Books for stupid morons

check out the world according to garp

real simple and enjoyable book that'll sort of prime you for more "literary" works

>reading as a hobby
Just fuck off.

Find stuff you want to read and will like. What kind of movies and TV shows do you like and find similar books or the books those things were based on.

Then start with one or more of these on how to read:

How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler(1972 revised)

The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had by Susan Wise Bauer

How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster

How to Read Novels Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster

Buy a used UnAbridged Dictionary and make notes of words you don't understand(and their page number in the book) as you are reading. When you are done reading or have 5 to 10 words look them up and copy the word(s) and definitions into a notebook or on index cards(flash cards) to look over later. and go back to the text to see how it was used. This will be a slow process at first but the more you read and do it the less you will have to look stuff up.

How to Read a Book is fucking awful and people need to stop recommending it. How to Read Literature Like a Professor is actually pretty decent, and doesn't spend like 100 pages prattling on about shit you don't care about before getting started. How to Read Novels is pretty bad also, which is a shame given that his first book on the subject was so well put togeth.

I love How to Read a Book. Its well written and concise with good info not only on reading a a book but critical thinking.

My main problems with How to Read a Book were that I found it's tone extremely pretentious, and I also felt it focused too heavily on non-fiction works. Non-fiction is easy to read, and most of the "help" it offers in respect of reading non-fiction is fairly obvious.

Maybe I went in to it looking for the wrong thing. For me, reading fiction deeply has always been the biggest challenge, and it feels to me like How to Read a Book doesn't really help with that in any meaningful way.

Even books like How to Read Literature Like a Professor haven't helped me a great deal, I still feel pretty lost trying to deeply read fiction, honestly, but it at least managed to elevate me to being able to read for more than just exclusively for plot.

Adler stats the book is primarily geared toward expository books. It was also originally written in the 1940s and later revised in 1972. The tone is a product of that time. The book was also targeted at high school level individuals that aren't accomplished readers. I love the book but a lot of what he says was almost common sense to me when I read it. It still has something to offer all level of readers. I still learned a lot from it and in some instances itr just validated things I already did and helped over some blocks I had that impeded my progress.

As far as reading deeply, it takes practice. Read the books and try to form your own interpretations then look at things like Bloom's guides and books or collected essays on the book(s) you read. Its a matter of learning how to analyze the books how you want and what criteria and resources you need to do that effectively.

No
Yes

To step back a little bit, especially as my first post was a lot more aggressive than it really needed to be, and I feel like it rather clouds the point I actually want to make.

I think, as a guide on reading expository works, it is more or less a decent book. I do _really_ dislike the tone it has, but aside from that, people who are not used to reading expository works, or who actually do struggle with it, will likely find much of the information quite valuable.

The issue I really take is that it tends to come up a lot in discussions here (and elsewhere) when people are either explicitly asking about reading fiction, or where it is ambiguous as to if it is the case (like in this thread). In my experience, people who ask for help getting in to literature because they are struggling with it, tend to be struggling with fiction as often they are coming from a background of really easy-to-read, relatively shallow, genre fiction and can't get a foothold on more ""literary"" works. I honestly feel like recommending How to Read a Book in these cases is really rather detrimental, and is apt to make the person who originally asked the question even more frustrated than before. I often feel that a lot of the people recommending it must not have actually read it themselves.

The tools for expository books can still be used on fiction at least for initial/cursory reading of the book before you really start to study it. The methods help you break down the book into its structure and parts and during that phase help the reader identify where they may need to spend the most time once they get into it. Its a matter of how and when you apply what Adler writes about. Its a foundation to build from.

Pick up a book of short stories by Harlan Ellison or Philip K. Dick.

I don't necessarily disagree with your argument on principle. I think in practice though, the problems that How to Read a Book helps people to work through aren't the problems that most people are going to find the most difficult in learning to appreciate great works of fiction.

Obviously the problem is that it's really difficult to teach people how to overcome the difficult problems, their solutions really come through experience. However, I think that a book like How to Read Literature Like a Professor is a better book to recommend for working over those hurdles, as it is designed in a way that at least attempts to address them, and at the very least should guide a student down something resembling the correct path to picking up the skills themselves.

I'm of course speaking primarily from my own personal experiences, as well as rather limited experience with other people who seem to share similar viewpoints. Perhaps I have attained a fairly lopsided view of the situation.

I'm not gonna lie, I loved Fight Club. It doesn't hold literary water, but it was fun.

Unironically this.

The first book I had that "epiphany" from, but compared to better authors, it's pretty entry-level. Still worth reading, imo, despite DFW haters on Veeky Forums.

Masterpiece? No. Absolute garbage? Nah. 7/10.

Lel

Found a pic of you, user.

