ITT: awkward endeavors and confessions regarding Veeky Forumserature-related things

ITT: awkward endeavors and confessions regarding Veeky Forumserature-related things.

> younger brother is adamant that he will make a career out of writing
> he tells me all his friends think his writing is good
> I say I want to support him as I'm interested in writing too and that I'll read some of his work
> he sends me it by e-mail, I open it
> it's full of typos, mixed tenses, over-use of hyphens and semi-colons, especially when they're not appropriate, the vocabulary is mostly monosyllabic and he doesn't seem to realise what standard punctuation is
> he doesn't think he needs to improve
> he refuses to ask for tips or look to further his writing experience or education outside of just sitting in his room for a few hours
> he tells me I just read his fourth draft
> most of it reads like i'm-so-dark-and-edgy-look-at-me blog posting
> he rarely actually reads and has only read a handful of Lovecraft short stories and YA fiction
> his favourite book is Eragon
> he's 19 years old

Is he too far gone?

Anyone got that pasta saved about the guy going into the book shop with no books and The Great Gatsby has a back 2 school sticker on it? He farts uncontrollably

Dog-earing your own books, as long as the pages aren't glossy, is completely fine.

I always have a reluctance to read door stoppers because I know, as busy as I am, I'll only read 20 pages a day and it'll take me almost a year to finish them. I'm looking at War & Peace specifically.

this, or false starts galore
>1/3 through count of monte cristo
>restart months later
>1/2 through next reading
>have to restart again
Good thing I love it...

It certainly feels like its own reward once you manage to finish them though huh

ill know when i finally finish one, but i imagine so ;_;

I don't even read.

I can never tell if people like this are serious when they browse Veeky Forums. Why even come here if you don't read? Why wouldn't you read if on some level you have an interest in visiting a literature board?

> his favourite book is Eragon
> he's 19 years old

People like this don't exist. Quit spreading slanderous filth on our pristine board, thank you.

I'm part of my university's 'book club' they exist lol

I have just started again and have read very little of what Veeky Forums recommends.

On a related note: how do I read more quickly and have a more vivid imagination? I read when I was a kid and did so very quickly and got completely immersed in the book. Now I have trouble picturing anything at all and take about 40 minutes to read a 30 page chapter.

Will it just come back with practice?

i think people are not worth considering as humans based on their aesthetic preferences and the kind of author they take seriously.

Yes, it will come back with practice, you also learn to read faster with practice

I guess it might depend on the book. If you're trying to read Moby Dick quickly, for example, you're probably not going to pick up on what makes that book fascinating.

I personally just read at my own pace, and depending on the book, that can be very slow or surprisingly quick. I'd recommend just taking the time you need, maybe setting a reading schedule (I try 50 pages a day but I know others will either do more or less).

>Will it just come back with practice?
No

How do I regain my vivid imagination then?

I'm smarter than any one of you, but I choose to mingle for my delight and entertainment.

I dog-ear the glossy pages of hardcover library books.

How does that make you feel?

Cannabis.

it's time to put him down user.

don't listen to him

you'll just fuck up your attention.

cannabis or any hallucinogens aren't going to make anything better.

deal with the facts that you aren't a little kid reading kid books anymore and that "visualizing" isn't necessary.

>when I started reading I was excited that a possibly byproduct of being better-read would be to better connect with cute girls
>now I hate talking to almost anybody about books because most people have shit taste
>I quickly get impatient with girls who talk to me when I read, or who sit near me contriving to be seen
>now I just want to be left alone with my books until I die

Take brief notes/chapter summaries so you can pick up where you left off. Monte Cristo is long but not overly complicated, but I can definitely see how you'd get lost if you put it down for a while.

>now I just want to be left alone with my books until I die
iktf

Wow, thank you!

>tfw every single morning I have coffee and become convinced that I mystically understand the zeitgeist and I have the solution which will propel us to a neo-neo-Hegelo-Kantian synthesis in this long dark night of the soul where we're all dynamite and no transvaluation and we dwell on the falsity of the shadows without ever thinking of leaving the cave and scribble down 21 pages of notes for a magnum opus I'll never write and then the coffee wears off and I forget everything and by 5PM I'm pacing around worrying that I'm a fraud and I'm going to fail my program and my adviser is laughing at me and in exactly three months I'll be a dishevelled hobo and maybe I just have toxoplasma gondi from cat shit in my brain making me super aggressive and upbeat in a way that doesn't correspond to reality or real results
>tfw I'm considering doing cocaine but I'm afraid my head will explode and spontaneously reform into thousands of tiny Hegels and Kants who immediately start strangling each other and this will all be for nothing

I can't stand poetry in general for the most part, but any poem over a page long that isn't an epic poem, i just can't handle it

Fuck you Wordsworth

>list literature as one of my interests in tinder description
>qt matches and messages me
>do you like virginia woolf
>i've never read any woolf
>decide to be honest and say no
>several messages later qt mentions Joyce
>say i've only read Portrait
>noticeable drop in qt's interest in me
>eventually stops responding to me
>qt thinks i'm a poser

>not being familiar with this pasta.

i mean, you are.

>interest in lit
>only read one Joyce novel and no Woolf

Yes, you are a poser

This board has become so meme it thinks the meme trilogy is the entirety of literature.

Let me guess. You came to Veeky Forums without ever having read much beyond the assigned reading in high school and were awestruck by how hi-brow and intelligent and well-read everyone is here. Average IQ of 147, smartest board on Veeky Forums. Not wanting to be left out of the party, you bought all the meme books which were probably way over your reading level and got very little out of them because you were a baby trying to learn calculus without even knowing algebra.

