Hi Veeky Forums, dumb highschool dropout hikiNEET /v/irgin /a/non here...

Hi Veeky Forums, dumb highschool dropout hikiNEET /v/irgin /a/non here. Recently my crippling anxiety and depression has driven me to a point where I've actually begun to try and change myself (hopefully for the better) and now I'm thinking about broadening my horizons by reading some literature for the first time in my life.

Would starting with big titles like Crime and Punishment, No Longer Human, Beyond Good and Evil, The Art of War, and Ten Little Niggers be a good idea? As silly as it sounds, I honestly have no idea what the fuck I'm doing. Should I just shut the fuck up and read something instead of blogshitting?

First you must wear this dress

comet suiced posrenormfagbro

the greeks, user. start with them

Then, you must read this chart.
Wearing the dress is very important!

Thanks lads. On another note, should I kill myself for buying books with GBP despite being a poorfag because library books trigger my OCD and digital books are impossible for me to read thanks of my ADHD?

Borrow stuff from the library.
Use money to buy this

Mate if you want a non-meme answer read like confessions of a mask, Great Expectations etc. Stories about how men are shaped from their childhood in spite of challenges they went through is probably the best thing for you to read. Also just read what you want, reading itself and just getting good is what's important.

What do you mean "triggers your OCD"?
Their filing system?
Would it be better or worse to go to a second-hand bookshop where the shelves are explicilty only organised in a general sense? You'd have a better chance of fidning something more actively interesting to you than by going off of what other people tell you they found interesting/edifying.

As per usual they will tell you to start with the Greeks, but just read whatever you feel like man. Your tastes in movies might be considered when choosing light fictions books, which is a pretty good place to start.Maybe try reading "shadow of the torturer" by Gene Wolfe first in a series if you like Medieval Sci-fi .Basically start light with whatever you might think you might enjoy or even just go straight for Dostoevsky because he is a genius and you can't go wrong. Just remember with some of the masterpiece classic works you might have to soldier through some bits that bore you but it is worth it, all of us pseuds can't be wrong.

Reading Dosto's Notes From Underground should be the only right answer

It would take me three lifetimes to get through all that.

Can you afford the cute dress though?

Isn't Gene Wolfe and the new sun books in particular too much for someone new to literature?

nigga who has time for all those 'books" haha read a real book

Judging by this board what makes you think that reading books will make you a better person?

>tfw obliged to refer an user to the "nobody here actually reads" meme
No one here actually reads.

Well, here's how I got into literature.
>read 1984 because the premise looked interesting
>first non-YA non-children's literature book I'd ever read
>really liked it and went through a dystopian literature kick for a little while
>Brave New World, We by Zamyatin, Anthem, Island, Farenheit 451 etc
>eventually come across Modern Library's top 100 novels of 20th century
>work through about a dozen of those
>by now I've pretty much read the majority of pic related, Veeky Forums's starter pack
Now I just sorta read whatever I want without some specific genre or list to guide me. The reason I was able to get into literature is because I started with something that interested me, dystopian literature, and developed my interests from there. My interest in dystopian literature led me to a clockwork orange, and maybe some aspect of the violence and slang of that book prepared me to appreciate Blood Meridian later on, or maybe that's a stretch.

You'll want some direct advice. All right.
Catch-22 is my favorite book in the starter pack. It's hilarious, but a new reader might find its structure and style frustrating. Then I recommend you start with Slaughterhouse Five. Pay attention to what aspects of it you like. The absurdity? The self-referential humor? The alien shit? Or maybe you're a sincere guy and and the tragic points of the novel make you feel some deep faggy-type emotions that you want to get more of? It's a good book, so you should read it, and pay attention to what you like so you can decide what you want more of.

that chart is as well made as the poop I just dropped on the porcelain. essential things not mentioned and lots of books out of order

Honestly, if you don't want to infuriate yourself with old forms of thinking/speaking, you might be better off with well-regarded modern books. The caveat is that these modern books (let's say any "serious" book for adults written after 1980) tend to get quick turnover and are forgotten just as quickly as they're praised, compared to classics that have been discussed if not well-regarded for decades/centuries.

Nonetheless, it might be easier and more fulfilling to get through, say, a Philip Roth book than Dostoevsky or Nietzsche.

