What got you into literature?

GBFM

was flipping through a roommates books in a transitional, read some very-short Kafka

my mum when i was a wee lad

Read Upton Sinclair's The Jungle based on the cover and wanted more literary fiction like it. The school reading cemented it, i enjoyed about half of what we read in high school. Before that I'd been reading Stephen King from my parent's bookshelf.

Same reason anyone does, I wanted to look smart.

Reading A Doll's House for a class really sparked it for me, but a couple months before that I started slowly reading things on my own anyway.

"Frankenstein" showed me the greatness of literature. I read "1984" before "Frankenstein," but it didn't do much.

Why am I seeing pictures of this specific faggot everywhere? Why is it always coupled with a meaningless topic? What are you trying to do to this guy?

The same thing that got me into bed with your mum; your father.

This.

Enid Blyton, Robert Louis Stevenson and Jack London

>read fantasy as a child
>Was le gamer so that took away from reading
>Favorite games were story heavy games
>Started to get bored of gaming
>Get really into film in college thanks to free time and Netflix
>Realize many great films are based on great literature
>buy a book and download as many classics as I can

Been seriously reading for years now. Stopped playing Vidya because I realized it's a shit medium for story telling and I am not a manchild.

>playing videogames for the story
>playing videogames
>watching films for the plot
>get into reading because of the stories and the plot.

omfgod, you really are a manchild and a pleb

I mostly read philosophy and poetry now

I've been reading fantasy and scifi since I was about 8, out of a natural love for imaginative storytelling and adventure.

I've been reading philosophy since I was 16 because I found it to be inspiring and fun.

there was a lot of buzz surrounding Dan Brown by the time i'd reached middle school, and my mother had become a fan. as an assignment for our mandatory writing class, we had to select a work of literature of our choice and write a report on it. i read my mother's copy of Angels and Demons for the assignment and found it compelling; i'd always had an interest in art, history, and conspiracy theories, and this had all three. from here i read the rest of Brown's output at that time and a few other thrillers. once i grew bored of the genre for being highly formulaic, i started reading horror, sci-fi, and literary fiction.

And you are a pretentious cookie cutter Veeky Forums drone who is completely ignorant of the fact that the story is at the core of art. Your next reply will likely confirm it. Let me guess, style IS the substance huh?

>And you are a pretentious cookie cutter Veeky Forums drone
Except they are always combated by your type of drone.
You can see everything.

What type of drone am I exactly?

The depression I thought I didn't have after breaking up with someone I was in a relationship for three years. After I got over her, depression still remained as something I could use reading as a coping mechanism for. I remember the first year after the breakup I binge read everything I could put my hands on, but after that conflict was resolved my reading slowed down to a more above-average-but-still-casual rate.

if i read fiction (something that i dont do regularly) i dont read it for the "story" because im not a kid who needs a regular sucesion of events in an order that im familiar with to keep me interested, the situational set-up or, the themes, or yes, the style is enough for me.

Bought a kindle. Started reading like mad because free books.
But the books that really got me into reading would be love in times of cholera and one hundred years of solitude. Those two really opend my eyes on literature

>because im not a kid who needs a regular sucesion of events in an order that im familiar with to keep me interested
That is what you think, when you hear the word 'story'. No wonder you're a Veeky Forumsdrone, you probably think Nabakov is a good writer, kid.

please explain to me what a "Story" is , genuinely interested

How did YOU get into literature?

When I was around 13 I watched the movie Into The Wild and it got me interested in Thoreau, around the same time, while I was going through an atheist/deist phase I became interested in Enlightenment philosophy because of a christian history book I had to read while I was being homeschooled.
I had read a few things before that (Charlotte's Web, Wind In The Willows) but I don't think I ever viewed reading as something really special until I read The Brothers Karamozov when I was about 15, after that I realized I had found something worth pursuing.

A story is any report of connected events. Even the most abstract and purple literature falls upon this, an 'event' is an incredibly ambiguous term as it can be an action or something akin to a realisation. Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake are stories. Style is incredibly important, and definitely is substance, but prose is always bolstered by a clear idea of what is going on in the mind of the writer. This notion that plot is unimportant is why there are so many awfully meaningless purple passages posted in critique , even good poetry relies upon a powerful story at its most concentrated. The best prose conveys an event and makes it more beautiful than it ever could be, the best books convey a series (connected in whatever way the writer feels is the best way to convey them) of events that combine into a powerful whole.

*posted in critique threads

I learned to read when i was 3.5 years old because i was an autistic fuck.
I used to read entry-level classics like The Little Prince and Verne stuff, along with some comics and easy-lit from my country, but then i grew disillusioned with literature because i realized that my country was known just because of shitty commie poets (this phase started on 2003, so i didn't knew shit about based Bolaño).

Then on 2012 i learned about Borges and the realismo magico circlejerk. I was surprised at the nature of those books, and the short story format was pretty comfortable.

