Does anyone else just consume books without really thinking too deeply about them...

The real question is why your professors insist that storytime is so important that you need to be able to infer as much as possible from the text. Read nonfiction. Comprehend what was said. Move on.

thats why you just read someone else's analysis afterwards and go "oh yeah that makes sense"

>alex jones is a /pol/ reaction image
I post reaction images of Alex Jones and I stopped going on /pol/ in like 2011

You know you can get the main thrust of a novel without combing through it. If you want to get better jot down patterns that you notice in the margins.

>Alex Jones on Joe Rogan
>exclusive for /pol/

Pick one.

Sauce?

It's silly to think that you should come away with a comprehensive critical understanding of all the content in a book unless you're actually writing a literary critique on it, or consider it part of your expertise

Pull out the most salient information in the books you read and file it away in your head, if you don't find an application for it than it's only proper that it should be forgotten

Art critique is a sham in general (considering that literature is art).

>It doesn't matter what the author meant, it's how I interpret it that matters.

No it fucking doesn't. Any child that can read can literally read something and interpret it any way they want. There is no entry barrier and any piece can mean anything depending on the observer which is absolute nonsense. An observer shouldn't be allowed to overthrow the author on his own work.

I don't actively say to myself "alrighty time to analyze", but I usually read for more than just the plot, unless it's genre fiction. I try to notice the prose, word choice, any allusions they make, etc. This especially applies to something that I know is supposed to be philosophical, though sometimes I do fail. I feel like The Fall by Camus went in one ear and out the other. Meant to watch a lecture on it on YouTube but it got taken down.

So basically you're saying that Ulysses shouldn't exist because Homer didn't write it?

No, they just spoke out against critics (and teachers) reading stuff into their work that they never intended

>Oh children, see how he says this girl has freckles? Little diasporas of darker pigments oppressed by an evil white majority?
>Yeah nah dude I just meant she had freckles

>Yeah nah dude I just meant she had freckles
>Well I interpret that as being oppressed and you can't stop me from having this interpretation.

>I can know better, I can feel good because I'm not a parasite perverting another man's work, I can make a fool out of you in public, I can warn my children against you and your postmodern French Marxist cancer
Good enough.

Please take your theory 101 course. Jesus fucking Christ.

I'm warning all of you that actually read who are scrolling past this thread. Just hide it and move on.

Now memory is the coffer and store-box of knowledge: mine is so defective that I cannot really complain if I know hardly anything. I do know the generic names of the sciences and what they mean, but nothing beyond that. I do not study books, I dip into them: as for anything I do retain from them, I am no longer aware that it belongs to somebody else: it is quite simply the material from which my judgement has profited and the arguments and ideas in which it has been steeped: I straightway forget the author, the source, the wording and the other particulars.

I am so outstanding a forgetter that, along with all the rest, I forget even my own works and writings. People are constantly quoting me to me without my realizing it. If anyone wanted to know the sources of the verse and exempla that I have accumulated here, I would be at a loss to tell him, and yet I have only gone begging them at the doors of well-known and famous authors, not being satisfied with splendid material if it did not come from splendid honoured hands. In them, authority and reason coincide. No wonder that my own book incurs the same fate as the others and that my memory lets go of what I write as of what I read; of what I give as of what I receive.

>you're wrong
>some cursing
Amazing argument.

And yet you're still wrong.

Enlighten me, or is "you're wrong" really all you can say?

Wow.

You put way too much faith in the concept of "what the author is saying." You obviously think interpretation is meaningless because you believe it's trying to pull the wool over your eyes, when really you're just in a "the curtains are blue" phase and don't have any interpretational backbone. Instead of trying to kill the conversation, why not join it? You also think some books are pointless without the right background, and use ridiculous examples like Notes and Faust, books that the reader is guaranteed to leave with ideas regardless of what they know about the book's material history. Your reduction of interpretation to "jerking off when you find an oxymoron" is full of empty resentment against people who want to discuss the ideas in books, and also doesn't make any sense with what you're saying in general. Isn't an obvious oxymoron a pretty sure clue about the author's intent?

You've provided nothing to the "thinking" part of your "thinking vs. consuming" dichotomy. You obviously do not want to think about literature, except when making vague references to historicism and biographical reading net you some appearance of being well read, although I'm pretty sure the only books you've read are Notes and Faust based on your random reference to them.

If you want to merely consume books, then just say so. Don't get wishy washy about what active reading is when you don't even understand the basics of close reading and analysis. Given the mess of what you just said and the hints of curtains-are-blueism in your post, I'm going to say you're probably a high schooler or deadbeat that wandered onto the wrong board.

Thanks for taking the time, although I still don't get why you're so condescending and hateful. Why not consider for a moment that maybe someone of a different opinion is just as smart as you, if not smarter?

>I feel like a brainlet when I don't do all the analysis shit they forced you to do in high school after every chapter
This is what OP said. This is what I responded to. This is what I think of as unnecessary.

>You obviously think interpretation is meaningless
Non sequitur.