OP I was in a depressed NEETtrap same as you and >9852999 was huge in helping me get over it. I'd recommend you read the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius right after. I'm no success since it comes slow, but I'm attending community college getting straight As and planning on transferring to big boy school after getting the associates in another semester. You're gonna feel better, but make sure you're keeping yourself busy working toward something bigger, even if it's just something like "read the main canonical works." If I'm constantly doing things, I feel less like I'm slipping back into that dark pit where nothing was happening. Keep working at it OP, you'll get there.

My reply is half a day late but I'm a faggot and it's tough for me to deal with how dirty I feel library books are. I'm sure some supposedly new books from bookstores have also met their fair share of readers' hands and whatnot but they don't bother me nearly as much.

Thanks for the advice anons. I bit the bullet and ended up starting with the Greeks though, since memes are what turned me into the pathetic piece of shit I am now so hopefully I can get back at the memes by maybe improving myself with them in some way. Memes aside, I just remembered that the Fate franchise got me a bit interested in Greek mythology in the past but my curiosity was never strong enough to push me beyond a few wikipedia pages. I started with pic related and hopefully I don't come back here later shitposting about how starting with the Greeks is just a meme. After I'm done with the Greeks I'll look into some of the other books mentioned in this thread.

That's really not a bad place to start. It's comfy as hell, but I recommend skipping all the genesis stuff (basically part 1) and just going straight into the stories about the heroes. If you really wanna do the Greeks, then do the Greeks. If you get tired of them then forget about them and move on to something else.
Oh, and personally I preferred Aeschylus's Oresteia trilogy to the Oedipus trilogy. The former isn't mentioned in the start with the greeks guide.

>actually starting with the Greeks

OP is going to give up in 3 days

Forgot to give a (You)

I'm sure that catgirl Atalanta will keep me going desu

I was in the same position a year ago. I'd advice reading whatever books you think look interesting from the lit starter pack. You also might want to try reading some non-fiction.

I started of reading Alongside the starter pack. Jumping straight into Homer without reading any more accessible stuff sound like a bad idea.

If you want to improve yourself in various areas from the bottom up you might want to give Kahn academy a try.i followed their ancient Greece history course to get more of a grip on the time period first.

God luck!

I don't think No Longer Human is good for the kind of improvement you're seeking but it will probably speak to you more now that any other point in your life

you dont need mythology to read homer, its self referential

any decent version of the iliad or odyssey will have annotations anyway

>Crime and Punishment, Beyond Good and Evil

A lot of people will say not to start with anything too over your head right now, which isn't necessarily terrible advice, but on the other hand, it's important to challenge yourself, and often some of the books that spark a love of literature in many people are things they've read that were a bit over their heads (this was the case for me). Just because someone doesn't yet have anything interesting to say about the problem of evil or the existence of God doesn't mean the subject doesn't interest them and won't spur them to read further on the subject later on. You want to cast a bit of a wide net so you're able to find out what you like. Forcing someone to only read things they'll completely understand is probably as bad as overwhelming them with a ton of stuff beyond their comprehension.

If Dostoyevsky and Nietzsche seem like they would interest you and you really want to read them, I would recommend giving them a try, although you're definitely not going to have a good understanding of what they were trying to do right now.

Crime and Punishment is definitely the best place to start with Dostoevsky, and for Nietzsche, I'd recommend buying a compilation of his writing, like the Basic Writings of Nietzsche by Modern Library Classics.

>The Art of War

Unless you have a strong interest in military history, or you're planning to become like a cutthroat CEO or gangbanger or something, I'd put this off. Even then, The Prince might be a better starting point.

>Ten Little Niggers

I wouldn't consider this as a "big title". It's just a fun little mystery novel. It is really, really good. You should definitely read it, especially if you like the genre, but it isn't at all difficult.

Agatha Christie is actually a great author to start with early on. She's a highly entertaining and engaging writer, but she isn't at all difficult. Once you read one of her books, you're probably going to want to read another, and another, and so on. They're very addictive. More than anything, enjoyment is what will develop a love of literature, so while you definitely want to challenge yourself and step outside of your comfort zone, you also don't always treat everything like it's a homework assignment. Don't only read things because you think they're big, important books that will make you a better person. Also read stuff just because you want to read it.