Now i finished reading a lot of the spanish canon, and i'm currently trying to delve into non-spanish modernism lit.

Ok, i understand agree with your definition. But you know that what people call a "story" is "a report of connected events" using a conventional linear narrative structure. And by the way, some times the events are not connected at all, if they are not , you consider that every event its a story by itself?

A bottle of wine and a lot of sweet talk. Then I pushed literature down onto the bed and got myself into him.

Occultism mostly.

Sorry for insulting you, and yes, I understand that not everyone has such an open view of the story. Despite this, my definition isn't correct and I stand by my notion that the best of literature, including the surreal and abstract, is reliant upon events that are connected in some way. I also understand that it can be cringe-worthy when people refer to the 'style over substance' argument, but a sentence with a genuine idea to express will always be better than frilly gibberish. Style must blend with the idea and neither must overpower the other (at least as far as creative fictional prose goes).

I actually like Nabakov and think he is a perfect example of style done right

There were two or three "phases" before that.

I read plenty as a kid and teen, mostly crappy fantasy tho, anyway I was always "used to" reading in my leisure time. I always read an occasional book, but I did not read fiction all the time at ages 15-18 or so.
...instead, I got interested in politics and started reading non-fiction and studying leftist/marxist thought. I even read shit by Stalin and though it was kinda good.
That lead to reading philosophy in general when I wanted to understand more.

Then, at some point, I just decided that fuck, I need to read some classic fiction as well. I started and the habit of reading varied stuff finally stuck.

>my definition isn't correct
*incorrect, kek

An interest in history branched into an interest in philosophy.

>tfw I have asian hair that sticks out at the sides when short
>not even asian

>Sorry for insulting you

Don't worry for that, that's how we all argue here :3

Thank you for your replies, it's an interesting topic and is hard to get meaningful conversations about it here.

hot af

My mother read good british children's lit to all of us before bed and our house was full of books.

My dad was in the Air Force and my family moved a lot when I was a kid, so we didn't exactly care much to even set up a TV since we knew we'd be moving again almost as soon as we'd shown up.

Thankfully, though, there were always libraries nearby.

I think somewhere along the line some wires crossed in my brain and I began enjoying the idiotic humor of this website, so who knows what damage has been done at this point?

>highly educated well read Catholics

>highly educated

>we read

>Catholics

what did he mean by this?

Jesus christ. Are you 65 or something?

No, why?

There's a subculture of Patrician Catholics who are better read than any insipid agnostic. They realize the limits of human reckoning and embrace an ancient religion on purpose, and in spite of their rationality. People like C.S. Lewis (albeit a high-church Anglican basically the same thing), or Chesterton.

10th grade Honors English class. Cuckoos Nest, Clockwork Orange, Romeo and Juliet, Prufrock, Keats, some of Pound's early poetry, some Dylan Thomas, some Auden. We had a good teacher too. He was really into it. He gave me extra credit reading assignments and then finally said, 'you've already got an A lets just meet every now and then and talk about what you're reading'
So I went from trying to impress him to trying to impress a bunch of degenerate jerkoffs on a Mongolian pottery forum

I think you may have responded to the wrong post, mate

i had no friends in elementary school and picked up The Giver off a school book shelf

>LE CATHOLICS ARE ALL DUMB MEME XD
Yikes

Two biggest influences:my mother, a corporate lawyer and sharp woman who read to me as a youth and herself reads every day consistently. She's the type of upper middle class educated woman for whom the NYTimes Bestseller List is exactly tailored- she's read a fair amount of classic but generally reads more contemporary fiction (Michael Chabon, for example). She never pressured me to read but the influence was there, and I know she lamented but eventually calmly accepted my heavy video game use in my youth (not heavy by Veeky Forums standards, but heavy).

The other is my best and closest friend who I've known since 2004. She adopted a certain idea of cool as high school passed into college- think The Beatles and Velvet Underground, Philip Roth, starting what was essentially an arts frat at her small, depressing, cold northeastern liberal arts college and obviously experimenting with drugs some. We remained close though at different schools and she always threw me recommendations that have panned out well (George Saunders, DFW, Pynchon, Gaddis). She's had diagnoses of psychosis, DID, heavy meds, suicide attempts, and lived as a male until earlier this year. Still an adjustment there... but she gives me good recs and I think if I hadn't been her friend these years I'd be less literate and watch Netflix all the time or something.

I should probably mention all three of us are Jews. Jews are generally pretty good about this.

Read Harry Potter as a child.

Profound, unsettling loneliness.

Same XD

Catholics are better than

>Highly educated
>muslims

Choose one

The Egyptian by Waltari. Somebody forced me to read it when I was 14.

>13 years old, in class
>giving my thoughts and ideas on life, the world, humanity etc
>at the end of the lesson, the teacher asks me if I have read Aristotle
>tell him no and that I don't even know who that is
>teacher is surprised that I have such profound ideas that are so similar to Aristotle's, without having read him
>gives me the Iliad and a book on the Presocratics to read

... And the rest, as they say, is history

aren't you that guy who posted a picture of himself reading infinite jest?

losing all my friends that didn't want to hang out with me. now i read all day.

wow just stop reading then jesus

My German teacher. Before, I used to read fantasy trash (I'm not saying ask fantasy is trash, but what I read, now looking back, was), simply as escapism.

