Veeky Forums confessions

I enjoy stephen king

I sometimes don't read things because they're too popular

i own three copies of infinite jest
one i bought in highschool
one i stole from a girl i beta orbited freshman year who later transferred schools
and one someone gave me because they thought it was funny i had two
i still haven't finished and don't want to finish infinite jest

if I see a girl reading a book in public, and I can see what it is, I strike a conversation. If it's John Greene, I ask them if they like the book, and when they say, "Yeah, it's great," (and if it's Looking for Alaska, I smile along and agree because I've read it, even though I hated Looking for Alaska, even before I got into Veeky Forums, and if it's Paper Towns or Fault in Our Stars, I tell them I've only read Looking for Alaska, but I need to get around to reading more John Greene).

The conversation never goes beyond that, I tell them to have fun, encounters like this have only happened a handful of times, and I can't remember ever seeing a girl reading anything at their leisure above YA at my university.

I like children's books too. I read this book a few days ago and it was pretty fun.

But worst of all: I'll keep some big boy book near by so when I hear someone coming I'll switch them out and pretend I was reading something like the Critique of Pure Reason the entire time.

Got any recs for emotional/tearjerking books?

I'm pretty dead inside after everything that's happened this year and I want to be moved again.

Probable autism haha

I enjoyed the television show more

I judge people based on my standards of literary quality that I've gradually adopted overtime on this board and am slightly ashamed of that fact. Like, today I was on a micro-date getting ice cream with this girl and she told me how her favorite writer was Fitzgerald and my first thought was 'god how typical and boring and overrated.' Then I realized that those were not entirely my own thoughts and that my only encounter with Fitzgerald was reading the Great Gatsby six years ago and that I can't actually argue for myself one way or another about the man's writing and that internally I had become an abhorrent snob barren of all intellectual authenticity. And in retrospect, The Great Gatsby is a pretty solid book.

>and one someone gave me because they thought it was funny i had two
lmao

I don't read as much as I subtly make people think I do—like you fuckers. It's pretty pathetic.

I enjoy reading Fanfiction

why

It just doesn't smell good what more do you need to know
Sort of like rotting carcass mixed with burnt hair

no i mean why did you shoot the cat

this crisis could have been averted if you hadnt shot the cat

Lmao

He should've shot the neighbor

I shot the cat because it smelled bad when I burned it.

but you said that you shot the cat then burned it

?????????

Yeah I know but I didn't want to wait for the cat to start burning to get my revenge for how bad it smelled

I knew it would smell bad because I tried burning another one of my neighbor's cats before shooting it

It sucked never doing that again

I almost got a gf, this girl who worked at the local bookstore, but she pretty much only read YA and even though we went out for coffee once she found my elitism repellent. I don't talk lit with women I'm interested in any more. I've learned my lesson.

>she found my elitism repellent.
Where do you buy your elitism repellent? My old source went out of business.
I'm just sick of these assholes trying to tell me how good Infinite Jest is like FUCK OFF

Of course by Veeky Forums's standards I'm not an elitist, but at least I was reading for content while she was reading purely for escapist pleasure.

I agree. If you're enjoying something, how could you possibly work up the courage to be smug about it?

I'm bored and tired all the time

I'm going to recommend Dickens to you. Much better than something contemporary for what you're talking about. He wrote many characters and settings that are often moving, often harrowing, and often quite humorous. The most humorous is Pickwick Papers; the most serious is Tale of Two Cities.

Well, at least it's not Sweet Valley High I guess.

>lmao

Thats a Veeky Forums user finder device if I ever saw one

This autism needs adressing

how do you even break two pages of a book

I won't read a novel unless I like the idea of liking it.

m'lady

idk
The book fell and the two final pages were ripped off.

explain

I've read maybe 2 novels with a female protagonist.

I think so called literary fiction is largely worse than genre fiction

People will get triggered at this comment since they put contemporary garbage in the same category of greats like Homer and Shakespeare.

Most the stuff I write is genre fiction and I hate that it's immediately dismissed by many for being so.

I like to read novels that Hollywood movies are based off of (and sometimes vice versa) such as the Bourne Identity and Alien.

I get a lot of my ideas for writing from manga and vidya.

Isn't this comment contradictory?
Are you saying genre fiction is better than homer and shakespeare?

No. Its that people would try to think I'm talking about Homer and Shakespeare since they associate such names with the term. When the truth is that 'literary fiction' is a very recent invention and its those recent works what I'm referring to.

>When the truth is that 'literary fiction' is a very recent invention
You are wrong.

Why can't people just read both? Genre and literary are both good

relative to Shakespeares time (nevermind Homer), yes it is very recent

If you realize what 'literary fiction' actually implies, no, you're wrong. The actual term is of course new, however.

I'm very sure that I specified the term.

>i changed the definition of a word to fit my narrative
how safe.

You're in too much of a hurry to play "gotcha"

Since the very first post I was referring to the term 'literary fiction' and how its used as a catch-all term for a certain type of fiction published today (and somehow confused with quality) while invoking works that existed way before that term was invented as a sort of magical shield.