>you don't have any interpretational backbone
Ad hominem.

>ridiculous examples like Notes I and Faust
"Pointless" is exaggerated, but you won't understand what the man in Notes is addressing and only about a quarter of Faust's lines make any sense if you have no background at all. That's not to say readers will leave without ideas, but the same can be said about letting a child read about quantum physics or a book in a language it doesn't know. Pointless refers to effort put in against how much of the potential you get out.

>is full of empty resentment against people who want to discuss the ideas in books
No, the opposite. It just prefers to exactly the process OP describes and which I had to do in school too. Literally counting the alliterations on every page of a chapter is the opposite of discussing the author's ideas and also the opposite of enjoying a work.

>You obviously do not want to think about literature
>You obviously think interpretation is meaningless
Why even do this style of arguing, it just looks really bad.

>although I'm pretty sure the only books you've read are Notes and Faust based on your random reference to them.
More ad hominem. And both are good examples of books that directly reference other books, hence making a background useful - how is that random?

>you're probably a high schooler or deadbeat
More insults.

Genuinely thought maybe I was wrong and could learn something, but all I got was a long autistic rant taking expressions like "jerking off over" seriously. And all that hate, Jesus, who hurt you?

>long autistic rant
Much preferable to a high and mighty post that can't take the initiative and has to resort to a "nice argument" retreat so that it can act self-assured in its response.

You're dogshit. Reading is wasted on you. Lurk more before being so utterly retarded.

>Much preferable to a high and mighty post that can't take the initiative and has to resort to a "nice argument" retreat so that it can act self-assured in its response.
You mean like saying "You're wrong" over and over and running away when you're called out but taking the time for some more hatred?

I feel legitimately sorry for you, something in your life must be going really, really wrong.

Gunsmith Cats, my man.

Most of the analysis you probably did in high school was extremely superficial
If you read a good author it's hard not to analyze it

(a) What do you do about the vast majority of cases, in which we don't have an explicit statement from the author about what they intended?

(b) Why would you trust an author's word on what they intended anyway? Wouldn't they generally be motivated to avoid giving personal information?

(c) Why does what an author not intending something mean it's irrelevant/uninteresting/whatever you're arguing?

You're acting like a faggot, faggot.

>(c)
Because there's no reason waste more than a minute spinning your wheels wondering about hypothetical meaning in the text.

Read slowly and attentively. Do not even think of analysis and criticism, focus instead on "being" with the text.

a) I was directly replying to the method in which teachers like to analyze books - which isn't necessarily bad since it's in part supposed to teach you the stylistic elements. But it is definitely not the ideal way to read a book outside of school and you definitely shouldn't feel bad for not doing so.
You always interpret when you read, there is no way around it. And in school or academia it is fine to take several hours for a single page. But that's not how most authors intend their work to be enjoyed, so OP shouldn't feel bad about not trying to analyze more than is naturally coming to him.

b) Of course an author can choose to be misleading or lie and invert the message of his book. But let's stay honest here about how likely that is.

c) I didn't say that. I said we often overanalyze even when the author didn't intend for us to, therefore we shouldn't feel bad about not analyzing constantly.
Of course you are always free to read more into a text than there is. And sometimes that's worthwhile and even the author will go "oh nice, I didn't think of it that way". But I'd say what the author intended is more relevant than what we think he intended. I won't get into that though.

Think about a complex song/movie you like, then go read the youtube/tumblr comments interpreting it. Maybe you'll be inclined to agree more with me afterwards.

>what the author intended is more relevant than what we think he intended
You still seem 100% focused on the author's intention here for some reason. Why are unintended things, things the author didn't even think about (possibly because they took them for granted) not important to you?

>read more into a text than there is
Huh. Do you believe the only 'things' in a text are the author's intentions?

We're leaving my original points now but sure:

>Why are unintended things, things the author didn't even think about not important to you?
Because when I read fiction, I am mostly interested in what the author tried to create, to bring across, I see their work as their child instead of something they drop off and now everyone is free to use it however they want. I'm interested in how a very specific person sees things and how their mind works. It's like when you're asking a person you admire for their opinion on something and then suddenly people start to chime in and tell me their opinion. It doesn't mean that they're wrong, it's just not what I was interested in hearing.
Or imagine you're asking someone to draw you a scene Treasure Island and they draw the whole crew with a yellow star of David on their chest because in their interpretation, Long John Silver is literally Hitler.
But I'm not saying my way to read is the only valid one.

Regarding
>read more into a text than there is

From feminist philosopher Luce Irigaray: >E=mc2 is a sexed equation: It privileges the speed of light over other speeds that are vitally necessary to us.

What do you think, do people sometimes read more into texts than there is? Like I said, go read some tumblr, youtube, or gender study interpretations.

You can be unconvinced by analysis. It doesn't mean the author's word is law. The key word is persuasion. Just read some theory and stop acting like a child.

Why does it matter so much to you that I start caring what "critics" have to say? I'm not insisting on anyone taking my view of reading.

kys commie fag