>getting in debt for studying literature
Meh!

I think you are assuming people already know to read and think critically. Its about building a foundation. Learning to crawl before you walk and learning to walk before you run.

Siddhartha

Quick and breezy.

Perhaps I'm expecting more of the average person asking these questions than I should. Most people I grew up around and spend time around have reasonably well developed critical thinking and reasoning skills. It may be irresponsible of me to assume that people who are struggling with reading are coming from that background.

That said, I'd also argue it's dangerous to assume that everyone who is struggling to get in to literature does have those problems for the reasons I expressed in . I suppose the only way to really get around this would be to supply a list of caveats with your suggested reading list, but doing that in a constructive way would probably be difficult, especially as I'd reckon most people who lack critical thinking skills are apt to not admit that to themselves.

I do really think it is a shame to have to recommend How to Read a Book though, as when I was trying to get in to literature I personally had it recommended to me and found it frustrating more than anything. I suppose in hindsight after this conversion, your post which recommends a variety of sources probably can't be improved upon too much which I find to be a bit of a shame.

That being said I still think How to Read Novels Like a Professor probably doesn't belong there. It really doesn't add much of substance for anyone who has already read How to Read Literature Like a Professor.

Beyond the books I listed you need things like Bloom's Guides, SparkNotes and essays on specific books as well as a discussion group to get deeper beyond what you can figure out on your own.

If there are other books of better scope than the ones I had listed I would love to be pointed towards them. I'm always open to the fact that I could learn more.

The Things They Carried
Heart of Darkness
Philip K Dick
Jules Verne

this 100 times

The bible

edgy

Top zozzle!

Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys
Goosebumps
Hunger Games

i'm serious

Ray Bradbury

Start with children's classics and fairy tales. They're well-written, easy to read, have surprising depth when you start to analyze, and are massively culturally important, so having read them is useful for understanding other literature and society
Charles Perrault (1628-1703): “The Sleeping Beauty in the Woods,” “Little Red Riding-hood,” “Blue Beard,” “The Master Cat, or Puss in Boots,” “Cinderella, or the Glass Slipper” 1696
Mme Le Prince de Beaumont (1711-80): “Beauty and the Beast” 1756
The Brothers Grimm (Jacob 1785-1863; Wilhelm 1786-1859): “Snow-white,” “The Frog Prince,” Hansel and Grethel,” “Rumplestiltskin,” “Aschenputtel,” “The Fisherman and his Wife,” “The Juniper Tree,” “The Brave Little Tailor,” “Rapunzel,” “Briar Rose, or The Sleeping Beauty”1812
Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875): The Snow Queen: A Tale in Seven Stories, “The Little Mermaid,” “The Princess and the Pea,” “The Little Match Girl,” “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” “The Steadfast Tin Soldier,” “The Ugly Duckling” 1835
Lewis Carroll (1832-1898): Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland 1865
Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888): Little Women 1868
Mark Twain (1835-1910): The Adventures of Tom Sawyer 1876
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894): Treasure Island 1883
Beatrix Potter (1866-1943): The Tale of Peter Rabbit 1902
Margery Williams Bianco (1880-1944): The Velveteen Rabbit, or How Toys Become Real 1922
Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874-1942): Anne of Green Gables 1908
Kenneth Grahame (1859-1932): The Wind in the Willows 1908
James M. Barrie (1860-1937): Peter and Wendy 1911
E.B. White (1899-1985): Charlotte’s Web 1952

>It doesn't hold literary water
why?

No meaningful achievement. It was written purely for entertainment

Just start with junk/bestsellers. You'll naturally move up to the good stuff. Enjoy it read imaginatively and naively

this, definitely for stupid morons

Books that are just backstories to or retellings of videogame plots

Hunter Thompson's good entry-level stuff, try Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas or The Rum Diary

Ulysses

A man goes on a search for his lost foreskin, only to find that it was there, in his heart, all along.

read that 100x, and if you can tell me what the real meaning is, you'll never have to read another book.

Just go with the Veeky Forums starter kit man. No pressure, take it one at a time, look up the words you don't know. It's a rewarding experience.

Any young adult novels desu senpai imo

Finnegans Wake. Jump in the deep end with both feet, pussy.

>fuck Slaughterhouse-Five
die.

Get a better opinion. Slaughterhouse-Five is overrated as shit and far from Vonnegut's most evocative work.

I consider introducing plebs to postmodernism an achievement

Fucking kek

...moby dick???
If you can get through that, then you get through something other than john grisham and patricia cornwell

Acquire a series of books on the history of world literature. You don't have to read the set of books in order of course, just start from whatever era seems interesting, mine the book for interesting authors and titles, get said books, and start reading. A series like this also builds up your understanding of literature in general.