I look at my bookshelf and it's nothing but the IQfy top 100. I'm a golem. A total NPC. I have no soul. It's all soulless garbage. Moby Dick? The Art of War? Brothers Karamazov? Mason & Dixon? I've never had an original thought in my life. It's over. It's so over. I try to think of the image of an apple but all I see is blackness. I have no voice in my head even as I type this. Was I ever even truly alive to begin with?
What do people with souls read?
I love looking at top ten threads. zero personality. just classics and lit memes. you’ll find like 5 guys in the whole thread that clearly read things that interest them. everyone else just the same old IQfyslop.
Maybe classics interest them, just because they don’t interest you that’s not true for everyone. Given that thousands of books have been mentioned on this board, they’re all litslop I guess.
It takes a lot, a lot of time to become well-read. I've only slightly managed because I was once a NEET with the luck to have an entire decade all to myself spent in free-range reading and intellectual wandering. It was awesome and I'm truly thankful but not everyone can be so fortunate.
>It's over. It's so over.
Don't worry anon, it's not over.
It never even began.
Read whatever you want. Why do you care if they’re popular?
Well when you're always staring at various screens and doing useless creativity killing shit like jacking off its expected you're gonna see some effects. Just keep reading, maybe explore Russian lit or something so you can be a autistic psued about 1 topic in particular and literally just write your thoughts every day also. The effects of not giving your brain proper rewarding stimulation are so understated, my thought process has been irreparably fricked but reading indubitably helps, not the best thing you can do for your mind i guess but who gives a frick, as long as you're caught up in the book
I have an affordable math degree library and I am not enrolled
IQfy top 100 or western canon and similar lists serve to give you a foundation to build on. You’ve read perennial classics that other literature leans on. Why complain about learning the grammar of a language as if it’s not useful?
Basically what this guy said. Top 100 is just an entry to the world of literature. After reading through these you should start developing your own personal taste and interest. Which one did you like the most?
Beowulf? Get into sagas and northern myths.
Master and Margarita? Get into soviet-core or surrealism.
The options are basically limitless, you can use your whole lifetime to develop yourself as a person. You may be an npc now, but in 10 years time you can be whoever you want.
>What do people with souls read?
The things which touch their souls.
>What do people with souls read?
Hesse and Mishima.
Oh boy more IQfy memes
I read what I like
You're not an NPC. But an idiot more like. Keep reading and don't feel inferior.
Do you like the books anon? Do they improve you? Do they extend your understanding?
Why are you looking for validation from people online?
I've been reading through the classics recently but growing up I almost exclusively read fantasy novels. Just peep whatever tickles your ivories anon. If you like boats peep boat shit, if you like spies peep spy shit. If you don't like any of it stop reading and go do some other shit none of this matters.
Try reading something you had as a reader in primary/middle/high school. Picrel is mine which I remember more fondly than some of the others
So? Like half my bookshelves are top 100. If you’re standing in the bookstore and don’t know what to read next, you’re unlikely to regret buying a classic. Then you can use the local library to branch out and try other stuff.
You should read more things about a topic you have an interest in.
Read The Iliad and The Odyssey
>What do people with souls read?
You say that you are an NPC because you read what other people tells you to read. But you come here and ask "people with souls" what books they read so that you can continue copying what others do?
I think you’re being overdramatic — the claim “I have no soul” is paradoxical like the claims “I’m not a good person” or “I’m too arrogant”, where the very recognition of the fault begins to be evidence to the contrary, whereas a truly soulless person would not worry that they had none. It’s also what makes these claims seem somewhat disingenuous to others, even if it’s expressing a real feeling, it feels performative. This post is definitely performative, even if only unconsciously so, because Moby-Dick, Mason & Dixon and Brothers Karamazov are hardly soulless books, they are books with great heart — it seems as though you are asking to be reassured that you are not soulless. My guess is that you’re early 20’s in the US, maybe started reading during or after college after doing a STEM type degree. You don’t discuss reading with others and have viewed it as a solitary hobby. So IQfy has been your only guidance on what and how to read, or at least that is the type of thing that I imagine makes solely IQfy-100 readers. It’s definitely not evidence of soullessness, perhaps just a lack of experience. I think you should try to meet new people IRL, go to new places, open yourself up to new experiences if you can. But also, I wouldn’t worry too much about trying to be “unique” in what you read. After all, the aim of reading the canon is sort of to reach a kind of impersonality and universality in your view of human experience, and the uniqueness, which inevitably comes, is more of a by-product of our own imperfections and limitation, although all the better because of that.
Pick something you like and look up similar books. LibraryThing is the best dedicated recommendation engine I know of but you can also use stuff as simple as the recommended results on Google or Amazon or Goodreads. Better yet is to look at the author's wiki page and see what's said about similar or associated or influential/influenced authors, because then you're following along the same paths that the actual author might have followed in their development.
Basically just have some self-efficacy and seek things out actively, that's the best way to find things you'll really care about.
Reading something in order to relate to others is a completely normal motivation to read something
Great post.
The advice I always give to young readers is to seek out books no one else they know has read. Find rare old books. Find perspectives not shared or read by many.
People are capable of independent thought, but if your readings are entirely based on a subset of books that are always read by everyone...good luck ever thinking of anything actually interesting to say.
To knowledge and perspective max you really should only be giving an author a single book unless they absolutely jaw dropped you. And even at that point you are reaching diminishing returns by giving one person and viewpoint so much time.
Pic related.
the great works of A E Knoch
Step one: Get a hobby.
Step two: Buy books relating to that hobby.
Or get really into some specific genre.
My bookshelves are just the books I found at thrift shops or on ebay
In the past I wanted to buy IQfycore but I was too stingy
go to a bookstore and go through random books and find one that looks interesting
Seems like step 1 from awakening from npcdom