Just scroll up, actually read, and you will see.

I don't think you understand how terms work, they are allowed to include earlier works.
And while obviously not all lit fic is great, the term does imply a certain quality.

>they are allowed to include earlier works.
Then we can very well call both Homer and Shakespeare "genre fiction". (Romance, Tragedy, Action, Mystery, etc, see what I'm getting at?)

>the term does imply a certain quality.
It really dosent, not anymore than "genre fiction" implies a lack of quality. At best they're good marketing terms, as denotations of quality they are useless.

Lit fic implies an analyzation of society or the human and/or a rigurous poetic mastery, which you will find in both shakespeare and homer, and not in your run of the mill genre fic book.

I thought you understood what i ment when i said "what lit fic implies", but apparently not, it would've taken you 2 seconds to wiki it.

>Lit fic implies, etc
That's a definition wrenched into the term. The term itself very poor since all "literary" means is 'pertaining to words', lol.

You can most certainly find an analysis of society, the human condition and some level of poetic mastery in quite a number of "genre fiction" titles. We get to a point where both terms are again practically meaningless outside the context of marketing.

If you need any examples here they are
>Lord of the Rings
>Dune
>Book of the New Sun (pretty much anything GW puts his hands on, really)
>Gormenghast Trilogy
>Canticle For Leibowitz

>>Book of the New Sun (pretty much anything GW puts his hands on, really)
Laughable.

>no ubik or DADoES

I haven't read Ubik yet, whats DADoES?

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep

lol

We can even take this further by introducing the fact that "genre fiction" does not simply mean sci-fi and fantasy, since there are genres like the Western, the Mystery, Romance, etc. and many examples of works with a so called "literary" inclination within each of them. Examples being Blood Meridian, Romeo and Juliet, The New York trilogy, etc.

It would be a mistake to say they couldn't be genre fiction as they "don't adhere to accepted tropes", but the truth is that they do, or may have simply jumpstarted a new phase like Tolkien. The difference here is how these concepts are used. Think of Don Quixote which was made a deliberate response to its own Chivalry genre, much of Shakespeare's work also carries the lacing of parody.

In the end, all that really matters here is the approach taken to these sets of symbols, or genres, and how well the writer does it. Once you keep this in mind it becomes very easy to detach from silly terms like "genre/literary", and just see the work for what it is.

A story is only as good as its writer, not its symbols.

Thanks.

I think that you don't really understand the point of the terms. They aren't perfect terms, so I can't blame you.

The way that I understand it is they're used to denote the line between pure entertainment and high art. Not to say that high art can't be entertaining or entertainment can't touch on the same stuff high art deals with, but there is a definite distinction. You bring up the stuff that straddles the line in your argument, but most genre fiction does not straddle the line. You're using examples which straddle the line to defend the thesis that "literary fiction is largely worse than genre fiction," when really most stuff Veeky Forums would classify as genre fiction is genuinely godawful, and even you would agree. You're being contrarian, and then defending your ideas with edge cases.

I thought we were arguing the terms and left the original point where it was. So far as "literary being worse than genre "... the long and short of it is that "genre" has no real hesitation for wanting to entertain you first and foremost, while any kind of message is an added bonus and hardly overstated. So called "literary fiction" acts as if its too good for entertainment and wants you to sift around for whats ultimately rather banal points - confusion and mundanety have become a virtue in themselves. I felt this in particular with The Lime Twig by John Hawkes. I did like The Blood Oranges, though and many of his short stories.

The funny thing is that many of the classic works, which are so jealously held under the label of "literary fiction", are very entertaining. We can go as far as Homer for that one.

Back to the terms argument. I surely am being contrarian, but why assume thats a bad thing? If the end-point is to denote quality then surely we can find more suitable terms than something so flimsy as the "literary/genre" divide. Its too filled with holes, contradictions and falls apart under basic scrutiny. Cases are cases, theres no such thing as "edge case" here, all works I've listed are considerably recognized.

I don't think that genre fiction is meant to be used in a way that is able to be scrutinized. I think it is basically a discrete label, a work can either be genre fiction or literary fiction. These examples you bring up (I'm only familiar with Wolfe) seem to definitely not belong in the category of genre fiction, even if Veeky Forums likes to call stuff like Wolfe genre fiction. But genre fiction in and of itself just a label for the sort of entertaining garbage with banal messages, the sort of stuff full of cliches.

Then maybe there is a spectrum for how "literary" something is, but genre fiction is not on that spectrum at all. At least, that's how I understand the terms to be.

I admit that this contradicts my last post, but I think this might be more accurate anyway.

I hear you. I guess for now these terms can serve, but I get frustrated when theyre used as tools for blindly disregarding quality works out of this weird idea of "sophistication" or lack of.

I haven't the slightest clue what Infinite Jest is.

No, you did not learn your lesson, as you are obviously still associating with womenfolk.