Yes, that's me.

is fantasy the animal crossing of Veeky Forums?

i read ulysses on bloomsday 2004, when I was a little lad of 13. I loved the book and all its references and irish politics. I read potrait of the artist as a young man next, followed by tagore, lermontov, roth and mccarthy. By the age of 14 I could already exercise my wit and intelligence and engage in debates with learned scholars. I got mad literary pussy. There I was, at 14 years old, sitting on top of six girls with one of my hands jerking myself off, and the other holding a critique of pure reasoning.

Trying to impress hipster qt's in high school

Read tonnes of classics

Realised they didn't even care/read

Accidentally became patrish

>what did he mean by this?
Jesuit schooling. It's some high powered indelible autism.

I dont think you can immediately discount style over substance merely for lacking purpose or being too frilly as then you immediately discount huge swathes of literature such as decadence and even the vast majority of poetry, as, besides epic poetry, the vastt majority of that is entirely unconcerned with story and is all themes and style.

Tao Lin

School taught me to read, if that's what you mean.

How do you 'get into' literature? I learned how to read at 6 and just kept on reading. Books have stories that are interesting so I read them. It's not anymore a choice than watching tv or playing a video game. It's just a thing. I want to read the story.

I don't understand people who don't read, unless they have a medical reason behind it. I always buy people books as gifts. It seems like the easiest gift to find.

liked reading as a child

Then I went to school and all love for literature was crushed.

Now that I am graduated I am re-discovering the joy of reading

for fun

While I was hospitalized last summer my grandmother gave me a copy of siddhartha by herman hesse. I had just moved to a new city and some night my appendix exploded, filling my insides with gastric bile and sending me right to emergency. I had surgery and then was kept in the hospital for 2 weeks. The painkillers made me trip balls harder than ive ever experienced, and I've done acid. The whole experience felt a lot like a symbolic rebirth, and I started reading a shitload of books from then on. I've been working through the western canon in that time, primarily philosophy and some general history to keep context. I'm currently in the middle ages, studying medieval theology. I hope to make it to descartes by the end of the summer.

i read notes from the underground and it really resonated with me also got me away from the STEM mindset of atheism and science

I hated fiction until I was 17/18... I read American Psycho after liking the film and flew through it in no time. I feel for the "muh classics" meme and it hindered my enjoyment of reading all my childhood.

*I fell for

Pretty dazzling chap tbf.

A desire to feel superior to everyone around me desu

A strong feeling of superiority over my high school peers which I wished to showcase by reading more advanced books than them.

The reasons were shallow and vain, but the results sincere and worthwhile. Its an interesting thing.

That's what I tell myself to sleep at night too user!

Aww thanks

what?

>watch lots of anime
>get ideas for stories
>story ideas develop over time
>decide to check out Veeky Forums to suck less making stories
>my god I know nothing

Currently working through the Yale introductory course on literary theory.

I think I'm better than other people.

>no dad, mom a Xanax Zombie, me in my early teens
>friend's jew dad surveys no one keeping an eye on me and works me like a mule Friday after school, Saturday, and Sunday at manual labor maintaining his properties. Get like $5 for 20 hours work.
>learn of Fagan the Jew in Oliver Twist exploiting orphans
>say to self, "Hey, books really do reflect real life!"
>been reading ever since

Rowling got me into reading and then Irving, Orwell, Kerouac, Hemingway etc. and slowly I got into literature

When I was in 3rd Grade, my teacher gave me a box of Great Illustrated Classics for some reason. I guess she realized from my grades, that I was above average, but I'm not a genius or anything. She just gave me a whole box of them, but didn't give them to anyone else. I don't know why she singled me out, I don't remember reading much before or expressing any keen interest in reading. Anyhow I read them and loved them, but didn't really think about it, since they were kiddie versions. Went on to other kiddie books like Star Wars stuff because that's what kid me was interested in.

Eventually LOTR FOTR came out and I realized that the cartoon about the little hobbit and the dragon I watched a million times as a kid was part of some grander scheme of novels. Read ALL of Tolkien. Got a grown up taste for things. Here I am.

Reading.

OP is the guy who claimed to have fucked his cousin. She's pretty fucking fine though. Dat good singaporean pussy.

We're Vietnamese, lol

Post/link that picture of your cousin? I lost the imgur link. Incest is patrician.

Here's us together

As someone who spends all day on a computer for school and work, the lifestyle aesthetic of someone sitting down calmly reading a book and perhaps sipping on coffee really appealed to me. Basically I wanted to pick up a hobby that had nothing to do with technology. I'm a STEMfag that secretly wishes he could be a liberal arts major desu.