We always have these threads about depressed people wanting to better themselves by exploring the wonderful world of...

We always have these threads about depressed people wanting to better themselves by exploring the wonderful world of books and I think we need a simple guide they can all turn to.

After much consideration, here are a list of books to read through to turn you into a healthy happy human being.

1. Harry Potter - These books will provide you with a comfy fantasy world to help you forget about real world feels. These books you make you feel, but in the context of fiction, you'll help deal with real feels.

2. A Song of Ice and Fire - It may seem like these books are depressing, and they are, but like above, they will help you deal with your feels better, but on a mature level. You'll learn about how history and politics shape our lives and maybe you'll learn to care about real world issues and give you a reason to help change the world.

3. Meditations - this is by a famous Roman emperor and it contains a lot of helpful advice on being a calm rational person in the face of a problem. Most philosophy books are concerned with weird metaphysical questions, but some of them are actually very helpful in letting you live a good life and this is one of them.

4. The Odyssey - Odysseus is an example of a character who's done just as much good IRL as most real people. He has helped as a role model for everyone finding their way home in the journey of our lives.

4.5 (optional). Ulysses - This book is a modern day retelling of The Odyssey. It isn't really necessary to improve your life, and it isn't meant to be. It's just a fun mix of styles and it's packed with many literary references which you may not get, but that's okay. If you think this sounds like a fun book, you can have fun with it, but it being mostly style over substance, it's okay to skip out on it for now.

5. Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace is often treated as a saint because he realized all of the terrible cynicism caused by irony in our modern era, and knew that the only way to defeat it is to live life more sincerely. Infinite Jest is a very long and difficult book, but it's very rewarding. You'll feel stronger when you finish it and learn to better live in our cynical ironic world.

You should also know that you shouldn't feel bad if these books take a long time to finish. If you have your own pace for reading, then it's okay to follow it because reading is about improving yourself and you know what's best for yourself.

I hope this guide will be very helpful for you. Happy reading!

Screenshotted, i'll get a Song of Ice and Fire tomorrow
Thanks mate, i really needed this list, i hope you have a fine day

I want to give you a hug, OP. You're either a brave sincere pleb or an expert baiter. Either way, I applaud you. As for additional recommendations, I would add Brothers K, to help you think through and understand problems of faith.

Best thread on Veeky Forums in ages DESU.

I'd like to add another book to this list.

The Holy Bible.

Thanks for your post snoopy

sticky this thread now

Really too complicated. Exactly the type of material Veeky Forums needs to forego if they want to normalize and resume their place in happy society.

It is very complicated, I agree. The most complicated book in existence. But it saved my life, I believe it will save the lives of others.

Look, sappy as it may be, but stuff like this is why Veeky Forums is the only board I still frequent.

Watership Down needs to be added to this list.

I take it this is aimed at plebs. Remove ulyssess and IJ. Seriously. Add The Stranger and Stoner. Possibly the Myth of Sisyphus as well.

Mother kekking kill yourself.

Thank you OP.

It seems you have taken the messages in these books to heart.

Well crafted post ironic bait 9/10

>people thinking this is a genuine thread
What the fuck is going on?

>he realized all of the terrible cynicism caused by irony in our modern era, and knew that the only way to defeat it is to live life more sincerely

Who cares if it's bait. If it is, OP is only baiting himself. If some innocent pleb starts reading one of the books he suggests, he has made the world a better place.

What's happening is part of a phenomenon I wrote about a couple of years ago when I was asked to comment on Rowling. I went to the Yale University bookstore and bought and read a copy of "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone." I suffered a great deal in the process. The writing was dreadful; the book was terrible. As I read, I noticed that every time a character went for a walk, the author wrote instead that the character "stretched his legs." I began marking on the back of an envelope every time that phrase was repeated. I stopped only after I had marked the envelope several dozen times. I was incredulous. Rowling's mind is so governed by cliches and dead metaphors that she has no other style of writing.

But when I wrote that in a newspaper, I was denounced. I was told that children would now read only J.K. Rowling, and I was asked whether that wasn't, after all, better than reading nothing at all? If Rowling was what it took to make them pick up a book, wasn't that a good thing?

It is not. "Harry Potter" will not lead our children on to Kipling's "Just So Stories" or his "Jungle Book." It will not lead them to Thurber's "Thirteen Clocks" or Kenneth Grahame's "Wind in the Willows" or Lewis Carroll's "Alice."

Later I read a lavish, loving review of Harry Potter by the same Stephen King. He wrote something to the effect of, "If these kids are reading Harry Potter at 11 or 12, then when they get older they will go on to read Stephen King." And he was quite right. He was not being ironic. When you read "Harry Potter" you are, in fact, trained to read Stephen King.

Our society and our literature and our culture are being dumbed down, and the causes are very complex. I'm 73 years old. In a lifetime of teaching English, I've seen the study of literature debased. There's very little authentic study of the humanities remaining. My research assistant came to me two years ago saying she'd been in a seminar in which the teacher spent two hours saying that Walt Whitman was a racist. This isn't even good nonsense. It's insufferable.