Wow, that really struck a nerve eh? I mean, wow, you are MAD

Am I wrong? You can be honest, this is a cringe thread after all.

For me personally, yes you are very wrong. I read stuff that Veeky Forums considers hard pretty easily and i read pretty often.

Woolf isn't really a meme to read here, nor is anything from Joyce beyond Ulysses & Finnegans Wake. But if you even remotely like books from 1920 onward, you owe it to yourself to read some Woolf

kek

I use spark notes sometimes

This guy gets it.

Eh yes and no. I have found reading after smoking can be very pleasant and rewarding, though the line between high enough and too high is very fine.

Do you suggest some kind of progression for beginners who want to get into literature? Where should I begin?

What do you like to read? What themes and ideas and genres (inb4 butthurt) do you like?

I paid $200 to attend a writer's conference in the vain hope of pitching my manuscript to an agent.

For most of the morning I walked around in a cold sweat eating lemon danishes and drinking little paper cups of orange juice. Everyone was mingling, exchanging phone numbers, explaining their book ideas. I saw a guy twice my age wearing those shoes that are shaped like feet.

After a while we gathered in the auditorium and some guest speaker who I'd never heard of before started cranking out platitudes like "Writing a book is like being a plumber..."

After that I attended a few of the panels, where professional agents who looked more like recently graduated college students spent 1-2 hours telling us information I could've googled for free. I did some quick research on the agents in attendance; after learning they primarily represented Women's and YA writers, I skipped the lunch event and drove home and took a long nap.

He's a shit who is defensive about his taste and hasnt even read Virginia Woolf

Pay no mind

I long term loaned The Voyage Out to an ex when we split but I dont imagine I'm ever getting it back

if im not getting baited you need to see a psychiatrist

but i think im getting baited

ive never seen anyone so unironically mad about normies before hahaha

also did you ever read about how joyce (i think it was him) said that he thought that anybody could read ulysses? that its message was so powerfully pervasive that anybody who took the time to read the difficult prose would get to its underlying meaning

I haven't read Virginia Woolf yet, except the small amount I did in highschool. She's excellent, but I haven't gotten around to reading her.

He'll grow out of it, give him some time. Just needs to get knocked on his ass first by someone his age, like when he first enters college and thinks he's the shit still. I cringe at how I was at that age.

There's a few authors with Joyce as their last name, so beware.

>Yes
>No
>Maybe

It's okay user, I have a little brothet who's pretty dumb with artistic goals too. I'm constantly battling with him so he doesn't do some Chris-chan shit and tarnish my last name.

One day at a time my man

:(

when I was 19 all I wrote was action packed shorties describing WOD adventures I had with friends.
I don't think I even understood the word nuance.
Now I have three half finished books in a cringe-worthy hybrid zone of scifi and Russian novels in which nothing happens.
actually not sure what my point is anymore.

a boy from school occasionally sends me memes from this board. i don't understand them. i'm into basic shit tier memes. i feel like he has no one else to send these fresh, obscure memes to. should i try to learn what these memes mean or ask him to bring his meme standards down for me? honestly, it's quite the dilemma

This is exactly why I came here

with the Greeks

>> he's 19 years old

that man is fucking gone this is beyond memery

this hits too close to home

Not a pasta, user. I honestly typed it out yesterday because it's true. My younger brother continues to ask me for advice though because he sees me as well-read (in comparison to him I guess, I wouldn't consider myself well-read).

i'm a bit triggered, not so triggered that i'm furious with rage and anger (rather than furious with joy) but just triggered enough that i had a little cry and now i need to shut my eyes

I know this feel. I started reading more frequently as my book collection grew and I knew it wasn't going to read itself, but now I've become more interested in reading rather than socialising.

i found the psych major

Lovecraft is dope tho, I dont know how he can write like shit if he has read and understood Lovecraft. He is a bitch to get trough.

Never lend out books. You'll never see them again and they are rarely read by those you loan them to.

Lovecraft is enjoyable but wow are you fucking kidding me

No, im not kidding you, Lovecraft is amazing once you get into it. Im not talking about the "geekie nerf omg I luv Lovecraft" who as only read short stories or The call of Cthulhu. Look at his work, in fantasy he is on par if not above Tolkien, his prose is dense and complicated but it Works to create a sense of reality, suspense and tension that goes perfectly with his stories. He is so underated that is not even funny.

Not him, but I would at least expect a Lovecraft reader to be able write above a sub-literate level. His writing is full of fifty-cent words and complex sentence structures.

Then he has only read 5 pages of Lovecraft and went to Twitter to post some Cthulhu fanart with "That is not dead wich can eternal die yet with strange aeons even death may die"

E U P H O R I C
U
P
H
O
R
I
C

I met someone yesterday who didn't realise Harry Potter was a series of books and they thought JK Rowling was the director of all 8 movies.

Not a fan of Harry Potter myself, but surely this is unforgivable.

...

Shut up.

>projecting this hard

lmao

I wish to see this too

I'm not OP, hombre. Just a passerby.

I really don't know, I enjoyed slaughterhouse 5 a lot. I'm really enjoying 1984, but honestly I haven't read much past high school required reading. Oh I loved the fuck out of Macbeth. I'm a former theatre kid, so if there are any Veeky Forums tier dramas, I'm sure I would enjoy those. I'm not really much for fantasy but I'm sure I could enjoy anything if I gave it a shot. I was thinking I might read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep after 1984, but I haven't really decided.