if you haven't realised plot is dead after post-modernism, you haven't been reading much after the 50s. The only big post-modern book I can think of that uses plot is IJ, which is using it more as a metaplot

this entire post: Autism speaks.

Don't project, darling. Back to your ritalin, vidya and sperging at mom for asking you to pause the online gaming.

>What should I pay attention to when I'm reading?
interesting shit that makes you go "huh, that shits interesting"
you then proceed to figure out if it something that is actually interesting if it's just gay.

Everything. The story, the writing style, the word choice, the characters, emotions, the meaning... Anything a specific book can offer.
Nobody reads for the plot, btw. The plot is the backbone that can't function without the rest of the organism (ie, it matters *how* something is written, not only what). Even ASOIAF offers much more than a mere story, with certain literary tools it has to make you interested in what happens. You wouldn't care at all about the same story if it was presented quickly, through bullet points, without any psychologically defined characters, for example.

>reading book instead of letting Veeky Forums tell you what to think
What a fucking pleb.

damn i love leila hatami
is this from "man"?