Harry Potter isn't so bad. It's only entertainment. The Harry Potter evangelists have a point when they say Harry Potter at least gets kids reading. The series was not my introduction to reading but it balances the line between digestible/entertaining and a well thought-out narrative that I could enjoy it when I was 6-7 years old. It's important to introduce children to reading in any way possible in this day and age, and if it takes Harry Potter to drag them away from the iPad then I say by all means let them read it.

As a young adult, I didn't enjoy "Wind in the Willows," "A Wrinkle in Time," or "The Hobbit" any less having read things like Harry Potter or The Golden Compass. It's not like J.K. Rowling is turning kids off good literature; if anything she's doing quite the opposite.

The Metamorphosis
Great Expectations
The Giver

I like reading depressing stories because I don't have to force myself to be happy to do it. It's exhausting to constantly pretend that everything is okay. Also, shitty times are easier to get through when you consider that you're not the only person to have a shitty life.

Why is Prisoner of Azkaban accepted as "the best"?

Thanks, i didn't get your compliment, but a compliment is a compliment i guess

>shitty times are easier to get through when you consider that you're not the only person to have a shitty life.

Yeah, me too. I think no book will make you feel happy or content if you have a predisposition to suffering and general psychic malaise.

Really hope the OP is bait, though.

I got diagnosed with depression literally weeks after finishing Harry Potter. I'm pretty sure JK Rowling ruined my life

>Really hope the OP is bait, though.
why?

It's the only movie with a competent director

This post gave me depression

I really think The Myth of Sisyphus should be on here. It's an extensive thought on human emotion, suicide and the motivations of it, with the conclusion that suicide is not a legitimate option. It's one of the only things I've read that tries to consolidate the fact that lige is meaningless and absurd yet still worth living

Good to see you including some pleb-tier books on there too. No, no one is suggesting that Rowling or Martin have beautiful prose or groundbreaking ideas or any of these qualities that we value so highly in writers. What do have is a brilliant imagination and the ability to construct a world that we can escape to for a few hours and escape the misery of our own lives. Plus, they're so popular that it means we can talk about them in real life to real people, instead of anonymous NEETs dotted around the world. It's ok to say that you enjoy books which are objectively pretty shit.

Wait... Really? Why? If anything that book would only make people paranoid as hell

> 73 years old on Veeky Forums
This post made me quit Veeky Forums. Imagining myself being a senior on Veeky Forums is just depressing in more ways than one.

Therefore this post should be on the list to aspire for something greater

Good riddance

t. Harold

Everyone in this thread needs to kill themselves

Including you?

>Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace
Why not put the Sorrow of Young Werther while you're at it?

Harold, do you spend all day shitposting and posting pictures of yourself? Seems like a pretty comfy life.

pls go away

I spend all day re-reading the canon and shitting on children's authors.

Pleb.

Seriously question: is it good? I liked the description and consider reading it, but has not seen any discussion about it.

No one discusses it because it's so long. Like why bother when you can just get your laffs and gaffes on the Infinite Jest that is the channels.

Get out.

If you're depressed you should read the Moomin books.
They've helped me a lot.

Infinite Jest is good but if you force it too much it's beyond tedious. Also really (amd really in a way weirdly) it's not suited to a typical e book format. Physical book and multiple bookmarks is really the way to go.

Sorrows of Young Werther you can just read but I'm really just making a joke that suggesting IJ is more likely to make you want to kill yourself. SoYW you may or may not know is infamous for also making people want to kill themselves.

It is good. It diagnoses a lot of problems with contemporary American culture (and thus global culture). It doesn't propose any solutions, but hey. Who knows what would work for literally everyone who feels disenfranchised?

How does Sincerity in the sense of Wallace help you with violent situations in the world, or at least career politics?
I feel that an ironic mindset is what makes you avoid trouble - or rather a sincere honest way of living will get you into some fights.

Please answer.

Having a shield of irony that you can call forth at will is the only way to survive in the modern day world. Without irony, you will forever be a victim to the looming talons of the ironic.

This thread cured my depression but gave me cancer. At least I'll die soon, thanks OP

didn't DFW kill himself though?

You can live and experience life with both irony and sincerity, there is no reason to purely accept one or the other and apply it to all experiences/interactions with the world

Do you think internet forums are a phase for boys aged 15-25? That you're a pathetic piece of filth if you still use the internet by 40?

You're already a lost cause if you sit around shitposting on /v/ or /b/ 5+ hours daily and think that every other user is the same.

He did it because he couldn't handle the rampant irony in the world. We should all so our best to get rid of irony so we don't lose any more sincere souls like DFW.

I just got an existential crisis

thread of the year imo

>but it being mostly style over substance

I literally want to kill with my own hands the person who started this meme.

>replying to bloomian pasta

get rekt fag

>Later I read a lavish, loving review of Harry Potter by the same Stephen King. He wrote something to the effect of, "If these kids are reading Harry Potter at 11 or 12, then when they get older they will go on to read Stephen King." And he was quite right.

my favorite part