Some more recommendations:

The Lord of the Rings
The Stranger
Short stories by HP Lovecraft (Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre by Del Ray is a good comp)
Short stories by Edgar Allan Poe (Complete Tales and Poems should be less than $1 used on Amazon/Abebooks plus shipping)
Mythology by Edith Hamilton
The Odyssey
The Republic (you might find it a bit boring, but read it anyway if you're interested in philosophy)
Essays and Aphorisms by Arthur Schopenhauer
Julius Caesar
The Killer Inside Me
The Collector

Sup OP, I also just started reading a short time ago, though I've been committed to 3+ hours a day and have made some fair progress in spite of my slower reading speed.

Nietzsche was my second book, and it was a compilation Beyond Good and Evil and On the Genealogy of Morals. I wouldn't necessarily recommend against it, but I feel like (and despite whatever Veeky Forums says of Nietzsche being apolitical HIMSELF, that does nothing to dispute the fact that peoples personal sense of morality will still bleed into the political arenas and lead to much of what we see today) it will resonate with you more powerfully if you have a relative understanding of the modern sociopolitical climate to see the parallels between what he was talking about which was comparatively in its infancy back then, and the monster which it's ballooned into today. If you don't have any interest in socio-victimhood-politics, it may be a bit tougher of a starting point because his style of essay is really nothing like most other writers whose names you hear thrown around. That is to say it's just tougher to read, so you might consider skimming a PDF of BG&E to see if you can work through a few subsections, then buy the book if you want.

Besides that, I feel it's good to just pick a topic that has always interested you and buy some books. I'm all over the map between theology, last-century history, light philosophy; but I'm keeping it strictly non-fiction. Besides certain minority of hallmarks of literary achievement in the genre, I feel like fiction is mostly a waste of time. Why bother memorizing fictional characters and fictional relationships and fictional happenings when real life is the greatest drama of all time.

Beyond Good and Evil is the best self help book I can think of, especially if you are dealing with feelings of guilt or shame.

Replying to myself here but, I forgot to include basically this It could actually be a good read for you regardless, as he's going to call you out on your entire mode of life, and maybe that will be exactly what you need to make you seriously reconsider yourself, even if it's not conventially motivating per-se. Jung also did this for me since I was the type to sit around fantasizing my ideas which I understood perfectly, nut couldn't always put into words, so I'd resign myself to my fantasies instead of challenging myself to articulate them. He called me a literal primitive, do-nothing whose charactef benefits nobody, not even oneself, as it restricts you to living inside of your head insteas of challenging the world around you. And he's right. So maybe Nietzsche is exactly what you need.

>Jung also did this for me since I was the type to sit around fantasizing my ideas which I understood perfectly, nut couldn't always put into words, so I'd resign myself to my fantasies instead of challenging myself to articulate them. He called me a literal primitive, do-nothing whose charactef benefits nobody, not even oneself, as it restricts you to living inside of your head insteas of challenging the world around you. And he's right.
Where should I start with Jung?

book depository dot com slash The-Basic-Writings-of-Jung-C-G-Jung slash 9780679600718

This is the one that I read. The part I talked about was within the first 50 pages. The next 300 or so pages is about general psychological concepts, and then the last 300 pages really picks up steam (in my opinion) as it strayed away from a lot of the abstract deconstruction of the psyche and applied all of what was talked about in the previous 300 to more-or-less its application in actual case studies as well as the analyzation of the basic archetypes and images of religiosity that his patients, especially his areligious or atheistic patients, always defaulted to in the process of tackling their neuroses. I thought it was a pretty powerful book, although Veeky Forums generally seems to cast Jung (maybe just psychologists in general?) aside as pseudo shit. But he references spirituality a lot and that's what I was interested in and why I picked him.

Not OP but thanks for the rec. Was planning to just dive into Man and His Symbols and MDR but it is probably better to have the basic knowledge first.

Link to epub or mobi please

>Hi Veeky Forums, dumb highschool dropout hikiNEET /v/irgin /a/non here.
Stopped reading.

Don't read no longer human or beyond good and evil, purely philosophical books build on the works of previous philosophers. Crime and Punishment would be a good place to start, it's relatively accessible for literary fiction. If you find that too difficult you could try something like George Orwell's 1984, or J.D Sallinger's Catcher in the Rye. Good luck with fixing your life, I was a hikkiNEET for three years and it wasn't very fun. All the best.

oh and to add to this, your excessive blogposting makes you sound pretty lonely. If you have a discord ID and want to post it I can talk to you if you would like.

Dazai ain't a philosopher, user.